Most Neutral Gray Cards for Digital Photography

Do you think you have to pay a lot of money to get a good neutral gray reference? If so, read on. The best solution may be free, and it may come from a hardware store.

I am colorblind, and I am a professional photographer. That creates problems. It means that I need to have color references I can trust, because, if I do, I can use them to create images with pleasing, vivid and accurate colors. If my references are off, then my images will probably be too.

I wanted to know which of my available gray-card references was most accurate, so I decided to measure them using a Gretag Macbeth i1 Spectrophotometer that I have. The i1 isn't the world's most accurate Spectrophotometer, but it's better than what most photographers would have available. If someone wants to improve on this by providing better measurements with a higher-end tool, I'd love to hear about it.

The candidates and the i1 Spectrophotometer are shown in the image below. I used the i1 to measure the "color" of all of the choices, then summarized how much they deviated from a neutral gray in the table that follows. The gray references are the Lastolite Ezybalance (largest behind the others), the WhiBal White Balance Reference (smallest with the black and white areas), DGC-100 Digital Gray Card (medium sized -- all gray) and a Glidden Paint sample strip (Snowfield, Universal Grey, Veil, Granite Grey, Obsidian Glass, Dark Secret) from Home Depot.

The measurements surprised me. I would have thought that the photo-products would have outscored the paint sample, but that's not the case. The Glidden strip is more neutral in every case except for the extremes where "Snowfield" (the lightest color) and "Dark Secret" (the darkest color) are slightly less neutral than the DGC-100.
So, what's a photographer to do. Well, if you've got something that's working, stick with it. My measurements are the average of three measurements on a single product, and there may well be enough product variation that you've got "a good one." If you're looking to buy something new, you might just settle for the right Glidden paint strip in these tough economic times. I have to admit, I like the form factor of the Lastolite the best, but I've been using it less and less since I did these measurements.

NVIDIA Project Inspire 2008 at Overfelt High School in San Jose

Photo by Chris Pedersen

On Saturday, I had the privilege of doing the photography for NVIDIA's annual winter community service event -- Project Inspire 2008. I was fortunate enough to secure the help of two other talented photographers -- Doug Quist, and Spencer Huang.

Photo by Spencer Huang

As in years past, I was impressed by the generosity and hard-working attitude of the NVIDIA employees. For one very long Saturday during their holiday season, they painted, shoveled, scraped, assembled, raked, hammered, grappled, prodded, poked, and sweated in the cold December air -- all so the students of San Jose's Overfelt High School students would have a better environment for learning when they were done. This year, they worked side-by-side with many student volunteers that were also impressive because of their willingness to work hard to improve their school. Many of the students also participated in a cultural show to entertain the NVIDIA volunteers. In all, more than 1,000 volunteers participated in this years event -- a nice reminder that in spite of all the bad news in the world, the amount of good still outweighs the bad by a huge margin.

Photo by Doug Quist

I've included some images here, but if you're interested in seeing more, they can be found at these links:
Top 50 Gallery
Photographer Selects 500 Gallery
All Photos Gallery -- 2000+ images

I hope you'll agree with me that the images capture the hard-work and joy of the volunteers.

Photo by Doug Quist

Photo by Spencer Huang

Photo by Chris Pedersen

Blockbuster Jumps in With Download-to-TV Solution

Today, Blockbuster announced that they will be offering a video on-demand download service with a box from 2Wire Inc. that connects to the TV. At first glance, I thought they were copying the Netflix/Roku solution that we've come to enjoy so much, but they're not. Instead of an all-you-can-eat subscription model like Netflix, the Blockbuster solution is a download movie rental service. After the first 25 free download rentals, included in the $99 purchase price of the 2Wire box, rentals will cost at least $1.99. They claim that this means they'll be able to offer much more recent content than the Netflix subscription service, but Netflix has recently secured a number of top-tier Disney titles including "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Ratatouille," "Meet the Robinsons," and more. In my mind, there is no comparison -- the subscription model wins. I don't think consumers are ready to "leave the meter running" on the TV set, and will be much more comfortable with a predictable bill for a set of content they value.

