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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01424.x Byline: Oren Meyers (1), Eyal Zandberg (2), Motti Neiger (2) Abstract: This study explores the ways in which commercial media perceive and manifest their public mnemonic role. It does so via an exploration of the 'memory menu'-the contents and flow of programming-offered by Channel 2, Israel's leading commercial television channel, on the eve of the country's Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism (MDHH), in which the airing of commercials is banned. In order to do so, the study incorporates a multilevel analysis that probes the structure of entire broadcasting evenings as well as the narrative building blocks that constitute each item. The study investigates the ways in which commercial media outlets operate in the context of 'commercial vacuums' as they substitute material capital with symbolic capital. This process is illuminated through Channel 2's inability to work MDHH into its extremely successful routine broadcasting formulas. The channel's MDHH broadcasts construct a commemorative narrative that is insulated from day-to-day Israeli public Holocaust memory discourse; hence they operate as a significant site of Israeli postmemory work. Furthermore, such a narrative not only commemorates the memory of the Holocaust itself but also the ways in which Israeli culture used to narrate the memory of the Holocaust in the past. Abstract: Resume Cette etude explore les manieres par lesquelles les medias commerciaux percoivent et manifestent leur role mnemonique public. Elle le fait a travers une exploration du ' menu du souvenir ' (le contenu et le deroulement de la programmation) offert par Aroutz 2, la premiere chaine de television commerciale en Israel, a la veille du Jour du Souvenir de l'Holocauste et de l'Heroisme (JSHH), pendant lequel la diffusion de publicites est interdite. A cette fin, l'etude integre une analyse multiniveau qui sonde la structure de soirees entieres de programmation ainsi que les assemblages narratifs qui constituent chaque element. L'etude explore les facons par lesquelles les entreprises mediatiques commerciales operent dans le contexte de ' vides commerciaux ', alors qu'ils remplacent le capital materiel par du capital symbolique. Ce processus est eclaire par l'incapacite d'Aroutz 2 a introduire le JSHH dans ses formules de programmation routinieres a tres grand succes. La programmation du JSHH de la chaine construit un narratif commemoratif isole du discours public quotidien sur le souvenir de l'Holocauste en Israel. Elle fonctionne donc comme un important site du travail israelien de post-memoire. De plus, un tel narratif ne fait pas que commemorer le souvenir de l'Holocauste meme, mais aussi les manieres par lesquelles la culture israelienne se racontait par le passe le souvenir de l'Holocauste. Abstract: Abstract: Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel (2) School of Communication, Netanya Academic College, Netanya 42365, Israel Article note: Oren Meyers; e-mail: omeyers@com.haifa.ac.il

This article proposes some physiognomic speculations regarding three visual characteristics of television in its pre-digital-broadcasting form: (1) the importance of the head shot as a staple technique for representing the human figure and, hence, the primacy of the human face as a televisual image; (2) the mirrorlike reflective surface of the cathode-ray tube television screen, which makes the viewer's reflected image appear to emanate from the depths of the television set; and (3) the boxlike design of television sets that turns them into miniature containers of the pictures they show. It argues that these three characteristics amounted to an integrated communicative structure that made television a key mechanism for the social construction of humanity in the second half of the twentieth century, a mechanism whose future is uncertain in the age of new digital platforms. Keywords: television; head shot; face; screen; container; humanity; digital platforms

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2009.03.003 Byline: Chai-Hien Gan (a), Phone Lin (b), Chung-Min Chen (c) Keywords: Channel prebuffering; Channel zapping; Content miss; IPTV network Abstract: The Internet Protocol TeleVision (IPTV) network utilizes the broadband IP network to provide users the TV service. Due to the limited bandwidth of the IP network, IPTV does not broadcast the content of all channels to its users. The channel zapping time (i.e., the delay between the time when the user switches to a new TV channel and the time when the content of the new TV channel is received by the user) and content miss (i.e., the content of the new TV channel arrives after the user switches to another TV channel so that the user did not watch the content of the new TV channel) significantly affect the QoS of IPTV service. This paper proposes Dynamic Prebuffering Scheme (DPS) that dynamically prebuffers the content of TV channels in the Home Gateways (HGs) based on the user's behavior to reduce the channel zapping time and the content miss probability. A prebuffer timer is implemented in DPS to reduce the bandwidth consumption. Both the analytic model and simulation experiments are developed to investigate the performance of DPS. The simulation results show that the performance enhancements are bounded by the setup of the number of prebuffering channels and the prebuffer timer. Based on the performance study, the IPTV operators can properly set the number of prebuffered channels and the prebuffer timer to obtain good performance. Our study indicates that DPS can significantly reduce the channel zapping time and the content miss probability by slightly increasing bandwidth consumption. Author Affiliation: (a) Information and Communications Research Labs, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Chutung, Hsinchu 310, Taiwan, ROC (b) Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC (c) Telcordia Technologies-Applied Research, 1 Telcordia Drive, Piscataway, NJ 08854, United States Article History: Received 3 May 2008; Revised 2 March 2009; Accepted 2 March 2009 Article Note: (miscellaneous) Responsible Editor: H. Alnuweiri

The role of computers in different facets of human life is increasing everyday, from one of supplementing his needs to one of integrating in the different activities, he is involved. This has become more predominant with the prolific developments in communication and internet. This brings in a need to raise the level of computers to the level of human beings and a paradigm shift from hard computing to soft computing towards the turn of this century has reinforced this. The present focus of the study is on implementing visual capabilities in computers so that involvement and interaction with humans are easier. The paper presents the details of object based video analysis for conventional engineering applications. Key words: Dynamic scenes, attributes, reconstruction, feature extraction, recognition, tracking, INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO PROCESSING Complex and dynamic scenes in video and television broadcasting have been a challenge for computerization of both in terms of storage and interaction. Scenes can be [...]

