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Ed Milbourn

Ed Milbourn

Correspondent

After graduating from Purdue University with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Education in 1961 and 1963 respectively, Ed Milbourn joined the RCA Home Entertainment Division in 1963. During his thirty-eight year career with RCA (later GE and Thomson multimedia), Mr. Milbourn held the positions of Field Service Engineer, Manager of Technical Training and Manager of Sales Training. In 1987, he joined Thomson\'s Product Management group as Manager of Advanced Television Systems Planning, with responsibilities including Digital Television and High Definition Television Product Management. Mr. Milbourn retired from Thomson multimedia in December 2001, and is now a Consumer Electronics Industry consultant.

44 Articles28 ColumnsRSS

Articles by Ed Milbourn

3DTV

Ed's View - The Next "Big Thing" - 3DTV

Autostereoscopic 3DTV remains technically unrealized, but converging technologies point toward viable mass-market deployment within five years. Key enablers include the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard with native 3D support, HEVC compression at 4:4:4 sampling and 10-bit color depth, Light-Field Camera systems capable of correcting stereo depth cues that cause eye strain, and nanolens display arrays that attach multi-element optics to individual RGB sub-pixels to create unlimited glasses-free viewing sweet spots. For consumers, this means the cumbersome glasses requirement that helped derail the first wave of 3DTV could be eliminated by the end of the decade.

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Events & Trade Shows

Ed's View: Flashback

At CES 2013, a holographic display system transmitted live via satellite from Germany demonstrated a photorealistic 3D figure that appeared to walk through bystanders, echoing a chance encounter decades earlier with early 10:1 digital video compression shown on side-by-side 13-monitor comparisons at a 1970s CES. Both technologies initially defied belief, yet the earlier compression work proved foundational to modern broadcasting. For readers tracking display innovation, the anecdote underscores how satellite-delivered holographic imaging may follow a similar trajectory from curiosity to mainstream adoption.

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4K Ultra HD

Ed's View: Ultra HD - Diminishing Returns?

Ultra HD television, offering at least four times the pixel density of conventional HDTV, delivers noticeable image improvement at viewing distances up to ten times the picture height for viewers with 20/20 acuity, though returns diminish as resolution approaches the limits of human visual perception. No commercial distribution infrastructure or broadcast standards (ATSC 3.0 remains years away) currently support native Ultra HD content, making upconversion of existing HDTV signals the most practical near-term application. For large front projection systems and stadium displays, advanced upconversion technology represents a compelling reason to consider Ultra HD today, even without original 4K source material.

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Ed's View: Cutting the Cord with Digital Stream's HD DVR
HD DVR

Ed's View: Cutting the Cord with Digital Stream's HD DVR

The Digital Stream DPH-1000R HD DVR pairs an ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuner with a 320GB HDD, offering up to 38 hours of HD or 150 hours of SD recording capacity for over-the-air content with no monthly subscription fee. The unit supports component and HDMI outputs with 5.1 audio, and successfully detected all 37 available local digital channels in a challenging reception environment 25 miles from transmitters. However, its sluggish control response, limited remote range of roughly ten feet, and a VCR-era user interface make daily operation frustrating despite solid audio and video performance.

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Standards3DTVOTA HD & Antennas

Ed's View - What's Wrong with 3DTV

3DTV adoption has stalled due to premature commercialization, with industry bodies including CEA, SMPTE, and ATSC failing to establish standards before products reached consumers. The lack of finalized 3DTV standards means that fixes for the existing installed base cannot be delivered via firmware updates, creating potential legal and financial exposure for manufacturers. For consumers who already purchased 3DTV hardware, the absence of coordinated industry standards signals continued underperformance and limited content growth in the near term.

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