You might be saying, “Wait a minute, high definition today means 720 or 1080 lines of resolution. I’m only watching the videos on a smaller-than-HD window on the TechCrunch website or smartphone. That’s not HD, so what’s the point.” Well, there is a big point.

It’s true most of our viewers don’t watch on HD size displays. You can watch in HD resolution on a monitor by clicking the fullscreen button in the player. But even on smaller displays, the image quality is much better. It’s partly a case of GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Starting with the highest quality images will get the best end result after all the encodings, decodings, and scaling – which also needs to be kept to the minimum.

For cameras, we use 3 robotic Panasonic AW-HE50′s. These cameras, introduced last summer, look like those security cameras in the ceiling. But, we have them mounted on tripods at eye level. They are not very intimidating to guests. We control them with a robotic camera controller, which allows us to store shots and make changes remotely.

We’ve chosen to use the cameras in 720p mode (for you video techies, the cameras output this via HD-SDI). Our programming is mostly viewed on computers or mobile devices with progressive displays so this mode works well. The cameras also offers 1080i and 480i outputs. Before getting our HD switcher, we used the 480i output in a DV timeline and the image quality was poor. But, shooting, switching and editing in HD mode has solved this.

Below is a screenshot using the SD 480i and DV timeline

And here’s a screenshot using 720p mode, HD switcher and HD timeline

Our production switcher is Newtek’s TriCaster TCXD850. The same model, launched last year, was used to produce the Facebook Live townhall with President Obama, MTV’s MVA red carpet show, ESPN’s X Games and many other sporting events. We bring in our HD camera inputs, add name or other graphics, and can do double-box graphic effects to put multiple sources on the screen at once.

We also input multiple Skype video sources into the switcher, so we can do multi-box interviews with anyone with a Skype connection and a webcam. Many cameras used for Skype output a 4:3 image. But, we can use the switcher to keep the image at 4:3, and put it over a background using the ‘virtual input feature’ that fills our 16:9 screen, so guests don’t get stretched.

The TriCaster also runs Adobe’s Flash Media Live Encoder, so with one button we can launch a live stream to our Ustream channel.

We record our studio segments on the TriCaster’s hard drive. From there, we render it in a format that works in Final Cut Pro, then transfer the file over our network to another computer for editing. After editing, we encode and upload a h.264 file to Ooyala, which makes multiple versions of the file for different bandwidths and player size. For playback, Ooyala uses adaptive bit rate streaming to dynamically select the highest quality stream to send to each viewer. You won’t get the highest quality feed if you don’t have the bandwidth for it.

While we’ve gone HD, the most important thing for us is our editorial content. If we have something our readers and viewers would be interested in, as long as you can see it, hear it, and aren’t distracted by the technical issues, we’ll bring it to you no matter what it’s captured with.

Much of our field shoots are done with Panasonic HVX200a cameras. We’ve also used iPhone cameras, Skype webcams, point-and-shoot digital cameras that record video, and DSLRs like the Canon 7Ds to capture our videos. Arrington even bought us some Barbie Video Girl cameras, which shoot with an impressive 320×240 image. That might have been called very high definition in the 1930s, when television systems used as few as 30 lines of resolution. Watch this fun video on how the Barbie-cam stacks up to the 7D.

Good news: Formula One will be in HD this year. You’d have thought that such a fancy racing circuit would be broadcast in HD already—how many years has Nascar been in HD?—but no; we’ve had to wait. Long overdue, yes.

The entire world feed will be in HD starting this season, which begins this March in Australia. That means it’s up to your local F1 provider whether or not they want to carry the feed. The BBC has already said they’ll carry the HD feed in the UK, and Speed here in the US has also committed to carrying it. Sighs of relief all around.

This makes the second big tech announcement concerning F1 that’s been made in recent weeks, the other being that the FIA is looking to “greenify” the sport as much as possible with new, smaller engines with lower fuel consumption than the current models that will kick off in two years.

