Next2Friends™ launches First Live Mobile Streaming Video for BlackBerry® Devices
Next2Friends free ‘Live’ application makes sharing videos taken from your mobile phone easy and fun.

9th October 2008 - London, UK: Next2Friends™ (www.next2friends.com), the mobile social media platform, today announces the availability of its innovative ‘Live’ mobile video streaming application and Social Suite for the BlackBerry® Curve™ and Pearl™ series smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM)(TSX: RIM). Already available for the Symbian S60 & S40 range of devices and the Windows Mobile 6 platform, Next2Friends is now actively extending its support and development for the BlackBerry OS as well as a number of other popular operating systems.

Next2Friends™ Live enables people to share their lives from anywhere, from broadcasting the little things that make up the day, to capturing a must-see-moment, to bringing happenings across the world closer to home. The application, soft-launched in late 2007 and officially released in June 2008, is continually being enhanced by the Next2Friends™ development team to deliver the optimal service for all the people already sharing their lives through real-time, rich media. Some of the new features that have recently been incorporated are one click streaming, the ability to zoom, pause or re-start live streams and automatic quality selection that guarantees the best streaming experience independent of location, carrier or connection speeds.

“We are excited to be making Next2Friends Live available for BlackBerry users.” commented Anthony Nystrom, CTO of Next2Friends™. “By bringing Next2Friends to the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve we will be opening up a whole new world of connectivity and interactivity to this surprisingly untapped segment of the industry.”

The Next2Friends™ mobile pack has been designed so people can share their life and connect with others anywhere by vastly extending the capability and usability of mobile devices. The Mobile Social Suite includes two-click photo uploading, media rich opinion polling and location-based social networking. Seamlessly integrated with all the extra features on www.Next2Friends.com, the total package is more complete, more compelling and more relevant to the needs and desires of today’s consumer than any other service.

Users can sign up for the free service at www.Next2Friends.com, download the application to their BlackBerry smartphone in seconds, and begin using immediately. Videos captured with the Next2Friends Live application are automatically streamed to the user’s personal video library where they can be easily shared with friends or embedded on other social networking profiles, websites and blogs.

Research in Motion (RIM) is one of the leading designers and manufacturers of smartphones in the US, with the BlackBerry line commanding 46% of the market in Q2 2008. With over 5 million BlackBerry units shipped in Q2 and 17.4% market share worldwide, there is little doubt that development for BlackBerry is a winning move. Driven by innovation and utility for both the business and consumer worlds, there is little sign that this momentum will slow.

Next2Friends™ Live application and Social Suite are free to install and use, with members only paying for networked data traffic via their carrier. Advanced compression technology ensures that all content is reduced to a fraction of its original size, with no degradation of quality or delays.

Fully supported devices include popular models from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, Samsung and now select models from BlackBerry.

-ends-

About Next2Friends
Next2Friends (www.next2friends.com), the mobile social media platform, was created to deliver content and connections that entertain, engage and enhance life. Bringing together the full capabilities of both mobile and PC-based internet technology, the comprehensive suite of applications and features provide rich media, commercial and communication services to today’s connected consumer.

Key applications include:
· Live – true, real-time video streaming from mobile device to web.
· Ask – opinion gathering and decision making on the move.
· Snap Up – automatic streaming of images captured while out and about.
· Tag & Meet – intelligent matching of virtual profiles in the physical world.

The Next2Friends platform utilises patent-pending, proprietary technology to ensure consumers, businesses and brands enjoy the full value of the mobile internet. The UK Limited Company, formed in 2007, has offices in the UK and US, in addition to R&D divisions on three continents.

Their demo is quite good. They used a webcam connected to a laptop. The program then analyzes the video, detecting the outline of the landscape and using it as the terrain for a shoot-em-up kind of game, in which you maneuver a spaceship to obtain stars. Best of all, they even implemented a two-player game mode.

It's a lot simpler than the airplane racing simulator we covered yesterday, but my guess is that this could be made even more sophisticated by using laser meters to actually detect depth of the landscape and make more complex, multidimensional game stages. [Carcade via OhGizmo!]

