Jeff Will, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Valparaiso University, said he thinks future technology will drive quality forward, but there will be little change in television consumption in the foreseeable future.
"I don't want to be a buzz-kill, but let's look at the history of television in order to project forward," Will said, noting that consumers were perfectly happy with "really crummy signal quality" for 60 years.
"HD-TV was promoted in the '90s, but it hasn't seen widespread adoption. Computer displays offer tons better quality of display, yet the majority of console games are still played on a standard television," he said.
The reason, he believes, is immersion.
"If you watch a good television show on a 19-inch, old TV or a 48-inch plasma screen, you are still consuming the same content," he said. "If the show is crummy, you won't enjoy it. If the show is great, you'll enjoy it on either format. After the first five minutes when a person sits down in front of a TV, they stop noticing the screen and are mentally immersed in the content of the show. It's all about content."
Still, Wills said he expects to see differences, largely in a shift to video-on-demand, including pay-per-view and digital video recorders, such as TiVo.
Hammond television builder John Jage, Iowa Public TV technology guru William Hayes, and Will, foresee three-dimensional television in the future.
"Three-D will be coming up. We've tried it numerous times," Jage said. "They'll come up with something."
Noting that the industry is volatile and amorphous, Hayes predicts television will remain an important part of lives and will share time with other emerging technologies.
"I have seen demonstrations of 3-D television that are incredible," he said. "I have seen video displays that are four to 10 times sharper than the best HD displays available today," he said.
Limited only by the creative drive of those developing the technologies, Hayes said, "In 25 years, our experience may be that, rather than watching television, the program will be happening around us, and we will be participating rather than watching."
