Digital Media: The Unfulfilled Promise of HTML 5 Video

HTML 5 is widely regarded as the holy-grail of internet video, or at least it’s supposed to be. It allows web-enabled devices (Smart TVs, video game consoles, phones, tablets, PCs. etc) to play video hosted on the internet right from the web browser with the need for any additional software i.e – plugins.  The framework for HTML 5 video was first drafted in 2007 and five years later, it is gathering steam. It hasn’t reached critical mass but it is flourishing. So just what has hampered this wonderful technology from being the massive success it was heralded to be? To understand this, we must consider how we got here in the first place.

Digital Media: Pixel Games

This is the first of a multi-part series covering various aspects of digital media. With the ever closing gap between premium and budget devices in the mobile industry, manufacturers are desperate to add features exclusive to their premium models. One aspect where this is being done is in screen resolution. Laptops, phones, tablets and TVs now have HD screens. HD content is either 720p (1280 x 720) and 1080p (1920 x 1080) or anything in between. 1080p is generally referred to as Full HD and this is the highest quality available for home video in the form of Blu-ray discs or digital downloads. With this in mind, I think manufacturers are pushing the envelope with their ever increasing pixel counts. There are already phones and tablets that have a native resolution of full HD. So why do manufacturers perceive a need for higher resolutions in their products? Devices like the iPad 3 and the Nexus 10 have a native resolution well in excess of 1080p. 

The Phones in the Crystal Ball

This is a look into the future. More particularly, the not too distant future of flagship smartphones. Over the course of mobile phone history, high-end features have usually made their debut on flagships; flagships of the major players like HTC and Samsung. The LG Optimus 2X was the first phone with a dual-core processor. The Samsung Galaxy S2 was the first phone to ship with 1GB of RAM. The first phone to ship with a screen larger than 4 inches was the HTC HD2 with its 4.3 inch screen, unless you choose to call the Dell Streak a phone. The first phone with a 720p screen resolution (1280 x 720) was the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, unless you also choose to regard the Samsung Galaxy Note as a phone.

An Open Letter to WhatsApp

In the wake of increased competition, it has become imperative for WhatsApp Inc to secure its place as the true leader of multi-platform instant messaging. Though there are alternative solutions, it is fallacious to regard services like Blackberry Instant Messenger and iMessaging as true competitors as they are not true multi-platform solutions; working only on Research in Motion's Blackberry devices and Apple's iOS devices respectively.

The Surface Pro: A Good Idea Wrongly Executed (Updated)

By now I bet we all know of the original Surface tablet, more properly called the Surface RT which costs $500 for 32GB of storage. The main difference with the recently announced Surface Pro is the flavor of Windows they run. The RT (which stands for Runtime) is simply a tablet running Windows Phone 8 with a different interface. The Pro on the other hand is a full-fledged PC running Windows 8 powered by a mainstream Intel Core i5 processor capable of running traditional Windows desktop apps. This is something the RT cannot do because its processor, the Nvidia Tegra3, is not x86 compatible. This has many obvious advantages, chief among which is the ability to install normal PC software on it just like you would on a laptop or desktop; something Apple OS X users cannot do on an iPad. However, if the tablet is truly running ‘vanilla’ Windows 8 with no modifications, I can think of a few problems that will prevent this tablet from being a huge success.