Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

One of the downsides of living with the “lunatic fringe” is that there are seldom surprises, specifically at CES. And for that matter, there are very few new “adult” gadgets (i.e., new computer, communications and entertainment products) that surprise me at Christmas. This isn’t a bad thing and shouldn’t get in the way of getting one or more of these wonderful new electronic toys to play with for Christmas. What this does mean is that I have to tell Santa exactly what I want – and sometimes I even have to purchase it myself, a phenomenon I’m sure many of you are familiar with.

So, what were some of my top choices this year? I’m certain I’ve forgotten a game or two, but there are several choices to think about:

• A new home computer
• A 1080p projector for my home theater
• A Blue-ray DVD player (or is that a HD DVD player?)
• Pleo
• Yet another big screen TV
• An upgrade on my PDA
• A better digital still camera
   

So from this list, what did Santa get me? I got a new computer and a new digital still camera. The computer, which I needed, was like getting new underwear as a kid. My old computer, for some reason, lost use of the USB ports (I had been waiting for several years for something to “break” so I could justify buying a new one). With perfect timing, it broke just before Christmas, just in time to show up on my wish list. After my daughter and I discussed the choices, the details were given to Santa (if you haven’t guessed by now, Santa, at my house, is my wife – beautiful redhead without a beard). It arrived Christmas Eve, and I signed for it. We didn’t even wrap it.

The digital still camera I received is pretty nice, but since we have at least two other perfectly good cameras, confusion has now set in as to which one to use. Also, the twelve megapixels on the new camera somehow seems a little too much for my everyday attempt at photography. The good news is that my new camera is a Kodak and works on the same printer that our previous two Kodak cameras used.

So, with what I got in mind, what didn’t I get? And why is that a good thing?

Let me start with the whole 1080p thing. I have a 12-foot screen in my home theater, and I am still projecting SD media through a 480i projector. You know, this is OK because no one except me can tell that the picture is “poor” quality. This makes it very hard to convince Santa that I should pay $5000 for a new projector, then pay more for an HD DVD (or is that Blue Ray) DVD player and then pay even more for the media to play on it – that is, if the media is available. So, I am glad I didn’t get it this year. I’m a patient man – it will all be better and cheaper next year (This is the same excuse I used while our children were growing up to wait on buying a video camera; and, yes, we have no videos of their younger years).

I’ll note that at the CES, I didn’t see any breakthroughs to excite me into buying this year and perhaps not even for next Christmas. I wasn’t overly impressed with the 150-inch plasma TV set I saw – gee, I have about that same size screen hanging on the wall in my home theater and it didn’t cost a fortune. A cool thing I did see was the new 3D ready DLP TVs. This capability can be used in two ways: The obvious one is 3DTV when it is available and, not so obvious, dual TV. With dual TV, two people can be watching two different shows on the same TV on the full screen. It also sounds really great for gaming. Interesting, I didn’t ask if the audio channels were also capable of being split, but I assume that has been taken care of – or will be shortly.

So, I think I have covered everything except a new Mobile Internet Devices (do we still call them PDAs?) and Pleo. I’ll avoid talking about the MID and jump right to Pleo. Pleo is a new product on the market and is a robotic dinosaur – quite amazing. The company who makes Pleo is Ugobe, and they are doing some interesting stuff. I’m looking forward to see the second generation of Pleo which will hopefully have more TI content. Check them out here: http://www.pleoworld.com/.

It’s a good thing I collect baseball cards or it would have had a relatively quiet Christmas morning for me. But, I still have high hopes for next Christmas.

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

1. Where I am
2. Where I want to end up at

The same goes for technology – we need to know where we are going to move in the right direction. So, I have challenged several of our senior technologists to think about what the state of the art will be in the year 2020. You might say that we need to have 20/20 vision for the year 2020. I have invited a number of technologists to provide their point of view (POV) of what the state of the art in IC technology will be in the year 2020, and I’m interested to hear what you have to say on the topic.

But, since this is my Blog, I will have the first and last word on what the year 2020 will hold for us. So, here are my first thoughts on the topic.

