Home Entertainment - ólafur Andri Ragnarsson

Transcript

HMV – Spring 2007 Reykjavík University, Computer Sci. T-611-NYTI, New Techology Teacher: Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson the digital home home entertainment sound & vision Author: Haraldur Sæmundsson (130966-4899) Published: March, 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 2 of 37 abstract This report will look at the evolution of the home entertainment system such as audio, video and television. How these systems evolved to the digitalization of the modern world and being a part of the digital home. The report will begin to look at how the audio, video and television came about and how they maturated. We will look at the trends and how the devices were received by the consumers, what was on the top and what went under. In the end we will discuss what will the future will bring us and see what the consequences are of the digitalization. keywords Digital Home, Home Entertainment Systems, Phonograph, Gramophone, Radio, Television, Broadcasting, Audio Systems, Computer, History. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 3 of 37 content 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 4 2. THE JOURNEY .................................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 BIRTH OF THE GADGETRY ................................................................................................................... 6 2.2 RADIO AND TV BROADCASTING IN ICELAND .......................................................................................... 10 2.3 EVOLVING .................................................................................................................................... 11 2.3.1 SATELLITE TELEVISION .............................................................................................................. 12 2.3.2 RECORDING DEVICES................................................................................................................ 13 3. ENTERING THE DIGITAL AGE ............................................................................................................ 17 3.1 DEVICES GOES DIGITAL .................................................................................................................... 17 3.1.1 CD AND CD-ROM .................................................................................................................... 17 3.1.2 DIGITAL TAPE RECORDERS ......................................................................................................... 18 3.1.3 DIGITAL RADIO (DAB) ............................................................................................................... 18 3.1.4 MP3 .................................................................................................................................... 18 3.1.5 DVD ..................................................................................................................................... 19 3.1.6 DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER ......................................................................................................... 20 3.1.7 DIGITAL TELEVISION ................................................................................................................. 21 3.1.8 FLAT TV – PLASMA & LCD ......................................................................................................... 22 3.1.9 HDTV ................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2 THE END OF ORIGINAL STANDARD TELEVISION ...................................................................................... 24 4. NEW SERVICES ................................................................................................................................. 25 4.1 4.2 4.3 5. INTERACTIVE TELEVISION ................................................................................................................. 25 IPTV............................................................................................................................................ 26 PC – THE NEXT HOME ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM? .................................................................................. 27 DIGITAL AGE ENTERING ICELAND .................................................................................................... 28 5.1 DIGITAL TELEVISION IN ICELAND ........................................................................................................ 28 5.2 CONTENT PROVIDERS...................................................................................................................... 28 5.2.1 ORKUVEITA REYKJAVIKUR (OR) .................................................................................................. 28 5.2.2 SIMINN................................................................................................................................. 29 5.2.3 365 BROADCAST MEDIA ........................................................................................................... 29 6. AND BEYOND – CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 30 6.1 7. A DAY IN OUR LIFE .......................................................................................................................... 31 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 32 7.1 7.2 7.3 DEFINITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................................... 32 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................................. 33 LIST OF IMAGES ............................................................................................................................. 36 Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 1. 4 of 37 introduction From the beginning people have always liked to be entertained. It brought a joy and relief into peoples everyday eventless life. People have been entertained and are entertaining them selves with singing, dancing, theater, story telling and so on. Iceland is famous for its saga and rhymes. In former times the Icelanders used to live in dark and cold gabled farmhouses and people told each other stories of famous men like Egill Skallagrimsson. These sagas and rhymes went verbally from generation to generation. On the continent, rich people could affort to get musician and entertainment brought to their slots. The composer Mozart used to entertain the aristocrats and Franz Liszt [14] is consider to be the first "popmusician". This need for entertainment got people, in the late 19th century, like Thomas Alva Edison to think how this music could be recorded and replayed for people to enjoy. This thinking and inventions of other devices led to his invention of the phonograph. From that time on, an “avalanche” of new inventions for recording and reproducing of sound and vision, started for the public. Imagine now that you could have every piece of music ever written and every piece of film or tv show ever produced right there at you fingertips whenever you want. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sit down in front of your TV and decide the program? You could watch your favorite TV program the whole night. Wouldn’t it be nice to listen to your favourite radio station which happened to be located on the other site of the earth, in your kitchen radio? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to watch your local sport live broadcast in a hotel room in another country? Wouldn’t it be nice if all this didn’t cost you a fortune? We are entering the digital age where everything is going to be digitalized, which make scenarios like that much easier to create. Standardized equipment, computer techniques and the software is going to change what we will be able to achieve with our home entertainment system. This trend has already begun. It started with the compact disk (CD) and the personal computer (PC). The computer and Internet are more and more used by people for source of entertainment. People go online, download music, films, TV programs, etc. People like to be in charge of what they are watching and when they watch it. So the next natural step must be merging. With the emergence of the digital age the distinction between radio, TV, music players and the computer is blurring and these devices are merging in new ways. There will still exist specialized versions of these hybrids, i.e. radio or music players like the iPod, but we will also see the devices beginning to talk to each other and work together. The radio will be able to go online and downstream any radio station or music you want to listen to. Your iPod will be updated automatically with the newest releases from your favorite band. There will be a TV set in every room of your home, capable of displaying whatever you could imagine. The computer will merge into the TV or vice versa. There will only be one cable (fiber) or wireless connection to your TV set which will be able to feed signals from todays cable, antenna and internet. You will have a centralized service or device, to keep all your audio and video collection and photos. A collection which is accessable from every device in your home or abroad. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 5 of 37 So why don’t we have all these things already? Is it because the technology is not ready or is it because the content owner, in search for a bigger share, are hindering the content to flow? To be able to answer these questions we need to take a look at the history and trends, and from that try to predict where we are heading. We also need to look at what are the big providers releasing for content and how it’s released. In this document you will read the highlights of the history of home entertainment system where the emphasis is on radio, TV and audio home systems. After these early years we will take a look at how the digitalization is merging into our home systems. With all these nice technologies coming what will we be able to use it for? To answer that question we will take a look at what is being offerred for a content, by the key players in Iceland on this market. The report will focus more on the hardware, without describing specific devices, regarding the home system rather than the software driving these equipment. Coverage of the software for home system would require a whole new report. