Author Archives: Multimedia Mike

Cribbed Microsoft Media Code

Okay folks, let’s get a few things clear here: Yes, we all know that some official source code for a few of Microsoft’s A/V codecs made it into the wrong hands and is now floating around the internet. Understand that you are not l33t h4X0r if you happen to receive this file. Also, quit sending it to me. I do not want it. I delete it upon receipt. I may have to implement a special mail filter to deal with it.

Realize that this could taint us. I have no problem with ripping open a publically-available binary decoder to discover an algorithm inside (and if they happen to leave the debug symbols compiled in, oops, file that under “their problem” category).

If it makes you feel any better, there are some people who have already glanced at the code and discovered that it covers algorithms that we have already largely reverse engineered, a long time ago, via legitimate methods.

Microsoft should come up with bogus, red herring source code samples and periodically “leak” them, just to give the -ahem- “hacker underground” something to salivate over and feel special about.

…sigh… and I had really hoped to avoid creating a legal/ethical category for this blog…

Sony Announces Glorified Post-Processing Chip?

From the Internet Movie Database Studio Briefing, Sony is planning to unveil a chip that will perform image postprocessing on a normal television signal in order to make it look like a HDTV signal:

Sony Brings HDTV-Like Quality to Ordinary TV — At a Price

Sony has unveiled a new settop processor called the Qualia 001 Creation Box…is a microchip that sharpens the edges of objects within an image…priced at $5,080.

This is not the first time I have heard about such a product. I saw an ad in a home A/V magazine a few months ago for a set top box that could perform 6 types of post-processing on the input video signal. I think the price tag was in the neighborhood of $3,500. Just for some well-known mathematical filters probably implemented in a standard Texas Instruments DSP.

Bad Fluffy Multimedia Deployment

On a recent visit to the FlatIron Crossing in Colorado, the first thing that greeted me was a large, hanging widescreen television with a PC BIOS start up screen imploring the user to remove any system disks and press any key to boot the computer. Another hanging screen nearby showed a Windows XP login screen. These screens were scattered throughout the shopping center and luckily, many of them were showing what they were supposed to be showing, I suppose. The regular presentation was some rather choppy video that made me wonder if the video stream was being piped in via a constrained 115Kbit/sec serial cable.

I do not even want to guess how much it cost to deploy dozens of these widescreen, flat-panel monitors all over the building, or what the underlying justification was. And how are they administered? Is there actually one PC driving each monitor? I understand that 1 PC driving the whole show would be unappealing as all the monitors would be in complete sync for an eerie, techno-dystopian effect. Perhaps 1 PC is driving 3-5 monitors?

Then there is the potential for misuse. I hope the back office with the PCs is well-secured. The program running these video files ad nauseum could probably be easily subverted to show anything. One unlocked door and a prankster with a CD-ROM of some choice cuts from the internet “adult content” community could turn family-friendly shopping on its ear.

Then again, perhaps the video streams are being transmitted via DSL from some central office, hence the quality.

Now that I think about it, I was probably paying more attention to the multitude of monitors than any other patron in the entire mall.