• Processing elements will be single clock domains. After many years of assuming that Moore’s law would give us faster and faster clock speeds, we have finally concluded that clock speed is no longer our friend. In fact, we should have noted that 15 years ago, but as we move forward, processing elements will be of the size that the CPU can communicate with all of its resources in one clock cycle.
• Systems will be made up of multiple processing elements. Integrated systems will be made up of many heterogeneous processing elements, each being a “single clock domain” processor.
• The processing elements will be arranged in a similar style as FPGAs today.
• We will take advantage of the third dimension. Integration using stacked die techniques (SIP) will be just as common as fully integrated SoC.
• All will be programmed with a high-level language. The development environment will have the ability to take into account all of the resources in the system. That is the microprocessors, DSPs, accelerators, peripherals, analog signal processors, analog peripherals, RF and other things I have forgotten about.
• IC designs will consist of smaller teams (5 to 10 designers) taking a
  shorter amount of time (6 to 12 months) to do the hardware design. Reuse will be the norm. While I am at it, let me explain that there are two definitions of “Reuse”:
  
      1. I’ll do such a good job on my design that everyone after me will use it..
  
      2. I don’t have time to reinvent the wheel, so I need to find something that is close enough to what I need to meet the schedule.

Unfortunately we use the first definition more than the second. Small design teams with short schedules will require us to use the latter definition. And, yes, there are companies already adopting this concept of reuse.

• The bulk of the innovation will be in the software on top of the hardware. Hardware will become part of the platform on which innovative designers will develop their ideas.

So, this is a sketch of how I see 2020. After a couple of POV papers from others at TI, I will come back with a conclusion. If you would like to share your view of 2020 with me, please comment or send me a private note.

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

When following the progression of modern processor architectures, it is possible to see where we may have lost our way. The introduction of the first microprocessor allowed us to process very simple signals in real time. During this time, the array processor and mini-computer were considered the state-of-the-art tools for signal processing and premier choice in the research community. As researchers discovered and developed new signal processing concepts and algorithms, another community of technologists were already on the path to creating the first DSP device. Approximately 20 years after the invention of the transistor, the first commercially available DSPs appeared on the market and dramatically changed the future of the world.

Early work in DSP algorithm implementation focused on reducing the number of multiplications since multiplies were expansive and slow when implemented in hardware. The primary breakthrough of widespread DSP adoption was the addition of a specialized hardware multiplier to the microprocessor. This innovation changed the focus of digital signal processing from reducing the number of multiplies required by an algorithm to instead, optimizing the numbers of necessary multiplies and additions.

Another major facet of the fast evolving DSP architecture was the use Harvard architecture (two busses – one for program memory and one for data memory) rather than Von Neuman architecture (a single bus with program and data sharing the same memory space). To better suit the needs of mathematically intense processors, the two busses of the Harvard architecture were modified to support both program and data memory allowing both busses to feed the multiplier.

To take advantage of the accelerated multiplication capabilities, new instructions were created to bring together the necessary operations to perform a multiply in a single instruction cycle. Later, the accumulate operation was added to create the familiar MAC function.

Further improvements to the DSP architecture followed. Combining the best of both the Harvard and Von Neuman architectures resulted in a multiple bus Von Neuman-style architecture. As IC performance increased, the concept of the Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) was introduced allowing parallel processing to meet real-time constraints.

Modern architectures continue to press the limits of performance and efficiency through innovations such as deep pipelines, extensive branch prediction technology and advanced instruction sets. These innovations, in turn create new challenges even as they overcome previous limitations, which I plan to discuss in several future blogs.

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

Over the last several months, many of you have been asking if I were going to start blogging again. So here I am. Fortunately, I have a lot on my mind and look forward to re-engaging with you all. Over the last several months I’ve been traveling, including a recent trip to China. (Here is a picture of me while in China – I’m the one on the right.)

I’ve also been to Russia, Israel, Taiwan and other foreign places like Boston to visit MIT (Note that I am on a cruise in the Caribbean as I write this). But, this wasn’t my first year to extensively travel – I have traveled my whole career. One of the skills I have managed to develop is handling jetlag. I can now fly to anywhere in the world without jetlag. Actually this is not totally true. I notice that the first couple of days I am hungry at breakfast time. But after those couple of days I am back to only a cup of coffee (refilled many times) to be all I need. And, before you ask, no, it doesn’t matter which way I fly as I don’t have jetlag when I get home for the most part.

