Blackmagic Design acquires Teranex, slashes prices

Earlier today, TV Technology reported that Blackmagic Design has acquired Teranex, a digital image processing company, from Jupiter Systems for an unreported price. Teranex has had some excellent technology for years, especially for standards conversion, video denoising and upscaling/downscaling, but it's never been part of a company that was focused on broadcast technology. Teranex started in 1998 as a spin-off of Lockheed Martin, which invested more than $100 million in real-time video processing. Lockheed Martin, of course, was primarily focused on defense-related business, not broadcasting. In 2004, Teranex was acquired by Silicon Optix, which focused primarily on semiconductors and consumer-grade video scalers. Silicon Optix sold Teranex and most of its other products to Integrated Device Technology in October 2008, and IDT sold Teranex to Jupiter Systems, a video wall manufacturer, in June 2009. And now, 2 1/2 years later, Jupiter Systems has sold it to Blackmagic Design.

When a company has been bought and sold as many times as Teranex, it's very difficult to retain employees or to focus on long-term product plans. As a result, it's hard to know exactly what Blackmagic Design is getting. Teranex has some very interesting 3D software that enables two of its video processors to convert 2D to 3D and output 3D in a variety of formats. Combined with Blackmagic Design's ATEM production switchers, the Teranex products give the company much more extensive real-time image processing capabilities. However, many of Teranex's hardware designs are several years old, and could probably benefit from Blackmagic's abilities to redesign the products using current LSIs for lower cost and higher performance.

Update, December 14, 2011: StudioDaily reports that Blackmagic Design has slashed the price of Teranex's top-of-the-line VC100 universal frame synchronizer and format converter from $90,000 to $19,995. In addition, Blackmagic added additional features including dual-channel 3D support, so that it no longer requires two converters to handle 3D. Existing owners of VC100s can get the new features with a $3,000 upgrade. Even without redesigned hardware, Blackmagic has managed to reduce the price by almost 80%,

In short, the acquisition is certainly a good move for Teranex, which is finally partnered with a parent company that knows what to do with its technology. Depending on how much it cost Blackmagic Design and how old Teranex's technology is, the acquisition might or might not be such a great idea for it. We'll know more at NAB 2012, when we see the first displays of Teranex products in the Blackmagic Design booth.

PressBooks eBook publishing service opens its doors to the public

PressBooks, a Montreal-based startup, took its eponymous online eBook production service public today. There are lots of services and software for creating eBooks, but PressBooks has some interesting features for self-publishing authors (and even for established publishers--more on that in a minute.) PressBooks is an online service built on top of WordPress. If you're familiar with the WordPress dashboard, you can jump into PressBooks right away. The service creates fully-formatted EPUBs and PDF files, as well as HTML online eBooks and XML documents. It's primarily designed for text-intensive trade-style eBooks; if you're planning to create picture books or heavily-formatted multi-column text titles, there are better tools than PressBooks. However, you can import book covers and images into a built-in media library.

PressBooks uses a simple WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing text; text can also be edited offline and then uploaded. A small variety of templates are available for automatically formatting eBooks; PressBooks is working on more designs. Multiple authors and users can be defined, and the site can be public (anyone can read the eBook) or private (only specified users can access the site). Users can enter metadata in the Book Information section, including title and subtitle, descriptions, names of editors and translators, print and eBook ISBNs, and prices.

PressBooks has already been used for creating two commercially-published eBooks: "Book: A Futurist's Manifesto", which was edited and published by the PressBooks team for O'Reilly Media while the software was under development, and "Nine Things Successful People Do Differently" by Heidi Grant Halvorson, published by the Harvard Business Review Press.

At the present time, PressBooks is a free service, but that's likely to change once it exits beta. Here's a presentation that demonstrates most of the service's features:

Pressbooks Demo Deck

A few quick presenting tips

I spent a couple of hours at an event last night where the main presenter spent about 40 minutes talking about himself and 15 minutes about the topic we were there to hear about. The information that he presented in those 15 minutes could have been reduced down to a two-paragraph blog post.

Most people who are asked to make presentations don't have a clue what they're doing. I used to believe that it was rude for audience members to check their email or browse the web during a presentation, but after sitting through years of crappy presentations, I now think that it's rude for poor, unprepared presenters to waste their audiences' time. So, in the spirit of making everyone's life easier, here are a few presenting tips from someone who's made every mistake in the book:

• If you only had five minutes to speak, what are the points you'd want to make? Those points should become the core of your presentation.
• It's better to focus on a few key points than it is to try to pack everything but the kitchen sink into the presentation.
• Use PowerPoint sparingly, and put one item on each slide. Keep them simple.
• If your presentation isn't well-organized, your audience won't understand it.
• Keep the presentation focused on the audience, not on you.
• Unless you're specifically doing a sales presentation, use your presentation to inform.
• Rehearse. The first time you give the presentation should never be in front of the intended audience.
• Arrive at the venue early enough to check out everything--make sure your laptop works with the venue's projector, your microphone works and, if you need it, you've got a network connection. Assume that nothing will work, and prepare backups.

The publisher bypass operation

I just read an article in the latest issue of Wired about the new breed of subscription music services--companies like Spotify, MOG and turntable.fm. The problem with these services (and for that matter, conventional purchase services like iTunes) is that artists get a very small share of the revenue. Most artists are now getting the majority of their income from live performances, not music sales. Where concerts once served to promote album sales, now digital music promotes live performances.

Online video distribution has had a similar impact on movies, television and original video. Most of the revenues from movies and television shows sold or rented by Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, etc., goes to the studios and distributors, not to the original producers. Original video produced for YouTube and other services is incredibly hard to monetize; only a few series, like "The Guild" and "Easy to Assemble", have sponsorship or distribution deals that directly compensate the producers. Most original video has to make do with a trickle of advertising revenue, modest sales from iTunes, or nothing at all.

That brings us to books, where the situation for independent authors is very different. Amazon will pay as much as 70% of the revenue from sales of eBooks to self-publishing authors, and other resellers will typically pay 35%. Compare that with the typical 10% to 12% royalty on wholesale price paid by publishers, and self-publishing starts to look very appealing. Yes, the self-publisher has to pay upfront for editing and design, but many publishers recoup those costs before they start paying royalties. In addition, unless you're a top author, publishers will do little or nothing to promote your title, so you'll have to hire a publicist or do the work yourself.

It's true that print still represents the majority of book sales, but the market is quickly shifting to eBooks. Some of the most popular titles are already selling almost as many copies of eBooks as print, and heavy book readers are adopting eBooks faster than any other group. The majority of book sales are likely to come from eBooks by the middle of this decade.