Switching From Satellite to ATT UVerse -- The Installation

I'm tempted to say "you just won't believe this," but with technology, almost no amount of frustration is a surprise these days.

As someone who makes a living by being up-to-date on the latest technology, and helping people craft plans for new technology businesses, I make a point to try a lot of technical things. So, when I heard that ATT's U-verse was available in my area, and that they had enabled whole-home access to their personal video recorder, I thought I should investigate. After a trip to the ATT store, I learned that we could save about $40 per month by switching from satellite to the ATT quadruple-play package of U-verse television, broadband Internet, cellphone service and land line service. That sounded like a deal, so we decided to try it. What they didn't tell me was that it would take 10 hours to install it! That's right, TEN HOURS.

Why did it take so long? Well, for starters, they need a line that goes from outside of the house, directly to the 2Wire gateway box that they install in front of the phone, Internet and TV services. That line can't have any branches off of it like most phone lines do. At first, he thought he would run a new line, but our crawl-space is very tight, and they couldn't get a tiny installer out to our house to squeeze through and install the line. Eventually, they were able to open EVERY SINGLE PHONE JACK IN OUR HOUSE and find a way to rewire them so there was a straight path to the gateway. At one point, he asked me if it was important that the phone jacks still work when he was done. I can kind of understand this question, after all, nearly everyone uses cordless phones these days, but I insisted that "yes, I would like for my house to still be in working order when you finish." He was very nice, very polite, and did as I said.

So what have I learned by trying out ATT U-verse so far? For starters, I can see why the telephone companies are having trouble rapidly growing their business. I asked him what was typical, and he said that they are allocated 3 hours for a one-TV household, 4 hours for a two-TV household, and up to 8 hours for a 3-or-more TV household. What I learned though was that the number of phone outlets, or the size of the crawl-space can also extend the installation time. I'll write later about how we like the service, but for now, let this be a warning to consumers that switching to ATT U-verse may take longer than you think. And for investors, it may take longer for telcos to eat satellite video service provider's lunch -- if for no other reason than that it takes so long to install these things!

Is Your Camera Seeing Too Much Light?

A few months ago, I attended the Northern California Chapter of the Digital Cinema Society -- a meeting of professional cinematographers to discuss the latest and greatest technology and tools available. The featured presentations were mostly about high-definition video production, and it was fun. There were several interesting video clips shown, and a lot of discussion about what it took to make them. In one of the behind-the-scenes shots, the subject of filtering Infrared came up, and it struck me that there's no reason for that to be just a movie problem -- it also applies to still photography.

In a nutshell, the problem is this. The sensor technology that sits inside all of our digital cameras is intrinsically sensitive to light we can't see -- especially the light that's redder than red, or infrared. Of course, manufacturers put filters in to make the sensors see things the way we do, but they can't get rid of all of the infrared sensitivity. The result is that our cameras still sense infrared, and what's worse, the red, green and blue sensors often all sense some infrared. That means that a light which is very strong in infrared light (like most tungsten lights are) can lead to very muddy images like the one shown on the right here.

I wanted to learn more about this, so I pinged my most knowledgeable color-science friend, Ricardo Motta. Ricardo is the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Imaging Systems at Pixim. I asked Ricardo if he knew how to test a camera's IR sensitivity, and then, how to filter if needed to improve it's rejection of unwanted Infrared. Apparently, I picked the right guy, because he immediately offered to show me how he does both of these things.

The good news is that Ricardo knows how to test cameras. The bad news is that it takes a lot of well thought through high-end electro-optical equipment and precise technique to do it well. His setup at Pixim is very impressive, and possibly the best in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it doesn't do much for the average photographer. If you want a quick check though, here's a tip. Grab your digital camera and one of your consumer electronics remote controls. Point the remote control at the camera, and press one of its buttons. If your camera still senses some residual infrared, you'll see it on the camera's preview, or playback display. Here are some pictures with the remote control on and off.

So, you do the test, and find out your camera "sees" IR just like the rest of ours -- is it the end of the world? In a word, no. First of all, remote controls are fairly bright IR sources, and most of the time, there's not that much IR to filter. Second, if you start to notice that you're getting really muddy shots and you suspect that there's a lot of IR in the light, then you can pickup an IR filter to go over your lens. According to Ricardo, the best is a Blue Glass BG39. I won't go into the details here, but the short summary is that it rejects IR better than the other choices, and even though it's not as color-neutral, when combined with the in-camera white-balance, it delivers more vivid colors.

