Thanks for the links. I've been following your posts about this with interest, and it's nice to see that they've decided to come out with a commercial unit but it sure is hush, hush. They never seem to get much press, and it's hard to get much of a feel for exactly how good/revolutionary this product will really be. In other words, it's all in the implimentation. A great idea backed by some awesome technology and brilliant people
can result in a truly amazing "to die for" product, but
will it? I guess we'll know more once a couple of serious reviews from credible sources are published... and sooner rather than later, let's hope! It sure is an exciting concept.
I've had similar feelings about the D-Box motion simulators for home theater applications. See
www.d-box.com They are as interesting as can be but they are also mighty expensive, especially if you're trying to add motion to existing seating with an "Odyssee" system rather than buying their integrated "Quest" chairs. My curiousity eventually got the best of me and I did an audition in one of the Sound Advice outlets in South Florida. They are most definitely "cool" but were still unconvincing. Getting thousands of motion effects synchronized to match individual movies is a Herculean task! They're done quite well with over 500 titles, but my guess is that this technology is still another 5 years away from being "perfected" to the point that the average person can suspend his/her imagination and "buy into" the motion effects to the point that they seldom become distracting. It's funny, because just as I was getting into it, my mind told me, "Nah, it's too fake..." and then another sequence would arrive that was done more convincingly and it would seem real again, and it was "on" again and "off" again in terms of how my mind was processing the whole experience. I suppose once the novelty wore off (i.e., if you installed a system and lived with it for a while), then you might become less sensitized to its peculiar little quirks and imprefections, and just enjoy it for what it does well. But it's a lot of money to drop on the "chance" that it might tickle your fancy.
For some reason, this is the kind of reaction that I suspect I'd have to the SVS apparatus. In other words, it would blow me away at times, and then suddenly I'd get an odd sensation that I'm in some strange futuristic movie just moments later (or perhaps, that wierd sensation that you get in your brain when you turn your head quickly while you are disoriented, either through low blood sugar, high blood pressure, etc.) And then another "wow" moment would arrive which would bring a smile to your face, and on it would go. Whether the SVS would become an indispensible listening tool or, ultimately, an annoying gimmick, is impossible to know. But I'm definitely rooting for them and wish them all the success in the world. It takes these kinds of innovators and a just a small sample of anxious customers who are looking for the latest and greatest to truly make a difference (years later) in what will one day (hopefully) become a standard that we all come to expect. At one point there wer no air bags in cars, and at a much earlier point they were started with cranks. Think of all of the new video formats that we now have, and at one point it was only 2 channel stereo, and much earlier they were all silent movies. Who would have expected motion to be added to the home theater experience, or head transfer effects to headphone listening?!?!
Hmm... how interesting that HT could become with a D-Box system and an SVS system! Now
that could really be special...