If you're not near a TV or computer tonight Verizon's VCAST service will be streaming CBS's feed live. Of course, there are streams from CBS's regular site, CNN and C-SPAN, who has probably the best and most forward-thinking—for Web 2.0 fanatics anyway—online coverage around. Hulu's Election '08 hub also aggregates everything from speeches to punditry to funnies from The Daily Show, Colbert, Conan and more if you want to flip something more engaging during a particularly snoozy stretch of the debate. Or if your politics appetite is just insatiable, there's Obama's maybe gaming-changing iPhone app if you want to put your fingers in your ears whenever McCain speaks.

Where else are you guys planning to peep the debate? [paid content]

Gotta love Anderson's tone when mentioning his "friends at Gizmodo." We love you too, dude—if there's anything else we can do to help drive your news cycle, you know where to find us! Toobin, thankfully, handles it like a champ and is now our new favorite television legal analyst.

Designed to create a destructive cloud to do major damage on a large group of soft bodies, the canister shot has played a central role in ground battles since the 18th century. The first time I read an account of its deadly power was in a book called A Day of Anger, describing how it literally made the streets of Madrid red with blood in the urban guerrilla battle that started the Spanish Independence War against the French.

In this video you can see how it works: A cylindrical metal canister is filled with lead or iron balls and sawdust, used to firmly pack the metal balls while avoiding them to crowding each other when the cannon fires. Basically, this type of shell turns the large tank cannon into a giant shotgun. And like a shotgun, its destructive power at close range is now mostly used in urban warfare.

The Good:
• Feels Like TiVo—Ars really liked that the whole TiVo experience exists on TiVo PC with few limitations.

• The UI is made for the PC—Ars noted that the interface works as well with a keyboard and mouse as it does with the remote. You can click with ease, or use the keys to do what you need to do.

• PC Versatility—With TiVo PC, you can swap content between other TiVos or Liquid TV setups on the same network. You can also remotely schedule programs to record.

The Bad:
• Exporting—The ability to export to PSP or iPod was a plus on paper, but the execution wasn't so great. Ars said that even with a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo and 8 GB of RAM on a Mac Pro, it took even longer than the minute of conversion for minute of content that TiVo PC suggested. Secondly, the lack of customizable encoding options and automated uploading to devices detracted from a good experience.

• No TiVoCast Support—Downloading from TiVo content partners like The Onion is not an option on TiVo PC. I'm sure there are some legal issues for this, being on the PC and all, but still, it's nice to have content like that already waiting for you.

• No CableCard Support—If you want to record more than Over The Air content in HD, you're out of luck with TiVo PC. Nero says they plan to add CableCard support in the future, but Ars doesn't think we'll see it anytime soon.

So there you have it. If you want a good, solid DVR program that records basic TV content, this might be right for you. If you want more, you may want to look elsewhere. [Ars Technica]

So potentially, non-PC gadgets that are running the Netflix streaming service could have the ability to directly add and reorder movies to the queue—saving the trouble of having to pull out your computer when you think of something you want to add on the fly.

Data will be accessible via REST and Javascript APIs (no JSON, though), plus ATOM feeds. The API will also be usable for commercial purposes, so if you have a Netflix killer app for the iPhone planned that you think could make you some money, you'd better get to work. Netflix's API will be available starting tomorrow at the Netflix developer site, which you will be able to sign up for by clicking here tomorrow, and not a moment earlier. [Netflix Developer via ReadWriteWeb]

It's too late to see the site doing its thing live (the first debate was last Friday), but there are three more debates planned, so you'll still get to see C-SPAN pull and archive video on the fly.

In an interview with ars technica, social media magnate Clay Shirky was enthused by C-SPAN's effort.

"This transforms liveblogging from a marginal thing that a few committed high-speed typists do to something anyone can do," said Shirky. "The platform allows me to do what I do when I blog asynchronously, basing a post directly on a link to a permanent reference point." This, he says, overcomes the "perennial liveblogger dilemma."

"Do I comment or watch and try to form a considered reaction?" he asked.