Finally, if you want to see things as really "glass-half-full," you can take advantage of the IR sensitivity of your camera by putting red or infrared-pass filters over your lens, and experiment with infrared photography. Be ready to put the camera on a tripod though, because you will have lost a lot of sensitivity by the time you filter out most of the visible light. It's a fun thing to experiment with though, and you can get some really pretty results like this shot that I took last month in Zion National Park. Needless to say, the sky wasn't really black, and the rocks weren't really white, but when you crank up the red sensitivity, the blue sky goes dark, and the red rocks go white.

NVIDIA Founder Offers Entrepreneurs Advice

Last night I had the pleasure of being entertained and educated by one of Silicon Valley's local success stories -- Chris Malachowsky, Co-Founder of NVIDIA. The event was part of the Fall Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Speaker series at Santa Clara University where my mother teaches, and I attended briefly as both an undergraduate and graduate student. The reason I say "pleasure" is that Chris is that rare combination of both success and grace. Though NVIDIA has become a multi-billion dollar a year company, Chris still knows the value of individuals, and can make anyone feel appreciated. His coaching seemed to come from a genuine desire to help, and I'm delighted to be able to summarize it here.

From Chris Malachowsky -- "What I learned"

• Don't jump in the foxhole with just anybody.
• Have a Vision -- there's was "to be one of the most important technology companies in the world."
• Recognize your competitive weapons -- every director of every function needs to be constantly thinking and acting to make that function a competitive weapon.
• People invest in people -- the VC's asked lots of questions, but in the end, Chris believes they invested because they believed in the management team.
• Focus, Focus, Focus -- take risks where you're differentiated, get to market as quickly as you can, then learn and adapt.
• Who you hire matters -- if you do it well, you'll always be the dumbest guy in the room.
• Stand for something, and don't be afraid to be useful -- people like working for someone willing to chip in and get things done.
• Know when to get off the train -- disasters don't usually happen in one moment, they are usually the product of a long chain of events, so it's better to recognize when things are going badly, and adjust earlier.
• Don't underestimate what you don't know -- 'nuf said.
• The only shame in failure is not learning from it -- "Experience leads to good decisions, and bad decisions lead to experience." Don't wait to be sure. Do something.

Like I said, it was a pleasure, and I hope others will find some value in this. Pass it along.

Annie Leibovitz, Spencer W. Kimball and Nike

On Monday night, I had the good fortune to be invited to a presentation by world-renowned-photogapher Annie Leibovitz in San Francisco. She read from her new book titled "Annie Leibovitz at Work." As she read, several of her photographs were projected in the theater, and the overall effect was like tagging along with her on a tour of her life. Not surprisingly, her tale, like that of many phenomenally successful people, had striking elements of chance, but when asked what she attributed her success to, she said "it's work" and "you just have to do it." She apologized for sounding like a Nike commercial, and I couldn't help but remember the first person I knew who espoused that slogan was the President of the Mormon church when I was growing up -- Spencer W. Kimball. In fact, long before Nike splashed the slogan around the world, he claimed it as a personal motto, and had it modeled into a plaque that sat on his desk. It's safe to say that there are few things in life as different as Annie Leibovitz, Spencer W. Kimball and the Nike corporation, so I'm impressed that they all three emphasized the message "do it."

As a photographer myself, one of the things that impressed me most about Annie Leibovitz's presentation was her pictures of the queen. She only had 25 minutes, and took four different poses with varying attire, and no "costume changes," just a progressive unlayering of very formal attire. To do that, I assume takes considerable preparation, and a readiness to "just do it" when the subject arrives.

