Planet Radio TV – tune in on any device

Planet Radio TV – tune in on any device

Planet Radio TV plans to be Africa's first online broadcaster that allows its listeners to watch via Internet and satellite TV as well as listen via FM or Internet radio. SEAN BACHER visits its studios

Planet Radio TV (PRTV) is broadcast much like any other terrestrial radio station, allowing its users to tune into it with a standard FM tuner. But its owner, Planet Image Productions, is about to launch two other means of tuning into the station.

In the coming month, MultiChoice will place a new satellite in orbit that will, by the new year, allow Planet to broadcast to subscribers via the satellite. Planet has also announced the PRTV app, which can be downloaded to Apple, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile devices, allowing users to stream the content to their phones and tablets.

“What makes this unique though is that our systems will automatically detect a user's connection speed and stream content in a format that suits that speed, says Planet Image CEO Wale Akinlabi. “For example, someone connecting through 3G will be able to view high-definition video and hear high-definition audio. A user with a slower connection will still be able to view and listen to the station, but at a lower quality.”

This, he believes, will eliminate the buffering issue which discourages many users from streaming video and audio to their devices.

The radio station comprises 80% African music, with the remainder being international, and is targeted at Africa's youth.

“At PRTV we intend to change the way consumers view, listen and interact with television, radio and Internet mediums,” says Mabel Mabaso, chief operations officer and director at Planet Image. “It is an exciting platform that synchronises three mediums, providing opportunities for consumers and advertisers alike.”

Planet RadioTV differentiates itself from other local broadcasters with its clever use of software and hardware. Planet Image uses a high-definition video-graphics (HDVG) rendering program, designed by Orad, an Israeli company specialising in TV production software. This software suite, combined with four Panasonic high-definition cameras, is able to detect and focus on a person's voice. When the camera fixes on a voice, that camera is automatically activated and begins broadcasting. Should someone else begin talking, a separate camera will detect the voice and focus on that person.

The software controlling the cameras also performs basic video editing. Mabaso says that, although the initial cost of the equipment was more than that of standard cameras, it will prove well worth it, as it eliminates the need for a dedicated cameraman filming the show in the studio.

“Another payoff is that we don't need that much office space,” she says.

Based in Randburg in Johannesburg, the studio is small in comparison to most others and the control room is just big enough for one person.

“The control room merely serves as a back-up should one of the cameras fail. It also allows us to control when and where visual adverts appear.”

The system is also tightly integrated with applications like Skype.

“We can interview someone overseas without having to send a crew there to perform recording. We simply communicate via Skype, making the interviewee's Internet camera an extension of our own in-studio cameras.”

Besides featuring local and international music, the station has regular fashion, food and cooking, music and culture segments, which are broadcast to around 30 000 listeners around Africa.

Rounding up the technology aspect, PRTV has integrated Twitter and Facebook, allowing its listeners to interact with DJs.

Listeners can tune into Planet Radio TV by logging onto w ww.planetradio.co.za 

Sumber :http://www.gadget.co.za

Planet Radio TV plans to be Africa's first online broadcaster that allows its listeners to watch via Internet and satellite TV as well as listen via FM or Internet radio. SEAN BACHER visits its studios

Planet Radio TV (PRTV) is broadcast much like any other terrestrial radio station, allowing its users to tune into it with a standard FM tuner. But its owner, Planet Image Productions, is about to launch two other means of tuning into the station.

In the coming month, MultiChoice will place a new satellite in orbit that will, by the new year, allow Planet to broadcast to subscribers via the satellite. Planet has also announced the PRTV app, which can be downloaded to Apple, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile devices, allowing users to stream the content to their phones and tablets.

“What makes this unique though is that our systems will automatically detect a user's connection speed and stream content in a format that suits that speed, says Planet Image CEO Wale Akinlabi. “For example, someone connecting through 3G will be able to view high-definition video and hear high-definition audio. A user with a slower connection will still be able to view and listen to the station, but at a lower quality.”

This, he believes, will eliminate the buffering issue which discourages many users from streaming video and audio to their devices.

The radio station comprises 80% African music, with the remainder being international, and is targeted at Africa's youth.

“At PRTV we intend to change the way consumers view, listen and interact with television, radio and Internet mediums,” says Mabel Mabaso, chief operations officer and director at Planet Image. “It is an exciting platform that synchronises three mediums, providing opportunities for consumers and advertisers alike.”

