With 4K UHD TVs the most visible stars of CES, including Sony’s new X-tended dynamic range models, of course someone had to up the ante with a 5K set. Toshiba was showing off this model that doesn’t have any more vertical resolution than a 4K set, but is wider, allowing full-screen display of cinematic content (which generally has a wider aspect ratio than normal wide-screen displays).
When Blaise Aguera y Arcas (then of Microsoft Research, but now at Google) demonstrated Photosynth at TED 2007, it became an immediate hit and has since become one of the most-watched and discussed tech demos of all time. While the original iteration of Photosynth was certainly cool, the new version — Photosynth 3D — will blow your mind.
The Photosynth project was started almost a decade ago for the purpose of “reinventing the whole enterprise of photography for ordinary people,” says Agüera y Arcas said. The first iteration of Photosynth, released in 2007, stitched together thousands of photos — cobbled together from all over the web — to create a seamless 2D image that you can explore. It was basically a clever computer vision algorithm combined with a “gigapixel” panorama builder/viewer. While the underlying tech was undoubtedly cool, it was the slickness of the interface that really wowed people. The original Photosynth video is embedded at the end of the story.
The new version, Photosynth 3D, takes that clever computer vision algorithm and incredible interface slickness into the third dimension. Photosynth can now take a bunch of photos and turn them into four different 3D views: Spin, Panorama, Walk, and Wall. The best way to demonstrate these four views is to watch the video, or to play around with some of the embedded synths below.
As you can see, all of these views are very similar to the original Photosynth, but now it’s also possible to move in space, rather than just panning and zooming a 2D plane. The 3D Panorama and Wall views are actually very similar to the original Photosynth, but the addition of 3D parallax makes it feel like you’re actually there, or that you’re watching a video.
Spin is a new mode that basically turns the panorama inwards, towards an object. Instead of turning on your feet to shoot a panorama of a scene, a Spin view is created by walking around a subject and taking dozens of photos. The Walk view, as the name implies, is basically a series of photos captured while you walk forward, and stitched together to create a 3D space. For all four modes, remember that when you stop the camera, you have full access to the original high-res images — it’s still like a gigapixel panorama in that regard. (Read: Autodesk Catch: Make a 3D print of anything, just by walking around it with a camera.)
Technologically, while the original Photosynth used computer vision to align a large number of images in two dimensions, Photosynth 3D uses the spacial gap between each image to generate 3D models of the objects in each scene. Then, depending on your position in the scene, textures (which have been cut out of the original photos) are overlaid on those objects. It’s fairly ingenious, and the new, mega-slick Photosynth viewer really adds to the experience. If you get a chance, try hitting the “c” or “m” keys while in the new Photosynth viewer; C reveals the 3D interpretation for each image, while M shows you the (scarily accurate) reconstructed path taken by the camera.
The future of Photosynth
As exciting as the original Photosynth was, we never really saw the tech come to fruition. In theory it is built into Bing Maps, allowing it to bring up geo-tagged synths, but it never really hit the critical mass required. For the most part, the Photosynth website seems to be Yet Another Gigapixel Panorama repository. (Read: Ricoh Theta: The first camera that can take spherical 360-degree panoramas.)
With these new 3D views, though, it’s easy to see the correlation between these new 3D views and competing services such as Google’s Streeview — especially when you consider that the Photosynth team moved from Microsoft Research to the Bing Maps department a few years ago. For now Photosynth 3D is just a tech preview, but hopefully Microsoft can find a way to bring it to the mass market. The tech is simply too cool to keep hidden away in the vaults. Copyright issues aside, imagine if Microsoft just left a few hundred Photosynth servers running in the background, joining up all of the photos on Flickr and Facebook to create a 3D panorama of the entire world…
On Monday, T-Mobile announced that is acquiring Verizon’s Lower 700MHz A block spectrum for $2.365 billion and some AWS/PCS spectrum in some markets. With this acquisition, T-Mobile is finally able to start offering LTE broadly on highly-desirable low-band spectrum.
The Lower 700MHz A block is part of the Lower 700MHz band that AT&T also uses. However, due to how the 700MHz LTE device ecosystem developed, the Lower 700MHz band was unnecessarily fragmented in such a way to prevent the usefulness of the A block for years.
Over the last few months, the situation has been changing for the better. Back in September, AT&T agreed to switch from Band 17 to Band 12 for its Lower 700MHz ecosystem if the Lower 700MHz E block rules were modified to lower the acceptable transmit power from towers. Dish Network (primary owner of the Lower 700MHz E block) said that it would accept those terms if the FCC agreed to allow it the option to convert its AWS-4 spectrum to downlink-only (which means another band would be required to be able to have phone-to-tower communications). At the end of October, the FCC adopted an order that solidified this conditional solution. In late December, the FCC adopted another order that granted Dish the optionality on AWS-4 it requested.
Because of the progress made on full Lower 700MHz interoperability, T-Mobile is acquiring Verizon Wireless’ Lower 700MHz A block spectrum (which it does not use for LTE at all) so that it can start building the kind of LTEnetwork that AT&T and Verizon offer today and thatSprint can offer soon with ESMR. There is one major obstacle, though: Digital TV Channel 51. Several of the major cities still have digital TV stations operating next to the spectrum, and within the range of the TV station, no LTE can be deployed on the Lower 700MHz A block. Most of urban California, New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Boston cannot have LTE deployed on the spectrum because they reside in “exclusion zones” that prevent deployment until the TV stations leave channel 51. However, a large portion of the licensed area is clear of channel 51 and can have LTE deployed immediately, especially in the rural areas surrounding many of the major cities under exclusion zones. The exclusion zones are expected to disappear in 2015 after the FCC conducts auctions for the 600MHz band.