So, where does that leave publishers? Penguin, for one, is getting into the self-publishing business through its Book Country online service. In addition to charging upfront fees for formatting and designing eBooks, Book Country demands a hefty fee for distributing self-published eBooks to online bookstores--which self-publishers can do themselves. Other publishers are experimenting with "augmented" eBooks--containing audio, video and animations--which they believe are beyond the ability of self-publishers to create. There are two problems with that approach:

1. Companies such as Vook are launching eBook creation tools that will allow self-publishers to make augmented eBooks, and
2. Sales figures to date suggest that there's not a big market for augmented eBooks. For example, Vook's original strategy was to publish augmented eBooks itself, but the company couldn't sell enough to sustain its business, so it's now focusing on licensing its platform to others.

To be sure, publishers still provide valuable services, especially for top-tier authors--but book publishing is the first industry where creators (writers) can compete effectively with distributors (publishers). In the near future, the big publishers will likely find themselves focusing on two categories:

1. New releases from "A-list" authors that can command high prices and sell tens of thousands of copies in print, and
2. Milking their existing backlist for eBook reissues, bundles, and other ways of delivering "old wine in new bottles".

Some mid-tier authors may find a home with smaller specialty publishers, but almost everyone below the "A-list" will have to self-publish. We're likely to see some self-publishing authors join together in "United Artists"-like organizations to create "quasi-publishers" that perform some of the functions of existing publishers, such as design, publicity and promotion. The participating authors could serve as editors for each other.

By mid-decade, we're going to have far fewer and smaller "old-style" publishers. On the other hand, we'll have far more self-publishers and quasi-publishers that are performing most of the tasks previously done by publishers themselves. The industry power will reside with resellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the U.S., and their equivalents in other countries around the world.

Be careful when you partner with startups

There are so many startups launching new products and services every day that it's incredibly tempting to work with them. In many cases, they offer their services for free or at a very low cost in order to get customer feedback and build a user base. In the past, the big problem with startups has been the risk of their going out of business, but that was usually visible long before the companies actually failed--for example, they couldn't find financing, their reference accounts were weak, or they were asking for investments at the same time they were trying to make the sale. Today, however, there's a new trend that magnifies the risk that successful startups will go under, and if you're not careful, they could take your business with them.

In the last two days, "talent acquisitions" have resulted in the closure of two well-regarded web startups. Talent acquisitions happen when startups are acquired, not for their products but for their people. The acquirers tend to be industry giants, such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Apple. On Tuesday, Facebook acquired the talent running Strobe, a startup that had built a cross-platform app development system based on HTML5. Facebook didn't acquire the Strobe platform itself, and Strobe (or what was left of it) said that its service would remain available indefinitely in beta. However, with no one working on it, bugs aren't going to be fixed and new features won't be added. In other words, that parrot is definitely dead. There's still a possibility that the Strobe team may sell the software to someone else, but it's very unlikely given that the entire development team is gone. If you were developing your apps using Strobe, you're now faced with finding another development platform, and likely, rewriting your apps to work with that platform.

Today, Google acquired Apture, which offered a plug-in for browsers that enabled pop-up searches for almost every word on webpages, and a JavaScript add-on that allowed multimedia content from many sites, including Wikipedia, Google and YouTube, to be integrated into pop-up windows on blogs. Apture had customers using its service including The Economist, the Financial Times, Reuters, Scientific American and Scribd. Unlike the Facebook-Strobe deal, Google acquired all of Apture, but Google has decided to discontinue the Apture services within the next month, according to TechCrunch. The Apture development team with join the Chrome browser project.

The lesson is that you can no longer use the funding or success of a startup as an indicator that the startup will remain in business. A "successful" startup can be acquired and its services can be shut down or left in limbo by the acquirer. So, what can you do to protect yourself?

• Be very cautious about building your product or service on top of an API offered by a startup. If anything happens to the startup or API, you may have to go into crisis mode to replace it.
• Make sure that you have a way to export any data that you don't already have copies of, and keep a local backup.
• Closely review the terms of service for any startup that you work with. If necessary, you should propose a revision or addendum that gives your company non-exclusive rights to continue using the service or software if the startup, or its acquirer or investors, decide to discontinue it. That may require you to host the service yourself or take possession of the software and source code from an escrow account.
• If the startup is providing hardware that's essential for your business, you should buy sufficient additional units and/or replacement parts to meet your needs long enough to transition to other hardware.

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't do business with startups, but you should exercise caution. A good "Plan B" is an essential insurance policy.

"My name is Bond...Teradek Bond."

Video "uplink in a backpack" systems, pioneered by LiveU, have become very popular for use at major-market television stations for live remotes. These systems use multiple 3G/4G broadband wireless connections, as well as Wi-Fi, to send HD-quality broadcast video live from the field for streaming to the Internet, or for live broadcast. LiveU typically rents its systems for $2,500/month or leases them on an annual basis for $1,500/month; comparable systems from TVU and Streambox sell for $25,000 to $40,000 (U.S.).

Teradek, whose Cube was the first device that made live broadcast-quality Wi-Fi streaming from camcorders feasible and inexpensive, has launched a new device called Bond that shrinks the "uplink in a backpack" down to a size that fits on top of a camcorder, and a price that almost any producer can afford. The Bond is designed to be connected to a Cube, and accepts up to five 3G or 4G USB cellular modems. The Cube provides the HD/SD-SDI or HDMI video input for the Bond; some models also provide Wi-Fi output. At the station or streaming end, Sputnik, a Linux-based application reconstructs the bonded video into a single MPEG-TS stream that can be processed with most H.264 decoders.

That's interesting, but not revolutionary: The LiveU, TVU and Streambox systems do essentially the same thing. What makes Teradek's system revolutionary is the price: The Bond's list price is $2,490 (U.S.). A Cube 250 with a HDMI interface and USB output (needed for the Bond) lists for $1,590. Sputnik is free. If you want to use an end-to-end Teradek solution, a Cube 400 decoder outputs to a HDMI interface as well as wired Ethernet, for $1,190. That's a complete, broadcast-quality broadband ENG uplink/downlnk system for $5,270. Depending on whether you rent monthly or annually, that's about two or four month's rental of a LiveU system, and about 20% of the purchase price of a TVU system. You're going to see a lot more live webcasts and broadcasts, thanks to Teradek and its Bond.

More thoughts on the new Canon and Red cameras

Now that the dust has cleared a bit from Thursday's announcements by Canon and Red, I've had some time to consider the new cameras, and the compromises that both companies made when developing them.

