Plastic film may soon be coming to a home theater near you&mdash;not as a food wrap, but as a video screen. London-based <A HREF="http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/">Cambridge Display Technology</A> (CDT), in association with its Japanese partner, Seiko Epson, has announced a new development that bonds light-emitting polymers (LEPs) to such film. Properly charged, the red, blue, and green pixels will emit bright light while using very little power. Unlike liquid-crystal displays, LEPs require no backlight and have a wide dispersion pattern.

Most of this site's visitors enjoy home theater. Now, thanks to a huge boost in funding for <A HREF="http://www.Broadwayarchive.com/"> Broadway Digital Entertainment</A> (BDE), we'll be able to enjoy theater at home, too. BDE has just received $3 million to help put its archive of historic theatrical performances out on VHS tape.

The film industry is going to hate this. A Santa Monica technology company has announced a digital video compression scheme that supposedly can increase the data density of ordinary DVDs by three to ten times.

Recently, <A HREF="http://www.hrrc.org">The Home Recording Rights Coalition</A> (HRRC) sounded an alert to consumers and all other users of home VCRs and personal computers. In passing legislation to implement copyright treaties, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee rejected an amendment that would have preserved consumers' rights to buy and use digital VCRs and PCs capable of making home recordings.