Webcams have come along way in the past decade. They’ve gone from a geek-inspiring novelty, producing puny pictures to, in some cases, inexpensive sources of real HD video. Moreover, as their capabilities have improved they have gained acceptance as serious…
Since taking up my new gig with ZipDX and Polycom a splendid HDX-4500 has graced my home office. It’s without question the most sophisticated end-point device that I’ve encountered. It’s a real treat to use, especially since I do so many calls using video these days.
The HDX is large enough that it gets a desk of it’s own, located across the room from my primary desk, desktop PC et al. When I’m using the HDX I always have my laptop on that desk as well.
The trouble is that I’ve had some difficulty getting the lighting correct for video calls. I’ve muddled along trying different solutions with what I’ve had on-hand, and playing with moving things around the space. Recently I’ve come to think that I need to take more significant steps to provide consistently good lighting.
Upon reading my prior post about my effort to capture the output of one of my Android devices fellow VUC alumni Andreas Dorfer suggested that I try the Elgato Game Capture HD. At first I was reluctant to make yet…
As you are no doubt aware, I’ve long been a fan of Polycom hardware. From the entry-level SoundPoint IP335 to the new VVX Series Business Media Phones, Polycom makes great hardware. That said, I’ve also come to expect that great quality often comes at a price.
I was not at all surprised to see that Polycom offers a video conference soft client called RealPresence Mobile as part of their RealPresence solution suite. RealPresence Mobile has been around for over a year but was not something that’s crossed my path until recently. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s distributed without cost.
In the post-roll of last week’s VUC call I got into a thread about webcams and various aspects digital video encoding. While many in the VUC audience already have some understanding of the related principles, it occurred to me that there may be some folks that visit this site who would be interested a primer on the basics of video compression.
Then by some serendipitous twist I found this video on the subject by Drew Tyler, Instructor of Digital Media at Weber State University in Utah. He covers the basics in a pretty good live presentation, even if he is a bit of an Apple fan-boy.
News coming out of last week’s NAB2013 conference is that 3DTV is definitely subsiding. Some might say it’s dying, but I expect that it will hang around in some applications. Certainly the movie studios will keep cranking out 3D movies in order to sustain the logic of the theatre chains ongoing transition to digital projection.
In my mind the big news was the coming wave of UltraHD (aka 4K) which seems to have largely displaced 3D as the major entertainment industry trend. UltraHD is quite interesting to me. Of particular interest was the announcement of a 50” diagonal 4K display for a mere $1299. Filmmaker and entertainment industry blogger Andrew Robinson has a good take on this announcement.