Computers And TV
Computer technology: That's entertainment, 2000
VIDEO CNN NewsStand's James
Hattori finds out what entertainment might look
like in the year 2010 December
31, 1999 Web posted at: 4:00 p.m. EST (2100
GMT) (CNN) -- As we reach the year
2000 and the next phase of the Information
Age, it's easy to forget that just 10
years ago, the Information Age was
stuck on its launching pad. The Internet was
unknown to nearly everyone
except university researchers; TV was still patting
itself on the back over
cable success; films were searching for the next big
thing; music was sold at
record stores. Now, television and computers are
colliding and millions of
channels are on the horizon; films are bigger, clearer
and cheaper to make;
and music, more than any other industry, is using the
Internet to market
itself HDTV will soon be rolling into homes, delivering a
wider screen and
digital picture Lucy, where are you? Television is on the brink
of major
changes that may forever alter the way we live. It should all happen
with the
inevitable switch from analog to digital technology. Right now, most
homes
are equipped with analog, the design of which has remained largely
unchanged
since the invention of television. The new kid on the block is HD,
or
high-definition television, with more than three times the resolution of
a
standard analog set. Unfortunately, you can't see HDTV's higher quality
on
regular TV. And for now, HDTV does come with high price tags and
scarce
programming. But there's little doubt that television signals are
going digital.
"I think the world of television and entertainment is poised
for explosion,
and that explosion comes about because television becomes
digital," says
Andy Lippman, associate director of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's
(MIT) Media Lab. It's one of the premiere
technology think tanks in the world.
"When television becomes digital, it
becomes a lot more like the Internet,
and that means that instead of a
hundred or 500 or 1,000 channels, you have to
think of television in terms of
243 million channels and accessing channels from
all around the world." With
a laser-pointer-like device, users can click on
images on a interactive TV to
purchase clothing and objects used by the actors
on screen That new type of
TV becomes interactive, too. For instance, you should
be able to watch a
favorite sitcom, and shop at the same time. This, through
innovations like
"hypersoap." With underwriting by the JCPenney
company, MIT professor Michael
Bove along with a team of MIT students created
the idea. Using a clicker like
a remote control, "hypersoap" viewers
can shop by highlighting any clothing
or objects they see on the screen,
allowing viewers of to buy the outfits
worn by their favorite actors -- if not
quite the shirts off their "Friends'"
backs. And shopping is just one
possibility. Interactive TV is also expected
to allow viewers to gather
additional relevant information on programs. For
example, if you're watching a
cooking program featuring chicken, you'll be
able to click one part of the
screen and get the recipe. If you're watching a
newscast on a Balkan uprising,
you can click the remote and learn the history
of the conflict, along with
latest headlines and video. Your favorite TV show
may soon follow you... from
your living room, to your car radio, to your
office computer Save that VCR There
are also ideas in the works that can keep
us from missing TV, even without using
the VCR. "It's always annoying when
one is watching a television
program," says Bove, "and the telephone rings or
one has to get into
the car and go drive to work. And it would be possible,
using almost the
infrastructure we have right now, to make a television
program that when I'm
watching, if I go out in the car, maybe it follows me
by means of my pager and
then my car, and when I get to work, it follows me
up the steps and on to the
screen of my PC. In fact, it would be very nice to
be able to follow your
program that way." And save that VCR. It'll be like
the phonograph one day.
Your grandkids will laugh at it as they flip on
their DVD players -- if DVD
players aren't outdated by then. George Lucas
helped usher in the digital
projection film with "Star Wars, Episode 1: The
Phantom Menace" Big
changes on big screen Movie makers are riding the digital
wave, too. George
Lucas says he plans to lead the charge of high-budget
filmmaking into digital
land, shooting the next "Star Wars" installment
digitally on video,
not film. As a way of spurring the development of digital
projectors, he had a
month-long showing of a special digital version of
1999's "Star Wars,
Episode I: The Phantom Menace." Along with better
quality, films are
getting bigger, too. IMAX and its grand-scale films that
make the viewer feel a
part of the action could foreshadow a day when
moviegoers enjoy a truly virtual
experience. And filmmakers are relying more
on not just digital film, but also
digital animation to fill their screens.
