The U.S. Commerce Department has announced that all American households will initially qualify to receive up to two $40 coupons to defray the cost of the TV converters starting January 2008. This will play an important role in completing the transition to digital TV. The DTA800 will receive analog signals until the cutoff, as well as HDTV transmissions, and will have a remote control. Analog viewers will have on-screen program information from stations, digital parental control options, closed captioning, and a SmartAntenna interface. The problem seems to be the final line of the Thomson announcement: “Retail availability and suggested retail pricing will be dependent on retailer interest in this new product category.”
Whatever Happened to Intel’s Viiv? – Intel’s Viiv technology platform was launched at the January 2006 CES, but most consumers have never heard of it. Intel described Viiv (pronounced Five) as a catalyst for digital home entertainment delivered thru the Internet and played on a variety of gadgets. But the idea of having a PC at the heart of a home entertainment system has not exactly taken the country by storm. Intel has partnerships with 150 content providers to provide either exclusive content or content that runs better on a Viiv-certified PC. That approach offers a way to ease Hollywood’s fears of piracy. But such PCs still do not easily connect to HDTVs, a definite bar to its success. Only PC makers such as HP and Sony offer PCs which can directly connect to a TV at all. DirecTV has just launched its own Viiv-certified digital video recorder (DVR). Intel has hopes for a new generation of products in the second half of this year.
Aussie Firm Develops Digital Sound Projector Chip – GLYN High-Tech Distribution has designed a fully-integrated consumer audio digital sound projector system on a low-cost chip. Multiple beams of sound are individually steered and projected within the room from a single front enclosure, using the walls and ceiling to reflect the beams to produce surround sound. A function called Beam2Me can even send an audio beam from one room to another, or send separate mono signals without headphones to TV viewers watching two different programs being shown on a split screen. The realistic playback of surround sound from a single speaker unit has become a major goal in TV audio and home audio, driven by surround sound movie soundtracks being easily available today.
