Video Asylum

Posted by Homer (A) on April 10, 2002 at 04:17:54

In Reply to: you pretty much need to build the house around it posted by petew on April 04, 2002 at 06:19:42:

Ooh, Homer no think beer well without.

> with the intent of solving my video switching problem once
> and for all:
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.
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> every time i want to switch from satellite to DVD...

I meant that people will get components (HD Broadcast receivers, DVD players, DVHS, etc.) that have DVI outputs. They'll want to switch these signals, so analog video switching & I/O will become obsolete, and everyone will have to upgrade their receivers for the 5th time in the past decade.

Also, I was musing that I think there will be issues, as soon as there exist multiple broadcast sources (i.e. digital cable, HD Broadcast, and digital satellite), with digital outputs, that people want to use a single PVR to record from. Either the PVR must have multiple inputs, and these peripherals would have digital outputs, or you'd need to always route them through the PVR, which creates a two-tier switching topology. There's the additional problem that the PVR would need to control these peripherals, so whatever you hook 'em up with better have bidirectional communication capabibilities. Hopefully, the same transport will also be used for both video and audio, or that'll be another mess.

So, the future of home theater continues to be clouded by digital interconnect standards, content protection mechanisms, and interoperability issues.

The worst part of it is that none of these are particularly difficult problems. They'll be complicated by new content protection schemes, but it basically comes down to the fact that the home theater equipment industry can't get its act together, due to all the outside forces. It also doesn't help that these manufacturers profit from continual obsolescence, hence we come full-circle. D'oh!