Cellphone Motion Picture Technology: Part 3

As cellphones increase their power, it is only a matter of time before professional applications leak down onto these devices. Apple's iPhone is a prime target for such devices, as Apple computers are used by many professionals in the arts. There have been demo applications of DigiDesign's famous Pro Tools that have been created for usage of the iPhone, which would be a great tool for music producers who are trying to mike a setup in a studio.



Furthermore, there have been hidden code in Apple's latest iPhone 3.0 Beta release that are evident that a video editing application is being created for the iPhone platform. Most likely this will be a simple application like a Mobile iMove, though the future will most likely have a Final Cut Mobile running on an iPhone. A quick and easy tool like that would be a director and editors best friend, as it would allow them to quickly browse through their footage and cut out any of the bad takes before returning to their main workstation.

LCD, Plasma and now OLED

OLED (Organic light-emitting diode), is a display technology using man-made, carbon-based molecules that emit light when charged with electricity. What seperates the OLED from the LCD or Plasma, are the components that produce the picture on the screen. The prototypes of an OLED are as thin as a credit card because the pixels are able to produce their own light with nothing behind the screen. With LCD's you need either a fluorescent or LED lamp to illuminate the pixels, and Plasma's need compartments of electrically charged gas. OLED's are all around better than the existing LCD's and Plasma's but will come at a higher cost. The release date is set for 2012.

500 Movies on One Disc!

General Electric believes that in the near future we will be able to store 500 of your very own favorite movies onto one single disc. Regular CD's, DVD's, and Blu-ray discs only use one dimension, but GE's holographic data storage adds two more dimensions to the information. This allows us the ability to store more information onto one disc. To read more about this new technology click on the link below.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518118,00.html

Movie Renting in the Future...

We have already seen many of the smaller video stores close up and now we are seeing the bigger ones doing the same. Today many people are finding better ways to rent movies like Netflicks, RedBox, and movies on demand. Eventually Redbox will not exist because in the future everyone will be able to easily download movies right to their televisions either by On Demand or Netflix. This means DVD players will not be needed in the future. We are seeing this already starting now, but in the future everyone will browsing the list of movies on demand and you wont see any video stores around. It will be like video stores never existed.

Mini Laptop

Struggling to carry around your big bulky laptop? Then why don't you try out the new and improved super mini laptop, brought to you by a Korean company UMID. As you can see from the pictures, it's as small as a cell phone and weighs in a little over a half a pound. It comes equiped with 1.33GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and up to 32GB of storage. There's no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future we will be done with laptops and be completley converted to the mini laptop.

Fireworks!

Fireworks have been around for centuries and have only gotten cooler. This is an art limited to a few people only because this business you need to be an expert, and know the experts. If you started up your own fireworks company, you'd most likely fail, or blow yourself up--good luck. Two families that stake claim as being the "first" in fire works are the Zambelli family and the Grucci family, both have a crazy list of credentials.

From the original Chinese recipe where gun power was shot into the air and then exploded to the secretly guarded family recipe’s that are responsible for miraculous chandelier effects and other numerous shapes that we’re surprised by year after year. In America, its become a summertime tradition and used anytime to celebrate.

Today we find fireworks at amusement parks at closing time, sporting events, festivals, concerts, and holidays—notably New Years and July4th. It isn’t uncommon to have a pyrotechnic display set to a sound track, to add an audio dimension to the luminous visual display. The complexities continue to grow 7 the competition is fierce by being so limited. However that’s only to benefit us who just watch the mid-night madness of fireworks.

Hot New Toys

What is going on with toys these days? It seems they are under the mystical power of an evil wizard with all of the lights and sounds and the things that they project. What happened to a wooden/ plastic/ or metal frame with two axels and four wheels that make a car, thats just not good enough now. Just to get a toy to work--well lets getting it out of the box where you will already have to own a plasma torch to rip it from the grips of those crazy twisty ties. The packaging for these things is absurd, no wonder 99% of material we purchase is thrown away in 6months.