I have said all of this as I think there is a new phenomena happening to us today very similar to jetlag. That new phenomena is what I call “Net lag”. So, just as a term was created to describe the reaction of our bodies to the jet airplane, there needs to be a term to describe the problems that have been created by the Internet.

I am certain you have thought about some of them. For example, we have design teams in TI made up of people from Texas, California, Boston, Japan, India and Europe. Finding a time for weekly team meetings becomes somewhat difficult. Someone has to attend in the middle of their night while others are just awakening, and others are preparing for bed. The best I can tell no one seems to have the luck of the meeting being in the middle of their day.

Other examples

• sending and receiving email
• playing Internet games
• phone calls – we’ve gone from four digit phone numbers to seven to ten. Will we be able to remember phone numbers with more digits that we have on our hands?

This will only get worse with video phones and video conferencing. The idea of virtual teams will spread like wildfire. Employees will be able to live where they want while being an active part of the team.

What will be the casualty of this Net lag phenomena? Our health, our social life and our sense of community? But, of course, there will be great advantages.

So, I’ll stop here with this topic. But I invite you to send me other examples of Net lag and even good stories about it.

• Video market changes in the past 5 years
• The movement from Standard to high definition
• Programmability issues as well as the ins and out of choosing codecs

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

When people first hear the term “video analytics,” many close to the technology first think about its applications in video security. In my previous blog (Read “Future of Video Analytics”), even I focused on security first as an industry being transformed by advances in analytic technology. However, the impact of video analytics will extend far beyond security to enable us to enjoy a safer, cleaner life where we interact with a world in new, more personalized ways. I’ve said it before – the possibilities are endless.

Let’s talk about how analytics can improve energy conservation. Engineers have realized that analytics can make energy consumption more efficient and help reduce carbon footprints. For example, intelligent cameras with embedded analytic capabilities will detect the location and number of occupants in a room and send the information to air conditioning systems to automatically adjust air flow and temperature. Similarly, lighting settings will be adjusted according to occupancy. As biometric analytics come into play, air conditioning and lighting systems will be able to tune settings to better meet the energy-conscious preferences of those in the room. These are just the simplest of examples of how analytics can reduce a building’s carbon footprint.

As comforting as energy conservation is, many of us don’t like the idea of being caught on camera 24/7 for the cause. It’s an understandable concern. I’m the first to admit I hate being in front of cameras – just ask the poor photographer who snapped the latest picture of me. Beyond that, people don’t want to have to worry about storing endless amounts of archived video footage. The good news is that video content does not need to be saved for many analytics applications, since smart cameras can deal in information and not just data. Here’s an example of the difference between data and information. The information is the knowledge of whether a person is in a room. The data would be the actual picture of the person in the room. In cases such as the energy example I mentioned, the camera is able to observe a scenario, make a decision and delete the data. The way I see it, we aren’t that interesting to look at anyway, and this removes the task of actually having to manually delete the footage.

This is also how analytics systems would work in consumer-driven scenarios, like a mall. Imagine walking up to an information center, and by doing a snapshot analysis of your build, sex and age, a map would instantly highlight relevant locations in a store. If you are like me, you want expedited shopping – in and out. If a store could also automatically make recommendations to help me overcome my stylistic shortcomings, so much the better. (Read Gene’s blog, “Is Technology getting more Personal or Intimate?” on blogs.ti.com)

Analytics is truly about making life easier, efficient and personalized. We will all have to make some adaptations to it, but ultimately it will be so seamlessly integrated into our lives that we won’t even notice it. The sheer number and diversity of the applications are mind boggling and flexible digital signal processing platforms for deployment will continue to drive the creation of new applications for the technology (Check out http://www.thedavincieffect.com).

This entry may also be found on SemiApps.com

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

Smart, programmable cameras with a high degree of analytical intelligence will be the workhorses that enable the next generation of applications for the security and automotive markets to name just a couple.