It’s tough to stress how grateful I am for the transition to HD. How many years has HD been mainstream? I know I had one in time for the 2006 World Cup, and I’m well certain I was several years behind the curve already. But it’s good to know that we can look forward to a year of Ferrari belly aching in HD.

Plainly, it’s about damn time.

It’s the end of the year, and that means many publications are rolling out their annual “best of” list. I don’t know if *we’re* doing anything along those lines, but I *do* have a bone to pick with 1UP. They’ve a delightful little list of 10 things the Xbox 360 did to change gaming forever. You already know most of the list before reading it: Achievement Points, Microsoft Points (1UP calls them “convenient” to use across Microsoft’s various services, as if dollars can’t be used in exchange for goods and services…), Kinect, and general entertainment use (things like Netflix streaming). But the one thing that has my dander up? That the Xbox 360 ushered in an era of HD gaming. Ha!

The phrasing of the entry is most troublesome:

In 2005, the prices of HD televisions were only beginning to reach reasonable levels. Well, that’s if you consider around $3,500 reasonable. Even with the cost barrier, Microsoft clearly believed that high-definition gaming was the future. HD televisions are now in 56% of homes, and many gamers have come to expect crystal clear graphics when playing big, triple-A titles. After all, what’s the point of teabagging your friend in Halo if it’s not presented in stunning, 1920×1080 resolution?

I’d like to know on what planet Halo runs at “stunning” 1920×1080. Is it Reach? It’s certainly not Planet Earth, that’s for sure.

A quick look at this list reveals the resolutions of the many Xbox 360 (and PS3) games that have been released over its five-year run. Halo 3 runs at 1152×640 (my three-year-old laptop has a higher resolution than that) and Halo: Reach runs at 1152×720. Note that Halo 3 has no anti-aliasing to speak of, while Reach adds 2x temporal AA.

Going through the list I found exactly four games that run at 1920×1080: Fifa Street 3, NBA Street Home Court (the demo!), Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, and Virtua Fighter 3.

Hardly what I’d consider the “HD era” of gaming.

Look at this screenshot of Dragon Age II and try to tell me we’re living in the “HD era” of gaming (here’s the full-res version):

I rest my case.

For reasons unknown, Tokyo-based accessory maker Thanko keeps churning out “spy” gadgets. This time we get a watch [JP] that looks quite bland from the outside but features a micro camera that can shoot both pictures and video. Another selling point is that it’s Thanko’s first spy watch that’s waterproof (IPX8 certification) – isn’t that great?

Videos can be recorded in 640×480 resolution at 30fps, while the watch shoots JPEGs in up to 1,600×1,200 resolution. Other features include 4GB of internal memory, a USB port, and compatibility to computers with Windows XP / Vista / 7 / Mac OS 10.5 on board.

The watch, which weighs 86g, can be ordered over at Geek Stuff 4 U for $158.95.

Here’s a video that was shot with it:

So what’s new? Well, the Bloggie has left the 90′s and joined us in modern design. The new camera is sporting a 3″ touchscreen with Full HD video, and 12.8 megapixels for still shots. Sony has also added HDMI out, 4x digital zoom, and 8GB of internal storage. Sony claims that 8GB will hold roughly 4 hours of 720p video. Not bad. The revamped Bloggie will be available this coming November in pink, black, or a brushed aluminum finish. No word on pricing as of yet, but I think I want one for this coming CES. You can read the full press release here.

[via Gizmodo]

Walking among the cars this weekend in Monterey I spotted an odd rig with two Red cameras attached to something that looked like a range hood. It turns out it was a 3D camera set-up from 21st Century 3D and records full HD at various depths and in a package that rides on a dolly.

Their BX3 has two cameras placed at 90-degree angles to each other. One camera takes the scene as it appears while another one shoots a one-way mirror at a slightly different angle to get the 3D effect. It’s obviously not for the average consumer – the Reds alone are $17,000 or so each – but was great to spot this thing in the wild.

Excuse the wind noise on the video. Sadly, I didn’t know I was picking it up until it was too late.

