Audio Video News

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.thomson-multimedia.com">Thomson Multimedia</A> announced what the company terms "an aggressive new effort" designed to bring HDTV within reach of more American consumers. Thomson, which manufactures and markets the RCA brand of television and video products, says it will be trimming suggested retail prices of RCA HDTV sets by 20%, effective in April.

DisplaySearch, a major flat-panel display (FPD) market-research and consulting firm, it holding its third annual HDTV Conference at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on August 23 and 24, 2005. A special conference room rate of $175/night is available for a limited time and may be reserved by calling the hotel directly at (310) 274-7777.

The second day of the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference 2005, held on August 24 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, began with a session on the current state&mdash;and future&mdash;of the HDTV market. The presentations from DisplaySearch, Samsung, and Panasonic were heavy on statistics. I won't report them in eye-glazing detail here, but a few will inevitably be scattered throughout this report.

At the NAB show in Las Vegas, <A HREF="http://www.sonicsolutions.com/">Sonic Solutions</A> announced a technology partnership with <A HREF="http://www.ravisent.com">Ravisent Technologies</A> that is intended to bring high-definition DVD to content developers and consumers for the first time. Sonic says that the new format, called hDVD, expands DVD beyond standard-definition video to include any of the 18 ATSC video formats, including 1080i and 720p.

One complaint cropping up more frequently among custom installers is the cable length limit of DVI/HDMI connections to high-definition displays. Gefen, Inc. has introduced a clever workaround by using conventional Cat-5 cable, common in computer networks.

There is no doubt in home theater enthusiasts' minds that high definition television (HDTV) offers far superior picture quality compared to standard definition television (SDTV). So, apart from movie studio piracy concerns, why is it taking so long to roll out more HD content? In a word, bandwidth. HDTV requires substantially more bandwidth than SDTV, which forces broadcasters to consider cutting back SDTV content to make room for high-def.