Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Online video popular with Internet-connected TV viewers

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:29:00 +0000

New market research forecasts nearly one-half of HDTVs shipped in 2012 will be Internet-connectable, and 75 percent of the owners of these sets watch online movies at least once a month on the Internet. Parks Associates, a market research firm, found ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

DVB approves 3DTV broadcast spec

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:15:26 +0000

The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium has announced that Phase 2a of its DVB-3DTV specification has been approved. The specification, which describes different ways to distribute 3-D signals to consumers’ set-top boxes, will now be submitted to ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Comcast builds out Chattanooga VOD service in the cloud

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 21:41:00 +0000

As multichannel systems operators (MSOs) continue their inevitable migration to a unicast distribution network—in order to support “TV Everywhere” business models that accommodate multiple portable devices in addition to the home TV set—they are taking ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

New spray-on battery technology offers unique applications for power source

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:41:00 +0000

Researchers at Rice University in Houston have made a breakthrough in the production of batteries, creating a new power source that can be sprayed on surfaces like paint. Although still in prototype form, the technology could hold promise for a number of ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Broadcasters “unlikely to succeed” in stopping Aereo

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:20:00 +0000

While the dust has not entirely settled yet, it’s looking less and lees likely that broadcasters will win their court fight to shut down Aereo’s nascent Internet service as a federal judge last week denied a broadcaster-instigated motion for a ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Audience confidence in TV news fading

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Gone are the days when viewers believe everything they see and hear on TV. A recent survey by the Gallup organization finds that audience confidence in television news has hit an all-time low this summer. Only 21 percent of adults expressed confidence ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Facebook Makes Social Media Deals with NBC and CNN

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Signaling its intention to use its considerable clout to support traditional TV, Facebook, the fast growing social media giant, has made cross-promotional deals with NBC for the Summer Olympics and CNN for the 2012 presidential elections. The agreements ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Making CDN Deployment Affordable Through Shared Capacity

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:00:00 +0000

The emergence of cloud- or remotely based storage and signal processing services has allowed a wide variety of companies to become instant bandwidth providers that enable end-users like Apple, Netflix, Google and others to deploy cost-effective content ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Major storm knocks out power to Amazon web services, throwing cloud safety into question

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:30:00 +0000

For more than a year broadcasters have heard the hype promoting the benefits of remotely based cloud computing: Redundant backup to the hilt with almost no chance of failure. Low costs and the ability to allow someone else to manage a storage ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Newspapers outsource local journalism to the Philippines; Is TV next?

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Several major American news organizations are outsourcing local journalism to the Philippines—paying reporters as little as 35-cents per news story, a weekly radio program on Chicago’s WBEZ has revealed. Producer Sarah Koenig, on WBEZ’s “This American ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

ABC enhances licensing of online archives

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:00:13 +0000

ABC News has enhanced its VideoSource website to allow news producers and other TV show creators to screen content and create clips from the ABC News archives dating back to 1896. The improvements are still another way as several news organizations ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

KWCH-TV hoping to “spark some interest” in mobile DTV in Kansas

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Full-power CBS affiliate KWCH-TV has become the first station in the Wichita-Hutchinson, Kansas market to broadcast an ATSC Mobile handheld (MH) signal, but the prognosis for success is clearly to be determined, as there are very few receivers available ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Unique soundproofing challenge met despite nearby airport

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:00:00 +0000

System integrators and architectural designers often have to deal with challenges of one type of another-a brick wall here, a misplaced AC duct there-in completing their broadcast and production facility installations, but the ability to cancel out the ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Technicolor broadcast services now a wholly owned business unit of Ericsson

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Ericsson has completed its acquisition of the Broadcast Services Division of Technicolor, headquartered in France. The initial acquisition announcement was made on March 13, 2012 for a reported purchase price of roughly $24 million (€19 million) and ...

Broadcast Engineering Beyond the Headlines

Comcast makes an encryption deal with Internet-TV developer

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:17:00 +0000

Comcast and Boxee, the Internet television developer, reached an agreement that will allow users of Boxee set-top boxes to access encrypted cable programming from Comcast. The relationship was revealed in a letter from Comcast to the FCC. Boxee, ...