S<I>tar Wars</I> fans might prefer to watch <I>Episode 1—The Phantom Menace</I> on DVD, but they aren't saying "no" to the videotape version. More than 5 million copies of the VHS version were snapped up within 48 hours after the tape went on sale April 4, accounting for almost $100 million in retail sales. The 133-minute film, which debuted last year, reached #2 in all-time box-office statistics.
Watching TV on your computer is not a new idea. In fact, companies have been bringing regular DTV to the desktop for over a year now (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?289">previous story</A>). But HDTV is another matter—the high-definition specification for digital television has been struggling to get out of the chute ever since its launch in November 1998. Several factors have slowed the emergence of HDTV, with the high prices of HDTV sets a deciding factor in most cases.
Both <A HREF="http://www.dwin.com/">Dwin Electronics</A> and <A HREF="http://www.faroudja.com">Faroudja</A> announced satisfaction last week in the resolution of a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by Faroudja a little over one year ago. According to Faroudja, the patents included in the settlement relate to detecting the 3:2 pulldown sequence of film-originated video and deinterlacing techniques used to improve the picture quality of high-resolution and large-screen video displays. Financial terms of the settlement agreement between the parties were not disclosed.
First Sony made the PlayStation 2, a $370 "gaming console." Then users discovered that it could play Digital Versatile Discs from all regions, a clear violation of DVD Forum engineering specifications intended to accommodate the entertainment industry's longstanding policy of releasing films on video at different times in different parts of the world—after they've run in commercial theaters. Shortly thereafter, users also found that they could make perfect videotape <A HREF="htpp://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?680">copies</A> of DVDs via the RGB outputs on the machine, thereby circumventing Macrovision, the copy-prevention technique built into the DVD format. Seems the PlayStation 2 was a two-front nightmare for the film business.
High-quality bi-directional video is on its way from <A HREF="http://www.lucent.com/">Lucent Technologies</A>. The company has announced a new venture, called GeoVideo Networks Inc., that will deliver what Lucent is calling "HDTV-quality" video over the Internet. Entertainment—including video-on-demand— is part of the intended package, but Lucent is emphasizing the medical, financial, and business-to-business applications of the broadband fiber network. The announcement was made March 29 at Lucent's Murray Hill, New Jersey headquarters.
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.
C. <I>Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, Tom Waits. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Aspect ratios: 2.35:1 (widescreen), 4:3 (full-frame). Dolby Digital 5.1. 91 minutes. 1983. Warner Bros. 11310. PG. $24.95.</I>
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.
DVD is recognized as a mainstream consumer format at this point, and several of the recent Oscar-winning and -nominated films are already available for purchase in the digital format, with the majority of the others on their way.
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.