Audio Video News

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.thebroadscreen.com">thebroadscreen.com</A> announced that it has laid all of the groundwork to begin MPEG-2 production of digital news and entertainment over what it terms "broadband Internet connections." The company says that the format will be dubbed iDVD (Internet Digital Video Disc), and is intended to be downloaded into the new DVD-RAM recorders or played live over cable and DSL connections.

For the last 25 years, about 1000 engineers from all regions of the world have gathered at the annual IEEE <A HREF="http://www.icce.org">International Conference on Consumer Electronics</A> (ICCE) in Chicago to review and discuss the emerging technology trends in the consumer industry.

It's a DTV jungle out there, with manufacturers, broadcasters, consumers, and other market forces fighting for their ecological niches. Always an aggressive participant in the struggle, the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> (CEA), in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission last week, stated that "ensuring that today's viewers continue to enjoy free, over-the-air service should be the primary focus of the digital television (DTV) transition." While new services should be "permitted and encouraged," argued the CEA, they should be consistent with broadcasters' "continued delivery of free over-the-air programming in the digital era."