SCART doesn’t seem to be utilized widely in Australia. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but in Europe it’s the king of interconnects. Maybe that’s the reason that Spreadshirt don’t ship to Australia (or the US), they think that because our cultures haven’t embraced SCART we just won’t get their cool iconography. Well I’ve got news for you Spreadshirt. SCART is underground in the southern hemisphere. You start shipping down to us and you’ll be streetwear before you know it.

European readers: You should buy this shirt, because I can’t.

via qbus

The blogosphere this week is all abuzz about the supposedly desire-inducing Upravlator. The awkwardly-named hardware comes from Art Lebedev, the mysterious designer who first promised the Optimus Keyboard, a unique “design concept” with tiny color displays under each key. That indeed sounds cool, but instead, after months of delays and promises, the shipping product turned out to be the Optimus Three, with three little displays that double as buttons. Full keyboard with displays: interesting. Three display buttons with no real function: erm? Instead of spending about US$150 on an Optimus Three, why not a Nintendo DS Lite? Which do you think would be more useful?

This week, we get the Upravlator. Imagine a powerful interactive piece of hardware that connects to your computer’s video port and dynamically displays, in full color, everything from interface widgets to graphics and video to dynamic Web content, all completely customizable for your own needs. Sounds unbelievably useful, right? Good thing we already have such a device: it’s called a monitor. Want touch input? It’s called a touchscreen monitor. Now take that monitor, divide it up into a tiny 4×3 grid, eliminating a significant portion of its usable space. Replace the full resolution of the touchscreen with 12 buttons (thousands of levels of resolution reduced to a dozen). Put it in a big bulky case, wait until 2007 to ship it (presumably for some enormous price), and require developers to rewrite software to use it. Now you’re getting the picture:

Upravlator Product Announcement [artlebedev.com official site]
The Upravlator unveiled [DVguru]
Art Lebedev explains Upravlator to five year olds, no one else [Engadget]
(and, like a zillion other blogs)

Worst of all, the Upravlator takes up lots of desk real estate and a free VGA port — two things better dedicated to a real monitor, especially when touchscreen monitors are coming down in price.

The dynamic keyboard remains a cool product. It may come in at an astronomical price, but the concept is good: take the physical feedback and ease of a great hardware input device (keyboard) and add dynamic visuals to make it more flexible. By contrast, the Upravlator and the Optimum Mini Three are useful neither as displays nor as input devices and actually reduce efficiency. We’ll wait for the Optimus-113 keyboard, if it can actually ship.

Don’t be too sad, though. You want gadget lust? Chumby’s got your gadget lust. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this homebrewed, open source, hackable gadget soon, because Team CDMo desperately wants one right now. Let’s compare:

I’m sure some CDMotion readers must be wondering if I actually own a DV camera considering the stop-motion and still camera focus these last couple of weeks. Rest assured I both own and even on occasion wield a DV cam, however my DSLR has held me in thrall with its beautiful images, shallow depth of field and sweet, sweet resolution.

Perhaps I’d be more excited about DV shooting if I was to buy one of the lovely HD Cameras the cool kids are talking about, or I could upgrade my current one; lower it a little, give it some chameleon paint, a spoiler, some oversized exhausts, fat rims… Ok, so I can’t think of anyone who’s undertaking cosmetic camera mods. However there are some fantastic mods and accessories, both commercial and DIY, which can help you get better video from that humble DV cam.

Beautiful Image: 35mm lens adapters

Redrock Micro was built from the Micro35 Project, which itself was based on the extremely expensive Mini35 from P+S Technik. These projects all throw variously sized chunks of money at the same concept: Using film lenses on a video camera.

At the lower end of the price spectrum, RedRockMicro sell a DIY guide on how to make their commercial M2 Adapter, which will set you back US$995 or more, depending on options. They also sell a Follow Focus unit to go with the M2, which looks rather cool.

