Hello Readers – Once again I find myself having to apologize for not keeping up with my Blog. Over the last three months, I have been jet-setting around the US and internationally and have managed to travel to many wonderful cities on business, including: Mexico City, London, Dubai, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Myrtle Beach. At least I found a slot in all that travel to take a cruise with my family on a Caribbean vacation. However, I did get a hard time from the family for taking pictures of the digital signage displays at the port of entry and ship; just could not resist.
The wonderful thing in common that I find, as I travel around the US and internationally, is the love for music and movies. And everyone loves those flat screens. The adoption of high definition movies, however, is a bit further behind the US, but I was told at the CEDIA UK that over the last few months, the buzz about high definition movies has increased substantially. They expect the sales of high definition players and movies to take off now.
Dubai was a wonderful place to visit. I even got to see a ski resort inside of a mall, with people skiing and snow boarding – unbelievable! I have never seen as many modern buildings and new construction in one place as I witnessed there. Over 1,500 new towers, residential and commercial, are either in construction or about to start construction in Dubai, and more behind those every month. And guess what? All planned with digital signage and multi-room audio and video.
Another thing about what I am seeing across the globe is that, where a few years ago custom electronic installers everywhere were saying “IP what?”, now everything is about IP products. The tradeshows also are making it all about the convergence of IP and audio video, or networked entertainment.
There are so many exciting technologies and products in development now, by so many companies, including NetStreams. This coming month we release our IP Video products, and the response at the shows so far has been overwhelming. The future looks exciting and fun, and I am just glad to be a part of it.
I will be busy this week working on the continuation of my IP Home Blog posts.
Cheers!
If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, or if you have any comments or questions, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Monday, July 02, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Year of IPTV and 1080P Televisions
Now that you know all about wiring for an IP home, let me tell about what I believe is one of the most exciting benefits of an IP home – IPTV, which will change our television experience forever.
2007 looks to be a very promising year for many new technologies, but two of these promise to change our lives forever. This is the year that IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) will begin to go mainstream. In 2005 many of the large TV manufacturers stuck their IPTV flag in the ground by announcing that they were planning on releasing their first IPTVs in 2007. In 2006 many of the other TV manufacturers announced their plans to introduce IPTVs in the near future as well. So this is the year that we get to see these arrive at a store near you.
What is IPTV? It is television programming distributed to us over the Internet. Yes…a broadband connection will be required. Stations will be offered across the Internet as stand alone stations, and some service providers may offer a ‘build your own bundle’. What does this mean for us? More choices. More service providers will offer us ‘on demand channels’, which allow us to select from a list of pre-scheduled programs. This means that we can watch these programs whenever we want and stop, rewind, or fast forward them, just like we do with our recorded programs on our PVR/DVRs (Digital Video Recorders or Personal Video Recorders). Many of the IPTV channels will allow you to watch programs that they have streamed that week, anytime after the original broadcast, just like the major networks are doing on the Internet with their prime shows.
IPTV also offers the small guys a chance to put their programs on the web, much like Internet Radio allows anyone with a computer and a microphone to broadcast on the web. And don’t forget that you will also be able to select short videos posted on sites like U-Tube and watch them as you wish, on your TV. Not only will you be able to view them, but you will be able to post your own videos on these types of sites for anyone in the world to see, or just those that you give permission to. Everyone now has a chance for fame.
New types of programming will become available and the TV will become more interactive. So that if you see a commercial and you want more information, with the click of a button, you will be able to request that information. If you are watching a cooking program and want the recipe, a click of a button and it’s on your printer. But if you are looking for a different or related recipe, you can do that too, while you watch your favorite cook on TV.
With technologies like NetStreams' IP Video, in the future you will be able to select 4 sport events and watch them simultaneously by splitting your display into four parts. But if the baby is asleep, you will be able to assign one of those quadrants to the IP camera in the baby’s room.
1080p High Definition – Of course, IPTV would not be complete without a better High Definition display. 2007 also promises to be the year where most TV manufacturers introduce their 1080p HD displays. Most High Definition TVs sold today are 1080i. The ‘i’ stands for interlaced, which means that in reality, you are only getting 540 lines of video, alternated faster than your eye can see, so that it gives you the illusion of 1,080 lines. 1080p is actually 1,080 lines of video, which gives you twice the resolution and a much better, crisper picture. All you need to know is that the higher the number, the better. And a ‘p’ is much better than an ‘i’.