To operate the contraption you'll need some sort of activation code which you can purchase online for an additional fee, otherwise, its a fancy lookin block with wheels (or another feature) except more expencive and more like to break...

Who knows what crazy robot or virual reality device is going to find its way into the corners of living toy stockpile or in the catacombs of basebent toyboxes left unused to collect dust...

Where are the Comic Books

The most awesome characteristic of a comic book is its sheer amount of imagination! There is a credible literary element and a vibrant visual element also, you cannot lack creativity and have a successful comic book. But are they becoming obsolete? There are countless movies today based on comic books, Batman, Superman, X-men, you name it there's been a movie in the past decade or so. This begs the question, are movie makers losing their creativity & stealing the work—via licensing agreement—or is this the way these characters are going to be introduced to the next generation?.

This is an intriguing thought as an entire archetype of people, the nerd-oaf who frequents the comic book store ran by the archetypical fat, long hair, bearded guy we see on the Simpsons has to merge or adapt.

ARTICLE: http://comics.ign.com/articles/629/629984p1.html

Lost in Transmission

Lost in Transmission By Michael Endelman
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1117175,00.html

This is an interesting articing pointing out some of the affects of the numerous commercials and repeated play of songs on the top FM radio stations. In additions to the same song always being on and commercials, there ar other problems not always noticed directly by the audiance, such as payola (pay to play) where labels bride stations to play songs, hence we hear them all the time. Below are a few excerpts for you to check out that i found pertinant.. the article is quite long

Mark Wallace a 23-year-old graphic designer from Quinby, Va., loves music, but he couldn't be less interested in what's available on the airwaves these days. ''I can't even remember the last time I listened to FM radio,'' he says. His complaints? ''The annoying ads and those constant repeats. And if you change the channel, you just hear the same song on another station.''

A typical Top 40 station has a total playlist of fewer than 200 songs — less than halfof what it was a decade ago. the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which led to a huge consolidation of radio holdings. ''Consolidation has led to increased homogenization of what gets played,'' says FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. ''It's harder for local and new artists to get on the air. labels are bribing stations to get records on the radio.

The Future Role of Gaming Systems

"Games have the potential to subsume almost all other forms of entertainment media. They can tell us stories, offer us music, give us challenges, allow us to communicate and interact with others, encourage us to make things, connect us to new communities, and let us play." - Will Wright, game designer and creator of the Sims franchise

It is increasingly clear that games and interactive technology will be driving the way people consume content in the future. Each year the medium is taking a rising share of consumer time and wallet from traditional media. Games are becoming an engine for creating new global entertainment franchises with crossover properties in film, TV, and the Internet. In short, games are redefining the boundaries of entertainment.

Some facts:
PWC projects the worldwide video game market is projected to become a $46 billion market in 2010, with the overall fastest growth in the US of all entertainment markets

More than 8 million people around the world are paying $10-15 per month to play World of Warcraft. The average player spends more than 20 hours a week in the game world

More than 100 million PlayStation 2 consoles have been sold worldwide

Over 5 million subscribers can access 1000 hours of video content from CBS, MTV, Warner Bros, TBS, Lions Gate, and Paramount on Xbox Live
Current and future leaders in the entertainment industry will need to be familiar with this ascendant medium. Our panelists will help us understand the following key issues:

Entrepreneurial opportunities in games

Convergence of games, animation, film/TV

Managing creative teams

New forms of gameplay

THe key thing to take into account here, ina holistic sense is that with the more technology we have available, then more mediums will become available for use. Gaming systems, and cell phone do many of the same thing. You can play video games on a phone, right? And you can have conversation via video game systems, with as good, or better quality than actual phones & may invlove numerous people--puts the 3-way connection to shame.

Future Concerts

(Picture taken from Flikr.com)

I’m sure you all heard of the Hannah Montana 3D concert movie and also the Jonas Brothers 3D Concert movie. If you haven’t basically they turned the live concerts into a 3D movie. All the concerts were sold out and showings in the first week in theaters were sold out or close to being sold out. In future years I believe more music artists will too turn their concerts into movies. This would allow many people to see sold out concerts on the big screen. Also it would allow people that cannot afford to buy tickets to the live concerts. The down side is you don’t get the feel of being at a live concert. Will ticket sales of the live concerts go down?

