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Apple TV set-top box not coming this year: Report
Techradar | Jul 31, 2014, 04.20 PM IST
The long rumoured Apple TV set-top box overhaul won't be adorning home entertainment set-ups until next year, if a new report is to be believed.
According to The Information (pay wall), Apple has shoved the launch of the device into 2015 after failing to entice content providers to buy into its vision for IPTV distribution.
The site's sources believe the cable providers are concerned that acquiescing to Apple's advances could see Cupertino replace them at the top of the television food pyramid.
The ongoing saga of the proposed merger between Time Warner and Comcast is also contributing to the hold up, the report claims.
2015, but when?
The Information's report says Apple is blaming the cable companies for the hold up, while those holding the rights claim Apple is biting off more than it can chew with its plans to modernise TV consumption.
As a result of all this, Apple is now working towards the 2015 timeline, although there's no mention of an exact release date.
Of course, this is not a new issue. As far back as a year ago it was reported that a failure to reach accords with content providers was behind Apple's inability to get a rumoured iTV flatscreen set out of the gate.
I think people vastly underestimate the plans SkyMedia may have for their Nuvola NP-1 embedded Glassless 3d TV's set for September release at a price point below Samsungs and LG's similar offerings. For every TV they sell, an NP-1 goes with it.
I will, thanks for the mature and constructive reply. I do hold shares here. Do we know at what time Margrit stepped down? I'm assuming when she took over Marani again.
Ok, so can anyone state who is officially the president of Zodiac? According to the license filed in '06, still active until 2/28/15, it's Margrit. Are we disputing this?
I guess I don't understand. To me the evidence provided clearly shows Margrit as president of Zodiac at least until 2/28/15. And why are we ignoring this? I hold shares here, if this is "old news", and nothing wrong has been done, why aren't we simply admitting or disclosing that she is still connected to these companies? Better yet, why hasn't she come out and disclosed that?
The license expiration dates show 2/28/15. So who's telling the truth here?
Given the expiration dates isn't Margrit still the president if zodiac?
This appears to be very damaging evidence. Glad to see pps move for those who needed it to.
Still have a little bit of difficulty proving NTEK is being investigated for ANY wrongdoing, right?
Lol, "aren't public". So to e clear, you have no proof, right?
Correct, dividends were projected but to date, no announcement has been made as there was for the first dividend. As for share buybacks, I would not anticipate a PR until they are completed.
Ultraflix 1.2 Production Release is in the final stages of QA testing. I've been told it's pretty slick and, "UltraFlix™ should become a household name on short order".
Skymedia (NTEK OEM Partner - NP-1's installed in TV), a venture enterprise, will launch its Glasses-Free 3D TV in September, faster than major brands such as Samsung and LG. Glasses-Free 3D UHD TV have been released only as a prototype in the global market.
Skymedia, a venture enterprise, will launch its Glasses-Free 3D TV in September, faster than major brands such as Samsung and LG. Glasses-Free 3D UHD TV have been released only as a prototype in the global market.
Alex, the CEO of Skymedia, said “We are going to launch our Glasses-Free 3D UHD TV within September. It will be the world first in current criterion.” LG and Samsung also released their Glasses-Free 3D TV in electronic fair but it has been understood that they
have not plan in the domestic market in a short period.
? Skymedia CEO Alex is posing in front of the prototype of Skymedia’s
Glasses-Free 3D UHD TV 50”
Skymedia’s First Glasses-Free 3D TV, specifically 65” model, will cost approximately 15-20% more than other UHD TVs. It seems to make sure the market demand through the big size 3D model that has large effect. For that reason, pricing do not over the maginot line
of consumer price, 4,000~5,000 dollars. Currently, Skymedia is planning to launch their 50” model, too.
Skymedia launched 3D TV in 2011 and then, has knocked consistently at the market of the 3D TV. Glasses-Free UHD 3D TV has already been develped more than 90%. It is possible to realize Glasses-Free due to ultra-fine lens on panel. They are made to overcome the lack of 3D contents, so consumers can enjoy 3D contents from 2D contents.
Glasses-Free UHD 3D TV will be produced at the factory located Hongcheon, which is three times bigger than the current factory at Pa-ju, and it will be completed by August. Skymedia is going to move their product line in July.
