Cable subscribers in Tampa, Florida and Austin, Texas will be the first in the nation to get movies whenever they wish. <A HREF="http://www.pathfinder.com/corp/">Time Warner</A>, the nation's second-largest cable company, is preparing to roll out video-on-demand to its subscribers in those cities by the end of the year, according to an October 15 report in the <A HREF="http://www.ajc.com/"><I>Atlanta Journal and Constitution</I></A>.
The old <I>Mission: Impossible</I> TV series always opened with the head of the spy team picking up his instructions on a miniature tape recorder stashed in an obscure place. An authoritative voice would give Mr. Phelps his instructions—always with the option of declining the assignment—and then announce that the tape would self-destruct, which it did with a burst of flame and a puff of smoke.
Steven Spielberg has held out long enough. With as many as 12 million DVD players expected to be in movie fans' homes by the end of the year, Hollywood's most successful director has decided to release his films on digital discs.
Years ago, Brian Eno pushed the artistic envelope with "sonic wallpaper," or background music as art. Artists working in film and video have exploited the concept too, using their cameras to record campfires, roaring surf, sleeping people and animals, stationary buildings, and other excruciatingly boring subjects. In playback, such fare tests viewers' patience and challenges their assumptions about art.
Hackers will need more than computer skills to work around the self-destructing DVDs soon to be released by Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
Despite the ocean of ink that has been spilled on the subject, most consumers are indifferent about the inclusion of TV tuners in their computers. "Convergence" might be simply another intellectual fad---popular among journalists because it seems so logical, yet flopping among consumers because it really isn't. Most computer users who have responded to marketing studies indicate they don't care if they can receive television on their computers or not.
CD is the dominant software medium today, but DVD will gradually replace it, according to panelists at the DVD-Audio Forum conference last week at the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the San Francisco airport. Higher storage capacity and greater versatility, including multichannel audio, mean greater value for consumers. The panel also predicted that the popularity of DVD-ROM will grow exponentially in the next three years, and the use of DVD-RAM---recordable media-----will easily triple within that period. Computers equipped with DVD "burners" are already on the market.
Build it and no one will come. That's been the broadcasting industry's worst nightmare since discussions about high-definition television began more than 10 years ago. Many executives have expressed dismay over the fact that the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> mandated their compliance with HDTV's launch---an effort that costs each station millions of dollars in new equipment and technical training---when there is almost no audience to see it. Dozens of stations are ready for the official nationwide launch of HDTV in just two weeks, but the few people who will see the first broadcasts will be engineers, journalists, and a handful of customers and salespeople in electronics stores.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell and his Republican-dominated agency have gotten their hands slapped by a year-end move by Congress to block proposed changes to rules limiting ownership of broadcast media by any single company.