Consumer electronics

Telecom companies, cable TV providers, computer makers, and even electric utilities have diversified to offer everything from digital camcorders down to compression chip-sets. In fact, well into the next few years the consumer market will be rocked by wave upon wave of products and services with the magic words multimedia and connectivity attached to them. Manufacturers are pushing around huge sums to create markets they believe will come into being, in one form or another. But never before have such divergent, and often mutually exclusive, plans to bring (read sell) technology been introduced simultaneously. Clearly, some sort of device or devices will be needed simply to coordinate the plethora of signals coming into the home. But no one can as yet say what these home “information devices” will be. Nor is there any consensus on the need for one megadevice, despite the melting-pot notion of technology popular today. The author discusses some of the new technology being put forward by manufacturers including digital video zooms, HDTV, and terrestrial digital broadcast using satellites