Planet RadioTV differentiates itself from other local broadcasters with its clever use of software and hardware. Planet Image uses a high-definition video-graphics (HDVG) rendering program, designed by Orad, an Israeli company specialising in TV production software. This software suite, combined with four Panasonic high-definition cameras, is able to detect and focus on a person's voice. When the camera fixes on a voice, that camera is automatically activated and begins broadcasting. Should someone else begin talking, a separate camera will detect the voice and focus on that person.

The software controlling the cameras also performs basic video editing. Mabaso says that, although the initial cost of the equipment was more than that of standard cameras, it will prove well worth it, as it eliminates the need for a dedicated cameraman filming the show in the studio.

“Another payoff is that we don't need that much office space,” she says.

Based in Randburg in Johannesburg, the studio is small in comparison to most others and the control room is just big enough for one person.

“The control room merely serves as a back-up should one of the cameras fail. It also allows us to control when and where visual adverts appear.”

The system is also tightly integrated with applications like Skype.

“We can interview someone overseas without having to send a crew there to perform recording. We simply communicate via Skype, making the interviewee's Internet camera an extension of our own in-studio cameras.”

Besides featuring local and international music, the station has regular fashion, food and cooking, music and culture segments, which are broadcast to around 30 000 listeners around Africa.

Rounding up the technology aspect, PRTV has integrated Twitter and Facebook, allowing its listeners to interact with DJs.

Listeners can tune into Planet Radio TV by logging onto w ww.planetradio.co.za 

Sumber :http://www.gadget.co.za

Buying an Mp3 Player - Tips and Tricks

Buying an Mp3 Player - Tips and Tricks

Mp3 players have been all the rage for quite a while now. Now the Mp4 players are out. The best way to learn all about your Mp3 player and accessories is to read the instructions that come with it. Another option is to get an electronics buying guide. This can help you with a lot of information about different electronic items. You can also gain access to the internet, where you can always find reviews and information about your Mp3 player. Mp3 players have the availability to download many songs for your enjoyment. Buy using your electronics buying guide you can find the best mp3 player for you. The buyer guide will walk you through the process, step by step, from choosing the right one, to finding the right one and to purchasing the right one. The guide will be your road map through the mp3 jungle. Here are some more helpful tips in reference to your mp3 player.

It is very important that you get to know your mp3 player. Determine what kind of file format it uses and therefore what type you can download. You should also try to organize your music files. A generation ago, you used to have to write every little thing down about your music to organize it. Times have changed for the better. With ID3 tags you can organize your music files easily and with the utmost confidence. Another tip would be too always download your music onto a external hard drive, as back up security in case your computer takes a turn for the worse.You would hate to lose everything that you have downloaded. Keep your battery charged for long trips or long outings.

There may be more tricks and tips out there to be found. Accessing the internet will bring you one step closer to them. Always gather as much information as you can before purchasing any electronic instrument. Your electronic device will only be as good as you are prepared to operate it. Before you know it, you will develop some tricks and tips of your own to pass on to the new guy on the block.

To learn more about mp3 simply visit our website with a complete range of mp3 players. Sumber :http://www.streetdirectory.com

Mp3 players have been all the rage for quite a while now. Now the Mp4 players are out. The best way to learn all about your Mp3 player and accessories is to read the instructions that come with it. Another option is to get an electronics buying guide. This can help you with a lot of information about different electronic items. You can also gain access to the internet, where you can always find reviews and information about your Mp3 player. Mp3 players have the availability to download many songs for your enjoyment. Buy using your electronics buying guide you can find the best mp3 player for you. The buyer guide will walk you through the process, step by step, from choosing the right one, to finding the right one and to purchasing the right one. The guide will be your road map through the mp3 jungle. Here are some more helpful tips in reference to your mp3 player.

It is very important that you get to know your mp3 player. Determine what kind of file format it uses and therefore what type you can download. You should also try to organize your music files. A generation ago, you used to have to write every little thing down about your music to organize it. Times have changed for the better. With ID3 tags you can organize your music files easily and with the utmost confidence. Another tip would be too always download your music onto a external hard drive, as back up security in case your computer takes a turn for the worse.You would hate to lose everything that you have downloaded. Keep your battery charged for long trips or long outings.

