GoPro launches the HD Hero2 camera

Announced earlier today, GoPro released details on the launch of the HD Hero2 digital video camera. This camera is the successor to the HD Hero, a 5-megapixel camera that shot 1080p HD video. The HD Hero2 has been bumped up to 11-megapixels and can also shoot at eight or five megapixels to save on memory space. GoPro claims that the camera has an image processor that’s twice as fast at the original HD Hero. They also claim that the lens produces images that are twice at sharp. The HD Hero2 can shoot in multiple fields-of-view (FOV) including 170 degrees for widescreen, 127 degrees for a normal shot and 90 degrees for a narrow shot. It also has the same FOV capabilities for shooting video.

go-pro-hero2-burst-modeThe company also claims that the HD Hero2 has professional level low light performance for those shooting at dusk. While the original HD Hero could only shoot three 5-megapixel shots per second, the HD Hero2 is capable of shooting ten 11-megapixel shots per second. In addition, there’s a new time-lapse setting that can record a 11-megapixel photo every 0.5 seconds. Other new additions to the new model include a mini-HDMI port for viewing photos or videos on a high definition television, a language based interface instead of the numeric interface, multiple LED lights on all sides of the camera and a 3.5mm stereo microphone input for plugging in an external microphone.

Similar to the previous model, the HD Hero2 is currently available in three different packages dependent on the usage. The packages include the Outdoor edition with a head / helmet straps for activities like mountain biking, the Motosports edition with suction cups / buckles and the Surf edition with surfboard mount. All packages are priced at $299.99 and comes with a 30-day return policy if the camera doesn’t perform well enough for the activity.



Source is
http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/gopro-launches-the-hd-hero2-camera/

Meet Shelby, Your Personalized Channel For Web Video

There are plenty of videos on the Internet. YouTube users alone upload 8 years of video every day. What the web needs is a service that helps organize them.

Shelby.tv hopes to provide that service. The startup is launching a web video player Monday that collects content your friends share on your Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr into one stream.

Instead of watching video on a small square within a large YouTube page, which can be surrounded by less-than-tasteful comments from strangers, you watch it in full-screen mode and within the context of your friends’ recommendations. You can watch the stream consistently — like TV — without searching or clicking, or you can reorder and delete videos. If you like a video, you can save it to a personal favorites feed.

“I don’t watch TV unless a friend says, ‘You have to see this show,’” says cofounder Reece Pacheco. “We’re trying to bring the same strength as word of mouth to web video.”

The startup, a graduate of TechStars’ inaugural New York class, is also launching an iPhone and iPad app Monday. The app is similar to the browser version, but portable. Pacheco says that he, for instance, sometimes watches Shelby.tv on his iPad while he’s brushing his teeth.

Despite this habit, Pacheco says the goal of Shelby.tv is not to get people to watch more web video, but to help them more easily find relevant web video. Eventually, the company plans to add “smart video” features, recommendations based on friends’ favorites, email notifications that alert you when someone watches your video and feeds that reorder themselves based on your past behavior. The player already notes and removes duplicate videos.

Shelby.tv isn’t the only startup that has these goals. VHX is a similar social web video platform that, like Shelby.tv, has a bookmark that can be used to add video from all over the web. In addition to scoping out videos in social feeds, it has users follow each other directly on the platform in order to share videos. iPad app Plizy builds you a personalized video stream based on your behavior on Facebook and Twitter.

At this point, the most obvious difference between Shelby.tv and others who are attempting similar hands-free socially curated web video is the experience they’ve each created — a point that goes back to why the team decided to name their product “Shelby” in the first place. The name comes from a sports car called the “Shelby Cobra.”

“It’s fast, powerful, sexy, cool,” Pacheco says. “That’s us.”


Source is
http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/meet-shelby-your-personalized-channel-for-web-video/

Social media’s power to amplify TV programming

Social media platforms are providing TV networks with new screens to program to drive even greater engagement and advertiser benefit. MTV and VH1 were two of the first brands that locked arms with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and as a result, we’ve seen the tremendous additive value that social media can provide in turning casual viewers into passionate superfan ambassadors for our shows and brands.