First, the Canon C300. Physically, it's a gorgeous camera--it reminds me of classic 16mm film camera designs. What I'm less impressed with are some of the compromises in the Canon design. For example, the C300 has automatic nothing--no autofocus, auto-aperture, or white balance. The lack of automatic controls may be good for teaching cinematography, just as when learning how to drive, it's better to start by learning how to use a manual transmission. However, in the real world, cinematographers often use autofocus, especially for documentaries and sports. And why no auto white balance, when just about every other digital cinema camera has it? Another big "miss" is the lack of a dual-link HD-SDI output and no 4:4:4 mode. Yet another questionable decision is support for 60 fps only at 720p resolution, together with a sensor that, while it's technically 4K, only outputs 1920 x 1080. The result is a weird mix: Many features of the C300 are oriented toward movie use, while the output of the camera screams "broadcast" and the C300 is missing some key broadcast features.

The reason why the C300 turned out this way can be found in an interview that Larry Thorpe, Canon U.S.A.'s Senior Director, Professional Engineering and Solutions, Imaging Technologies and Communications Group, gave to Digital Photography Review. According to the interview, the C300 was a "fast-track" project inside Canon--two years from inception to product release. In order to meet the tight schedule, Canon couldn't develop new electronics for the C300, so it adapted the processor and electronics from the XF 305 camcorder for the C300. The XF 305 is a very nice camcorder, but it's not a digital cinema camera, and it's most certainly not a $20,000 camera. Most of the missing features in the C300 are due to using the XF 305's electronics.

From what Thorpe said in the interview, it's clear that the C300 is a placeholder for a broader, more functional line of digital cinema cameras coming from Canon. A few years from now, we'll probably look back at the C300 and wonder why anyone bought it, given how powerful the Canon models will be by then. For now, however, the C300 is a strange bundle--a great design, undermined by inadequate electronics.

The new Red Scarlet-X is different--it's plenty powerful enough, but it's not a Scarlet. It uses the same imager as the EPIC, except it uses it at a lower resolution and can thus utilize imagers that failed quality testing for the EPIC. It uses all the same accessories and software as the EPIC. It's the same form-factor as the EPIC. As Philip Bloom points out, it's not the Scarlet that Red's been talking about for three years, the one that was supposed to be light and cheap but still high-resolution. Perhaps the Scarlet-X should have been called the EPIC Light, and Red should have scrapped the Scarlet name. It's a niggling point--Red is going to sell lots of Scarlet-Xs--but the Scarlet-X doesn't fit into the niche that Red created for the Scarlet. Instead, it's an entry-level EPIC--perfect as a B camera to the EPIC, but not competitive in any way with the Panasonic AF101 or the Sony FS100. Speaking of which, the Canon and Red announcements have made the FS100 and AF101 look even more appealing.

Canon, Red and Sony: It's War, I tell you! War!

First, Sony released the F3, a Super 35mm digital cinema camera for about $17,000 U.S. list price--$14,000 street price. The F3 has a 2K sensor, uses Sony's 35Mbps XDCAM EX codec, and comes with a dual-link HD-SDI interface. For an additional $4,000, it can be upgraded to 4:4:4 output and 3G-SDI.

Next, in a theater on the Paramount Pictures lot this afternoon, Canon announced its new EOS C300 digital cinema camera, based on the EOS DSLR platform, but with a new form factor and sensor. The sensor has 4K resolution, but it uses all the pixels in the sensor instead of line-skipping, and outputs a native 1920 x 1080 image. It uses Canon's 50Mbps XF codec at 4:2:2 and delivers 12 stops of dynamic range. Unlike the F3, it doesn't have options for dual-link HD-SDI, 3G-SDI or 4:4:4, but it does have Canon's Log format built-in. Two lens mounts are available: Canon's EF and Arri's industry-standard PL mount.

Unlike the Sony and most other cinema cameras and camcorders, the C300 doesn't have any automatic settings at all: No autofocus, automatic aperture, or automatic white balance. Everything is manual. That works for digital cinematography, but it's useless for "run & gun" situations, such as sports and documentaries, where the shot changes faster than most cinematographers can keep up.

The Canon, like the F3, comes with most of the essential accessories bundled, including the viewfinder, XLR audio interface, side grip, top handle, battery and charger. The list price of the C300 will be $20,000 (U.S.), and will ship in January 2012.

No sooner would the ink about the C300 have dried on the page if we were still printing ink on pages, than Jim Jannard of Red was standing in front of another group in another theater in Los Angeles, introducing the Scarlet. Yep, THAT Scarlet, the one that's been announced more times than Harold Camping has predicted the Rapture. However, it's not really THAT Scarlet, the model that was supposed to cost $3,000 with a 3K 2/3" sensor and a fixed lens. The Scarlet-X that Jannard introduced has the same Mysterium-X imager as the Red EPIC, uses all the same accessories at the EPIC, and can be purchased with either a EF or PL mount.

The Scarlet-X's sensor has 5K resolution for still images, 4K at 1-25 fps, 2K at 60 fps, and 1K at 120 fps. The sensor's dynamic range is 13.5 stops, and up to 18 stops with HDRx enabled. It records REDCODE RAW at 440Mbps--almost nine times more data per second than Canon's C300. The basic Scarlet-X sells for $9,750, including the imager, an EF mount, Brain (central processor) and side mount for a Solid State Drive. Add $1,500 for a Titanium PL mount; a full configuration with viewfinder and HD-SDI output is $14,000. The Scarlet-X with the PL mount will start shipping this month, and with the EF mount will begin shipping on December 1st. Red estimates that it will take until February to fill all the existing back orders.

The Canon C300 has been seeded to a handful of cinematographers; it's not clear if anyone outside Red has used the Scarlet-X. In any case, reviews of both cameras should start showing up in a few weeks. There are now three digital cinema cameras in the $14,000 to $20,000 range, all of which can do things that required cameras of two or three times their price a year ago.

The self-publishing conundrum

In 2002, when I was running a home video distributor, the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was a huge success. The movie cost $5 million to produce and was distributed by IFC Films, an independent distributor owned by the AMC cable channel. It grossed almost $370 million (U.S. dollars) worldwide. That film, along with "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 and "The Passion of the Christ" in 2004, led movie producers worldwide to conclude that inexpensive, independently-distributed films could make a lot of money. The problem was that all three films were outliers--totally unrepresentative of the fate of the vast majority of inexpensive, independently-produced files, most of which never even make it into movie theaters.

A lot of money was lost by independent producers and distributors in that period, as they tried to duplicate the success of those three films. The producers of "The Blair Witch Project" even made a sequel with a much bigger budget, but it grossed only a tiny fraction of what the original film took in. A second sequel was planned but never made.

History is repeating itself in the world of self-publishing. Amanda Hocking and John Locke are both said to have sold more than a million copies of their self-published works. As a result of their success, many other authors have decided to go the self-publishing route. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of self-publishing success stories to point to beyond Hocking and Locke. There are some self-publishers who make a nice living from a series of titles, or who have one particular title that does well, but the vast majority of self-published titles sell few, or even no, copies.