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 2. the journey 2.1 birth of the gadgetry 6 of 37 Our history starts in the late 19th century when the telegraph and the telefone had been invented. Thomas Alva Edisons work on a machine that could transcribe telegraphic messages and later be send over telegraph repeatedly, led him to invent the phonograph in 1877. The first recorded sound was Edison speaking the nursery rhyme, "Mary had a little lamb" [1]. The phonograph, as seen in Figure 1, is a mechanical apparatus which consists of a waxed cyliender, a tube with membrand which is connected to a needle, and an arm which needs to be turn to rotate the cyliender. To record, the arm was turned, which rotated the cyliender. The people spoke into the tube and the membrand in the tube vibrated the needle which made a groove into the waxed cylinder. To playback the recording the needle was placed at the beginning of the recorded Figure 1. Edison's phonograph, groove and the arm turned. The needle vibrated and ca. 1899. moved the membrand which regenerated the recorded sound which was amplified in the tube so people could hear the recording. This invention was popular and people wanted to buy prerecorded cylinders with famous artist. In the beginning there was no method of mass duplication of cyliender and each and every copy had to be recorded invidually. The process for mass production of cylienders was invented in 1901 [1] and cylinder production peaked in 1903. Soon the disc machines begun to outsell the Edison cylinders. Edison responded in 1908 by extending the playing time of his records to 4 minutes. The last outside horn machine was sold around 1915 [2]. Emile Berliner pattended in 1887 the gramophone which used a lateral-cut disc record. It was exclusively used in toys until 1894, when the disc records were first marketed. Emile's patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records expired in november 1918, which got many companies to produce the discs and caused the them to overtake the cylinders in popularity. The disc records and record players dominated the market until the 1980's [3], in all kinds of shapes and forms. The electricity was discovered in 1873 and the "Age of Electricity" was born. This discovery had a huge influence on the society at that time. Many new Figure 2. His Master's Voice,early inventions using electricity were invented. Among 1930s portable wind-up gramophone. other things the gramophone got electric and a motor replaced the wind-up arm and became to the record player we know today. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision Many experiments with radio waves led to the invention of the radio. The first experimental radio broadcast was on Christmas Day in 1906, made by Reginald Fessenden. It wasn't until 1920 that the commercial radio broadcasting started, as it began to be feasible with the widespread introduction of tuneable radio receivers. Before the advent of the television, commercial radios included not only music and news, but as well comedies, dramas, variety of shows and many other forms of entertainment. That it used only sound was unique among dramatic presentation. [4] 7 of 37 Figure 3. Philco 1931. Famous Quote[5], Radio(1905): “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" - David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s The improvement of radio technology and radio sales brought many phonograph dealers to financial ruin in Christmas 1925. The record companies succeeded to keep the business booming through the end of the decade by putting effort in improve the audio fidelity, but many companies merged or went out of business, because the record sale plummeted during the Great Depression. [15] Long before the radio was invented people had dreamed of a machine that could transmit pictures. It wasn't until 1926, after the radio, that this dream came to life when the television was invented. The invention of the television was not done by a single person but by several individuals. John Logie Baird that had the first public demonstration of a working television that transmitted live moving images early in the year 1926. Baird further demonstrated the world's first color television transmission in 1928. [7] Figure 4. First image Baird transmitted. Figure 5. John Logie Baird with his first television. Famous Quote[5], Television (1926): “For God’s sake go down to the reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless!” -Editor of the Daily Express in response to a prospective visit by John Logie Baird, Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 8 of 37 The first television sets were mechanical (Figure 5), with a rotating metal disk, which produced a poore picture (Figure 4). A quality with only 30 to 60 lines. [8] These first steps were more of an experimental than popular public use. The television sets had small displays, that were hard to watch, had rotating mechanics and where expensive. The television technology was further improved. More and more electronics were put into the sets and finally all mechanics were removed. Figure 6. Mechanical television. Fracarro, 30 line (ca.1930). The first all electronic television was demonstrated to the public in 1934 by Philo Farnsworth at the Franklin Institue in Philadelphia. The RCA company where also big players on improving the quality of both the camera tube and the picture tube [9]. The image improved and electronic television sets get produced and became available to the public in 1935. At the same time broadcasting for these new television sets started. The first experimental electronic TV broadcast began in Germany 1935. England started their first regular public TV broadcast in 1936 from Alexandra Palace. Regular network broadcast began in USA in 1946 and television became common in American home by the middle 1950's. [7] The first public broadcast was from the Olympic games in Berlin 1936. The race to be the first to bring a color to the television started. Figure 7. Television set from 1950's. Mechanically scanned color television was demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 and the electronic scanned color television in 1940 by RCA. A post-war of color television standards emerged between CBS's partly mechanically color TV, NBC’s (which owned RCA) all electronic color TV and the CTI's system. To make a long story short, CBS won and became the U.S. color broadcasting standard in 1950. [9] Because of the conflicts that arised between companies in US over the introduction of a nationwide analog television system [10], the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the National Television System Committee (NTSC) in 1940. CBS never got their color on the air and in 1953 testified before US Congress that they had no further plan for their own color system. This decision opened up for NTSC to develop a color system that was compatible with existing black and white TV sets and would pass FCC quality standards. The NTSC color system was approved by FCC in late 1953 and became the new US standard for color television. [9] Europe had its first color broadcast in July 1967 by BBC2 (in PAL) and the French (in SECAM) in October the same year. [9] In the late 1940's and early 1950's the television had overtaken the popularity of radio Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 9 of 37 comedy, drama and variety of shows. Late in 1950's radio broadcasting took the form it has today and is strongly focused on music, news and sports. Drama can though still be heard. [6] Television usage skyrocketed in the US after World War II as the manufacturing freeze on war-related technological advances was lifted, the gradual expansion in television networks, the drop in price due to mass production, increase in peoples leasure time and in additional disposable income. In 1946 only 0.5% of US households had a television sets, in 1954 it had increased to 55.7% and in 1962 to 90%. Late 1980's, 98% of all homes in US had a least one TV set. In Britain, television per houshold increased from 15,000 in 1945 to 1.4 million in 1952 and to 15.1 million by 1968. [9] As a result, television watching increased dramatically. On average Americans watched four hours of television per day. Two third of them got most of their news about the world from TV and nearly half of them got all their news from TV. Today these figures are estimated to be significantly higher. [9] For many years different countries used different television standards. The PAL system was invented in Germany, the SECAM in France and North America kept to their NTSC standard from 1941. Eventually the whole Europe switched to the PAL standard. [9] Figure 8, shows how the television standards (encoding) are divided by the worlds nations. Figure 8. Television encoding systems by nation. This is the status of the home entertainment systems so far. First we got the gramophone record player in 1918 which evolved into what we know it today. Then we got commercial radio broadcast in 1920 which became very popular with its variety of entertainments. Soon after that the television was invented in 1926, first with mechanicals and later with electronics. The first public television broadcast was in the mid 1940's. TV popularity grew very fast and became common in American home in 1950's. Emergence of the TV overtook the popularity of radio broadcast and the radio changed to what we are used to day. In the middle of the 1960's the television got color. