Like two pit bulls tussling over a piece of rotten meat, CEDIA and Bose have been at war over the right to use the word "lifestyle." The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has finally ruled that Bose may not prevent CEDIA from using the déclassé cliché.
This past week it was announced that Warner Home Video has extended its distribution agreement with Oscar-winning producer Saul Zaentz for another five years. Two of the crown jewels in the Zaentz portfolio, <I>Amadeus</I> and <I>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</I>, both best picture winners, will be hitting Blu-ray and HD DVD in February of 2008, just in time for the 80th anniversary of the Academy Awards.
Looking for a smoother way to switch between cable and broadcast channels? Next week Motorola will demo a dual-function cable box that also receives off-the-air channels. The product will surface at the annual convention of NCTA, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Internet radio broadcasters may get a reprieve from Congress. A bill surfaced last week that would reverse the recent royalty rate hike that net radio outfits say would have doomed them to extinction.
The PR machines for both competing HD formats are relentless. And I have to admit that the impetus for this story was the Blu-ray Disc Association's recent announcement that Blu-ray beat its rival by getting to one million discs sold to consumers first. But what's more fascinating to me is that the HD DVD isn't far behind, in spite of the fact that consumers are allegedly staying away from both formats in droves because of the format war.
One of the few major audio manufacturers to function as a public company will be taken private. Kohlbert Kravis Roberts and GS Capital Partners bought Harman International in a deal worth $8.3 billion.
A "statement" component is usually a top of the line, no holds barred, expensive flagship. Onkyo has just unveiled a different kind of statement product. While it didn't surprise me at all that Onkyo would release an AVR equipped with HDMI 1.3 and onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, I am taken aback that the first AVR to boast these new features is the $599 TX-SR605. <I>That's</I> a statement!
At least one major cable operator is pruning analog channels in advance of the end of analog broadcasting, slated for February 17, 2009. Time Warner Cable's Staten Island Project will provide 100 new channels of HDTV to the southernmost borough of New York City.
Cable operators may discriminate against broadcasters by reducing both the quality and quantity of DTV channels, the head of the National Association of Broadcasters asserted last week in a keynote at the NAB's annual convention in Las Vegas.
Sony will offer replacements for 20 defective glitch-prone DVD titles. The cause of the defect is yet another digital rights management scheme that's gone wacky.
The latest challenge to the music industry comes from musicians themselves. Some of them are re-recording their hits to capture licensing revenue that otherwise would go to their record companies.
HD DVD seized command of HD sales news this week, beating Blu-ray to a significant milestone by topping 100,000 standalone players sold in the US, and also setting an Amazon HD sales record.