Self publishers start with several strikes against them:

• They have to bear the expense of hiring an editor and designer or do the tasks themselves and risk releasing a book with typos, an amateurish cover and poor layout.
• They also have to pay for a book publicist or do the work themselves.
• Self-publishers also have to get (and pay for) ISBN numbers in order to sell their books through most retailers.
• If they're selling print books as well as eBooks, self-publishers have very limited ways of selling to retail bookstores, and they don't have salespeople who are regularly calling on bookstore buyers.

Self-publishers can almost always make much more money "off the top" for each copy of their books sold than if they work with a publisher, but they have a lot of costs to bear that they have to pay upfront. On the other hand, self-published authors and authors working with a publisher are fairly equal when it comes to promotion. Most publishers offer little or no promotional support for new authors beyond including them in their catalogs and listing them in Bowker's databases. If you want a book tour or want to get press interviews, you're either going to have to hire a publicist or do the work yourself.

I'm a fan of self-publishing, and I don't want to discourage you from considering it. However, keep in mind that you'll have to bear a lot of costs and do a lot of work that a publisher would do for you (albeit at a high cost, especially if your book is very successful). One final point: Both Amanda Hocking and John Locke are now working with publishers: Hocking with St. Martin's Press, and Locke with Simon & Schuster.

YouTube's scattershot channel strategy

Earlier today, the New York Times reported that YouTube will launch more than 100 channels of third-party video programming. YouTube is said to be paying the producers of the new channels, which will begin launching in November and continue throughout 2012, as much as $100 million to create original programming. The producers who have signed on with YouTube range from well-known media brands such as The Wall Street Journal, The Onion, Lionsgate, Reuters, Rodale Press and the WWE, to companies that were entirely unknown until today. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Deepak Chopra are also involved.

YouTube's plan, which is intended to eventually produce 25 hours of original content each day, is to build the new channels into places where viewers will return day after day, and advertisers will be willing to pay substantially higher rates than they pay for user-generated content. It's a good idea, but YouTube is taking a very scattershot approach to implementing it.

In the past, I've written about YouTube's plans to attract more and better programming. Last December, YouTube gave $1,000 credits to 500 of its YouTube Partners. At the time, I wrote that there's not much useful that a video producer can buy for $1,000 that would make a significant improvement in their productions. YouTube would have been much better off giving $10,000 credits to 50 well-targeted producers.

I feel much the same way about YouTube's new plan. The channels selected are all over the board in terms of content, and are likely to be equally all over the board in terms of quality. Instead of starting with 100 channels, YouTube should have started with 20 or 25, and worked carefully with the producers to insure that the quality of the channels would be high. Then, they could roll out a second wave of channels, perhaps six months down the road. By greenlighting 100 channels at the outset and rolling them out rapidly, YouTube has almost guaranteed that it will end up with a confusing mishmash of shows.

YouTube's intention is to build up a big library of compelling original programming quickly, but they're just as likely to create an assortment of channels carrying junk that would have never been produced had YouTube not committed to pay for it.

The eSingle revolution

No, I'm not talking about online dating services or individual music tracks. eSingles are short (usually 30,000 words or less) eBooks, most often non-fiction. Amazon calls them Kindle Singles (hence the eSingles name); Apple calls them Quick Reads. There have been printed short stories and novellas almost since the birth of Gutenberg's printing press, but short non-fiction books haven't fared as well, especially in retail bookstores. There's an implicit connection in consumers' minds between the length of a book and its value: A thin book is simply worth less money than a thick one.

The manufacturing costs of books--printing and binding--are affected much less by the number of pages in a book with a given page size than they are by how many copies are printed and bound at a time. A 300-page book costs more than a 100-page book, but nowhere near three times as much. If consumers are predisposed to pay more for a bigger book, that makes the bigger book more profitable than a smaller one. The result is that publishers set word- and page-count targets for their authors that are intended to create bigger, higher-priced and more profitable books. In turn, the books are often padded out with unnecessary information--case histories, sidebars, interviews, etc., that may be interesting but that don't really contribute to the core value of the book. In other words, filler is added to increase the page count.

eBooks have changed how consumers perceive books, in that they no longer judge books by their cover (or, in this case, their size), and instead pay more attention to other factors: The author, subject and reviews. This has enabled eSingles to become viable. Seth Godin's The Domino Project, for example, publishes short non-fiction eBooks that are either primarily motivational or that focus on a single topic. Italy's 40Kbooks is bringing the same approach to fiction. Magazines and newspapers are publishing eSingles that either feature compilations of previously-published articles or new works; The U.K.'s The Guardian newspaper, for example, recently published an eSingle explaining how it broke the News International phone hacking story.

eSingles are generally less expensive than full-length eBooks--for example, they're typically priced between $1.99 and $7.99 at Amazon. Their short length means that they can be written, edited, designed and released much more quickly than full-length titles. That means that they can be more current than full-length titles from the "Big 6" trade publishers, which often take a year or more to get from submission of the manuscript into the hands of consumers as a printed book. Also, both writers and publishers can spread their risks across far more titles; a writer could potentially write and publish as many as four eSingles a year, vs. one full-length title.

Another factor in favor of eSingles, especially for self-publishing authors, is the aggressive royalty that they can get. Amazon, for example, will pay as much as a 70% royalty on each eBook sold, depending on the price and whether or not it gets exclusivity. Given that the Big 6 typically pay only 12% to 15% of the wholesale price to authors, self-publishing authors can make significantly more per copy, even at a much lower sales price.

Here's an example:

$19.99 eBook sold on agency terms (30% to reseller) = $13.99 wholesale price
15% author's royalty (before exclusions and deductions) = $2.10 per copy

$6.99 eSingle sold exclusively through Amazon with 70% royalty = $4.89 per copy

In this example, the author/self-publisher will have to pay all the costs of copyediting and design, but will still end up making substantially more money. That's why I believe that authors will gravitate to eSingles, non-conventional book publishers will embrace them, and "old line" publishers will be forced to respond.

Here's why the movie industry needs new revenues

AllThingsD reports that Rich Greenfield of BTIG has quantified the straits that the movie industry has found itself in. For more than a decade, DVD sales made up an ever-increasing majority of the industry's revenues. 2008's Great Recession flipped the DVD market from growth into decline, and the increasing popularity of Netflix and Redbox moved the home video market, which had transitioned from rental to purchase, back toward majority rental.

