Motion Simulator for Home Theater

Dalvenjah FoxFire writes "D-Box, a Canadian speaker company, has designed a system called the Odyssee consisting of four motor-driven actuators that go under your couch and a controller box with a CD-ROM drive for the control files. The controller reads the Dolby Digital bitstream from your DVD player, and plays back synchronized motion effects designed by the company. For about $20,000, you too can add motion simulation to your home theater. They have a list on their site of the movies they've encoded, including The Matrix, Drunken Master, Star Wars Episode I, and more, though it also has an 'audio driven' mode which will work with any source."

Comments

This is the same old problem

[ShooterNeo]

This technology has the same old problem TONS of extremely cool failed entertainment techs have had.

Force feedback, HDTV, 3d displays, head mounted displays, smell devices, and many others. I suspect the first true V.R. rigs (with wires jacking right in to your nervous system) will suffer it too.

The old chicken and the egg. This tech is not quite good enough for the early adopters with the big budgets to buy it, and because of that prices will never come down enough so the rest of us can afford it.

Only when a new technology is SO much better than the current available do the earlier adopters buy it and the tech takes off. But there also has to be convincing content for it.

One pair of ears

[fedor]

It's better to improve recording technology rather than producting expensive speaker systems to improve 'natural sound'. As long as people have two ears, two signals are enough to recreate 3D sound in our brains. As long as I'm sitting on a couch while listening to the soundtrack of a movie while watching the screen, I don't want to move my head to listen to the superfluous speakers.

Re:One pair of ears

[Idarubicin]

As long as people have two ears, two signals are enough to recreate 3D sound in our brains. As long as I'm sitting on a couch while listening to the soundtrack of a movie while watching the screen, I don't want to move my head to listen to the superfluous speakers.

Okay, that's quite true. You do only need two signals for perfect reproduction of 3D sound--if you never move your head. Unfortunately, you do move. And turn. The extra speakers are to preserve the illusion of a three-dimensional sound environment even for an observer that isn't tied in one place and completely unable to move.

In principle, if a movie viewer had a pair of headphones coupled to a sensor to monitor head position and angle and the movie had encoded information about the precise location of each and every sound source within each scene and the system could adjust the sound fed to your ears fast enough to prevent a disorienting disjoint between sound and visuals...then maybe two speakers would be enough for 3D sound--per audience member.

That said, you're right--there are a lot of movies out there with poorly-recorded/edited/engineered sound, and that can't be fixed no matter how clever your home theatre system is.