Near Future Living Room

I have actually been trying to find stats to show my ideas, but it seems there is nothing out there that really does what I am thinking about. We are in super cool sci fi now type stuff here. Woot.

This entire thing began when I wanted a big screen TV that could display better than the screens today, at a size not offered. I could go looking for one, and find myself with a standardized edition of something, or I could build my own.

Let’s say I wanted to make a screen the size of a wall. For simplicity sake, its 16x9 feet. That’s 192x108 inches btw. There are projectors out there, but they tend to have difficulties presenting darker colors, and also can get very fuzzy unless I buy a really expensive kind. Instead, what if you used screens like the ones you find on phones and stacked them together?

I did a bit of searching and found an iPhone 5s touch screen at $63. It has a screen size of 4x2.25 approximate inches, and displays at 1136x640 pixels at the standard 16:9 ratio. This isn’t all perfectly done, but is good enough for this mind game. To equal out the entire wall you would need 2304 screens at a cost of -get ready for this gut punch- $161,280 if you include a raspberry pi zero ($5) computer for each screen. That’s the cost of a house, or a modern cinema projector.

The thing is, the modern projector can only go to 4K in display. At the amount given with these screens you reach 30k, or 7.5 times the display size the projector could reach. Also, if there are problems, the parts are easy enough to replace. I am fairly certain I could find a much cheaper bargain from overseas shipping, but haven’t found them yet. I have found some at $12-$24 but don’t know enough details to make a comparison. Still it goes from a house to a new car.

While thinking about this, I then imagined what the modern standard would look like in comparison. At 1080p compared to 30k, a standard TV would be a small rectangle. It would be a credit card sitting up on large bookshelf.

If we were to zoom into the standard 1080p of that picture, a stadium full of people would become a handful of people. The image would be crisp, and fine.

Now let’s do it in reverse. If we had a picture of the entire world up on a wall, and wanted to be able to find 1080p of a single dime, it would be 2.4Billion standard HD TV’s wide which would mean about 2.4 Trillion x 4.3 Trillion in resolution.

At our standard layout, the shot of the earth would make mountains and various clouds easy to see. At 30K we could see the US. At 100k it would be the SouthWestern US. At 4Million it is a city like Phoenix or LA with all the surrounding suburbs. 4Billion and it is a neighborhood. Oddly enough, 480i would be someone’s house and front yard.

I tried to find out the size of the image file, let alone a video for such a thing and there was too much involved to really find out. In fact, when we are dealing with numbers like this, we come into some huge problems. A small bit of glare, or other radiation could distort a large chunk of what we are looking at. Phoenix for example is very reflective and gives off an enormous amount of heat and extra light. The program would have to compensate for Phoenix, while altering for places like England or Seattle to see through the clouds.

At this range, the basic radiation we all live with actually distorts the image. At shows I have done, a camera with a big lense has to be held up very carefully or it will shake. If I get a close up with the lense the slightest movement will shake it. I don’t mean a voluntary one either, I mean stuff like blood pumping through your veins at the given heart rate. With an image this size, the shake of something we can barely imagine could disrupt the shot of the dime. Radiation like gamma, which wouldn’t even be talked about for a camera shot, would actually distort the picture. There is no way to properly take care of it using a camera hardware. The software would have to compensate.

At first when you read this, it sounds insane, and perhaps a bit like it’s impossible. Actually, the technology would have amazing benefits. We have all sorts of things naturally going on around us beyond our color spectrum. Cameras today work to get rid of any other spectrum. In fact a chip works to get rid of the closer spectrums. If a camera reaches something like 100K, it needs to use those other spectrums to create a better image. Not only that, it will use them in ways that are even more amazing than you guessed.

The images today work only in 2D. Using these other radiations we actually begin to work into 3D. Not only that, multiple cameras and different uses of the camera have to be used. Some companies like Replay Technologies are already working with what we have today.

I was actually going to write about getting multiple cameras synced up to make an image like what the FreeD system has. So, there goes that billion dollar idea. But still, lets talk about it.

If all of the cameras are synced up, and set at 360’, we could scan the area like what you see from that link, only better. They should already know what the players, or various fans look like because of closer proximity to these cameras. Then, adjust the images based on updates. That free roaming camera, and ability to slow down a shot can also make it so we can remove or add things within the shot. Ads, or some cool effect during a cool goal can be done in real time.

With this kind of set up, the crew doing the live show of a game could be very small, and some shots could be entirely done by the program itself. The basic information is kept on a database letting the commenters, or heck, fans at home do replays from every angle. Charge a monthly fee, and suddenly you can get every home game from every angle, and shot. It would be amazing.

The medical benefits would also be great. At a live game, with cameras that can pick up even a small fever, and sending information about things beyond the normal color spectrum, a doctor can watch an athlete at an amazing degree. A commentator can show exactly how a bone broke. Or perhaps we could see the health of any player at a given time.

This isn’t just for sports either. When I was thinking about all of this, I wanted to see a convention. People could see all the cosplay, and stuff at the show from their wall sized TV’s, and checking out what was on display at the artist alley. It could give guys like me, who study this as a cultural meeting of geek tribes, a way to see more and know more than any one person could find.

Throw in the fact that multiple cameras means echolocation, with filters I can hear any conversation going on.

So there I am, watching on my giant TV made of smaller screens, zooming around with a controller to get exact information on that big thing I enjoy. But wait, we need sound.

Ok, this is going to be a bit weird. If you want to know the real future of displays, it is plasma projectors. There are some projectors that can even create an image in the air you can touch. The amount of movement, and heat involved is something that you probably don’t want to read too much about. Basically, a lazer is heating up a small air particle for a moment faster than you can think to make a ball of visible plasma.

Time for some sci fi stuff. If a person wanted to, they could have a plasma display that instead made sounds. It’s heating up the air for a femosecond, it could also create the electric current that would create the vibrations for a sound. Instead of worrying about speaker placement, we would have sounds moving around us in real time. You could watch an orchestra play, and hear where the violins are compared to where the trombones. In fact, you could pick up your controller, move toward the violins, and listen as the trombones and other instruments move around you.

The plasma itself could also add lights, and small characters that move around. Projectors around you would make it feel more like a surrounding experience. The projectors need a lot more work at this point, but I would love to see what they can do in a few years.

Basically put, the room I am describing is possible with the technology we have today. In fact, some companies have already begun to show off those ideas. A wall sized tv at 30 K, or a plasma projecting sound system is not cheap. However, making something like that will inspire others to continue to look into it. I am fully willing to do this… if I ever get the money for it.