The so-called Super Hi-Vision standard is nothing new, as it was brought to life by NHK (as an experiment) seven years ago. But it’s very impressive anyway.

NHK’s system, to which Hitachi contributed some pieces of hardware, consists of three main units. Its camera records 8K video with 33MP sensors and then transmits a 90 Gbps signal to the camera control unit. The control unit analyzes the material, boosts image quality and then sends the images to a total of four tiled full HD screens, which display video in glorious 7,680×4,320 resolution.

NHK demonstrated various prototypes over the years. Watch how the system currently works and looks like in the video embedded below.

Sharp really believes in 3D, it seems. In the past weeks the company presented a new 3D touchscreen for mobile devices, then the world’s first four-primary 3D display, followed by a 3D e-book reader. And today Sharp in Japan unveiled [press release in English] the world’s first 3D camera module that can be used in mobile devices such as cell phones, digital cameras or portable gaming systems.

Technical details are relatively scarce at this point, but what we know is that the module will make it possible to shoot both 3D photos and 3D videos in HD (720p) with those devices.

Sharp plans to begin shipping the first 3D modules to hardware makers as early as July, followed by mass-production within this year. Having this thing built into the Nintendo 3DS sooner or later would be kind of cool.

The “E-mount” interchangeable lenses for the two digi cams will be usable as well, next to the “A-mount” interchangeable lenses from Sony’s existing Alpha DSLRs (via a mount adapter). All of these pictures just show early mock-ups, meaning the final design may differ significantly when Sony starts selling the camcorder in fall this year.

Here’s Sony’s official promo video:
http://www.sony.co.jp/video3/player.swf

Via AV Watch [JP]

We’re about to get yet another 3D display. This time, it’s Toshiba Mobile Display Corp. that’s prepping such a screen, an autostereoscopic (glasses-free), 21-inch 3D HD display “for use in next-generation 3D monitors”, to be more exact. Toshiba says the main selling points is that its new “integral imaging system” with 9-parallax design makes it possible for users to view 3D images from a wider range of viewing angles.

According to the company, that system required the development of a new “ultra-high-definition LCD module”, but ultimately leads to less eye fatigue and produces better images than 2-parallax 3D displays. The company teamed up with Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in the development of the HD display.

The device features WXGA (1,280×800) resolution, 480 cd/m2 brightness, and ±15 degrees (horizontal) 3D viewing angle. Toshiba expects it to be mainly used for advertisement and entertainment purposes. The display will be showcased next month at the SID 2010 International Symposium in Seattle.

The new version is now clad in brushed aluminium, but is still capable enough to catch HD broadcasts over the air. EyeTV will also capture video feeds and record them via the bundled RCA adapter. It’ll even capture input from analog sources. Elgato has priced the new EyeTV at $150, and it should be available soon through the Apple store or from Elgato directly.

[via Electronista]

Camera phone pictures could get a whole lot prettier with Samsung’s newest image sensors. The Korean manufacturer has just announced two new CMOS sensors for mobile phones with improved image quality over greater depth of field ranges and HD video. Does it sound a little too good to be true?

I’m glad to see that this isn’t just another megapixel pissing contest and that Samsung is actually making strides in improving image quality. The first sensor is the S5K4E2, a 5 megapixel sensor that uses Samsung Enhanced Energy Steering, or SEES technology. It has better noise reduction than most camera phone sensors, if not all, and HD video capabilities. Unfortunately, it’s a choppingly slow 15 frames-per-second at full resolution. With the ability to fit inside a 6.5mm x 6.5mm x 4.5mm module, everything can stay thin and pretty.

The S5K5CA is a 3 megapixel sensor that has has 720p HD capabilities. This sensor is already in mass production, with the S5k4E2 going into mass production late in the first quarter. I’d imagine that coupling sensors like these on capable cameras, especially with the new Bada platform feature phones, would be big hits for Samsung.