There may be more tricks and tips out there to be found. Accessing the internet will bring you one step closer to them. Always gather as much information as you can before purchasing any electronic instrument. Your electronic device will only be as good as you are prepared to operate it. Before you know it, you will develop some tricks and tips of your own to pass on to the new guy on the block.

To learn more about mp3 simply visit our website with a complete range of mp3 players. Sumber :http://www.streetdirectory.com

Readers are now buying more e-books than printed books

Readers are now buying more e-books than printed books

Readers are now buying more e-books than printed books, Britain's biggest bookseller announced yesterday.

Amazon said that for every 100 physical paperbacks and hardbacks, customers had downloaded 114 titles to its Kindle e-reader.

The online giant's UK website - which started selling books in 1998 - reached the tipping point quicker than it did in the US, where it took almost four years for 'e' to outsell 'p'.

While the news does not mean that e-books are now outselling physical books across the UK, it does mark a turning point for the printed word.High street bookshops are struggling amid the dominance of the US online giant and e-reading devices, notably the Kindle.

By driving down prices by offering proportionately higher royalties for lower-priced e-books, Amazon.co.uk has been accused of undermining the value of literature and endangering the future of publishers.

Many Kindle titles are a fraction of the price of printed books, while classics by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are free.

Amazon also publishes titles direct by authors, who can now do without having to seek the approval of traditional publishing houses – which both frees writers and arguably lowers standards.

Speaking at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate last week, the crime writer Mark Billingham criticised the growing self-publishing industry, describing it as “shifting units” to “punters”.

The audience applauded Mr Billingham, author of the Tom Thorne detective series, when he said books were devalued if they were sold for “less than half the price of a cup of tea”.

Amazon suggested that the Kindle had led to more people reading books and had expanded the whole of UK publishing.

Its sales figures showed that Kindle readers bought four times the number of books they did prior to owning the device, as well as continuing to buy physical books.

Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice president of Kindle EU, said: “As a result of the success of Kindle, we're selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers. And thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, thousands of self-published authors have also been given an outlet to share their work with the millions of Kindle readers worldwide.”

Amazon said that if it had included free books, the ratio of 114 Kindle downloads to 100 purchases of physical books would have been even higher.

“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow,” said Mr Van der Meulen said:

“We hit this milestone in the US less than four years after introducing Kindle, so to reach this landmark after just two years in the UK is remarkable and shows how quickly UK readers are embracing Kindle.”

Sumber:http://www.independent.co.uk

Readers are now buying more e-books than printed books, Britain's biggest bookseller announced yesterday.

Amazon said that for every 100 physical paperbacks and hardbacks, customers had downloaded 114 titles to its Kindle e-reader.

The online giant's UK website - which started selling books in 1998 - reached the tipping point quicker than it did in the US, where it took almost four years for 'e' to outsell 'p'.

While the news does not mean that e-books are now outselling physical books across the UK, it does mark a turning point for the printed word.High street bookshops are struggling amid the dominance of the US online giant and e-reading devices, notably the Kindle.

By driving down prices by offering proportionately higher royalties for lower-priced e-books, Amazon.co.uk has been accused of undermining the value of literature and endangering the future of publishers.

Many Kindle titles are a fraction of the price of printed books, while classics by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are free.

Amazon also publishes titles direct by authors, who can now do without having to seek the approval of traditional publishing houses – which both frees writers and arguably lowers standards.

Speaking at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate last week, the crime writer Mark Billingham criticised the growing self-publishing industry, describing it as “shifting units” to “punters”.

The audience applauded Mr Billingham, author of the Tom Thorne detective series, when he said books were devalued if they were sold for “less than half the price of a cup of tea”.

Amazon suggested that the Kindle had led to more people reading books and had expanded the whole of UK publishing.

Its sales figures showed that Kindle readers bought four times the number of books they did prior to owning the device, as well as continuing to buy physical books.

Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice president of Kindle EU, said: “As a result of the success of Kindle, we're selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers. And thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, thousands of self-published authors have also been given an outlet to share their work with the millions of Kindle readers worldwide.”

Amazon said that if it had included free books, the ratio of 114 Kindle downloads to 100 purchases of physical books would have been even higher.