BTIG's numbers show how far the pendulum has swung. In the first half of 2010, U.S. sales of DVDs were just over $4 billion. Including Blu-Ray and electronic media, total home video sales were $4.998 billion. In the first half of this year, U.S. DVD sales were just over $3 billion--down almost 24% in one year. Blu-Ray sales, which were once seen as the great hope of the movie industry, were $810 million, up from $773 million a year earlier. The total for all physical media was less than the total for DVD alone last year. Electronic media sales increased year-over-year, but only from $260 million in 2010 to $270 million in 2011. Rental and Video-on-Demand revenues, on the other hand, increased from $3.782 billion in 2010 to $4.195 billion in 2011. The total rental market is now bigger than home video sales, and most of the rental revenues go to companies like Redbox and Netflix, not the movie studios.

This is why the movie studios are desperately trying every tactic they can think of to increase revenues, from $60 Video-on-Demand movies to UltraViolet digital copies of movies for online streaming. It's why Sony no longer wants to pay for 3D glasses, and why both movie studios and theaters are pushing 3D movies so hard. DVD sales were the lifeblood of the industry, financing ever more expensive movies and bigger promotional campaigns. With DVD revenues shrinking, studios are having to make difficult decisions, such as Paramount's recent decisions to consolidate its home video division with two other groups and to close its New York distribution office. At some point, studios are going to have to cut back movie budgets and possibly even cut the number of films they release each year.

The DVD "cash cow" is running out of milk, and there's nothing new on the horizon to replace it.

Intel surrenders in the set-top box war

NewTeeVee reports that Intel has shut down its its Digital Home Group, which was working on chips including Atom-based CE media processors for Internet-based set-top boxes, including Google TV and the Boxee Box. The Digital Home Group team has been reassigned to tablet development. Some work will continue on devices for cable and IPTV set-top boxes, such as the processor that Pace is using in the Xfinity set-top box that it developed for Comcast.

Intel was a partner in Google TV's development, and Intel's involvement was partially responsible for the failure of the first-generation product. The reason was that only Intel processors could be used in Google TV devices, and the cost of Intel's Atom processor made the price of products such as the Logitech Revue uncompetitive. The Revue was launched at $299, then dropped to $250 and now sells for $99. The price of Intel's processors wasn't the only problem, of course; poorly-designed software, inscrutable remote controls and a lack of support from content providers didn't help.

Now, processors based on ARM look like they have the upper hand in future Internet set-top box development. ARM-based processors are less expensive than Intel's Atom, and potential set-top box makers such as Samsung already manufacture them. Apple's A-series of processors is based on ARM. Now, it appears that both Google TV and Boxee will go with ARM for their next-generation products.

A $60 Video-on-Demand Movie? It's Comcastic!

Fierce Cable reports that Comcast, and its Universal Studios subsidiary, will test releasing a movie to Video-on-Demand (VOD) just three weeks after it opens in theaters. The movie is "Tower Heist", starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, which opens November 4th, and Comcast will run the test in Atlanta and Portland, OR. And the price? $59.95, for which you get to watch the movie once.

(Update--October 13, 2011: Home Media Magazine reports that Universal and Comcast have cancelled their plans to release "Tower Heist" on VOD after two theater chains, Cinemark and National Amusements, said that they wouldn't show the movie if the companies went through with their plans.)

DirecTV already has a program in place with multiple movie studios to show VOD movies 60 days after they open in theaters for $29.95. Comcast's argument is that large families can save money by watching the movie at home instead of buying movie tickets, food and drink. My counterargument is that a family that's looking to save money will wait a few more weeks and get the movie from Redbox for $1, and a family that has to see the movie as soon as it comes out vs. paying $60 to see it at home will go to the theater.

The movie studios are getting more and more desperate to replace the income they're losing from the decline in DVD revenues, and Comcast is trying to fight off Netflix and Amazon by offering movies and television shows sooner than the over-the-top video providers can. However, the value proposition for a $60 VOD movie that's already been in theaters for three weeks is extremely hard to make.

Is Apple moving to an incremental product release strategy?

Yesterday's announcement of the iPhone 4S disappointed a lot of people, not just because of Tim Cook's low-key presentation. Many observers were expecting an all-new iPhone 5 with a larger display and a case design similar to the iPad 2. Instead, they got an iPhone 4 with a faster processor and better camera. As a practical matter, the functional difference between what was generally expected in the "iPhone 5" and what Apple actually delivered in the iPhone 4S isn't great. Apple is also going to sell a ton of iPhone 4S phones, regardless of what the pundits think.

The question is whether the iPhone 4S is an interim product designed to buy time in order to get a true 4G LTE model ready, or whether it represents an overall slowdown in product revisions by Apple. On the desktop, the iMac design hasn't changed much in years; the big changes have been internal, with minor cosmetic external revisions. The Mac Pro's external design has barely changed since it was introduced in 2006. There's an excellent chance that the next iPad will combine the iPad 2's physical design with a faster processor, higher-resolution display, and perhaps, a better camera.

Does it mean that Apple will slow down its product development cycles? Will Apple start releasing entirely new iPhones and iPads every 24 to 36 months? Longer product lives would certainly give Apple an opportunity to amortize tooling costs over far more units. It would also give Apple more time to develop completely new designs. After all, Apple will still be selling the iPhone 3GS when it ships the 4S, more than two years after it was first introduced. The 3GS is still a viable entry-level smartphone.

So, don't be surprised if the next iPad looks very much like the iPad 2, and if future iPad and iPhone exterior designs are changed less often. Apple may see no reason to issue an entirely new model every year, until competitors catch up.

Amazon and Apple's dramatically different strategies

Today's announcement of three new black & white Kindle models, plus the Kindle Fire tablet, have shaken up both Amazon's competitors and a number of industry observers. The Kindle 4 models (the Touch, Touch 3G and just plain Kindle) each set new low price points for eReaders with their functionality. The Kindle, at $79, will be a stocking-stuffer for the coming Holiday season. The Kindle Touch Wi-Fi, at $99, provides comparable functionality to Barnes & Noble's Nook for $40 less, and the Kindle Touch 3G adds always-on wireless connectivity. for $149. (All these prices are for Kindles with Special Offers, or in other words, advertising. Add $30 to the Kindle and $40 to the Kindle Touch models if you don't want ads.)

The Kindle Fire tablet, at $199, is cheaper than any brand name Android tablet except Lenovo's forthcoming A1, which comes with front and back cameras and GPS, all of which Amazon leaves off. However, Amazon has built its own user interface on top of Android that's designed to make the Kindle Fire much easier to use than Google's standard Android. Amazon has also built its own browser, called Silk, that uses Amazon's cloud services to pre-render web content for better performance.

