Audio Video News

The Internet's video parallel to the controversial MP3 free-music phenomenon&mdash;currently being contested in US courts&mdash;quickly reached crisis proportions last week. A judge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ruled against <A HREF="http://www.icravetv.com/">iCraveTV.com</A>, a Canadian startup that late last year began retransmitting Canadian and American TV programming over the Internet without permission. On January 28, the judge found in favor of a coalition of plaintiffs, including three of the four major television networks, several movie studios, the <A HREF="http://www.nba.com/">National Basketball Association</A>, and the <A HREF="http://www.nfl.com/">National Football League</A>. At the moment, iCraveTV's site has a notice informing visitors that "access to stations and program listings is not available."

What's a tag line worth? Try five million bucks. That's the price <A HREF="http://www.lagroupinc.com/">LA Group, Inc.</A>, paid in mid-January for "As Seen On TV," one of the oldest phrases in the marketing lexicon. The domain name <A HREF="http://www.AsSeenOnTV.com/">www.AsSeenOnTV.com</A> will be used for a portal site for customers looking for products they have seen&mdash;that's right&mdash;on TV.

According to statistics released last week, factory-to-dealer sales of digital television (DTV) products closed out the year by posting a fifth consecutive month of growth in December. Numbers released by the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> (CEA) indicate that DTV sales last month surpassed 23,000 units, bringing sales figures for 1999 to 121,226, and total sales since the introduction of DTV (in August 1998) to 134,402.

Pundits have long predicted that, as we move toward streaming more digital bandwidth into the home, consumers will begin to prefer video-on-demand services via their home network vs. renting films from video stores. This is not good news for the established bricks-and-mortar rental chains, many of which are fighting for ever-diminishing returns in crowded markets.

It's been roughly 12 months since TiVo and Replay Networks first unveiled their digital video recorders, so it seemed a good time to ask how the format is doing so far. To answer the question, market intelligence company <A HREF="http://www.techtrends.net">TechTrends</A> conducted a survey of more than 1400 consumers for a new study, <I>The Digital Television Revolution: Success Factors for the Emerging Digital Video Recorder Market</I>. TechTrends claims that their research is the most comprehensive market study to date of the DVR market.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.SmartVision.com">Saco SmartVision</A> announced that the world's largest video screen has been activated at 4 Times Square, flooding the area with nine-story-tall video images. The new screen is based on millions of discrete, individually energized red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and measures 120x90 feet, following the curved form of the new Conde Nast Building at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street.

As announced last week, the 2000 Republican National Convention will be America's first political convention aired in high-definition television. But in an interesting twist, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson noted that the party has approved the request of <A HREF="http://www.nhk.or.jp/index-e.html">NHK</A> (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) to cover the Convention in HDTV. NHK says it will make available a digital high-definition feed to other "accredited" broadcasters choosing to take the signal for transmission to their viewers.