EBU • UER - Technical Review

No. 296 (October 2003)

From giant flat screens to wireless networked homes

The Internationale Funkaustaustellung (IFA) in Berlin has always been a significant trend-setting event for the latest products in the consumer area of audiovisual and multimedia devices. For many years, consumers and professional alike have been aware that high-end products on show at the IFA would become "every-day" products by the time of the next IFA. This has happened to the CD player, the DVD player, the first 16x9 TV sets and so on. Formerly, very expensive and "high-end", today they represent mass-market products.

So what were the significant products at this year IFA?

Flat screens

First, everybody who had the opportunity of being at the IFA was overwhelmed by the large amount of flat screens. It was almost a search-task for visitors to find conventional CRT-based TV sets – although many of them had been upgraded by additional technologies such as integrated DVD players and surround sound, or have simply been offered at a very cheap price. The press rightly concluded "this years IFA will go down into the annals as the year of the flat screens".

Manufacturers plan to address the consumer market from now on in an aggressive way – providing not only large 42-inch flat screens (which are still an expensive investment for the typical household), but rather ... 15- to 37-inch TV sets that conveniently can be placed in every niche of the home. These smaller flat screens use liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, very well known from PC applications.

55-inch LCoS display from Philips

Although some large (42- to 60-inch) flat screens based on LCD technology were also seen at the Show, most of the displays over 42 inches still apply plasma technology. Improved rear-projection sets, many using Texas Instruments' DLP technology, and other types of projectors were also shown on a large scale. On all these large-screen and projector devices, visitors were able to see astonishing pictures but, when talking to the vendors, they admitted that the source for most of the pictures was either well-mastered DVD or, increasingly, HDTV material. Surprisingly, when standing by and listening to discussions between "normal visitors" and company vendors, the word HDTV was mentioned quite often.

Sagem projection display using Texas Instrument's DLP technology

DVB and DAB

DVB-T – the terrestrial standard for digital TV to the home, in combination with the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) – were, of course, another highlight of the IFA. The fact that terrestrial television in Berlin has fully switched over from analogue to digital transmission – and that this switchover was largely accepted very positively by the population (all needed to have a new DVB-T set-top box) – has supported the inevitable rollout of DVB-T.

MHP on display at the Samsung stand

Concerning DAB, there was a re-assuringly large selection of DAB receivers on show in a special DAB area although, apart from Blaupunkt, there were few sets evident on individual manufacturers' stands.

Blaupunkt Woodstock DAB 52 (top) and DAB 53 car radios

The wireless networked home

Another trend seen at IFA was the wireless networking of devices around the home – in particular, the integration of the Internet and networking capabilities within home entertainment devices (such as TVs, set-top boxes and audio sets). In many cases, the manufacturers used PCs to act as "servers" to provide audiovisual information over wireless links to the household devices.

Home cinema and multi-channel sound

Home cinema surround-sound systems were introduced on the market some years ago ... but new innovations – such as flat displays, digital amplifiers and automatic loudspeaker alignment to the acoustics of the room – today provide new home cinema experiences. In this respect, it is important to mention the satellite radio test transmissions of the German public broadcasters, BR and WDR, using Dolby Digital 5.1 which astonished many listeners in the audio suite of the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT).

Home cinema system

DVD and CD

The end of the classic VHS video recorder seems to be close. The IFA confirmed a dramatic drop in the price of numerous DVD players and recorders. The typical DVD player has become an all-round device that can play many different compression formats including DivX.

Standard TV recording onto DVD was available in almost all the vendors' portfolios and hybrids of DVD players/recorders, including hard disks and static memory devices, were also visible. Even a DVD player integrated in a DVB-T set-top box was on show. Since the storage capacity of these little memory devices has been increasing almost proportional to their drop in price, they are becoming a universal storage medium – for the storage of conventional computer data and as memory devices for digital cameras, digital video cameras and MP3 players, to name just a few applications. Panasonic, for example, apply their so-called SD cards – with a capacity of up to 1 GB (20 Mbit/s transfer rate)– in a wide range of their consumer applications. The advantage of this type of data memory is that it offers the consumer a fully digital chain for maintaining the quality of their audiovisual material during the transfer from one device to another.

First prototypes of the Blue Ray DVD player and recorder – supporting HDTV – were also on show but manufacturers indicated that the production products would first be introduced outside the European marketplace.

It wasn't just the display devices that have become flatter and flatter – the rest of the AV equipment for the home has also become flatter over the years. Multi-channel audio amplifiers have become flatter because of digital technology. These digital amplifiers do not produce the amount of heat produced previously by analogue amplifiers and, for that reason, they require much smaller power supplies. On top of that, vendors are providing automatic adjustment of the surround speakers to suit the acoustics of the living room. For those who want to create their own archives, some amplifiers already provide an Ethernet interface for playing out audio to a PC hard disk. Hi-Fi enthusiasts who don't like to hardwire their surround speakers to the amplifier can use Bluetooth technology to provide wireless connections (e.g. certain products from LG Electronics).

High-fidelity sound means either using the DVD-Audio format or the new generation of CDs called SACD (Super Audio CD) which stores audio at a much higher sampling rate than normal CDs. The repertoire of those medias has now been increased to about 2000 titles. Some of the SACDs are also available as hybrids (2 layers on the CD) so that they can also be used with conventional CD players.

Science & Technology Forum

The Science and Technology Forum ("Technisch-Wissenschaftliche Forum") looks to the future of electronic media. At IFA 2003, the forum included PVRs (personal video recorders), interactive television, new compression systems, audiovisual media in the intelligent home, 3D television technologies and the management of audiovisual content (copyright and protection). These themes were mostly represented by research institutes such as the IRT and Frauenhofer as well as universities.

Science & Technology Forum

Summary

Those who ever wanted to see real convergence between the audiovisual, computer and telecommunication worlds were not disappointed at IFA 2003. Flat screens surely represented the trend for future TV sets while the digitalization and networking of the entire home environment is already happening.

Of course, the IFA usually shows high-end products, including many products which have just left the laboratories and which are hardly affordable in normal households. But many of these products will drop significantly in price before the next IFA in two years time – and should become a reasonably-priced gift to put under the Christmas tree at the end of 2005.

Hans Hoffmann
EBU Technical Department