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I suspect that Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of first-rate movie theaters in the country. True, there are fewer and fewer premier-quality movie houses even there than in the past. At least two have disappeared in the past 12 years. And every time I visit the Village or National in Westwood (two of the biggest and the best) I wonder how long the crowds (which rarely fill more than half of either theater, even for a hit movie on a weekend evening) can continue to support the maintenance of such a large space in such a pricey real estate market. Nevertheless, there more such theaters here than in any other large metropolitan area in the US. Which is, as you would expect, when you think about it.

Though the first Sony product imported to America was either a transistor radio or a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the cassette-based Walkman was probably the company's best seller, it was the 1968 introduction of the Trinitron television that drove the Sony brand name into America's collective consciousness.

In case we needed further evidence of the market domination of portable electronics devices, TiVo has announced that a future enhancement of its Series 2 DVRs will allow users to sync to home-networked PCs and then download recorded programs to video iPods and PlayStation Portable media players. TiVo subscribers will be required to buy the software required to drive this enhancement. Although the price for the software hasn't been announced yet, it's anticipated to be low enough to drive sales.