LATEST ADDITIONS

Plastic film may soon be coming to a home theater near you&mdash;not as a food wrap, but as a video screen. London-based <A HREF="http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/">Cambridge Display Technology</A> (CDT), in association with its Japanese partner, Seiko Epson, has announced a new development that bonds light-emitting polymers (LEPs) to such film. Properly charged, the red, blue, and green pixels will emit bright light while using very little power. Unlike liquid-crystal displays, LEPs require no backlight and have a wide dispersion pattern.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.pioneer-america.com/">Pioneer North America</A> announced plans to open the newest addition to its North American operation: Pioneer Research Center USA (referred to as PRA), which the company describes as a new research-and-development unit. Pioneer says that PRA will open in San Jose, California on July 5 and will develop both digital television and digital network technologies to be incorporated into audio-video products sold primarily in the US market.

Walter Matthau, the gruff-voiced, droopy-faced master of deadpan comic acting, died early Saturday morning, July 1, after suffering a heart attack. He was pronounced dead at 1:42am, shortly after being taken to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Matthau was 79.

It's a DTV jungle out there, with manufacturers, broadcasters, consumers, and other market forces fighting for their ecological niches. Always an aggressive participant in the struggle, the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> (CEA), in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission last week, stated that "ensuring that today's viewers continue to enjoy free, over-the-air service should be the primary focus of the digital television (DTV) transition." While new services should be "permitted and encouraged," argued the CEA, they should be consistent with broadcasters' "continued delivery of free over-the-air programming in the digital era."