Truly, it could mean more power to the people, and an end to the talking heads of cable network news. I think that's an idea, red or blue, that we can all get behind. [C-SPAN via ars technica]

In tests using the Replay Media Catcher from Applian Technologies, Reuters successfully downloaded movies from Amazon and other sites that utilized Adobe software to deliver media. Amazon insists that their movies and TV shows cannot be pirated using video stream catching software, but it seems clear that Adobe's flaw combined with the way Amazon streams content makes it open season on thousands of movies and TV shows for anyone willing to shell out about $40. [Yahoo]

Aperture Settings
The coolest thing about shooting with a DSLR is the fact that you can switch lenses, so the second coolest thing is inherently that you can tweak the aperture. (As a video camera shooting a constant 30fps, there's of course no shutter control.) I found that shooting family members with a 50mm lens at really low f-stops can be amazing as long as they're not moving around so much. If you have a moving target, like a cat, for instance, you can just dial up the f-stop to narrow it. You may sacrifice a bit of the intimacy of a portait shot, but you can keep your moving subject in a greater depth of field. As you can see from the rubber duck shots, though, it's not too great a depth.

Manual Focus and Zoom
I find that shooting with a tripod makes everything a lot easier with this camera, which is of course a flaw when it comes to mobility and capturing the moment. Staged shoots—like the one above, and the far more aesthetically pleasing Vincent Laforet Canon 5D Mark II film—are pulled off by reducing the amount of camera movement. At the same time, you can make use of this by doing funky focus tricks, like the rack focus shot above with the duck, the knife and the Giz logo. Manual zoom is also good and bad—you can't really achieve the kind of speed I get at the end of this vid when using regular cameras; however, even when I was being careful, there was a little jostle. I decided to keep it for effect, but it's a bit annoying. (Maybe a more expensive tripod would help.)

Color, ISO and Other Settings
Pretty much anything you can tweak before shooting a photo can be done with the D90. If you want a movie in black-and-white or any range of color settings, just go into the shooting menu and make it so. Same goes for exposure settings, ISO and a lot more tweaky options. I was (accidentally) shooting with a high ISO for much of the duck shoot, and you can really only see a good bit of noise when I was in the high f-stop tight aperture setting. Truth is, you can unexpectedly do a lot of cool stuff in low-light thanks to the D90's ISO control.

A Few Things To Keep In Mind
• It's important to focus beforehand, and if you're in Live View on manual focus, you can tap the magnifying glass to zoom in (digitally) to get a better focus on your subject.

• When using Live View, the auto-focus is slow because it uses contrast or face recognition. Also, again, this can only be used to set up the shot, and can't be used when shooting vid.

• Holding AE-L AF-L button will lock the exposure setting when you're shooting, so panning from a bright window to a dark corner won't screw up your carefully constructed ambience with a quick lighting change. (Of course, manually panning and adjusting your focus will probably mess up the shot anyhow.) Reader TimmyTimeTravel just told me about this article, which contains an additional AE tip: "To set your camera for AE-L (hold): Menu > Custom Settings (Pencil Icon) > f (controls) >> Assign AE-L/AF-L Button > Ae lock (hold) > Ok"

• Very important: Camera settings don't take for some reason unless you exit Live View. So if you change your aperture or ISO or some other setting, exit LV, then pop back in to see the change.

What Not To Do
Here in a second video I'm including some shots of me and Wade the Cat to show you how hard it can be to manage the thing when you're not really working at it. Notice how shaky everything is, and how objects come in and out of focus all too easily. Aside from the fisheye bit (in there because how can you not shoot your cat with a damn fisheye?), the video was shot at pretty wide aperture setting, partially explaining the inability to keep focus:

Update: Though I shot this in 720p, I had to edit it and compress it to put into our servers. I'm no pro, of course, but some blurring of in-focus shots did happen in the conversion process. The following are actual frames pulled from the movies seen above, preserved much closer to their native resolution:

[Nikon D90 on Giz; song in duck vid was "Tasty" by The Grift]

RP Cuento sent us this time-lapse video showing how he built his 2,558-piece Lego Mac Pro, which he dubs Bricked Mac. He also told us a few more facts about this fantastic Lego computer, starting with a basic question: Does it overheat?

It doesnt really overheat too badly. If I'm running batch compressor stuff, I'll just pop open the side, which is removable.