Together, 1080p High Definition and IPTV will redefine how we enjoy and interact with our televisions and our homes. Maybe its time to replace the name ‘television’ with a new, cooler name like ‘ViewPort’ or ‘IPvision’.
Of course my house is wired and ready for IPTV and 1080p television. J For more information on how you can do the same, see my previous post. In fact, I am already enjoying my Marantz 1080p projector. All I can say is… WOW!!! Oh… and you can bet that NetStreams is working on IP Video products that will support up to 1080p video distribution.
If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.
Herman Cardenas
2007 looks to be a very promising year for many new technologies, but two of these promise to change our lives forever. This is the year that IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) will begin to go mainstream. In 2005 many of the large TV manufacturers stuck their IPTV flag in the ground by announcing that they were planning on releasing their first IPTVs in 2007. In 2006 many of the other TV manufacturers announced their plans to introduce IPTVs in the near future as well. So this is the year that we get to see these arrive at a store near you.
What is IPTV? It is television programming distributed to us over the Internet. Yes…a broadband connection will be required. Stations will be offered across the Internet as stand alone stations, and some service providers may offer a ‘build your own bundle’. What does this mean for us? More choices. More service providers will offer us ‘on demand channels’, which allow us to select from a list of pre-scheduled programs. This means that we can watch these programs whenever we want and stop, rewind, or fast forward them, just like we do with our recorded programs on our PVR/DVRs (Digital Video Recorders or Personal Video Recorders). Many of the IPTV channels will allow you to watch programs that they have streamed that week, anytime after the original broadcast, just like the major networks are doing on the Internet with their prime shows.
IPTV also offers the small guys a chance to put their programs on the web, much like Internet Radio allows anyone with a computer and a microphone to broadcast on the web. And don’t forget that you will also be able to select short videos posted on sites like U-Tube and watch them as you wish, on your TV. Not only will you be able to view them, but you will be able to post your own videos on these types of sites for anyone in the world to see, or just those that you give permission to. Everyone now has a chance for fame.
New types of programming will become available and the TV will become more interactive. So that if you see a commercial and you want more information, with the click of a button, you will be able to request that information. If you are watching a cooking program and want the recipe, a click of a button and it’s on your printer. But if you are looking for a different or related recipe, you can do that too, while you watch your favorite cook on TV.
With technologies like NetStreams' IP Video, in the future you will be able to select 4 sport events and watch them simultaneously by splitting your display into four parts. But if the baby is asleep, you will be able to assign one of those quadrants to the IP camera in the baby’s room.
1080p High Definition – Of course, IPTV would not be complete without a better High Definition display. 2007 also promises to be the year where most TV manufacturers introduce their 1080p HD displays. Most High Definition TVs sold today are 1080i. The ‘i’ stands for interlaced, which means that in reality, you are only getting 540 lines of video, alternated faster than your eye can see, so that it gives you the illusion of 1,080 lines. 1080p is actually 1,080 lines of video, which gives you twice the resolution and a much better, crisper picture. All you need to know is that the higher the number, the better. And a ‘p’ is much better than an ‘i’.
Together, 1080p High Definition and IPTV will redefine how we enjoy and interact with our televisions and our homes. Maybe its time to replace the name ‘television’ with a new, cooler name like ‘ViewPort’ or ‘IPvision’.
Of course my house is wired and ready for IPTV and 1080p television. J For more information on how you can do the same, see my previous post. In fact, I am already enjoying my Marantz 1080p projector. All I can say is… WOW!!! Oh… and you can bet that NetStreams is working on IP Video products that will support up to 1080p video distribution.
If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.
