Jon Iverson

Last week <A HREF="http://www.broadcom.com">Broadcom</A>, <A HREF="http://www.genesis-microchip.com">Genesis Microchip</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments</A> announced the introduction of what they describe as a cross-platform digital interconnect standard for the consumer electronics industry and an extension of the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) version 1.0. The companies say that this new standard encompasses the necessary requirements for a "superior digital interconnect technology" used in a variety of consumer electronics such as DVD players, high definition television, and digital set-top boxes.

In a low-key rollout last week, <A HREF="http://www.hd.net">HDNet</A>, which bills itself as "the world's only all-high definition national television network", went live on DirecTV channel 199 with a broadcast of the Minnesota Twins at Texas Rangers. HDNet, with offices in Dallas and Denver, says that this is the first of 15 Major League Baseball games it intends to air throughout the month.

It ranks as many movie buffs' best film of all time, and has landed at the top of the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Movies, but until now, you could not get it on DVD. The film, of course, is <I>Citizen Kane</I>, Orson Welles' Academy-Award-winning masterwork credited with expanding film-making frontiers like no other movie in history.

In the world of video-on-demand broadcast over the Internet, MPEG-4 video codec DivX (not to be confused with the <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?453">previous Circuit City fiasco</A> of the same name) has emerged as one of the more popular video compression technologies. Last week, <A HREF="http://www.divx.com">DivXNetworks</A> announced that DivX 4.0, the newest version of the codec (compressor/decompressor), is now available for download at its website.