“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow,” said Mr Van der Meulen said:

“We hit this milestone in the US less than four years after introducing Kindle, so to reach this landmark after just two years in the UK is remarkable and shows how quickly UK readers are embracing Kindle.”

Sumber:http://www.independent.co.uk

Impatient Futurist Forget 3D Screens—We Need 3D Audio, Like in Real Life

Impatient Futurist Forget 3D Screens—We Need 3D Audio, Like in Real Life

A backward march of audio quality has left us listening to tinny, stripped-down MP3s. It's time to show the kids what they are missing.

Some decades ago, a salesguy in a high-end audio shop badly misjudged my socioeconomic status and treated me to an ultrahigh-quality recording of an obscure jazz ensemble, played on a $10,000 audio system in an acoustically perfect room. I staggered out goose-bumped and hair-raised, a newly minted audiophile wannabe. I was sure that this was just the beginning of a journey into ever-more-amazing sound experiences. The equipment in that room consisted of glowing tubes in big metal cases, vibrating domes in massive wood cabinets, and spinning platters of plastic. No doubt technological innovation would one day shrink this clunky system into something small enough to carry around and cheap enough to avoid triggering the reckless-behavior clause in my prenup. More important, I was sure that even grander realms of audio quality lay ahead. By 2011, who could imagine what sort of incredible sonic delights would await?

Technology certainly has come through in some ways. Today's iPod Shuffle is so small that it is little more than audio-enabled jewelry. No complaints on the pricing, either; you can get a pretty good MP3 player for the cost of a newly released CD. There's just one little snag: Today's sound quality is miserable, worse than what I was listening to on my budget stereo 30 years ago.

The biggest culprit in our sonic backsliding is the ubiquity of low-quality digital music files. “If you're not going to listen to a high-quality recording, you don't need a high-quality system,” says John Meyer, founder of the audiophile speaker company Newform Research in Ontario. Hey, tell my kids. They are all too happy to semipermanently install wads of plastic in their ears for the privilege of listening to near-terabytic playlists rendered in mediocre-at-best fidelity.

The music and electronics industries have eagerly catered to our growing obsession with convenience, blithely sacrificing sound in the process. All the way back in the 1980s, audiophiles were pointing out that those newfangled digital CDs lacked the subtlety and warmth of the best vinyl recordings. And the most popular versions of today's standard, the MP3 file, have just a fraction of the potential fidelity of a CD recording.

The problem with MP3s is that they are “lossy,” which means they literally are missing some of the sound. When your brain hears sounds made up of multiple frequencies (as almost all music is), it tends to pay attention to whichever frequencies are the most readily perceived at any moment and largely ignores the rest. Most MP3 files simply leave out the subtler components of the music altogether—as much as 85 percent of what is actually recorded—in order to shrink the file size.

In theory we should not much notice what's missing, but in practice a careful listener will find the diminished quality hard to ignore, especially when playing MP3s on a high-fidelity home stereo. To my kids this blandness has just become the standard of what recorded music sounds like: They have learned to like their music uniformly loud and stripped-down to an in-your-face artificial clarity that does away with all the warm, rounded audio undercurrents.

The good news is that the lab of Louis Thibault, director of Canada's Communications Research Centre's Advanced Audio Systems Group , is developing a superior way to encode music files. The technique involves plotting out how the music varies over time in frequency and amplitude, which results in a graph that depicts the music as a sort of rugged 3-D mountainscape. Visualizing a recording this way lets you describe the music in terms of geometric shapes instead of as a bunch of frequencies. That approach turns out to save a lot of file space, in the same way that describing a circle as a center point and a radius is more efficient than describing every little segment of the circle. “It looks as if we can reduce file size by about 50 percent compared with MP3s, with the same audio quality,” Thibault says.

Turned around, this “object-based compression,” as it's called, could provide much higher fidelity than that of a typical 16-bit MP3 in an equal-size file. Apple, meanwhile, is reportedly developing a new digital music player that can handle higher-resolution , 24-bit recordings, but who wants pricier, slower downloads that will make your existing music player obsolete? If Thibault's compression scheme becomes standard, as he hopes it will, we could keep our 16-bit music players, and headphones could easily catch up; a decent pair of $50 earbuds already well exceed the potential of the music that gets poured into them. My kids may go into audio shock when they find out what they've been missing. Sumber:http://discovermagazine.com

A backward march of audio quality has left us listening to tinny, stripped-down MP3s. It's time to show the kids what they are missing.

