Tag Archives: Quality

Consultants

Buzzword Compliance at SMPTE/NAB/CinemaCon

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The fundamentals of Digital Cinema are built upon Open Source tools, in particular Motion-JPEG (instead of the license troubled MPEG world) and AES-128 encryption (instead of any number of private systems) as well as PCM Wave coding for audio. The combined reasoning of avoiding license fees and allowing the technology to flow by inhibiting the restrictions that proprietary tools bring makes sense.

Now, an adjunct technology iis being held under the same scrutiny and one suspects that the reason is Marketing. Clever marketing, since this is a confused market, but marketing nonetheless. One of the first thing that one learns about standards is that they can be inhibiting and destructive in many circumstances.

The exhibitors want two things. They want to differentiate themselves by keep giving perks and higher quality in special circumstances. This means that they will buy innovation.

But they also want some security that the equipment that they buy won’t turn out to be something that they can’t use in a few years. To many the later translates into “Come On Guys, Can’t You Work Together?” Hey~! Open Source.

Whether Open Source is something the industry wants in its secondary products needs some scrutiny and education. There also has to be some recognition of the enormous amounts of investment that goes into hardware designs and accommodating capabilities not yet dreamed of. 

What is being heard now is Open Something. Open Source is bandied about, then licensing is tied to usage to become something else. 

=-=-=This will be updated as the players find ways to answer to their stockholders…or find another way to announce their firstiness.

Consultants

Buzzword Compliance at SMPTE/NAB/CinemaCon

Leave a comment

The fundamentals of Digital Cinema are built upon Open Source tools, in particular Motion-JPEG (instead of the license troubled MPEG world) and AES-128 encryption (instead of any number of private systems) as well as PCM Wave coding for audio. The combined reasoning of avoiding license fees and allowing the technology to flow by inhibiting the restrictions that proprietary tools bring makes sense.

Now, an adjunct technology iis being held under the same scrutiny and one suspects that the reason is Marketing. Clever marketing, since this is a confused market, but marketing nonetheless. One of the first thing that one learns about standards is that they can be inhibiting and destructive in many circumstances.

The exhibitors want two things. They want to differentiate themselves by keep giving perks and higher quality in special circumstances. This means that they will buy innovation.

But they also want some security that the equipment that they buy won’t turn out to be something that they can’t use in a few years. To many the later translates into “Come On Guys, Can’t You Work Together?” Hey~! Open Source.

Whether Open Source is something the industry wants in its secondary products needs some scrutiny and education. There also has to be some recognition of the enormous amounts of investment that goes into hardware designs and accommodating capabilities not yet dreamed of. 

What is being heard now is Open Something. Open Source is bandied about, then licensing is tied to usage to become something else. 

=-=-=This will be updated as the players find ways to answer to their stockholders…or find another way to announce their firstiness.

Exhibitor News

CinemaCon 2013: Maturity Brings Discussions of Quality in Digital Cinema

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Wherever one looks at CinemaCon 2013 there is the smell of Quality Control in the air. Examples:

Jack Cashin, President of USL – famous for their test and measurement systems as well as quality systems for the deaf/hard of hearing/blind/partially sighted audiences and multi-projector movie distribution systems – is awarded the Ken Mason Inter-Society Award. They introduced a QC system last CinemaCon.

Highlands Technologies introduces the QALIF Calibration system [QALIF  Digital projection System Measurement Tool] and arranges for West US distribution with Charles Flynn of Digital Test Tools (+1 818 877-6149) — See attached presentation

Harkness Screens introduces iPad apps – Digital Screen Modeller and in particular the Digital Screen Archiver – will assist in changing people’s view of their valuable data as well as helping projectionists keep track of reality. — See attached press releases

…and last but not least…

RealD is showing the new “Precision White Screen” technology that the spoke about at last years SMPTE October event. If they can make a screen that not only broadens the sweet spot of 3D movies but is more efficient then they can do the industry a great deal of actual good.More on this after the demos. — See attached press releases

=-=-=

Although some say that new audio systems are just a way to fill the coming income void resulting from a market that is now nearly digital saturated, in fact with larger ceiling’d rooms there is a need to fill the room better. Technology has moved on from the simplicity of the 1990s’ and Atmos and Auro are taking advantage of new potentials of faster chips and algorithms that were impossible last decade.