Smart cameras will constantly be absorbing, processing and acting on information all around us, so we are free to think about other things. If someone climbs over a fence at 1:00 in the morning, these cameras will be able to distinguish between your teenage son sneaking home or a burglar trying to sneak off with your TV set. In an airport or other public places, they will know if a bag has been left unattended and will contact the appropriate authorities. On the streets, they will reduce the work load on the police force and other emergency services. In our cars they will serve as a security function but will also eventually take over the driving responsibilities. (Read my entry on, “Security vs. Safety and Privacy”)

Currently, when we think of video analytics, we think of a human as the end user. We think in terms of receiving information in a storable size that still contains all the data, of compression and reproduction. But the future of analytics will feature a computer as the end user. In that scenario, compression is no longer an issue and a perfect picture is unimportant – to a machine, a bad pixel is merely a spec of dust to be ignored. Analytics becomes less about data and more about intelligence, and that is a huge step that will require not just technological transition, but sociological transition as well. People may not be quite ready for machines to make important decisions without any human input. (Another good one to read, “Is Technology getting more Personal or Intimate?”)

I think this transition will occur in steps. Take the automotive industry for example. First, we will put cameras in to allow drivers to make better decisions. For instance, a camera can look at a driver’s blind spot and pass along the data of whether a car is there or not. The driver makes a decision about what to do with that data. In the second iteration of the technology, the camera becomes the second opinion on a decision. If I try to change lanes and the camera sees a car in the other lane, it tightens the tension in the steering wheel to let me know there is a potential problem. Third, the camera becomes the leading decision maker and the driver has to option to override it. Ultimately, we will reach a point where the camera is the only opinion and decision maker. (“Is There a Consumer Breaking Point In Terms Of Convergence?” )

Of course, all of this is going to require programmability. Not only because the system has to be instructed in the myriad of decisions it will have to make, but also as a reality of business. We will need cameras that are programmable and able to have the software adapted according to the application, which will continue to evolve with time. But the bottom line is, as long as you have enough programmability, there’s no limit to what you can do. (SoCs Are Answering Demand for Converged and “Architecture or Application?”)

Of course, we humans will need some re-programming as well. We have to be able to trust these cameras and the decisions they make.

But once we do, we will see these smart cameras used in every aspect f our daily lives. They will be used by the department of transportation to detect not only the location of traffic problems, but the root cause. They will be used for every form of security, from facial recognition in airports, to guarding newborn infants in hospitals. They will be used to transform transportation as computers relieve us of the burden of driving, thus ending gridlock, accidents and delays.

The technology will be in place. Are we ready for it as human beings?

This entry may also be found on SemiApps.com

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

Has it really been 25 years? Can it be possible that TI’s digital signal processing technology is old enough to rent a car and appear in a light beer commercial? In 1982, the semiconductor market saw the first viable digital signal processor shipped. Over the ensuing 25 years a paradox has arisen. As they’ve aged, DSPs have grown smarter, faster and more agile while I have grown slower, and more apt to spend a Saturday night in front of the TV. Tempus fugit.

I kid, of course. But there is no overlooking the impact of the technology over that span of years. The industry has shipped 9.5 billion DSPs in a broad range of products that have improved our lives to a degree that was unimaginable even to those of us who helped usher in the DSP era. But if you think the last 25 years was something, just wait and see what will happen in the next 25 years. DSP is proliferating new areas in the semiconductor market, demonstrating that it has evolved into a catalyst for innovation that will change our very lives.

The main reason for this is that we have freed manufacturers from building products that are defined by the chip. We are on a product-first, chip-second paradigm that allows for broader innovation. The marriage of digital signal processors with other technologies like accelerators and ARMs has enabled SoC-based innovation that is leading to exponential breakthroughs in previously un-thought of application spaces. Currently, those spaces are video and audio entertainment for the most part. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take a look at what life will be like just a few short years from now.

Here I am in the year 2020. It seems like a good place to position myself, as it implies clear vision. I’m in my car, racing to the airport. Of course, I’m not actually driving, that’s so 2010. No, automotive vision has reached a stage where cars drive themselves. Gridlock is a thing of the past as traffic moves in perfect syncopation. I’d be bored if I couldn’t instantly access my entire video and music library. I tell the inboard computer to load the Rolling Stones 2018 farewell concert. You’d think that Mick Jagger would have a heart attack the way he bounds across the stage – and at his age. Of course, if he did, sensors would instantly warn him of impending cardiac trouble and implanted medication would be dispensed. Do you remember when impending medical emergencies came as a surprise?

