Let's discuss CNN's awesome technology...

James81 · Nov 5, 2008

Where are my fellow Star Wars nerds?

What did you think about the holograms and the virtual white house? Wasn't that the baddest thing you've ever seen?

maxmordon · Nov 5, 2008

What is this all Hologram everyone is talking about?

maestrowork · Nov 5, 2008

The hologram people were just silly... but the hologram charts, etc. were really cool -- they even moved with the camera. That's super cool.

mscelina · Nov 5, 2008

Many Bothans have died to bring us this information...from the exit polls in Peoria.

What a silly gimmick.

Higgins · Nov 5, 2008

mscelina said:
Many Bothans have died to bring us this information...from the exit polls in Peoria.

What a silly gimmick.

Welcome to the Paradise of Holograms.

mscelina · Nov 5, 2008

Higgins said:
Welcome to the Paradise of Holograms.

Watch out, dude--there's an at-at over your shoulder and it's about to step on you.

kuwisdelu · Nov 5, 2008

I like technology, but can anyone say overkill? How much of that was really necessary?

My favorite part was when the virtual Capitol "froze"

maxmordon · Nov 5, 2008

What the hell is everyone speaking???

James81 · Nov 5, 2008

kuwisdelu said:
I like technology, but can anyone say overkill? How much of that was really necessary?

I dunno. When that woman was in the tent trying to talk with everyone screaming behind her, I couldn't hear a damn word she was saying.

When they beamed her in to the newsroom, that's all you could hear was what she was saying.

There is SOME merit to this technology.

mscelina · Nov 5, 2008

My favorite part was when the virtual Capitol "froze"

It is cold on Hoth.

kuwisdelu · Nov 5, 2008

James81 said:
I dunno. When that woman was in the tent trying to talk with everyone screaming behind her, I couldn't hear a damn word she was saying.

When they beamed her in to the newsroom, that's all you could hear was what she was saying.

There is SOME merit to this technology.

Everyone knows a microphone wouldn't have sufficed

maxmordon · Nov 5, 2008

I give up...

DeleyanLee · Nov 5, 2008

She had a microphone. It didn't help.

Stew21 · Nov 5, 2008

one of the news channels had holograms for the election coverage last night, Max.

kuwisdelu · Nov 5, 2008

What really blows my mind is when reporters are shown sitting with their laptops, pulling up various emails or reading aloud comments on their website. What??

Don · Nov 5, 2008

That silly telephone thing will never be worth a darn, either. And moving pictures, transmitted through air? How silly. I hear there's even some gadget that can multiply numbers and such.

Or as Ben Franklin said at the first manned balloon flight: "Sir, what's the use of a newborn baby?"

Williebee · Nov 5, 2008

I don't think it actually qualified as a hologram.

As near as I could tell, the image wasn't actually there in front of Wolf Blitzer. It was just available on the monitors.

ETA: Exercised my Google Foo From CNET

While CNN is touting its special effects from election night as a '"hologram," that may not be technically the case. CNN's "hologram" seems to have been done using overlay images and a green screen to virtually put the reporter in the same studio as Wolf Blitzer. But true holography uses a different technique to create a true 3D image of a person standing in the studio. According to Wikipedia, "holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object was still present, thus making the recorded image or hologram appear three-dimensional."

Higgins · Nov 5, 2008

Stew21 said:
one of the news channels had holograms for the election coverage last night, Max.

What's weird is...well, maybe it's just what you'd expect...anyway I have a hologrammatical "TV" at home and whenever the hologrammatically correct events "happened" (I don't know how to put this: CNN's hologrammar didn't work with my hologrammatical home system protocol, I guess),
I saw a kind of moire effect with kalieadescopic after-images that kind of swept themselves up in a sort of aurora borealis that shimmered and whispered around the dinning room, peeking under the samovar, exposing some film, turning the silver back and rendering my favorite X-rays completely opaque and so on...I somehow doubt that his is what the CNN crew had in mind.