Before going to the presentation, I thought Annie Leibovitz was someone with good skills that got lucky. After all, there are many, many skilled photographers in the world who never get noticed, never get the chance to shoot for an up-and-coming national magazine, never get the chance to travel with the Rolling Stones, and never make it big. After seeing her presentation, and hearing her advice, I think I'm a little more humbled and chastened. Though it's easy to say "just do it," it's much harder to actually live by that creed on a daily basis. Perhaps I should give her, and many other "famous pros" more of a break, and recognize that working hard has it's rewards too. Put another way, if you've got the skills, and are ready to work hard, one "big break" is probably all you need, and that's not too much for any of us to expect over a lifetime.

6 Ways to Improve Netflix Instant Streaming

We've been using the Netflix Instant Streaming now for about three months, and I have to say our family loves it. I keep thinking we should keep a log of our hours, but I'd estimate that 20% to 30% of all of our TV watching is now through the Roku box. That's pretty amazing when you think that it's an OTT (over-the-top) Internet video streaming service that we're getting through a DSL Internet connection. Still, there are a few ways it could be improved, so here goes:

1. Faster start times -- I know a streaming feed over the Internet needs to be buffered, but why not have a memory card slot the user can put some Flash memory in, and pre-buffer the shows in their queue? It wouldn't cost much, and it would mean all of the shows in their queue could start almost immediately.

2. Built-in HDMI switch -- Most people don't have a lot of HDMI inputs available on their receiver or TV yet, but that's the highest quality, most convenient way to connect a new video source like the Roku. At our house, we solved that problem by putting an HDMI switch between the Roku, our DVD player and the AV Receiver. The switch defaults to the DVD player if it's on, or goes to the Roku if the DVD player is off. Building this into the Roku (or LG Blu-ray player, or XBox 360, or TiVo) would make the install even easier.

3. Netflix iPhone Queue Manager -- The Netflix Instant Streaming app makes you go to the PC to add shows to your queue. I know there are at least a couple of apps that claim to do this, but they appear to be weakly integrated, and not supported from Netflix. The PC is an ok fall-back, but the iPhone is much more likely to be with me on the couch. For now, I'll keep trying the emerging 3rd party iPhone apps.

4. On-screen content finder -- Wouldn't it be great if Netflix could introduce me to what I want to watch when I want to watch it instead of offering me a laundry list of things I've already "queued up?"

5. Integrated TV DVR and Netflix Instant Streaming Recommendations -- This is the holy grail. My digital video recorder knows a lot about me and my family. Netflix knows a lot about us too. Unfortunately, neither knows what the other knows, and consequently, my video recorder is a little dense when it comes to speculatively recording shows for us, and Netflix is a little dense about the TV shows we like. Getting this information shared and leveraged is probably a business challenge, but the results could be delightful.

6. Ratings Preferences -- Why can't I tell Netflix that I'm not interested in movies or TV shows with particular ratings (Say R or X)? Maybe I'm just missing how to do this, but it seems a pretty basic request -- sort of like turning on search result filtering in Google.

Like I said, we love our Netflix Instant Streaming, but there are ways to make it better, and I'm guessing we'll see many of them sooner rather than later.

Hollywood Hates Netflix, Hollywood Loves Netflix

One of the things I love about Silicon Valley is how connected it is. In the past two weeks I casually met with a former Hollywood studio senior manager, and a Netflix insider. It was an opportunity to find out what they know that I don't -- and it's usually a lot! Since I'm a recent Netflix Instant Streaming convert, I asked them both about it, and what I found out was interesting. According to the former studio guy, "the studios hate Netflix." According to the Netflix insider, "the studios love Netflix." And, according to both of them, it's all about money. So what gives?

When I asked my ex-studio friend about Netflix, his reaction was nearly instantaneous and visceral -- "Do you know how much the studios hate Netflix?" According to him, the issue is that Netflix "hides behind" the "first sale doctrine" resulting in lower revenue to the studios. The "first sale doctrine" refers to US law that allows copyrighted material to be transferred after it's been purchased so long as no additional copies are created. What that means is that Netflix can legally send me a DVD disc in the mail, then get it returned and keep circulating it as long as they want without paying the studios any more money. That's different from say a pay-per-view movie, where every time someone watches it, the studios get a cut of the revenue. OK, I can see why the studios wouldn't like that, but then it's not like Netflix made the rules -- they just built a system to capitalize on them.

