Audio Video News

In recent months, <A HREF="http://www.plasmavision.com">Fujitsu</A> has steadily lowered the prices for its groundbreaking 42" plasma display (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?450">previous story</A>), while steadily improving the basic design's performance. Last week, the company announced that the newest models will be jumping back up in price with the latest additions to their Plasmavision product line, the PDS4221 and PDS4222. These two new models increase the number of current Plasmavision offerings to seven.

B<I>ill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Aspect ratio: 2:35:1 (anamorphic). Dolby Digital 5.1. 107 minutes. 1984. Columbia/TriStar COL04139DVD. PG. $29.98</I>

Put <A HREF="http://www.dreamworks.com/">DreamWorks SKG</A> and Imagine Entertainment together and what do you have? <A HREF="http://www.pop.com/">POP.com</A>, a joint effort by the two of the film industry's most innovative and highly regarded companies. On Monday, October 25, film director Steven Spielberg (<I>Saving Private Ryan</I>), actor/producer/director Ron Howard (<I>Apollo 13</I>), and their associates announced a new joint venture to bring professionally produced short videos to the Internet. The videos will incorporate both live action and animation, with an emphasis on comedy.

Is the world ready for interactive television? The <A HREF="http://www.pbs.org">Public Broadcasting Service</A> (PBS) apparently thinks so. Last week PBS, along with several of its member stations, LG Electronics, and <A HREF="http://www.lgerca.com">LG Electronics Research Center of America</A> (LGERCA), began demonstrating "enhanced digital television and data broadcasting" to their viewers as part of PBS Digital Week 2.0.

Wading into the recently erupted battle over the future of HDTV (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?553">related article</A>), the <A HREF="http://www.CEMAcity.org">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> (CEMA) filed a Motion for Immediate Dismissal with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week in response to a proposal submitted earlier by Sinclair Broadcasting. CEMA claims its Motion (available for reading on its <A HREF="http://www.CEMAcity.org">website</A>) is aimed at urging the Commission to avoid a "costly, dead-end path of reopening the digital television (DTV) standard approved in 1996."

Unheard by the general public, a debate has been raging in engineering circles about the <A HREF="http://www.atsc.org/">Advanced Television Standards Committee</A>'s transmission protocol for high-definition TV. Mandated by the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A>, the standard, known as 8-VSB (trellis-coded 8-level vestigial sideband), has come under fire from several directions, most notably from <A HREF="http://www.sbgi.com/">Sinclair Broadcasting</A>, which has called for an overhaul of the standard after a series of DTV reception tests in the Philadelphia area.

The FCC's plan to convert US households to digital television by 2006 is on the verge of collapse, according to a new report by consultants <A HREF="http://www.strategyanalytics.com">Strategy Analytics</A>. Their report, titled "Interactive and Digital Television: Issues in the Transition Phase," predicts that fewer than 5% of US households will be watching over-the-air DTV by 2005, with terrestrial broadcasters expected to use their digital capacity increasingly for data services. Terrestrial broadcasters can use their digital (DTV) capacity for either HDTV (high-definition TV) or SDTV (standard-definition TV), and there is currently debate over whether the industry should change the technical specifications of the ATSC standard.