Coming Attractions Digital Tv Arrives, Dvd Tries to Take Off in '98
infoseek.com
The Hartford Courant
Thu, Jan 29 1998
High-definition television, the must-see digital TV, transformed the recent Consumer Electronics Show into the largest show-and-tell session in the hemisphere.
Although the first digital sets are not expected in stores until late this year, more than a dozen manufacturers lined up monstrous working prototypes. By Vegas standards, the demonstrations were understated, even dignified. But to draw attention to the breathtaking clarity and depth of digital TV -- or to the equally stunning prices, $5,000 to $10,000 -- did not require a hip-wiggling Elvis impersonator.
It was easy to work up a froth while taking in the crystalline images. People stood five minutes, 10 minutes and more, mesmerized by stock nature scenes. Thomson Consumer Electronics showed a few plays from a football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers shot in high-definition and recorded off a DirecTv digital satellite transmission. The viewing angle was so expansive that the entire field seemed to unfold on the screen in startling depth and detail.
It was hard to keep the fingers from reaching for a credit card. But with such high sticker prices, there will be no mad rush for the digital sets this year. Instead, the displays were intended as picture-perfect snapshots of television's future.
The federal government has established 2006 as the target for the switchover from analog to digital. The Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association estimates, as prices and set size drop, 30 percent of American households will own a digital TV by then. Everyone else must add a set-top box, costing about $150, to make the digital signal playable on their analog sets. The picture, unfortunately, will not be high definition. And until cable catches up, an antenna will be the only way to receive HDTV signals.
Despite more than 10 years of development and $1 billion in research, HDTV remains an unfinished work. Because high-definition projectors are easier to manufacture than building HDTV into the "direct-view" picture-tube set found in most homes, the digital sets on display were rear-projection models that looked like the hull of the Titanic.
Typical screen sizes, measured diagonally, were 55, 61 and 64 inches. Thomson, makers of RCA and ProScan sets, will manufacture a 61-inch model that will sell for about $7,000. Zenith (about $10,000) and Philips (price undetermined) will have 64-inch models. Sony was the first to announce it will make a direct-view digital set.
HDTV sets also need more elbow room than today's televisions. The aspect ratio -- measuring the relationship between the screen's width and height -- of the typical analog set is 4:3, or 12:9. For HDTV, it's 16:9, a shape more like a movie theater screen. To get an idea, today's 35-inch set (measured diagonally) and a 42-inch HDTV set each have a screen 21 inches high.
In both screen shape and picture quality, HDTV's closest cousin in video presentation is the cinema. HDTV is five times sharper than today's digital media, such as DVD and direct satellite broadcasting, and 10 times better than videotape.
There will be at least two grades of digital television, high definition and standard definition, and several data broadcasting applications. To be classified high definition, according to Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Assocation guidelines, a digital set must have at least 720 lines of horizontal resolution (today's sets have 480), display a 16:9 image and be equipped with Dolby Digital audio. A standard-definition set would have lower resolution -- about the same as today's digital satellite reception -- no specified aspect ratio and only "usable" audio.
By government regulation, the four major network affiliates (CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox) in each of the nation's top 10 markets must construct digital TV facilities by May 1999. By this November, broadcasters are promising at least one functioning digital station in each of those markets. (The next 20 largest markets, including Hartford/New Haven, must be equipped for digital broadcasting by November 1999.)
HBO and PBS say they will offer high-definition programming by the end of the year. DirecTv's decision to transmit two HDTV channels to digital satellite system customers later this year could pressure other broadcasters to follow. Some shows, including NBC's "ER," already are shot in high definition.
Many broadcasters, however, are considering "multicasting" -- squeezing up to five standard-definition channels into the bandwidth otherwise occupied by the single high-definition signal.
Although HDTV stole the show, there was plenty more going on in Las Vegas. Plasma televisions, less than 6 inches thick with 42-inch screens and suitable for hanging on the wall, displayed pictures almost as commanding, and expensive, as HDTV's. These flat-panel analog sets are still a few years away from offering a full-bloom high-definition picture.
