Audio Video News

On September 13, San Francisco-based Dolby Laboratories announced the availability of a new reference multichannel decoder, the <A HREF="http://www.dolby.com/products/DP564/">DP564</A>. The new tool is able to decode every Dolby&#174; consumer format, making it the "perfect solution for monitoring in DVD, digital TV broadcast, and postproduction applications," according to an official announcement. The DP564 debuted at the International Broadcasting Convention held September 13&ndash;17.

A red laser&ndash;based Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) format system developed by Toshiba and NEC has been chosen by the DVD Forum as the standard for next-generation high-definition DVD players. The DVD Forum will develop AOD specs and publish them in the spring, according to the Nikkei news service. NEC said it would release AOD drives for PCs next year. Toshiba plans to market AOD home recorders in 2004.

The next generation of video projectors will be several magnitudes better than the best ones available now. A hint of things to come was unveiled by Sony Electronics earlier in March, with a public demonstration of its Silicon Crystal Reflective (SXRD) technology. At the heart of SXRD is a high-density fixed-pixel micro display generating over 2 million pixels (1920 x 1080 pixels) of picture data from a 0.78"-diagonal panel with a pixel pitch of 9mm each and an inter-pixel spacing of just 0.35mm.

"Stunning artifact-free picture quality" is the sort of promotional hype that always accompanies the release of any new video product. In the case of <A HREF="http://www.vinc.com">V Inc.</A>'s new Bravo D1, it may be more than hot air. On May 9, the Fountain Valley, CA technology company announced the D1, described as the first DVD player equipped with MPEG-4 playback capability and a digital video interface. The D1 outputs both interlaced and progressive signals, and can scale its output to 480p/720p/1080i.

HP entering TV business? The line between the computer and consumer electronics industry gets blurrier by the day. During the last week of November, computer giant Hewlett-Packard announced that it would begin offering its own brand of large flat-screen TVs. Already in discussions with several Asian manufacturers, HP will deliver both LCDs and plasma display panels (PDPs) under its own name, probably by spring.

A cheaper, better future: New microprocessors from <A HREF="http://www.intel.com">Intel Corporation</A> could revolutionize the market for flat-panel and slim-profile big screen televisions, according to a December 17 <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/technology/17chip.html?th">report</A> by John Markoff in the <I>New York Times</I>. Leveraging large-scale integration, the company's chips and design expertise could yield big bright high-definition displays at prices far below today's. In what is perhaps a misquote of Intel executive Richard Doherty, Markoff predicts 50" liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) rear-projection "engines" selling for $1000 by the next winter holiday shopping season.