In Pictures: NHK's Successor to HDTV
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Engineers at Japan's NHK have demonstrated progress on Super Hi-Vision, a future replacement for today's HDTV systems.
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Neosonik has come up with a way to beam HDTV pictures and surround-sound audio to a set 120 feet away.
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from LPs to compact discs and from VHS to DVD,&quot; says Jeff Joseph of the Consumer Electronics Association. &quot;High definition
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(InfoWorld) - Sharp raised the bar for high-definition LCD (liquid crystal display) screens this week with the demonstration of 64-inch prototype with a resolution of 4,096 pixels by 2,160 pixels -- four times higher than current high-definition displays. The screen, the first such prototype developed by Sharp, was on display this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. While projection display systems have been developed that can match the resolution of Sharp's latest prototype, this is the first time that an LCD has been produced with a resolution this high, said Toshiyuki Matsumara, a company spokesman. The Sharp prototype's resolution tops that of a screen demonstrated last year by Taiwan's Chi Mei Optoelectronics. That display, unveiled last year in Yokohama, Japan, measured 56 inches across the diagonal and had a resolution of 3,840 pixels by 2,160 pixels. Sharp developed the prototype display to keep up with changes in the motion picture industry, Matsumara said. As studios move from film to digital media, resolutions will go higher and displays will need to keep up, he said. Prototype display technologies have been a highlight of this year's Ceatec exhibition. Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. demonstrated a television with a 55-inch SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) screen. The screens, which offer higher contrast and lower power consumption than other flat-panel technologies, will enter production next year. Japan's public broadcaster, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), showed a system it calls Super Hi-Vision that offers a 16:9 aspect ratio picture with 4,320 horizontal lines -- double that of Sharp's prototype. The NHK system, which has been demonstrated before, is still under development.
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A cable giant looks to the future of digital video.
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Hard-drive video recorders support HDTV, while Blu-ray and HD-DVD wait in the wings. Plus: pricey headphones and cheap megapixels.
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Sony's new direction tells us plenty about the future of television screens.
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A new type of premium DVD player has emerged, converting a disc's images to greater resolution to take advantage of high-definition TV sets. A comparison of offerings from five makers.
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(InfoWorld) - It's an interesting contrast: consumers are fast ditching videotape for DVDs and hard disks, but the people who make TV shows are sticking to tape for some cutting edge applications. When it comes to recording broadcast-quality HDTV, today's optical disc systems just can't spin fast enough to keep up with the video -- but that may be about to change. Current optical disc systems are speed-capped at about 10,000 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Spin them any faster and there's a danger the discs will physically disintegrate in the drive leaving nothing but a pile of sharp plastic splinters and data that is gone forever. And even if they don't break apart the disc can begin to wobble making reliable recording a problem. Engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) of Japan's public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), are working on an optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray Disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 rpm without these problems and demonstrated it last week. It's needed because broadcast quality HDTV signals of the type NHK records stream at 250MbpsÂ making a fast-spinning optical disc a necessity. A 1X Blu-ray Disc records at 36Mbps so the new system is equivalent to 7X speed. NHK has gotten around the stress problem by making a flexible disc that is just 0.1 millimeters thick. The disc, which was co-developed with Ricoh, is essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1 millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity. It won't break apart at higher speeds but is not rigid enough to be useful in a drive at any speed. To solve this second problem a thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive. When spun, the disc is kept steady by the stabilizer and can be used up to 15,000 rpm, said Daiichi Koide, an engineer at NHK STRL. The set-up is similar to Hitachi Maxell's Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD) that wasÂ introduced in prototype formÂ at last year's Ceatec exhibition in Japan and shown again at Cebit in Germany this year. SVOD packs several 0.1 millimeter thick optical discs into a cartridge and holds them against a stabilizer in the drive to keep them steady while in use. However there is a key difference between the two, said Koide. In the NHK drive the stabilizer doesn't rotate. If it did it would be susceptible to the same stresses that as the discs. The result is that NHK can spin the disc up to 15,000 rpm without any mechanical problems. The system is still under development and there's no word on when it will literally be ready for prime time. NHK envisages cartridges stuffed with a number of the thin discs that can replace videotapes. Â
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Dual-layer disc to smooth hi-def format adoption
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Consumers are racing to replace their aging televisions with high-definition TVs. Trouble is, many are still using devices and services that can't fill those HDTVs with enough visual information to make them look their best.
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Answers to common questions about digital television:
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HD DVD isn't dead, at least not quite. That leaves many options and potentially expensive mistakes for consumers.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if you bought a TV in the last several months you may already feel like it's out of date. Your shiny new flat-screen arrives, you hook it up to the antenna and the first thing you see is a commercial for a bigger, better model. It might even have a cheaper price. It's the way things seem to work these days in the world of TVs. Things aren't likely to change any time soon. The latest buzz is around "100Hz" or "120Hz" technology, which relates to how often the image on the screen is refreshed or redrawn. The technology is already appearing in TVs, and if you haven't seen promotional stickers for it yet you probably will soon. Most TV sets today refresh the picture either 50 times per second (50Hz) or 60 times per second (60Hz) depending where in the world you live (different regions use different color formatting.) That rate is fine for most images, but when it comes to fast moving shows like sports events the images can appear blurry on an LCD (liquid crystal display) TV. Doubling the rate at which images are displayed, to 100 or 120 frames per second, makes for a better, more high-definition picture. The need to improve LCD TVs has been especially acute because their chief competitor, PDP (plasma display panel) TVs, don't have the same blurring problem. Compounding the issue is that screen sizes are getting bigger, so any imperfections are more noticeable, said Mina Naito, a spokeswoman for Sony. PDP makers have trumpeted their advantage for some time, but things may be about to change. Compared to previous LCD panels, the new 100Hz and 120Hz models are "a big improvement," said Hisakazu Torii, a TV industry analyst with DisplaySearch in Tokyo. Prototype panels with the faster refresh rate began appearing last year. At the FPD International 2006 show in Yokohama in October, Samsung ElectronicsÂ demonstrated images and text scrolling across just such a panel, and they appeared to move more smoothly than on existing LCD TVs. Then at theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January, Sony announced a 120Hz model with the Samsung screen for the U.S. market. The 70-inch LCD TV is launched this month and carries the hefty price of $33,000. Samsung plans a 70-inch set, also based on the Samsung panel, which will go on sale in the first half of this year. Competitors including Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) are also promoting 120Hz sets in Japan. The latest company to join the party isÂ Sharp, which last week said it would put five sets in its Aquos range on sale in Japan from March. The price runs from Â¥500,000 for a 42-inch model to Â¥1 million for a 65-inch model.
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Sony rivals Toshiba, Sanyo and NEC are working on HD-DVD rather than Blu-ray. Both are designed to have much more storage capacity than the current generation of discs.
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New technologies wirelessly transmit high-definition video.
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Plus: Mashups for the masses and HD video in a digital camera.