[via Unwired]

A tipster writes in with knowledge of some of the improvements TiVo may be making to its devices. The most important: a move to full HD menus, improved search, and the phasing out of Series 2 hardware. Because the company stopped making improvements to the current software as of the middle of last year, our source believes that aside from minor add-ons like Blockbuster support the old UI and OS will be replaced by a fully HD version, available at first on Series 3 hardware.

He describes the move as something akin to Microsoft’s redesign of the Xbox Dashboard – a surface refresh that plays better with larger, HD TVs. This could also include new methods for adding apps and content to existing boxes.

There is obviously some talk of the TiVo Premiere coming with ATSC and cable card support. This, also, is still a rumor.

Our hope is this: new, cheaper hardware that supports HD recording and that can work without a cable card. (Tru2Way maybe?) Thanks to content providers, that may be a big fat pipe dream, but TiVo has a deep hole to climb out of, especially with the move towards cable-company DVRs even if those DVRs are far inferior to TiVo’s interface. TiVo made it big in a world without competitors and now they have many. Unless they can outfox those competitors, they’re sunk.

Just connect the box to your TV (via HDMI 1.3a), insert the memory card into one of the two slots built into the device and you are ready to view content in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (mts/m2ts/mov), MPEG-2 TS(tod), MPEG-2 PS (mod/mpg) formats. The box supports AVCHD, can display JPEGs and play music files, too (MP3 and WMA).

The CU-VS100 comes with a remote control and will go on sale in Japan next week (price: $220). JVC hasn’t said yet whether the player will be sold outside Japan as well.

Finally, soccer in HD! Fox announced yesterday (I guess we’re not cool enough to get the memo directly…) that it’s going to re-launch Fox Soccer Channel on March 1, 2010. The new channel will be called Fox Soccer Plus, and it will bring you every single Premier League game it has the rights to (more on that in a moment) in HD. Serie A, too, so there’s something there for you Continental types. I cannot stress this enough: every Premier League game in HD!

So, off the top of my head, that means Americans can see the Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A in HD. Now all we need is for GolTV to switch over to be guaranteed to see every La Liga and Bundesliga game (shown here, at least) in a proper resolution.

I’m very excited.

UPDATE~! Well, I’m still excited, but now my excitement has been tempered. All that info up there? Mostly wrong! As The Gaffer (whose site, EPL Talk, is actually pretty cool, by the way) corrects me, Fox Soccer Channel isn’t going anywhere, but that Fox will be launching another channel called Fox Soccer Plus. It’ll be a premium channel, but whether or not your cable/satellite provider actually charges extra, or puts the channel behind a pre-existing tier (maybe like a “premium sports package”type of thing), is entirely up to your provider. Fox has a handy search dealie where you can see if your provider will be picking up Fox Soccer Plus. Regardless of your Fox Soccer Plus status, plain ol’ Fox Soccer Channel will be in HD come March 1, too. One thousand apologies. I completely misread that.

Tokyo-based USB accessory specialist Thanko has a thing for spy gadgets. Just look at their spy button camera, the USB necktie with a built-in camera and the camera watch they developed in the last few months. Last July, Thanko started offering a a pen with an integrated micro camera. And today the company announced [JP] the so-called Super Slim Video Pen 2, which is a spy pen that shoots video in HD (1,280×960 at 30fps, to be more exact).

The pen lets you shoot JPEGs with the same resolution. It’s 14cm long and weighs 30g. It can store 1.5 hours of video with its internal memory but also supports microSD cards (up to 16GB). Thanko says an 8GB card is enough to record around six hours of HD video. Users just need to press a button on top of the pen to start the recording. The micro camera is right under it (see picture above).

Video files can later be transferred to your PC (as long as it runs under Windows XP, Vista or 7) via USB 2.0 (the pen has a miniUSB slot).

Thanko is selling the spy pen for $65. Ask Geek Stuff 4U if you live outside Japan and are interested in getting one (they’re just offering the older model at the moment).

