Early last week, <A HREF="http://www.valley-media.com">Valley Media</A>'s <A HREF="http://www.schwann.com">Schwann Publications</A> announced that they are introducing a new publication, <I>Schwann DVD Advance</I>. The company says the first issue of the bimonthly publication, dated September/October 1999, will list more than 3500 DVDs, sport an initial circulation of 10,000, and be available in retail stories and by subscription.

At the upcoming <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/conventions/">National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show</A>, <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/">Sony Electronics</A> will be showing a full line of professional products to enable DTV implementation in 1998. The company's Business and Professional Group recently unveiled its strategy and plans, which include interfacing SDTV and HDTV formats for all DTV applications through an MPEG2 environment, the industry's global standard for DTV broadcasting.

Your cable company might not be the only television pipeline in town for much longer, thanks to legislation passed late Thursday, May 20, by the US Senate. The measure, backed by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), allows direct broadcast satellite (DBS) program providers to begin beaming local TV channels into the same localities from which they originate, just as cable providers have always done. A similar bill was recently passed by the US House of Representatives.

The video-display war got a lot hotter on December 3. That day, <A HREF="http://www.sharp-usa.com/">Sharp Electronics</A> debuted its SharpVision LC-R60HDU CG-Silicon rear projector, the first such display to incorporate the company's revolutionary continuous-grain silicon (CG-Silicon) LCD technology. The 60"-diagonal display has more than 3.93 million pixels, and is said to offer unprecedented brightness, clarity, and color accuracy from any viewing angle. Perfection doesn't come cheap, however. The new projector costs a cool $50k.