Today’s audiences do not distinguish content as either pure digital or television. They’re living in a hyperconnected world in which they are watching TV while simultaneously interacting via their smartphones, tablet devices and laptops. We regard social media as another screen to program, and just like with television, quality content is key to social success. We have grown our social graph tremendously by staying committed to continually creating compelling multiplatform content that propels fan interaction and sharing.

We know that social media can amplify the proverbial “watercooler” chatter into a real-time global conversation. However, you can’t rely solely on social media to drive this message. You have to create the ecosystem for the conversation to take place. We’ve embraced this behavior and have created cross-platform second screen co-viewing experiences MTV’s WatchWith and VH1’s CoStar. These provide an additive and complementary experience to the primary television viewing for series as well as tent-pole events. Unlike outside developers and platforms, when it comes to our shows and tent-poles, we’re armed with the knowledge of what happens next. Having this advantage enables us to tailor and program content to viewers in tandem with the storyline unfolding on television. The goal here is to turn each episode into a can’t-miss event where our co-viewing experiences are facilitating the conversation and information exchange, while simultaneously delighting the audience.

With larger tent-pole events like MTV Video Music Awards or VH1 Divas, we’ve designed more robust, full cross-platform takeover experiences that provide fans with multiple points of entry. For example, with this year’s VMAs, we produced an entire lean-forward second screen co-viewing platform across web and mobile where fans can activate their own experience including selecting their own camera angle, such as a backstage or audience view, to being part of the conversation via our Twitter Tracker. Additional lean-forward activities at the VMAs this year included providing fans the tools to share video content across their social graph, send congratulatory tweets to winners, and view a live map of artists tweeting from their seats. This isn’t cheap and takes investment at every level. The payoff, however, was huge as the event ranked as the most tweeted-about award show of all time, as well as MTV’s most watched broadcast ever.

As early pioneers, we’ve accrued a myriad of best-practice learnings that we eagerly share with our partners in order to help them grow their own social graph. We have been leaders in creating partner awareness and engagement across all platforms in the form of premium ad products. We’re now exploring ways in which to create an ad experience that syncs up across multiple screens to create a whole new level of partner awareness and engagement.

Measuring the correlation between ratings and social buzz is clearly top-of-mind. We’re encouraged to see social activity drive traffic to new platforms, and pleased at the recent reports that social buzz drives ratings. While it’s not an exact science by any means, it is infinitely clear is that social buzz delivers awareness and builds brand affinity. In such a crowded marketplace, that in itself is exciting and worth the continued investment. In the end, regardless of the platforms you build, or partnerships you make, you have to ensure you are producing high quality content. This is the only way to ensure your audience will continue to discover, interact and share with your brand with their social graph.

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/frank-on-social-media-in-tv-programming/

Five Android Giants Will Steal Apple iPhone 4S Thunder

Apple Inc. received an overwhelming response from all around the world for iPhone 4S. Apple iPhone 4S is expected to face competition from Android devices like Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Droid RAZR, HTC EVO Design 4G, Motorola Atrix 2 and Samsung Captivate Glide.

Apple Inc. took the wraps off the iPhone 4's sequel earlier this month. Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S started on Oct. 7 and has since registered 1 million units on the first day, surpassing the previous single-day record of 600,000 for the iPhone 4. Apple said it has sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S during the opening weekend.

iPhone 4S comes in either black or white and features some important upgrades that were rumored to be a part of the imaginary iPhone 5. The main features that adorn iPhone 4S are: 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, an Apple A5 chipset, an 8-megapixel LED-flash camera with 1080p HD video recording and a secondary VGA front-facing camera for video chat.

Apple's latest smartphone also has a 3.5-inch TFT Retina multi-touch display and is loaded with Apple's latest operating system, iOS 5. In addition, the phone comes with alternating antennae for better call reception, CDMA and GSM support, a personal assistant called Siri, iCloud and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology.

