Audio Video News

TriStar Pictures and Columbia Pictures will soon be one big happy family, <A HREF="http://www.spe.sony.com/">Sony Pictures Entertainment</A> announced on March 31 in Culver City, CA. The two production companies, which were purchased separately by Sony in 1989, have been operated independently, except for a common marketing and distribution department. John Calley, Sony Pictures president, said it no longer made financial sense to have the two companies competing for the same projects.

Widescreen pictures and 5.1-channel audio will soon be accompanied by stenches, scents, fragrances, and aromas. Parfum Recherche SA, a Paris-based olfactory research firm, has announced a partnership with Snout & Proboscis Development Corp. of Santa Clara, California, to license its scent-encoding and -decoding technology to film studios and home-theater hardware makers worldwide. S&P's new chip division will be known as Scentronics.

Predicted by an industry announcement last week: Widescreen digital televisions with theater-quality pictures and sound are on track for delivery by the end of the year. They'll be backed with new high-definition broadcasts in the fall, according to Sarnoff Corporation.

On March 17, <A HREF="http://www.tvpc.com">Ino Technologies</A> of Austin, Texas announced that, for only $799, its new TVPC with DVD has "cracked the code" of the long-elusive home-convergence device. Otherwise known as the "Living Room PC," the TVPC connects directly to a regular television; unlike other so-called living-room devices, TVPC comes complete with a full-function remote keyboard, a hand-held remote, and a DVD drive.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.cablelabs.com">Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.</A> specified an existing high-speed serial protocol called IEEE 1394 (also known as FireWire) as the link between OpenCable digital set-top boxes and devices such as television sets and DVD players. <A HREF="http://www.opencable.com">OpenCable</A> is a CableLabs-sponsored initiative aimed at developing key interface specifications in order to foster interoperability among digital set-top boxes built by multiple vendors and used in broadband, two-way cable networks.

A<I>lbert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds, Rob Morrow. Directed by Albert Brooks. Aspect ratio: 1:85:1. Dolby Surround. Two Sides. 104 minutes. 1996. Pioneer Entertainment LV 332473-W. Rated PG-13. $39.95.</I>

On March 9, <A HREF="http://www.pioneerusa.com">Pioneer New Media Technologies</A> announced the availability of its first DVD-Recordable (DVD-R) drive, the DVR-S101, bundled with DVD mastering software from Prassi Software USA and five blank DVD-R discs. Aimed at the professional desktop DVD market, Pioneer's SCSI-2 DVD-R drive lists for $16,995 and provides a data-transfer rate of 1.428 megabits per second, a data-buffer capacity of 4 MB, and a tray-loading system. Together with the mastering software, this products constitutes the first fully functional DVD-R drive to be offered for sale that allows users to create a disc image file and record on the desktop. "The Pioneer/Prassi bundle provides the DVD-mastering market with the only DVD-R solution available," says Paul Dempsey, senior vice president of marketing and sales at Pioneer New Media Technologies. "This is a powerful product offering that is incredibly easy to use."