sony is sponsoring a celebration of digital cinematography with special guest dean semler, tom houghton, and romeo tirone. most likely sony will feature at the 7 PM and 9 PM screenings a 4K presentation:
monday 14 april 2008
sony cinealta lounge at NAB 2008
6:30 PM – 11:00 PM
BALLY’S LAS VEGAS
BALLY’S EVENT CENTER
3645 LAS VEGAS BLVD S
LAS VEGAS NV 89109-4321
NAB 2008 is approaching, but several stalwart software companies will not have a booth: namely apple and avid. sony, panasonic, JVC, canon, and other companies will have large displays and many products for the broadcast and presentation world. for those of you who are going and want to know what free events you can participate in, here are top choices.
sunday 13 april 2008
autodesk user group event NAB 2008
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
WYNN LAS VEGAS
LATOUR BALLROOM
3131 LAS VEGAS BLVD S
LAS VEGAS NV 89109-1967
monday 14 april 2008
sony vegas user gathering at NAB 2008 with VASST, AMD, and Microsoft
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
LAS VEGAS CONVENTION CENTER
NORTH HALL ROOM 250
3150 PARADISE RD
LAS VEGAS NV 89109-9096
tuesday 15 april 2008
promax 13th annual charles mcconathy digital cafe
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
SANDS EXPO CONVENTION CENTER
201 SANDS AVE
LAS VEGAS NV 89109-2617
wednesday 16 april 2008
7th annual final cut pro user group supermeet at NAB 2008
6:30 PM – 10:30 PM
MGM GRAND LAS VEGAS
MGM CONFERENCE CENTER
GRAND BALLROOM
3799 LAS VEGAS BLVD S
LAS VEGAS NV 89109-4319
for several years, the next crest of storage has always been 3 dimensional holographic media. two companies seemed locked in the struggle to get their technology to market, inphase and optware. both promise a device by this year in the range of 200 GB to 300 GB, and a few deals have been made, but no hardware yet. when only the light moves, and the disc remains mostly steady, challenges can arise.
the first holographic storage system will most likely be over $10,000 and address only the most needy high volume broadcaster or studio. the consumer versions of such devices most like will not see the light of day until 2010. for the rest of us with 500 GB and 750 GB hard drives with archive in mind, we have the foolhardy disk to disk solution, or a very tall stack of DVD or blu-ray discs. more than likely for 2006 and 2007 we’ll still be using LTO2 of LTO3 tapes for the archive, holding either 200 GB or 400 GB per cartridge.
back in mid june, nick webster wrote an investigative piece on the living conditions of apple contract workers in china. today, after a thorough investigation, apple answered the article, and many of the conditions described by the journalist were true. the chinese manufacturing facilty employs some 200,000 folks who only half make more than the local minimum wage, and around 25% of the time works more than six days straight without breaks.
read the apple report to find out more on who makes the products we use every day.
Siggraph 2006 is just under a few weeks away: the visual effects and virtual world hub of the known world. for those of you who are going, here’s a brief list of free events. with the consolidation last year, the autodesk presentation (acquired alias products maya and motionbuilder) should not be missed.
monday 31 july 2006
autodesk user group meeting
3:00 PM – 9:00 PM
THE WESTIN BOSTON WATERFRONT
CONCOURSE LEVEL
GRAND BALLROOM
425 SUMMER ST
BOSTON MA 02210-1719
NVIDIA gelato user group meeting
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
BOSTON MARRIOTT COPLEY PLACE
110 HUNTINGTON AVE
BOSTON MA 02116-5706
tuesday 1 august 2006
apple shake ‘n’ final cut studio meeting
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
SEAPORT HOTEL
SEAPORT BALLROOM
1 SEAPORT LN
BOSTON MA 02210-2013
newtek lightwave 09 SIGGRAPH launch party
6:30 PM – 10:00 PM
NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM
CENTRAL WHARF
BOSTON MA 02110-3399
softimage user group meeting
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM
SEAPORT HOTEL
PLAZA BALLROOM
1 SEAPORT LN
BOSTON MA 02210-2013
tuesday – thursday 1 – 3 august 2006
siggraph exhibit floor open
9:30 AM – 6:00 PM (3:30 PM on THR)
BOSTON CONVENTION & EXHIBITION CENTER
415 SUMMER ST
BOSTON MA 02210-1719
get an exhibition only pass code from newtek
from the apple mac user perspective, intel was a company of little significance. now that apple+intel are partners, and the entire apple enterprise is moving to intel, tradeshows like winHEC or intel technology presentations portend well for the mac platform. for an excellent summary of where intel plans to take it’s own architecture, recently named core 2, take a look at the intel server technology update from the prudential london technology conference webcast from 17 may 2006.