Everything about the Kindle Fire demonstrates how radically Amazon's and Apple's strategies differ. Apple uses software to sell hardware; the iTunes Store and App Store are there to increase demand for Apple's hardware. Apple makes money from software and content, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to its hardware revenues. Amazon, on the other hand, uses hardware in order to sell its goods and services. It's likely that the new Kindles, including the Kindle Fire, are all being sold at close to break-even or possibly even at a small loss, in order to generate more sales of other goods and services. Amazon sees the Kindle Fire as potentially being as stimulative for music, movie and television show sales, as well as Amazon Prime subscriptions, as the black & white Kindles have been for eBook sales.

There's not a lot of daylight between Amazon and Apple for competitors to exploit. Amazon is setting price expectations at the low end and is trying to dominate the content market; Apple dominates the developer community, and the iPad will continue to have a much bigger selection of apps than any of its competitors. Can competitors sell more expensive tablets than Amazon with a mediocre selection of content, or less expensive tablets than Apple with a mediocre selection of apps? I doubt it.

This would have been a great opportunity for a radically different tablet, like Microsoft's Courier, that could compete in a completely different market segment, but Microsoft killed the Courier, and there's nothing on the horizon from first-tier competitors that can forge its own path. In hindsight, HP was probably right to kill the TouchPad, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see other companies rethink their entire approach to the tablet market. Cloning Apple or Amazon won't work; competitors need radically different products.

Who buys Hulu? Most likely, no one

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that, now that Hulu's auction is completed, the company's owners have some hard decisions to make. Comcast, News Corporation, Disney and Providence Equity Partners were looking for well north of $2 billion for Hulu, but they didn't get it. More accurately, they got it, but not in the way they wanted.

(Update, October 13, 2011: AllThingsD has reported that Hulu's owners have called off the company's sale and will continue to manage it themselves.)

The top bidder for Hulu was Dish Network, which bid around $1.9 billion dollars, more than either Yahoo or Amazon. Google apparently offered far more--around $4 billion--but the company wanted guaranteed access to Hulu's owners' content for much longer than the two to three years that had been offered. Without that kind of concession, the Hulu deal is really a two to three-year non-exclusive license to its content, not an "acquisition" in any real sense.

That's why Dish, Yahoo and Amazon weren't willing to spend even $2 billion for the company. Hulu's partners could more than double Dish's bid overnight by accepting Google's terms, but I don't think they will. They believe that their content, and the investment they've made in the Hulu platform, is worth more than $1.9 billion, and they're not willing to extend longer terms, given the rate of change in the online content market. Therefore, it's most likely that they'll cancel the auction and keep Hulu themselves.

Poof! Your set-top box has turned into a brick

Yesterday, Sezmi, a Silicon Valley-based video service provider, announced that it is discontinuing its services in the U.S. in order to focus on selling its platform to international service providers. Sezmi used a combination of an Internet connection and digital broadcast signals to provide a subscription package of broadcast, cable and Internet-only channels. While the service was eventually offered in 36 U.S. markets, the cable channels were never made available outside Los Angeles (even though customers in other markets were told they would get them), and the cable channels in Los Angeles were discontinued last December. Subscribers purchased a $150 package including a set-top box with a 1TB hard drive, and a digital antenna for picking up over-the-air broadcasts; the monthly price was $5 for basic service, and another $20 for the cable channels.

Sezmi's unique selling proposition was that it was a low-cost replacement for cable service, but once the cable channels went away, Sezmi lost its primary selling point. In addition, if subscribers lived too far away from local television transmitters to get a good digital picture, they couldn't use Sezmi, either. Sophisticated industry observers could see that Sezmi was doomed, but consumers didn't necessarily have that insight.

Consumers who bought into Sezmi are stuck with bricks that will be useless for anything except watching YouTube by November 1st. Sezmi isn't offering any refunds for hardware, no matter when it was purchased. Subscription video services fail all the time--for example, Cablevision's VOOM was the first HD satellite TV service, and lasted for approximately two years. The VOOM set-top boxes could also be used as ATSC digital receivers, so a few of them are probably still in use, but most of them ended up in the scrap pile.

The lesson is that consumers should beware when being asked to purchase a set-top box, especially an expensive one. If the company offering the service goes out of business, changes strategic direction or is acquired, its set-top box is likely to become a paperweight. Apple and Roku have the right idea--none of their set-top boxes are priced over $100. It's clear that no one feels any particular responsibility to their customers if they discontinue their services, so caveat emptor.

Adobe pins Flash's future on 3D

Adobe Flash's clock is ticking, and not in a good way. Apple wants it dead, Microsoft is about to make life for it much less comfortable with Windows 8, and Google supports it, but only to get under Apple's skin. The better that browsers and authoring tools that support HTML5 get, the smaller the remaining market space for Flash becomes.

For Flash to remain viable, Adobe has to position it for applications that can't be done well, or at all, with HTML5. It appears that Adobe has decided to focus on 3D applications with Version 11 of Adobe's Flash Player and Version 3 of Adobe AIR, both of which are scheduled for release in early October. Flash 11 has a new GPU-accelerated 3D API called Stage 3D, which should dramatically improve 2D and 3D rendering rates on devices with compatible hardware. Adobe claims that, compared with the current Flash Player's capability to render thousands of non z-buffered triangles at 30 Hz, Flash 11 will be able to render hundreds of thousands of z-buffered triangles at 60 Hz.

Flash is currently very popular for browser-based casual games, but Adobe wants Flash 11 to be used for far more graphically-intensive games, and has signed up EA Interactive, Ubisoft and Zygna to support the new capabilities in their games. The problem, as Wired's Webmonkey site points out, is that WebGL can provide at least the same level of 3D performance in browsers without plug-ins, and WebGL is an industry standard. However, Internet Explorer currently doesn't support WebGL at all, and other browsers have widely varying WebGL performance.

So, Adobe may be able to carve out a niche with Flash for 3D applications, but it's hard to see it as anything more than temporary. Browser developers will be improving their WebGL performance in parallel with increasing their HTML5 compliance. The real test will be how many developers successfully market games written with Stage 3D.

Nikon unveils Nikon 1 EVIL cameras

Nikon finally entered the small-form-factor interchangeable lens camera (sometimes called EVIL) market with a new system, called Nikon 1. The first two members of the Nikon 1 family are the J1 and V1. Both models use a new 1" 10MP CX sensor developed by Nikon (hence the "Nikon 1" name). Both the size and the resolution of the sensor are substantially smaller than the sensors used by Panasonic and Olympus in their Micro Four-Thirds cameras, or by Sony in its NEX-series cameras. The smaller sensor gives the Nikon cameras a larger crop factor (2.7x) than its competition (for example, a 100mm lens on a Nikon 1 camera would be comparable to 270mm.)