The box took 14 hours to build. It includes a Mac Mini with a 250GB hard drive hack, with the system drive being an ESATA drive. The Hackintosh running Mac OS X, the second computer inside the box, uses:

2.4GHz Intel Q6600 Quad Core
Gigabyte ep35-ds3l motheboard
BFG NVIDIA 8800gt with 512 Mbytes
2GB of 800MHz RAM
750 and 400GB harddrives

[Thanks RP Cuenco!]

The video walkthrough of the new T-Mobile G1, the first Google Android phone, shows all the details you will ever need. It feels smooth and fast, although the interface looks a bit dated and mixed. It kind of reminds me of a 1990s Windows desktop manager, especially next to the glossy, ultra-polished iPhone interface. However, there are certain aspects of it that are droolworthy, like the accelerometer-based Google Maps Streetview.

SlingCatcher

This place-shifting feature is the main focus of the product (hence the name), and its ability to circumvent the computer entirely is pretty great. One of the first things you notice when you enter the SlingCatcher feature and log in to your account is that any Slingbox you've ever connected are all displayed in a list. Sling's recently enabled users to link devices to their ID and this lets you hop from Sling to Sling with relative ease and not much thought.

As far as performance goes, the picture looked great at times, especially when used with an HD Slingbox. It suffered from some slowdown and artifacting, but part of that was because my own internet connection was acting up. I'll be curious to see how it looks over LAN when streaming in the same house.

My Media
My Media is the most straightforward of the features on the SlingCatcher. You plug in some form of storage, SlingCatcher brings up the file directory of content it can playback from the drive , you pick what you want, and start watching. Also, using SlingSync, you can wirelessly send your files to an attached drive, and the software will make sure they're compatible before doing so. This feature doesn't currently support NAS drives, but that functionality is planned for future software updates.

Sling Projector

This was the feature that excited me the most. While it has the ability to display your entire computer desktop to your TV with audio, its real strength is locking on to a specific area, like a video window, and upscaling it to fit your TV screen. Most of the SlingProjector experience takes place on your computer with a special desktop client.

Launching the SlingProjector program brings an icon up on the screen that has the option to start or stop "projection," as well as a toggle button to capture the whole screen, or just part. When part is selected, there's a blue rectangle that floats around your screen, auto-attaching itself to different elements. You can also tweak the size of the rectangle manually, and home in on specific dimensions. Think of the like creating webclips in Safari.

When you select your boundaries for projection, the signal is sent to the TV, followed by a brief moment where SlingCatcher recognizes the dimensions of the video, upscales, and adjusts the stream buffer accordingly. I watched LOST from ABC's online player, and about 10-15 seconds after it loaded, it looked pretty amazing on a 42-inch LCD. For now, the SlingProjector software will only work with Windows computers, but OS X-compatible software is in development.

While no specific date has been locked down for release, the SlingCatcher will definitely come out this year, and when it does, expect a full review of this versatile, powerful device. [Sling on Giz]

To be fair, Sony's licensing agreement claims "Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a PLAYSTATION 3 or PSP system." In other words, anyone who has downloaded a film has agreed to this arrangement fair and square. But making a call to Sony in the instance where you delete the movie can grant you a one time exception.

Just all the more reason why digital downloads make for a great way to rent a movie, but a crappy way to buy a movie. [arstechnica]

[Peter Thuvander via Core77 via Treehugger]

GOCE belongs to the group that the European Space Agency classifies as Earth Explorers: five new satellites dedicated to provide a closer, more intimate look of our planet. And while CRYOSAT and SWARM look funky too—with SMOS and AEOLUS being a bit more conventional—GOCE's design seems straight out of a sci-fi movie.

GOCE
Developed to do a precise map of Earth's gravity field—with the help of onboard instrumentation and the GPS network—and also study the oceans' circulation.

CryoSat-2
It will study changes in polar ice caps and floating ice.

SMOS
Designed to measure soil moisture in land and salinity in the oceans, which will help us understand better the behavior of the oceans.

Aeolus
It will analyze wind patterns to improve weather forecasts and the understanding of atmospheric dynamics.

