NAD announced a 4K-ready upgrade program for AV receivers and preamp/processors ensuring consumers can incorporate new technologies “when they are truly ready.” All NAD T 758, T 777, T 787 and T 187 models shipped will include an upgrade video multiple description coding (MDC) module certificate. Many details of the 4K format “are not settled and testing and compatibility between various components has not even begun," said NAD, which will make the upgrade module available later this year for $599. The program “protects customers from buying a technology that is half-baked and becoming disappointed,” said Dean Miller, president of parent company Lenbrook America. MDC is a "perfect solution as it allows someone to enjoy their new AVR or PrePro now and then upgrade when the time is right and they are ready.”
Columbia University's Technology Ventures patent program became the 16th licensor to join One-Blue, said the one-stop-shop Blu-ray patent pool in a Tuesday announcement. Other licensors in the pool are Cyberlink, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, JVCKenwood, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Taiyo Yuden and Yamaha.
HDT HDBaseT developer Valens Semiconductor and analog components supplier Avago Technologies are demonstrating at Integrated Systems Europe this week HDBaseT fiber transmission technology running over 800 meters of multimode fiber cable. Based on Valens’s Colligo chipsets and Avago’s extended-reach AFBR-709HDZ transceivers, it's targeted to applications including hospitality video systems, video surveillance and digital signage. Valens credited line coding and error correction capabilities of its Colligo chipsets for the increased distance, and Avago said its small form factor fiber transceivers will enable more market applications for HDBaseT, which was previously capped at up to 100 meters over a single Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable.
Verbatim and Millenniata have teamed to develop what they’re calling the world’s first 100-GB Blu-ray optical discs to enable “large-scale optical storage” with more than 1,000 years of “archival storage life.” The one-time-writable M-discs will be available for shipment globally through the Verbatim and Millenniata sales channels by the end of the month, the companies said. Manufactured in Japan to the BDXL specification, the discs will work in any BDXL-capable Blu-ray drive, they said. BDXL 100-GB write-once Blu-rays differ significantly in their construction and functionality from the 100-GB prerecorded triple-layer discs that the Blu-ray Disc Association is studying to accommodate the package of features that will comprise the next-gen Ultra HD Blu-ray format, BDA officials have told us (see 1409170023).
DTS and Starz partnered to enable Encore Playm Movieplex Play and Starz Play subscribers on the Xbox One to hear content in multichannel surround sound using DTS-HD, the companies said Wednesday. It’s the first time authenticated TV Everywhere services have been made available using DTS-HD, they said. Advanced audio technology “such as DTS-HD” enables viewers to be “more immersed and engaged with the content,” said Ray Milius, executive vice president-programming and IT operations, Starz. Starz Play has more than 400 monthly selections, including 300 first-run movies from Disney; Encore Play offers more than 1,500 monthly viewing options; and Movieplex Play makes available 200 movies each month, Starz said.
TiVo is targeting binge viewers with a new feature it launched at CES called OnePass that tracks down every episode of a program subscribers want to see and places them in a single folder, organized by season, channel and streaming service. Jim Denney, vice president-product marketing, TiVo, called the feature a “next-generation Season Pass” designed to get users all episodes of a program “no matter where they’re coming from.” Over the past few years, TiVo has had integrated search, which searched for programs whether by live TV or video on demand service. What’s changed in the OnePass software update, Denney told us during a booth demo, is “how it’s presented to the user” in the My Shows section. Amazon has for a while shown users the various channel or on-demand options for a particular program. New in the update is an option for users to include recordings and streaming videos from services including Amazon, Hulu Plus, Netflix and Vudu. Users can specify by season for on-demand shows and specify whether shows involving a rental or purchase are included in the search results. The software would know whether a program available on Amazon Prime would be free to the viewer, and shows with a per-viewing rental or purchase fee would be indicated. At the time of viewing, subscribers would activate the purchase for VOD programming, Denney said. In the past TiVo Season Pass recordings have been available by channel, and with the update to OnePass, that feature will extend to all channels showing a program, Denney said. “If you’re watching a show that’s both syndicated and new, it would pick it up on the syndicated channel” -- CW in the case of The Simpsons -- as well as on the current season on Fox, he said. Also new is the ability for users to specify quality of recordings such as HD only, HD never to save space, or HD when possible, he said. Users will be able to see in the My Shows section whether shows are recorded or available by streaming, with the latter designated by an icon for a radio signal. “We’ve consolidated streaming and live TV for six years,” he said. What’s different now is presenting the consolidated content to consumers in “consumption mode,” he said. Later this year, TiVo will add the ability to transcode and download premium content to a mobile device. The capability is currently available only on unprotected content, he said. The update will go out to set-top boxes and the TiVo app, he said. When the content is “side-loaded,” he said, it goes to a tablet and disappears from the hard drive on the set-top box. “The key is you can have one copy,” he said.
