September 30, 2009
HD: Improvement or tradeoff?
By Cliff Roth

I don't claim to have "golden eyes," but I've certainly looked at enough

A few nights ago, having just finished a big project, I gave myself a rare luxury of time, by watching some late night TV -- an episode of "The Late Show with David Letterman." Don't get me wrong, it's not that I never ordinarily have the TV on, but usually it's in the background while I'm working or doing chores. This time, I actually watched the program, in HD, via Time Warner cable-TV. What I saw, from a QoS perspective, was horrendous. With a frequency of at least once per minute, and often four or five times per minute, there were glaring problems with the image. Sometimes it was freeze up for several frames. Sometimes it would exhibit artifacts where you'd expect, amidst fast-moving hands or other objects. Sometimes the picture would locally break up in seemingly random, or unchallenging spots. But it kept happening, over and over, throughout the entire program. At one point I got so fed up I switched to the standard definition signal, which thankfully exhibited no such problems.

Clearly the engineers at the CBS television network would never let such a poor HD signal leave the studios, so my gut tells me Time Warner cable, with its constrained constant-bit-rate channel bandwidth is the culprit (some reports have measured cable-TV's MPEG-2 CBR HD signals in the U.S. at roughly 10-megabits/second.) And if it's happening on my local cable system it's happening on other cable systems everywhere (see USA Today article.)

The HD QoS dilemma comes down to this fundamental question: Does high definition represent an improvement over standard definition, or is it more a tradeoff?

Back in the late 1980s, when the U.S. first contemplated the HD transition and there wasn't even talk about DTV -- HD was initially presumed to be analog, as the pioneering Japanese NHK "HiVision" system had been -- HD was presumed to represent a total improvement. HD would offer everything standard def had, plus higher resolution and a wider screen.

Two decades later, in practice, things have proved to be more complicated. HD does have more detail, and the wider screen, but on cable-TV it can come at the expense of image artifacts. Lots of image artifacts.

This conundrum isn't just limited to cable-TV. In camcorders, consumers and the designers of video cameras face a similar HD tradeoff: You can use higher resolution image sensors, but they'll come at the expense of low light sensitivity. This is just basic image sensor physics -- for any sensor diameter and technology, more pixels means less surface area per pixel. Storage, of course, presents yet another set of HD trade-offs.

In the rush to make everything HD, product designers and engineers should always keep the consumer perspective, and these tradeoffs that must be made, in mind. And carriers of HD signal, such as Time Warner, need to literally clean up their HD QoS act -- probably by devoting a few million more bits per second to each HD channel (or switching to a more efficient H.264-based compression scheme -- something that's inevitable, but requires considerable infrastructure investment.)

I've said goodbye in this space so many times previously, I'm losing count, but it now appears I'll be on hiatus again for at least a while, if not longer. In the meantime, please check out some of my other related activities at my own site, cliffroth.com.
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September 02, 2009
Rovi: Does Macrovision and TV Guide name change signify new mission?
By Cliff Roth

Macrovision changed its name over the summer, to Rovi. Having acquired the infamous Gemstar patents and the TV Guide program guide service, but with a name that consumers associated with just one annoying technology --

Simultaneous with the name change the company launched a new media guide that combines TV listings with Internet and home video content. While others have been offering such "convergence guides" for years, two things make Rovi's entry significant: First, it's being offered by the biggest program guide company. And second, it reflects the need for a "post TV Guide" name. As strong as the TV Guide brand has been for more than half a century, its glory days are in the past. As TV watching has moved from traditional screens to PCs and mobile devices, and as the content being viewed shifts to user-generated videos, short clips, and movies and premium content on demand, the term "TV" is outdated, and fails to embrace the wider universe of video choices.

I have no idea what went into coming up with this new name, but surely it's intended to conjure images of "roving" or a "rover" who is exploring. "With our leading guide solutions and extensive entertainment metadata, we believe we are now positioned as a key enabler for digital entertainment," said Rovi president and CEO Fred Amoroso in the name change announcement.

Rovi holds over 4,000 patents, including some of the most contentious patents in consumer electronics history -- the Gemstar patents that are widely believed to cover the display of even the most basic grid-style program guide. However, as reported here previously, the company is much more willing to license these patents to third-party program guide developers working on TV, DVR, set top box, and other EPG/IPGs than Gemstar was. Now, Rovi even has a page on their new web site devoted to the subject: Rovi Guide Patent Licensing

Rovi's site also features an area called "The 'Everything Guide' Vision," again reflecting their mission to be a consumer friendly all-inclusive interface. But at the end of the day, there's an irony and contradiction here.

