Home Theater History
The development of affordable, high resolution, large digital flat screen televisions and digital projection systems along with the recent mandate of HD digital broadcast signals have fueled the growth of the Home Theater market.
Prior to the digital Television, manufactures tried numerous ways to create large images on home television sets. These methods all were using the existing United States television standard designed for a 12 inch television. The NTSC television standard was adopted on March 8, 1941 and then modified for color transmission on December 23, 1953. It was not until 10 years later that the general public would buy color TVs in substantial numbers.
In the late 1970s the first projected TV images were available for home viewing. The larger images and low resolution display prompted manufactures to develop line doublers to create higher resolution on a 40 year old technology which was done with some success. One might say the image was big, but it never brought the true theater experience to our homes.
The development of the home computer and small high speed digital signal processors opened the door to the development of a high resolution television pictures on a large display. Processors were developed, (some better than others) to digitally enhance NTSC 525 line interlaced broadcast signal and to eliminate the scan lines that are normally seen in previous large screen devices.
In 2005 large high definition displays for the average consumer become affordable for the masses and the production and availability of high definition movies, cable, satellite and broadcast television signals finally started to become more available to justify a HD television purchase.
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