HD Cellphones: The Final Chapter

Finally, there needs to be a way in order to get the HD content off of the phone and onto a HDTV. Usually, cumbersome cables are involved in this process, creating quite a mess as people are stepping over cables, and one has to be right in front of the TV so that the cable can reach both devices. That impractical setup will be a thing of the past within the next three to four years, as wireless HD technology works it's way into mobile devies and HDTV sets. This technology will allow for one of just have their phone in range of the HDTV set, and would wirelessly stream the footage to the set without the need of cables.

This is the final step for complete autonomy in HD cellphones. The ability to shoot, edit, and wirelessly stream the HD content onto other devices could be a paradigm shift for consumers within the next 10 to 15 years.

HD Cellphones: Part 2

A good quality picture on a camera is directly tied to (on a digital camera) the sensor, as well as the lens being used. Most small camera's that are on cellphones and other mobile devices are not equipped with powerful lenses like those on regular cameras. Several years ago, a company patented a type of cellphone lens that used no power, and could function like the human eye, though it never reached production, though I feel this technology is due for a breakthrough within the next few years. It can zoom and auto focus, features that are DESPERATELY needed in order to create decent video recordings on cellular phones.

HD Cellphones: Part One

Cellular phones have proliferated as wonderful convergence devices. In reality, cell phones are not phones, especially in terms of smart phones (Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre), they are computers that can place calls over wireless cellular internet. As an iPhone user, I can attest that the phone program is the weakest feature of the device, which is quite ironic. As these devices become even more and more homogenized and converged, there will be a lessening demand for the other dedicated prodcuts. The first way in which cellphones will do this to pocketable HD camcorders is through the future advacement of small HD camera sensors that will be imbeded into these smartphones. Development has already began on the incorportation of 12MP (megapixel) sensors capable of 720p HD playback. Having the ability for HD playback is the first step towards being able to record that quality video on mobile devices

the future!

the future of motion picture technology will be influenced by the proliferation of HD capable cell phones, both in terms of recording and playback.(and due to that this entire blog post is being composed on my iPhone via text message). as cell phone camera sensors become more and more powerful they could rise up and overtake the market space of dedicated camcorders, at least for the average consumer. Another trend of the future is the distribution of mot ion pictures, which is more of a short-term look ahead of what Comcast in plans for newly released films. Finally, the increasing reality of CGI technology will eventually lead to completely photo-realistic visuals that will make it difficult to discern whether the movie they are watching is animated or not.

More posts will follow shortly...

--kane

(this message was originally texted to blogger, but it arrived in split up messages, so I do not recommend the text message method for posting!)

Ultra-thin LCD TV of the future!

Sharp, a TV manufacturer designed a new LCD TV in Japan. This prototype only needs one cable and that is for the power. Overall I think this TV is really nice. It’s hard to think that it is only 2cm thick. The only problem with it I see is that the signal can be a cut off if something gets in its way, so it might be difficult with little kids. Watch the video and check it out!

Digital Cinema: Hard Drives replacing Film Reels

The digital media revolution is just now hitting cinemas around the county, as slowly, but surely, these facilities replace the old film projectors with the state of the art 2K and 4K digital cinema projectors. Powered by Texas Instrumetns DLP technology, these projector systems can display uncompressed digital files of films in quality that is 2-4 times more clear than standard HDTV, as well as in 3D. The setup also replaces the need for intricate and bulky film reels, as the films are stored on hard drives or optical media (Blu-Ray discs or other high capacity optical discs). The chance for these files to fall into the wrong hands still is a risk, though there lies the possiblity of using the Internet to transfer the films to the projector system. However, that probably will not happen for sometime as current Internet speeds would make that quite a time consuming process.

Here are articles on recent digital cinema progress as well as a presentation by Sony on their 3D 4K resolution digital cinema projectors.

