LATEST ADDITIONS

By the first day of November, more than half the nation's television viewers&mdash;those within reach of the <A HREF="http://www.cbs.com/">Columbia Broadcasting System</A>'s 40 major stations&mdash;will be in the "footprint" of HDTV broadcasting from CBS. The network has announced an ambitious production schedule for the fall season that includes at least 12 hours of prime-time HDTV programming each week.

Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington in Seattle reported last week that digital high-definition TV signals (HDTV) had been successfully transmitted across the so-called "<A HREF="http://www.Internet2.org/">Internet2</A>" network. The group says that the transmission has proved the capability of Internet technology to transmit broadcast-quality video, in stark contrast to the poor-quality video loaded onto today's commercial Internet systems.

An ambitious plan to bring high-speed interactive video services to cable subscribers in the New York area has been announced by <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation</A> and <A HREF="http://www.cablevision.com/">Cablevision Systems Corporation</A>. Sony will supply approximately 3 million set-top converter boxes to Cablevision customers.

Movie fans don't normally associate an organization as stodgy as the <A HREF="http://www.AICPA.org/">American Institute of Certified Public Accountants</A> (AICPA) with the glamour of Hollywood, but as of Tuesday, September 14, the accountants' group will have had an everlasting effect on the industry and its notoriously loose accounting procedures. A new set of rules about the way the industry figures profits and losses will soon cause some irrevocable changes in the financial picture of the movie business.