Two Eyes, Two Ears, Two People....Two Video Programs?

Although I wrote up the debut product from National Semiconductor's video processor group, the AVC2510 unveiled at April's NAB show, I took a pass on the follow-up AVC5000 announced at May's SID conference (although, I must say, my colleague Steve did a solid summary writeup!). Here's the Cliffs Notes explanation of the two chips' differences: take the AVC2510, drop the secondary standard definition output, give the secondary-input processor the same beefy feature set as the primary-input processor, and voila….the AVC5000 (intended for displays, whereas the AVC2510 was primarily intended for video generation devices).

Here's where I got stuck when National Semiconductor was briefing me on the AVC5000 pre-show….who in the world (aside from niche markets like video production and broadcast) is going to want to simultaneously watch two full-sized audio-plus-video presentations side-by-side on a common high-definition display? Aside from the schizophrenic eyeball-and-brain distraction factors, consider the audio issue….do you mute one of the two presentations, and force the viewer to toggle between them? Certainly you wouldn't want to blend them together, would you? And somehow the idea of pumping on video stream's audio through speakers and another through headphones didn't hold even a speck of appeal to me. But then again I don't watch much television. Or have kids.

Sharp's displays group hasn't solved the audio issue, but they've taken an intriguing stab at addressing the dual-video problem. The company has developed an LCD that simultaneously displays different information in the right and left viewing directions (Gizmodo has a picture). I haven't seen a demo yet, and until I do I'm skeptical that the product would meet most consumers' expectations for wide viewing angle, right-versus-left content isolation, contrast ratio, brightness, white and black level, response time, and other characteristics….but I confess I find the concept quite intriguing. I'm still hung up on the audio problem; maybe EDN technical editor Warren Webb's directional audio article from May 2003 provides a clue?