So how is it my Netflix contact can claim that the studios love them? Well, to start with, according to him, it's not about how much money the studios make on each viewing, it's about how many viewers Netflix brings to more obscure content. He claims Netflix is so good at learning what you like, that they can sell you the "long-tail," or lesser-known content, and you'll love it. So, the upside for the studios is that they can make money with movies and TV shows that would never sell on an end cap at Walmart or Circuit City, because Netflix has to tools to find just the right people to watch them. Not only does this grow the market, but it also helps up-and-coming artists find an audience. You might be great at making shows that appeal to 1% of the viewing audience, but no one will ever know if you have to get approved by a Walmart buyer first.

The one thing they both agreed on is that it's all business, and it's all about money. If Netflix (or anyone else) builds a service that has lots of viewers, paying lots of money, with enough allocated to send to Hollywood, the studios will find a way to provide their content. Today, Netflix Instant Streaming content library selection consists mostly of older TV shows and movies, and in some cases, it's clear that it's "teaser" content. For example, you might get episodes 1 to 4 out of a series via Instant Streaming, but then have to watch concluding episode 5 on DVD. From a studio perspective, that ensures that Netflix still buys the DVD, but it definitely compromises the consumer experience. So what would it take to have a richer library, or one without these kinds of compromises? The answer is simple -- money.

Today, Netflix Instant Streaming is bundled with a DVD rental service, so you could argue that the end-customer isn't really paying anything for it. In contrast, the other "all-you-can-eat" video-on-demand services are either ad-funded (e.g. Hulu) or come with fairly large monthly bills (e.g. Cable and Satellite TV). What will be interesting to see is how this evolves over time. In the past, cable and satellite justified their rates by arguing that it was expensive to build and maintain their distribution networks. Now that standard definition TV can be readily delivered over broadband cable, and HDTV will be in the near future, the line between traditional video services, and Internet streaming services has begun to blur. So regardless of any love-hate relationships, I'd place my bets on the most efficient delivery systems -- after all, it's all about the money.

AT&T U-Verse Catching Up

Today, AT&T announced that their U-verse video service would be adding whole-home video watching from a single PVR to up to 8 televisions. Hooray! As a consumer, it's always great to have a choice, and until now, Dish was pretty much the only service-provider game in town when it came to whole-home PVR. Now, if they'd only add the ability to expand the hard-drive capacity via USB, and compatibility with portable viewers like the Archos players, we'd have a real horse race.

As a long-time user of the Dish Network VIP-622 PVR, this has been one of the features missing for me in the AT&T offering. Being able to program only one PVR and have it available on both of our TV's has been a great convenience. Dish network took a rather simple, but effective approach to multi-room PVR viewing. They have an output on their PVR that essentially broadcasts a second viewing experience including user interface, audio and video on a cable TV channel. By connecting that output to a coax cable running to a second TV, you can access all of the PVR's recorded shows on that other TV. This approach has some advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, there's no set-top box required at the second TV. On the minus side, it only works for standard definition viewing, because the channel it sends is a standard-definition analog TV signal. The control from the second TV is via an RF wireless remote control. In principle, that should work fine, but in practice, we find that it doesn't go through stucco walls very well, and we're often contorting our bodies to achieve the right positioning of the remote to get the key clicks heard by the PVR. Still, it's been fantastic to only have one PVR to record, and have the whole collection of video available in two rooms at once.

The new AT&T approach is different. They require a simple IP set top box for each of the TV's that will be accessing the PVR, but those were necessary to view the U-verse service anyway. Because the remote controls are communicating with those set top boxes, there's not likely to be any problem with remote control range like there is with the Dish Network PVR. The AT&T U-verse solution also covers up to 8 TV's which will probably matter to some folks, though we're a bit backward having only two. I'm still on the fence about trying the service because I'm always running out of hard-drive space, and the Dish solution allows an extra hard drive to be installed via USB while the AT&T solution does not. I've also used the Archos PocketDish players with the Dish network, and liked them. Again, I don't think AT&T U-verse has anything to match this. Still, if they were able to add multi-room, maybe it's just a matter of time. In their press release, Jeff Weber, AT&T VP of video products says "With our 100 percent IP network, we are able to constantly evolve features and services to match the needs of viewers." So, I guess we'll have to watch to see if they deliver on that promise.