The J1 is the entry-level model in the Nikon 1 line. It has an electronic shutter that limits sync speed to 1/60th of a second, but that operates at up to 1/16,000th of a second. It's got a 73-point autofocus system that switches between phase- and contrast-detection to get the best focus under current lighting conditions, and a 3", 460,000 pixel resolution LCD. Its burst rate with adaptive autofocus is 10 fps, and a blazing 60 fps when focus is locked. In video mode, it can record at 1080i60 and 1080p30. It's got lower-resolution slo-mo modes at 400 and 1,200 fps, as well as a somewhat confusing Motion Snapshot mode that records brief clips at 1080p60 but plays them back at 1080p24 for a slow-motion effect. The J1 will ship in the U.S. on October 20th with a 10-30mm lens for $649.95.

The V1 is the "enthusiast" Nikon 1 model. It's positioned by Nikon as the world's smallest camera with both an .47', 1.44MP resolution electronic viewfinder and interchangeable lenses. It has both an electronic and mechanical shutter; the electronic shutter is the same as in the J1, and the mechanical shutter supports sync speeds of up to 1/250th of a second and can operate up to 1/4000th of a second. The V1 also has connections for stereo microphones and a "multi-accessory" port for attaching a speedlight or GPS module. Other than these features, the V1 is functionally identical to the J1. The V1 will also ship in the U.S. on October 20th with a 10-30mm lens for $899.95.

Nikon also announced a range of lenses for the Nikon 1 cameras: The 10-30mm zoom included with the two new cameras, a 30-110mm f3.5/5.6 zoom lens, a 10-100mm f4.5/5.6 power zoom for movies, and a 10mm f2.8 pancake lens. Nikon will also offer the FT-1 F-mount adapter for using conventional Nikkor lenses with Nikon 1 cameras. Prices and availability have not yet been announced.

I have to admit that I'm underwhelmed by the Nikon 1 cameras and lenses, based at least on their specifications. The 1" CX sensor is both substantially smaller and lower-resolution than either the Micro Four-Thirds or APS-C sensors. Nikon compensates to a degree with the camera's hybrid autofocus system and very fast burst rate (up to 60 fps with focus locked), but I doubt that's going to be enough to save these cameras. Nikon says that it's pursuing consumers who want better cameras than point & shoot models, and who want interchangeable lenses without the complexity of DSLRs. The problem is that the new Nikon models don't appear to be significantly smaller, cheaper or easier to use than competitive cameras that take better pictures and are more flexible (although the new hybrid autofocus system is a significant advance). In addition, the big plus of the Nikon 1s, their fast burst rate, is of most use in applications such as sports photography, where image quality is a paramount consideration.

Nikon's new lenses are also fairly slow, especially the power zoom, which negates some of the cameras' depth-of-field advantages. On paper, at least, there's not much about the Nikons that would cause anyone other than a devoted Nikon customer to buy them, rather than buying a Sony, Panasonic or Olympus model.

Windows 8: Destination unknown

Earlier this week, Microsoft formally introduced Windows 8 to its developer community at its Build conference. The new operating system was well received--so much so that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had to caution people who downloaded the developer preview version that it's very early software and should in no way be used for production environments. Windows 8 is, in a way, Microsoft's answer to both iOS and OSX from Apple: It will run on PCs, notebooks and netbooks, like Windows 7, but it will also run on tablets, like iOS. It'll run on Intel processors like Windows 7, but it will also run on ARM processors like iOS. It runs all the Win32 desktop-style applications that Windows 7 does, but it also has a touch-oriented user interface and supports touch-based applications like iOS.

Windows 8's "secret sauce" is a new touch-oriented user interface called Metro. Metro is based on the Windows Mobile 7 operating system's user interface for smartphones, which is in turn based on the now-defunct Zune user interface. It does the sliding, zooming and selecting kinds of things that you'd expect from iOS and Android, but it does it on top of Windows. That represents both an opportunity and a problem.

The opportunity is that one operating system, Windows 8, could service both the legacy PC market and the new tablet market. Most observers believe that Apple will eventually unify iOS and OSX; Microsoft has done it with Windows 8. It's much easier for developers to build and support applications for one operating system instead of two.

Windows 8 supports two different kinds of applications: Win32 and Metro-style. Win32 applications are the programs and user interface elements that we've seen on Windows since Windows 3.1. They've been refined and updated over the years, but a Windows XP user shouldn't have any difficulty using a Win32-style program on Windows 8. Win32 apps are designed for a keyboard and mouse, and will work poorly, or not at all, with a touch interface. Metro-style applications, on the other hand, are all full-screen, use a radically different user interface, and are optimized for touch. You can use a mouse and a keyboard with Metro-style apps, but you probably won't want to do so.

Windows 8 systems will open into the Metro user interface, using a touchscreen. If you want to run a Win32 app, you'll switch back to the old user interface, using a keyboard and mouse. You'll then go back and forth between user interfaces as you switch from program to program. You can configure Windows 8 to always use a Win32-style GUI, but then you'll lose access to the Metro-style apps. That's the problem with running both Win32 and Metro-style applications on the same device.

Apple knew that tablets were going to be used very differently from desktop computers, so it optimized iOS for touch on smartphones and tablets. iOS doesn't try to run OSX-style keyboard-and-mouse applications; it offers similar functionality, but the user interfaces are very different. Windows 8, on the other hand, wants to be equally good at desktop and tablet applications, even though the use cases are very different.

For existing Windows users who want to continue using Win32-style apps, from what Microsoft showed this week, there's not much value in upgrading to Windows 8,  other than cutting down on boot times. Customers who are primarily interested in Metro-style tablet apps will find that app developers are starting from scratch, and it may take years for Microsoft to reach parity with the selection in Apple's iOS App Store. Customers who want to use both types of apps, and switch back and forth, are likely to get frustrated very quickly with dealing with two dramatically different user interfaces.

My suspicion, sitting a year or more away from when Windows 8 formally launches, is that Metro-style apps will be used almost exclusively on tablets, and that desktops, notebooks and netbooks will almost exclusively be used for Win32-style apps, despite Microsoft's goal of getting touch-enabled displays on every kind of computing device. This approach will allow customers to avoid switching between user interfaces, but it won't do much for Microsoft's growth prospects. Windows 8 on conventional PCs and Windows 8 on tablets will represent two different markets, and on the tablet side, Microsoft won't be able to leverage its huge PC installed base. It'll be starting from zero. Given that Apple will probably be on the iPad 4 and Google will be on Android 5 by the time that Windows 8 ships, that's not a good place for Microsoft to be.

Atomos' little solution to a big problem

From the standpoint of getting high-quality video and audio out of a camcorder, either HDMI or HD-SDI will work, but HDMI is a consumer connection--the connector doesn't lock, and it's designed for casual use. SDI, on the other hand, is a professional connection--the connectors lock, and it's designed for much heavier usage than HDMI. There have been converters that input HDMI and output HD-SDI and vice versa, but they've tended to be big and line-powered--not something that you'd want to carry with you wherever you go.