This reminds me, I have a medical checkup today. I download my vital signs into an e-mail and shoot it off to my doctor over my cell phone. I gave myself an MRI at home last night and include that information as well. Doctor Frantz – my grandson – instantly responds, giving me a clean bill of health. I can’t believe he didn’t become an engineer. Still, he did finish at the top of his class at Oxford, and never had to leave Texas. Distance learning has taken on a whole new meaning thanks to real-time, life-like video conferencing.

I have a conference, as well, and better check in. It’s a quick team meeting with Tahiti, Juneau and Rio de Janeiro. We’ve eliminated the need for most business travel and, thankfully, jet lag. Phone lag is still a problem, it’s 2 a.m. in UAE, but we’re working on that as well. I say a word and I am instantly connected. The video is so real, it’s like I’m sitting across the table rather than across the world. I speak in English and my words are translated into perfect French and Portuguese. After 15 minutes I beg off. I have a plane to catch.

No business travel here – strictly pleasure, the only reason to fly. My wife turns off her virtual Sudoku. Did I leave the stove on, she asks. Some things never change. I access my home monitor and confirm that she did, indeed, leave it on. I turn it off and check that my security systems are functioning properly. The cameras know when to alert me of anything strange and are also programmed to recognize my friends and family – which is good because my daughter is picking up my social security check ¬apparently the only piece of mail I still receive. You see, my wife made me retire again!

The airport is crowded but moves as quickly as the traffic. It takes one minute to get through security as my implanted information and my person are scanned. I lose my wife to one of the gift shops and quickly check her GPS position. She’s buying the latest e-book and with a scan of her ID chip, we’re on our way. In two hours we’ll be in Rome, just enough time for a short nap for this tired digital self.

This vision for the next twenty-five years is profound, but also raises challenges. To bring portability, connectivity and intelligence to every electronic device, semiconductor companies will need to hide the inherent complexity of creating such devices. Complete system solutions consisting of hardware, software and tools that spawn cooperative signal processing will be of paramount importance. With its expertise, technology and industry collaboration, TI is poised to address these challenges just as it has consistently conquered performance, price and power obstacles.

We are at a thrilling time in history, and life as we know it is about to change. It’s already happening – we will make it happen together.

If you have a vision of what the future will hold, send it to me. Put yourself in 2020 and imagine where DSP technology will take you.

I had the chance this morning, at TI’s fifth annual Developer Conference, to get together with about 1000 engineers who are using TI Digital Signal Processing technology to create unique and exciting electronics products. As you may know, this is the 25th anniversary of the first commercially successful digital signal processing. And as someone who was there at the beginning, I am pleased to join the conference today to talk about where the technology is headed in the next 25 years.

Back in the early 1980’s, DSP was just an idea we were kicking around in TI’s Houston offices. There were about thirty of us, young engineers who truly believed we were on a mission from God to create a new technology that had the potential to change the world. Back then, a DSP was a simple processor with a single multiplier, and you could literally memorize the lines of code. The market was relatively small (zero at first), but our customers developed some amazing products for the telecommunications, military and industrial spaces. I remember one of the markets on our target list was homomorphic processing. Back then, I used to say I had no idea what it was, but I assumed it would make the world safe for democracy.


Today, we’re living in a very different DSP world. Global sales reached 9.5 billion last year, and with products like DaVinci™, we’re integrating DSP, RISC processors and hardware accelerators and peripherals. And we’ve gone from 500 lines of code to a future with potentially hundreds of thousands lines of code.

As I look ahead, I truly believe we are only at the beginning of the DSP evolution. TI customers are creating applications we never imagined back in my Houston days. And as we talk about the Digital Age to come, we imagine 3-D integration and processors so small, they’re virtually invisible. Moreover, at TI, we’re looking at artificial vision, and laying the groundwork for processors that sense their environment and can interact with the end-user. There are even times when we sound as though we’re wandering in the realm of science fiction. But we’ve been there before.

That’s where we first discovered DSP technology and we will continue to forge the future providing you with the most innovative solutions for your unique and exciting applications.

Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

It’s the holiday season and people are naturally out shopping and creating their own wish lists. A while back, Dylan McGrath at EE Times posed several questions for his readers on what they wanted for the holidays. Here are my thoughts as I wind down this week, with holidays and CES just around the corner.