Despite shedding the Macrovision moniker, a big chunk of the re-branded company is still devoted to copy protection. Newer variants include ACP, RipGuard and BD+, developed for DVD, Blu-ray, PPV and VOD delivery. Ultimately, from the consumer's perspective, these technologies can frustrate and prevent whole-home enjoyment of purchased media, as the recently adjudicated Kaleidascape case demonstrates.

Ultimately, Rovi may be the company that tells a consumer perusing a program guide in the living room that there's a wonderful DVD in the PC in the attic, but to watch it she'll have to climb two flights of stairs to go get it, because copy protection prevents transmission through the home network.
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July 28, 2009
Surveillance video standards promise easier entry
By Cliff Roth

While surveillance video keeps growing, it's a continuing source of amazement that so few standards exist. The biggest brands of turnkey surveillance systems benefit from proprietary standards that help lock out would-be competitors, partly explaining the predicament. There are many

On the one hand is the most recently introduced standard, HDcctv, which is designed to slip in seamlessly with existing coaxial cable infrastructure. The idea is to replace existing analog video cameras with high def digital surveillance cameras, while keeping all the cabling intact. This standard emphasizes the plug-in replacement advantage, and the argument that putting the "smarts" of video analytics at the central server can save money in the long term, because cameras can last ten years or more while improvements in analytics can be expected as frequently as Moore's Law allows. It's short-term thinking, this argument goes, to build analytics into the camera because it will require replacing the camera much more frequently to stay up to date.

PSIA (the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance), on the other hand, emphasizes the advantages of advanced IP video cameras with built-in analytics (though built-in analytics are by no means required by this standard.) Those advantages include inexpensive signal transport (assuming users are willing to risk using the public Internet) even over very long distances, easy delivery in multiple formats to multiple screens and receiving devices (such as a thumbnail image for portable viewing, a high def image for archiving), and with built-in analytics, the ability to vastly reduce bandwidth (and storage) requirements by only sending items of interest.

Yes it is possible to build a security camera that's compatible with both standards, but of course this would add a bit to the bill of materials, and it remains to be seen how many customers would have any need for a dual-standard camera.

One other way of sorting all this out is by distance from the central server or viewing station. The HDcctv standard is really focused on short distances, as an upgrade for existing security video infrastructure in banks, office buildings, factories, etc. where the coax cable is already in place. PSIA is more applicable for long-distance applications, such as a business owner or homeowner who wants to see what's going on while away, or for a campus with no already-installed coax cable but plenty of IP capability.

Either way, the good news for smaller security camera and video recorder and analytics manufacturers, as well as wannabes, is that thanks to these new standards, it should become easier to enter this ever-expanding market.
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March 09, 2009
Videos about video technology
By Cliff Roth

We've all heard the cliche about how it's the shoemaker's kids who have holes in their soles, and a similar observation can sometimes be made about the video technology industry. How well are companies who make video chips, IP, and other related technology utilizing

Over the years I've seen some truly great demos -- some of which I've reported on in this space -- but I've also seen my fair share of sloppy, poorly lit, sound-challenged, shaky and confusingly structured videos -- which is why, I suspect, a large number of companies involved in video technology seem to avoid the medium almost entirely.

This is too bad, because we all know what a powerful and persuasive medium video can be. On the consumer side, video's appeal is what's driving the explosion in video technology. Video has a proven track record for selling and communicating all sorts of products and technologies -- everything from soap suds to political candidates.

Sometimes, it really doesn't take much to make the point with video -- like this example of a flexible touch screen demo:

Flexible Touchscreen Demo

Or, this example from an article we ran on video analytics showing the essence of bounding objects and categorizing them:

Video Analytics Demo

But these examples are demos showing off what the product does. With most video and imaging products, the "special sauce" is a bit subtler and less dramatically demonstrable. These products need to be explained, more than demonstrated.

So I've decided to do something about it, and start a new venture producing video product announcements. These will be short videos that professionally present a product or technology to an engineering audience. My thinking is that many engineers are just too busy -- especially during this downturn in which layoffs have translated into more work for everyone else -- to spend much time and effort reading up about what's new (thank you for reading this!). Videos offer a way of delivering key information to engineers without demanding the dedicated attention of reading. Plus, as in the examples above, video does offer the obvious benefits of show and tell -- sometimes seeing is believing.

I'd be happy to hear from interested companies, from engineers and any other people who'd like to be on our distribution list -- please email me at videos@cliffroth.com. I'm also always interested in seeing how others are using video to promote video technology, please drop a line if you've got anything to share.
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