APCO AUDIO VISUAL: 2009

8/6/09

New Technology Review from SIGGRAPH 2009

This year's SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans has some very exciting new technologies on display. This article goes over the top five new technologies (as chosen by Technology Review), which include Touchable Holography, Augmented Reality, Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality, 3D Teleconferencing, and Scratchable Input.

Read the full article here.

7/8/09

How to Create 3D Text and Place it in Photoshop

Here's a turorial on how to create 3D text and put in in a picture:

How to Create 3D Text

Google Announces Chrome Operating System to be available mid-2010.

Google Announces Chrome OS (Operating System) to be available mid-2010. They are targeting netbooks with this new operating system, which could take considerable market share away from Microsoft. The Chrome OS will be much more secure than Windows could ever dream of and it's tightly woven into the internet super-machine...

Slashdot article here: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/08/0953238/Google-Announces-Chrome-OS-For-Release-Mid-2010?art_pos=2

7/1/09

Our Senior Technical Director

Ben Hale is our Senior Technical Director and Head of the Autostereoscopic Video Production Department.

He maintains the blog Autostereoscopic Video Production

as well as this blog.

He also designed our website: www.apcoav.com
and applied SEO to it.

4/28/09

APCO AV can convert Philips Wowvx 2D+Depth content into 9-view MultiView video.

We can take your 2D+Depth images and convert them into a 9-view, MultiView with our software.

As you may know, Philips has stopped developing and manufacturing for their Wowvx technology.

APCO Audio Visual, with offices throughout the US, Canada, and England, can convert your legacy Wowvx 2d+depth content into the new and better MultiView.

An Interesting 3D Computer Interface.

This video was just released, and it shows a neat device that senses your hand as you hover it over a square input device that has some sort of electromagnetic field that detects your hand. The implications of such a device could be fascinating.

See the video here.

4/27/09

Windows 7 Review

At APCO AV, we have yet to update the bulk of our computers to

Windows Vista, but these changes in Windows 7 may be the turning point on adoption of this new operating system from Microsoft.

It is reported that Windows 7 will have a full-fledged Windows XP virtual environment available for all those still hanging onto XP.

Also, check out these default backgrounds!

4/7/09

Philips Steps Out of Autostereoscopic Market

Philips has exited the autostereoscopic display and content creation market. Their WOWvx displays and content creation tools will no longer be developed.

Their Wikipedia entry (quoted on 04-06-09) says, "Because of current market developments, the point in time where mass adoption of no-glasses based 3D TV will occur has shifted significantly. Therefore, Philips has decided to stop the 3D Solutions venture. Philips has been marketing its leading no-glasses based 3D technologies through a pro-active approach for a long time, because it believes that over time, no-glasses based 3D TVs will bring the ultimate 3D experience to the home."

APCO AV initially supported Philips WOWvx displays and content creation, but as time passed we began to understand their approach's limitations. Early into 2008, APCO AV decided to pursue another type of autostereoscopic 3D display and content creation approach. Our current displays far exceeded the quality of Philips WOWvx displays. This is because Philips limited the quality of it's 3D video so that it could take up less bandwidth. That approach was fatal for Philips, because its leading competing technology didn't sacrifice video quality for bandwidth - it just used more powerful machines to deliver the higher-bandwidth video. Also, Philips charged way too much money for its content creation tools. These two things were where Philips went wrong and eventually ended their autostereoscopic ventures.

3D Stereogram Macros

Here's a nice collection of 3D Stereogram Macros from flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/sets/1571779/

These pics are the ones where you have to cross your eyes, then slowly bring them back to normal until you can see the 3D picture.

The best thing about our new autostereoscopic 3D monitors (A3D-4200) that we rent is that you don't have to cross your eyes or wear any special glasses to get the 3D effect!

4/6/09

Realistic 3D Renderings of People

APCOAV has ventured into the autostereoscopic 3d world, recently winning the New product showcase at Exhibitor 2009. we will now include all 3d-related storioes in our blog.

Here's a nice list of some amazing 3d renderings of people:

http://blog.templates.com/reality-imagination-people-3d/

Samsung LED HDTV's set to Ship!

These new LED TVs are the next big thing! Darker blacks (isn't that what they all promise?), addresses LCD motion blur and image judder issues with fast movement on LCDs, and uses the new LED technology.

Check out this great article about Samsung LED TVs.

Check out Samsung's LED HDTV page here.

2/17/09

Pioneer Stops Making Plasma TVs.

The End of Plasma TVs? Pioneer has announced they will be completely exiting the plasma TV making industry. This is alongside their announcement of laying off 10,000 jobs due to "the global economic slump."

Panasonic, LG and Samsung are the only manufacturers left with Panasonic being the only manufacturer left that produces more plasmas than LCDs. Popular Science has a good article describing the current state of Plasmas here: http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-amp-gaming/article/2009-02/plasma-going-way-romans

Despite plasma TVs being superior to LCD in many ways, the future doesn't look good.

Samsung Introducs a Transparent OLED Display

Check out this video to see this amazing new display.

Here's an interesting comment from reddit.com about these displays:

"Making large OLEDs isn't tough. The reason the display industry hails it as the 2nd coming is because OLED can be fabricated using inkjet printing processes over a theoretically unlimited surface area. OLEDs can be printed on curved substrates, flexible substrates, transparent substrates, you name it.
The tricky part is that they have a service life somewhere between yoghurt and beer. The dyes used really, really like to suck water out of the atmosphere and break down; some of them will actually leech hydrogen and oxygen out of the substrates on which they're printed. They also break down quickly in UV light; sitting all day on the dashboard of a hot car in a parking lot is pretty much the nightmare scenario for OLED at the moment."

I hope they work out these problems - the possibilities for these displays are endless.