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 2.2 10 of 37 radio and tv broadcasting in iceland Meanwhile in Iceland. In the year 1926 some people experimented with radio broadcast in Reykjavik. Their plan was to create a commercial radio but they unsucceeded and closed few months later. [11] In 1930, the state owned radio (RUV) started broadcasting. At first it mostly broadcasted news, later it broadcasted music, educational programs, drama and so on. The popularity of the radio grew fast amongst the people as a cultural and entertainment media. [11] Figure 9. RUV logo. RUV started a television broadcasting September 30, 1966. At first it only broadcasted twice during the week but soon increased to six days. For a long time there was no broadcasting on Thursdays and while the television employees went on vacation in July, there was no broadcasting. It wasn't until 1983 that RUV began to broadcast all months of the year and in 1987 RUV started to broadcast all seven day of the week. [12] Radio and television quickly reached nearly every household in Iceland. First the television was in black and white and in 1976 color broadcasting started. In 1983, RUV started their second radio channel, "Rás 2" a modern music channel for the younger public. [12] Figure 10. "Ástardrykkurinn", RUV 1969 A privatly owned television station, Station 2 (“Stöð 2”) started their broadcasting in 1986 when the monopoly RUV had on radio and TV broadcasting was lifted. At the same time a privatly owned radio station Bylgjan started their broadcasting. [11] From 1934-35 and until the year 1966-7 people could only buy radio and television sets from the state which had monopoly on the sale. [13] In the beginning and late into the century, radio receivers and television sets where build and manufactured in Iceland. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 2.3 11 of 37 evolving In this chapter we will take a look at the evolvement of the home electronics from after the World War II (WWII) until the beginning of the digitalization about 1990. After WWII the development for home entertainment system began to take off. Manufacturing cost got cheaper and people had more time to enjoy the media. The devices got better and more features where put in. All kinds of technologies we take for grant today were developed. The audio and video quality of the systems improved. The transistor is considered to be the greatest invention in the modern history and the key component in practically all modern electronics. The transistor was invented in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs. The transistor gradually replaced the vacuum tubes in most application and later made it possible to create new devices such as the integrated circuit (IC) and the personal computer. [16] Figure 11. The first point contact transistor. Radio broadcasters used amplitude modulation (AM) which wasn't of the greatest sound quality. In the 1940 the frequency modulation (FM) was developed, which allowed for much higher fidelity than AM radio could ever give. [4] Though FM was developed in 1940 it took a long time to be adopted by the majority of radio listeners. First it was primarily used to broadcast classical music. By the late 1960's FM had been adopted by fans of alternative "rock music" and it wasn't until 1978 that FM broadcast became mainstream and exceeded listenership of AM stations. During 1980's and 1990's more music station abandoned AM for FM. Today AM is mainly used for minority types of radio programming. The stereo was added to FM radio in the early 1960's [17] Figure 12. Nordmende Columbia C-615, 1961. AM/FM/SW transistor receiver The basic television technology got established, TV standards (e.g. PAL, NTSC and SECAM) where settled, the picture got color and the vaccum tubes got replaced with transistors. The only vaccum tube left was the picture tube (CRT – Cathode Ray Tube) which wasn't replaced until much later when flat TV was introduced. The look changed from being the big furniture to being in smaller case though the viewing area got larger. TV projectors where made to create even larger viewing area. Figure 13. RCA 21" color sets, 1960. NICAM stereo was developed in the 80's by the BBC and the first program, using NICAM was broadcasted on BBC in 1986. [18] Although technology progressed rather slowly, the television broadcasting industry made up for it in progression of content. The "Golden Age of Television" is consider to be the Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 12 of 37 period from 1949 to 1960, when the television became a popular mass medium. The new medium attracted many innovative and high quality programming in this era. TV shows and film series where created. Many of the best early programs evolved from successful radio shows. [19] The Ed Sullivan show, shown on CBS, was one of the longest living TV shows [20], running from 1948 to 1971. NBC started Saturday Night Live show 1975 and is still going. In 2005, NBC renewed SNL contract to 2012, making it one of the longest running show in television history [21]. The gramophone didn’t see much changes in the basic Figure 14. The Beatles at Ed design from 1887 with its rotating disk, arm and a Sullivan Show, 1965 needle which tracked a groove on a rotating record. The record player mechanic got better with better motors, tone arms and needles. Different kind of setup was introduced, linier tone arm, beltdriven disk and direct driven disk. The record itself changed from being hard lacquer to be made out af vinyl and the rotation speed of the disk changed from 78 rpm to 33,5 rpm and 45 rpm where common for singles. [3][15] The sound quality of the record depended on the quality of the vinyl the records were made of. Stereo sound for records was issued in 1958 by Audio Fidelity in the USA. Development of the quadraphonic records was announced in 1971, which ment that these records could be recorded with four separated sound channels. This technique proved to be commercially unsuccessful, but was an important precursor to later sound system we see in home cinema today. [3] Figure 15. Modern turntable. 2.3.1 satellite television People received their TV signal via cable or antenna, but this was about to be changed with emergence of TV satellites. Use of satellites for relaying television signals was first done when a signal was relayed from Europa to the Telestar satellite over North America in 1962. The first satellite to carry Direct-To-Home television was a Soviet geostationary satellite called Ekran which was launched in 1976. From that on more satellites were launched and reception of the satellite signal were available around the world. The first commercial DBS service in UK, Sky television, was launced in 1989 and it used the ASTRA satellite which provided four analogue TV channels. [37] Figure 16. Sky digital minidish. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 To receive television via satellite people needed a dish, a parabolic antenna and a set-top box to decode the signal from the satellites. nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 13 of 37 2.3.2 recording devices The years after the WWII was also an era of improvement and invention of all kinds of recording devices for commercial use. Since the invention of Edison's phonograph the recording had mostly be done by the recording industry using expensive equipments, but this was about to be changed. A significant improvement in the electrical recording was made in 1906 when Lee De Forest invented the "Audion" triode vaccum tube, which could greatly amplify weak electric signals, which became the basis of all subsequent electrical sound systems until the invention of the transistor in 1947. [22] A young electronic genius, Edwin Armstrong, invented and patented the Regeneration circuit in 1914 and the Super-Regenerative circuit and the Superheterodyne receiver circuit 1922. His invention made higher fidelity electrical sound recording and reproduction a practical reality, leading to the development of the electronic amplifer and many other devices. After 1925 these systems had become a standard in the recording and radio industry. Armstrong's Superheterodyne circuit was the central component of almost all analog amplification and radio-frequency transmitter and receiver devices of the 20th century. [22] There where several historical developments in the periode for the recording media. A Danish inventor introducted the first pratical magnetic sound recording system using a magnetic wire, but the sound quality was so poor that it was mostly marketed as business dictating machine. In the 1930's a system of magentic sound recording using steel tape where developed by Guglielmo Marconi. This was the same material used to make razor blades, and considered so dangerous that technicians had to operate them from another room. The required recording speed was high and the thin tape frequently broke, sending jagged lengths of razor steel flying around the studio. [22] A major invention of this period were the magnetic tape and the tape recorder. This technology was invented by German audio engineers in the 1930's and became the basis for almost all commercial recording from 1950's to 1980's. [22] The American engineer John T. Mullin [22] perfected the Germans tape recording just after the war and the Ampex company produced the first commercial available tape recorders in the late 1940's. Their first model, Ampex 200 model, was launced in 1948, see Figure 17. The tape enabled radio industry to pre-record section of its content which formerly had to be presented live, such as commercials and long-duration recordings of entire programs. Thanks to the magnetic tape the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high fidelity stereophonic sound where developed. This