Curiouser and curiouser. Wonderland's Alice would feel right at home in the topsy-turvy world of Silicon Valley, where companies never have to show a profit to make their founders wealthy, and where probable courtroom adversaries invest in each others' businesses. That's exactly what happened August 17 at <A HREF="http://www.replaytv.com/">RePlay Networks</A>, which received a whopping $57 million in financing from a group of investors including Time Warner Inc., The Walt Disney Co., Liberty Media Group, United Television Inc., Showtime Networks Inc., and a division of industrial giant Matsushita, whose Panasonic company makes one version of the RePlay hard-disk-based video recorder.

Fans of <A HREF="http://www.disney.com">Disney</A>'s animated films are about to finally get what they've been asking for this past year. Nine films are scheduled for release on DVD, starting October 26 with <I>Pinocchio</I>&mdash;which was also the studio's first animated classic to be released on video, back in 1985. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disney's home-video division, will release the remaining eight features on DVD over the next four months as part of what the company calls a "once-in-a-millennium celebration."

Digital technology is changing everything&mdash;especially the marketing of entertainment. DVD-Audio has the music industry excited about interactive features like artists' bios, still pictures, and other as-yet unimagined marketing opportunities. Free MP3 audio files are being used by some music companies as promotional tools for new releases.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.net-tv.net">NetTV</A>, which markets progressive-scan digital televisions and set-top boxes with integrated DVD-ROM players, announced that the company's High-Resolution DVD and digital television will be showcased at the DVD PRO Conference & Exhibition, to be held later this week in San Francisco. NetTV claims it is building digital-entertainment systems that combine progressive-scan video with Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio. The company's products include the ExtremeDVD digital entertainment set-top box and DTV Series digital televisions (29, 34, and 38 inches).