Currently, in many of the markets T-Mobile is acquiring 700MHz spectrum, it can already offer up to 150Mbps of downlink throughput through the 20+20 MHz LTE network it will have in place in those areas. Band 12 (Lower 700MHz A+B+C blocks) and Band 4 (AWS, 1.7/2.1 GHz) can be combined using LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation to further enhance downlink throughput up to 200Mbps with a combined 25MHz of downlink spectrum.
T-Mobile and Verizon expect the deal to close by the end of the first half of the year, allowing for T-Mobile to rapidly deploy the spectrum throughout the third quarter of 2014 in time for the first set of devices from T-Mobile with Band 12 to arrive in the fourth quarter. However, T-Mobile has beaten its own estimates before, and perhaps we will see devices introduced earlier and the network deployed much more quickly than expected.
If you’ve been looking to step into a dual monitor setup on a budget, this deal is for you — and it won’t last long. Right now you can grab two Dell P2213 22-inch monitors and Dell’s own adjustable dual monitor stand for just $278.24 with free shipping, a massive 48% discount.
The P2213 may not have the sexy attributes of some of the new ultra-thin or ultra-high resolution displays, but it has all the right specs to get the job done. The 22-incher serves up 1680×1050 resolution via an LED-backlit LCD. It will connect to most any modern PC via VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort inputs, along with a two-port USB hub for convenient port replication.
Not only do you get two of these little beauties in this deal, but you get Dell’s MDS14 dual monitor stand. It has a u-shaped base that gives you a little more flexibility in your desktop arrangement and allows for both vertical and horizontal adjustment of the monitors.
As a professional grade monitor, the P2213 also enjoys Dell’s generous three-year advance exchange warranty. During those three years of coverage, should you need warranty service Dell will send you a replacement and you just drop the unit to be repaired in their box and ship it back on their dime. When you consider how much it will cost to ship and properly package (because you totally saved the original box) a monitor, you won’t want to buy a monitor without this type of coverage.
Normally Dell charges $539.99 for this bundle, but right now you can stack instant and coupon savings to drop the price down to an amazing $278.24 with free shipping. This is a discount of such magnitude that it may even be a price mistake, so don’t wait long if this is making your deal senses tingle.
Add-ons for video game consoles are an expected part of the hardware cycle. A console comes out, it starts to age, and add-on hardware is released to breathe a little more life into the platform. We’ve already discussed the future of add-ons for the PS4 and Xbox One, so let’s take a moment to reflect on the history of console add-ons.
There have been an absurd number of accessories released in the thirty-odd years of home consoles, so it’s impossible to fit every single one into this article. Even so, I’ve picked the most interesting, important, and just plain silly add-ons to highlight exactly how console add-ons have changed the face of gaming.
Famicom Disk System
Released in Japan in 1986, the Famicom Disk System added support for proprietary floppy disks to Japan’s version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. After release, high-profile games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid took advantage of the format’s ability to easily save the player’s progress. Sadly, the add-on never made its way to North America, so ports of Disk System games had to be made on traditional NES cartridges with either battery-powered volatile memory or elaborate password systems.
Robotic Operating Buddy
The Robotic Operating Buddy — better known as R.O.B. — was a small robot released in 1985 for the NES. This crazy console add-on worked with two games: Gyromite and Stack-Up. As specific events took place on the screen, R.O.B. would react accordingly in the real world. It was a very novel concept at the time, but was ultimately just a gimmick to market the NES as a toy instead of a video game machine.
NES Zapper
The NES Zapper wasn’t the first light gun accessory, but it certainly was the first to gain widespread use. With the success of titles like Duck Hunt, this gun-shaped accessory made the NES seem like a much more approachable console for video game initiates.
Power Glove
The Power Glove was a terrible add-on. It looked very futuristic and nerdy, but the functionality was actually quite limited. Infamously, it was featured prominently in The Wizard, but it ultimately failed in the market due to its impracticality and lack of software support.
TurboGrafx-CD
The TurboGrafx-CD was a compact disc add-on for the TurboGrafx-16, and was the first of its kind when it hit store shelves in the late ’80s. While the platform never took off in the United States, it performed quite well in Japan. Without a doubt, this accessory helped fast-track the move towards optical media.
Multitap
Consoles usually came with just two controller ports, so an add-on was needed to enable four-player games. The TurboGrafx-16, NES, and even the PlayStation all took advantage of multitap add-ons. It wasn’t until the Nintendo 64 era that consoles actually started to ship with four controller ports.
Sega CD
The Sega CD was a bizarre add-on to the Sega Genesis. It offered substantially more storage space for games, but it was ultimately a failure due to the large price tag and limited library. While the core idea wasn’t bad, Sega ended up suffering due to the poor implementation.
Because of the progress made on full Lower 700MHz interoperability, T-Mobile is acquiring Verizon Wireless’ Lower 700MHz A block spectrum (which it does not use for LTE at all) so that it can start building the kind of LTEnetwork that AT&T and Verizon offer today and thatSprint can offer soon with ESMR. There is one major obstacle, though: Digital TV Channel 51. Several of the major cities still have digital TV stations operating next to the spectrum, and within the range of the TV station, no LTE can be deployed on the Lower 700MHz A block. Most of urban California, New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Boston cannot have LTE deployed on the spectrum because they reside in “exclusion zones” that prevent deployment until the TV stations leave channel 51. However, a large portion of the licensed area is clear of channel 51 and can have LTE deployed immediately, especially in the rural areas surrounding many of the major cities under exclusion zones. The exclusion zones are expected to disappear in 2015 after the FCC conducts auctions for the 600MHz band.