Some might argue there couldn’t be a more apt title to summarize Sony Pictures Entertainment and its current plight with North Korean hackers (see 1412180056). Deliver Us From Evil will be released Jan. 5 on Blu-ray and DVD, the U.K. subsidiary of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment said Thursday. It has nothing to do with North Korean hackers. It's the story of a New York City police detective investigating a series of "disturbing and inexplicable crimes" that turn out to have "supernatural origins," the studio said. The title debuted late October on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S.
Total DisplayPort device certification grew to 1,395 devices in 2014, from 805 devices in January, fueled by 4K displays and smaller devices with “more flexible connectivity,” said the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) Tuesday. DisplayPort was originally intended to be used with its own specified connector, but its data packet structure enables it to be transported across different connection types -- and with other data, VESA said. That structure allows DisplayPort to be backward compatible and to support format converters including DisplayPort to VGA, DVI and HDMI adapters. VESA said. The Thunderbolt standard developed by Apple and Intel, like the VESA DockPort standard, uses the DisplayPort protocol to transport display and audio data, it said. In 2015, products will launch using the new USB Type-C connector that also supports DisplayPort, using the DisplayPort Alt Mode standard published earlier this year, VESA said. In addition, the DisplayPort protocol is supported by the WiGig standard, unveiled last year by the Wi-Fi Alliance, VESA said. Meanwhile, Analogix Semiconductor said Tuesday it has shipped more than a billion DisplayPort devices into the CE market, enabling smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs to connect with the latest generation of TVs and monitors.
Though HDMI has had its critics over the years, most recently from compatibility concerns about meshing HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 content protection (see 1403240068), the HDMI interface will get a Primetime Emmy award for "engineering excellence" in ceremonies Jan. 8 during CES, HDMI Licensing said in a Tuesday announcement. HDMI Licensing President Steve Venuti said the award is given "for developments and/or standardization in engineering technologies which either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they have materially affected the transmission, recording, or reception of television." What began as a "vision" has become a "de-facto worldwide HD connectivity standard and a household name for exceptional digital audio and video quality over a single cable," Venuti said. He estimated more than 1,500 licensees have created 4 billion HDMI-compliant products. Last spring, Venuti publicly acknowledged performance issues could become a keen problem as more studios begin protecting their native Ultra HD content with HDCP 2.2, and there’s a body of HDMI 2.0-compliant devices that don’t support HDCP 2.2 and will yield error messages when a consumer wants to play back a movie. In years past, manufacturers and retailers also accused HDMI Licensing of lax policing of its standards. So "inconsistent" was the implementation of HDMI at one point that Best Buy threatened publicly to clear its shelves of HDMI products that hadn’t been tested and certified for compatibility with other HDMI devices because it could no longer "trust the standard" (see 0612190104). HDMI Licensing responded by ramping up its oversight of compliance testing (see 1405010065), but critics still abound.
Overall U.S. spending on home entertainment content fell 1.2 percent in Q3 to $3.92 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Wednesday. That was "flat" compared with Q3 a year earlier, evidence of the industry’s "ongoing stability," the DEG said. But the Q3 decline followed a relatively healthy 2.1 percent increase in spending in Q2 (see 1408060045). Blu-ray penetration is now approaching 80 million U.S. homes, the DEG said, though sellthrough spending on all packaged goods, including DVD and Blu-ray, fell 8 percent in Q3 to $1.3 billion. Overall spending on electronic sellthrough was Q3's biggest star on a percentage-increase basis, rising 26.7 percent to $347 million and 33.2 percent for 2014's first nine months to $1.02 billion, the DEG said.