To accelerate their market growth, Skymedia will participate in Europe’s biggest electronic fair ‘IFA2014 in Berlin’ and exhibit their Glasses-Free UHD 3D TV. Skymedia is exporting FHD TV to Europe·the Middle East·South America. Profits, which were 60million dollars last year, are expected to earn 100 billion dollars the follow year. 70~80% of the profits are from overseas sales.
Alex said “When we launched our 3D TV, we have exected that being able to enjoy 3D capability without the glasses will bring in profits, and is marketable. In addition, Skymedia makes an effort to be the global leading enterprise for the Glasses-Free 3D TV in the future.”
by Joonbae Kim | joon@etnews.com
Finally, let’s ask the price of 3D UHD TV. I got the answer that is about USD 5,000 for 50” and USD 6,500 for 60”.
And they expressed their market strategy of selling lower the price than Samsung and LG at 20-30 percent off.
In any case, there is no difference between panel and function, it is no doubt that people want reasonable price.
NP-1 video of guy using Xbox 360 controller, pretty cool:
Akamai, a billion dollar company seemed to be well aware that HEVC is not the only way to effectively stream 4k today. It's nice to know NTEK saw an opportunity to stream 4k successfully now and not deal with all the headaches and bugs that h.265 currently brings. As h.265 codecs develop, I'm sure they will be right there with a next generation np-1 product.
LG 55LA9700:
*May require a separate purchase and installation. Contact LG Customer Service with any questions regarding the LG 4K upgrade.
gotta know where to look.
Netflix may be using hevc, but virtually no one is able to watch it with any success. On the other hand, Nuvola owners have been and continue to watch 4k effortlessly.
lol, Amazon hasn't even announced a release date for their updated HDX Fire Tablet. The rumor of the Snapdragon 805 in the next Fire HDX offering, which may turn out to be true, is still just a rumor. This is one of many tech blogs that like to find leaked benchmarks, some of which come true, some don't.
Nanotech: Three Levels of UHD Upconversion
The Online Reporter
Digital Media & Broadband Industry News, Research and Insight
Nanotech: Three Levels of UHD Upconversion
Monday, July 28th, 2014
We can say with certainty, having owned two UHD TVs, that upconversion is absolutely necessary in the current universe of 1080p HD content and that there are major differences in set makers’ upconversion technology.
Upconverting 1080p HD to near-UHD quality can be done in the consumer’s hardware — TV set, Blu-ray player or a separately attached net-top box. Makers of those devices say their upconversion technology is the best so we asked Nanotech how it does upconversion in its Nuvola media player net-top box and, because all UHD TVs have upconversion technology, why is it necessary? Its representative Andy Marken responded by saying:
“Upcoversion can be done prior to it being sent to the consumer or in the consumers’ hardware. Nanotech does both. Nanotech’s subsidiary 4K Studios is repurposing. It takes HD content, breaks it down by unassembling the various components and rebuilding the content in higher resolution — cleaning up everything in the process. Some studios with their own upconversion facilities are doing the same. There are other studios that simply upconvert by using ‘scalers’ to convert a signal from a lower resolution to a higher resolution.
“Nuvola will stream the content at the highest quality, bandwidth possible. It will also ‘talk’ to the TV set and say either: ‘We’ve improved it by X, you have upconverting capability and can improve X to X+5; or it can tell the UHD TV set this is true 4K content at the right speed so just leave it alone.
“We are in agreement with Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) that all of the heavy lifting shouldn’t be dumped on the TV set, which is what pay TV folks say. They want most of the conversion done at the front-end and streamed at the best that’s possible to a device in front of the set that takes the content the last 10-inches or so.
“Nanotech sees two or three categories of UHD TV sets available now and evolving — not unlike the days we were involved with MPEG 2 hardware because computers didn’t have enough power to do it in software — that changed over time, of course.
“In this case we’ll have companies such as Samsung, Sony and LG with robust upconversion technology in their sets. That’s also true of Vizio, whose overall quality has been increasing and whose UHD sets won an award at CES for quality and design.
“There’ll be middle TV sets with so/so processor units and at the bottom will be budget sets from the likes of Seiki, TCL and Skyworth that use cheap processors. The last group will always need an external unit to help them deliver quality content.
“Nanotech thinks the top category will pretty quickly have all the power they need to handle the workload. Then the external box, the Nuvola in our case, will be one fantastic game system to enjoy all the Android and PC games out there. For these, there will be Nanotech’s UltraFlix OTT service, which is totally 4K and with genre type categories to choose.
“The answers to your question are and will probably always be: yes, no, maybe.”
