Television technology focuses on size, quality

      Thirty years ago, flat-screen TV sets that hang on the living room wall like a painting were a science-fiction fantasy.
      The fantasy has, after much trial and error, become a reality. The QFTV company last week unveiled its FlatScreen video monitor at the National Association of Broadcasters convention held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas Hilton and Sands Expo and Convention Center.
      Peter Marcus, founder and chairman of the company, says the set's gas plasma technology has come a long way "from what I called hurt-your-eyes glow. It was unwieldy and generated a lot of heat," as high as 90 degrees, Marcus says.
      Today's set, with a rectanglar screen 4 inches thick, comes in 21-inch and 42-inch sizes, and has a screen temperature of less than 50 degrees, thanks to a ventilation system that takes the heat out of the home through a wall vent behind the set.
      The screen itself is manufactured by Fujitsu, one of several companies that QFTV has been working with on the technology.
      A word of warning though: the screen's picture has come a long way from its early monochrome days, and it's much better than the experts expected, but it still isn't quite as sharp as current TV sets.
      And the price is a bit steep -- $19,970 for the 42-inch model. The earliest customers have been businesses and rich individuals, according to Marcus.
      "This is in the early stages of getting into the homes of consumers," he says.
      The price will be going down in the future, says Marcus. He expects the set to cost $5,000 in a few years.
      QFTV is, like every other television-set manufacturer these days, moving toward high-definition television, and Marcus optimistically sees his FlatScreen in a high-definition mode in the near future.
      Meanwhile, after years of research and development, and the slow process of governmental decision-making, high-definition television is finally on its way.
      High-definition television, also called digital TV, provides viewers with a picture twice as sharp as current sets and six channels of digital sound.
      While it won't arrive this year, plans are in high gear to bring it to consumers in time to take advantage of the big Christmas buying season in 1998.
      The Federal Communications Commission recently ordered a delivery of digital TV to the top 10 television markets -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, Dallas, Detroit and Atlanta -- in the next two years. Because high-definition TV requires new technology for broadcasters, local stations in those markets will have one year to apply for an HDTV channel designation and another year to get high definition up and running.
      The next 30 largest markets will have 2 1/2 years from now to make the conversion and other commercial stations, including those in Las Vegas, will have five years. Noncommercial stations, such as public broadcasting channels, will have six years to comply. Eventually all television stations will be required to broadcast in an HDTV format.
      Switching to high definition is expected to cost each station between $7 million to $12 million for a total equipment conversion, according to Victor Tawil of Maximum Service Television, a partner in the first HDTV station in the United States.
      Broadcasters will have several high-definition levels to choose from. But the one favored by the networks and NAB is the wide-screen, high-definition picture that contains 1080 scan lines, more than twice the current picture standard, to produce a much sharper image.
      "I think broadcasters will go with the highest-definition format," says Gerald Waldron, a telecommunications law attorney with Covington & Burling of Washington, D.C., and a panelist Wednesday at an NAB conference called "The Switch to HDTV: Making It Work."
      "Early on, they will want to excite the public with the best format," Waldron says.
      Sets are estimated to cost between $2,000 to $5,000 at first, with price drops to depend on how fast consumers respond to the new generation of television.
      CBS announced plans at the convention to quickly convert the stations it owns to high definition. Its prime-time shows will be the first to appear in the new format, followed by late-night programs and sports.