Mythbusters, NVIDIA and Growth

For the grand finale at NVISION 08, NVIDIA brought in the Mythbusters. They were looking to demonstrate how a GPU (graphics processing unit) differs from a CPU (central processing unit) in a way that the average person-on-the-street could understand. This is important to NVIDIA because they've come to dominate the stand-alone GPU business, and still need to grow. To do that, they'll need to have both the industry, and end-users come to appreciate how the GPU can do more than just graphics.

First the Mythbusters demo (you can see all of my pictures on my photo-sharing website pqphotography by clicking here). They started with a small remote control robot that represented the CPU because it did one-thing at a time -- namely, shot paint balls at a piece of paper to paint a smiley face. The crowd of industry analysts, gamers and developers loved it, and welcomed Jaime and Adam to the stage like heroes. It was kind of cool and generated applause. Then, it was time for the GPU demo, which involved pulling the curtain back and unveiling a suitably more impressive machine. Naturally, it does more in parallel -- Using 1,100 paint-ball guns to paint the Mona Lisa in a fraction of a second. It was very impressive. If you want to see a youtube video (hopefully still posted), click here.

So, other than having pulled off and entertaining, engaging, trade-show with clear messages, what did this all say about the evolving graphics market, and NVIDIA in particular? As for graphics, I think it's clear that the industry is following an "if you build it, they will come" strategy, and the developers and artists are coming. It's hard to imagine all of the things that will be done with graphics in the next 5 to 10 years, but it's easy to imagine that many of them will be compelling and easily appreciated by large segments of the population.

As for NVIDIA, they're at an interesting point in their development as a company. Many a company experiences success in one domain, only to struggle extending that success beyond their initial niche. They've had an amazing run when you think that they are the only sizable dedicated PC graphics company still standing, and they're doing very well against the likes of Intel and AMD who each develop and offer their own graphics engines. But continuing to grow at a rate that will satisfy investors will require much more than maintaining share of the PC graphics business, so the bets they are placing are on mobile, embedded, and compute applications of GPUs. I like these bets because they are all adjacencies and logical extensions of their core capabilities. For mobile, it seems reasonable that we will want richer interfaces on our iPhones and Smartphones. For embedded, why not have richer interfaces and displays for our cars -- after all, a 3D representation of the map would be a lot closer to what I see out the window of the car. Probably the toughest challenge is in compute. Sure, there are interesting difficult problems that will quickly appreciate the value of NVIDIA's CUDA that turns their GPUs into massively parallel compute engines, but it's hard to imagine that this won't be fiercely fought for by existing CPU companies when the market broadens. That's not to say that NVIDIA will fail, just that this is less of an adjacency, and will be a harder win. On the whole though, yes, NVIDIA came off looking like a company making good calculated bets on the future, while continuing to lead in their core business. I look forward to seeing where they are at NVISION 09.

NVISION 08

Last month, NVIDIA hosted their first visual computing conference in San Jose, California. It was a three-day celebration of the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) and all it can do. There were tracks for gamers, investors, developers, and interesting performances and eye-candy for the general public and lookieloos. There was a trade-show floor, and a couple of razzle-dazzle keynote sessions. And, the key message from NVIDIA seemed to be that their main product, the GPU, is evolving from "graphics engine" to "compute engine" and that their impact is expanding from cool graphics to life-changing computation. Of course, this would be a good thing for NVIDIA given their status as "last-man-standing" in the dedicated graphics chip business, but there are reasons to believe they can pull off this transformation, and I'll touch on some below.

Day One -- They kicked off NVISION 08 by inviting gamers from around the world to participate in a Guinness World Record attempt to sustain the longest LAN party (40 hours and 15 minutes) ever held. Hundreds heard the call, and filled darkened cavernous rooms at the San Jose Convention Center with their PCs and bodies to game away for days on end. Some of the world's best gaming teams came as this was also the stage for the super-bowl of video gaming, the Electronic Sports World Cup. The environment was buzzing, and occasionally near riotous as team members would shout out instructions to others on their team who were about to be ambushed and slaughtered in a virtual world.

