Stereo DVD at CES

[BARRY_BRONSON@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Just came back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  The
big hype this show was DVD (Digital Versatile/Video Disk).  Most of
the major players had a demo showing off the sound and picture potential
of what will, I agree, be a major step forward for info storage and
entertainment.

I saw most of the demos, but was most impressed by Sony's.  Why?
While you stand in line to get into their theater, they hand you
a pair of novel fold-up polarized glasses (they look like a 10" DVD disk).

Using four 16:9 overhead video projectors their DVD demo makes good use of
the MPEG2 resolution and AC3 sound, (as you'd expect) but adds stereo
imagery in a way that, if one were unfamiliar with DVD, might think
that this was an integral feature of the new technology.  Good for Sony!

Stereo video was used throughout much of the 15 minute demo and was
reasonably well done most of the time; adding realism to a range of
entertainment vehicles (movies, games, annimations, TV, VR...).

Maybe they are trying to warm the dealers and distributors in the
audience to the notion of DVD being more than just high quality FLAT
video.  As far as I can tell, stereo video is not part of the DVD spec,
and I don't know if they used synchronized players or interleaved
frames/lines.  I certainly noticed no loss in spacial or temporal
resolution over other non stereo DVD demos.  And the audience sure
seemed to enjoy it; me too.

Barry Bronson


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