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"In an interview, Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis joked that the hoverboards used in the movie were real. It was only after toy stores dealt with customers requesting them that he clarified and explained that they were suspended from wires. While we're still waiting for a brilliant inventor to bring us real-life hoverboards, one technology predicted in the movie has already come to pass. \nDuring the second film which takes place in the year 2015, Marty McFly Jr. watches six channels at once on a flat screen TV. This sounds like nothing fancy now, but back then most people didn't have access to the number of channels we have today \u2014 so watching more than one show at once was not only futuristic, it was silly.\nIt was also only the beginning. Now we not only split screens into multiple TV channels, but also different views in video games, a TV/Internet combo and soon, a full-screen experience of more than one show at once thanks to 3D technology. \nVideo Games\nImage courtesy of Flickr, popculturegeek\nSplit-screen gaming was a cool innovation in some games that allowed each person to see his or her own perspective. If you were racing cars, you'd each get to view the track from your vehicle. If you were running around a tropical landscape taking shots at other players, you might not know where they were until they came into your view \u2014 or until you looked at their portion of the screen. \nThe funny part is, this screen setup was more popular ten years ago when our TVs were much smaller. But now most players connect with neighborhood friends and far away friends through games with an Internet connection \u2014 so each player gets the whole screen to themselves. \nMore mainstream games on both Kinect and Wii still use the split screen functionality. \nSmart TVs\nThe next big trend is supposed to be smart TVs. Apple is expected to launch its own TV set and we'd expect it to be as different from today's TVs as the first iPhone was from existing cellphones. \nSharp introduced a smart TV at CES earlier this year that has split-screen capabilities for Web and TV, so you could watch a show and view the tweets about it at the same time. The concept is interesting, but most people are achieving the same by browsing on a smartphone or tablet, so perhaps this type of split screen is not worth its price tag. \nSplit Feeds\n\nAlso at CES 2013, Samsung showed off a TV that is dual-view without splitting the screen. It actually uses the same technology as 3D TVs in that a 3D screen splits the display for your right and left eye, and this TV splits the display for two different people. So yes, a pair of glasses are necessary. The concept is anything but gimmicky. One of the best and worst features of a huge and awesome TV in the living room is that everyone in the family has their own opinion on what to watch at a given time. With glasses (and headphones) more than one person could watch what they want, live. \nThe screen is also made of OLED, a material expected to make screens thinner and lighter, which makes sense for a large TV. \nWhile a prototype was revealed at CES, this TV is not on the market yet. \n\nThe Future of Tech series is presented by IBM. Check out IBM's five innovations that have the potential to change our lives in the next five years.\n\n\nPhotos by Pete Pachal, Mashable"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/03/11/split-screens/>