Film Editing: Non-Lnear Editing Systems

The expanding power and flexibility of modern computers has allowed for the video editing process to transition from using a flatbed (physically cutting and pasting the footage) to using a relatively inexpensive computer and editing software. While these technologies have been available to the professional market for over decade, a market has opened up for professional level editing software running on consumer-grade equipment, opening up the creative field of video editing to more people. The most popular editing software for its abundance of features to its realatively small price is Apple's Final Cut Studio. Attached is a link to the site and the services that Final Cut offers for video editors.

The Future Games Systems

There has been so many game systems throughout the years. Everytime a new one comes out its hard to think what will they come out with next. This is a video of different ideas of future game systems.

Cinema without Film--Digital Cinematography

The precision and relative simplicity that digital technology offers has finally caught up with the film industry. Many cinematographers and directors have resisted the transition to film-less cameras due to poor low light performance, or a shallow depth of field, in addition to the resentment that digital files did not have the "film look". Digital cinema has made great advances in recent years, with some of the newest cameras offering superior 4K resolutions, solid build quality, and the same features from all standard film cameras, not to mention a competitive price. Furthermore, using digital cinema cameras allows creative minds to record right to disk, bypassing the necessity for rolls and rolls of film and processing costs, which are all time consuming activities. Film-less cameras can have their footage imported directly into the non-linear workstation, for instant editing, especially when that workstation and editing software could be a modern laptop. Attached is a link to the outstanding RED ONE Digital cinema camcorder.

(Editors note: These cost around $17,000, when you include the lens, 4K sensor, body, and other essential parts, and if I had the money I'd buy one in a heart beat!)

"Present Theme: Digital Cinema"

My articles for the past highlighed the primitive beginnings of motion picture technology, starting at the very basics of persistance of motion, all the way to the first modern 24p film camera. Currently, the film industry is in the middle of several huge transitions. One is the transition from recordring to celluiod film stock to recording straight to hard drive. Second, is the transition from flatbed editing systems to non-linear computer editing workstations. Finally, the way in which films are shown in theaters are going through a digital transition, as more and more theaters are being outfitted with digital projectors, projecting films at 2K-4k resolutions (2-4x the quality of 1080p HDTV). The devices and software show in the following posts will be based around these important transitions.

Apology

To the viewers of this blog: my deepest apology for not having my my posts on time. I'm sure many of you were looking for posts to comment on this week, and you were severely limited due to the absence of my posts. Not to make any excuses, but with all of the craziness with the presentation preparation, the blog posts slipped my mind. Expect them to be up ASAP.

Cartoon Family Sit-Coms--AKA shows on Fox

The Simpsons, formed by Matt Groening, is an American animated sitcom for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a humorous sketch of a middle class American lifestyle characterized by its eponymous family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is places in the story bound town of Springfield, and makes fun of many aspects of the human condition including American culture, society, and television.

Newer, and more popular, Family Guy is an animated American television sitcom, created by Seth MacFarlane, is a staple of Fox Sunday nights. The Show features a strangely dysfunctional family in the town of Quahog.

Jumbrotron / Phanavision

A Jumbo Tron is a huge television, developed by Sony, is typically used in sports stadiums and performance venues to display close up shots of the occurrences on the field or in the crowd or ads and various other videos. " A trademark of Sony, "JumboTron is used to express assorted styles of large video screens. Each Manufacturer has their own name for their own version of the large screen. North America’s largest high-definition display is a Daktronics ProStar. University of Texas Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium hosts the Godzillatron.

When the philies Moved into their new stadium they also got a new video system. Largest LED video display board in the National League, 39'5" x 69'7"; 2,759 square feet; supplied by VMagic division of Venue1.

This wonderful public television hosts the infamous kiss-cam

Satellite Radio

A satellite radio or subscription radio (SR) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals.

For now, satellite radio offers a meaningful alternative to ground-based radio services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services, such as Sirius, XM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go.

As of July 29, 2008 Sirius XM claims over 18.5 million subscribers.[1] One critical factor for the success of satellite radio is the deployment of in-car receivers. Sirius XM has attempted to convince automakers to equip vehicles with their receiver.

