Super Hi-Vision - the future of television?

You may be able to remember a time when the television was a luxury item - one per household, if you were lucky, with ownership of the colour versions even more rare and enviable.

Of course, the progress of the TV - both technological and social - has come a long way since the earliest models were made commercially available in the 1920s.

Most Australian households have at least one box, maybe even two - one for the lounge and one for the bedroom.

There's no denying that the ease of use and instantaneousness of entertainment that the television can provide suits our modern lives quite well - although certainly there are those who doubt that it adds anything to modern society except a dulling of the senses and a dumbing-down of the younger generations!

However, no matter what your feelings are about TVs, they are certainly representative of the technological advances made in recent times.

And the newest prototype viewing experience unveiled by a Japanese company this week (May 29) definitely adds to the continuum of television development.

NHK, Japan's premiere broadcaster and media developer, has launched Super Hi-Vision - and initial reports describe it as similar to watching IMAX in your living room.

This new technology offers a viewing experience that has 16 times more resolution than what is currently available on HDTVs.

Just to give you an idea of scale, NHK has been demonstrating the Super Hi-Vision prototype on 145-inch screens in order to show it off to its fullest potential.

However, the 33-megapixel pictures look just as good on smaller screens - like 85-inch models.

That size of television screen is probably a bit larger than us Australians are used to, but it's interesting to know where the future of our telly-watching is headed.

And with the interplay between most visual technologies and their progression - like phones, computers and other communicative devices - the Super Hi-Vision prototype probably tells us a lot about what we can look forward to in more general terms.

Remember, it wasn't so long ago that mobile communication was a distant dream, and look at us now!