LATEST ADDITIONS

"Timber!" was the first word out of my mouth as we rolled Philip's high-definition television into our evaluation room. I could have sworn the TV was going to fall over and crush John, our burly assistant. Fortunately, the cabinet's attractively curved front baseboard makes the set more like a Weeble than a Suzuki 4 x 4 in a Consumer Reports road test. It didn't take more than a nudge from the back to make the TV lean forward; however, no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't make it crash to the floor. Satisfied that John was safe from being squashed, I dissected the display's performance.

The finger-pointing and barb-hurling over the slow rollout of digital television continued through mid-May. The latest episode occurred on Wednesday the 17th, when the <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</A> (NAB) laid the blame on the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> (FCC) for its laxity in requiring cable providers to carry digital signals. Electronics manufacturers should also be held to stricter standards, the NAB said.

It would appear inevitable that digital video recorders are going mainstream when one of the largest manufacturers of conventional taped-based VCRs leaps into the market with a competitive product. This is exactly what was announced last week, when <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony Corp.</A> revealed that it has released the SVR-2000 Digital Network Recorder, based on the <A HREF="http://www.tivo.com">TiVo</A> Personal TV Service.

The sky will become a bit more crowded next year as <A HREF="http://www.bellsouth.com/">BellSouth Corporation</A> debuts a new direct-broadcast satellite service. The Atlanta-based telecommunications company announced May 8 that it will launch the new service in 2001 in the hope of expanding its communications and programming services.