For a decade the industry was fighting to just handle the influx that the digital transition kept piling on them. Now post-installation can be discussed.

Exhibitor News

CinemaCon 2013: Maturity Brings Discussions of Quality in Digital Cinema

Leave a comment

Wherever one looks at CinemaCon 2013 there is the smell of Quality Control in the air. Examples:

Jack Cashin, President of USL – famous for their test and measurement systems as well as quality systems for the deaf/hard of hearing/blind/partially sighted audiences and multi-projector movie distribution systems – is awarded the Ken Mason Inter-Society Award. They introduced a QC system last CinemaCon.

Highlands Technologies introduces the QALIF Calibration system [QALIF  Digital projection System Measurement Tool] and arranges for West US distribution with Charles Flynn of Digital Test Tools (+1 818 877-6149) — See attached presentation

Harkness Screens introduces iPad apps – Digital Screen Modeller and in particular the Digital Screen Archiver – will assist in changing people’s view of their valuable data as well as helping projectionists keep track of reality. — See attached press releases

…and last but not least…

RealD is showing the new “Precision White Screen” technology that the spoke about at last years SMPTE October event. If they can make a screen that not only broadens the sweet spot of 3D movies but is more efficient then they can do the industry a great deal of actual good.More on this after the demos. — See attached press releases

=-=-=

Although some say that new audio systems are just a way to fill the coming income void resulting from a market that is now nearly digital saturated, in fact with larger ceiling’d rooms there is a need to fill the room better. Technology has moved on from the simplicity of the 1990s’ and Atmos and Auro are taking advantage of new potentials of faster chips and algorithms that were impossible last decade.

For a decade the industry was fighting to just handle the influx that the digital transition kept piling on them. Now post-installation can be discussed.

Exhibitor News

CinemaCon 2013: Maturity Brings Discussions of Quality in Digital Cinema

Leave a comment

Wherever one looks at CinemaCon 2013 there is the smell of Quality Control in the air. Examples:

Jack Cashin, President of USL – famous for their test and measurement systems as well as quality systems for the deaf/hard of hearing/blind/partially sighted audiences and multi-projector movie distribution systems – is awarded the Ken Mason Inter-Society Award. They introduced a QC system last CinemaCon.

Highlands Technologies introduces the QALIF Calibration system [QALIF  Digital projection System Measurement Tool] and arranges for West US distribution with Charles Flynn of Digital Test Tools (+1 818 877-6149) — See attached presentation

Harkness Screens introduces iPad apps – Digital Screen Modeller and in particular the Digital Screen Archiver – will assist in changing people’s view of their valuable data as well as helping projectionists keep track of reality. — See attached press releases

…and last but not least…

RealD is showing the new “Precision White Screen” technology that the spoke about at last years SMPTE October event. If they can make a screen that not only broadens the sweet spot of 3D movies but is more efficient then they can do the industry a great deal of actual good.More on this after the demos. — See attached press releases

=-=-=

Although some say that new audio systems are just a way to fill the coming income void resulting from a market that is now nearly digital saturated, in fact with larger ceiling’d rooms there is a need to fill the room better. Technology has moved on from the simplicity of the 1990s’ and Atmos and Auro are taking advantage of new potentials of faster chips and algorithms that were impossible last decade.

For a decade the industry was fighting to just handle the influx that the digital transition kept piling on them. Now post-installation can be discussed.

Tangential Art and Science

BSPR – Ultimate Acronym or Cloud Guarantee?

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We bring it up because we like the idea of someone certifying their safety, and taking responsibility for it. There must be some ‘out’, since hithertoo unknown flaws seem to take precidence over following all the compliance rules. But it is nice that the EU might put this in place, which will make it harder for cloud providers, yet by leveling the playing field toward quality it will make the whole system shine.

