TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020590/0205206.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.1 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 50

Who Wants to Wait for HDTV?


Viewers are building home theaters from the latest gear at hand


    With its jumbo screen, crisp digital sound and a video
picture as sharp as a 35-mm slide, high-definition television
has been heralded as a couch potato's dream come true. But HDTV
has run into some interference. Squabbling over technological
standards and sniping between Japanese, European and U.S.
manufacturers have slowed its development to a crawl. Industry
experts now estimate that full-fledged HDTV may not arrive in
U.S. homes until the turn of the century.

    Yet video's evolution has been anything but stagnant in
living rooms across the country. Consumers, their appetites
whetted for high-quality TV images, have started to take
progress into their own hands. To the delight of retailers and
manufacturers, viewers are hooking together their video and
stereo components, linking them with one or two new pieces of
advanced controlling equipment and creating what has been
dubbed home theaters. In a U.S. consumer-electronics market
whose sales are increasing at a sluggish 4% a year (1989 total:
$32 billion),  sales of home-theater components are climbing at
a pace of 25% or more. Among the hottest gear: big-screen
stereo TV sets, laser-scanned videodisc players and audio/video
amplifiers that can drench the home audience in theater-like
surround sound.

    The boom in home-theater devices has heightened the
electronics industry's sense of urgency about developing not
only HDTV but also an array of interim products that will
encourage consumers to keep upgrading their equipment. Last
week two European electronics giants, Thomson and Philips, the
largest makers of color TV sets for the U.S. market, said they
plan to combine their long-term HDTV development efforts. In
a more immediate step, the Europeans will join forces with NBC
and the David Sarnoff Research Center to concentrate on what
they call EDTV (extended-definition television), a wide-screen,
digital-stereo version of today's standard. The manufacturers
hope to have EDTV sets ready for delivery by 1993. Said J.
Peter Bingham, vice president of technology for Philips
Consumer Electronics: "We want U.S. consumers to have access
to advanced TV services as quickly as possible."

    Why the sudden consumer craze for improved TV? After all,
Sony, Pioneer and others have been trying to market pricey
"media rooms" and "home entertainment centers" for nearly a
decade -- with notable lack of success. Electronics-industry
experts point to several changes in viewing habits that are
sparking sales of home-theater products. Thanks to the
videocasette revolution, consumers have acquired a steady
appetite for watching videotaped movies in the comfort of their
dens and bedrooms. In little more than a decade, the percentage
of U.S. homes with VCRs has zoomed from zero to 70. According
to an industry survey, U.S. viewers rented 72 million movie
tapes during just one week last October.

    At the same time, many of these videophiles have bought
compact-disc players, giving them an appreciation for the
crispness of digital sound. For consumers who love their VCR
and CD players, the logical next step is the laser videodisc
player, which combines digital sound with high-resolution
motion pictures. An estimated 300,000 U.S. households have
laser videodisc players, for which manufacturers have produced
more than 3,700 movie titles.

    The nerve center of today's home theater is a little-known
component called the audio/video receiver. With ports in the
back for a variety of TV and stereo signals, the A/V receiver
is the link that allows consumers to play their new stereo TV
sets through the speakers and amplifiers of their hi-fi
systems. Receivers equipped with Dolby Surround sound can
re-create the full atmospherics of the movie theater, from the
scream of jets passing overhead to the seat-shaking rumble of
helicopter gunships. To ensure that what the actors say actually
comes out of their mouths, models with the Dolby Pro Logic
feature isolate dialogue and pipe it to a speaker mounted
directly below the TV screen.

    None of this comes cheap. A bare-bones home theater costs
$400 for  the A/V box, $700 for a stereo TV, $800 or more for
a laser videodisc player and upwards of $1,500 for a
five-speaker surround-sound system. And it is ruinously easy
to spend $10,000 to $50,000 re-creating an RKO theater in a
suburban ranch home. Yet the number of consumers who are trying
to do just that has launched a booming market for audio/video
installers: entrepreneurs who select and hook up the latest
gear, often using wall-mounted speakers and sleek cabinetry to
hide the equipment. A glossy new magazine, Audio/Video
Interiors, regularly dazzles its readers with images of posh
pleasure domes of sound and light. Says John Briesch, president
of Sony's Consumer Products Group (USA): "The only thing that
has surprised us is how much people will pay." Even Sears and
Montgomery Ward are planning to carry jumbo-screen TVs and
surround sound systems, Briesch says.

    Even so, prices will have to drop considerably before
surround-sound TV becomes a mass-market phenomenon like the
Walkman or the VCR. Unlike those breakthrough products, which
instantly transformed electronic life, the new TV systems are
likely to be perceived by consumers as a more gradual -- though
inevitable -- improvement. Moreover, the Walkman did not
require major home remodeling to work its magic. At the Winter
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Mitsubishi
demonstrated a 120-in. rear-projection TV set that calls for
a 6 1/2-ft. space to be cleared out behind a wall before the set
can be installed in a home. And not everyone wants his house
turned into a videodome. "What happens when you build a house
around a TV set," author Fran Lebowitz carped in the January
issue of HG, "is that the house looks like a TV set."


By Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Reported by Jonathan Beaty/Las Vegas.