Some decades ago, a salesguy in a high-end audio shop badly misjudged my socioeconomic status and treated me to an ultrahigh-quality recording of an obscure jazz ensemble, played on a $10,000 audio system in an acoustically perfect room. I staggered out goose-bumped and hair-raised, a newly minted audiophile wannabe. I was sure that this was just the beginning of a journey into ever-more-amazing sound experiences. The equipment in that room consisted of glowing tubes in big metal cases, vibrating domes in massive wood cabinets, and spinning platters of plastic. No doubt technological innovation would one day shrink this clunky system into something small enough to carry around and cheap enough to avoid triggering the reckless-behavior clause in my prenup. More important, I was sure that even grander realms of audio quality lay ahead. By 2011, who could imagine what sort of incredible sonic delights would await?

Technology certainly has come through in some ways. Today's iPod Shuffle is so small that it is little more than audio-enabled jewelry. No complaints on the pricing, either; you can get a pretty good MP3 player for the cost of a newly released CD. There's just one little snag: Today's sound quality is miserable, worse than what I was listening to on my budget stereo 30 years ago.

The biggest culprit in our sonic backsliding is the ubiquity of low-quality digital music files. “If you're not going to listen to a high-quality recording, you don't need a high-quality system,” says John Meyer, founder of the audiophile speaker company Newform Research in Ontario. Hey, tell my kids. They are all too happy to semipermanently install wads of plastic in their ears for the privilege of listening to near-terabytic playlists rendered in mediocre-at-best fidelity.

The music and electronics industries have eagerly catered to our growing obsession with convenience, blithely sacrificing sound in the process. All the way back in the 1980s, audiophiles were pointing out that those newfangled digital CDs lacked the subtlety and warmth of the best vinyl recordings. And the most popular versions of today's standard, the MP3 file, have just a fraction of the potential fidelity of a CD recording.

The problem with MP3s is that they are “lossy,” which means they literally are missing some of the sound. When your brain hears sounds made up of multiple frequencies (as almost all music is), it tends to pay attention to whichever frequencies are the most readily perceived at any moment and largely ignores the rest. Most MP3 files simply leave out the subtler components of the music altogether—as much as 85 percent of what is actually recorded—in order to shrink the file size.

In theory we should not much notice what's missing, but in practice a careful listener will find the diminished quality hard to ignore, especially when playing MP3s on a high-fidelity home stereo. To my kids this blandness has just become the standard of what recorded music sounds like: They have learned to like their music uniformly loud and stripped-down to an in-your-face artificial clarity that does away with all the warm, rounded audio undercurrents.

The good news is that the lab of Louis Thibault, director of Canada's Communications Research Centre's Advanced Audio Systems Group , is developing a superior way to encode music files. The technique involves plotting out how the music varies over time in frequency and amplitude, which results in a graph that depicts the music as a sort of rugged 3-D mountainscape. Visualizing a recording this way lets you describe the music in terms of geometric shapes instead of as a bunch of frequencies. That approach turns out to save a lot of file space, in the same way that describing a circle as a center point and a radius is more efficient than describing every little segment of the circle. “It looks as if we can reduce file size by about 50 percent compared with MP3s, with the same audio quality,” Thibault says.

Turned around, this “object-based compression,” as it's called, could provide much higher fidelity than that of a typical 16-bit MP3 in an equal-size file. Apple, meanwhile, is reportedly developing a new digital music player that can handle higher-resolution , 24-bit recordings, but who wants pricier, slower downloads that will make your existing music player obsolete? If Thibault's compression scheme becomes standard, as he hopes it will, we could keep our 16-bit music players, and headphones could easily catch up; a decent pair of $50 earbuds already well exceed the potential of the music that gets poured into them. My kids may go into audio shock when they find out what they've been missing. Sumber:http://discovermagazine.com

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

It's been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos -- that great keeper of open standards -- to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn't settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been "relaxed" for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos's certification is just a formality at this point, and that today's news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

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It's been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos -- that great keeper of open standards -- to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn't settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been "relaxed" for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos's certification is just a formality at this point, and that today's news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Hide Press Release