All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE

Although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013's 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Rich Doherty, research director of …

[MondoMan]

Not fragile

+1 (Canadian) for the BTO reference!

[Dave 126]

Re: Not fragile

Tch, Neil Merryweather is my mid-1970s Canadian rocker of choice : D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQigGkTnmcc

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: BTO

I bought some BTO bird feeders to attract birds to the piece of waste ground I call my garden. Apparently that's the British Trust for Ornithology but it may as well be Bachman Turner Overdrive because they've been out in the garden for ages and I ain't seen nothing yet.

[Steve Knox]

NO

"Envisioneering"

NO.

[142]

Re: NO

What? and no knuckle rapping for "automagically"!?

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Re: NO

I always treat the word "automagically" as a signal to stop listening to the presenter. I will now add. "envisioneering" to the list.

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: NO

Yeah... "automagically" was real cute for about five minutes in the mid '90s; now it's like hanging a neon sign around your neck, flashing "I HAVE NO ORIGINAL IDEAS".

[Euripides Pants]

Re: NO

Someone needs to tell that Doherty guy to stop drinking the used mop water.

[Andus McCoatover]

Used mop water????

If the mop's been used to clean the bar floor, I don't (hic!) see a problem....

[Craig Vaughton]

What's New?

They've been saying my audio kit is obsolete for years, but strangely the demand for the the black round things to play on is rising.

As for Super HD TV, makes no odd how good the picture is, the content will still be 90% crap.

Where's the grumpy old man icon when you need one?

[Enrico Vanni]

Re: What's New?

Content is everything.

The fact that old movies get re-sampled to 4k (and 40 years ago someone tried to remaster the Beatles recordings in 'stereo') tells you that.

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: What's New?

I've seen the HD remastered version of A Hard Day's Night, and it's gobsmackingly gorgeous. it was resampled from the original negs, as I recall, and they used the stereo masters of all the songs featured in the movie.

And yes, there were stereo mixes done of many of those songs even though there were still a lot of monaural record players around. Many albums back then were issued in two different versions: the mono version and the stereo version (bearing the famous advisory "playable on monaural equipment").

Add to that the fact that it had been quite some years since I'd seen A Hard Day's Night, and it was extra extra sweet.

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: advisory

Best advisory ever:

"This stereo record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment please hand it into the nearest police station."

[FlyingPhil]

Re: advisory

Plus....Tubular Bells!

[Stacy]

Re: What's New?

@Mike Flugennock

I have a 1080p remastered Blu-ray of The Italian Job (the real one! You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!) and 2001 and the picture on both is just stunning.

The azure blue lakes in the opening of the Italian Job are sparkling! And in 2001 everything is crisp with bright colours.

The content is there, it's just not always new!

As for the speakers, I'm sure that there will be improvements made, but until I hear something to out do the CM9's in the living room (and are affordable!) I don't think I'll class them as obsolete! I guess I can keep them for a long time yet :)

[Roland6]

Re: What's New?

If you read about the remastering process you will know that for many of these older films, including James Bond, with the BluRay versions there is effectively a one-to-one mapping between film crystals and pixels, so for older stuff there is no value in remastering at even higher pixel counts.

What 4x and beyond enable is the home user being able to use the cinema release of a modern digital film (on all it's disks).

Don't expect terrestrial TV to upgrade as in the UK it is in the process of loosing spectrum to 4G/LTE ...

[Martin Budden]

Re: What's New?

<--- Here's your icon.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: What's New?

Agreed. None of this stuff sounds appealing to me. I'm perfectly happy with the audio quality of my mobile phone. I use the built-in speakers on the TV. For that matter, I own three TV sets (one of which hasn't been powered on in a year), and two are CRTs; the other's an inexpensive LCD just because that's what's cheap now.

I've seen hi-def TVs and films on Blu-Ray. I've heard fancy expensive audio systems. I don't find I enjoy the content any more with them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must shake my cane at those damn kids.

[pPPPP]

Noise cancelling in cars sounds like it might be a good idea, but I'd like to be able to hear if I've got a flat tyre, a worn bearing, etc. etc.