At IBC, Atomos, the Australian video recorder folks, introduced a new product, Connect, that solves the problems with existing converters. The Connect is available in two versions: HDMI to HD-SDI, and HD-SDI to HDMI. Each one is priced at 249 Euros/$349 (U.S.), and is only 42.5mm W x 29 mm H by 72.5mm L. They're powered by a Sony battery and fit on Sony, Canon and Panasonic battery plates, so they can be mounted easily on almost any device. They can also be ganged together, so that multiple converters can share a single external battery.

Atomos' Connect converters can add a HD-SDI interface to any camcorder, make DSLRs work with professional video recorders and switchers, and enable lower-cost HDMI monitors to be used with HD-SDI devices. The company expects to begin shipping the devices worldwide by the end of 2011.

Sony: Getting its act together (at least with cameras and camcorders)

I've pointed out over the last several years the many times that Panasonic has eaten Sony's lunch in the camcorder and camera businesses:

• Panasonic's P2 and SD memory cards were the start of the solid-state, file-based camcorder revolution, while Sony's XDCAM optical disc has largely been a dead-end format.
• Panasonic and Olympus pioneered the big-sensor, small-camera interchangeable lens format with Micro Four-Thirds, while it took Sony several years to get on board with its NEX series of cameras.
• Panasonic and Canon introduced professional-level video to their DSLRs several years ago, while Sony's A77, just released a few weeks ago, is the company's first DSLR with professional-level video.
• It took Sony more than a year to respond to Panasonic's AF100 Micro Four-Thirds-based camcorder, with the F3 and FS100.

Finally, Sony is back in the game in a big way, in three different product lines:

• The new A77 DSLR is a first-rate still camera that can compete with Canon and Panasonic on video as well. It has a 24 megapixel sensor, a 2.4 megapixel OLED electronic viewfinder that's actually much higher resolution than its 920,000 pixel pull-out LCD display, and a 12 fps burst rate. It can record video at 1080p60 (1080p50 in Europe) using AVCHD 2.0 (Panasonic refers to it as AVCHD Progressive), which supports a maximum bit rate of 28mbps, versus 24mbps for previous AVCHD implementations. It also supports live autofocus in video mode. U.S. body-only pruce is $1,399.
• The NEX-7 is Sony's new top-of-the-line EVIL (electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens) camera that competes with Micro Four-Thirds models. It has the same sensor and OLED electronic viewfinder as the A77, in a pocket-sized package. It also records video at 1080p60 using AVCHD 2.0, with the same live autofocus as the A77. Expected U.S. body-only price will be $1,199.
• The NEX-5n replaces the former top-of-the-line NEX-5 EVIL camera. It uses a 16.1 megapixel sensor and doesn't come with an electronic viewfinder; the optional FDA-EV1S viewfinder, which is connected to the top of the camera, has the same OLED display as the NEX-7 and A77. It records video at 1080p60/50 using AVCHD 2.0, and has live autofocus. U.S. body-only price is $699.
• The LA-EA2 adapter allows Alpha-mount lenses to be used with the NEX-series E mount. The adapter supports autofocus on the Alpha lenses. The LA-EA2 is almost as big as the NEX cameras themselves, and it costs $399, but it could be valuable for those NEX-family camera users who want to use Alpha lenses without losing autofocus capabilities.
• The F3 is Sony's lowest-cost digital cinematography camcorder. It uses a Super 35 Exmor CMOS sensor and PL mount for supporting film lenses. It records in 4:2:2 1080p59.94/50, and optionally in 4:4:4 1080p59.94/50, on SxS media. Its U.S. list price is $16,800 without lens.
• Sony's NEX-FS100 is Sony's answer to Panasonic's AF100, with a unique, squared-off form factor and top-mounted electronic viewfinder. It uses the same E-mount lenses as Sony's NEX-family of still cameras, and comes with an 18-200mm zoom lens. The FS100 uses the same Super 35 Exmor sensor as the F3. Like the new NEX cameras, it records video at 1080p60/50 using AVCHD 2.0. The FS100 records on SDHC/SDXC and Sony Memory stick cards, and the optional HXR-FM128 records onto 128GB of flash memory. U.S. list price with lens is $6,550.

For all of Sony's new competitiveness, the company still sometimes makes questionable decisions about product features. For example, the FS100 has dual XLR audio inputs, but only outputs video via HDMI rather than HD-SDI. HDMI connections, which don't lock, are notorious for becoming disconnected at the worst possible time. By comparison, the less-expensive Panasonic AF100 has both HDMI and HD-SDI outputs. Also, the AF100 has built-in neutral density filters, but the FS100 doesn't.

Also, Sony believes that, as a matter of principle, its products are worth more than the competition, even if they're objectively no better. Going back to the FS100-AF100 comparison, Sony's FS100 is about $1,000 more than Panasonic's AF100, even though the AF100 arguably has more professional features than the FS100.

Even given those caveats, however, Sony has clearly gotten back into the game with both still cameras and camcorders. It's good to see the company competing for business instead of resting on its laurels.

Speculation: The game any number can play

Late last week, TechCrunch's MG Siegler reported that he had not only gotten his eyes on a prototype of a new Amazon tablet, but his hands as well. He reported many details about the hardware and software, the price, when it will be announced, and even what kinds of promotions Amazon plans for it. Siegler's story triggered a flood of speculative articles, all primarily based on his description. For example:

• From Forbes:  Amazon Can Become Tablet King With E-Commerce Underwriting
• From The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com Says It Is Testing Website Redesign (Changes, Which Will Roll Out Gradually, Were Made With Tablet Computers In Mind)
• From Wireless World: Amazon's $249 tablet could shake up pay TV business

I take Siegler at his word that he saw and used a prototype of an Amazon tablet, and that he spoke with a source with inside information about Amazon's plans. However, we have no independent verification that the tablet he used is representative of the final product, or that the pricing, availability and promotional details that he got are correct and won't change by the time the product finally ships. Nor do we have any independent verification of what he wrote about a second tablet, or about Amazon's plans for other black & white Kindles.

It's easy (and fun for the whole family) to base articles on a single, unconfirmed story, but they take as fact what is only rumor and hearsay. The problem with piling speculation on top of hearsay is obvious: If the hearsay is incorrect, the speculation based on it is even more incorrect, and the whole pile tumbles down like a badly-constucted Jenga tower.

We know what TechCrunch published. Let's get some independent confirmation of the facts before we start drawing conclusions or determining what the impact will be on the industry. If Siegler is correct, we don't have long to wait before we get confirmation from Amazon itself. There's plenty of time to determine the implications of Amazon's actions once we know the "true facts".