So, you're driving down the road one fine morning in February 2009 when suddenly the FCC officially pulls the plug on analog TV, and just as suddenly, your little tykes are freaking out in the back seat as SpongeBob goes black. In the midst of 100-inch+ HDTVs, Samsung is keeping check on future reality by announcing A-VSB, a technology designed to take DTV on the road. A-VSB uses an embedded tracking signal in digital-TV broadcasts to enhance DTV reception in a mobile environment, be it your laptop computer, rear-seat entertainment system, or any other live mobile device.

A-VSB is kinda cool — it uses the existing sideband capacity to "turbo-code" and strengthen the signal, so it's easier for your mobile device to track. Problems like ghost images (an issue with existing broadcast DTV) are alleviated. As an added bonus, it would cost TV stations only a few tens of thousands to upgrade to this technology, and thus reach even wider audiences, plus it's backward-compatible. A-VSB is still only a technical proposal, existing in demo mode in the U.S., but if adopted, products could appear in 2008. Finally, A-VSB is good to go for vehicle speeds up to 170 mph. I bet you never swam through Rock Bottom at that kind of speed. — Leslie Shapiro