CES is here, even though most of your friendly neighborhood CrunchGear writers are still in their respective home states. (We’ll be arriving in Las Vegas throughout the day today.) First up for me: new camcorders from Canon. Entry-level ones, too, so don’t feel intimidated. You’ve got the HFR11, the HFR10, and the HFR100. They’re basically souped up, HD versions of the previous FS series of entry-level cameras. Nothing wrong with HD.

The HFR11 is the top dog, coming with 32GB of built-in flash memory, while the R10 has 8GB of flash, and the R100 has none, but does has an SD/SDHC card slot to stick in whatever amount of flash you have lying about.

Other goodies: 20X optical zoom, simple to use HD to SD conversion, your standard ports for external mics and headphones, and a setting that makes taking short clips (2, 4, or 8 seconds long) so simple enough a caveman can do it. Hack alert.

Prices: the HFR11 for $699, the HFR10 for $549, and the HFR100 for $499. Those are all MSRPs, of course, so it may be different than what you find at the store.

This here is a video of New Super Mario Bros. Wii in 1080p, thanks to the wonders of emulation. (I had completely forgotten about the Dolphin emulator!) If there were ever a reason for Nintendo get off its backside and fully commit to the Wii HD, this is it.

You really ought to go to YouTube proper to see the video in the highest resolution possible.

Wii HD. Make it happen, Nintendo.

The new Pinnacle Studio meets the needs of a wide range of consumers, from novices to video enthusiasts and semi-professionals. The family of products includes Pinnacle Studio HD, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection, which offer a complete HDV & AVCHD workflow and allows consumers to export movies to Flash, QuickTime, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Apple iPod and more. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and Pinnacle Ultimate Collection also offer Blu-ray authoring with motion menus.

Other new features include:

• A stop-motion capture for animated and fast-motion effects.

• New content and enhancements for Pinnacle Montage.

• Dynamic Motion Titler tool that includes a number of new templates.

• A new stabilizer effect – leveraging the same technology used in Avid’s professional editing products to fix shaky camera shots.

Also, those who purchase Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection will receive the most complete solution, including a green sheet for Chroma key effects and six highly acclaimed professional plug-ins from Red Giant:

• Shine ultra-fast light ray effects

• ToonIt turns video into cartoon style animation

• Knoll Light factory creates lens flares, sunsets & more

• Magic Bullet Looks generates advanced video styles

• 3D stroke creates glowing lines, swirling shapes, and 3D camera effects

• Particular smoke, explosion, and abstract effects

Did I get that right? You get a green screen? COOL!

The price of Pinnacle Studio HD, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection remains the same as previous version: US$49.99, $99.99 and $129.99, respectively. However there will be upgrade price breaks of $30 for Studio Ultimate and $40 for Studio Ultimate Collection made available to existing customers.

Pinnacle Studio is compatible with Windows Vista SP2 (Both 32-bit & 64-bit), Windows XP SP3 & Windows 7.

Also coming soon are three new Pro-Tools bundles that aim to give experienced consumers and first-time hobbyists alike, affordable access to the classic digital editing toolset for audio–ProTools. The bundles which are named Pro Tools Vocal Studio, Pro Tools Recording Studio and Pro Tools KeyStudio™, have both software and hardware components. The distinct software portions are known as Pro Tools M-Powered™ Essential software, which is a specific version of ProTools that works natively with M-Audio hardware (which incidentally Avid owns). The M-Audio hardware within these packages sounds compelling too: a studio quality USB mic, FastTrack USB interface and an M-Audio  KeyStudio USB keyboard, respectively.

Here are some more detailed descriptions from Avid:

Pro Tools Vocal Studio turns the computer into a complete vocal recording studio. This bundle includes the Producer USB microphone, a studio-quality mic that lets people capture vocals, as well as record acoustically played instruments. The Producer USB mic lets people record with stunning clarity, whether they’re singing a future hit song or narrating a family biography. And with Pro Tools M-Powered Essential, it’s easy to remix vocals to produce professional-quality soundtracks and podcasts with ease.