I'd rather they weren't cancelled out.

I also tend to find that on a decent stereo the best setting for tone controls are everything at zero. Anything that "adapts" is bound to sound crap.

I would be up for adaptive controls that turn down knob-ends' headphones on trains, and give out high-voltage electric shocks to people who play their crappy tinny music out of their phones in public. After stabbing them in the eye.

[Mike Flugennock]

re: tinny, crappy music out of mobile phones

...and give out high-voltage electric shocks to people who play their crappy tinny music out of their phones in public...

Wow, talk about everything old being new again. A couple of years back I got aboard a subway downtown and heard some girl cranking her "beats" out of a smartphone of some kind -- in spite of a transit authority rule mandating headphones on radios, walkmans, DVD players, iThings, what-have-you. In spite of my annoyance, it brought back oddly-pleasant memories of my boyhood in the '60s... going to the beach with my family, and hearing a thousand teenagers with a thousand crappy little transistor radios cranking a thousand different songs, all with that same blaring, tinny, flattened-dynamic-range sound.

Mind you, I still wanted that chick clear at the other end of the car to PUT SOME FUCKING EARPHONES ON THAT THING, WILLYA?

[Simon Harris]

Re: re: tinny, crappy music out of mobile phones

A Vulcan nerve pinch usually does the trick!

[Woodgar]

I got the impression that the sound cancelling could be done for the passengers separately from the driver, so you get to hear the road noise whilst they get to hear each other.

[Mike Flugennock]

re: sound canceling in cars

I got the impression that the sound cancelling could be done for the passengers separately from the driver, so you get to hear the road noise whilst they get to hear each other.

Y'know, now that I think of it, this article doesn't say a damn' thing about dealing with the whole issue of people in the front seats and back seat being unable to hear each other talking even though they're about three feet apart. What's the deal with that?

[Mike Flugennock]

D'ahh, Christ -- AGAIN?

"...smart audio, Ultra HD eyewear..."

At first I was amazed, then I was amused, and now I'm just annoyed when the tech rags regurgitate slag like this. This sounds like the kind of cloud cuckoo jazz I used to see in Wired all the time about twenty-odd years ago.

How long has it been, now, where every few years some clown who can get the media to listen to him starts blurting out some cockamamie horsehockey about eyeglasses with TV screens, 360-degree TV, music piped straight into your brain, wearable computers...?

I didn't get that far into the article before the name "Envisioneering Group" set my bullshit alarm a'clanging.

"JANE! HELP! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well stop bragging and forecasting and bloody well get on with it. I've wanted a realistic video wall ever since Total Recall.

[Bill Posters]

Still waiting

Don't care who much I can or can't hear in side my car, or what it sounds like outside.

As long as it can fly.

[Ole Juul]

I remember HI-FI

It was very popular at a time when it was difficult to achieve "high fidelity". What I find interesting is that even now when it is relatively easy and cheap to achieve even higher levels of fidelity - nobody cares any more. The quality of professional audio that I hear is often dismal and wouldn't have passed muster 30 years ago. Sometimes that's because producers are indeed amateurs (and don't even know they are), and sometimes it's because fidelity isn't a very marketable quality in a world where individual sound preferences are more fashionable.

[Dave 126]

Re: I remember HI-FI

Well, there is the current trend for compressing the dynamic range of music these days... a shame because most playback devices can do that should the user want it. Curiously, movies have gone the other way- turn it up enough to hear the dialogue and the next gunshot or car crash will deafen your neighbours.

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

Re: I remember 30years ago

Was it that long ago that Stock, Aiken and Waterman was making wankmusak?

[John Smith 19]

Re: I remember 30years ago

"Was it that long ago that Stock, Aiken and Waterman was making wankmusak?"

Yes. But now you'll be able to hear every note of the wankness.

How exciting is that?

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: I remember HI-FI

"sometimes it's because fidelity isn't a very marketable quality in a world where individual sound preferences are more fashionable"

Fidelity isn't marketable also because it is being mistaken for bad audio quality by modern teen audiences listening to "house", "dubstep", "rap" and other commoditised noise pollution.