Entertainment Centers, no more

During the days of the cathode ray TV, which emmitted cathode rays from a tube, hence boob tube, TVs were size just right to fit into what we call an antertainment center, which would also house a vcr--eventaully dvd-players, stereo equipment speaker. It would also store movies & hide the wiring for the products.

TOday i nthe day oh HI-Def TV, its no longer as practicle. Walk into a furniture store and you'll see an much lower amount of these things, most of them just left over. Today these flat HD TVs are mounted on a wall of just a stand since space lo longer availible because its taken up by the TV

TiVo

TiVo is the pioneer of digital video recording. TiVo allows people to search and record movies and shows. You can rewind, fast forward, and pause what you are watching. You can season pass your favorite shows. Now you can download movies off of Amazon and send the movies directly to your TiVo. TiVo does so much you can check it out at www.tivo.com. TiVo has changes the way we watch TV. Advertising on commercials is hurting because now people don't have to the commercials. I have had TiVo for about 4 years now and I honestly can’t stand watching TV normally. It’s great I can pause shows when I need to and fast forward through commercials.

YouTube

YouTube was first introduced to the community in February 2005. It was created by three former PayPal employees and later bought out by Google. I think it's safe to say that almost everyone has been on YouTube atleast once to view some type of video in the past four years of existance. The type of technology used to provide us with this immense amount database of videos is the Adobe Flash Video. The website is easy to use and is pretty much compatible to all computers. Videos avaliable to us are almost endless while including movie clips, TV clips, music videos, and even blogging clips. Ofcourse, in the past year many copyright issues have comes across YouTube's path enabling them to share some videos, but it still has alot of entertainment available to the public.

Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray disc is still fairly new to our community, but has had great impact toward the entertainment industry. With Blu-Ray's short existence they have already sent many companies packing and looking for new business. These companies are mainly producers of HD DVD players and recorders. So how did Blu-Ray put their enemies out of competition so early? Well, there are many technical ways of explaining how they did it, but to save you all from the over loading information that will do nothing but cause headaches, I will put it in simplest form. Blu-Ray, simply used a blue laser(Therefore it's name "Blu-Ray") operating at shorter wavelengths in order to make it possible to store more information on the CD. It's almost impossible to describe what the picture looks like, but it is truly remarkable. I urge you to witness this at first hand for yourself and let me know what you think.

Microsoft: Xbox 360

Microsoft first introduced the Xbox 360 in May of 2005. This was a huge outbreak to video game consoles of the seventh generation, and showed us what our technology is capable of creating. The Xbox 360 comes equiped with many different features depending on which model you were to go with. There are three types of models offered to us, which are Xbox 360 Arcade, Pro, and Elite. The Arcade addition is the lowest grade model of the three and includes a 256MB flash, with 5 Xbox arcade games. Next, is the Pro addition, which offeres two types of memory, 20 or 60GB, both vary in price. Last, is the best avaliable addition, the Elite. The Elite addition is the most expensive at $400, and provides you with the most amount of memory at 120GB.
With the release of the Xbox 360, it created a mainstream for other competeting companies to relinquish their products such as, the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3.

IMAX Theaters

More and more IMAX theaters are being built. IMAX stands for Image MAXimum. The traditional version of an IMAX theater has the capacity to record and display images of a greater size and resolution. There are different types of IMAX theaters which include IMAX Dome (using a tilted dome screen), IMAX 3D and IMAX Digital. These theaters are being built all around the world. The top Picture is the IMAX Dome, the second is IMAX Digital, and the last picture is IMAX3D.

iPod

Apple first introduced the iPod on October of 2001. With the creation of the iPod it provided a huge source of entertainment to the public. It wasn't any normal electronic that played MP3's, it had more to offer than just that. Apple offers many different models now of the iPod, the big difference between which model you choose would be the actual size of the iPod (Classic, Mini, Nano, Shuffle, and Touch). Next you would have to choose the memory size that would fit your needs, these sizes can range anywhere from 160GB - 1GB. Below, I have left you with a video to watch of the first ever introduction of the Ipod, presented by no other than Steve Jobs.

