Connecting From the Couch: DVDs, Digital TVs, PVRs

As home audio and video go digital, two important features--the ability to copy and to connect--have been conspicuously absent from key products. But that’s changing as the major consumer electronics manufacturers roll out new digital recorders and devices that pump the Internet into living rooms.

The gear makers, like many of the leading names in the computer industry, envision a future in which every screen and speaker in a consumer’s possession are bound together and served by a single digital entertainment source that feeds everything from music and movies to news.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, pieces of that vision were on display: new digital recording and storage devices, portable Web tablets, Internet-enabled TVs and DVD players and candy-colored, stripped-down computers for people who fear or loathe PCs.

The picture was blurred, however, by disagreements over critical standards, particularly in video recording. Those disputes have delayed products from reaching the United States, and they threaten to strand overeager buyers with first- or second-generation devices that the industry abandons.

The move to digital began in the early 1980s, when manufacturers pushed consumers to replace their beloved turntables with CD players. Today, they’re trying to persuade consumers to replace their analog TV sets with far more expensive digital ones, which boast sharper and more detailed pictures and better sound.

A problem is that broadcasters and Hollywood studios aren’t giving consumers much incentive to own a digital set. There’s little unique programming, and not much offered in the highest-quality format, HDTV (short for “high definition television”). Meanwhile, some broadcasters continue to press for a different transmission standard from the one used by the new digital sets.

To plug the programming gap, set makers are turning to DVD players for high-quality pictures. Hot this year were DVD players delivering even better picture quality: “progressive scan” models whose pictures offer twice as much detail as a standard DVD when hooked to a digital set.

But although DVDs may beat VCRs as a playback device, they can’t record. In response, manufacturers showed off a new line of DVD-VCR combination units, with and without a TV attached. More significant, they unveiled a broad lineup of DVD recorders that they plan to introduce this year.

And because fully networked homes--complete with broadband access--are years away from becoming commonplace, easy-to-use high-capacity storage media to transfer content from device to device will be critical.

The new breed of recorders, however, falls into three warring camps, each with its own type of disc: DVD+RW, which proponents claim to be compatible with most of the millions of DVD players already in homes; DVD-RW, which backers say is compatible with many of the players sold today; and DVD-RAM, which won’t play on any standard DVD device.

This split is likely to endure for several years, keeping consumers at bay and prices high. There were hints of a truce between the DVD+RW and DVD-RW factions, however, and Sony even pledged to deliver a DVD player in 2002 capable of reading both types of discs.

Consumer electronics companies also are high on digital video recorders that make temporary copies of shows on a built-in hard drive, rather than on removable discs. Unlike VCRs, these “personal video recorders” can play back as they record, enabling viewers to pause, rewind and replay shows as they are broadcast.

The trend in PVRs is to move away from stand-alone devices toward combination units, including what appears to be the first TV with a built-in PVR: Panasonic’s $900 27-inch set with a 30-hour recorder from ReplayTV.

A more common approach is to combine a PVR with a satellite TV receiver for Hughes’ DirecTV service or EchoStar’s DISH Network. These include Sony’s and Thomson’s version of UltimateTV, a Microsoft-powered PVR capable of simultaneously recording shows on two DirecTV channels.

The uncertainty about digital TV transmission standards mainly affects the tuner portion of a digital set, not the display. So TV manufacturers have been selling most of their digital sets with analog tuners, meaning that they can display HDTV or a lesser form of digital signal only when connected to a separate digital receiver.

This year’s show offered many more of these digital monitors, with prices reaching new lows. For example, Panasonic unveiled a 47-inch rear-projection HDTV monitor that it plans to introduce with a suggested price of $2,000--half of what the company charges for a similar model today. And Zenith announced a 27-inch digital set, complete with digital tuner, that will sell for less than $1,000--a first for the industry. It’s not an HDTV, though, meaning that its pictures will be clearer but no more detailed than today’s analog sets.

Most manufacturers argue that the main selling point for digital TVs will be the cinematic quality of HDTV on a big, wide screen. In addition to trying to drive down prices on the entry-level models, manufacturers also are exploring expensive new display technologies that deliver stunningly smooth and sharp digital pictures to blackboard-sized screens.

The Consumer Electronics Show featured dozens of super-thin plasma and LCD screens, most of them priced at $10,000 or higher. Also on display were a handful of projection sets that bounce light off of microscopic mirrors, an approach that promises more finely detailed pictures at lower cost than plasma displays. For example, Thomson unveiled its first “liquid crystal on silicon” monitor, a 50-inch wide-screen model due to sell this summer for $6,000 to $8,000--a relatively low starting point for a new display technology.

For digital and analog tube sets, the main design theme was flat viewing screens that promised less distortion. But there also was a surge in TVs with built-in modems, Web browsers and e-mail capabilities.

These included a line of interactive HDTV monitors developed by Ch.1 Inc. of Orange County, along with analog interactive TVs from Panasonic, Fuze3 Technologies and EspritTV Inc.

Sony plans to offer a portable, tablet-shaped monitor that can display signals from a TV, DVD player, VCR or the Web. The tablet, which has a 10.4-inch color LCD screen, connects wirelessly to a base station that hooks to a home entertainment center and dials into the Internet.

With MP3-format audio and recordable CDs burgeoning in popularity among computer users, consumer-electronics companies are busily incorporating those elements into their living-room products.

Not only did companies display dozens of new CD recorders, including some with multiple disc changers, manufacturers gave more of their stereo systems and DVD players the ability to read CD-R, CD-RW and MP3-encoded discs. They also announced more audio-video players with built-in hard drives that can store thousands of songs in MP3 format and, potentially, serve as PVRs.

RCA’s $1,000 Digital Media Manager, for example, has a DVD player, a TV tuner, a Web browser and an Internet radio tuner. A similarly equipped model is Harman Kardon’s $900 Digital Media Center, which links to online audio and video services from ZapMedia.

Also on display from several companies was stereo equipment that connects to a PC through a home network, enabling it to play the MP3 files stored there or tune in to Internet radio stations. Other new products connect to Web radio stations without a PC, such as Philips’ sub-$500 bookshelf stereo system with Net radio and the $300 Kerbango tuner from 3Com and Thomson.

The first version of the Philips and Kerbango devices, however, work only when connected to an Ethernet network, something that few consumers have in their homes. One alternative is the $200 SmartMedia DDL Player, which can connect to an Ethernet network or its built-in dial-up modem.

For audiophiles, manufacturers offer two high-end digital-music formats: Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio. Although very few discs have been recorded in either format, the show featured a host of new players, including some at non-audiophile prices.

The most dramatic price cut came from Sony, whose first SACD player sold for $5,000. Its two new models, available by summer for $400 and $1,700, not only support multichannel SACD in addition to the original stereo but also will have five-disc changers.

Several manufacturers included support for DVD-Audio in many of the new DVD players, and Samsung promised to include it in a $300 progressive-scan player. The only company to include both SACD and DVD-Audio in a single player, though, appeared to be Pioneer, which expects to sell a combo unit for about $6,000.

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Times staff writer Jon Healey covers the digital living room.