Here is a great little program to control the Stoker automatic temperature control for your smoker.

Click here to download it.

One of the most controversial issues related to HD DVD this year was related to the copy protection mechanism, AACS (advanced access content system). You might recall that controversy arose when some hackers published a code key that could be used to illegally copy some content on the news site Digg. When the site owners took down the key, a controversy broke out among their users.

The controversy had less to do with AACS than with Digg, but the association threatened to give a black eye to an effective content protection technology.

Richard Doherty, director of strategy for our Consumer Media Technology Group at Microsoft, recently took time to discuss some of the advantages of AACS and how it came to be the standard for copy protection for HD DVD.

Many people may not realize that AACS is the protection technology for both Blu-ray and HDDVD video formats. The DVD Forum when developing the HD DVD standard made a decision to keep the content protection system separate from the format. AACS then was developed as a separate system. According to Richard, the forum members believed that the systems would be more effective, and the movie studios, TV, and IT industries would be more supportive of a separate protection system.

Blu-ray originally had its own copy protection system, but as the competing formats were developing, the movie studios expressed a strong interest in trying to get the two working groups to join. The studios wanted to influence the content protection system and played a role in negotiating with the Blu-ray Disc Association, which ultimately chose to also use AACS.

It boils down to this: Content protection systems are not a competitive advantage for consumers. The studios need an effective system before they will release movies, and this is especially a concern for studios as they release high-definition content. But viewers don’t choose to buy a movie or a format because of its content protection system. Therefore, it behooves the industry to come together and agree on one effective system.

As the industry agreed on AACS, a working group was formed that created the specifications and adaptation books. The specifications are available to the public and anyone can find information on the Web to see how AACS is implemented.

That’s not a contradiction. Cryptographers believe a system is safe if it is peer reviewed and publicized – which makes it much better than a system designed in secrecy.

AACS is different from many other forms of content protection, also known as digital rights management (DRM). For example, Windows Media DRM, and Microsoft PlayReady content access technology are proprietary protection technologies. In some ways, these are more sophisticated in that they support many types of players, they support content transmission over the Internet for audio and video, and support a great deal of flexibility in rights management.

In contrast, AACS is designed for one specific purpose--protecting high-definition video on an optical disc.

As Richard put it: “We have been very clear about the application for which this was designed so there would be no confusion in the marketplace between it and other types of DRM systems that are designed to protect a broader group of content.”

With AACS, the disc authors encrypt the data on the disc, and the players in the field decrypt the data.

The working group that developed AACS learned from the experience of the DVD copy protection system, known as CSS. That system was rendered mostly ineffective after tools and methods to circumvent it were widely distributed.

AACS has more built-in flexibility, strong cryptography, and has some built-in safeguards against attacks, includes a more robust revocation mechanism. That means even if key codes or methods to get around AACS are widely distributed, the standards body can revoke the rights for a specific player or specific disc to play. For example, if the protection system for a specific brand of player, or the protection system for a specific video were broken and widely distributed, the standards body could revoke the rights for that player or video. It may mean a minor inconvenience for the player or video owner – nothing more than downloading an update, in most cases, similar perhaps to a common Windows Update. The benefit for the viewer is that it creates a more reliable system into which movie studios will continue to release new content.

In the Digg controversy, the codes posted online were extracted from two software media players, which made it possible for users to unlawfully circumvent the copy protection. The AACS standards body revoked the keys for those players. The software vendors then issued updates to their customers with new versions of the software with new keys. The updates are easy to install, and are required for future content. In effect, viewers who do not update their media players will not be able to play new video titles released after the date of the revocation.

A similar mechanism can be used to revoke AACS rights for hardware players. In such cases, new video discs could include instructions that prevent playing on certain specific players unless they have been patched. Although HD DVD players do have Internet connection capabilities, many players may not be connected. The patches after a revocation, therefore, could be distributed on the discs. “We did not want to disturb the business model of going to the store, buying a disc, going home and playing it,” Richard said.

AACS also provides the flexibility necessary in a content protection system. A disc owner will be able to make copies of the video that he or she buys. This right is known as “managed copy.” A movie owner will be able to at least make one copy on a hard drive, for example, to use in a home network or on a portable device. The details of managed copy in AACS are still being worked out. Points of discussion include (limited) exceptions to the requirement for all discs to offer a copy, and the breadth of offer availability. Studios will be able to control the price of the offers, and some have suggested making the first offer free.

Managed copy is partially a response to the DVD system breakdown. It is also a response to consumer demand. Studios also see it as a potential business opportunity, according to Richard, whether the managed copy be provided as an added value for disc owners to spur the purchase of movies, or perhaps in a scenario in which fees are charged depending on the type of copy.

“We tried to design a system that allows consumers to use content in the way they want.”

It was a thrill last year when my group at Microsoft won an Emmy award for the work we'd done on Streaming Media Architectures and Components in Windows. The nominations for the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards are due at the end of August and I believe we have some great entries in the innovative work we've done at Microsoft this year. I've added photos from last year's event, along with some photos from last year's CES in my photo gallery.

