READING 1 HOUR
READING
PART ONE
Questions 1--7
· Look at the statements below and the information on future home on the opposite page.
· Which section (A, B, C, or D) does each statement 1--7 refer to?
· For each statement 1--7, mark one letter (A, B, C, or D) on your Answer Sheet.
· You will need to use some of these letters more than once.
1 What we have done in the living room will be related closely to each other in the future.
2 When you are back home, the computer knows who you are.
3 We will lead a much easier life in the future.
4 People are spending a lot of time in the living room.
5 Progress has been made to improve our living room, but we still have difficulty in making the future living room.
6 Future TV is expensive and it worths the prize.
7 Target consumers of today's merchants are usually people who spend most of their time in the living room.
A
It's the space where commodities traders turn into couch potatoes and kids spend every waking moment from the terrible twos to the terrifying teens. Whatever you want to call it--the living room, the family room, the playroom--it's now the most wired room in the house, even more so, surprisingly, than the home office. So it's about time you got some R&R (Rest and Relaxation) payback from all that technology.
B
Despite many changes in the past few decades, we're essentially doing the same things in the family room we've always done. These include watching TV and movies, listening to music, and communicating with friends. But now we've gone hi-tech. The capabilities and quality of the devices we use today have improved dramatically, and there's much more to come. Parts of your future living room are currently well-defined and developed, but hooking them all up into a cohesive whole is still like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle.
C
In recent years, TVs have become bigger and more beautiful. But we're still paying a high price for the size and beauty. Take, for exaraple, Toshiba's 65-inch TheaterWide HD Projection TV, which is big enough to make you feel like you're really in a movie theater. As it costs almost $ 8, 500, you could practically hire some actors to perform in your living room for less. But you're paying for the size and picture quality of a projection TV, as well as fUture-proofing support for digifal High-Definition TV.
D
The great thing about life in the 21st century is how much easier when you get home. In Tokyo the folds at Panasonic have built a mockup of what they call "the house of the future". In the future, it's gonna be yideo mail and starts when you do a fingerprint analysis to let the computer know you're borne. Sensors then note your presence, turn on the lights and set each room's temperature to your preference, or fire up the 500-channel, 50-inch plasma TV, which can a store hundred hours of TV programs in the main home computer.