Gazing at faded black-and-white photos from the first CES, which occurred 50 years ago this week in New York, it’s tough not to laugh at the antiquated gear that was considered cutting-edge at the time—fat tube black-and-white TVs when 23 inches was considered “big screen,” giant wood console cabinet TV/record player/radio combos, “portable” TVs that […]
Hungry Mobile Video: Will Next-Generation TV Feed the Beast?
Bandwidth-hungry video is viewed as an insatiable beast by those who are delivering it over crowded networks. Better compression and mobile network advances have relieved some congestion but the flames of UHD and virtual reality are licking at the heels of cellular networks. TV broadcasters think they can help relieve some of that congestion with […]
Apple Makes Play for Video’s Future at WWDC 2017
The big news out of Apple’s recent developers conference wasn’t the new, more powerful iMac Pro or refreshed Macbooks. It was the news that Apple was embracing HEVC compression across its product lines. (OK, it was big news if you’re a video compression junky!) Apple threw both of its arms around HEVC at its World […]
Emerging Markets Have Different Ideas about the Latest Video Tech
Many of the new video-tech tools are delivering the latest premium viewing experience (Ultra HDTV) to consumers mainly in developed economies. You’d be forgiven for assuming that the latest compression technologies’ sole purpose is to enable the delivery of UHD video to high-end TV displays. This application of the new technology gets all the attention, […]
Amazon Is Building a Video Empire to Crush All Rivals
Amazon is a rather unique public company. Rather than redirect its profits (when there are profits) to shareholders, its founder and president Jeff Bezos famously prefers to re-invest its huge cash inflows into furthering the business and taking bets on the future. One of Amazon’s biggest bets is video. This year, the company is likely […]