the future looks very bright for apple riding in the wings of intel.
at CES 2006, michael dell reminded the audience that computer users have had high resolution displays above and beyond any high definition consumer box. a HD signal of 1280 x 720 could easily fit on a SXGA 1280 x 1024 and a UXGA 1600 x 1200 panel. higher resolution panels include the WUXGA 1920 x 1200 and a WQXGA 2560 x 1600 fit a highest HD signal of 1920 x 1080. the dell 3007WFP panel lives up to the WQXGA format, but for the first time including a DVI-HDCP input, allowing the use of future protected content from a blu-ray or HD DVD consumer player.
it always seemed foolish that after spending $1000 or even $2000 on a display, you could not hook up a ATSC HD tuner. with DVI-HDCP the tables turn, and any valid DVI signal will be decoded, if it originates from a NVIDIA or ATI card or a next generation disc player. i would suspect that both mac OS X leopard and windows vista will support HDCP for computer playback of protected content.
it’s been some time since the introduction of the first intel based mac systems started shipping. first it was the imac, next came the mac mini, and starting to trickle into the market is the macbook pro. oddly, the only universal versions of apple software beyond the operating system, was ilife and iwork. now, almost three months after the mac+intel adventure, general purpose applications like final cut studio, aperture, and logic are scheduled to arrive on the apple scene.
from reports, the rosetta technology is effective in translating the powerPC code into intel core duo speak, but the performance has not been up to snuff with native algorithyms. of course, safari, mail, ichat AV, itunes, and ical work great, and the expectations of final cut studio and announced features of aperture 1.1 on intel will live up the the partnership apple and intel made last june 2005. we all want the transition from G5 RISC to core dou X86 heritage.
the next generation of chips, based on the intel core microarchitecture look even better, as they will integrate rich x64 architecture, industry leading performance per watt specificiations, and bring the intel processors on par with AMD opteron and athlon processors. intel might have been a little late to the 64-bit party, but with the juggernaught of resources and engineering gusto, late 2006 will be the time apple+intel shines.
as apple transitions from freescale and IBM powerPC processors to intel core duo processors, mac OS X developers must deliver universal binary versions of their applications, which allow native processor performance on both the powerPC and intel platforms. it all seems fine, except once you consider that if you have legacy powerPC version of an application, it becomes completely obsolete once the developer moved to the hybrid universal version.
apple computer has announced a crossgrade program for their pro apps including, final cut studio, logic, and aperture. when these application ship, if you do no fork over the crossgrade fee, your application version will be retired. developers will not continue to support three customers: powerPC only, intel only, universal. that’s too much work to test, so you’ll need the universal version to work properly. most likely major applications will move to the universal code on the next major revision to avoid these upgrade issues. hopefully at NAB 2006, apple will revise all their applications to the next version to make moot the move to universal unnecessary for powerPC workflows.
two years ago medialive canceled the annual trek to the las vegas strip for comdex, the largest gathering of IT professionals on the planet. no one event has taken it’s place, but the heir to the event this year will be the international CES 2006. historically, panasonic, samsung, cisco systems, and HP gave keynotes, but this year intel, sony, yahoo, and google deliver addresses.
intel has already reshaped their company logo and processor line for what looks be be an incredible year of product introductions. yahoo and google move outside of internet search to offer a whole slew of web services and applications, some may say only now at a nascent level. computer processors and graphics engines have already exceeded the expectations of the average user generating e-mail, simple documents, and balancing a spreadsheet, but with the introduction of high definitions video and multi channel audio, even the consumer wants a few processors to rev up the music rips, transfer of photos on to portable viewing devices, and simple HD editing. What a year 2006 will be.