There are more photos in Sean Alexander's gallery (that's Sean with me in the photo) on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanalex/sets/72157594470125054/

When I tell people that I like digital photography, the standard reaction is, “that makes sense.”  This makes me wonder. Why does it make sense?  I guess they look at  a person who loves audio/video technology and consider photography a natural extension of that.  Or they think any technical A/V guy (OK, geek), will also want to dabble in photography.  As you see below, there is more truth to this wisdom than one wants to accept.  I think all engineers at some level, want to think that they can also dabble in the artistic side of things.  Photography brings a nice hedge here as half the challenge is technical. So to the extent you flunk the artistic side but master the technical aspect, you can still call yourself a photographer. 

I got into photography shortly after I got married in the early 1980s.  I bought a Canon AE-1 mostly because of the above reason. I saw that it had an LED display and thought I must own a high-tech gadget like that. Sadly, I soon learned that an analog (“match needle”) exposure display was far more powerful as you could see what your set exposure was, relative to what the camera thought it should be at.  So on I went to invest in  Canon’s then top of the line professional camera, the F-1.  I learned the basics of exposure (“Sunny 16”).  Then I made my first mistake and that was becoming interested in wildlife photography.  I say mistakenly because wildlife photography requires an investment in long lenses which automatically means a big spending budget.  I think there should be a Surgeon General warning on any book on wildlife photography, saying wildlife photography is highly damaging to your pocketbook! Wildlife photography doesn’t get “interesting” until you move into 400mm and longer lenses. Worse yet, the best are the professional lines which cost even more. There is a reason Canon designates their high-end lines as “L” series which stands for Luxury. And luxury it is and something I badly lacked in those days. So I opted to get a 300 F4L lens and got stuck with a very limited set of capabilities, relative to the great body I was attaching it to.

Still, I had fun with what I had to work with. I was living in Florida at the time, with good access to larger birds. I lugged my equipment (all of it, including my heavy Bogen tripod with the pan/tilt heads which were all the rage at the time) on all vacations and business trips. But the results were frankly not there. My keeper rate was very low, probably more random than anything predictable. And then our family grew, work got more intense and soon, I just couldn’t bring myself to lug all that heavy equipment around the world just to come back with the results that I was getting.  So I went ahead and packed away all the gear, including the Cibachrome darkroom equipment I was using to print my own slides.

Fast forward some 20 years later, and something caught my eye. Namely, the Canon 10D digital body with its 6 megapixels and very reasonable cost (compared to much more expensive digital cameras before it at lower resolution/performance). Reviews showed it to rival film which at first I did not believe, but sure enough, the performance was more than good enough to get me back in the game. But then something stopped me. I remembered that I used to get hassled a ton for my choice of Canon in the old days. Everyone at the time swore by Nikon.  All the pros used them and you could not pick a photography book that didn’t showcase Nikon equipment. To my surprise, while I was asleep so to speak during these two decades, Canon had mounted a revolution, completely turning this situation around. The key innovation was Image Stabilization (IS)  which Canon had deployed widely in their lenses whereas Nikon had far fewer offerings.  Perhaps more importantly, everyone swore by Canon being the standard choice, rather than the other way around, as evidenced by Canon ads of sporting events, showing a majority of long lenses being white (i.e. Canon L series).  So with much excitement, I jumped back into the Canon line yet again.

Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise. People talk about the benefits of digital but there is one key component that is not mentioned.  That is what I call the “closed feedback loop.” With film, you shoot a bunch of images, then wait days to get the results. With no metadata to tell you the shooting parameters, if you get bad results, there is no way to know what you did wrong.  With digital, the results are as close as the nearest computer.  In my shoots now, after the golden light of the morning is gone, I transfer the images from the flash card to the computer and can instantly examine both my technical and artistic skills. I can see if I used a fast enough shutter speed for example. Or dialed in enough depth of field for a close up shot or a bird’s head to get both the eye and the beak in focus. Or that certain framing worked better than others. I put all of these lessons to good use the following afternoon or the next morning. This fast feedback loop, allowed me to learn more about photography in 3 months than I had learned in 3 years the first go around! This ignited the photography passion in me like nothing before as I was soon creating images that I could not even dream about in the first round.

There are also other benefits. Like being able to send a few images to your loved ones at home, wondering what this crazy guy is doing at 4:00am at subzero temperatures, in the middle of New Mexico (“Bosque”) or some other remote area half way around the world. The miracle of modern communication allows me to do this now with my cellular modems from anywhere in the world, while still in the field! The kudos back in e-mail, gives one the motivation to repeat the cycle the next day and the one after that.  After all, we don’t just take pictures for our sake, but also to touch someone else with them.

Another thing that is nice now is  a healthier budget for photography allowing investment in “serious glass” (e.g. 600mm F4).  Getting older and later in your career does have some benefits. With teleconverters, I now have a level of reach that went well beyond anything I could imagine before. But there is also another unsung hero here. That is, the advent of carbon fiber tripods. My gitzo tripods weigh a fraction of my Bogen tripod yet they are solid as a rock and don’t fail as that one did. So while the lens became much heavier, the tripod nicely compensated for it.  Yes, carbon fiber tripods cost a fortune.  But did I mention that being older is nicer? I thought I did.

All in all, wildlife photography remains a challenging field even with these latest advancements.  There is no denying that you have to lug heavy equipment across many distances at times, chasing elusive animals who don’t want to be our willing subjects.  But technology advancements help and help a lot to make this a challenge that one can conquer.  In my upcoming posts, I will write about tools and techniques that help here.