Went today to the videoforum 2004. Wasnt as varied as last years, but there were some highlights.
Oplayo.com, the first company to do streaming video over 2.5g. The interesting thing is that it will work with almost any colour Java or Symbian phone. Which there are about 10 million in the UK now, I believe? Note funding for Oplayo is from Siemans and Nokia. Hummm… Anyway it works and works quite well with about 12secs to download a 1-2min clip they claim? Flix is a company which make a living off the Oplayo technology, they usually charge around 2 pounds per stream. Which works out to be 50 percent to Flix, 20 – 6 percent for the content creator or owner and then 17.5 percent for the operater. They also say the user GRPS charge should only cost 5 – 10 pence and the 2 pounds will be charged to the users phone bill. Oh they use MVQ video codec for there streams. And there is a kind of directory wml page interface available for use too.
In the sound section I found a nice GNU/Linux audio project called Augnula. Its made for Redhat and Debian but will work on most Linux boxes. It just a matter of getting the hardware to support the software.
Talking about Linux, I passed by the AMD stand and got a spookly but nice light up green AMD pen. But finally got my hands on a AMD 64 Laptop and saw a 4 CPU Operton server running. Wow it was pumping out hot air, plus it needed 3 PSU's to keep it stable! Not for desktop use I'm sure. Interesting thing is that all the laptops out there at the moment are standard desktop AMD 64 chips not the AMD 64 Mobile chip, so they dont last as long on battery, even though the chips have a neat power saving feature. Also the AMD 64 regular chips will change to 939 pin and the Operton to 940 pin in the near future. At the moment the regular chips are using 736 pin or something like that. So who knows what will happen to the FX range?
On the hardware front I finally got to play with a Korg Kaoss Pad. If you've never had a play its well worth having a go. Too expensive for me, but one funky tool. Specially now it does audio and video effects… Thing also worth mentioing is the Alesis Fx's. The Air Fx and Air synths allow you to control them without touching them, you basicly wave your hand over the top of it to control it. And it works really well. Almost as good as the Kaoss pad. While the ModFX's are very cheap FX tools which can be chained together to make a complete setup. Considered buying one if I was that much into making music just to play with while out and about. There very cute too… Didnt see the Pioneer DVJ-x1 though…