Netflix

This video just talks about Netflix and how it works. Personally I think Netflix is a great idea. My brother just got it for me as a holiday present. It was unlimited movies for 3 months. Now I changed the plan to just 2 movies a month because of school and its only $4.99 a month! The unlimited one movie at a time is just $8.99. This is way cheaper than renting one movie at a video store. There are so many packages you can choose from that fits your life style! On the down side this concept is putting many video stores out of business. Do you think it’s good or bad?

Nintendo

nintendo has touched many of our lives in some way. My childhood memories consist of a powerpad, similar to a DDR pad, used to perform track n field events for the system, the duckhunt game & of course constantly blowing into the console & cartraige until they finally operated. There has been a fierce competition between various video game console makers, each rying their own thing. Today nintendo stake claim to the inventive & inique Wii. Nintendo will always be present in the videogame world even as other come and go.

GO DJ...

One of the earliest forms of entertainment when it comes to music and partying would have to be the Jukebox. In 1889 the first modern Jukebox was introduced in Palais Royale Salon in San Francisco. It was an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph and accepted nickles to listen to your favorite hits. It was also refereed to as the nickle-in-the-slot machine and in it's first six months of operation it earned over $1000!!!

Phillips First Video Cassett Recorder

Below I have posted a Youtube video of the first Phillips Video Cassett Recorder ever. The video includes different specs about the VCR and it's truely amazing to see how our technology has improved since then. I apologize for the audio, the guy in the video is a little hard to hear.

America's National Pastime

Americans started playing the game of baseball first in the early 1800's. In the year 1845 the first modern baseball field was created by a man named Alexander Joy Cartwright. Him along with the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club created the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball. The first game recorded was in 1846 when the Knickerbocker's lost to the the New York Baseball Club. Below is a link for you to click on and view a picture of the Knickerbocker team.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.19cbaseball.com/images/new-york-knickerbockers-baseball-team.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.19cbaseball.com/image-new-york-knickerbockers-baseball-team.html&h=580&w=730&sz=100&tbnid=At20iKD5ncyKYM::&tbnh=112&tbnw=141&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnew%2Byork%2Bknickerbocker%2Bbaseball%2Bclub%2Bpicture&hl=en&usg=____gd0WWxq_nTZ_17mJOk5FsHc2E=&ei=RaypSfGQHovltgeErNn5Dw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&cd=1

Pinball Machines

The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible. This game kept people busy for hours. What happened to this game it is slowly disappearing into the past. You see fewer and fewer pinball machines around today.

Early History of Radio

This is a cool website that has a lot of information about the early history of radio in the U.S.

http://earlyradiohistory.us/

Old-Computers.com

This is a cool website I found that has a listing of a lot of old models of computers. They have a description for each that includes everything you would ever want to know about old computer models. The website also includes descriptions for old video game systems and old pong games. Its pretty cool, check it out.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp?st=3

1984 Pioneer Laserdisc demo with Devo

Old video about the original Laser disc. It is a store demo video talking about how much better the laser disc is compared to VHS. They even got Ray Charles to talk about it.

Old Recording of Edison talking about his Phonograph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Advertising_Record.ogg

Just click play

Sony Bravia Commercial: Zoetrope

The embedded video is a European advertisement for Sony's Bravia HDTV line, which references the moving picture's beginnings with the zoetrope.

Persistance of Motion and the Zoetrope

There were very basic moving picture devices in existence decades before the creation of Edison's and the Lumière brothers' creations. The zoetrope, while completely rudimentary, is the earliest example of an optical illusion that would give way to motion pictures. This device relied on the optical illusion "persistence of motion" that seemingly creates a moving picture when a series of photographs taken in succession are spun at a quick speed. Click HERE to learn more about the Zoetrope.

Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe

While Edison was the first in the States to pioneer in motion picture technology, the Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, had been at work in France with their own motion picture device: the Cinématographe. This device, which both recorded and projected back the moving images, was confined to one easily portable box. The portability and flexibility gave it major advantages over Edison’s Kinetoscope, which was a stationary cabinet-like playback device, incapable of recording moving pictures to celluloid film.

Click HERE to see more information on the Cinematographe, and HERE for additional information on the Kinetoscope.

Video Game Consoles of the Past

Video games have been around for years, dating all the way back 1972 when the first ever console was released, The Magnavox Odyssey. Although it is nothing compared to the consoles available to us today, it was a great form of entertainment for all ages and everyone couldn't wait to get their hands on it. The Magnavox Odyssey started the video gaming world that our society has become so addicted too and many consoles have been released since then. Some consoles that have been released after the Odyssey include, The Atari, Mattel Intellivision, Vectrex, Nintendo, and many more. Below, I've posted a video that I found on Youtube of different commercials advertising for video game consoles of the past. Many of them are humorous and you may actually remember some of these videos from back when you were a youngster. Enjoy.

The "Late Nite" talk show...

With the upcoming switch in NBC's late night line-up, this is a pertinent time to discuss what has gone on in past late night programming.

Late night television started out in the 1950's with variety shows such as a show hosted by Steve Allen called--you guessed it--"The Variety Show." Others would include the Ed sullivan show, these shows hosted popular celebs of their day, but weren't on as late as todays late night talk shows.

Steve Allen Host the first late night talk show called, "Tonight". This is the show that evolved into "The Tonight Show" Which Johnny Carson hosted for thirty years making the show a staple of network programming.

Jay Leno was a frequent guest host on Carson's show, meanwhile, David Letterman hosted the program following Carson, "Late Nite" with David Letterman--now hosted by Conan O'Brian who will, very soon, pass it off to Jimmy Fallon.

Carson Wanted Letterman to replace him & Letterman expected this to happen; however NBC announced that Leno was to fill in the "Tonight Show" void, causing a well known fued between Leno & Letterman.

Electric Guitar: Then & Now

In the early 20th century live musical performances for entertainment purposes didn't usually exceed an audience size that required manufactured amplification. Usually "big bands" from the 20s produced enough sound & volume to fill the room & of course orchestras could fill large halls, but the guitar just didn't have the "umph".

It's interesting to see the struggles players went through to make an effective sound. Perhaps t he reason the electric guitar has a rebellious reputation is because ever since its inception it has been undergoing many changes & suffering the influences of innovation to improve it—improvement equals change & change translates to a rebellious attitude.

This kinda goes with the the video on drive in movies I posted below. This link is a website on the history of drive in movies through the years. Its an interesting website. I really think they need to start bringing back drive in movies. I think it would be just a great experience! What do you think?

http://www.driveintheater.com/history/

Drive In Movies Memories...

This is a short video of memories of the drive in movies. I really think they should bring these back.

Edison's First Motion Picture

Here is the first footage that Edison ever recorded onto celluloid film. While it is extremely short and simplistic for modern days, this was revolutionary for the time period.

New Spinal tap material...

The fictional band Spinal Tap, the subject of a 1980's movie features the trials and tribulations of a band and is quite the knee slapper even if you do not enjoy this genre of music. And anytime they're mentioned one shold immedialtly begin thinkin in a satirical manner otherwise, the subject matter just won't make much sense. You can find more information and a video here:
http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/61983169

Television Evolution

This video shows how far TVs have come!

The Beginnings of Motion Picture

Film as we know it in America was started by Thomas Edison and company over in New Jersey. While they were not the first to experiment with motion picture, they were among the first to do so in America. At first, Edison did not really know what to do with motion pictures. For instance, the first major achievement in motion pictures was capturing the motion of a man sneezing. It was not for another couple years until they began realizing that stories could be told and recreated through the technology of motion picture. I am linking a great site about Edison and his team and more information on their film making, and some of my upcoming blog posts will have embedded video clips of some of the early motion pictures.

Click HERE for the website on Thomas Edison's motion pictures...