Audio Video News

The wearisome chicken-or-egg debate over the rollout of digital television went another round last week, as television manufacturers appealed to the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> to require more digital programming from broadcasters.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.yamaha.com/yec/index1.htm">Yamaha</A>, traditionally known to American consumers as a specialist in audio equipment, announced that it will enter the home entertainment projector market. The first offering in Yamaha's new product line is a high-resolution projector, based on <A HREF="http://www.dlp.com">Digital Light Processing</A> (DLP) technology and intended for home theater use. Yamaha says that the projector is due to be released next spring.

D<I>enis Leary, Billy Crudup, Ian Hart, Jason Barry, Famke Janssen, Colm Meaney, Martin Sheen, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Noah Emmerich, John Diehl. Directed by Ted Demme. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (widescreen). Dolby Digital 5.1. 94 minutes. 1998. Miramax 17093. R. $24.98.</I>

Convergence is more than a buzzword in the minds of the engineers at <A HREF="http://www.hauppauge.com/"> Hauppauge Digital, Inc</A>. The New York electronics manufacturer has announced what it is calling "the first personal video recorder for PCs." In development for eighteen months, the WinTV-PVR is built to occupy a single PCI slot, and allows the recording and playback of television programs via computer. The device is compatible with Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows ME, and comes bundled with a remote control and an FM receiver for the PC.

What would you pay for a display with more than four times the resolution of the best HDTV on the market today? Don't even bother to answer that unless you are an official at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which is scheduled to receive the first such units from <A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/news/2000/11/10.phtml"> IBM</A>. The new 22-inch display boasts an astounding 200 pixels per inch and a total of more than 9 million pixels on its screen. It is said to create images "as clear as an original photograph."

A satellite receiver with programmable recording capability is now available nationwide from <A HREF="http://www.directv.com/">DirecTV</A>. The result of a four-way collaboration among the direct broadcast satellite service, hard disk recording pioneer <A HREF="http://www.tivo.com/">TiVo, Inc.</A>, Philips Electronics, and Sony Electronics, the DirecTV Receiver with TiVo technology allows consumers to select, record, and time-shift programming selected from among DirecTV's more than 225 channels, according to a November 2 press release.

Digital television, the broadcast format, may still be in limbo, but digital television, the consumer electronics category, is going strong. Figures released November 2 by the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org/">Consumer Electronics Association</A> (CEA) show 368,947 DTV displays were shipped from factories to dealers during the first nine months of 2000, nearly seven times the number of displays sold during the same period in 1999.