Pro Tools Recording Studio enables people to craft professional-sounding songs and remixes — no experience needed. With the included Fast Track® USB audio interface plugged right into the computer, music enthusiasts can capture pristine digital sound for any recording project, whether from a guitar or a standard microphone. With Pro Tools M-Powered Essential software, consumers can dub, mix, remix, edit, blend, restore, hone and more to create audio projects that will sound like they came from a pro — even if someone’s never recorded a note before.

Pro Tools KeyStudio features the M-Audio KeyStudio USB keyboard, a simple, yet high-quality 49-note velocity-sensitive keyboard that also functions as a MIDI interface. With Pro Tools KeyStudio, users can record a single keyboard track or create a complete orchestral recording using the KeyStudio to input any of the 60+ virtual instruments that come loaded with Pro Tools M-Powered Essential.

Each Pro Tools Essential bundle is, as of this writing,  available at an MSRP of $129 and works on mac or windows.

All of this is good news for the people out there looking for reasonably priced entry products of this nature. It makes sense for both the Pinnacle and ProTools offerings to be released together as they are meant to work together to help people craft “slicker-than-you-thought-I-could-do” home movies and more. I wonder how seamlessly they interact?

It’s also a good strategy on Avid’s part to offer these less expensive products to compete with FinalCutPro, Premiere, GarageBand and the many other pro-sumer type software packages out there these days. I seem to always remember Avid as an expensive, “for-professionals-only” platform back in the day when I was doing all my FCP work in agency-life, but clearly their acquisition path and continued development of some consumer-friendly apps shows that they are trying to cover more than one side of the quickly evolving world of digital media.

Most film is recorded at 24 frames per second, but your LCD TV probably either displays at 60 fps or 120 hz (hertz is just a measurement of frequency per second). There are three main ways to cope with this.

First is to simply display each frame longer, this is the oldest technique in LCD tech. However, its undesirable side effects include the possibility of motion blur, or of judder. Judder is an artifact of adjusting the framerate and it looks like a sort of stutter in movement that would otherwise be smooth (a slow pan, for instance).

The second technique is one used on Plasmas and CRT TVs. Instead of showing a bright image the whole time, they display the frame, then a short frame of either darkness or a very dimmed picture. This alleviates much of the issue with judder and motion blur as it allows your brain to fill in the gap faster than you can consciously notice. It is also an old technique, and is used in theaters. It provides the traditional cinema feel.

The most recent and advanced technique is motion interpolation. Motion interpolation is a process by which your TV analyzes the current frame, and the next frame, then creates an average. It inserts these averaged frames in between. The result is extremely smooth motion with no motion blur and judder becomes almost non-existent. There are a few technical issues with this, including the possibility of ghosting or artifacts in rare cases. Also the smooth movement this creates is slightly disconcerting.

This extremely smooth motion has earned the name the “Soap Opera Effect,” after the way those shows looked, having been shot on cheaper 30Hz video instead of regular broadcast equipment or film. Although it might be technically superior it seems it is disconcerting to me. The movement looks like a digital video, not like film. This problem is exacerbated by the high definition. I’ve seen this happen in standard definition video as well and you essentially see the “moving” objects on a different plane than the background, as if they were cut outs moving on a painted background.

Cinematographers and video experts have had techniques for hiding “telecine” video artifacts for years, but the increase in interpolation frames (from 30 to 60 to 120 or more) has reduced the need for such techniques. Instead, the increased framerate minimizes the video glitches at the cost of looking a bit weird. There are a lot of complaints out there over how 120Hz looks “too smooth” or unrealistic. This is probably mostly due to people just not being used to it and wanting to home films to look like the cinema they are used to. The rub here is simple: HD content looks incredible, on the aggregate, but these interpolation problems pull us out of the uncanny valley and into a strange new way of seeing motion. It isn’t quite what we expect and it upsets us.

Maybe TV makers will solve this problem or maybe we’ll just get used to it. Either way, something you can simply turn interpolation off and get the old, juddery picture you know and love.

With Berkeley Beyers