L
Leonard Caillouet
Guest
Having been deeply involved in home theater since its beginnings in the 1970s, it is truly astonishing to see how far things have come. The quality in sound and video, the sophistication of the systems, and the low cost never ceases to amaze me. Sure, there are very expensive systems out there, but the cost of getting very high quality in AV has really never been lower.
So where did home theater get started? Well, if one were to identify one of the earliest points of departure from pure audio to the integration of audio and video into home theater, it would have to be with Henry Kloss' notion of developing low cost consumer projection television. Most everyone in audio knows that The Advent Loudspeaker (TAL) was one of the most popular speakers of the 1970s, and generally regarded as the value audiophile product of its time, but there is more to the story. TAL was actually developed as a high value, high profit margin product intended to finance Kloss' intention of building a low cost projection system. And for much of the 1970s it did just that. Advent produced the first consumer level projection television, the Videobeam 1000 and started delivering them in 1972. Selling for $2500, Advent was actually losing money on the product, and the speaker business made up the difference...for a while. Advent stuggled, and Kloss eventually moved on to start Kloss Video Corporation where he produced the Novabeam, which was intended to be a much lower cost product and easier to service and align. By the time it hit the market near the end of the 1970s, a small group of dealers across the country were beginning to put together Advent and Novabeam projectors with audio systems to create the first real home theaters.
The vision of Henry Kloss, and that group of audiophiles gone video dealers, really did change the consumer electronics industry and the movie business. As the first video recorders hit the consumer market, and movies started to become available for home use, it was becoming obvious that there was a demand for at home theater experiences. While Kloss focused on the video display, dealers who had been selling great audio for years started to merge the two. There were already crude methods in the 1960s to add ambient sound in rear channels using out of phase signals from stereo, and the demand for something like surround sound was growing.
I had the good fortune to get involved with one of those early pioneers in the industry. In 1979 I went to work for Art Colley's Audio Specialties & Video Home Theater. Art was an audio dealer that instantly got the idea of what home theater could do and became one of the first Advent, and later Kloss Video Corp. dealers. I had been a customer for several years and by the time I came on board, the Novabeam was coming to market. It wasn't long before the video tape business really took off and once we had program material to support it, the home theater was becoming a big part of the business.
Now the Novabeam happened to be an astonishingly good performer, when it worked, but it was a troubled product. While Henry Kloss was a creative genius and a great engineer, his insistence on keeping the price points low, and lack of quality control in manufacturing processes led to serious reliability problems. But the home theater cat was out of the bag, and others were beginning to produce competing products. As it turned out those reliability problems sealed my fate to to some degree, as I ended up being the one to repair many of the sets, and used my electronics training to fix, and even modify the Novabeams. Art Colley actually was the first to sell Novabeams on flat screens. We had to modify the convergence circuits to correct geometry, and while Kloss was skeptical, we knew that larger screen sizes and flat screens were the way to go, getting a more movie theater effect.
By the early 1980s there were several other projectors becoming available, though they were typically much more expensive, but Kloss was becoming irrelevant in the market because of continued reliability problems and financial problems. The home theater was off and running, though the major Japanese electronics vendors were skeptical about being able to sell it on a large scale.
More to come...
So where did home theater get started? Well, if one were to identify one of the earliest points of departure from pure audio to the integration of audio and video into home theater, it would have to be with Henry Kloss' notion of developing low cost consumer projection television. Most everyone in audio knows that The Advent Loudspeaker (TAL) was one of the most popular speakers of the 1970s, and generally regarded as the value audiophile product of its time, but there is more to the story. TAL was actually developed as a high value, high profit margin product intended to finance Kloss' intention of building a low cost projection system. And for much of the 1970s it did just that. Advent produced the first consumer level projection television, the Videobeam 1000 and started delivering them in 1972. Selling for $2500, Advent was actually losing money on the product, and the speaker business made up the difference...for a while. Advent stuggled, and Kloss eventually moved on to start Kloss Video Corporation where he produced the Novabeam, which was intended to be a much lower cost product and easier to service and align. By the time it hit the market near the end of the 1970s, a small group of dealers across the country were beginning to put together Advent and Novabeam projectors with audio systems to create the first real home theaters.
The vision of Henry Kloss, and that group of audiophiles gone video dealers, really did change the consumer electronics industry and the movie business. As the first video recorders hit the consumer market, and movies started to become available for home use, it was becoming obvious that there was a demand for at home theater experiences. While Kloss focused on the video display, dealers who had been selling great audio for years started to merge the two. There were already crude methods in the 1960s to add ambient sound in rear channels using out of phase signals from stereo, and the demand for something like surround sound was growing.
I had the good fortune to get involved with one of those early pioneers in the industry. In 1979 I went to work for Art Colley's Audio Specialties & Video Home Theater. Art was an audio dealer that instantly got the idea of what home theater could do and became one of the first Advent, and later Kloss Video Corp. dealers. I had been a customer for several years and by the time I came on board, the Novabeam was coming to market. It wasn't long before the video tape business really took off and once we had program material to support it, the home theater was becoming a big part of the business.
Now the Novabeam happened to be an astonishingly good performer, when it worked, but it was a troubled product. While Henry Kloss was a creative genius and a great engineer, his insistence on keeping the price points low, and lack of quality control in manufacturing processes led to serious reliability problems. But the home theater cat was out of the bag, and others were beginning to produce competing products. As it turned out those reliability problems sealed my fate to to some degree, as I ended up being the one to repair many of the sets, and used my electronics training to fix, and even modify the Novabeams. Art Colley actually was the first to sell Novabeams on flat screens. We had to modify the convergence circuits to correct geometry, and while Kloss was skeptical, we knew that larger screen sizes and flat screens were the way to go, getting a more movie theater effect.
By the early 1980s there were several other projectors becoming available, though they were typically much more expensive, but Kloss was becoming irrelevant in the market because of continued reliability problems and financial problems. The home theater was off and running, though the major Japanese electronics vendors were skeptical about being able to sell it on a large scale.
More to come...