Nanotech’s EVP of sales and marketing Aaron Taylor said the company has three levels of 4K:
1. 4K Platinum: 100% native 4K from shoot to edit and output.
2. 4K Gold: 35mm film scanning with Nanotech’s set of Laser Graphic Film Scanners — 10-shots per frame, 3-levels of RGB and 1-white. Post-Process is for clean-up, color-correction and audio.
3. 4K Silver: 1080p proprietary up-scale. The most sophisticated and HQ up scaling techniques available today. It’s an off- line process so it’s done before the content is streamed.
He said most of Nanotech’s content is number one.
Taylor previously ran the commercial division of Roku where he helped build the company from a start-up to a $40 million a year business and the market leader in digital signage media players.
Marken said…
July 29, 2014 from the AndroidBlog:
It's called Cloud NP-1 and definitely like it more than anyone, at least to those who understand media player and needing a good device for the price is not very high. We always talk about 300 Euros, to be sure, but you can not expect less from a gadget like that, especially when you consider that one of its peculiarities is the reproduction of video Ultra HD: characteristic - the latter - which is certainly not common to all the media player on the market today.
Unfortunately at the moment the only code supported is the 'H.264 but, through an official communication, the producer said that in the future through a software update will also be implemented the new H.265 which, for the uninitiated, codec is a new generation able to further compress video files without losing quality-This way you get a weight in terms of space occupied by the movie about half compared to the same movie in H.264.
Well at least we have full disclosure here. Thanks for the honesty.
Hell, Sony boxes don't even work on some of their own 4k tv's.
Will sony's proprietary devices work on a non-Sony 4k TV?
For now, true, except there are some major differences: Oem np-1 installations in 4k tv's, ultraflix ported and installed on 4k tv's and I anticipate a world wide release of ultraflix soon as well.
I would assume this to be true. Sony is succeeding in losing many loyal customers over their proprietary devices and content. With 4k tv's coming down in price, this is a losing gamble IMO. Keeping their content proprietary helps ntek right now. Ultraflix can be had by anyone with a 4k panel. They have just enough content to create buyers right now.
This is the exciting position ntek holds in this market. I believe ntek will continue to put pressure on companies like Sony and Netflix who can provide 4k but are failing at actually getting the 4k into the consumers home. Sony, no stream epic fail and Netflix has a lot of issues with their HEVC streaming with a min 25mbps requirement. Virtually nobody is watching Netflix in 4k. A small amount of dd on sony's 4k boxes will reveal an epic fail. Ntek is going to be making revenue on a very nice, unique library of 4k, the competitors can continue to fail, join ultraflix revolution or be left behind.
I don't recall RoyBoy ever mentioning DF, but even if it was, who cares. The point is they provided excellent customer service. The other part of the review I believe, is why these things will sell like hot cakes in this current 4K market. RoyBoy hasn't even tried games yet. I saw OUYA's at Target yesterday and thought it would make a nice gift for my child and then remembered that OUYA's fame library will be available on the NP-1. To me, it'd be like buying an NP-1 for $199 (+ controller) as the OUYA costs $99. But I digress, here is his quote:
"Given the lack of availability of main stream films and inability to stream YouTube or Netflix content I'm not feeling the value is there at $300 given I already own most of the other set top boxes. Nevertheless I will keep mine as the limited 4K content that is provided looks great and I'm hoping for more in the future.
If you're an early adapter of a set with HDMI 1.4 and would like to see just how good it can look with native 4K content, this is your only option for now unless you own an early Sony UHD model which offers the X1 proprietary box for purchase."
Fact, Nuvola NP-1, Google certified, right?
"Slight" exaggeration? but yes it would be prudent for one to watch for a likely lower entry point and score a bounce trade.
So, to be clear, NTEK is clearly delivering the things they previously "claimed" they would do, or "did" do, right?
I hope for those red here that you're right.
I don't think that's what ct meant. I think he was referring to the possibility that poor revs came out or some other bad news - public, not insider private bad news. IMO the price action reflected shareholder reaction to MoneyTV which in its most simplistic analysis is "all talk and no walk". That and the strong possibility Marani dumped more shares for reasons that actually don't matter at this time and pps.
This should be duly noted and stickied.
Exciting times for ntek!
Nuubie wrote: "The NTEK desperation and uncertainty has already begun...
More to come..."
I think it's more likely that -
The NTEK-critics desperation and uncertainty has already begun...
More to come...