Genesis HD Cinema Show

Beamed across Europe in glorious high definition and supreme 5.1 audio last night were 'we won't go quietly' seventies super group Genesis.

Cinemas in the UK, Sweden, France and Spain took the satellite feed from the second night concert from Düsseldorf, Germany. The venue picked maybe because 'Germany Love Genesis' as one sign pointed out and maybe because the last such 'cine-cast' was also from Germany with Robbie Williams and they did a pretty good job.

Initial impressions of the evening in a Cambridge VUE cinema...

BAD:
The band were ropey in parts and took a while to warm up, one of the tech cranes was permanently out of focus, the director chose some very strange angles (behind a below Tony Banks to get his feverish fingers), amplifier overload in Cambridge so we had frequent cut-offs, no steadicam on-stage which would have been a good idea, no interaction with the cinema audience so it didn't make the most of the 'live' aspect. Felt like a second hand experience - no surprise there you're in a different country!

GOOD:
Filled in the screen with pretty good HD; gave you a great view of proceedings (just like a concert DVD would though) ; sound mix was fantastic and reproduction was great except for the overloads; ears weren't buzzing post concert; played some of the old stuff but needed more rehearsal time.

CONCLUSION:
For £15 (about €23; $30) you got to share a large 'living room' with the best AV system money could buy and a bunch of strangers with a group who gave all they had to give. You wouldn't want to pay more than that without keeping a copy for your DVD shelves.

Arri's D-20 Digital Camera Movie Credits

Arri's newish D-20 digital camera has up to now been known more for shooting for TV production and commercials than for feature length movies but news from Arri includes use of the camera on movies with DoP Mick Coulter on Roger McDonald's Baker Street and DP David Higgs on Guy Ritchie's Rockonroller.

Christie Digital's 3000th Cinema Install

Christie has announced that it has installed more than 3,000 Digital Cinema systems worldwide. They say that the figure equates to nearly 80% of all installations around the world using Christie DLP Cinema projectors, so the nearest thing we have to a standard.

More than 2600 systems are installed throughout the USA. Christie installations also span Africa, Asia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.

Christie Digital

Soderbergh Confirms RED Camera Use

Director/Producer Steve Soderbergh has confirmed that he will shoot his two new films with the RED digital cinematography camera.

The Argentine and Guerilla (the stories of Che Guevara with Benicio del Toro in the lead roles - see above) are in pre-production at the moment and due for release next year. Soderbergh is well known to favour use of digital techniques going back to the seminal 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' and including Full Frontal shot in DV with Julia Roberts.

The question is can RED get him the cameras in time!

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Codex Digital Launch New Portable Media Recorder

Codex Digital has released details of their new portable media recorder with eight channels of digital audio and 2-channels of video up to 4K in quality. The casing is made of F1-like carbon fibre and uses RAID diskpacks for storage. More details when they tell us.

JVC Enter The 4K World

Infocomm which was on this week in California is an increasingly important show and obviously important enough for JVC to show its hand in the 4K acquisition and projector world. On their stand was the above industrial looking 4K camera complete with unnamed lens. Reports (and pic above) from the guys from Colorspace reported that the camera has 3xCMOS chips (3840x2048) without pixel shifting. Each chip measuring 29x15mm. Adam from Colorspace reported that the recorder used was Astro's new 444 recorder.

The 4k projector showed its own content and also some live shots from the camera. More details soon.

This news comes on the same day that Jim Jannard (of RED) looks like he is stepping away from Oakley sunglasses after an offer to purchase his shares. Having seen his companies shares rocket on news of the RED camera we wonder if RED was always a clever way of preparing Oakley for sale.

RED has definitely forced Sony's 4K hand and now JVC's. Adam from Colorspace interestingly says in his report on CML that the differences between 4K and 2K are negligible.

Wii HD - 'A Couple Of Years'

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes a higher spec, HD-enabled "Wii 2" could be on the shelves "in a couple of years".

"I think that a lot of people consider the Wii a "fad", and attribute that conclusion to the type of people who have been attracted to the Wii so far," Pachter said, observing that many publishers "don't know what to do with" the new demographics of female and older gamers.