Herman Cardenas
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Labeling and Certifying Your Cables
Proper Labeling – If there is one thing that my integrator and I would do all over again, it would be to certify and properly label all of the cables in my home, during the ‘wiring phase’. This would have saved us a tremendous amount of time (days) and money. I can’t even begin to tell you how much pain and time it cost us not having properly labeled and certified cables. My Integrator’s plan was to do this done from the very beginning, but the installer that he assigned to my job chose to label my cables with numbers and then create a reference table, which he kept to himself. Sometime after my house was dry walled, this installer got fired, and as retaliation, he chose to conveniently lose this table, leaving us back at square one. It also turned out that, although he originally put numbers on both ends of the cable, when he cut the cables to stuff them into their appropriate wall boxes, he did not label the cables again.
Recommendation – Since we know what each cable is intended for prior to wiring the project, and adequate label printers are available almost anywhere, starting as low as $29.00, the way to go is to label each cable in plain English: i.e. ‘Dining Room Amplifier’, ‘Living Room Touch Screen’, or ‘Patio Speakers’. This way, if a new installer is assigned to finish the job months later, there is no guessing involved. The label maker that I bought is made by Brothers. I bought it at Office Max and it cost me $39. I then ordered special ½” label tape that is designed for application on cables. When labeling equipment that is black, like power supplies or rack mounted equipment, we used white-on-black tape. For all other label needs, we used black-on-white. Now it is so easy to see what is connected to what, and if we want to make a change, there is no guessing or ringing out cables involved.
Certifying Your Cables – There are a couple of ways to certify your cables documented and undocumented. The first is to simply test all of your cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of the job. The second is to test them, then print out the results to serve as documentation for the integrator and the customer, that all cables have been tested and passed during that phase. Although it is not required, it wouldn’t hurt to test the cables again after drywall to insure that none of the cables were damaged by other contractors on the project. In many commercial projects, this is a requirement.
Many installers believe that a simple continuity test is sufficient. It is not. That was OK for telephone, but now that we are installing devices that require significant bandwidth from your network, like IP Audio and IP Video, it is extremely important that these cables are terminated properly and that their integrity is intact, so that you can maximum performance from your network.
The difference between a reliable system and one that is plagued with problems is usually in the wiring and termination. My installer was able to demonstrate to me that a bad cable that passes the ‘network’ test with a simply continuity cable tester, can fail when tested with a proper network cable tester.
Recommendation – Test all cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of your project, before drywall and consider testing them again after drywall, if budget allows. Printing the test results of all of the cables is a great option, and may even be required on some projects.
If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you and learn what other parts of my ‘building an IP home’ experience would be helpful to you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.
Recommendation – Since we know what each cable is intended for prior to wiring the project, and adequate label printers are available almost anywhere, starting as low as $29.00, the way to go is to label each cable in plain English: i.e. ‘Dining Room Amplifier’, ‘Living Room Touch Screen’, or ‘Patio Speakers’. This way, if a new installer is assigned to finish the job months later, there is no guessing involved. The label maker that I bought is made by Brothers. I bought it at Office Max and it cost me $39. I then ordered special ½” label tape that is designed for application on cables. When labeling equipment that is black, like power supplies or rack mounted equipment, we used white-on-black tape. For all other label needs, we used black-on-white. Now it is so easy to see what is connected to what, and if we want to make a change, there is no guessing or ringing out cables involved.
Certifying Your Cables – There are a couple of ways to certify your cables documented and undocumented. The first is to simply test all of your cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of the job. The second is to test them, then print out the results to serve as documentation for the integrator and the customer, that all cables have been tested and passed during that phase. Although it is not required, it wouldn’t hurt to test the cables again after drywall to insure that none of the cables were damaged by other contractors on the project. In many commercial projects, this is a requirement.
Many installers believe that a simple continuity test is sufficient. It is not. That was OK for telephone, but now that we are installing devices that require significant bandwidth from your network, like IP Audio and IP Video, it is extremely important that these cables are terminated properly and that their integrity is intact, so that you can maximum performance from your network.
The difference between a reliable system and one that is plagued with problems is usually in the wiring and termination. My installer was able to demonstrate to me that a bad cable that passes the ‘network’ test with a simply continuity cable tester, can fail when tested with a proper network cable tester.
Recommendation – Test all cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of your project, before drywall and consider testing them again after drywall, if budget allows. Printing the test results of all of the cables is a great option, and may even be required on some projects.