helped development of stereo for gramaphone records. [22] Figure 17. Bing Crosby with Ampex Model 200, 1948. The record industry was transformed by the magnetic tape and by the late 1950’s the vast majority of commercial recordings were mastered on tape. The tape soon envolved in multitrack Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 14 of 37 system for studio recording. A 8-track cartridge was launced as a consumer audio and aimed particulary to be the first practial and affordable car HiFi systems. The next important innovation was the compact cassette [22], which Philips electronics introduced in 1964. It became a major consumer audio format, which eventually led to the development of the Sony Walkman, introduced in the 1970’s. A major boost to the mass distribution of music recording was given and the cassettes became the first successful consumer re-recording medium as Figure 18. Typical Audio opposed to the gramophone record, which was a pre-recorded Cassette playback medium. This little device enabled the general public to record and playback their favority music and radio shows in a cheap and easy way. Even though the 8-track were offering superior sound quality over the compact cassette, the 8-track lost the battle and the compact cassette became the dominant consumer format for portable audio devices in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The magnetic tape changed the sound industry and so did it change the vision industry, the videocassette recorder was born. The first commercial successful videotape recorder, Ampex VRX-1000 was introduced by Ampex in 1956. It used 2” Quadruplex format, using 2” (5.1 cm) tape. [23] Because of its $50.000 (US) price tag, the machine could only be afforded by the television networks and the largets individual stations. Sony marketed model CV-2000 in 1965 as the world’s first VTR intended for home use. It used 1” real-to-real tape and had a build in black and white monitor. Figure 19. Ampex VRX-1000, first commercial videotape recorder. Figure 20. Two page advertise for Sony CV-2000 VTR, 1965. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 15 of 37 Ampex and RCA soon followed and came with their own real-to-real VTR’s priced under $1.000 (US) for the home consumer market [23]. Luckily for the consumer these big machines didn’t catch on for home use. Ampex concentrated on the professional market and became the world leader for studio and TV applications. The interest of the general public was woken. A device that enabled us to record our favorite TV program and watch later, was a revolution. The battle for the home video recorder consumer market was on. Sony came out with a U-matic system in 1971 and Philips developed a home videocassette format they confusingly named VCR in 1972 which Grundig and Loewe supported. The LaserDisc (reflected optical videodisc system) came in 1978 from MCA. It was not until late 1970’s that the video recorder became a mass market consumer product when the European and Japanese companies developed more technically advanced machines, greater tape duration and more accurate electronic timers. By the 1980, three technical standards were competing, all with different physically incompatible tape cassettes. The three standards were Betamax from Sony, VHS from JVC and Philips with Video 2000 (not the same as VCR they came out with earlier). [23] To make a long story short the Video 2000 failed to the market partically due to their late entrance to it, problem with the playback mechanic and the fact that the VHS and Betamax had already established a huge marked share. [24] VHS and Betamax fought a bitter war. Betamax held early lead, offering some technical advantages. VHS gained marketshare due to its longer tape time (ultimately offering nine hour recording) and because of VHS wide licensing, it was easier to get hold of, particulary in the rental market. After competing for several years VHS pulled ahead as more VHS machines came into use and more films for the VHS format came available, eventually squeezing Betamax out of the consumer market. [23] Figure 21. Betamax vs. VHS vs. V2000 Figure 22. VHS Home VTR, 1976. (JVC HR-3300) The sale of consumer high-fidelity (HiFi) sound system accelerated from 1960’s onwards when the thermionic valve (vacuum tube) were replaced by the smaller, cooler and less power hungry transistor. In the 1950’s most record players were monophonic and their sound quality had relatively low fidelity and few consumers could afford to buy high quality stereophonic sound systems. American manufactures introduced in 1960’s a new generations of “modular” HiFi components; turntables, tape recorders, integrated Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 16 of 37 amplifiers and other type of equipment (like the graphic equalizer), which could be connected together to create a complete home sound system. A television could also be included in such system creating a complete home entertainment systems. The Japanese electronics companies rapidly took up these developments and soon flooded the world market with releatively cheap, high quality components. And by the 1980’s companies like Sony had become world leaders in the music recording and playback industry. [22] All kinds of improvements and formats of the existing analog technology was made before entering the next era, the digital age. Footnote: For the enthusiasts, the web “The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCR’s” page tells a story of the VCR. http://www.totalrewind.org/mainhall.htm Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 17 of 37 3. entering the digital age 3.1 devices goes digital Since the 1990’s the digital technology has revolutionized our home entertainment, from the CD to the DVD, it has ushered in a new era of audio and video quality and convience for the consumer [45]. In this chapter we will discuss the devices which I believe has the most impact on the home entertainment systems. 3.1.1 cd and cd-rom In 1979 Philips and Sony joined to design the new audio disc. And late in 1982 the Compact Disc (CD) reached the market in Asia and the following year in other markets. This event is of the seen as the Big Bang of the digital audio revolution. This technology was enthusiastically received by the audiophile communities and its quality received particular praise. [25] Figure 23. Philips first CD player CD100, 1983. The impact on the society was enormous and the transition from LP to CD was relatively short. As can be seen in Figure 24 the sales of LP records fell rapidly as sails of CD records grown exponential. [29] Figure 24. Sales for LP vs. CD. Source: The CD Story. Originally the CD was thought of as an evolution of the gramophone record, rather than primarily as a data storage medium. The CD grew to ecompass other application from its origins as a music format. The CD-ROM was introduced in 1985 and a recordable CD was introduced in 1990. Both were developed by Sony and Philips. The recording capability enables the consumer to record their music without loss in quality and music piracy became a problem. [25] Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 18 of 37 3.1.2 digital tape recorders We saw also other digital media being developed, such as DAT (Digital Audio Tape) developed by Sony in the mid 1980’s [27]. It is still used by professionals and can also be found in computer systems for tape backup. Sony came with the MiniDisc (MD) in 1992, which was intended to replace the cassette tapes. It was popular in Japan but didn’t gain popularity world-wide [30]. A competitor to the MiniDisc and the DAT was the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992 [31]. The DCC shared the same format as the analog compact cassette and could play back either type of cassette. But the DCC never came popular with the general public and was discontinued in late 1996, because of its poor sales and advent of the recordable CD, which made the use of tape obsolete for consumer applications. Many other formats not mentioned in this report here were also developed. 3.1.3 digital radio (dab) In 1985 the first demonstration of the digital radio (DAB) was held at the WARC-ORB in Geneva and later it was developed as a research project for the European Union (EU) in 1987. In 1995 a pilot broadcast were launced in serveral countries and UK was the first country to receive a wide range of radio stations via DAB. To date the UK has been the most successful market for DAB and is being projected to be in 40% of homes by 2009. Worldwide there are approximately 1,000 DAB stations in operation and 500 million people were in the coverage area of DAB broadcast by the year 2006. [33] So what is DAB? DAB is the next generation of radio. It is able to provide listeners with cleared reception, better sound quality, more services and range of other features, including tuning by station name, record and rewind capability, text information, graphics, pictures and web pages. [32] Figure 25. Roberts Gemini RD6 Portable, DAB radio. 3.1.4 mp3 The MP2 (MPEG-1 layer-2) audio codec was created as a part of the DAB project. A group consisting of Leon Van de Kerkhof (The Netherlands), Gerhard Stoll (Germany), Leonardo Chiariglione (Italy), Yves-François Dehery (France), Karlheinz Brandenburg (Germany), took ideas from this and the ASPEC project, added some ideas of their own and created the MP3. The goal was to achieve the same quality at 128 kb/s as MP2 at 192 kb/s. It became a part of the MPEG standard and was originally published in 1995. [28] In 1994 the Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder called I3enc, and the filename extension .mp3 was chosen by the Fraunhofer team. The first real-time Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 19 of 37 software MP3 player, Winplay3, was released in 1995 and with that many people were able to encode and playback MP3 files on their PC’s. [28] Soon this new format began to spread on the internet and its popularity began to rise rapidly with the advent of the Winamp (1997) player, the mpg123 unix player and the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster (1999). These programs made it simple for average users to create, share, collect and playback MP3 files. [28] Despite the limitation in the audio quality, which is a trade-off between the amount of space used and the sound quality, the popularity of the MP3 format took off mainly because of its small file size, resulting in that MP3 playback is now supported in many hardware devices. Following figure is an example of just one of the many devices. Figure 26, SanDisk Sansa e260, 4GB Digital Multimedia Device Audio Player, Video Player, Photo Viewer, FM Tuner, FM Recorder, Voice Recorder. 