Michael,
The demonstration was held in the Technology Playground pavilion on the
Mall--part of the "American Journey" celebration for the Inauguration.
The Time Warner/Sony demo was playing "Batman Forever", while the Intel
guy was switching between "Twister" and "Eraser". "Batman" was shown on
a large screen in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. There were about a
dozen key scenes to which you could easily jump to, or you could jump
to another part of the movie based on time elapsed (say, one hour from
the beginning, for instance). Other Time-Warner DVD-ROMs were also
displayed, but I can't remember which ones. All hardware and movies
will be available in April.
The Intel guy said that the MMX PC was the next step on the road to
a combined PC/TV. I remarked that C-Cube had said much the same thing
in last week's Time magazine article on DVD ("The Next Great Gadget",
Jan. 20, 1997, p. 66), but judging by his reaction, I don't think he
had ever heard of C-Cube. I guess when you're Intel, everyone else
looks like an ant. . .
Picture quality was very good, comparable to HDTV (there is an HDTV
permanently on display at the Museum of American History).
Besides the DVD-related vendors, others in the Technology pavilion included
Silicon Graphics, IBM, AT&T, Yahoo, WebTV, several others, also NASA
and National Geographic. Among the visitors yesterday was Al Gore,
who browsed around for an hour while the rabble was kept outside in
the cold. Otherwise, it was a real treat! |