Other news from the show: The DVD outlook is even more confusing, the MiniDisc might be here to stay and Microsoft goes for a joy ride.
DVD, The Sequel
DVD is evolving like any other hideous inbreeding experiment gone terribly wrong.
Here's a rundown of what's new:
* Divx, or Digital Video Express, arrives this summer.
It's an idea, almost unanimously condemned as braindead, that assumes consumers will rent something (DVD movies) that they would not buy. But it's more than that. A user must first buy a specially equipped DVD player for at least $500, then buy Divx movies for about $7 each.
The catch is that the movies can be watched only for 48 hours. After that, the user pays for another viewing period, or buys the disc outright, by using an on-screen menu linked to the Divx home office via a modem built into the player.
If you don't renew, the disc is unplayable, a pancake of polycarbonate waste even less valuable than Pat Boone's "In a Metal Mood."
Divx players will play all DVD movies. But no current DVD player will accept the Divx discs. The dueling DVDs are bound to confuse people. Retailers aren't too happy about it, either, because Divx chairman Richard Sharp also owns their competition, Circuit City. Sharp started Divx with $100 million from Circuit City.
Zenith will manufacture the first Divx DVD player, with Thomson (RCA) and Panasonic to follow.
But what happens to Divx when more video stores start renting standard DVD movies for $3 a night?
* Recordable DVDs for computersarrive in several flavors.
A group of manufacturers that organized as the DVD Forum agreed last year on a DVD-RAM format. (A DVD can store more than 10 times the information of a CD-ROM.) But Sony and Philips abstained from the final vote and established their own format, DVD+RW. Pioneer and NEC also are working on their own, separate formats. Panasonic's LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive ($799), which follows the DVD Forum's guidelines, should start showing up in desktop computers by April.
The good news is that though all these formats apply to computers, the technology has moved that much closer to bringing recordable DVD audio and video into the home.
* An audio DVD standard arrives, perhaps by summertime.
Although a few DVD audio discs are being sold by small, independent labels, agreement on a formal DVD audio standard is not expected before summer at the earliest.
What it's likely to be is uncertain, but the Super Audio CD, with super-fidelity two-channel and multichannel mixes on one layer of a bonded disc and today's two-channel audio standard on another, is still alive. The first DVD audio players could arrive in 1999.
For those who live in the present, DVD movie players for '98 tend to include 1) Dolby Digital processors to match the "Dolby Digital-ready" receivers now available and 2) souped-up digital-to-analog convertors in anticipation of the higher-fidelity DVD audio standard.
The hands-down winner for highest va-va-voom quotient in Las Vegas, however, was Panasonic's piping-hot DVD-L10 portable laptop DVD with pop-up screen. The L10 is actually smaller than a laptop, with a 6-inch LCD screen, built-in speakers, Dolby Digital circuitry and a two-hour rechargeable battery. For the movie fanatic/showoff on the go; it should be availble by spring for $1,300.
Dolby Digital
As with desktop computers, Dolby Digital prices are in a freefall. Sherwood promises a $400 Dolby Digital receiver this summer and Pioneer will drop the price on its VSX-D557 Dolby Digital receiver to $500 from $800. Dolby Digital-ready receivers, which can be hooked up to a separate Dolby Digital processor or a DVD player with Dolby Digital built in, will approach $250. Any of these receivers can still play Dolby Pro Logic material, which, unlike Dolby Digital, does not feature rear-channel stereo.
After barely a month, it's already a great year for DTS (Digital Theater Systems), a surround-sound rival of Dolby Digital previously known only to those familiar with laserdiscs and high-priced audio equipment. A new Motorola chip that packages several home theater functions, including Dolby Digital, DTS and THX processing, will give consumers a choice in home theater listening and greater flexibility when buying software. It should also lower the price of the best-available home theater technology.
Meanwhile, Technics will offer a combination Dolby Digital/DTS decoder, the SH-AC500D, for $400.
The first DTS-encoded movies on DVD arrive in April, with more than 100 expected to be released this year.