3.1.5 dvd A new war for the digital video format was coming. Two high density optical storage standards were being developed in the early 1990’s; one was the Super Density disc, supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson and JVC and the other was the MultiMedia Compact Disc backed by Philips and Sony. In the anticipation that the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980’s was repeating it self, the IBM’s president, Lou Gerstner, acted as a matchmaker leading the effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard. Philips and Sony abondended their standard and fully agreed upon the SuperDensity Disc with one modification: the EFMPlus (EFMPlus have a great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints). The result of this matchmaking was the DVD specification, for the DVD movie player and the DVD-ROM computer application, in december of 1995. The DVD consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum in 1997, which is open to all other companies and thereby the war was avoided. [26] Currently the DVD is in three categories; the DVD-Video, DVD-Audio and DVDrecordable/rewriteable. DVD-Video is a standard for storing video content on the DVD media, DVD-Audio is a format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD and the third is for recording and is compatible with computers DVD. [26] According to survey the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) did in january 2000 and is reported by Ultimate AV [34], the DVD is the fastest selling consumer electronics product in history. The growth of the DVD sales in 1999 was due in large part to consumers interest in digital technologies. The survey showed that 85% of buyers Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 20 of 37 expressed satisfaction with their DVD players. It also reveals that, overall, 92% of the owners stated that picture quality was very or somewhat important to their purchase decision, followed closely by sound quality and interest in digital technology. Figure 27. Portable DVD player from Pixa Inc. Today we might have another war coming/ongoing between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD, a HD (High Definition) standards for the DVD. Currently (march 2007) there is no end to this battle and difficult to predict which one will be on the top. Both formats have many companies backing them up and pros and cons of the technology. The HD techonology promise us more data capacity on the disk allowing us to store longer films and films on the high definition format for the HDTV. 3.1.6 digital video recorder The signs of the VHS decline comes from two directions. First the manufactures are downsizing their VHS production and the shops are cutting down variety of VHS recorders they carry in-stock. The second is that the video content in VHS format is slowly disappearing. The popularity of VHS in both rental stores and sales has fallen. America (MPAA – Motion Pictures Association of America) announced in 2006, that commercial films will no longer be released on VHS. [35] What has gained in popularity with home users are high capacity digital recording systems. These systems come in several forms; e.g. harddisk based set-top boxes, PC based media centers and harddisk/optical disc combination. Harddisk (HD) based systems includes TiVo and as well as other digtial video recorder (DVR). These systems provides users with virtually a no-maintenance solution for recording video content while the VHS and other cartridge solutions require physical handling of the media, as well as mechanical maintenance and head cleaning. Unlike the cardridge based systems, the HD based systems allows many hours of recording without physical maintenance. E.g. a 120GB HD based system can record over 25 hours of video content, at an extended recording rate (XP) of 9,800 bps MPEG-2. [35] Figure 28. Philips DVDR3450H, DVD Recorder w/160GB harddisk. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 21 of 37 The term digital video recorder is defined as a device that records video to a hard drive based digital storage medium. The term included stand alone boxes and software for personal computers which enables video capture and playback to and from disk. [36] It was in 1985 an employee of Honeywell‘s Physical Sciences Center, David Rafner, who first described a drive base DVR design for home TV recording with commercial skipping and time slipping. The patent focused on a multi-channel design to allow simultaneous independent recording and playback. [36] ReplayTV and TiVO, two of the early consumer DVR‘s, were launced at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas, 1999. Spite the ReplayTV winning the best show award, it was the TiVO that got much greated commercial success. The devices has since developed complementary ablities, such as recording into DVD‘s, Internet sharing of recordings, and programming and remote control facilities using PDA‘s or over the network. [36] We will continue to see all kinds of combinations of this kind of devices. For example many satellite and cable companies have included DVR functions in their set-top boxes and recorders are being put into TV sets, etc. 3.1.7 digital television In contrast to the analog signals used by traditional (analog) TV, the DTV (Digital television) is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound by means of digital signals. DTV uses digital modulation data, which is digitally compressed. Reception requires decoding by a specially designed television set, or a settop box for the standard TV, or a PC fitted with a television card. [42] The most significant advantages of the digital television over the traditional analog TV is that digital channels take up less bandwith space. This allows the digital broadcasters to provide more digital channels in the same space, provide high definition digital services or other non-television services such as pay multimedia services or interactive services. DTV also permits special services such as multicast (more than one program on the same channel) and electronic program guides. [42] The DTV picture technology is still in its early stages. Pictures have some defects that are not present on analog television, due to present day limitation of bandwidth and the compression algorithms such as MPEG-2. When a compressed digital image is compared whith the original program source such as a 35mm motion picture film print, some digital image sequences may have distortion or degradation such as quantization noise, incorrect color, blockiness when high-speed motion is depicted, or a blurred, shimmering haze. [42] The DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) is a suite of internationally accepted open standards for digital television. It defines several standards for digital distribution over satellite (DVB-S), cable (DBV-C), terrestrial television (DVB-T) and via microwave (DVB-Mx). [44] Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 22 of 37 3.1.8 flat tv – plasma & lcd The bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) television are fast dissapearing to be replaced by the new slimmer flat TV’s. As the prices fall and the technology get better, these flat screens becomes more attractive to the general public and the sale is booming, according to the analysts [48]. The flat panel display encompass a growing number of technologies enabling displayes that are lighter and much thinner that CRT displays and are usually less than 100mm thick. Commercial available technique today are: DLP (Digital Light Processing), Plasma Displays, LCD (Liquid Crystal Displays), OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode Display) and LED (Light Emitting Diode Display). Many other technologies are currently being developed. [38] DLP is most used in projectors and video projectors. OLED is mainly used in cellular telephones. LED is made of small light emitting diodes and is used in various applications. [38] The most common for home TV are the LCD and Plasma displays. In the early 2000’s the LCD display captured large part of the computer monitor marked from traditional CRT displays. The technology advanced and started to compete against plasma and rear projection television for the home TV market. [39] Early LCD TV had a drawback relative to tradition display technique that it displayed fastmoving action with ghosting and could be viewed best by looking at the screen from slight angle or by looking directly to the screen. These problems have largely been overcome in recent years and LCD along with Plasma displays, have dominated the market worldwide from CTR displays. Additional advantage in the LCD design is it use the electricity more efficient that the CRT design. [39] Figure 29. Samsung 82“ LCD TV. Plasma is a type of flat display commonly used for large TV displays, typically over 32”. The plasma technology is not new, it was invented in 1964 by Donald L. Blitzer, H. Gene Slottow and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO Computer System. In 1970’s the semiconductor