If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you and learn what other parts of my ‘building an IP home’ experience would be helpful to you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The State of the Industry
I read an article today in the September / October issue of Robb Report Home Entertainment & Design about "networked control" and it struck me how far behind the consumer electronics industry is in thinking about TCP/IP. (Note this edition is not yet posted on their website but the print issue is beginning to circulate. Go to your newstand and look for this magazine. I find it very insightful!).
Yes, controlling audio, video and home automation products over TCP/IP is a no brainer. Frankly, we all should have moved towards this years ago. My company was beginning to work on this 7 years ago, back when we were the incorporated as GE Smart and were a joint venture with General Electric and Microsoft.
Why do I say the industry is behind where it should be? It seems to me that too many people in our industry think about TCP/IP in the sense that it is just another protocol, like RS-232, RF or IR.
CE Manufacturers of high end equipment started putting RS-232 connectors on their devices in 1997. In the Robb Report article, Jared Lewis (an installer) is quoted as saying "If you think about it, we never got there on RS-232. I mean, you're just starting to see RS-232 on entry level to mid-grade components." And this is now 2005!
To think that our industry may take just as long to transition to a complete IP-Based system (not just IP-Based Control) makes me worry about the future of the CE manufacturer. Our counterparts, the PC Manufacturers, move much quicker on a new technology, especially when they identify a significant enhancement which will improve the value proposition for the consumer. (The key here is improving the value proposition significantly!).
Sure, you could use TCP/IP to control products, but TCP/IP was designed to deliver content too. It's not impossible to do that. At NetStreams, we've proven that with our DigiLinX system, which has been selling for several months now. A whole host of media server manufacturers have enabled their Ethernet connections so that audio is distributed over TCP/IP (more about that in a later post).
Simply controlling A/V equipment over TCP/IP is, in my opinion, not a compelling value proposition to the market. However controlling AND distributing the entertainment content is very attractive to the consumer. Why? Well to name a few reasons:
- Audio can be distributed to multiple rooms digitally and with high resolution (over TCP/IP)
- Multiple songs can be listened to from one hard disc drive based media server (over TCP/IP)
- the system is extremely flexible and scalable
There IS a difference between IP-Based Control and a complete IP-Based system. For those investing in a new system in their home, make sure you're compatible for the future.
Yes, controlling audio, video and home automation products over TCP/IP is a no brainer. Frankly, we all should have moved towards this years ago. My company was beginning to work on this 7 years ago, back when we were the incorporated as GE Smart and were a joint venture with General Electric and Microsoft.
Why do I say the industry is behind where it should be? It seems to me that too many people in our industry think about TCP/IP in the sense that it is just another protocol, like RS-232, RF or IR.
CE Manufacturers of high end equipment started putting RS-232 connectors on their devices in 1997. In the Robb Report article, Jared Lewis (an installer) is quoted as saying "If you think about it, we never got there on RS-232. I mean, you're just starting to see RS-232 on entry level to mid-grade components." And this is now 2005!
To think that our industry may take just as long to transition to a complete IP-Based system (not just IP-Based Control) makes me worry about the future of the CE manufacturer. Our counterparts, the PC Manufacturers, move much quicker on a new technology, especially when they identify a significant enhancement which will improve the value proposition for the consumer. (The key here is improving the value proposition significantly!).
Sure, you could use TCP/IP to control products, but TCP/IP was designed to deliver content too. It's not impossible to do that. At NetStreams, we've proven that with our DigiLinX system, which has been selling for several months now. A whole host of media server manufacturers have enabled their Ethernet connections so that audio is distributed over TCP/IP (more about that in a later post).
Simply controlling A/V equipment over TCP/IP is, in my opinion, not a compelling value proposition to the market. However controlling AND distributing the entertainment content is very attractive to the consumer. Why? Well to name a few reasons:
- Audio can be distributed to multiple rooms digitally and with high resolution (over TCP/IP)
- Multiple songs can be listened to from one hard disc drive based media server (over TCP/IP)
- the system is extremely flexible and scalable
There IS a difference between IP-Based Control and a complete IP-Based system. For those investing in a new system in their home, make sure you're compatible for the future.
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