New Electronics to Pack More in Less Space
A rapidly advancing technology that allows video and sound information to be squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces was at the heart of many of the most interesting new products on display at the Consumer Electronics show that ended here Sunday.
Digital compression is the technological basis for a new type of tape recorder, a system for delivering movies to the home in seconds and a new type of multimedia computer system. The technology that has been around for years but recently has become cheap enough and sophisticated enough to find a broad new range of uses.
To compress sounds or images, the analog audio or video signal is first converted into the ones and zeros of computer code through a mathematical sampling process. Then that set of ones and zeros is coded via a series of formulas known as algorithms, and in that form takes up far less space then the original signal.
This technique promises to revolutionize any audio, video, and computer products. At CES, the Dutch electronics firm N.V. Philips demonstrated a new digital tape recorder that will provide compact-disk quality sound on a new type of tape (but will also play existing tapes). A new type of sound compression scheme made the product possible.
Video and image compression promises to have an even broader impact. Moving images contain so much information that they cannot be stored or transmitted efficiently in their original form, but compressed images can change that.
Explore Technology, a fledgling firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., is hoping to exploit digital compression in a way that could revolutionize the video business.
Company co-founder Richard Lang explained that the firm has a patent on a system for transmitting compressed video information over cable television lines, satellites, or high-capacity phone circuits. A two-hour movie could thus be sent from a central video “library” to a special video receiver in the home in a matter of minutes.
Lang’s business plan depends on the cooperation of a host of powerful entities, including the telephone, satellite and cable companies that control the communications circuits, the movie companies that own the movies, and the consumer electronics companies that would produce the hardware.
