Darryl Wilkinson

Yet another Internet-related company is looking to bring content - "with High Definition quality" - to your computer and TV screens. DAVETV, an acronym for Distributed Audio Video Entertainment, claims to be "a new kind of television broadcast network offering not only traditional programming such as movies, music, music videos and sports, but also new original content self-published by end users using DAVETV's secure peer-to-peer networking system."

Backs and butts strained by the hard work of listening to music and watching movies in home theaters around the United States, rejoice! FAMILY INADA, maker of the world's first shiatsu massage chair, will unveil a new massage chair model, W.1, at the grand opening of its first U.S. showroom in Manhattan (7 West 56th Street) on November 17th. The INADA Chair W.1 is the world's first massage chair to take music and other sounds from sources in your home theater (DVD, TV, VHS, CD, and even your turntable) and synchronize it with a healthy, energizing massage.

So you've got HD satellite receivers from VOOM, DIRECTV, and Dish Network plus an HD cable box from your local cable provider, not to mention the biggest, baddest terrestrial antenna sprouting from your roof so you can pick up every local, terrestrial HD broadcast, but you still can't get enough HD content to watch. Now what?

We have heard the soundtrack of the High Definition future on DVD, and it's compatible with the jillion¹ or so digital surround sound receivers currently delighting home theater owners around the globe - or so says Dolby Laboratories and DTS. In separate recent announcements, each company proudly touted the fact that their audio technologies have been selected as a mandatory part of both the High-Definition Digital Versatile Disc (HD DVD) and the Blu-ray Disc high-definition video disc formats. The two rival disc formats are locked in a good-versus-evil, battle-to-the-death struggle to convince studios, manufacturers, consumers, and anyone else who will listen that their format makes the most sense (and cents) for the future of packaged optical media. Although most people immediately think video when they hear about High Definition on disc, the announcement of mandatory audio standards is an excellent reminder to all concerned that audio quality is just as important as video clarity.