Swarm
This constellation of satellites will control the evolution of the Earth's geomagnetic field to help us understand Earth's interior and its climate.

I don't know what kind of substances the engineers at the European Space Agency are using, but I want a double shot. [ESA via Astroengine and Euronews]

[XBMC]

The nurse applied a series of numbing drops to my eyeball, each stronger than the previous. The doctor clamped my lids back with a metal tool. I felt a bracket hold my eye down and someone in the operating room gave the order, "Suction."

A whirring sound commenced and my eyeball felt like it was being sucked up and out of my skull, elongated like a green grape between a Roman emperor's fingers, ready to burst. The bright blue-white light grew closer. As the pressure killed circulation in the eye things went black and I felt an arcing slice in the surface of my cornea—I did not move my jaw or tongue or mouth, but deep in my throat I uncontrollably whimpered, "THAT HURT!" and hoped no one heard me. I hoped the other eye would not feel the same. It did not, as the drops had actually taken full effect by the time it was sliced open with a beam of light. The rest was, as they said in the brochure, physically painless.

A few days earlier on Linda Del Mar beach, a wave knocked me off my longboard. Under the turbulence, both contact lenses were flushed out of my eyes. It was impossible for me to catch any more waves with the remainder of my eyesight. Although I'd entertained the idea for years on and off, it was right there that I decided to get LASIK done as soon as I could. A friend told me he'd had good success at LasikPlus. Coincidentally, my vision plan gave a hefty discount there, so I figured I would try them out. It was them or the LASIK doctor from Family Guy:

I went for a free consultation. Their office was like any other doctor's office, with one exception. In the middle—behind a giant glass window that everyone in the waiting room could see—was an operating chair situated in between giant boxy machines. They had overhanging beaks positioned as if ready to feast on whoever was strapped into the seat.

The optometrist concluded I was a good candidate for the surgery, based on having light to middle nearsightedness, slight astigmatism and otherwise healthy eyes. She showed me a brochure with all the options I could get: The $900 base package uses a scalpel to cut open the cornea and then a broad UV laser whose every zap removes tissue 1/500th of a human hair in thickness. I opted for the $2000 package, which opened the cornea with a laser instead of a scalpel and tracked a custom map of my eye's irregularities, treating it sector by sector. This wavefront guided analysis is the same tech NASA used to detect and counter irregularities in high-powered telescopes. This would reduce halos around bright lights and "dramatically improve vision." According to a study I do not know enough about to believe, it was more likely to better than 20/20 vision with such a package than without. The Navy recommends this version of LASIK for its aviators. And if it's good enough for Top Gun, it was good enough for me, regardless of cost. (These quotes are per eye.)

I was surprised to discover when I went in later that others were getting the basic surgery. I winced as one lady's eye was cut by a scalpel in a device akin to a carpenter's plane. Another lady—whose husband was getting it later depending on how hers went—complained about night vision problems but didn't opt for the costlier halo-reducing procedure. I found this astounding considering the banners on LasikPlus's site offering 0% financing.

Someone asked the nurse what the difference was between the cheap and the expensive LASIK and she said something that might not have been exactly endorsed by the company: The expensive one was like high-definition TV and the cheaper one was like standard-definition, but they both get the job done. I thought to myself, "Like hell standard definition gets the job done!" Yet everyone in the room nodded as if they were still using VHS at home.

On the Saturday before the lasering, I had gone surfing with my contacts but was told to wear glasses for the next three days to ready my eyes for the operation. Hard lenses need to be left out for 4-6 weeks before surgery since they greatly affect the shape of the eyeball.

Wearing my glasses again, I appreciated the nice titanium frames and ultrathin glass. I realized there was a lot to be said for how glasses made me feel. In 7th grade, I'd noticed difficulty making out the blackboard, but avoided getting them and got through math class by squinting. The teacher reported me to the nurse, and I got stuck with some hideous gold colored ones with horn rimmed earpieces. I felt self conscious in them, almost diminished.

