Unleashing the power of High-Definition

Although home theaters have become much more elaborate since the days of Betamax and laserdisc players, little else has changed. Granted the video and audio quality have vastly improved. Today, all the buzz is around 1080p. Throw in a fancy new Blu-ray and a THX certified 7.1 surround sound system and what do you have? A system whose general block diagram isn't that much different than the way things were done some 20 years ago.

Now before you start yelling and screaming in defense of your $10K home theater system, let's stop for a moment and think about it. If you factor out the quality improvement in each component, the model is still the same as back in the days of kluging your television to your stereo. In your living room you've got a display, a video source, and a sound system all connected point-to-point. Take a look behind your television and arguably one can say things have actually become worse in the last 20 years. Today you have to deal with more cables then anyone can really keep track of without an hour of diagramming. In that rat's nest of cables you find HDMI, DVI, VGA, component video, composite video, coax, SPIDIF, 1394, USB and Ethernet cables. The list becomes more and more complex with each generation of electronics. So when does this madness end?