Yes, well I don’t know about changing everything, but a few days ago, Glenn Fleishman wrote about 3D TV, HTML5, video over Wi-Fi, superfast USB, and mobile augmented reality as being key breakthrough technologies emerging over the next few years. While there are certainly many such lists to be made, I think Glenn’s done a nice job detailing this particular set of five technologies for us.

He rightly dubs USB as one of the “least-sexy technologies” built into present-day computers and mobile devices, but speeding it up by an order of magnitude is a game changer. And in fact, USB 3.0 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed) should deliver more than 3.2 gbps of actual throughput. The results will introduce major changes in device connectivity, computer backup (coupled with coming advances in flash drives), and video (replacing HDMI?).

By 2012, two new WiFi protocols–802.11ac and 802.11ad–are expected to handle over-the-air data transmission at 1 gbps or faster. Glenn does a nice job of pointing out that the high speed transfers will work well “moving data across short distances between devices in the same room.” He quotes Allen Huotari, the technical leader at Cisco as saying “home networks won’t result from “any one single technology in the home, but rather a pairing of technologies or a trio of technologies–wired and/or wireless–for the backbone and the wireless on the edges.” With one foot firmly in the G.hn camp, Rainier concurs.

Then we come to 3D TV. Could the makers of the old red and blue cardboard eyeglasses ever have envisioned the coming active-shutter approach to 3D simulations? What Hollywood has historically called “depth enhanced movies” are now moving more toward the promise of real 3DTV, an immersive, true-to-life experience that’s nothing like anything we’ve seen before.

Augmented Reality?

My favorite part of Glenn’s article is his discussion of “augmented reality.” First of all, the phrase itself, with or without quotation marks, pulls us immediately into the philosophical domain. I personally think that until we can artificially stimulate our cranial neurons to have choreographed experiences, reality is still reality.

Technologies like heads-up displays, etc. are terrific tools for enhancing safety, efficiency, etc., but they are still tools (is a compass – once an exceedingly innovative high-tech device, “augmented reality?”)

Glenn’s final breakthrough, HTML5, sounds a little dull until you consider it might may do away with the need for audio, video, and interactive plug-ins, and will let designers create Websites that work essentially the same on every browser–whether on a desktop, a laptop, or a mobile device. Yeah, actually, that would be kind of awesome.

Read Glenn’s article in its entirety here.

Uncategorized broadband, G.hn, home networking, innovation, technology, tv, WiFi

When Bell Aliant needed a differentiator to compete with cable, it decided to provide home networking – a rarity back in 2005 in the cable space. But while the telephone service provider was comfortable delivering signals to the side of the house, and even into the house, it was clueless about routing signals inside the residence.

Then BA’s parent company, Bell Canada, started playing around with HomePNA (HPNA) – the home networking technology that runs IP packets over existing residential coax. Viola – now instead of fighting cable, BA was using installed coax (put there by the cable operator) to make money. The company estimates that between 90 and 95 percent of “new” Bell Aliant installs are in homes that already have coax running throughout the house.

In his CED Magazine article, telecom writer Jim Barthold discusses HomePNA impact on Bell Atlantic’s business, and talks with Michael Weissman of CopperGate – the leading provider of HomePNA technology.

Bell Aliant has now launched IPTV in three of its six provinces using a combination of Corinex Ethernet networking gear and Motorola set-top boxes equipped with CopperGate HPNA chips to deliver IPTV and later IP video to multiple TVs within a residence.

Uncategorized homepna, innovation, telecom, tv

In keynote addresses today at the Intel Developer Forum, Eric Kim (head of Intel’s Digital Home Group) and Intel CTO Justin Rattner discussed what happens and what’s needed when the full Internet converges with broadcast networks. The television, they said (both the device and the experience) has arrived at an inflection point.

Delivering interactive product placements, games and on-demand video on non-traditional TVs, such as digital connected CE devices, will require innovation in how that content is actually distributed from TV service providers.

This key phrase from Intel’s press release about the keynote address stood out for me:

“At the center of the TV evolution is more processing power.”

Processing, and the ability to differentiate products through software, will continue to be the key driver behind inventive solutions to problems such as the one Rattner describes, “By the year 2015, you can expect 15 billion consumer devices capable of delivering TV content with billions of hours of video available. We’ll need much more sophisticated ways to organize content and provide it on demand.”

Moores Law has given us the processing performance density and speed to make some incredible things happen. If we remove all the perceived barriers by considering the extremes – infinite processing at zero cost and using zero electricity (and perfectly bug-free code) – we can begin to imagine huge leaps of innovation far beyond the ones already happening in the immediate future of TV.

Intel’s full press release can be read here.

Uncategorized innovation, processing, software, technology, tv