The smartphone is available in the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for the new 64GB model.

Here is a list of the top smartphones which can give iPhone 4S a run for its money:

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Samsung and Google Inc. introduced the Galaxy Nexus at an event in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The smartphone was scheduled to be launched last week, but was postponed as a tribute to the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

The smartphone was also known as Samsung Google Nexus Prime, Samsung Google Galaxy Nexus I9250, Samsung Google Nexus 3, and Samsung Google Nexus 4G.

Loaded with a dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, TI OMAP 4460 chipset, Samsung's new device touts a 4.65-inch high-definition "super" AMOLED display with a pixel density of about 315 ppi. It also has a face recognition function to unlock the phone.

Galaxy Nexus, the first LTE-enabled smartphone to feature Ice Cream Sandwich, has 1 GB of RAM and 16 or 32 GB of internal memory, as per users' choice. It comes with a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with 1080p video capture and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls. The phone also features an accelerometer, compass, gyro sensor, light sensor, proximity sensor and barometer lurking in there as well.

The phone comes in 135.5 x 67.94 x 8.94 mm dimension and weighs 135 grams. The additional features include Bluetooth 3.0 version with A2DP, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, HTML, 4G LTE, HSPA+ versions, NFC support, advanced noise cancellation with dedicated mic, MP4/H.264/H.263 player, MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3 player, Adobe Flash support, Voice memo/dial/commands, microUSB 2.0 version, A-GPS support and comes with Li-Ion 1750 mAh standard battery.

Avatar tops illegal download list

Netflix recently published a list of the ten most rented movies of all time and this got the people at the TorrentFreak web site thinking; what are the most downloaded movies on BitTorrent?

With an estimated 21 million downloads, Avatar is the most pirated movie of all time, followed by The Dark Knight and Transformers with about 19 million downloads each. Interestingly enough, none of the above films were present in Netflix’s list.

The BitTorrent and Netflix lists do show some overlap, as Inception and The Departed make an appearance in both.

Despite the massive piracy, the films below have not done too shabbily at the box-office. Avatar is the best grossing movie of all time and The Dark Knight is third, right before Star Trek, notes Torrent Freak.

Last April, Torrent Freak noticed that Netflix is “killing” BitTorrent in the US – with the number of Netflix subscribers going up, the number of illegal downloads is going down. “the only way to decrease piracy is to compete with it and offer products that are superior to its pirated counterpart.”

Top 10 illegal BitTorrent downloads

1. Avatar (2009) – 21 million – $2,782,275,172
2. The Dark Knight (2008) – 19 million – $1,001,921,825
3. Transformers (2007) – 19 million – $709,709,780
4. Inception (2010) – 18 million – $825,408,570
5. The Hangover (2009) – 17 million – $467,483,912
6. Star Trek (2008) – 16 million – $385,680,446
7. Kick-Ass (2010) – 15 million – $96,188,903
8. The Departed (2006) – 14 million – $289,847,354
9. The Incredible Hulk (2008) – 14 million – $263,427,551
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) – 14 million – $963,420,425

The list above is based on statistics is gathered from public BitTorrent trackers, dating back to early 2006. The figure after the title denotes the number of illegal downloads, the $ figure the estimated total world-wide box office earnings

Top 10 most rented movies on Netflix

1. The Blind Side (2009)
2. Crash (2004)
3. The Bucket List (2007)
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
5. The Hurt Locker (2008)
6. The Departed (2006)
7. Sherlock Holmes (2009)
8. Inception (2010)
9. Iron Man (2008)
10. No Country for Old Men (2007)

The above list was published by Netflix at the end of September 2011

Source is
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2011/10/15/avatar-tops-illegal-download-list/

Ice Cream Sandwich supports WebM streaming, MKVs

Here’s a small nugget about Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, that hasn’t gotten much play yet: The mobile OS now natively supports the playback of MKV files as well as streaming of Googe’s WebM video format (hat tip to Richard Lawler). The changes were announced through an updated list of supported media formats on the Android developer website.

