The theme for this year’s Channel O Music Video Awards was “Uniting Africa Through Music” and Africa’s leading music channel has gone to extra lengths to ensure that this year’s event was bigger, better, and more spectacular than ever.
And it really was a spectacular show on October 9 at the Big Top Arena, Carnival City, Johannesburg! Performers from all around Africa came together to entertain the continent and they were duly rewarded! The Channel O MVAs recognizes excellence and contributions towards developing music on the continent.
Top Nigerian artistes who won laurels at the event include: Ikechukwu (Best Male Video), P Square (Best Duo or Group) and (Video of the Year), M-Trill (Best African West), and KC Presh (Best Hip Hop Video), Lizha James (Mozambique) – Best Female Video; Buffalo Souljah (Zimbabwe) – Best Newcomer and Best Ragga Dancehall Video; Lady May (Namibia) – Best Dance; Gal Level (Namibia) – Best R & B Video; The Dogg (Namibia) – Best Kwaito; Freshly Ground (South Africa) – Best African Southern; and Witness ft Fid Q (Tanzania) – Best African East.
The two VJs’ that hosted the big event are the effervescent Kabelo “KB” Ngakane, who has been with Channel O since 1998, and his chic co-host Nonhle “Diva” Thema.
The Channel O music Video Awards are distinctly African and the winners are entirely chosen by the viewing public across the continent and not by a panel of judges. This means that fans really can make a difference between artists being a nominee or a winner and give countries the chance to fly the flag high for their own nominees.
The Channel O Music Video Awards are also the first Pan-African television awards ceremony to celebrate distinctly African music.
Jimmy Dludlu paid tribute to his friend and mentor, George Lee Larnyoh, who received the 2008 Special Recognition Award on September 16th.

The electronics powerhouse NEC Corp. has introduced NEC MultiSync E221W,  the first model in a new series of displays for small businesses, designed to perfectly meet the needs of the home office and SMB sectors.

The 22″ display equipped with a high quality TN panel that offers unusually high viewing angles also features an ergonomic design and multiple interfaces, such as DVI-D with HDCP. Equipped with an integrated Carbon Footprint meter that shows the quantity of CO2 emissions that can be saved over the running time of the device, the NEC MultiSync® E221W offers an extensive range of features at a good cost-performance ratio whether for traditional office applications or for internet use.

In order to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the monitor’s power consumption might be reduced by switching to EcoMode, where the brightness of the display is limited to no greater than 60 per cent of its maximum, and power consumption falls from a typical 40W to 28W.

With a modern and elegant design, the NEC MultiSync® E221W features clear lines and rounded edging. The narrow bezel, another features of the display, is advantageous for multi-monitor applications, as several displays can be perfectly aligned alongside each other without any distracting gaps appearing between the displays.

With its high viewing angles, an excellent view of the screen is guaranteed from almost any perspective, even for multi-monitor solutions, the ergonomic features, such as the flexible positioning of the display with height adjustment of up to 50 mm, ensure a productive working environment. 

In the mists of a global economic crisis, technology continues to evolve, and here we are projecting images through a wall of water. 

The technology that uses water to create a thin, suspended layer of dry fog that enables projection of images that appear to float is gaining rapid acceptance in the live-productions industry because it offers an interesting alternative to high-resolution projection and display to staging designers and event organizers.

Using a laser, a video projector, or lighting fixtures with gobos as a projection source, makes images appear to float in front of the audience. The water screens are creating a thin film of water ideal for rear projection of video, lasers, gobos, and other lighting effects.

The system utilizes a combined water collection trough and nozzle system to create the water screen that can display high-resolution projected imagery. Water is recycled via pumps from the ground-level channel to an extruded aluminum box section “nozzle,” through which the water drops under little or no pressure from a series of small holes in the nozzle’s bottom surface.

Basically this technology is reconstituting a virtual image using an array of hundreds of thousands of tiny point sources. This unique projection surface also gives the illusion that the image is floating in mid-air. It’s actually a very high-resolution playback system. There are 1,700 jets per every 10ft. section of screen. To scale, then, there are actually more ‘pixels’ than in any high-resolution monitor.

Thanks to the unique visual experience of glimmering, rushing cascades, along with the rippling sounds of falling water, water walls can be used onstage, mid-room, or on a back wall as projection screens, or in a trade show booth. This way you can easily have a waterfall dumping 200 to 300 gallons per minute from the ceiling.

One live-event application of the water screens is at corporate functions where executives wish to make a dramatic entrance. For example, lets create a 30-ft. water curtain, by linking three 10-ft. nozzle sections together, each with its own pump supplying water. When operating together, the water appears to fall as a single uniform water curtain. One nozzle, however (the center one, for example), can be shut off independently, revealing a product or person behind, while the water continues to fall on either side of him.

But, doesn’t technology cost? So are the water screens, a seven-foot section with a screen, ejector, tank, hose, water pumps, and filtration system can add up to nearly  $20,000 or more. Nonetheless, water screens are becoming increasingly popular at corporate meetings, church services, and orchestra performances.

Whenever we think of Hollywood, we think of money and glamour unseen anywhere else. But in the future things may change.

While Hollywood has long been an expensive business, Bollywood, the nickname for the Indian film industry, is just emerging from its humble roots as a kind of a small industry. For many years Hollywood has benefitted tremendously from the film and entertainment industry, but in the past few years all this has changed as Bollywood started to attract more and more viewers around the world.

If you compare Hollywood to Bollywood you will see more differences than similarities. While Bollywood consists mainly of people of Indian descendant, Hollywood consists of people from different ethnicities and cultures. On one hand, there is Bollywood known for its rich Hindu language and culture, portraying a constant celebration of its traditions, and on the other hand, there is Hollywood, known for its integrated entity of various cultures and languages. “Hollywood’s movies are plot-oriented, while Bollywood’s are meandering melodramas stuffed with music, dance and colour.” One thing is clear, though, Bollywood has strict and clear ways in defining Indian relationships, beauty, and culture with its morals and values. Hollywood on the other hand, portrays all this based on what is in fashion. Bollywood produces more than 800 movies a year, with revenues increasing strongly worldwide, while the United States produces half as many.

One reason Bollywood is becoming more popular around the world is that Indian culture is more accessible than others. However, Bollywood cannot be considered a rival to the American movie industry unless, there is foreign input on the scriptwriting, to iron out details such as in-jokes that would be lost on foreign audiences.

If Bollywood will ever want to compete with Hollywood on an equal level, then it will have to learn the tricks of the trade. When this will happen, the name Bollywood will become synonymous to the word “exquisite”.