Good news for TV addicts. Soon they will have the possibility to watch their favourite TV programmes wherever they may be as a result of new chipsets for digital TV from a dynamic French electronics company.

Founded in 2000, DiBcom designs high-performance, low power consuming chipsets – based on their patented algorithms and architectures – which enable mobile TV. This means digital television will be available for cars, laptops, PCs and portable LCD TV, and even mobile devices s

A Yorkshire research centre has won a prestigious contract as specialist consultants on a multi-billion dollar project to roll out interactive digital television across Brazil.

The work will see Yorkshire technology becoming part of a new world standard in digital television. It could open the door to the Latin American markets for Yorkshire companies working in wireless technology, providing a major boost to the region’s digital economy.

The team at the newly created W

The hardware and software developed by a European project aims to unleash the full potential of digital media by offering the secure creation, delivery and consumption of audiovisual media across a wide range of hybrid networks and platforms.

The IST-funded project TIRAMISU focuses on protection of intellectual assets by securing the content with a digital rights management (DRM) solution, while maintaining interoperability and use of open standards.

According to projec

A new website with a Global Information System will provide valuable information for assessing environmental hazards caused by Hurricane Katrina. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health, created the website to provide the most up-to-date data to public health and safety workers on contaminants in flood waters, infrastructure and industry maps, as well as demographic information for local populations.

The NIEH

For young Americans, the “food landscape” in television advertising is packed with junk food, according to a new study.

The study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the first to explore the nutritional composition of foods advertised to children using Nutrition Facts labeling.

Nutrient-poor high-sugar foods – candy, sweets and soft drinks – dominate (nearly 44 percent) the foods advertised during the TV programs children ages 6 to 11 wa

Consumers who are very skeptical about the truth of advertising claims are more responsive to emotionally appealing ads than ones peppered with information, according to a new study.

The finding comes from work by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Washington State University who examined consumers’ responses to advertising, including brand beliefs, responses to informational and emotional appeals, efforts to avoid advertising, attention to ads

A unique piece of software that will code any piece of recorded music, or speech, for any device, has been created by a team of European researchers.

The IST project, called ARDOR, developed a unique codec, short for COmpressor-DECompressor. Codecs are the engine under the hood of software media players.

“At the moment there are dozens of standardised sound codecs. Basically each application has its own dedicated codec and these codecs are optimised for specific input sig

We look at a Gothic cathedral in a different way than we gaze at a standard apartment block, and when we scrutinize paintings, our gaze slides along differently than when we look at a datasheet with numerals to be memorized. And how are training materials – manuals, video films and websites – perceived, when as much information should be gained from a glance? How should they be made up to work most effectively? Specialists of the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (Modern University for the Humanitie

The earliest “moving picture” of a magician – which was created for a scientific study on magic in the 1890’s – will be shown for the first time tonight, Wednesday 26 July, at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in South Kensington, London.

The pictures were created during a study by famed psychologist and creator of the IQ test, Alfred Binet, as he investigated the psychology of magic.

Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, who discovered the pictures in a Paris archive, wi

“Reporters are surpassing doctors as a source of health information,” says Maria Simbra, a medical reporter for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, United States, and a practicing physician, in a special debate in this month’s issue of the open access international medical journal PLoS Medicine.

For the debate, PLoS Medicine invited health journalists worldwide to give their views on the role that the media should play in spreading health messages to the public.

In her commentary,

Eat at Joes. Eat at Joes. Eat at Joes. Eat at Joes. Eat at Joes. Eat at Joes. So, where are you going to eat tonight?! Repetition is a hallmark of advertising, but the advertisements to which consumers are exposed are not simply repeated without a plan. Instead, the idea of “spacing” or how often to repeat an advertisement is considered when trying to elicit a consumer response. Research in the September 2005 Journal of Consumer Research finds that such repetition must come with variation to

Leading European players from the telecommunications, electronics, audiovisual and media industries have joined forces in an initiative to foster the development of new audiovisual and multimedia broadband services. This initiative, chaired by Thomson, is called NEM – Networked and Electronic Media. The NEM initiative was launched on 29 June in Brussels as an EU Technology Platform.

The founding members of this initiative are Alcatel, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Franc

Opening the door to a new world of education and entertainment the development of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and simulator allows users to go where few others have gone before, taking telepresence to a new level.

Developed by nine partners from four EU countries under the IST project TELEDRIVE, the system allows users to go underwater in an aquarium or in the sea without getting their feet wet or to visit an archaeological site where human presence could be damaging.

Opening Europe’s inland waterways to a new generation of travellers is a new system for the tourism sector. Due to undergo a test demonstration at the end of May, it will provide up-to-date, location-based information on everything from good restaurants to nearby emergency services.

Developed under the EurEauWeb IST project combines mobile communications, location sensing and detailed information and, if successful, could become the platform of choice for hundreds of other g

For many people, the mere thought of public speaking makes their palms sweat, heart race and stomach reel. But help may be on the way in the form of virtual reality exposure therapy – computer-generated images and sound delivered through a helmet-like headset. Page Anderson, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgia State University, is beginning a clinical study later this month to determine how effective the technology is in allaying the fear and anxiety that often accompany public speakin

With mobile phones attaining almost universal coverage in Europe, the focus has now shifted to providing the next generation of content-rich applications and services to end users.

The IST-funded project MAESTRO aims to play its part in this evolution by harnessing satellite technology together with existing 3G UMTS networks to deliver interactive digital multimedia services to mobile users.

Launched in January 2004, MAESTRO sets out to use Satellite Digital Multimedia B