Cranky · Nov 5, 2008

What Willie said.

Kitty Pryde · Nov 5, 2008

WTF WERE those things anyway? Anderson Cooper was talking to Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas, so I was having enough trouble taking it seriously. But I thought they were joking about having a hologram. Like they only showed Will.i.am from two angles, front, and back. If I had funky-fresh hologram technology, I would be spinning the camera around it to show that it's real. I thought they just had a camera on the guy from two angles and they were doing blue screen work in the studio. Any links to how it works (or doesn't)?

Max: CNN was showing holograms last night, like Princess Leia in Star Wars when she is projected out of R2-D2 and says "Help me obiwan kenobi, you're my only hope" and then Luke drools on himself cause he's hot for his sister.

katiemac · Nov 5, 2008

Here's an example via Youtube.

benbradley · Nov 5, 2008

maxmordon said:
What is this all Hologram everyone is talking about?

As the MC in Heinlein's "Job" said' "What's all this hollow gram stuff..."

kuwisdelu said:
I like technology, but can anyone say overkill? How much of that was really necessary?

My favorite part was when the virtual Capitol "froze"

maxmordon said:
What the hell is everyone speaking???

CNNspeak. Or is is MSMspeak...

Now I recall last night, I think between the McCain and Obama speeches, WSB Radio was apparently playing the audio from the CNN coverage, and there was this occasional "WOOSH" sound, "... and here is the elect<WOOSH>oral results map..." just like those stupid video and sound effects they use in football TV coverage, all the various WOOSH sounds they use when they bring up scoreboards or show replays...

I guess it's all Lowest Common Denominator type stuff... it's the same old stuff we got when I was growing up when we had three channels and the "educational" [public broadcasting] channel, only now it's over cable or satellite, there's hundreds of channels, and people pay "only" $69.95 a month to watch it.

benbradley · Nov 5, 2008

katiemac said:
Here's an example via Youtube.

Okay, so from that, I'm sure that's not a real hologram (as in a laser-generated interference pattern of the scene), but just a computer-inserted image of her into the other scene, effectively a blue-screen thing with the movements for the cameras for both scenes moving in sync. I'm sure whats-his-name (Wolf Blitzer?) didn't actually see her on the studio floor, that's just an image of her in the studio with him he could only see on a monitor.

And what's with the floor under her feet glowing red? (starting about 42 seconds into the clip)

But if CNN wants to redefine the word hologram and use it that way, who am I to argue, I'm just some pedant on the IntraWebz...

Jcomp · Nov 5, 2008

While CNN is touting its special effects from election night as a '"hologram," that may not be technically the case. CNN's "hologram" seems to have been done using overlay images and a green screen to virtually put the reporter in the same studio as Wolf Blitzer. But true holography uses a different technique to create a true 3D image of a person standing in the studio. According to Wikipedia, "holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object was still present, thus making the recorded image or hologram appear three-dimensional."

I knew it. It looked like green screen to me. Just too clean, somehow.

But the touch-screen stuff, that's what I really want. I've been wanting that for a while now, actually... I want a touch-screen day planner that I can hang on my wall like a flat screen. It'll have a built in alarm that wakes me up with a choice of either music, soothing sounds of nature, or a warm, seductive female voice saying, "Good morning Mr. Compton. The time is now seven o'clock, and a beautiful day awaits you." She'll know it's a beautiful day because she can pull local weather forecasts, and tell you about traffic, and remind you of what you've previously scheduled on your daily planner.

Her name will be A.U.B.R.I.E. I don't know what the acronym stands for yet, I'll get to that later...

benbradley · Nov 6, 2008

CNN.com now has a story on this "Breaking News:"
"Beam me up, Wolf! CNN debuts election-night hologram"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/06/hologram.yellin/index.html
The most salient of the four "points" posted above the article:
# The trick was done with a round green-screen room and 35 high-def video cameras
# The never-before-seen image already is being spoofed on the Internet and TV

Let's discuss CNN's awesome technology...

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