An encoding system was implemented purely in software for sending H.264 video multicast to mobile devices. The H.264 encoder is a multi-threaded parallel-GOP encoder. It is capable of running in real-time with an AMD Opteron 1.8 GHz dual-core platform in baseline profile at CIF resolution at 1 Mbps. Real-time video encoding is accomplished with aggressive Single Instruction Multiple Data assembly code optimizations and advanced algorithms. A Time Control algorithm was developed to quell the mode decision process from spending too much time per frame. Transmission of the audio and video streams is on an IP layer over WiFi and DVB-H. DVB-H is chosen for its power saving and reliability features. Using the IP network, the encoder can be repurposed for applications other than mobile broadcast video. Index Terms--AVC, digital communication, digital TV, DVB-H, encoder, encoding, H.264, internet, mobile communication, mobility, real-time, software, TV Broadcasting, video coding, wireless.

The results of an extensive study on analog PAL signals interfered with by digital DVB-T signals are presented in this paper. The study covers a theoretical evaluation of the interference problems, field and laboratory measurements, and even a national survey among TV installation companies. The field measurements are reported in part I of the paper. These measurements explain the origin of co-channel and some of the adjacent channel interference problems. However, some customers reported interference in areas where the field measurements showed that the protection ratios for PAL signals interfered with by DVB-T adjacent channel signals were met. As these customers lived in flats in multistory buildings with Master Antenna TV (MATV) installations the study was extended to analyze the role of these installations in the interference problems. As will be seen, it has been found that part of the interference problems are due to the amplifiers of the MATV installations in buildings. These amplifiers, designed to operate in an analog scenario, are not prepared to cope with adjacent channel DVB-T signals. The nonlinear effects of the amplifiers give rise to intermodulation problems. The ITU-R recommendations [1] recognize that the presence of non linear amplifiers at the receiver could be a source of problems and that higher protection ratios may be needed. However, no value of the required increase of the protection ratios is given in the recommendations. As result of the laboratory tests of commercial amplifiers conducted in the study presented in this report, it has been found that an increase of the protection ratios between 12 to 16 dB would be needed to avoid a significant degradation of the PAL TV signal in these amplifiers. It has also been found that most of the interference situations are not due just to the fact of the interfering signal being a DVB-T format but that the signal amplitude of any significant signal in the passband of the filter will cause interference. Therefore, MATV system distribution needs planning factors associated with the distribution of any signals near the main signal. To be able to generalize the conclusions and to evaluate the importance of the interference problems a survey among companies who install communal telecommunication infrastructure in Spain was conducted. The results of this poll are present in Section HI. Index Terms--Adjacent-channel, co-channel, digital television, DVB-T, interference, measurement.

The author examines the use of remote and live coverage of media events. Topics include event reconstruction, broadcast locations, and spatio-temporal dynamics.

The author argues that the US television broadcast media lacks the ability to make creative programs because the medium's balance between quality and entertainment has been destroyed. Originality and freshness are needed to make television vital again.

It is often desirable to increase the channel capacity and the covered distance in lightwave TV systems. For doing so, the conventional CATV channel set - usually placed within the 50 to 550 MHz frequency range - may be up-shifted, by means of a subcarrier, to a low microwave frequency range, typically located at 2 GHz. Next, this shifted spectrum directly modulates a laser diode, in the analog AM mode. It is shown that this up-shift procedure may dislodge a number of nonlinear distortion components from the useful TV band. Consequently, the system effective optical modulation index may be increased, allowing for an expansion in the channel capacity or covered distance. This enlarged capacity or distance may compensate for the modest price increase concerning the up-shift equipment. All the performance evaluations presented here were carried out with a rigorous numerical model, and assuming the lightwave systems used the economical AM-VSB format. Index Terms - CATV by optical fiber, microwave subcarrier, laser modeling, SCM AM-VSB TV system, lightwave TV system design.

In order to meet the Quality-Of-Service (QOS) requirements of the VOD (Video-On-Demand) service, and, on the other hand, to maximize the system throughput (revenue), it is essential that the admission control algorithm be carefully designed. In this paper, two new types of admission control schemes for the VOD service are proposed. They are the Enhanced Strict Admission Control (ESAC) and the Probabilistic Admission Control (PAC). In the ESAC schemes, we propose to use more statistics (of small amount and easily pre-calculated) than the peak frame size of the stored video information to strictly guarantee the QOS requirement and to achieve potentially much higher throughput. In the PAC schemes, we propose to use similar statistics as used in the ESAC schemes to achieve even higher throughput at the cost of some small and controllable likelihood of lost/overdue data. The admission control problems are formulated as feasibility problems where different systems of simultaneous equations are considered. For each admission control scheme, if the corresponding system of simultaneous equations has a feasible solution, then admit the call request; otherwise, reject the call. Special structures of the systems are identified so as to facilitate the development of optimal real-time admission control algorithms. Efficient optimal algorithms are also proposed to calculate the minimal buffer requirement for a given performance objective.