Wow... played on a touch screen table, this really looks cool. My only issue is that a touch screen table is of limited usefulness for a lot of the things I do now.

This is pretty cool... a company is taking buildings, developing a 3-D model to synchronize the animation, and projecting fantastic displays including balls of light, water falling, and even a collapsing facade!

It reminds me of what these guys did... projecting  a "prison escape" onto the wall of an actual prison - realistic enough to cause the guards to sound the alarm!

I'd like to take a moment to discuss where video technology will take us in the next decade with movies. Let's start by looking where we've been and where we are....

In the dawn of the TV era, the only movies we could enjoy on TV were those broadcast from TV stations. In the late 60s/early 70s came cable and the "pay channel" stations, which revolutionized TV by bringing commercial-free, first run movies into your living room... but even that was a short-lived revolution, as the video tape recorder made its debut. We all know the battle between Betamax and VHS, and for a little more than a decade after VHS won that battle, tape ruled. Laserdisc, a superior (though still "analog") technology was relegated as a sideline, due to its inability to record and higher cost. DVD came along in the mid 90s, and finally started overtaking VHS by 2000. DVD offered a clear difference in quality, didn't require rewinding, and (barring scratches and dirt) played the same the hundredth time as it did on the first.

Today, our choices have become more "muddy" - Not everybody has hi-def TVs, and many of those that do have a hard time imagining that a movie might look better in a hi-def format over what they see from a DVD. We had HD-DVD, which lost the hi-def disc wars against Blu-Ray, but we also have hi-def content being delivered by broadcast TV thanks to the digital switchover, on demand content delivered by cable providers, and even hi-def content streamed from the broadband internet. Industry pundits have lauded all of these methods of delivering the sharp hi-def content into the future, but few of them focus on what I believe will be the future of hi-def content delivery in the future.

Before I get into what my thoughts on the future are, however, let's talk about Blu-Ray, and why the industry is backing it currently... as well as my reasons for believing it will have a very short life-span. Blu-Ray, like DVDs before it, are built on the idea of encrypting the content to prevent the everyday user from copying commercial discs. Some parts of this scheme have worked quite well
(HDCP), but ultimately, Blu-Ray, like DVD before it, have been cracked open like eggs by the rather large pirate community that thrives on the trade of movies (now in 1080p content, too) over the internet and on the streets. Blu-Ray is the victim of its own arrogance, in some ways.... a technology that is too overpriced to get into enough homes to gain critical mass, with encryption that barely challenged the hacker community. More importantly, all of the tools that were non-existent during the VHS reign, and in their infancy during the opening decade of DVD, have become mature in the past 4 years, offering everyday consumers the means to decrypt and recode with minimal quality Blu-Ray releases; broadband offers internet users an easy avenue to distribute or download these hi-def movies, and a whole host of affordable (i.e. cheaper than a Blu-Ray player) options exist to play back that material on HDTVs. In short, the primary reason the movie industry pushed Blu-Ray is gone... and it's continued high cost makes it more convenient for all but the most scrupulous consumers to simply hop onto a torrent site and get what they want via P2P.

With Blu-Ray already relegated to the "almost could have been" corner, like Laserdisc, the movie industry needs to start thinking outside of the box to deliver the next generation of packaged content, and like Star Trek movies, perhaps the consumer will look at Blu-Ray as an odd-numbered movie, worth skipping for the next media platform. What will that platform be? Memory cards. Not flash memory cards... that would not be practical, nor would it deliver the features consumers and content owners (the movie studios) require.

I propose a new ROM card format, similar to SDHC in form factor, but with added encryption (imagine that, a live encryption chip embedded in the device), and capacities from 8GB to whatever (at least 64GB, but let's keep that standard open ended). It would have an HDCP encryption chain that starts at the Memory Card and ends at the display. How much for a player? I'd be amazed if you couldn't deliver a player for less than $50 today, and the media could probably be produced for less then $5 for 16GB (Masked ROM, not flash, which saves on complexity and an encryption chip). Times have changed since Nintendo flamed out trying to push expensive cartridge technology with their N64 console, and memory technology has gotten dirt cheap, and grown into usable densities. By creating a specific slot for a movie content memory card (Let's call it MCMC for now), consumer devices can be made that handle all sorts of media.... an MCM slot, an SDHC (flash memory card) slot, USB ports for external hard drives and thumb drives... recording done to flash memory, while commercially pre-packaged movies getting their own slot and the protection of active encryption technology. The "trust" chain changes slightly, but should be stronger for the inclusion of an on-board, handshake-able chip. Even better.... companies that create media players (like the iPod/iPhone, Zune, Zen, etc...) could include an MCMC slot - effectively removing the need for people to make "fair use copies" to play on their media players. Such an interface would only add a few dollars to the Bill of Materials (what it costs to manufacture a product) right now, and eventually, would only add pennies.

By being open ended on capacity and display format, such devices could also provide a very long lifecycle for the format. What comes next? Holographic displays? Perhaps my proposed format can take that in to consideration... with enough capacity, it certainly could deliver content into foreseeable technologies that might come along in the next decade or two. Long life and future-proofing the media provides consumers with the confidence to invest in the new format, along with inexpensive players and the added convenience of portability, my proposed "MCMC" format offers far more reason to upgrade form DVD than Blu-Ray or any of the other choices.
 

Sorry there haven't been many updates.... I've been busy with a lot of things.

Here's a great special from National Geographic on the 4th of July. Enjoy!

Primrose flowers blooming just before it gets dark, after sunset.

I am not into the wii and I bought it because of the 1 game and 1 game only "Fire Emblem"

Anywho, here is what's going on in the wii universe in Japan (will come to the US market soon hopefully)


Black Wii available from 2009/8/1

http://gamez.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0906/04/news076.html

Ordering pizza via Wii

http://gamez.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0906/02/news073.html


and please, whatever you do, do NOT purchase the fake one "Vii"

I tried to purchase it, but it hard to come by even in Japan.

Thanx

This is always cool.... hacking hardware, "old-school". I love the idea of a community lab, and this is just very cool. I imagine digging through the tables a tthe San Jose flea market and plopping gear onto a table and building "something" interesting.

Cool to watch these tigers and leopards enjoy playing with, and eating pumpkins.

Ask yourself a question: Was there ever a "real" ghost or goblin before Scrappy Doo came along? The "original" Mystery, Inc crew always seemed to figure out, by the end of an episode, that the haunting was the result of some real estate developer or gold prospector using a projector and some ropes. Once Scrappy appeared on the scene, the ghosts became real, and the rest of the gang departed to parts unknown (imprisoned by Scrappy?). Scooby also somehow acquired the power to walk on two legs and became even more "talkative" - but Scrappy was the odd one out, who's only relationship to being an actual dog was merely his appearance.

I leave it to you, the reader, to ultimately decide whether Scrappy was really an evil imp, but my opinion was further validated by the second live action Scooby Doo movie, where Scrappy sought to take over the world using hellish powers of evil. Clearly I was not alone in this line of thought...

Did Scrappy make the series better or worse? That's a harder question to answer, but it did boost ratings when he appeared, at least for a while. Like any annoying comedic device, however, his appeal faded over time, however. One might even say this is further proof of his real origins, that Scooby Doo's people made a deal with the devil, and were forced to take an incredibly grating character on as the price to save the show. In the end, the show unleashed ghosts, demons, vampires, and other evil minions upon the Earth - an evil not as easily locked up as old man Smithers was by those meddling kids.

Interesting, but the video's description doesn't offer much insight. I have to assume there is more than just H2O in these beakers.

Still, fascinating stuff.