Different Views on the Home Theater of the Future at HPA Tech Retreat

A complicated and occasionally contentious discussion over the future of the networked home developed on the first day of the 2007 Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat held this week in Palm Springs, CA.

Hearing representatives from different technology vendors describe the likely future of in-home digital entertainment was a little like listening to the blind men of fable describe an elephant ‘ for example, Microsoft executive Blair Westlake’s paean to Windows Vista Media Center and the Xbox was followed immediately by Googlean Vincent Dureau’s declaration that the problems of non-interoperable consumer devices can be solved by shifting the focus to Internet-based services.

All of the panelists agreed that the path forward for an “average Joe” looking to maximize his home media experience is far from clear. The wisecracking Jerry Pierce of Universal Pictures set the tone by noting that consumers have a low threshold for technical minutiae. “The average Joe is going to buy the sexiest TV he can afford ‘ all it needs is an ‘HD’ sticker,” he joked. “I strongly believe that Harley Davidson needs to sell TVs, so they can put an ‘HD’ sticker on them. Consumers just want a 16×9 TV. 1080p, 720p? They don’t care what all that means as long as it says, ‘HD.'”

Pierce described a recent evening he spent with his daughter, shuffling back and forth between DVD copies of the NBC series The Office and the feature film Malena and a motley variety of video clips assembled at network Web sites or located using YouTube. Pierce watched the YouTube videos on an eight-foot-wide projection screen in his living room, but his point was that getting Internet content onto a big-screen TV remains a daunting task for people who don’t work with content for a living. “The future is already here ‘ it is just not appropriately distributed,” he said.

Westlake, corporate VP for Microsoft’s media and entertainment group, ran down a list of numbers that included predictions for a healthy future in telecom-provided IPTV services (50 million subscribers worldwide by 2010, according to the Gartner Group) and downloadable content (he said HD downloads generally outsell SD downloads by a factor of 2:1 via the Xbox Live service) as well as indications that growing numbers of consumers are carrying two wireless devices with them. That increases the frustration they feel when content, especially purchased downloads, can’t be easily transferred from device to device, he said.

A little later on, USC student Kevin Blake, a content producer in his own right, tried to reframe the question, saying it’s important to ask not “How will consumers view content," but "How will consumers choose which content to view?” He stressed the importance of social networks to young consumers, acknowledged that it remains incredibly easy for those consumers to download music for free instead of paying for it, and suggested that DRM restrictions should be rethought, saying that artists actually benefit from the extra attention that file-sharing generates. That earned him a stern rebuke from one audience member, who accused him of ignoring the need of content-creation professionals to receive fair payment for their work.

But concerns about draconian DRM were echoed by others on the panel. “Consumers have not embraced the idea of paying for digital content,” said Westlake. “DRM has been sold as handcuffs, and that’s the mistake.” He said DRM needs to be re-cast as an enabler, rather than a restricter, suggesting a scenario where a movie studio might offer an in-home window for downloading a rights-protected feature film shortly after its theatrical release.

“There needs to be DRM interoperability,” said John Godfrey, VP of government and industry affairs for Samsung Information Systems America, “and a little more flexibility on the part of content owners in allowing it to be used in novel new ways.” As if to underscore the point, he showed a slide of Samsung’s new Helix recorder, which allows satellite radio listeners to record audio broadcasts, then noted that the practice is already the subject of a lawsuit and proposed legislation to make it illegal. On a less controversial note, he also explained the details of Advanced VSB, a technology that modifies digital broadcasts to be received by mobile devices without tapping an Internet or cellular network for the privilege.

Though consumers may be baffled by connectivity options and stymied by DRM, the panelists agreed that it’s something of a golden age for consumer electronics purchases, with the price of quality HD displays dropping by as much as 30 percent or more on a year-to-year basis. Godfrey noted the arrival of affordable 1080p screens in passing, predicting that “within a few years, we’ll see four or 16 times that resolution appearing in people’s homes.” The real question remains, what will people be watching on those screens, and how will it be delivered?

Broadcasters shared their pain later in the day, when Randy Hoffner at ABC declared, “Audio is still killing us,” referring to sync problems that are sometimes, he said, already embedded in the tapes the network received from post. Bob Seidel, from CBS, described a series of systematic tests that were performed with terrestrial digital broadcasts in and around New York City ‘ a notoriously difficult environment for such broadcasts ‘ with encouraging results for both bounced and line-of-sight signals as far as 30 miles out.

Jim DeFilippis of Fox said the prognosis for HD commercial production is looking brighter, with between 10 and 25 percent of commercials now broadcast in HD. One problem is aspect ratios. The trend is to present a 16×9 spot as a letterboxed image on 4×3 sets, he said, noting that it’s still important for advertisers to think about a 4×3 safe area inside the frame of the HD commercial, just to stay on the safe side in case a pan-and-scan version is aired instead.

And another problem is loudness. Digital’s 90 dB of dynamic range means overloud commercials can be truly jarring to viewers, and he noted that dial_norm (short for Dolby’s dialog-normalization system) hasn’t been universally implemented. “You don’t want the consumer to reach for the remote,” DeFilippis said. Truer words have seldom been spoken.