The Future of TV
The capabilities of audio and video source gear have exploded in just the past year. Someone with a sweet home A/V system used to have a VCR, DVD player, cable or satellite receiver (or both), Tivo, reel-to-reel, CD changer, cassette player, and phonograph. This took up a lot of space, had a mess of wires, and required extreme dexterity to operate all the remotes, or one really well programmed universal remote.
Today, the consumer can get a Blu-Ray player with Netflix, VUDU, YouTube, Pandora, weather information, and access to local computer files. TV’s are available with similar capabilities. The ability to stream music and movies over the web is making source gear less necessary.
However, video quality is still a bit of an issue. Services that stream video in real time typically can’t give you the high quality picture of cable or Satellite. Services such as Amazon.com and VUDU allow you to download movies for purchase or rental in higher resolutions.
It won’t be long before you will be able to satisfy all of your audio and video desires by simply purchasing a TV, connecting it to the internet, and using the TV remote to watch TV, download and stream movies, and listen to music.
This likelihood leaves me wondering how this will affect the movie and music industry, video gaming capabilities, power consumption (no more cable and satellite boxes hogging power when you aren’t using them).
How do you think the landscape will change? What issues might this cause or solve? Let us know!
Revisiting The Bat Cave Theater
The Bat Cave home theater has been featured in trade and shelter magazines, contests, blogs and reviews over the years, most notably, the trade source CEPro. Their website is currently featuring “Spot Light on Home Theater” and the Bat Cave Theater appears once again as a ‘Favorite Themed Home Theater’. First of all, we offer many, many thanks to CEPro and writer, Arlen Schweiger for recognizing this very special project. Next, we thought you would enjoy learning about the recent upgrades which updated the theater to 2010 audio video standards.
The legacy 3 gun sony CRT projector andFaroudja line quadrupler have been replaced with a state of the art 3 chip Digital Light Processing projector by Sim2. Check out that sexy Italian beast! The projector is now mounted with a Chief ceiling mount system. B&K Reference Audio Processor and Amplifier were upgraded to 7 channel digital amplification and THX Ultra2 Plus Preamp/processor by Integra.
We used Audyssey MultEQ Pro Calibration to achieve perfect sound in this decidedly challenging space. Viewers can now enjoy the latest video format with the addition of a Sony Blu-Ray player complete with new HDMI topology using SnapAV B7 series cables.
And lastly, we reprogrammed the Crestron control systems to incorporate these upgrades and make the system easier than ever to operate. With the touch of a button, the movie is cued up, the lights dim, the screen drops, the curtain rises,the volume adjusts and the drama begins, better than ever!
Oh-and by the way-we changed our name from DC Audio Video to DC Home Systems!