Minidisc
A couple of years ago, the MiniDisc was a candidate for a consumer electronics industry's funniest-bloopers segment. Sony, almost singlehandedly, kept the MD alive. No one's laughing now. Soon Denon and Yamaha plan to release their first MiniDisc products, JVC will return with two home decks after dropping out of the MD business and Kenwood, Sharp and Aiwa will increase their MD offerings.
The venerable cassette could be vulnerable. Sales of home cassette decks continue to drop about 25 percent each year and sales of prerecorded tapes also are down. Sony, hoping for a breakthrough, begins a major marketing push in February, targeting 18- to 34-year-olds raised in the instant-access, video-game era. Anyone else with a short attention span also qualifies. It worked in Japan.
Though inferior to CD, MiniDisc sound quality easily surpasses the cassette. The digital format's recording flexibility and long life ultimately might earn the MiniDisc a spot in the marketplace. An MD looks like an undersized floppy disk, and stores songs as a floppy might. The user can alter the sequence of songs or erase individual tracks.
The new CD-RW, or CD-ReWritable, audio recorders offer slightly better fidelity but little of the MD's flexibility. Example: Although a CD-RW disc can be recorded many times over, the recorder cannot erase, say, the first track on a disc without erasing every track after that.
Sony will increase the MiniDisc's anti-shock memory to 40 seconds, from 10, on two new portables but still says heavy plodders might make the players skip while jogging. Portables with up to 22 hours playback with a rechargeable lithium battery also will be available.
The low end of MD pricing is still about $300. Kenwood has the most extravagant package, a mid-size MD recorder in a Series 21 setup that also includes a CD player, DVD player, six-channel amplifier, loudspeakers and a tuner-preamp with Dolby Digital processing. Price: $3,000.
Car Talk
Transportation or home away from home? That 409 was real fine, but today's automobiles are becoming portable living pods. As if cruise control weren't enough. Now a driver can get the names of the next five tropical storms, directions to the nearest McDonald's, catch up with "Days of Our Lives" and answer e-mail while on the way to Grandma's. (Coming in '99: the driverless car.)
Clarion's AutoPC extends Microsoft's reach even further, putting the Windows CE operating system into your car's dashboard. It combines a car stereo, PC and navigation system in an unassuming unit operated largely by voice command. Clarion will be the only AutoPC manufacturer for the first year. The AutoPC is expected to be ready by the summer, $1,300 each.
If auto life is dullsville even with an AutoPC, there's Kenwood's "wide-screen" LCD TV made specifically for cars. The LZ-700W ($1,300) has a 7-inch screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The set can be used with a VCR or DVD player, even a satellite dish. It will also play the kids' video games.
And JVC is putting together a complete entertainment system for the road, featuring AM/FM radio, a 12-disc CD player, a color TV with LCD screen and a mobile VCR.
Are we there yet? Who cares?
Car stereo, a Cro-Magnon on wheels, is emerging from the four-channel-mono era. DTS, a competitor with Dolby Digital in the home-theater business, comes to the car with Sherwood's XDTS-80 DTS/Circle Surround Decoder ($600). It will play discrete multichannel music -- separate signals for up to five speakers -- off DTS discs and synthesize multichannel sound from any standard two-channel CD.
Multichannel stereo is also available in Alpine's Mobile MultiMedia system, which features a DVD player and pop-up LCD screens for the front and back seats. The audio system plays DVD discs, standard CDs and anything with Dolby Digital or Dolby Pro Logic. It won't be available until 1999 at the earliest.
PalmPC
In the computer world's version of hand-to-hand combat, the copycat PalmPC using the Windows CE operating system will challenge the established Palm Pilot, the popular pocket-size appointment-keeper that can hook up to desktop computers. Let's not forget Apple pioneered the idea a few years ago with Newton, which quickly became the computer world's Edsel.
The big boys for the home, meanwhile, keep dropping in price. Compaq and Hewlett-Packard each introduced full-featured 200-megahertz machines that will sell for $799 without a monitor. Similar packages for $699, even $599, can be expected by the end of the year.
(Copyright @ The Hartford Courant 1998) |
