Fox News Touchscreens are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel Displays Running Windows 8 | Hacker News Reader

Fox News Touchscreens are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel Displays Running Windows 8

techcrunch.com

48 pointsaelaguiz47 comments

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'Aside from it being simply neat of Fox News to use the displays,'

Nah.

'it’s a nice moment for Microsoft:'

Nah.

'the company has found an early commercial use for the technology.'

Nahhhhhh.

To me it's more likely Microsoft is driving hard these visible partnerships, for example like Delta Air using Surface tables, at a loss for exposure. But I wouldn't know, I'm not a TechCrunch journalist.

Why don't you think it's a good example of a commercial use? Why don't you think this is a good moment for Microsoft?

I don't believe it's a good commercial use because I don't believe Newsrooms need that kind of technological change - they are clearly intended to be showy, not useful, as a 17" screen would certainly do for research.

I don't think Close-up, a 55" 1080p resolution can hardly lead to productive work. I sometimes use a 55" 1080p screen from five feet away and even there the text is not clear enough and too large to fit entirely in my field of vision.

It's not a good moment because it's a completely irrelevant moment. I am sure Microsoft has other exciting products in thr works.

It's hard to find tech specs on the Perspective Pixel displays, but at least one source† says they are 1920x1080. The idea of doing lots of text-oriented work sitting inches away from a 55" 1080p monitor sounds horrible, but I guess it makes for good TV.

† http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2819660

Good for TV? Its Fox, so anything that distracts from the words they are saying is great for TV.

I find a lot of relevant news on Fox, relevant commentary, knowledgeable opinions. Unless you can cite an example of what you mean then it's just a personal attack against Fox with no basis.

>> jebblue 1 hour ago said:

>> I find a lot of relevant news on Fox, relevant commentary, knowledgeable opinions. Unless you can cite an example of what you mean then it's just a personal attack against Fox with no basis.

Here's your example.

"Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news. Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom."

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/fox-news-w...

I eagerly await any attempts to defend FOXNews in a comment-thread on HackerNews. Seriously, go for it. http://i.imgur.com/xblF4.gif

Did you seriously link to a Huffington Post article to criticize the bias of Fox News?

I can't defend Fox's practices, but the fact that you aren't railing against MSNBC as well makes me think you're far from an impartial observer. Fox News and MSNBC are two sides of the same ridiculous coin, but media bias only seems to bother you when it's coming from the right.

I assume it was directly solely at Fox News as this is the line of argument I took. The op posted a link to Fox then I slandered the Fox network's good name. In addition, I don't live in the US and never see American news with the exception of rehashed Fox garbage, hence my angle.

The O'Reilly Factor.

I'm not sure if this is a joke or a troll. I'll bite and link to everyone's favourite source. In addition, could you seriously read a Murdoch publication regularly and be ok with it? He is one of the most degenerate business owners in living memory. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversie...

  1920 / 55 means 34.9 dpi ?

If thats correct then this is just awful. I feel sorry for those who have to use this daily.

I don't understand how anybody would use that to do anything serious on.

Fox News is not serious.

that's not correct, 55 inches is diagonal.

(16x)^2 + (9x)^2 = (55)^2

x ~= 2.996

1920/(16x) ~= 40.05 dpi

I've done graphics for television (literally fullscreens and boxes for newscasts and that sort of thing) - if something appears onscreen (especially on a screen on screen) you'd be surprised how terrible the resolution has to be before it even matters visually to the home viewer.

If this is the display tech I saw over a year ago at OSCON, they were visually fine. When I pushed the MS rep on the booth for info about pricing and it was in the 5 digit range I politely moved on without getting more info. They looked good very close at finger touch range, but don't know the pixel density.

Here is the product page: https://www.microsoft.com/office/perceptivepixel/products/de....

I think it's great that Fox employs tiny journalists. They're just as intelligent and capable as other newspeople.

as with other people, there is a tendency to confuse their journalists and their talk show hosts. Separating the two in your head allows you to watch the appropriate shows on each channel without screaming at the set, or dismissing what is being said from misconception.

They have a bunch of people in the background using them apparently, not just the hosts. Do those people actually do work, or are they just 'extras'? Are they actually even there, or is looped footage of them bluescreened in?

Seems like an awful job if they are actually real, having to sit at a desk with a tv camera pointed at your back the entire time...

I bet moonlighting at that job is actually a welcome change from the smell of the stables. Granted, being a jockey is probably lots of fun during those all-too-brief sprints around the track, but the rest of the time, I'd want to be as far away from horses as possible.

At the tv station where I was last employed, they decided to change the format of their newscasts by filming in the newsroom... so if you happened to be cutting packages together for the next newscast or whatever you ended up in the background.

It did kind of suck.

Which one is the journalist? Baier? Wallace? haha

Glad to see our corporate overlords are equipping their propoganda departments with the latest high-tech gear.

You mean, the illusion of the latest high-tech gear.

82 inch screens @ 1920 X 1080

Those bezels look larger on one side... which must make their work lean heavily to the right. /snark

In all seriousness, though, I can't imagine how they are going to be any more productive at those resolutions than they would be with traditional input methods, not to mention the sore arms that these will cause.

Does anyone remember the CNN hologram?

I don't quite understand the newsroom gimmicks...

Have you ever been to a midway at a carnival?

Think of each booth as a different station trying anything to catch your attention and you'll understand. It's just a hook. Doesn't matter if it's clever, or stupid, or if they think it's clever and it looks stupid - if it gets you to watch the commercials than it works.

I don't quite understand the newsroom gimmicks.

They aren't really newsrooms, at least not like they used to be. Now it's all about improving ratings at the expense of long term credibility.

(But then if all are doing it, we're talking about relative credibility.)

We would have bought some at $dayjob but their Linux support required coding against a proprietary API. We'd like a nice big interactive display (e.g. take a wacom, make it big) that works on Linux. No custom APIs, please; if your hardware needs special bits please improve the Linux ecosystem and contribute them there.

Apologies if this has changed since we demoed them, but those were my notes at the time.

It's great that they're trying to leverage the technology like this. Ideally, we'll get a little news room arms race, which will hopefully lead to a few innovations. The next newsroom needs 8k screens. :-)

Giant displays or newsalumpas?

Previous post (5 hours ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509781

Sorry the new information is that they are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel displays running Windows 8.

That was already figured out in the story comments of the first link.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/7/4812630/fox-news-shepard-s...

Those poor bastards. Their arms are going to be unbelievably sore by by 10a every day.

It looks like the keyboard and mouse shown are made by Apple.

"The Attack of the Giant iPads"

Or Surfaces...

can anyone say, gorilla arm?

Either the Fox staff does not know how to use these or they were captured using it not exactly the way it was intended. From what I know these are not supposed to be used as tablets like the guys in the article are doing. These are huddle around whiteboards. Something you can use in a meeting room. Their use in media is interesting and the use of these in a broadcast is just a minor use case for these amazing devices.

So a shit fascist news service is using a shit fascist operating system.

Bring on the haters.

It's less fascist than OSX.

At least OSX is Unix-based and actually makes some sense and can do useful things

You'll fit in well here at HN.

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