"Titanic" and "The
Phantom Menace" are two recent blockbusters that
implemented this with
tremendous results. Although Jar-Jar Binks, in all his
digital green glory,
wasn't the most popular character, there's talk that one
day many films will
include digital actors, presumably because they won't ask
for $20 million per
picture. "Edna McCoy's Festival" was an all-digitally
produced film
that was shown at the 1999 Austin Film Festival Low-budget
filmmakers are
feeling the effects of all this technology, too. Digital tapes
are much cheaper
than traditional film stock, but yield better quality and
can be edited on a
home computer. It's an independent filmmaker's dream come
true. At the 1999
Austin Film Festival, in fact, a group of low-budget
auteurs shot a short film
using digital tapes in the span of a week on a $200
budget. Perhaps even more
alluring for independent filmmakers is the idea
that they'll always have a place
to screen their films, thanks to the
Internet. Some say they foresee a day when
filmmakers will simply e-mail
their work to theaters with digital projectors, at
least for a time probably
throwing the economy of film distribution into
disarray. The new music Music,
of course, has enjoyed the most change so far in
these digital times. MP3,
the technology that allows Web surfers to download
CD-quality music, has
been written up in most major publications and has caused
old-guard record
companies to at once curse and embrace the technology. MP3
audio will help
change the way we buy and listen to music But new musicians,
like young
filmmakers, see the digital technology as a way to sidestep
traditional
avenues to success and use the Internet to distribute their art. The
future
of music content should be interesting to monitor, too. The last decade
of
the century has seen a broad mix of styles flooding radio stations,
including
early-century jazz and swing, Latin pop, folk, rap, folk-rap,
hip-hop, dance,
Celtic, new world music, and that old-fashioned,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. It
seems music artists are continually searching
for new ways to communicate, so
perhaps the 2000s will witness the invention
of a new instrument -- like the
origination of the electric guitar in the
mid-1900s -- that will sail us to new
sound horizons. 'Faster and bigger'
Another force that can no longer be ignored
is the electronic $6.3 million
gaming industry. It keeps millions of Americans,
mostly teens, entertained.
Eye-popping graphics and battling heroes have pushed
sales of electronic
games past what's spent by moviegoers every year. "Ultima"
has evolved as
video game technology has been improved And what will games you
play in 10
years be like? "The interaction you will have will be much more
like
interacting with real people versus what it is right now," says
Richard
Garriot, who created the highly popular "Ultima" adventure
games. "You're
going to see some very compelling experiences that are
presented in ways
which are, you know, well beyond today's movies and
television." Or course,
all this is merely educated speculation, and it's
likely that many
predictions will miss their mark. But it's safe to say the
Internet and
its technologies should have vast effects on all that's
entertainment. "We
will see a billion users of the Internet before the end
of the year 2000,"
says Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of MIT's
Media Lab. "That
is basically 20 percent of the planet. "And what's
really frightening, or
interesting, depending on your perspective, is that the
change from now will
even be faster and bigger than we're expecting." NOTE
----MP3's The only
problem with MP3, however, is that it is a "lossy"
compression scheme -- that
is, one that must throw out musical data from the
high and low ends of our
hearing in order to achieve its small size. When you
expand those files to
put on an audio CD, they will not sound as good as the
original tracks,
because the information just isn't there. Enter SHN, a file
format gaining
popularity with fans of live music. SHN (or shortened) files only
offer about
2:1 compression (unlike the 10:1 ratio common with MP3), but SHN
files are
lossless -- in every way the same as the source files from which they
were
made. Of course, with less compression, the files are also much larger --
a
full shortened disc can take up about 400MB -- so they're not exactly
quick
downloads. But with high-speed DSL and cable modems at home (and those
blessed
high-speed lines we've got at work), waiting several hours for a
download while
you sleep is much quicker -- and often more reliable -- than
setting up and
completing a CD trade by mail. It's also a great way for a
single source (or
"seed") to get out to hundreds of people in a hurry. Often,
a show
will be transferred from DAT and encoding in SHN format just days
after taking
place -- perfect for us music junkies who can't wait to hear
Phish's *http://www.phish.com/*
latest version of "Chalkdust Torture" or "You
Enjoy Myself."
As any music collector knows, you can never have too much
of the same thing. The
software you'll need to take advantage of this
great-sounding technology is
called Shorten for Macintosh, which can expand
SHN files to either AIFF or WAV
formats, but only compresses WAV files. The
free download is still in an early
stage of development, but is very
stable--not to mention that it's currently the
only choice for Mac users when
it comes to SHN. Remember, however, that you
can't play an SHN file like you
would an MP3 -- it must be expanded for
listening or recording onto a CD.