Full story here

Archos Launch Generation 5 Media Players

Archos has launched their fifth generation of their well thought of media players. Most interesting for us is the 605 wifi model as with a plug-in you can get 10mb/s data rate and play something approaching 720p - the screen's native resolution is 800x480.

The 605 has a seven inch screen and associated docking station to record live TV broadcasts. Recordings done this way are now one-touch operations through time-shifting but you can only record one programme at a time.

Archos are partnering with many content owners through their content portal for downloads to the PMP and so are entering the race to attract browsers with money for content.

Other plug-ins (these are going to be around €30 each) include Podcast downloads and of course an Opera browser with Flash media playback for you YouTube fans.

Hard drive sizes up to 160 GB and will encode video up to 2.5Mbps. Price around €160 without plug-ins.

Kodak Announce New Bayer Filtering For More Light

Kodak's new sensor approach is based on the "Bayer Pattern," an arrangement of red, green, and blue pixels introduced by Kodak scientist Dr. Bryce Bayer in 1976. The pixels work together with the image sensor to collect light.

Half of the pixels on the sensor collect green light, while the remaining pixels collect red and blue light; software later reconstructs the a full-color signal for each pixel.

Enter Kodak's new high-sensitivity image sensor.

"We're introducing a fourth pixel in addition to red, green, and blue," Kodak's DeLuca commented. "This one is clear, panchromatic, so all wavelengths of light go through and are detected by the pixel. Those panchromatic pixels are more sensitive, because they do not filter out any light [striking the sensor]. We can then use those panchromatic pixels to increase the sensitivity of the sensor, and use the colour pixels to collect the colour information that ends up in the final image."

Light would come from above, and then go through this colour filter to go out, so only the red light or blue light or green light passes," DeLuca says. "And then the remaining light is detected by the pixel structure."

But Kodak is changing the filter. From a manufacturing perspective, it's not a dramatic fix. "All we need to do is to change the configuration in that colour filter layer, leaving the rest of the pixel unchanged," DeLuca says.

Kodak's new image sensor technology has a software component as well. The high-sensitivity sensor, with its new approach to patterns, requires revised software algorithms to generate a full colour image from the raw information coming off the sensor.

"There's additional work that needs to happen to integrate the new algorithms--which will continue to be developed--into the camera," DeLuca says. "We're not changing the fundamental structure of the silicon, which gives us the opportunity to deploy this broadly. This technology has the opportunity to become a new standard."

sourced PC World.com

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As Dell Stop Selling HDTVs Is the Market Undervalued?

Dell Computers has decided to stop selling LCD HDTVs to return its focus back to selling computers. Although Dell were branding other people's screens their leaving of a supposedly 'profit heavy' market may start revealing how increasingly undervalued it is.

At the start of the HDTV land grab Dell and many other traditionally non-TV brands, like Motorola and Kodak, saw an opportunity to quickly make vast profits on the news that hundreds of millions of household were swapping out their main television.

Most of the newcomers bought their TVs from third-party original equipment manufacturers, who then put on the specific company brand names. But the huge investment made in flat screens has flooded the market and prices have tumbled accordingly putting customers off buying and instead waiting for the inevitable price drop.

CES Is World's Biggest Consumer Show - It's Official

The International CES has announced the results of an independent audit that confirms CES’ stature as the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and North America’s largest annual tradeshow of any kind.

The 2007 International CES audit, conducted by VERIS Consulting LLC, revealed that the industry tradeshow drew a record 27,020 international attendees, with overall attendance totaling 143,695 industry professionals during CES’ four-day run in Las Vegas, NV, January 8-11, 2007.

Sony's Latest Blu Ray Player is Only $499

Sony began shipping its new Blu-ray Disc player in the US to major consumer electronics retailers and specialty dealers nationwide for a list price of only $499. The new model can output 1920 x 1080/24p high-definition video, currently the highest resolution high-definition signal available through an HDMI connection. The player supports various video formats, including MPEG2, MPEG4-AVC and VC1.