The pleasure of going to the movies or a concert is the sensory experience brought on by massive screens and booming sound systems. Thanks to the confluence of many technologies, you can recreate the ambience of the movie theater or concert hall at home—and even enjoy it on the road.
On another front, video games have undergone major enhancements. Supercomputer-like graphics capabilities, networked communications, and even force-feedback joysticks, mice, and other controls put gamers right in the middle of the action.
Advances in digital technology are making a wide variety of entertainment products possible and affordable by implementing high-performance control and signal-processing functions for very few dollars. Whether it's audio or video, the use of DSP algorithms and chips, along with intellectual property, has opened many opportunities to improve audio and video quality, as well as add special effects.
Recreating the atmosphere of a concert hall or a nightclub, the visual and audio effects of a large-screen movie, or the realism of the latest 3D game depends on many technologies, not just continual improvements in digital ICs. For instance, the ever-popular wall-size video displays are seeing significant advances in both high- and standard-definition direct-view and projection video systems. As for handheld entertainment, major improvements in small-area displays will create greater realism in gaming devices as well as higher-resolution video playback.
Higher-quality, more immersive audio systems are also coming. The Dolby 5.1 and THX sound systems used in movie houses are already appearing in many home theaters. Yet as screens get bigger, audio systems must get better. The current 5.1-channel sound systems are ceding to 7.1 channels, adding another set of rear-channel speakers to enrich that surroundsound feel. Over the next few years, mainstream systems with even more sound channels and features will help you match the sound system to the room.
For those who really want the theater experience at home, large-area plasma flat panels now come in sizes once thought impossible. At the latest Consumer Electronics Show, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics demonstrated prototype panels with diagonals of 76 in. and 80 in., respectively. If you have to ask the price, though, you probably can't afford them. (Estimated retail pricing will be between $20,000 and $30,000.) And as you might expect, efforts are under way to create even bigger plasma screens.
LCD-based flat-panel displays are also expanding, with 55-in. panels now available from LG Electronics, Sharp, and a few others. Emerging as an alternative for small-area displays, organic-LED (OLED) displays show lots of promise as a direct-view technology for large-area flat panels. But a number of technology hurdles still must be overcome to make large OLED panels manufacturable at a reasonable cost.
Projection systems eliminate the need for the big sheets of heavy vacuum glass required by plasma panels, yet they still deliver large, bright images. Though not new, HDTV projection systems have been hampered somewhat by their bulkiness. Some upcoming projection systems, however, free up some floor space while providing larger screens, better resolution, higher brightness, and lower cost.
NO SMOKE, JUST MIRRORS The older projection systems based on high-temperature polysilicon light valves are giving way to systems based on digitally controlled micromirror technology. For example, there's the digital light processor (DLP) from Texas Instruments. And, Mitsubishi and Intel favor an all-digital approach that deposits a liquid-crystal matrix on top of a silicon chip (LCoS).
Many companies producing projection systems are adopting the digital micromirror display (DMD), since it has a simple image path that allows for very slim system designs. One forthcoming system, the ScreenPlay 61 developed by InFocus, is just 6.85 in. deep—thin enough to hang on a wall. It offers a 61-in. diagonal and native HD resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels and includes a built-in HD tuner and browser (Fig. 1). Also coming is a 61-in., sub-7-in. deep system from RCA as part of the Scenium HDTV family, which happens to be based on the TI DLP as well.
For those of you with really big rooms, get ready for the largest-screen HDTV projection system yet developed. The Alpha WL82913, in final development at Mitsubishi Electric's Digital Television Division, will have a screen diagonal of 82 in. and use three LCoS chips (one for each primary color) to deliver a 2-Mpixel image with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (Fig. 2a).
Projection systems based on LCoS imagers show a great deal of promise, according to Intel. The company feels that the other technologies can't increase their resolution as easily, so certain tradeoffs may be required to achieve resolutions of more than 1280 by 720 pixels. LCoS technology under development at Intel leverages standard silicon processing and scaling opportunities, enabling higher pixel counts on the same chip area without compromising picture quality or manufacturability (Fig. 2b).
If you don't want a box sitting on the floor or a big panel hanging on the wall, try direct projection systems. They're similar to the desktop projectors now replacing the ubiquitous overhead projector. But the software and display subsystem is tuned for home use and to deliver multimedia content rather than static PowerPoint slides or still images. These projectors can be ceiling-mounted to project onto a wall or screen or easily moved from room to room. Many also incorporate wireless network interfaces so video can be streamed to the system, eliminating extra cables.
The digital video disk has revolutionized the digital entertainment industry. With HD video coming on strong, changes to the basic DVD will arrive as well. The 6-Gbyte capacity of today's DVD must increase almost tenfold to hold a full-length HD movie. Soon, standard DVD disks will lead to enhanced disks, possibly based on the Blu-Ray blue laser standard, which will push the storage capacity to 50 Gbytes on a single disk (www.blu-raydisc-official.org/index.html).
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