memory made CRT display cheaper than plasma displays, nonetheless the plasmas relative large screen size and thin profile made it attractive for high profile placement such as lobbies and stock exchanges. [40] Different kind of plasma displays were created and in 1997, Pioneer started selling the first plasma television to the public. The displays are introduced to be thinner and in greater sizes in order to compete with projector screens. The largest plasma display in Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 23 of 37 the world, today, was shown at the CES in Las Vegas in 2006, measuring 103” and was made by Matshushita. [40] Until quite recently, the superior brightness, faster response time, greater color spectrum, and wider viewing angle of the plasma displays, when compared with LCD televisions, made them one of the most popular forms of display for HDTV. [40] It was believed for a long time that the LCD technology was suited only to smalle sized television and could not compete with the plasma technology at sized 40” or larger. At the time, the plasma held the edge in performance and cost. But this belief has been undermined by the announcements of seventh-generation LCD panels by major manufactures. [39] Improvements in the LCD technology have narrowed the gap between LCD and plasma. Falled prices, lower weights, lower electrical power consumption and higher resolutions (which is crucial for HDTV) of LCD’s make them competitive against plasmas in the television market [39]. In late 2006, analysts note that LCD’s are overtaking the plasmas, particularly in the important 40” and above, where plasma had enjoyed strong dominance a couple of years before. [41] 3.1.9 hdtv The HDTV (High Definition Television) is a television broadcast system with a significantly higher resolution than traditional formats (PAL, NTSC and SECAM). HDTV is usally broadcasted digitally, because DTV (digital television) broadcast requires much less bandwith, but can be broadcasted analogically and some earlier analog HDTV formats were broadcasted in Europa and Japan. The HDTV technology was first introduced by a group of electronics companies called the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance in the US during 1990’s. [43] The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) defined the current HDTV standards as 1080 active interlace or progressive scan lines, or 720 progressive scan lines, using a 16:9 aspect ratio. HDTV uses Dolby Digital (AC-3) format to support 5.1 surround sound and is therefore capable of “theater-quality” audio. While HDTV is more like a theater in quality than conventional television, it should be noted that, 35mm and 70mm film projectors used in theaters still have the highest resolution and best viewing quality on very large screens and many HDTV programs are produced from movies on film as well as content shot in HD video. [43] Figure 30. Projection screen in a home theater, displaying a HDTV image. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 24 of 37 24 million US households have HDTVs in 2007. However, only half are set up to actually receive HDTV programming as some consumers are not aware that they must get special receivers or tuners to receive HDTV from cable or over-the-air broadcasts, and some are planning to use it in the future. [43] Advantage of the HDTV over “Standard” television is that it offer much better picture quality, the screen is less blurred and less fuzzy. The color is richer and more natural, no problem with snow, double images from ghosting and picture sparkles from impulse noise are thing of the past. The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound broadcasting along with standard HDTV video signal, allowes full surround sound capabilities. HDTV has twice the linear resolution of the standard TV, thus allowing much more detailed picture compared with analog television or regular DVD. [43] 3.2 the end of original standard television Even the oldest televisions can still receive TV programs, whose broadcast signal has not significantly changed. However, with little opposition, the United States congress has passed a law which would require cessation of all conventional television broadcast signals by 2009 (see: the following footnote). If the law comes to pass, all conventional televisions, whether large or portable, with analog tuners will go dark unless fitted with possibly expensive or bulky HDTV tuners or adapters, and the spectrum will be auctioned off for other uses. [7] Footnote: FCC digital broadcast deadline “Starting March 1, 2007, new television sets that receive signals [over-the-air] must include digital or HDTV tuners for digital broadcasts, including pocket sized portable televisions. Only expensive televisions are currently made with both kinds of tuners. By 2009, all U.S. television broadcasts will be exclusively digital, by order of the Federal Communications Commission. The ruling, which so far has met little opposition from consumers or manufacturers, would render all non-digital televisions dark and obsolete within 2 years. [42]” Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 4. 25 of 37 new services As the devices are getting digital more services exploiting the digital medium are developed. The devices innards begin to have standard components, like CPU and memory. The hardware is less important and more importance is on the software. The possibilities of the new digital devices and medium are more depending on their software applications. Now it’s the software that sets the limit of the device not the device itself. Only the imagination of the software developer creates the next killer application. In this chapter we take a look at two of the services that have envolved in the digital age and emergence of the internet, that could (or have) change how the home entertainment systems are used. 4.1 interactive television The definition of the iTV (Interactive Television) is any television with what is called a return path. Information flows not only from the broadcaster to the viewer, but also from the viewer to the broadcaster. Another common feature to all iTV systems, is the ability to offer each TV set, or each viewer who uses that TV, a different choice of content. [46] Figure 31. There are different configurations and its possible to build a crude interactive service using analog systems, but the type of systems now being offered, that will dramatically change how viewers live, are digital, either cable or satellite. [46] One aspect of the iTV is to be able to interact with TV program content. Have influence on the drama plot details and endings or participate in a poll, questions, comments, or other forms of audience response back into the show. Another aspect is to interact with TV releated content, example get more informations about what is on the TV, whether, sports, movies, news etc. Or getting more information about what is being advertised, along with the ability to buy it. This form is called T-Commerce (Television Commerce). [47] The return path could be implemented in various ways; via telephone line, mobile SMS or internet connection which is currently the most popular return path. The internet connection currently requires that you have a external computer but in coming years there will be no need to have both a computer and a TV set for iTV, the interactive content will be built into the system via the next generation of set-top boxes. [47] Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 4.2 26 of 37 iptv The IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is a system where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure. IPTV is often provided in conjuction with VOD (Video On Demand) and may be bundled with a Internet access. The broadband operator typically supply IPTV using a closed network infrastructure. This type of delivery is widely called TV over Internet or Internet Television. A simpler definition of IPTV would be television content that is received by the viewer through the technologies used from computer networks, instead of being delivered through traditional formats and cabling. [49] The IPTV technology has been restricted by low broadband penetration. However in the coming years, residential IPTV is expected to grow as broadband was available to more than 200 million households worldwide in the year 2005. [49] “Many of the world's major telecommunications providers are exploring IPTV as a new revenue opportunity from their existing markets and as a defensive measure against encroachment from more conventional Cable Television services” [49]. In a traditional TV network, using the broadcast technology, all the content constantly flows downstream to each customer and he switches the content at the receiver. The customer selection depends on how much content the company can put into the pipe to the customer’s home. In the IP network things work differently. Content remains on the network, and only the content the customer selects is sent to his home. This frees up bandwidth, and the customer choice is less restricted by the size of the pipe into the home. [49] It will be possible to make the TV viewers experience more interactive and personalized. It could be possible for the supplier to include an interactive program guide that allows the viewers to search for content by title or actor’s name, or be able to look up the player’s stats while watching a sports game, or control the camera angle. The viewers could have picture-in-picture functionality that allows them to “channel surf” without leaving the program they are watching. It could also be possible to access photos or music from the home PC on the television, use a wireless phone to schedule a recording of the favorite show, or even adjust parental control so their child could watch a documentary for a school report, while they are away from home. [4] The VOD (Video On Demand) services allows a customer to browse an online movie catalogue, watch trailers and select the movie he wants to watch. They movie playout starts nearly instantaneously on the customer’s TV or PC. The VOD content is generally encrypted in order to avoid content piracy. [49] Quote from the Economist: “Doughnut adjust your set” (2006) [50]: “This living-room overload is likely to get worse as telecoms operators launch a new generation of television-over-broadband services, using a technology called IPTV. This will make possible thousands of channels, downloadable programmes and films, plus messaging, internet access and games. It will also involve the biggest and most complicated controllers ever seen. “The experience isn't as good as it could be,” says Michael Cai of Parks Associates, a consultancy. So some companies believe a new approach is needed.” The IPTV has its limitation due to the Internet Protocol, it is sensitive to packet loss and delays if the connection is not fast enough. [49] Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 4.3 27 of 37 pc – the next home entertainment system? It was a little difficult to place this chapter as the question of where does the PC fit into the home entertainment system is currently difficult to answer. The PC as a media center has become popular in homes and people are using it as radio, TV, VCR, music player, music recorder, internet browsing, a game machine and for many more applications. The PC has endless possibilities only depending on the software application it runs and little bit on the hardware (TV cards etc). The PC-base media center can serve the same features as a DVR set top box, but can also be useful for electronic mail and surfing the Internet. A media center may be the better solution for the technical-savvy consumer who is looking for a system he can regularly upgrade, such as software , disk capacity and better components. [35] Figure 32. A typical Windows Media Center menu. In a PC-based media center the software plays the key role. The software applications decide what is possible to do with the computer and how the software connects and pull downs services provided over the cabel or the Internet. To be able to watch television broadcasting over the air or cable one is required to have a TV tuner card installed in the PC, but for IPTV one is only required to have a good (>4Mb/s) ADSL connection. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 5. digital age entering iceland 5.1 digital television in iceland 28 of 37 The digitalization of television broadcast is also coming to Iceland like the rest of the world. Or is it already here? When do we expect to have fully changed to digital broadcasting? In the following I will address these questions. The exposition of digitial television in Iceland which a group of experts prepared for the Ministry of Communication concludes that a company should be founded to distribute digital television and all broadcasters should have equal right to distribute their content on the network provided by this company. Some of the distribution would be via satellite while other would be terrestrial. This way considerable asset would be saved. No date is set when a full switch to digital broacasting would accure. [51] In an enquiry at the Icelandic Parlament 7. dec. 2005 [52], where the enquirer asked about the distribution of digital broadcasting for RUV, we can see that there is three major distribution network currently running in Iceland. The distribution networks are; Siminn with cabel network and TV via ADSL, Digital Iceland which 365 Broadcast Media owns and Orkuveita Reykjavikur which own and operate the fiber optic network. None of these networks are nation wide and only work in limited area. From this we can see that the recommendation from the expert group haven’t gone through. What does that mean for small countries like Iceland? It could mean several things, but at least one thing will be sure, everything will cost more for the customer. We could also get stand still and slow down the advancement of the digital technology because of the cost and lack of customers for each network. There is also a risk that one of the network will be on the top and buy up other companies and thus get a monopole over the market. 5.2 content providers What services are these three companies offering Icelandic customers? RUV is not included in this summary as it has not started digital broadcast at the time this report was written. 5.2.1 orkuveita reykjavikur (OR) OR owns a constantly expdangin fiber network which has already reached most of the capital area and some smaller towns around Iceland. The plan is that in ten years all houses in the captial area will be connected. OR will be the provider of the fiber distribution network and sell other companies access to the fiber to distribute their services. [53] Currently one can get television, telephone and internet services over the fiber. As an example of services; IPTV with all the Icelandic channels and serveral foreign channels, a VOD, a telephone using the VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and the internet with 30Mb/s connection. The TV channels are ready for HDTV. [53] To get more information see their web page at: http://www.4v.is/ Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 29 of 37 5.2.2 siminn Siminn currently owns and runs two networks; a cable network and a telephone wire network. The telephone network reaches every house in Iceland while the cable only reaches houses in the major cities. Siminn runs the distribution network while Skjarinn (a company that Siminn owns) provides the content. [54] The cable network is mostly for television while over the telephone wire one can get telephone, internet access and television via ADSL modem. On the television site one can get all the Icelandic channels and wide selection of the foreign channels divided into predefined packets. Siminn also offer, over ADSL, services like IPTV and VOD. Broadcasting over ADSL is digital while broadcasting over cable is both analog and digital. Special set-top box is required to receive the digital broadcast while traditional television receiver is only required for the analog broadcast over the cable. [54] According to an interview I had with their corporate communication manager (Linda Björk Waage), a interactive television is being developed. She expected that it will take at least 10 year for fully switch over to digital television. For the TV on Demand (where the viewer self desides the program) it stops on copyrights over the material but technically it wouldn’t be any problem. To get more informations see: http://www.siminn.is/forsida/einstaklingar/sjonvarp/ and: http://www.skjarinn.is 5.2.3 365 broadcast media 365 is a big media company that owns and operates a newspaper, TV stations (e.g. Stod2), radio stations and other mass media. It owns Sena which produces and distributes music, film and computer games and owns several movie theaters. It owns D3 which runs news internet pages and owns a company that produces, TV shows, films and ads. [55] 365 owns and operates its own distribution network, Digital Iceland, for television broadcasting, though it works in collaboration with Vodafone for operation and maintenance of the network. Digital Iceland distributes all of the 365 stations and other Icelandic TV stations as well as variety of foreign stations. Digital Iceland broadcasts can be received via specific antenna or via the cable which Siminn owns. 365 has almost finished their plan to only broadcast in digital. 365 sell access to almost all their programs in subscription and the subscribers need special set-top box to receive the broadcast. It is not visible on Digital Iceland’s homepage that they provide other services than traditional broadcasting. To get more informations see: http://www.digitalisland.is Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 6. 30 of 37 and beyond – conclusion From the summary of the chapter “digital age entering iceland” its clear that each of the big media companies have their own distribution network and own media source to provide content for their network. All networks distributes all the Icelandic channels and its also visible that they also provides the same foreign channels. So why do we have three networks and perhaps getting the fourth when RUV start broadcasting in digital, when we should only have one distribution network and many providers? The analog devices have served us well and brought music and film to us to enjoy. This has changed the life of many people, some have got addicted to television viewing while another were not affected and yet another couldn’t think of a day without listen to some music. Our devices are changing. The rise of the digital age revolutionizes our devices to handle ever-increasing stream of digital information. Analog is fading away while the digitalization escalates, for the joy of the public. Digitalized content tend to end up in a file and/or in a digital stream. No matter if, they started as video or audio. With the content in manageable format, it can be handled in many ways. It could be recorded to a media such as CD, DVD, streamed over network, or carried in small devices like a music player or telephone. The software and software applications are going to play a bigger role in our devices. Even the smallest device has a piece of software in it. Possibilities of our devices depends on how smart and inventive our software developers will be. We are seeing new services from the content providers, developed purely by software, such as IPTV, iTV and VOD. If the software is the key player in the development of the devices, why do we need all these different types of devices then? The natural next step in the evolution must be the integration of the devices. Different kind of devices merges. Our radio goes online and stream radio station from the internet as well as receiving broadcast over the air. It even can talk to our music collection server to get a piece of music. Our TV will get online, streaming all kind of visual entertainment and services, as well as displaying information’s from the internet. The big amplifiers and DVD hardware players disappears and get integrated into TV, radio or small music players. Loudspeakers get smart and become able to communicate with playing devices and emit the sound the device set it up to. Devices will be able to communicate with each other. We could even use our telephone as remote control or use it to play any content as well as being our communication device. Many people have a PC (personal computer) in their home and increasingly use them as their home entertainment center. They go online and stream audio, video and other kind of entertainment. TV watching is decreasing in favor of Internet browsing. The computer slowly takes over the role of home entertainment system as the radio, TV, music player, records integrates with the computer. If this merging will be a TV with computer or computer with TV does not matter, it will have the same result. Maybe a TV with computer is more specialized and cannot do as many things as computer with TV. It is difficult to predict, it all depends what the people want and what the market offers. