Far be it from me to find fault with filmmaker-great Steven Spielberg or with author Ernest Cline. But as effective and entertaining as Ready Player One is, its depiction of what VR will be like 25 years hence is, conceptually, ridiculous. <Spoilers ahead> One major problem involved in forecasting VR’s future—other than any extrapolating of […]
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What Will Be The Legacy of Legacy Formats?
Recent reports of the demise of the compact disc feature elegies tinged with funereal nostalgia for what was once a bold, new and literally shiny technology. Those might as well have been elegies for all physical media including the CD’s video packaged-media analogues: DVD and Blu-ray. Neither of which is quite ready for a final […]
I Saw the Integrated Future at CES
CES is traditionally a wonderland of new devices and new technologies, some frivolous and some functional, some ready-for-prime-time and some preparing for a hopeful or eventual future. Also, traditionally, most of these new devices and technologies exist by-and-large in siloes, distinct product categories or distinct applications designed to work, perhaps, tangentially, complementary or supplementary with […]
Hedy Lamarr Finally Gets Her Spread Spectrum Due in ‘Bombshell’
AI, voice control, VR/AR, IoT/connected devices, autonomous cars—all these and more are going to be prime topics at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show. But as a scoop of sherbet cleanses the palate, instead of diving right into CES, I’d like to discuss a new documentary about movie siren Hedy Lamarr. And, yes, her story is […]
Are There Killer Apps for AR and VR?
Restless grumblings are rocking the virtual reality (VR) world. Previous rose-colored projections are undergoing hasty revisions as disappointing VR hardware sales reports trickle in. We’re shocked that folks don’t like putting stuff on their heads that completely blind them, forcing them to grope around to find the controllers, bumping into walls or furniture, and looking […]
VR’s Rocky Road to the Mainstream
For Mom and Pop America to buy into a new technology, they first need an answer to their inevitable “why do I need it?” question. And the answer to this question ends up being more want than need. To get to that “want and can’t live without it” stage, content must be particularly suited to […]
Ready for the AI TV Future?
As everyone in the consumer technology business knows, live demos are a tricky business, especially when dealing with persnickety Wi-Fi connections. To live demo or not to live demo decisions are not arrived at lightly, and then are copiously rehearsed to avoid offending the live demo gods. So when TCL’s senior product designer Tiago Abreu […]
UHD Blu-ray’s Narrow Opportunity Window
My wife loved Wonder Woman. No, to paraphrase Woody Allen, love is too weak a word for how she feels about the initial adventures of the Amazon princess—she luuurved it, she loaved it, she luffed it (two Fs, yes). She l’ed Wonder Woman so much, we’ve seen it three times in the theater. (I am […]
The Coming 1K/2K to 4K Upconversion Disconnect
A couple of months back I received a distressed email from a reader. It seems he bought a new 4K TV and eagerly hooked up his DVD player, believing his new UHD would make his old DVDs look lovely. You can guess the inevitable: disastrous results. Imagine blowing up a postage stamp-sized photo to billboard […]
How Disruptive Will Bluetooth Mesh Be?
Even though Bluetooth has been around for less than 20 years, it is only in the last half dozen or so that its adoption has ballooned. Bluetooth’s accelerated adoption rate is attributable largely to the explosion in Bluetooth speakers and headphones, and especially to the growing cornucopia of products and product categories using smartphone-connected Bluetooth […]