The Times: Tech column - Home media hubs
By David Rowan
A RELAXING evening in front of the box used to be so simple. You would get cosy on the sofa, wine glass in hand, and make no more demanding decision than which buttons to press on the remote control.
That was before consumer choice landed in the middle of your living room. Now, before you can choose between Changing Rooms and The Simpsons, you have some fundamental issues to address. Over the past five years, developments in television technology have brought a vast range of consumer choices. If wall-mounted flat screens are not your thing, you can invest in a bathroom mirror with in-built LCD (liquid crystal display) television screens. And if a home-cinema system sounds too conventional, you can try a domestic "media hub" that uses a personal computer to stream images and sound wirelessly to screens around your home. To entice you to upgrade to the latest kit, retailers will bombard you with jargon promoting their "widescreen high-definition projection TV monitors". What, you may be wondering, are they talking about?
First, forget about cathode ray tubes. Today's fashion is for "flat panel" screens such as LCDs, which at their best show vivid pictures even in direct sunlight.
John Lewis will sell you anything from a £199 portable Roadstar LCD television to a 37-inch model by Sharp, at a mere £4,995. A plasma screen, by contrast, relies on thousands of small tubes containing ionised gas (plasma) that glow red, blue or green when a current passes through them. £4,495 will get you a 42-inch plasma widescreen set from Panasonic. The stand will cost extra.
As Nicam VHS recorders fall to barely £100, the electronics industry has found other ways to get you spending again. While arguments continue about which DVD format will emerge as the standard, the personal video recorder (PVR), often called the digital video recorder (DVR), is gaining ground. This lets you store television programmes on a computer hard drive, pause live broadcasts, skip commercials or even watch two channels at once.
Computer manufacturers hope that you will base your "home media hub" around their systems. PCs that run the latest edition of Microsoft's Windows XP Media Centre can show, pause and record live television. With a high-quality screen and a powerful enough PC, you can also watch high-resolution digital movies in the latest HDTV (high definition television) formats. Hollywood make-up artists are reportedly so concerned about the picture quality of these formats that they are looking for new ways to disguise the stars' blemishes. Phillip Swann, a columnist for TV Week, suggests that while Nicole Kidman and George Clooney may have little to worry about, Liz Hurley and Cameron Diaz may not in future look their best.
This could be digital radio's big opportunity...
(The Times, December 12 2003)
A RELAXING evening in front of the box used to be so simple. You would get cosy on the sofa, wine glass in hand, and make no more demanding decision than which buttons to press on the remote control.
That was before consumer choice landed in the middle of your living room. Now, before you can choose between Changing Rooms and The Simpsons, you have some fundamental issues to address. Over the past five years, developments in television technology have brought a vast range of consumer choices. If wall-mounted flat screens are not your thing, you can invest in a bathroom mirror with in-built LCD (liquid crystal display) television screens. And if a home-cinema system sounds too conventional, you can try a domestic "media hub" that uses a personal computer to stream images and sound wirelessly to screens around your home. To entice you to upgrade to the latest kit, retailers will bombard you with jargon promoting their "widescreen high-definition projection TV monitors". What, you may be wondering, are they talking about?
First, forget about cathode ray tubes. Today's fashion is for "flat panel" screens such as LCDs, which at their best show vivid pictures even in direct sunlight.
John Lewis will sell you anything from a £199 portable Roadstar LCD television to a 37-inch model by Sharp, at a mere £4,995. A plasma screen, by contrast, relies on thousands of small tubes containing ionised gas (plasma) that glow red, blue or green when a current passes through them. £4,495 will get you a 42-inch plasma widescreen set from Panasonic. The stand will cost extra.
As Nicam VHS recorders fall to barely £100, the electronics industry has found other ways to get you spending again. While arguments continue about which DVD format will emerge as the standard, the personal video recorder (PVR), often called the digital video recorder (DVR), is gaining ground. This lets you store television programmes on a computer hard drive, pause live broadcasts, skip commercials or even watch two channels at once.
Computer manufacturers hope that you will base your "home media hub" around their systems. PCs that run the latest edition of Microsoft's Windows XP Media Centre can show, pause and record live television. With a high-quality screen and a powerful enough PC, you can also watch high-resolution digital movies in the latest HDTV (high definition television) formats. Hollywood make-up artists are reportedly so concerned about the picture quality of these formats that they are looking for new ways to disguise the stars' blemishes. Phillip Swann, a columnist for TV Week, suggests that while Nicole Kidman and George Clooney may have little to worry about, Liz Hurley and Cameron Diaz may not in future look their best.
This could be digital radio's big opportunity...
(The Times, December 12 2003)
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