That feeling went away as I grew up and earned some nerd pride, but I have always allowed myself to say geekier things and do more socially awkward things when wearing them. I could futz with my phone instead of carrying on in a group conversation, push my glasses up my nose and laugh slightly louder than usual at slightly stupider things, and expect people to chalk it up to nerdiness. I think I might miss this, for all the advantages of having laser-enhanced vision.

On the day of the operation, the doctor spoke to the patients in the waiting room. The entire procedure would take about 15 seconds per eye. There was nothing we could possibly do to cause the surgery to fail, but please do not shake our legs. (?!?) Lisa asked me at least 5 times if I was scared. It made me wonder if I looked scared, because I didn't think I was scared and if I looked scared that means I was so scared I didn't even realize it. Which all freaked me out. A lot.

Once my corneas were cut open and I experienced that initial pain, I was definitely frightened, and escaped to a corner of my mind where I would not think too much about all the things they were doing to my eyes and what my life would be like if I happened to be the "less than 1%" of patients with vision-reducing complications.

I was already in this mental cone of silence when the doctor lifted up the covers of my eyeball flaps using what looked like metal chopsticks, mixing around a stir fry while I watched, first-person perspective, from within the wok. I was shifted under the largest machine in the room, its eye a flashing red/orange light. It reminded me of a Discovery Channel feature on exploding stars. There was a sound, a clicking like that from a Tesla coil, and the smell of ozone, which went on for 15 seconds as the nurse counted down. My eyes were clamped, and I felt I was being burned alive (even though LASIK's UV laser does no thermal damage to tissue). I was told not to attempt to move or blink, which of course, makes you move and blink. The muscles in my eye fought the devices holding me steady, and before I could calm myself down, the laser had already stopped.

The doctor finished my second eye, and had me sit up. There was fog everywhere and contrast was abysmal, but my vision had improved by measures of sharpness. I slept in the car ride home as Lisa drove, and as the painkillers wore off. The hard part began: I was to avoid all optical stimulation and sleep the rest of the day. At one point, I could handle it no longer and I checked my email. All of it.

I was told that the next morning I would have a miraculous, life-changing experience as I woke up without any need for glasses or contacts. Actually, it was not so miraculous. My healing eyes could see somewhat sharply but with a lot of haze. It was similar to sleeping with my contacts in. I took off the racquetball-style eye shield I was to sleep with for a week, and began the steroid and antibiotic eye-drop treatment, which I'd also keep up for a week. I got dressed and went for my check up appointment. And that was when the miracle happened.

I got in front of that damn eye chart and, even through the haze, smoked the exam's 20/20 line. Had my eyes been clearer, I would have read the letters on the 20/15 line, too. Not bad for $4K, a laser in my eyes for less than a minute and a day's worth of healing.

After I get used to the sharpness, I am sure I will be worried about being one of the few percentage of people who walk away from LASIK dissatisfied. (Wikipedia cites four studies that indicate post-op satisfaction anywhere from 92% to 98%, but that's still a lot of people pissed off.) Even if things go perfectly, they say it will take 3-6 months to heal completely, during which my vision will be irregular. Eyeballs might be dryer at times than I'd want them to be. The biggest problems I have now are the night time halos, which supposedly will improve over time, especially with the wavefront guided method my eyes were carved up with and the terrible, terrible bloodshot I have from the suction device. They say this may take a few weeks to clear up, and while I'm waiting, I have been wearing sunglasses at night and apologizing for them. Annoying.

None of this bothers me much, save the fact that newer, better, safer technology will come around sooner or later, and my eyes may end up as out-of-date as back-to-school iPods. There is talk of using the laser to cut the flap, which is of lower disruption to the corneal tissue, to complete the entire operation, soon. And I do not know if my eyes will be forward-compatible, having already been sliced. Still, for now I remain top-of-the-line, and I would gladly endure 10 times the (mostly imaginary) pain of LASIK to gain the quality of eyesight found in elite Major League Baseball pitchers.

[Thanks to Lisa for feeding me, driving me home and taking that video.]