From the artilce:

When the EU drafts a new data protection law in November, it will introduce rules designed to ensure cloud providers are offering a safe service, IT Pro has learned.

The Binding Safe Processor Rules (BSPR) will ask cloud service providers working in the EU to agree to becoming legally liable should any data offences occur at their data centres, lawyers said yesterday.

It will effectively act as an accreditation scheme for cloud providers, meaning it will need vendors to sign up to the initiative.

However, the driving force behind the new rules, partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse Eduardo Ustaran, said service providers were certain to sign up as it would give them a much-needed selling point and, if they didn’t, they would be seen as unsafe to use.

To get that accreditation, vendors would have to prove their security models were adequate as well, Ustaran said.

“Cloud service providers would be given an accreditation from their data protection authority,” Ustaran told IT Pro.

Verizon Business is one organisation that has been pushing for the EU to enshrine the BSPR concept in data protection law, which is now set to happen.

Stewart Room, partner in FFW’s Privacy and Information Law Group, described it as the “bridge” for cloud adoption, given the fears around being legally liable if data offences occur in the cloud.

However, it will do little to allay fears around the US Patriot Act, which is fast emerging as a real threat to cloud adoption. The law effectively means the US can search through any US-run cloud provider’s data centres to find information on illegal activities.

For companies planning on using vendors with data centres in the US, this poses a significant obstacle to cloud adoption.

The European Parliament has already raised concerns about the impact of the Patriot Act and its effective overriding of EU data protection laws.

Legal changes incoming

In November, the EU will publish the draft new data protection law, which will form the basis of national legislations for the next 15-20 years. This will replace the current Data Protection Directive and the Data Protection Act in the UK.

Outside of the new Binding Safe Processor Rules, mandatory breach disclosure will be embedded in the draft law.

“We are certain that mandatory breach disclosure laws will be contained with the new EU data protection law. The European Commission has made this clear already,” Room said.

This means companies will be required to report any breaches, making more work for Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). It makes it much more likely private companies will be reprimanded by the watchdog, if it decides to show its teeth.

Room believes the ICO will order companies to provide records of any breaches on a monthly basis.

For further coverage of cloud computing visit our sister siteCloud Pro.

In the News

Security: Connect the Dots–Ongoing

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This article will be an ongoing list of interesting articles in the security arena, none earth-shattering (which will have separate articles), but each one a dot that might connect to other data. Please add other news in the comments or write editor at dciematools.com 

15 August–Welcome to the future: cloud-based WPA cracking is here

Cloud computing is the latest effort to put data off site, to let professionals handle the IT details, or to put large amounts of data close to the user, while allowing the users to concentrate on their application. Dolby, for example, uses the well-regarded Salesforce solution (as do many large corporations) to monitor equipment and solutions in the field. Thus it is news…and really really really points to the need for using excellent passwords.

In 2008, I speculated about the future of distributed security cracking. That future has arrived, in the form of a $17 “cloud” based service provided through the efforts of a security researcher known as Moxie Marlinspike. It is effective against pre-shared key deployments of both WPA and WPA2 wireless networks.

The mechanism used involves captured network traffic, which is uploaded to the WPA Cracker service and subjected to an intensive brute force cracking effort. As advertised on the site, what would be a five-day task on a dual-core PC is reduced to a job of about twenty minutes on average. …Because it is a dictionary attack using a predefined 135-million-word list, there is no guarantee that you will crack the WPA key, but such an extensive dictionary attack should be sufficient for any but the most specialized penetration testing purposes.

If you opt to use the service, you will of course leave a money trail via Amazon Payments — which is probably a bad idea if you are attempting to gain unauthorized access to a secured network illegally. For the good guys testing the security of a client’s network, however, this is an incredibly handy tool to have at one’s disposal.

It gets even better. If you try the standard 135-million-word dictionary and do not crack the WPA encryption on your target network, there is an extended dictionary that contains an additional 284 million words. In short, serious brute force wireless network encryption cracking has become a retail commodity.

 

Please report any security news which you think that community could benefit from in the comments.