» Posts Tagged ‘tv’
The biggest complaint about Ultra High Definition televisions is that their prices are still astronomical. Right now, if you want to watch 4K content, you don’t have too many choices in your home that won’t have you selling your car or refinancing your home. Things are certainly getting interesting though, especially as Sony just announced some $5,000 4K TVs, and a company from China, Seiki, is shipping a $1,500 4K TV (which has been on sale for as low as $1,200-$1,300). Is it any good though? Read on for some first impressions. More »
Several recent developments are helping to bring more 4K (or “more-K“) to your television screen than many of us might have anticipated, even a year ago. RED has big ideas for your home theater (pictured left), consumer electronics companies are starting to roll out some screens with very high pixel densities, media mega-vendors YouTube and Netflix will (or already do) support 4K, and to bring just about everything together, H.265 will be dilating streaming efficiency on 1 billion devices near you. 4K will likely find its way to you via the web a lot sooner than it will through your cable subscription — unless, of course, you live in Japan. To reinvigorate the country’s (somehow) floundering consumer electronics economy, its ministry of communications will be making 2014 the year of 4K in Japan. And perhaps beyond, not long after that. More »
Technology’s progression sometimes moves with consistent momentum, and sometime comes in spurts. For instance, processors of mobile devices regularly decrease in size and price with relation to power — while, at the same time, the speed of your internet connection may not change much at all for several years, and make a great leap whenever it does. Both of these tendencies of advancement seem to inform High Efficiency Video Coding, A.K.A. H.265 — the successor to that other codec with which we’re all quite familiar (H.264). Improving efficiency by around double, H.265 aims to set the standard for the next decade in video streaming and encoding — and it’s going to ease mobile data congestion and likely make 4K a reality much sooner than many would have anticipated. More »
Yesterday, Google announced that YouTube was coming to your real tube in a big new way, by way of your Android device and WiFi. Today, RCA has reported something similar, but the opposite — sort of — perhaps looking to get in on today’s lucrative tablet market. Interestingly, in this case, the company has announced an Android tablet that will be capable of wirelessly receiving television channels, for free — but not via WiFi internet access. The device will tap the airwaves in much the same way the ‘bunny ears’ of your parents’ old cable-less TV set did back in the ’50s, but allow you to do so while traveling, up to 100 miles per hour. More »
We consistently hear that 4K won’t be happening for a long, long time, especially considering plenty of broadcasters only made the switch a few years ago. I’ve been somewhere in the middle in thinking it won’t happen tomorrow, and it will happen sooner than 10 years. Solutions are beginning to show up from RED and Sony for 4K distribution (at least as far as movies are concerned), and of course we’ve had the cameras capable of 4K for quite a while now — with more on the way. Now it looks like the TV landscape could be changing drastically. LG and Samsung, two of the biggest display makers, have been having serious issues with OLED high definition panels, so instead it looks like they may be shifting focus instead to 4K panels. More »
If you didn’t watch last year’s premiere of FX networks’ American Horror Story, you missed out on some seriously daring television. There was sex (and scandal), there were scares (and some blood-splatter), and there were spirits — though which characters were truly flesh-and-blood and which were a bit more ghostly didn’t become clear until much later – all in the context of an addicting melodrama. The series (created by Nip/Tuck and Glee masterminds Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk) recently began its second season with some cast-members returning (to play different roles), but the setting has been moved to a darkly-imagined Massachusetts mental institution. One vital piece of the puzzle that is AHS is its look, which is being achieved on 35mm film — especially notable when FX’s own Sons of Anarchy and Justified, for instance, have opted for Alexa and EPIC respectively. Courtesy American Cinematographer, here’s a look at the shooting style of this aggressively original program — and just in time for the show’s Halloween episode premiere! More »
The fact that 4K is the buzzword at this year’s NAB makes me think about the people I know who are less technically inclined and who, despite having an HDTV, are watching less than HD-quality content on it due to configuration issues. Most people don’t watch HD content even if they have an HDTV. The issue of configuration is one of the issues I believe Apple will try to solve when and if they introduce their own TV (the remote control — or method of input — being another). Turns out there’s another major manufacturer with an eye on the living room entertainment center — furniture maker IKEA. More »
Alex Buono, Director of Photography for Saturday Night Live, has been shooting on DSLRs for quite some time (the intro for the show was in fact shot on a Canon 5D Mark II and 7D). Here, he gets his hands on a C300, shoots some spots for the show, and talks about his impressions of the camera (which are quite positive). Here’s the video, courtesy Clint Milby: More »
Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield and now The Chicago Code, is probably the best-known filmmaker to graduate from my alma mater, Middlebury College. Shawn broke into the industry after writing “thirteen or fourteen spec scripts,” a testament to his drive as a writer. In a pair of interviews I found myself reading and watching recently, Shawn gives excellent advice for aspiring writers. The first interview is actually by a classmate of mine, Astri von Arbin Ahlander conducted by Evan Dumouchel, who asked Shawn, “What advice would you give to young people as they develop their craft?”: More »
When I originally wrote, “Google TV is what independent filmmakers have been waiting for,” in retrospect I forgot the “is” at the beginning of the sentence and the question mark at the end. So far the answer to that question has been, admittedly and unfortunately, a resounding “no” — so much so that, despite being sent a Google TV by Google (in part because of writing that article), I still haven’t set it up. But when it comes to independent film distribution, the TV is the final frontier, and whether or not Google TV version 1 made an impact, version 2 is currently rolling out this week and looks to improve things significantly. Oh, and rumors are flying that Apple is apparently getting into the TV game for real (the current Apple TV is nothing more than a hobby). More »
How we watch TV is changing every day, with cable TV subscribers cutting the cord in droves. But do you ever wonder how we got to this point, where commercial TV broadcasters (in the US) are afforded free access to the airwaves — despite the fact that few of us would ever argue that they’re focused on providing a community service? Ars Technica has a good series of feature articles that explore the history — and future — of television. Looking to the former, does FCC commisioner Newton Minow’s famous 1961 speech still ring true? More »
This is an oldie but goodie. David Mamet wrote an impassioned memo to his writers on the now-cancelled show The Unit
I caught the new show from the Neistat Brothers on HBO On Demand the other night and found myself sucked in by the decidedly low-fi, autobiographical chapters. The show is appropriately named The Neistat Brothers, because that’s what it’s about: them. Them and their creative process, which ascribes to a total NYC/DIY aesthetic. Because of its use of indie music and first-person narrative, but also due to the DIY nature of the production, the show reminds me a lot of the terrific Four Eyed Monsters podcast, which was about the making of the DIY feature Four Eyed Monsters — the difference is, Neistat Brothers has no associated feature film attached. It’s just about the Neistats, who are fellow graduates of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces (class of 2006, in their case). Normally I’d find a show about a show — which is essentially what it is — to be solipsistic and navel-gazing, but the brothers work it out. More »
The season finale of House was famously shot on a DSLR, specifically the 5d Mark II. FOX doesn’t post full episodes online until 8 days after they air on TV, which is why the season finale hasn’t been available anywhere — until now. Here’s the DSLR-shot episode in full: More »
I’m only posting this because I love The Wire, but really you could pull a thousand individual quotes from the show and it wouldn’t do it justice. The issue with this compendium is it focuses on the gully street slang that is, yes, a large part of The Wire — but a large part that is balanced out by profound cultural critiques and real, humanized characters. More »
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