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Microsoft’s Xbox One is promising even more second-screen support than we saw on the Xbox 360. An improvement of the SmartGlass integration we’ve seen pop up on the Xbox 360, Microsoft says it can make your mobile device feel like it was “built” to work with your console. The current SmartGlass app has seen over 10 million downloads, and it looks like Microsoft is aiming for more this time around. It will also be able to screen scrape video, encode it to h.264 and send it over to your second screen, although what will work on which devices is still unknown. What is mentioned in the press release is that it will support multiple devices at once, for multiplayer and shared entertainment. It’s also promising exclusive experiences with its NFL partnership that attach to SmartGlass and Skype integration, so we’ll expect to see more about that in the future.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft

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Google’s Motorola branch isn’t having much success lately in getting patent claims to stick against Microsoft. A few months after the company dropped some ITC claims, the judge in a Seattle contract lawsuit has granted Microsoft’s motion to invalidate 13 of Motorola’s claims across three standards-based patents, all of them linked to H.264 video coding. The individual claims aren’t well-defined enough to hold, Judge James Robart says. The ruling takes most of the thunder out of components in the lawsuit that aren’t directly related to the contract, and could lead to lighter penalties against Microsoft should Google and Motorola win — not that Google has much sway when it’s prevented from seeking bans over standards-based patents.

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Gaming, Microsoft, Google

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Via: Electronista

Source: FOSS Patents

Sony has announced that it’ll release an SDK to 4K developers this month for its recently launched XAVC video format used by the new F5 and F55 CineAlta camcorders. The new specification uses MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video compression, which allows up to 12-bit color depth, 60 fps shooting speed at 4k and 180 fps in HD. So far, fourteen companies including Adobe and Apple have signed on as licensees, and Sony says the format may come to consumer products as well. Details of the program along with an SDK will arrive this month, just in time for a possible Ultra HD onslaught.

Filed under: Cameras, HD, Sony

Sony to release XAVC 4K video spec, licensees include Apple, Adobe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In another face of the ever turning world of patent battles, Reuters reports Microsoft has snagged a victory over Motorola as the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in its favor today. Motorola had obtained an injunction in Germany against Microsoft products — including the Xbox 360 and Windows 7 — based on its h.264 patents back in May, but today the court upheld a previous decision putting enforcement on hold because of Microsoft’s existing lawsuit against Moto for breach of contract. Microsoft’s push to leverage its patents into licensing payouts from manufacturers of Android devices have seen the two at each other’s throats since at least 2010, when the folks from Redmond lodged an ITC complaint over nine patents and followed up with another suit accusing Motorola of charging unfair license fees for its patents. Motorola fired back with its own pair of lawsuits — all of this a year before we heard it would be acquired by Google — and the battle was on. Whether or not this moves us any closer to any resolution remains to be seen, but at least Bavarian gaming consoles are safe, for now.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft, Google

US Appeals court rules Motorola can’t enforce injunction against Microsoft in Germany… again originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All of that squabbling over H.264 may be rendered moot in the near future. The Motion Picture Experts Group (better known as MPEG) has just let us know that it was quietly drafting a new video standard while everyone was on summer vacation last month: H.265, also called High Efficiency Video Coding, promises to squeeze video sizes with double the efficiency of H.264. As you might imagine, this could lead either to a much smaller video footprint for bandwidth-starved mobile users or a hike to image quality with the same size as before. Imagine fast-loading HD streaming on 4G, or cable TV without all the excess compression, and you’ve got the idea. Ericsson Research visual technology lead Per Fröjdh anticipates H.265 coming as soon as 2013, when our smartphones and tablets are most likely to play it first. TV and other areas might have to wait, although Fröjdh is offering a consolation prize — he’s teasing a separate MPEG project that could give us glasses-free, compressed 3D video as a standard by 2014.

Continue reading MPEG drafts twice-as-efficient H.265 video standard, sees use in phones as soon as 2013

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Software

MPEG drafts twice-as-efficient H.265 video standard, sees use in phones as soon as 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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