Expert opinion: HDTV continues hot
Article Abstract:
Topics of major interest in the consumer electronics industry in 1991 included high-definition television (HDTV), Compact Disk-Interactive (CD-I), Philip's Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), closed-caption technology, digital audio tape (DAT) and the Electronic Industries Assn's (EIA's) standard for the CEBus communications framework for home automation. Television makers are developing interim television set technologies that will provide some of the advantages of HDTV (such as the 16:9 aspect ratio) without all of the expected high costs of eventual HDTV products. Congress passed a law mandating inclusion of close-captioning decoders in all 13-inch or larger TV sets beginning Jul 1, 1993. CD-I products were introduced into the US consumer market. The US Congress passed legislation legalizing the sale and consumer use of DAT products, though DAT recorders will include circuitry to prevent making of copies from copies. Philips announced its DCC, with DCC hardware expected to debut late 1992. EIA's CEBus and 1991's seven percent growth in factory sales of consumer electronics over 1990 are discussed.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1992
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Expert opinion: new ideas will fuel real advances
Article Abstract:
Engineers expect more from new systems than faster, smaller, cheaper models. New functionality and the incorporation of new concepts into the machine's architecture could impact usefulness much further. For example, in 1992 the advent of the commercial 64-bit processor architecture, MIPS R4000 and DEC Alpha, hit the market. The question that lingers is when will software support for the 64-bit architecture become widely available. The most important technology to emerge in 1992 for the laptop market was the PC Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) bus for pocket-sized cards that can eventually be used for general purpose I/O such as micro-sized hard disks to radio links and network connections to processor accelerators. Other significant advances were made in parallel processing and in wireless networking.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1993
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Expert opinion: so many architectures, so much fanfare: what's a user to believe?
Article Abstract:
Dramatic changes in the large computer systems market are happening, with some experts predicting the demise of the mainframe computer and the eventual demise of the supercomputer as well. The new systems are scalable and based on the principles of openness. A transition to an alternative mainframe environment will not happen overnight, partly because traditional machines based on proprietary architectures and instruction sets with over two decades of software and data bases residing on them cannot be easily thrown out or migrated to new environments. Software development lags behind hardware, particularly in the supercomputing world, however progress is being made in programming languages and in operating systems.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1993
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: Expert opinion: in search of simpler software integration. Expert opinion: PCs and workstations blend new kinds of applications
- Abstracts: Linear control analysis on a PC. Editing made easy
- Abstracts: Linear control analysis on a PC. Interactive visualization
- Abstracts: Commitment from the top makes it work. Aerospace and defense
- Abstracts: B-ISDN and how it works: end users will get multimedia transmission by accessing gigabit-per-second public networks on a switched basis