Now that a cheap SFF PC or Mac mini can output high-definition DVI, your next problem is how to manage all those high-resolution digital signals for display. Gefen, who made the switcher I’ve been enjoying so much (see previous review, 2×1 DVI KVM), have a slew of new DVI solutions they’re rolling out at the AES audio convention. Why AES? Because studios will love these setups, particularly in the case of the extenders. But they could be equally at home in a multi-computer setup or installation work. Yep, it’s another CDMo post that will have to have a big “grant application”/”budget” warning on it, as these could be spectacular for setting up multiple-computer, interactive installations:

1. 4×4 DVI matrix: Four computers, four displays, all switched via onboard controls or IR remote. 1900×1200 resolution, plus audio and high-speed USB. HDCP support for HDTV, optional RS232.
2. 4×1 DVI DL switcher: Up until now, there haven’t been many switchers capable of supporting 3840×2400 resolution, the ultra-high-resolution display used by hardware like Apple’s 30″ Cinema Display. Thanks to its 4×1 configuration and high-res support with dual-link compatibility, this switcher does the job. Like the matrix, it doubles as a full KVM (USB2 and audio support).
3. 8×1 DVI switcher: Yeah, you heard that right: a full 8 inputs at the control of a single IR remote. Full-access switching takes about 10 seconds.

Gefen has been keeping these products in the price range of mortals — well, assuming you can afford eight inputs to drive that last one, anyway — so while I don’t have pricing, I expect it’ll be down to earth as with previous products. I’m most excited about the 4×4 DVI switcher, just in terms of versatility. I can see some beautiful installation applications for that. (Visual eye candy, that is, not something so mundane as an audio studio — who said I had to be practical?)

Site doesn’t appear to be updated, but when it is, product info will be at Gefen:
Gefen, Inc.

I don’t think they’ve done it just to spite Peter and CDMu readers, but not 3 days after the “is it vapourware” conversation, Thinkgeek have unboxed the first step towards Optimus.

It’s still not yet shipping, nor OSX or Linux compatible, and not really in the realm of truly useful gear ($169? How about a whole second or third 17″ monitor?), but it’s exciting news nevertheless. This device isn’t anywhere near the interaction leap of the multitouch demos we’ve been seeing, or even that daft “desktop metaphor enriching” thing, but it’s still extremely exciting that one of these thought experiments is actually becoming a reality.

There’s the obvious advantage for VJs: Triggering clips by hitting the key which displays the corresponding thumbnail, ditto for filters and transition modes, all with a stage-friendly backlit interface? Sign me up! Of course, if you want more than 3 buttons it would probably be cheaper and more functional to just get an LCD touchscreen for now, but for me this product is just as important for what it symbolises. This is the first step to those vapourware devices becoming real, and when every surface is covered with tiny displays, everyone is going to need some compelling visual content to cover those surfaces.

My fellow visualists, our time approaches. Don’t let someone else make the big money selling Matrix screensavers for all those Optimuses– Optimou– Optimii– things.

Over the course of a conversation with Peter I became aware that he was oblivious to the existence of video baluns. This made me wonder, how many other VJs are going through life as he is: Anxious and empty, unsure whether the venue he’s playing at will be able to do justice to the imagery he creates, or if they’ll push his feed through some kind of horrible, unshielded composite cable which has been draped over hot lights and snacked on by rats since the last refit in 1982.

There’s no shame in this, I too was living under this ominent shadow of doubt. Until I discovered baluns.

Okay, aspiring VJs: not happy with the pre-coded solutions out there? Wish you could code your own stuff via a free tool? Check out Processing, a free cross-platform tool. The pay-off: how about 1680×1050 imagery, running at 20-40fps on a lowly PowerBook G4?

Robert Hodgin is featured doing just that, armed with four silver USB knobs (Griffin PowerMates) mounted, glowing blue, on a custom Plexiglass surface. Watch his hypnotic visualizations for GameBoy musician BitShifter, then download the source. More links:

Processing as a VJ tool (project videos, documentation, source, and other info)

Flight404 featuring an insane number of PowerMate tricks

And yes, the master of all things Processing, Chris aka Pixelsumo got to this before I did. Watch his site for regular references to Processing.