When we reviewed Pioneer's flagship Elite DV-09 DVD player in our September 1998 issue, it blew us away so much that it garnered an Editors' Choice award (see the February 1999 issue) as the best DVD player we had reviewed up to that time. This opinion has not changed in the intervening months, but at $2000, the DV-09 is more than many home-theater fans can afford (or justify) for a DVD player. The Elite DV-05, introduced earlier this year, provides many of the features and most of performance capabilities of the DV-09 at a more affordable price.
California's Assembly Appropriations Committee has unanimously voted in favor of legislation that will treat celebrities' images as copyrighted property. SB 209, nicknamed "the Astaire Bill," was passed 30-1 by the state's Senate on April 5, and will now move to the full Assembly for a final vote.
Gary Shapiro is after the US Congress to reconcile House and Senate versions of the Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA). Shapiro, president of the <A HREF="http://www.cemacity.org/">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> (CEMA), has asked legislators to incorporate provisions of a recent agreement between direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service <A HREF="http://www.directv.com/">DirecTV</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</A>, allowing DBS services to transmit local TV signals—a practice known as local-into-local—as cable companies have always done.
T<I>he following review was scheduled for publication in the print edition of </I>SGHT<I>, but we were recently told by Sony that the VPH-20U has been discontinued. Although this review won't run in </I>SGHT<I>, we thought some of you might find it useful if you're interested in purchasing a projector soon, as there will undoubtedly be some VPH-20Us in stores for a few weeks.—Ed.</I>
Japanese researchers have developed a digital storage device the size of a laserdisc with a capacity of 200 gigabytes, Reuters news service reported August 25. 200GB is more than 40 times the capacity of a DVD's 4.7GB—enough to put 40 two-hour movies on a 12-inch disc.
Curiouser and curiouser. Wonderland's Alice would feel right at home in the topsy-turvy world of Silicon Valley, where companies never have to show a profit to make their founders wealthy, and where probable courtroom adversaries invest in each others' businesses. That's exactly what happened August 17 at <A HREF="http://www.replaytv.com/">RePlay Networks</A>, which received a whopping $57 million in financing from a group of investors including Time Warner Inc., The Walt Disney Co., Liberty Media Group, United Television Inc., Showtime Networks Inc., and a division of industrial giant Matsushita, whose Panasonic company makes one version of the RePlay hard-disk-based video recorder.
Last week, <A HREF="http://www.panasonic.com">Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company</A> announced that it will release its first progressive-scan DVD player this October. The company says that the DVD-H1000 will deliver 480p images directly to a progressive-scan display at a retail price of $2999.95. According to Panasonic, the unit will feature composite, S-video, and component-video outputs, standard L/R audio outs, and 6-channel and optical digital audio outputs.
Fans of <A HREF="http://www.disney.com">Disney</A>'s animated films are about to finally get what they've been asking for this past year. Nine films are scheduled for release on DVD, starting October 26 with <I>Pinocchio</I>—which was also the studio's first animated classic to be released on video, back in 1985. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disney's home-video division, will release the remaining eight features on DVD over the next four months as part of what the company calls a "once-in-a-millennium celebration."