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 6.1 31 of 37 a day in our life It was seven in the morning when my TV turned on and my house computer woke me up with her softly speaking voice; “It’s a time to get up! Its beatiful morning outside”. I rose up and glimpsed on the todays forecast which was rolling on the screen. I turned to look at my wife and she was still sleeping. Before I got up I changed my TV to browse the stocks. The Tokyo stock had went up some while the New York stock went down a little, nothing to worry about. I set my computer to alert me if the NewYork stock went further down. I went out of the bed and looked by the childrens room on my way to the shower, they were still asleep. While I was showering the morning news rolled on the TV display in the shower. Nothing new so I turned down the volume and turned on my favorite radio station in Spain which was having a disco theme the whole week. I sang aloud with “I will survive..”, which I shouldn’t have done judging by the look from my neighbour when I met him in the hallway this morning. By the time I was finished other residents of the house had woken up, maybe due to my singing. The coffee maker had already brewed the coffee and the refrigerator warned that we were low on milk. My wife confirmed with the fridge’s computer and added some more stuff on the shopping list we needed to buy. She chose to pick up the groceries from the local stored on her way home in the evening. While the kids ate their breakfast they watched some old cartoons, from when I was young, I guess they are coming back, which they found on the net somewhere. I browsed my email online while I finished my coffee. We were a little bit lazy in the evening and decided to have a pizza for dinner. We went online to the local pizzaria and selected on the screen what we wanted on the pizza and placed the order. A counter on the screen showed us how long until the pizza arrived. On the time the pizza arrived, and the hot pizza went down with ease. While the kid finished their school work and handed it in online to the teachers computer, me and my wife watched the news on the TV. We browsed a list of available news from all around the world and selected the ones we were interested in. By the time the kid had finished their homework we had finished watching the news, so we decided to watch some film together. We looked at some samples and finally agreed on a comedy film that we rented online. When the movie started the TV adjusted the speakers so we could enjoy it in full surround sound. The movie was a success and the kids went to the bed happy. I think they listened to some music before falling a sleep. We decided to watch a comedy show that just had been released in US while we where watching the film. We started to watch in the living room but after some yawning we decided to go to bed, so we paused the show, prepared for bed and continued to watch in the bedroom. I think we falled a sleep because I can’t remember the end. Well we will finish watching it tomorrow. The house computer dimmed all the lights and turned off the TV’s when she sensed that we were all asleep. Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 7. references 7.1 definitions and abbreviations AM Amplitude Modulation. ASPEC Adaptive Spectral Perceptual Entropy Coding CD Compact Disc CES Consumer Electronics Show CTR Cathode Ray Tube DAT Digital Audio Tape DBS Direct Broadcast Satellite DCC Digital Compact Cassette DTV Digital Television DVB Digital Video Broadcasting DVD Digital Versatile Disc DVR Digital Video Recorder FCC Federal Communications Commission FM Frequency Modulation. HDTV High Definition Television IPTV Internet Protocol Television MP3 MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 NICAM Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex NTSC National Television System Committee PAL Phase Alternating Line RCA Radio Corporation of America RUV Ríkisútvarpið (e. The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service) SECAM Sequential Color with Memory VCR Videocassette Recorder VOD Video On Demand VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 32 of 37 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 7.2 33 of 37 bibliography [1] The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph. 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Available at: http://www.365.is Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 7.3 36 of 37 list of images Figure 1 Edison's phonograph, ca. 1899. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EdisonPhonograph.jpg Figure 2 His Master's Voice,early 1930s portable wind-up gramophone. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Portable_78_rpm_record_player.jpg Figure 3 Philco 90 "cathedral" style radio from 1931. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Philco_cathedral_radio.jpg Figure 4 First image Baird transmitted. from: http://www.mztv.com/newframe.asp?content=http://www.mztv.com/baird.html Figure 5 John Logie Baird with his first television. from: http://www.mztv.com/newframe.asp?content=http://www.mztv.com/baird.html Figure 6 Mechanical television. Fracarro, 30 line (ca.1930) from: http://www.earlytelevision.org/scandisk.html Figure 7 Television set from 1950's. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1950%27s_television.jpg Figure 8 Television encoding systems by nation. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NTSC-PAL-SECAM.svg Figure 9 The RÚV logo. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ruv_iceland.jpg Figure 10 "Ástardrykkurinn", RUV 1969 from: http://www.listogsaga.is/abakvidt.html Figure 11 The first point contact transistor. from: http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1997/Dec/hour1_121297.html Figure 12 Nordmende Columbia C-615, 1961. FM/FM/SW transistor receiver from: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1031/trans/SW/Columbia.html Figure 13 RCA 21" color sets, 1960. from: http://www.tvhistory.tv/1960-RCA-Ad-Color.JPG Figure 14 The Beatles at Ed Sullivan Show, 1965 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Beatlessullivantogether.jpg Figure 15 Modern turntable. - Pro-Ject Xpression turntable. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Turntable-floating-view.jpg Figure 16 Sky digital mini-dish. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sky_minidish.JPG Figure 17 Bing Crosby with Ampex Model 200, 1948. from: http://www.ampexdata.com/html/history.html Figure 18 Typical Audio Cassette. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tdkc60cassette.jpg Figure 19 Ampex VRX-1000, first commercial videotape recorder. from: http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ampex-commercial-vtr-1956.html Figure 20 Two page advertise for Sony CV-2000 VTR, 1965. from: http://www.smecc.org/sony_cv_series_video.htm Figure 21 Betamax vs. VHS vs. V2000 cassettes. from: http://www.totalrewind.org/v2000.htm Figure 22 VHS Home VTR, 1976. (JVC HR-3300) from: http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/vhs.html Figure 23 Philips first CD player CD100, 1983 Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007 the digital home – sound & vision 37 of 37 from: http://tk-cc.marcomxchange.philips.com/2023/3437/ Figure 24 Sales for LP vs. CD. Source: The CD Story. from: http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstory.pdf Figure 25 Roberts Gemini RD6 Portable, DAB radio. from: http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/dabreceivers.html Figure 26 SanDisk Sansa e260, 4GB Digital Multimedia Device Audio Player, Video Player, Photo Viewer, FM Tuner, FM Recorder, Voice Recorder. from: http://www.overstock.com/cgibin/d2.cgi?page=proframe&prod_id=2090111&IID=prod2090111 Figure 27 Portable DVD player from Pixa Inc from: http://chipchick.com/2005/03/first_portable_.html Figure 28 Philips DVDR3450H, DVD Recorder w/160GB harddisk. from: http://www.ht.is/index.php?sida=vara&vara=DVDR3450H Figure 29 Samsung 82“ LCD TV. from: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/samsung/samsung-tops-others-with-82-lcd-tv146716.php?mail2=true Figure 30 Projection screen in a home theater, displaying a HDTV image. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Highdefinition.jpg Figure 31 Comedy strip on iTV. from: http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=shortSpyTV Figure 32 A typical Windows Media Center menu. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MCE_2005.png Haraldur Sæmundsson © 2007 nd Due: March 22 , 2007