Day one also included a keynote from NVIDIA's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in which he laid out many examples of how NVIDIA technology is going beyond creating fantastic visuals, to also enabling transformational problem solving through ubiquitous massively parallel computing. He led off with describing foldingathome which is a down-loadable software application that helps scientists find out how proteins fold, and in turn, help understand and find cures for critical diseases. By using GPUs, the process runs many times faster, potentially speeding medical advances. And, when you multiply those gains by millions of NVIDIA GPUs already installed in PC's, the impact is potentially huge. He also spoke to more traditional examples such as virtual product prototyping, digital image processing, and mapping applications such as Google Earth.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of his talk though, was about virtual worlds. He drove the point home with an on-screen avatar of himself that was decidedly hip -- making fantastic break-dancing moves, and apparently winning the affections of at least one attractive avatar lady friend. It's less clear how this is a revolutionary application of graphics processing power that will improve lives, but it was fun eye-candy, and kept the crowd entertained.

Road-Mapping Technology -- After the keynote, I attended some of the technical sessions, and took away a very high level view of trends in this space -- namely that graphics processors are improving faster than Moore's Law which predicts 2x performance every 18-12 months. There are also three different levels of performance that track each other by a lag of approximately 5 years. The highest level of performance is what you see in "cinematics" which are the super-high-end graphics that go into feature films and the promotional videos for new games. These are generated in days, and played in minutes but look stunning. The next level of performance is real-time video-game graphics. What's interesting is that even though it doesn't look as good as the cinematics, it will in about 5 years. Just imagine game play that looks like as good as today's movies! The last level of performance is graphics for mobile devices, and this lags desktop games by another 5 years, so 5 years from now, we'll be seeing immersive high-end graphics on our cell phones.

There were also a range of sessions dedicated to new companies in the graphics space, or companies using their graphics processors for interesting compute problems. These sessions were sometimes inspiring, sometimes bewildering, but most often interesting and engaging. I love to see people trying to create something new, and these sessions had creativity and collaboration throughout.

On the whole, NVIDIA did a fantastic job for their first year, and I'm sure they learned a lot. I think they got the message out that "it's not just about graphics anymore." They've staked claim to a very broad space, and have a lead in pursuing it. It will be interesting to see how things evolve, and where they are in a year when I assume they'll be doing NVISION 09.

For their grand finale, they brought in the Mythbusters and did an amazing demo, but I'll put that in the next post along with some thoughts about what I took away regarding NVIDIA's long-term prospects.

For a complete set of photos of the event, click here.

Remote DVR Decision

Yesterday the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals announced a finding that a lower court erred in ruling that Cablevision's plans to introduce a remote-storage DVR system would violate copyright laws. This potentially opens the door to cable, telco and Internet video service providers offering virtual-PVR functionality without having to place and manage set top boxes with hard drives in the home. The decision will most probably be appealed, but if it stands, it will have dramatic implications.

One of the obvious implications is that it further de-values the already challenged business model of pay-per-view video on-demand since it makes large quantities of free, time-shifted content available on-demand. Though this isn't a major revenue stream for studios, it's something they'd rather not lose.

Another implication is that the trend toward time-shifted viewing will accelerate from its already rapid growth. According to e-Marketer, between May of 2007 and May of 2008, average time spent watching time-shifted programming per month among unique US users grew from 3 hours and 44 minutes to 5 hours and 50 minutes -- an increase of 56%. As this grows, the significance of scheduled programming time slots, and the value of in-line advertising decline, while the value of carousel broadcasting of unique shows, and non-traditional advertising (e.g. product placements) will grow.

It will be interesting to see how rapidly Cablevision moves to take advantage of this decision, and how fast the content owners move to challenge it. In time, I expect more and more content will be served directly from content aggregators to end-users through the Internet or on-demand channels from service providers, but for many years, the PVR model will dominate. One can only imagine how tempting it will be, if this decision stands, for the virtual PVR provider to argue that they only need to keep one copy of every show they offer time-shifted, and how adamantly the content owners will argue that doing anything more than offering the end-user a virtual space to shift in would violate their rights. It's a fascinating time.

When Will Internet-Delivered Video Rival Satellite & Cable?