1) If you had $100 to spend for electronic devices for the holidays, what would you spend it on? a) If $300? b) If $500? c) If $1,000?

This is a hard question as my entertainment tastes exceed the $100 mark. Some of the products I am wanting fit into other categories. So, here they are:

For $300, I would invest in a Sling Box, that is if I didn’t have one already. The reason for even mentioning this is that the Sling Box gives me one more dimension of freedom with my entertainment. That is it gives the ability to have my entertainment where I want it. As I am writing this I am sitting in my hotel in Taipei wishing I could watch a local Houston channel. OK, I guess I could even now except TI won’t let me connect to the Sling Box through the firewall. Perhaps this is something else I could wish for this Christmas.

For $500, I guess I would be looking for a new DVR. I really need an HD DVR. Believe it or not, I actually have two DVRs right now. One is a TIVO which I bought the first year they were available. The other is a ReplayTV. And yes, I bought it the first year it was out. But that has now been more than five years and its time to upgrade. My fear is that an HD DVR is going to be more like a $1000 product this Christmas, so, I may be waiting another year for it.

For $1000, I’m focusing on an HD DVD player. But I am waiting for the battle to subside and a winner to be declared. It would also be nice to see significant content available.

Now, for the real interesting toy that exceeds the price choices is a new projector for my home theater. I am still using a 480p projector for my 12 foot screen. Yes, it looks just fine and no, I’m not severely near sighted, thank you very much. But, it is time to finally get the 1080p projector I need. What is holding me up is the battle for the HD DVD space and for the price of projectors to come down a bit more.

So, all in all, I can spend all of the money and not blink an eye.

2) What do you consider as a great value in its technological evolution? (e.g. MP-3 player, iPod, digital video camera, HDTV set)

I always think the greatest value in the evolution is the next one – what ever that is. If I have to pick what truly revolutionized the consumer it would be the digital cell phone rather than any of those in the question. It was that “aha” moment that turned the consumer on to digital toys (I sometimes call them the “new adult toys”, but generally am told that I shouldn’t refer to them that way). Cell phones have continued to increase in value while the prices have stayed relatively the same for consumers. Whereas five years ago, a cell phone was just a voice communications tool, today for virtually the same price a cell phone is more than that. Cell phones can create content (pictures and movie), be entertaining (listen to music and watch video) and are a full communications suite (voice, email, text) all in your hand.

3) What do consider not ready for prime time? (e.g. plasma TV, LCD TV, rear-projection TV, home theater)

Once again I go in another direction. All of these are in prime time. As I have been saying, the battle for the living room is over. The winners are: big screen TVs, surround sound, set-top box, DVR and DVD player. This is prime time. What is emerging is the battle for the “bedroom”, or perhaps better put, the personal entertainment space. New content distribution concepts like MySpace, YouTube and so forth are changing the whole industry. But, I don’t think it is quite ready for prime time. Many aspects are still open for consideration. Aspects such as the creation, distribution, and monitoring of content, along with how anyone makes money at it. I suspect the latter will be the controlling issue. Products which are making an early attempt at meeting the needs of this emerging market are things like personal video players, video phones and other AV entertainment devices. We are finding them not only show up in the “bedroom” but also in pockets and automobiles.

4) What consumer systems, if any, have you personally worked on that you’d recommend to your friends for the holiday buying season and why?

That depends on who I’m talking to. That is, how old are they and how techno savvy are they. Things like a DVR or a good sound system will revolutionize the dedicated TV watcher. A Sling Box will excite the technosavvy traveler. A camera ready cell phone, a notebook computer or a broadband connection would be on my short list for a teen or twenties consumer. Notice I’ve left off things like iPods, and the sort. As neat as they are, I feel most have already got one if they want it.

Note that I haven’t mentioned an gaming systems – so try to guess my age;->.

5) What consumer systems that haven’t been conceived need to be conceived?

If the personal space entertainment industry is going to succeed, it will take several dedicated products to be invented. The first is a product for the end user. I’m guessing it will come down to a cell phone with a 7” screen and a video camera. Such a product would allow the user to create content and to download content. I am certain there are other products that will enhance this new concept of entertainment.

Happy holidays, folks. We’ll chat more in the new year.