4k

On Facebook, don't panic!

In 2008, the Loaded crew took a road trip to interview Janis Wolak at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes against Children Research Center. Wolak, a UNH professor, co-authored a study about "Internet predators," which showed that they do not fit the stereotype of thuggish basement-dweller using force, abduction, or deception to lure young teens into sexual relationships.

On the contrary, research shows that Internet sex offenders coax teens into relationships slowly, gaining their trust over time. Once the relationships become obviously inappropriate, teens feel that they have been complicit and are therefore less likely to report … Read more

YouTube now supports 4k-resolution videos

Thought 1080p video on YouTube was big? Think bigger.

YouTube on Friday announced that its player now supports 4k, a standard resolution for films that measures 4096x3072 pixels. As YouTube Engineer Ramesh Sarukkai explained in the announcement on YouTube's official blog, "4K is nearly four times the size of 1080p," and it dwarfs even Imax, which projects films in the slightly smaller 2k format, with its 2048?1080-pixel resolution.

Of course, the proof of 4k's merits is in the pudding, which is why YouTube has a special playlist of five films that can be played back … Read more

BOL 1092: The slippery Slate

Bill Keller from the New York Times let slip he's been working on a version of the New York Times for the Apple Slate. Great! What the hell is the Apple Slate? well obviously it's a much-rumored Apple Tablet. We also discuss T-Mobile's unlimited plans and hope against all hopes that they are truly unlimited.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1092

Bill Keller: Apple Tablet ‘Impending’ http://gawker.com/5389636/bill-keller-apple-tablet-impending

T-Mobile Adds ‘Even More Plus’ Plans http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2354721,00.asp… Read more

Digital cinema is looking 'Up'

I went to an opening-day screening of the new Disney/Pixar film "Up," on Friday. I had a great time and not just because of the movie. There was an interesting technology story, too.

The Camera 7 theater in the Silicon Valley city of Campbell recently installed four new digital cinema projectors. They're the best on the market today: Sony's SRXR220, which lists for about $200,000 with the usual required accessories.

Sony also has a slightly less expensive model, the SRXR210, for smaller screens. What puts these projectors ahead of the competition is their native … Read more

Sony's 4,096x2,400 resolution projector

Unless you have room for a 50-foot screen in your swanky penthouse, this projector probably will not be very practical--at least, not right now. Sony's SRX-R105, running around $100k, is the latest generation of so-called 4K projectors, named as such because of their 4,096x2,400 resolution. That's greater than 9 million pixels, or more than four times the resolution of 1080p displays. Hmm, I wonder if Kristen Dunst looks any better in Spider-Man 3 (one only a few movies natively available in this format) at this level of detail.

Such 4K projectors are intended for professional applications--namely, … Read more

Blu-ray beats HD DVD... Now get ready for the next format war

I have to hand it to fellow analyst Rob Enderle. Way back in August of 2005, he called the high-def format war in a piece titled "Blu-ray Wins or Nothing Does."

Then again, he also said in that article that "the more likely outcome is that the market will bypass both products and move to something else," so perhaps he wasn't perfectly prescient.

And come to think of it, a year later (in December 2006) he changed his mind entirely in columns titled "Optical HD Battle May Be Over: HD DVD Wins," "… Read more

Red One: The HD Camera

CES 2008 is over and now it's up to us to figure out which gizmos are next on our list of Must Have items. Even though I've been a life-long Canon customer, I was sorely tempted by the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 that the company says can shoot 60 still images per second with 6MP resolution. Wow! But what if the action lasts more than a single second? And what if you want 2x the resolution so that you can show off the full capabilities of your new 150" Panasonic TH46PXZ850, with it's 4K by 2K resolution? You need a 4K camera, and that's been hard to find in a consumer-sized format. Until now.… Read more

After HDTV, what's next?

One of the last things I did at Siggraph this year was to spend about 20 minutes enraptured by the best video I've ever seen. It's called "4K" (after the number of pixels on each horizontal line), and you'll be seeing it in theaters within the next few years.

The Siggraph Computer Animation Festival included one session of video driven by a Sony SXRD SRX-R105 projector displaying 4,096 by 2,160 pixels at 24 frames per second with progressive scan (or 2160p24 for short).

That's four times the number of pixels you'll see on a home HDTV set-- or in… Read more