The audio visual medium is racing ahead. Racing so fast that it will carry and even transform other media like print & outdoor. The next generation "roll-up TV" display screens are expected to be sturdy, wafer thin, plastic media which can be rolled up for portability. And then there is hologram (3D) display (of Star Wars fame) which is waiting on the anvil of the future.

Technology predictor Phillip Swann announced on April 21, 2004 that future TV related technologies like DVR, Video-on-Demand, Roll-up TV sets, Hologram TVs will change the way we live & do business. With automatic recording of TV content, people will be able to recall clips at will. With the ubiquitous Internet, they will be able to share content. And read their emails, newspapers on their TV screen. Which they may be able to "roll up" and carry along ! And of course, carry on working from their residence via the home network. . .

Roll-Up TVs - An Example of the Constant Evolution of TV
The flat-screen TV of today is expected to be replaced with the portable, flexible roll-up TV. Built with new plastic compounds, these TVs can be rolled up and put away when not in use.

Holland-based electronics giant Philips has been working on building large polymer-based integrated circuit arrays, which can be used to manufacture flexible, plastic TV display screens.

While Philips is in the driver's seat, Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba are not far behind in the race to produce "roll-up TV sets". (By the way, the development of roll-up TV is expected to play a spectacular role in the development of wireless TV.) And the U.S. Army plans to introduce lightweight, portable roll-up displays for recieving satellite maps in the battlefield.

Not to mention roll-up displays for mobile phones, electronic books & newspapers, all of which could beam live content on the portable screen !

The Universe : A Gigantic Hologram ?
The hologram is a 3 dimensional rendition of an image, which is driven & controlled by a complex set of information & instructions.

Classically, the "physical world" is supposed to be made up of "matter and energy." But the past few decades of the "information revolution" has conclusively demonstrated that information (data) is the most crucial component of our world.

For example, an assembly-line robot is made up of metal and plastic but is useless if it does not have pre-stored instruction sets ! These instructions (which is stored as information) consists of voluminous & detailed directions which tells it which part to join with what. Similarly, a ribosome in a human cell has amino acid building blocks which are self-powered by energy releases, but can do nothing without the information available in the DNA in the cell's nucleus ! (John Wheeler of Princeton University has suggested that we re-define the physical world as primarily made of information along with energy and matter as secondary components.)

So can we envision our world as a gigantic hologram (or multiple holograms) controlled by a set of instructions which are stored in a humongous storage device ? (How much information will it take to describe the whole universe? And what size of computer storage device would hold that description?)

Hologram TV
It may take another decade before we see commercial production of Hologram TV. But everybody will agree that, for many decades, holograms have been recognized as the ultimate (3D) display.

Hologram TV will make the television medium even more powerful. And much like the Hindu concept of Maya (illusion), future viewers of Hologram TV may find it impossible to separate fact from fiction ! And peripheral technology like releasing of scents synchronized with the images will make the illusion all the more over-powering.

Progress on hologram display technology has been slow because of the massive amount of information required to be stored. (A hologram image is a dynamic rendition which is controlled by humongous volumes of instructions which are stored as information.) Along with a requirement for extremely high-speed processing and improved techniques for data compression. Not to mention, super efficient algorithms to render high quality holograms on the fly.

Besides many ongoing research projects, the first commercial implementations have been predictably released for advertising & marketing. Denmark based viZoo for example, has developed a patented solution that creates 3D shop displays, or outdoor advertisements - by projecting a specially produced film onto a transperent screen.

A Long Way
Television has evolved a long way in the last century. Perceived initially as an educational medium, television is increasingly influencing the way we live & operate. In the years to come, the television medium (albeit altered) is expected to wield enormous influence on our day-to-day lives.

So much so, that it may appear that television imitates life !