People listening to that crap are not listening to music - they just "consume" a fix of repetitive noise to jerk and twitch in rhythm with it. It is the same as ritual dances in various African tribes - it serves totally different purpose to music and satisfies completely different set of instincts to those that determine our perception of music.

[Fatman]

Re: I remember HI-FI

I guess you are referring to those days long ago where once could find a vinyl disc that was cut direct to disc, complete with its lack of tape hiss, etc.

I once put a vinyl disc on the turntable, and with the speakers about 12 feet apart, and your eyes closed; you could sonically place the vocalists and instruments from left to right.

Now a days, things sound too much like monaural shit, but, there are some exceptions.

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

Quick

Get some Reg Hacks off to Vegas with all expenses pared. I want to hear more.

[Andy Christ]

all expenses PARED ?

Ooh, way to go!

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Re: Quick

It's "all expenses paid" or "no expense spared".

[Isendel Steel]

Re: Quick

yup - pared to just the accommodation and food....

[Crazy Goat Man Al]

Great chavs get chavier

"if you're coming up along someone, the external exhaust note will sound like a dump truck, and maybe they'll move over a little faster"

Is it just me who waits a little longer if somebody tries to bully you out of the way? Come up behind me to a sensible distance and next gap I will move over, come up behind me sit on my bumper flash your lights and gun your engine and I will stay put for as long as possible!!

[Neil Barnes]

I love the advanced mathematics displayed

Let's have video displays ten or fifteen times faster than required; let's have video codecs four times as efficient.

Hm. Can't see any bandwidth problems there, then.

To quote my favourite musical satirists:

"The ear can't hear as high as that, but I ought to please any passing bat..."

[Andy Christ]

Re: Flanders & Swann

But I never did care for music much,

It's the high fidelity!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fJmmDkvQyc

[Claus Møller]

Re: I love the advanced mathematics displayed

Well..

Today I get my television - HD channels and all - through my internet-connection. Can even watch several streams on several televisions simultaniously. While recording a stream as well.

That seemed impossible/very futuristic 10 years ago. Today it is a rock solid solution. Why not 4xHD or 8xHD in 10 years?

Only upgrade I am looking for now is a filtering of "reality-stars" and idiotic cooking-competitions.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: I love the advanced mathematics displayed

Why not 4xHD or 8xHD in 10 years?

Why 4xHD ever?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I love the advanced mathematics displayed

How else are the providers of cloud services to make back on their investments?

It's truly ironic that as computing power etc increases new standards are marketed to the easily pleased that ensure that we stay where we are.

I guess that it will be brilliant for the occasional film that has both a top notch story and superb cinematography which incidentally will look 100x better in the cinema than the average home anyway, but the rest of the 99% will still be rubbish where ever and however it's watched.

That EastEnders has lasted for decades clearly shows that people like the TV equivalent of children's drawings.

[Bob H]

Typical imagineering bull, 1000fps in five years? Does this man even know that TVs evolve on an 18 month cycle? Does he know that frame capture at super high frame rates creates massive quantum-level problems for image sensors?

I could set myself up as an institute and spout crap but it won't mean that anything I say will become reality. Instead I just work with my R&D teams to make it happen...

[Rambler88]

What I really want is a recordable voicemail message that sounds half as good as my long-departed cassette-tape answering machine.

And, to be quite blunt, I don't think that this time around I'm really going to want to ditch either my vinyl or my CDs. The low-res MP3s, maybe, but not the quality stuff.

[DN4]

Impossible

My audio and video kit cannot become obsolete. It already is.

[Lusty]

Could we..

Could we get at least one person working on usability rather than headline technology features for a change? We don't need or want half of this stuff, but in the mean time it's still too hard to share content between devices unless you've bought everything from Apple which is expensive and then definitely won't work with anything else. By now we should be able to (without any complex setup) take any phone, laptop, tablet, music player etc. and send content to any tablet, stereo, TV, computer in the home. Never mind noise cancelling in my car, just let me play my MP3s in my living room without copying the whole collection or spending an hour setting it up!

