Home-tech has gone high-tech like never before.
With the press of a button, you can listen to nearly flawless stereo music from any one of several sources that only a few years ago were unknown. Digital is the buzz word for the 1980s. Digital VCRs can help improve picture clarity; digital TVs allow you to watch more than one program on the screen at the same time; digital recordings recreate concert-like productions in the comfort of your living room.
Laser discs offer movies at home of unparalleled clarity. ”Surround sound” decoder boxes, which cost as little as $200, unleash bone-rattling audio special effects comparable to those heard in theaters.
Phones can toss your picture across the world; compact disc players can
”remember” the songs you want to hear; soon-to-be-released digital audio tape will provide CD-quality sound on cassette tape; futuristic exercise equipment offers precision-promised results; luxurious bathtubs surround you with whirlpool massages while the water temperature appears on digital readouts.
Today`s home is capable of a scientific sophistication that would make H.G. Wells turn green with envy.
Not only can you tap into your office via computer, bank, mail and shop by computer and program your home to automatically monitor against intrusions, but you can also transform the smart house of tomorrow into a movie, music and relaxation environment from which you may seldom want to wander.
”What you`re seeing is an electronic revolution and a demographic revolution happening at the same time,” explains Judith Morrison, editor of Home Entertainment magazine. ”You`re seeing an enormous portion of the population at that stage in its life where they want to stay home with their kids, or wives and husbands and friends. So the two working together have helped create more and more products.”
If revolutions such as this have any true beginning, this one probably started in the late 1970s, when the first clunky Betamax VCRs came off the line at more than $1,000 each.
Before, only presidents and movie moguls could watch first-run films in their living room. Now, anyone can do it. And the unbroken string of record annual VCR sales proves we`re eager to take advantage of the opportunity.
”The main thing behind the home entertainment phenomenon is the ability to watch a movie at home,” says Douglas Garr, editor of Video magazine.
But it`s more than just being able to watch a movie at home. Today`s technology also brings us close to theater-like sound and pictures.
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Take one NEC (PJ4650) rear projection ($3,800 suggested retail) and a 46- inch stereo monitor-receiver with wireless remote control, and hook it to a Pioneer CLD909 Laser Disc Player for high resolution movies. Add a Yamaha DSP1 ($899) Dolby surround sound decoder for bone-rattling special effects, similar to the short-lived quadraphonic sound systems of 10 years ago, and a surround sound amp by Yamaha ($250).
Now you`ll need a Carver C1 pre amp to control the audio and video control center ($600). You`ll need a Carver M1.5T power amp to run your DCM Time Window 1A speakers ($950 a pair), plus two pairs of Bang & Olufsen RL60.2 speakers ($450 a pair) for the surround sound equipment.
”Once you have all that,” says Steve Kay, a sales representative for the Gramophone, a high-end home entertainment store in Birmingham, ”all you`d need is movies.”
Pricey it is. But the quality of such a system rivals that of many professional movie houses.
”I`d place this as better than a movie house,” adds Kay, ”because you have a more comfortable experience in your home. You don`t have all the people around, and you can see what movies you want when you want them.”
Realizing that most of us don`t have the financial or technical wherewithal to put such a system together, many manufacturers are introducing single-brand audio-video systems. The beauty here is that sometimes it is cheaper to assemble an audio-video package this way; you know everything will fit just right, and you eliminate juggling the remote controls necessary for component systems.
Fisher, for example, offers six audio-video systems for less than $2,500 each.
The national networks also are getting involved in the home entertainment phenomenon.
By the end of this year, some 500 television stations are expected to be able to broadcast network programming in stereo, which means about two thirds of the country will be able to receive a stereo television broadcast. RCA says about half the TVs sold in the latter part of this year will feature stereo capability.
But TV is only one of several new ways to bathe yourself in stereo sound. Compact discs, silver platters the shape of 45 rpm records that reproduce music using a laser beam, offer near flawless sound reproduction.
CDs have become so popular so quickly that manufacturers have been unable to keep up with demand. By the end of this year about 5 percent of U.S. households are expected to have CD players. And for the first time, the industry expects to sell more CD players this year (about 1.8 million) than turntables (about 1.2 million).
By using a laser to read digitally encoded information rather than dragging a stylus across vinyl, CDs eliminate the hiss and ”cracks” found on records and will last much longer.
You can program a CD player to play those songs you want to hear, bypass those songs you dislike, mix up the order of the songs to suit your preference. Magnavox is expected to introduce a unit with a computer chip that can ”remember” which songs you want to ignore automatically whenever you put the CD into the player.
Although they`re primarily used now for music, experts say CDs may soon offer much more.
”Compact discs have the ability to contain an enormous amount of information,” says Home Entertainment`s Morrison. ”When you combine the audio information with graphics hooked to a TV monitor, you have tremendous opportunities. You could have music, you could have movies, you could store whole encyclopedias on CD and do your homework at home.”
Home entertainment enthusiasts are also expected to have a digital alternative to CDs by late next year, when Japan introduces Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to the U.S.
DAT will provide CD-quality stereo sound on audio tape through cassettes about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Industry experts believe that at first they`ll largely be used to record CDs. The Recording Industry Association of America has strongly opposed DAT, unless it can be introduced with some type of anti-copying device, arguing that it will contribute to the $1.5 billion a year it says already is lost to copying.
This is also the year when digital VCRs will start to make their mark.
Digital systems are those that store or transmit information as electrical pulses representing numbers.
The revolution doesn`t stop with movies and music.
LUMA, a California-based subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electronics Sales America Inc., has introduced a commercial picture telephone that can send a snapshot over normal telephone lines anywhere you can call.
The desktop unit includes a telephone directory, automatic dial and speaker phone. But what sets it apart is a small monitor that reflects your image. When you like what you see, you press a button and within five seconds the image is sent via conventional phone lines to a LUMA phone at the other end. Price: $1,450.
Want to tone up your image before you start sending it across the country? Perhaps the $3,500 Dynavit A-30 exercise cycle can help.
This futuristic sweat-mobile uses a computer-operated magnet to control the bike`s tension, giving what Exersource spokesperson Carol Fields says is one of the smoothest pedaling exercises available.
”This eliminates or reduces lactic acid buildup,” says Fields, ”which is what gives you the pain you get from expending energy. The idea is that by having a smooth workout, you can work a lot longer.”
If jogging is more your speed, there`s the MAX, from Trotter Inc., an indoor, computer-controlled treadmill with 63 internal programs that can speed up, slow down and elevate the unit to simulate outdoor running. Price: $4,600. Tired after all that exercise? Consider the quintessential bathtub.
The BathWomb is a $13,700, self-contained basin that includes a whirlpool, stereo system, speaker phone, digital readouts for time and water temperature, nine Cyclojets, a massage unit for your head, facial mist or cool air stream, a waterproof compartment for magazines, tray table and even a soap dish.
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So where does it all end?
”Of course, the answer is that it doesn`t end,” says Home Entertainment`s Morrison. ”But it`s also true that it (high technology for the home) has been accelerated now.
”What this all means is that high-tech increases our access to information and entertainment and makes a home a wonderful place to be.”
Next: The kitchen as laboratory.