Home Entertainment Systems Research Articles

Interface Design and Research Process for Studying the Usability of Interactive Home-Entertainment Systems by Young Children

This study evaluated young children's understanding of and ability to use an input device of the type associated with home-entertainment systems (like videogame players, DVD's, and other interactive systems that connect to a television set). These systems have the potential to serve as a powerful platform for delivering interactive educational programming to young children. However, the input controllers for these systems have proven extremely difficult for young children to use, as they typically require use of very small buttons that are close together, and arrow-based keys or joystick-like devices. To examine the potential for enabling young children to use such hardware devices, three adapted software interfaces were implemented. Eighty-four children, ranging in age from 36 to 59 months and from lower to lower-middle socio-economic status, participated in this study, using one of the three software interfaces to make simple on-screen choices. The results demonstrate that it is possible to enable preschool children to use home-entertainment system control devices, by implementing adapted software interfaces which limit the kinds of inputs and choices that are required. In addition, this study describes and documents a process for conducting usability research with young children using home-entertainment interactive media systems.

Digital media technology: industry trends and developments

The range and definition of digital media is vast, reaching from PCs to consumer electronics, but at the center of it all is the display controller. Powered by the advances in semiconductor fabrication and the expansion of the PC market, new graphics controllers, video processors, and audio processors have emerged that promise astounding home entertainment systems at affordable prices. Along with digital media advances have come developments in communications devices. However, the cost of expanding the physical infrastructure is thwarting advances in communications. In addition, both the communications infrastructure problems and the lack of interesting or compelling 3D content are limiting the interactivity of the home entertainment system. But the pace of development and function assimilation continues unabated, and new amazing digital media devices and systems are appearing.

Virtual bass for home entertainment, multimedia PC, game station and portable audio systems

In digital audio playback systems for home entertainment, multimedia PC, game station and portable audio devices, there is a strong demand to produce deep bass using small multimedia speakers and earphones, without the need for additional subwoofer or expensive speakers/earphones. This paper describes a technique in synthesizing psycho-acoustic bass over a pair of stereo speakers using the pitch perception theory. This new method of creating a bass effect for the musical signal has been found to be very effective and simple in implementation, without increasing significant cost in many modern digital audio systems. A subjective evaluation is also being performed to validate the virtual bass implementation.

Elevated speaker projection for digital home entertainment system

This paper presents a novel processing technique to enhance the sound images with playback over elevated loudspeakers for both two-speaker and multiple-speaker configuration. This is achieved by a specially designed inverse filter together with HRTF filtering.

A Comparison of Alternative High-Definition Display Technologies to CRT

Over the past 18 months, high-definition (HD) home entertainment systems have become available to the U.S. consumer, albeit with a substantial price tag. These systems are based almost exclusively on direct view and rear projection cathode ray tube (CRT) technology. More recently however, a number of manufacturers have made announcements portending the arrival of high-definition television (HDTV) projection systems based on alternative display rechnologies such as transmissive and reflective liquid crystal display (LCD), and digital light processor (DLP) technology. Many of these announcements promise excellent image quality, but demonstrations of prototype systems have shown that there is much variability in subjective image quality from system to system. This paper examines some of the image quality characteristics of representative samples of several LCD and DLP-based projection display technologies as compared to those of CRT-based HD sets. Modulation transfer function (MTF) characteristics are compared, as well as quantitative image quality metrics, using several established methods.

In-flight entertainment: the sky's the limit

Microprocessors and miniaturized components, which have filtered into so many aspects of daily life, are now poised to sweep through passenger planes, leaving a plethora of high-tech amenities in their wake. Travelers will soon enjoy audio and video on demand, along with in-seat movies, video games, catalog shopping, phones and faxing, e-mail and Internet access. Airliners will provide a complete home entertainment system and mobile office for each passenger seat.

Digital Video Dud?

Digital Video Dud?

Content based image retrieval systems

Images are being generated at an ever-increasing rate by sources such as defence and civilian satellites, military reconnaissance and surveillance flights, fingerprinting and mug-shot-capturing devices, scientific experiments, biomedical imaging, and home entertainment systems. For example, NASA's Earth Observing System will generate about 1 terabyte of image data per day when fully operational. A content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system is required to effectively and efficiently use information from these image repositories. Such a system helps users (even those unfamiliar with the database) retrieve relevant images based on their contents. Application areas in which CBIR is a principal activity are numerous and diverse. With the recent interest in multimedia systems, CBIR has attracted the attention of researchers across several disciplines. >

Military networking technology applied to location-based, theme park and home entertainment systems

Theme parks and location-based entertainment (LBE) systems are evolving away from scripted scenario, movie-based motion rides, and towards computer image-generated, interactive experiences. Though the passive ride attractions will not be displaced entirely, a new breed of smaller, distributed, multi-player pods, running networked, real-time simulations of virtual worlds, will attract customers desiring more interactivity. Some of these systems are presently in use, such as BattleTech™, Virtuality™, Fightertown™, etc.These systems are weak in several areas, including large-scale networking. Typically, these systems can network up to four nodes on a local area network (LAN). The next generation of these systems will likely use cutting edge networking technology developed by the military, specifically distributed interactive simulation (DIS) technology. DIS allows thousands of participants to be networked via LANs and long-haul networks (LHN). Theme park attractions with dozens of pods networked to each other, and in turn networked to similar facilities at other locations, are easily attainable with today's technology.

Browsing within time-driven multimedia documents

We present the software design and the interfaces of an interactive browser for time-driven multimedia objects. Time-driven multimedia objects may have as their main resource voice or animation sequences. Several important application environments such as training systems, home entertainment systems, do-it-yourself manuals may involve time-driven multimedia objects and they may be implemented with such browsing interfaces. Such applications may be implemented using easy to replicate optical disks such as CD-ROMs, and distributed to a large user community.

Quadrifizzle: Is four channel a Quadrifizzle?

Explains the concept of quadriffizle - a four channel home entertainment system. Discusses its technology, special features, and communications capaibabilities.