MKV is an open container format for video files that has become particularly popular with people who download HD movies or TV shows from the Internet. However, don’t expect your Ice Cream Sandwich handset to natively play all your BitTorrent downloads; the MKV support in Android 4.0 is restricted to MKV files that use Google’s VP8 codec, which is also used in WebM.

Google released WebM under an open-source license in early 2010, which is based on the company’s VP8 video codec. The format has since slowly gained traction; YouTube, for example, has converted almost all of its videos to WebM, and Skype is using VP8 as its default codec for video conferencing.

Adding support for WebM streaming and VP8 MKVs shouldn’t matter as much to end users, but it should lead to an increased adoption of the formats among developers. VP8 has been optimized for real-time video applications, which means video conferencing app developers now have an option to rely on a royalty-free codec on new Android handsets.

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/android-mkv-webm-streaming/

Video: How Does The iPhone 4S's Video Camera Compare With a Canon 5D?

The iPhone 4S is receiving rave reviews for its fantastic camera, which can record surprisingly good video at 1080p. One videographer, in fact, was so impressed with the camera’s performance, he decided to test how it measures up to a full-fledged DSLR camera used for HD video capture.

Robino Films compared the HD video shot with an iPhone 4S with the video from a Canon 5D MK II, a popular DSLR, on similar settings. The iPhone 4S, which can shoot 1080p video at 30 frames per second, could theoretically give amateurs a great way to capture high-quality video, even in various tricky lighting situations — much like the iPhone 4 did for still photography.

“I was blown away by how good the video quality was,” said Robino Jones of the iPhone 4S’ video capabilities. “The resolution was nice. There was very little aliasing and moire was not visible. I really think that Apple made an amazing 1080p video camera, and to be able to carry that much power in your pocket is awesome.”

Knowing that the iPhone was “crippled” in comparison to the DSLR, Robino did his best to use similar settings when comparing the two cameras. The Canon 5D Mark II was set with an ISO of 160 to 640 and an F-stop of 7 to 22 (varied to match that of the iPhone). The DSLR was also set to a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second, automatic white balance, standard picture style, and 1080p at 30 fps.

Despite its great-for-a-smartphone camera specs (which we describe below), Robino Films said the iPhone fell short of the DSLR in six areas: compression (the iPhone 4S produces noisy video, even in daytime shots); sensor size (the iPhone’s is extremely small); lens quality (great for a smartphone, but nowhere near that of a DSLR); and the inability to adjust frame rate, shutter speed or picture style. However, Jones said, “the iPhone 4S is holding very well against the 5D’s standard picture style.” The smartphone also produces a warmer image overall.

Jones said the iPhone scores points on resolution (which is better than on the 5D) and portability. He also praised really great dynamic range. The 5D’s video has a softer overall look, and more aliasing and moire.

In a comment on Vimeo, Jones said, “This test is really only to show that the 4S is coming close to the 5D but in NO WAY is it better. The iPhone is a great 1080p pocket camera and shows us where technology is heading. Give it two, three years, and we should see some interesting micro high performance cameras.”

As for the iPhone camera of today, the 4S features impressive specs. It shoots 1080p video with real-time image stabilization (to help mitigate the problems of a wobbly hand) as well as temporal noise reduction (to enhance low-light capture). The camera boasts a maximum aperture of f/2.4 and five lenses for sharper, brighter photos with a shallower field of focus. A backside-illuminated sensor paired with an image-processor on the phone’s A5 chip help things run quickly and smoothly.

Check out the video below to see how the iPhone 4S and Canon 5D Mark II’s 1080p video footage measures up side-by-side. Vimeo’s HD content only goes up to 720p, but you can download the 1080p footage to check it out yourself.


Source is
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/iphone-4s-dslr-video/