It's been a good few weeks for DSLRs. Just after Nikon's D90 became the first ever to jump into the sweet, sweet waters of the HD video pool, Canon did a gigantic cannonball today with the EOS 5D Mk II, upping the game to full 1080p captures at 30fps. The question that all of this good news brings up is: Why now? Why haven't the DSLRs we've been using for years ever been able to grab video clips like their cheaper pocket-cam brethren? Let's take a look at the roadblocks that have stood in the way of the DSLR video revolution, and why Canon, Nikon and others are only just now starting to Bigfoot right over them.

Processing: The biggest challenge to overcome is also the most vague and nebulous, and is the one part of digital cameras most of us never think about. Processing is each manufacturer's secret sauce (that's why we never hear a MHz number or any other specs). It's where a huge portion of the engineering dollars go to—and where most of the patents come from.

The data dumped out by a DSLR's large sensor is a lot to swallow—orders of magnitude more than what even the baddest compact digicam can process into video. So for instance, according to Canon's long-time camera tech guru Chuck Westfall, the 5D Mk II's Digic IV processor must take the 21MP, full-frame sensor data and downsample it by 10x to 1920 x 1080 and compress it into MPEG4 encoding—and it has to do that 30 times each second. That's a lot of CPU power, and Canon and Nikon both only just got there, with Digic IV and Expeed, respectively.

Auto Focus: If you've used live view on a Nikon or Canon DSLR, you know that auto focus happens differently. That's because with the mirror flipped up and the shutter open, the channel is cleared to allow light from the lens to stream onto the main image sensor, bypassing the separate AF sensor used for still images.

It's the same for a DSLR in video mode—on the 5D Mk II, the camera uses a separate contrast-based system to assign focus points (or it can also attempt facial recognition using contrast, both of which put even more strain on our good friend the processor), and it takes several seconds for focus to shift if it needs to (in some modes you must assign the new focus point manually using the camera's jog dial).

While you may not notice or care about shifting auto focus during videos on a compact camera, when a DSLR's more responsive and sensitive depth-of-field is factored in, focus is more important. The majors are just now locking all of this down enough to the point of usability—and they still have a ways to go. Of course, you can always focus manually, but try getting a major manufacturer to put that dusty sentence in a PR brochure.

Sony and Olympus have used an innovative two-sensor setup to provide live view without the AF problems. However, Olympus has gone away from that model and now only uses one sensor, presumably to cut down on cost and complexity. Nobody has used the second image sensor to dump the live view feed to video, probably because the output would not be of usable quality.

Sensors: Everything changes when instead of the fraction of a second of exposure for a still image, a sensor has to sustain constant operation to grab a video. When it's capturing light continuously a sensor heats up, and heat = noise = shitty looking images. Today's DSLR CMOS sensors (which handle heat and noise better, generally, than CCDs) are just now getting to the levels of low power consumption and efficiency to not turn into little mini-griddles when recording a video. Canon has only produced one CCD camera in its history (the first, the 1D), and Nikon has been CMOS on the top end—but there's a reason the mid-range video-capable D90 has moved to CMOS from its D80 predeccesor's CCD, and why most manufacturers are heading in that direction. Olympus uses what they call LiveMOS (or NMOS) and may very well be implementing video recording soon on its E-series cameras.

Image Quality: When you buy a DSLR, you want everything that comes out of it to be of substantially better quality than what you could get with the compact digital it's likely replacing. That's why the first DSLR movie modes we've seen from the biggies are all touting HD quality—if they had really wanted to, someone could have found a way to squeeze video out of a DSLR before now—but for all of the reasons above, it wouldn't have looked much (if any) better than what compacts have been spewing directly to YouTube for years. And while the majors want you to love your new "prosumer" status, they're also quite happy to have you continue shopping for a compact camera to back it up.

But now, the more interesting overlap is not DSLRs vs. point and shoots, it's DSLRs and digital camcorders. We'll have a Giz Explains on "should I even consider buying a digical camcorder again" ready when that becomes an actual reality.

Special thanks to Chuck Westfall from Canon for helping us out. Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about touching, feeling or screening to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

As our good friend and video wizard Charlie White points out, it doesn't have the specs to match the legendary 4K Red One, but it does cost a lot less, less than half at just south of $10,000. That awesome memory card is twice as fast as the next best card on the market, but there is a catch: That 80GB will be used up in 15 minutes of video. [Ikonoskop via DVice]