Content makers need to stop "pushing the limits" and concentrate for just a moment on making digital content easily available (ultraviolet is a nice start) but also make it cost at least as little as buying a disk. I bought a CD yesterday because it cost considerably less than the download. They also need to spend 5 minutes looking at quality of content rather than quality of dots!

[Lusty]

Re: Could we..

Oh, and I don't want to have to walk to the TV to "bump" devices for sharing to justify the use of NFC (recent reg story). I know which phone and TV are mine so I ought to be able to do this wirelessly!

[auburnman]

The technology revolution is here

3D is the future

BluRays will replace DVDs in a few years

No one should need more than 128K

We have always been at war with Oceania

Etc etc.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

We'll see 1000 frames per second

What the f*ck for, may I ask?

People can't see any difference between 30fps and 60fps or 200fps, so higher frame rate is either a huge waste of bitrate or destruction of quality through overcompression.

Oh, I know what it's for - it's a scam to lure punters into regularly buying new unneeded staff so that the industry could keep going without thinking much about what to do next. Just add more pixels, more frames (and more blades on razors?).

[John Smith 19]

1000 fps. Why?

Title & icon says it all.

[punk4evr]

Future???

Honestly, I just hope they do increase the quality of music. I love it. Also I would really have expected flying vehicles by now.... And I really do want True Time Motion Tracking glasses to replace displays for games now. I was really hoping for that. I already see an issue with the "Adaptive" audio concept, What baseline would be used to alter the audio perception? As you already said, every one hears different. Now if your playing back an orchestra, and the "adaptive" listening changes the sound to "Who"s hearing Baseline? Someone elses? I think things will sound really weird if we are suddenly made to change how things sound to mach something else, when we have grown up hearing everything with our natural hearing.

I also think we will manage go get to a level with video, in which we could do better than our natural eyesight would perceive, however would there be any point of doing so?

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Small speakers with decent bass

I'll believe it when I see^H^H^Hhear it.

[RonWheeler]

Re: Small speakers with decent bass

I havn't seen many speakers released in the last 20 years that come close to what was considered mainstream in the 70s/80s ( speaker cab a foot wide, 2 foot high, 1 x 6.5 inch bass and 1 x 2 inch tweeter). The ridiculous trend towards 'bookshelf' speakers and those tall skinny £600/pair poser devices with 5 small s41t speakers is mad. Then of course everyone is buying subwoofers now which are great for TV - but also sound s41t for music unless you like your audio sounding like a chav's Saxo with a big bass box in the boot.

Ultra high quality sound sources are fine until you try to play it through garbage trendy hardware with obligatory ipod dock. Onanism sells.

[EvilGav 1]

Increase the quality of music?

From what?

mp3s @ 192kbps, mp3s @ ~400kbps, CDs @ 1440kbps, DVD-A @ ~8mbps ??

[Anonymous Coward 15]

DVDA?

8Mbps of hardcore XXX!

[Robert Helpmann??]

Re: DVDA?

Such a shame the article did not address haptic feedback then.

[Roland6]

Re: Increase the quality of music?

It would be nice to have music that is at least as good as CD and ideally at least as good as that obtainable from quality vinyl on a decent deck; and for such music to be readily obtainable like mp3's...

[John Arthur]

"We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."

And how exactly does one measure four times better? Or 16 times better? What rubbish.

[User McUser]

Re: "We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."

Just turn the knob up to 11.

[Fatman]

Re: "We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."

Probably he means that for the existing audio "profile", they will be able to cut the bitrate by a factor of 4.

The average stupid mp3 listening lusers today don't understand that mp3 is a lossy format, once the audio has been compressed down to a low bitrate mp3, you ain't getting back what was lost. The music industry loves those `fules`, 'cause they don't know what they are missing.

[Jan 0]

Re: "We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."

It doesn't matter how much better they make the signal chain, until we get something approximating* fidelity in loudspeakers, we're never going to achieve "Hi-Fi". However, given that our brains are very good at interpreting horribly distorted sound, maybe we shouldn't get too upset.

*Just take a look at the frequency and impulse response curves of any loudspeaker and weep at their non-linearity.