Everyday, we hear about how video is moving to the Internet, but so far, it's a trickle compared to Satellite & Cable. Consumers still pay hundreds of billions of dollars to traditional video service providers to get premium broadcast network and cable network TV content. Even with recent growth, Hulu, iTunes video and You Tube combined amount to less than 3% of satellite and cable revenue. Why is that, and what will make it change? I think it comes down to three things: the experience, the content, and the business model.

I'll begin with the experience. Let's face it, there's something compelling about lying on the couch watching a big-screen TV on the other side of the room. Yes, a PC might look as big if you get close to the screen, but it's not as easy to share the experience with friends and family, and it feels different. Not only is the TV experience bigger, but it's also much simpler. There aren't keyboards, mice, boot-times, configuration issues, waits for downloads or periodic service slow-downs. We all expect our TVs to just work, and the vast majority of the time they do. Yes, the interface has gotten more complex with the advent of personal video recorders (PVRs ala TiVO), but it's still simple compared to a PC, and the complexity has brought with it more than enough benefit to offset the frustrations of a more complex interface. For Internet-delivered video to eventually rival Satellite and Cable services, it will have to achieve similar levels of simplicity delivered to the TV, not the PC. And to be truly simple, it will probably need to be an integrated part of the overall experience, not a separate box and service.

Next, there's content. The way cable and satellite have justified their cost to consumers is by becoming the way consumers get access to premium live content, namely premium broadcast and cable network channels. One might think that the only way Internet-delivered video could rival traditional video services would be to offer the same content, but I think that's "old-school" thinking. As consumers embrace PVRs, they become less and less dependent on scheduled programming and promoted hits, and more and more able to watch personalized shows that appeal to them. This opens a back-door path for Internet video providers who can create services with broad appeal by combining deep libraries of tier-2 content with powerful recommendation engines (ala Amazon and Netflix) that give consumers content they want at a lower-price than recent hits. Netflix made this point at their Annual Investor Day presentations in May where they pointed out that the content their consumers enjoy the most is the content their recommendation engine promotes, and that this content is often less expensive and more available to license for streaming over the Internet. The bottom line is that Internet video will have a shot at rivaling satellite and cable services long before it duplicates their entire content selection, provided there is a broad selection of content combined with a good recommendation engine that lets consumers find things they want to watch, when they want to watch them.

And lastly, we'll look at business models. There are basically four ways our video entertainment gets funded: advertising, subscription, purchase, and rental/pay-per-view. Of these, advertising, subscription and DVD purchase dominate by far, with rental, pay-per-view and Internet purchase trailing behind. Why? Probably because consumers don't like the idea of getting a big surprise bill at the end of the month. No one likes the idea of leaving the kids on the couch with a remote control that debits their credit card with every key-click. So, what does that mean for Internet-delivered video? I think it means that consumers are more comfortable with the subscription and advertising models than the ala-carte purchase models, and that a company who delivers the combination of compelling experience, compelling content (premium, or personalized), and a subscription and/or advertising business model will have the best shot at becoming the first Internet-delivered video service to make inroads against traditional video services.

So, has anyone done it right yet? I think Netflix with their Instant Streaming service on the Roku box comes closest, but there's still a long way to go. The user experience is good -- simple remote control on the couch, with Internet-delivered video on the TV -- but it's still a long way from what we expect in the living room. It takes around 30 seconds to begin playing a show (while the buffer fills to overcome the flakiness of Internet content delivery), requires a PC to select new content, and it's still a separate video source. They're working with Microsoft, and LG to make it part of the Xbox 360 and LG's next-generation Bluray Disc player, which will help, but it's still not an integral part of the primary video source, which for many is their cable or satellite set-top box. The content story with the Netflix Instant Streaming service is good and getting better, with them now claiming 12,000 titles, and an excellent recommendation engine. Lastly, the business model is a subscription model -- one that consumers have already embraced for traditional video services and as a replacement for the traditional video rental model. Overall, I think the Netflix solution is an interesting glimpse at what the future might hold, and an excellent step in the direction of Internet-delivered video services that, in time, will come to rival satellite and cable video services that have dominated up until now.