LATEST ADDITIONS

The <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> announced last week that factory-to-dealer sales of digital television (DTV) display devices reached their second-highest total ever this February, surpassing 22,000 units. The CEA claims that February's sales total of 22,844 units is second only to the December 1999 figures, and brings total sales since the introduction of DTV (in August 1998) to 178,254 units.

Divx, Circuit City's pay-per-view DVD format, may be dead, but DivX, a new video-copying phenomenon, is alive and well. The hacker-developed technology is said to allow copying and transmission of "high-quality pictures" over the Internet in much the way MP3 audio files can be shared by music fans. With DivX and a broadband connection, a full-length film can be downloaded in a few hours and stored on a recordable CD, according to several reports in late March.

Oh for the simplicity of days of yore, when a home-entertainment system came entombed in a massive slab of French Provincial furniture, with the television tube in the middle and built-in loudspeakers flanking it on either side. There was little decision-making as to speaker placement, usually boiling down to which wall of the living room was equipped with the twin-lead connection to the aerial on the roof. With this simplicity and lack of flexibility, there was little one could do wrong (or right, for that matter) in terms of speaker placement.

If you don't want a front projector, you should. Projectors rock! A big-screen image is the only way to get that cinematic feel with home movies (prerecorded movies, that is—not the jittery Handicam shots of your baby's first steps).