all he sees.

"What a beautiful world this would be, what a glorious time to be free....'' Bad news from the home entertainment front: virtually all the available technology is out of date. Mark that word `virtually.' In a few short but dynamic years, we will regard existing home entertainment products in much the same way that the modern soldier thinks of the crossbow.

The single most important development in television since the introduction of colour is now being tested in a small number of homes in Japan. Get ready for an image so clear you'll hardly be able to tell where reality ends and the television set begins. Get ready for HDTV.

High Density television has an ironic ring in a world where low density intelligence is required to watch the endless re-runs, cartoons and sports blackouts which seem to constitute the bulk of TV software. That's why the industry has been working flat out to improve the quality of its products, and why it too is about to introduce a quantum leap which will intensify the way we spend our spare time.

Instant videocam reproduction, and still photographs transferred onto CD for playback onto the TV screen; real-time stock quotes, airline reservations facilities, and shopping catalogues; such is today's cutting edge, which will be old hat when a virtual reality kit is delivered to your post box.

Not too far off now is the net of which William Gibson wrote in his seminal novel of the near future, Neuromancer. One glorious integrated all-seeing, all-promising infotainment network, to which we will all be connected. The net will feed us new products exactly when the net knows we're ready for them. The future is in the process of imitating Gibson's art. Turn on, dial up and drop into a non-existent world rented out by the hour. That should keep them quiet down on the farm.

Virtual reality is computer programmes containing simulated worlds which respond to the whim of the person wearing them. Since so many are disenchanted with their actual reality, being locked into a VR helmet and controlling armbands might resolve the search for happiness, promoters hope. A kind of happiness, anyway.

The net will supply new products directly to our home system. If we want Bruce Hornsby's latest album, or one-time viewing rights to Jurassic Park, we'll dial Programming Headquarters and punch in identification and product codes.

The album, liner notes and all, or the movie and a thousand pages of supporting information and reviews, will be downloaded to our living room.

Simultaneously, the cost of the exercise will be downloaded from our bank account.

Those who want to sit and stare at a giant screen depicting Captain James T.

Kirk sitting in the Starship Enterprise staring at a giant screen will be able to do so at will. While the three major American TV networks will probably survive in some altered state, most entertainment will be on dial-up demand whenever we want to watch it.

To anyone looking at Channel 9 News on an old black-and-white portable TV, these future prospects must seem unutterably distant. Nevertheless, as you read this, someone in Japan is watching HDTV, one of a small number of guinea pigs for the new sensation. The system utilises a screen made up of more than 1,100 lines, where present North American television delivery systems make do with 525. The result of halving the information which each line must carry reportedly much more than doubles the clarity of the image.

It'll be just like going to the movies in our own living room, except that the picture quality will be far higher than that of the local fleapit, and we'll decide the starting time and intermission.

If TV is not our bag, there will still be space for us in the future.

Interactive CD will allow us to join in the fun. We'll learn management tips from the Chairman of IBM, who will answer our questions, and encourage us if that helps. Speak French with a Frenchman who will be our imaginary friend as we saunter through a programmed relationship. Encyclopaedic knowledge can be ours for the asking.

Not just the VCRs of the future, but all the equipment, will respond to vocal programming, but for those unhappy talking to machinery, the flick of a 12-in-1 remote control programming and ordering center will do the trick.

For musical reproduction and infotainment purposes, CD will remain the medium of choice beyond the year 2000. CD will run our house, and home computer, entertainment systems, and financial affairs. And where better to spend our leisure hours than in the comfort of our own home theatre? Once the private reserve of Hollywood moguls, the home theatre is this year's hot news. Let's have one installed this afternoon: they're on the Island, and coming soon to a living room near you.

Instead of buying a pair of speakers for the stereo, and perhaps channelling the TV sound through them, your 21st century TV D systems will be fed through a central control into as many speakers as our room and pocketbook can carry.

A consensus appears to be forming around eight speakers: two well behind us, two more almost behind us, two just in front, and two more just where we'd expect speakers to be.

Crank these babies up, and it'll be almost like being there.

Almost, virtual... these are words which should remind us that interacting with equipment is not like being there. Virtual reality is not reality at all.

Remember that, as the tech takes us higher.

No amount of trickery or quality built right into a videocam will ever make us cinematographers, just as buying the finest word processing programme will never turn an average writer into Charles Dickens.

Reliable mechanical equipment will brighten our leisure hours, but what of the social ramifications for workers who spend all day long staring at computer screens, only to come home and stare at the video wall? Higher resolution images are enormously seductive, but a future of solitary, learned couch vegetables sitting around in virtual reality helmets is a grim prospect for social cohesion.

AUGUST 1993 RG MAGAZINE