[John 62]

Re: "We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."

I don't know about the 16 number, maybe it's to do with sampling rate or noise floor, but the 4 times number probably has to do with the 4kHz bandwidth of most phone calls, which sound crap because most ears actually have a bandwidth about 4 times as much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thumb down, way more tech should be up. meh

I looked, the published event sucked. gadget girls sucked, everything did.

Nobody's doing shit, no cheap batteries, solar panels, voltage regs, freq and loads, it all sux.

Where's RIMM kicking google and apple ass? with battery saving QNX and the real shit everyone wants to run EVERYTHING yourself!

Sandbagging that's where.

But I will dawn teh asbestos suit, and take the WEAK ASS HITS.

[K]

"Google's Project Glass eyewear having Ultra HD resolution"

Yes... And it comes with a free Microscope so we can be amazed at the fidelity of a picture we can't see with the naked eye!

Mr Doherty, you are a moron!

[f1rest0rm]

Peter Murphy

Big thumbs up from me for the Maxell ad photo ....

If it helps I'm a "right technology for the situation" sort of guy. Running means MP3s on a shuffle, background music means MP3s via Sonos but actually sitting down and listening to music is done using vinyl and valves and wires and stuff

[Luke McCarthy]

1000 Hz

I don't see what use this could possibly be except in high-speed cameras (for slow-motion). Even 120 Hz is overkill in my opinion.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Phoney

MEMs speakers might be OK for earphones. They won't be much use for filling your living room with bass - unless he's imagivisioning a flat panel speaker covered with millions of the things.

Also, the cochlear-measuring adaptive audio is going to require something in or near your ear. Won't be a fat lot of use with speakers (where there may also be more than one listener, with different hearing parameters!)

Perhaps he thinks no-one will listen to speakers in the future

[Wize]

Well...

...I'll just go home and chuck all my vinyl in the skip straight away.

[Lusty]

Re: Well...

You still have vinyl?!

[Andus McCoatover]

Gawd, mummifying my Linn LP12 Sondek, Ittok arm. Cost me a fuc*king fortune....

Well, it's in England now, in my Ex's garage.

Oddly I (OK, she) still posess two vinyl copies of Sargeant Pepper. One in stereo, one in mono. IMHO, the mono was better.

Quad preamp, home-built amp (from an Eletro (?) ) article, BBC LP3 speakers, the thing was a joy.

Never hear or see them again.

Now, I stick a pair of 'buds in my ear, and sorta listen to MP3's. Sad, really.

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: Gawd, mummifying my Linn LP12 Sondek, Ittok arm. Cost me a fuc*king fortune....

Well, it's in England now, in my Ex's garage.

Oddly I (OK, she) still posess two vinyl copies of Sargeant Pepper. One in stereo, one in mono. IMHO, the mono was better...

Aaauuuuggghhhhh.

Maybe it's just a generational thing. I dimly remember monaural records played on a big, stonking monaural "hi-fi" set with multiple cones in the cabinet, AM/FM, a record changer, etc. at our house when I was a young kid in the early '60s... but when I was old enough to start buying my own records, pretty much everything was stereo -- records, radio; hell, even some of the bigger-budget movies were coming out in stereo then. The whole frickin' world was in stereo.

I could understand some folks preferring Meet The Beatles or Hard Day's Night or even Revolver in mono -- but Sergeant Pepper? Cripes, man, you're missing half the fun.

[johnnytruant]

well that's all very well

But I think the question really should be how is all this going to affect my fridge?

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: well that's all very well

But I think the question really should be how is all this going to affect my fridge?

That's quite obvious. Your fridge is going to be networked via wifi and accessible via smartphone so that you can see how many beers are in it before you get up from the sofa, and so that if you're in the kitchen getting a beer and you've left your smartphone in the living room and a call comes, it will ring over to the kitchen and whoever's calling can leave a voice message on your fridge.

ABOVE, LEFT: Sample remote image transmitted from fridge to smartphone via wifi.

[cortland]

No it isn't!

My HiFi worked in1962 and it'll work for as long as I can still hear the music.

I've got the valves to keep it going, too.