[PLUG-TALK] multiphone tile movies

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sun Aug 21 16:06:14 UTC 2016


Way off topic.  Some of you write smart phone apps, or
can learn how.  Brain fart to encourage small (or large!)
meetups of friends or strangers:

Imagine four people laying our their phones in a 2x2 grid.
Each phone has previously downloaded an encrypted quadrant
of a 5 minute movie, resampled so that each screen has the
same impage scale (compensating for different phones with
different sizes and pixel densities),

Initially, the tile movie app displays an alignment
pattern so the 4 participants can move their phones to the
correct positions.  Together, the phones synchronize
through the web to the movie server and play the movie.  

Mich larger arrays of phones are possible, but the app
might have to coordinate multiple tile downloads to each
phone to make up for no-shows.

It might be a fun way to meet people.  It might be a fun
way for video artists to showcase their work.  It might be
a way for new Hollywood movies to show extended trailers
and create buzz without releasing those trailers to the
web in general.

Of course, the assembled image would have a "dark" 
crosshatch line grid representing the nonpixelated edges
of the phones.  Large grids would have wider gaps due to
varying sizes and shapes.  The remapping of the video at
the server end would not be trivial but not too difficult.

I'll leave it to the app writer to fix the idea.  There
are no doubt flaws and many improvements.  But gathering
in public with strangers to watch a short movie seems like
a Portland Thing To Do, and might catch on worldwide.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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