Last week, <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony</A> and computer storage company <A HREF="http://www.westerndigital.com">Western Digital</A> announced that they will form a strategic partnership to co-develop a new hard-disk drive (HDD) for consumer audio and video applications. According to the announcement, prototypes of the AV HDD will be developed and tested for verification of basic technologies by the end of March 1999. Commercialization of the AV HDD is being targeted for the year 2000.
In spite of our <A HREF="http://hrrc.org/">guaranteed right</A> to make a personal copy of the CDs and videos we purchase, <A HREF="http://www.foxhome.com/">Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment</A> and <A HREF="http://www.macrovision.com/">Macrovision Corporation</A> announced last week that they have signed a one-year agreement to copy-protect all of Fox's DVDs produced in the US and Canada. Fox will also use the triangular "CP" (copy protection) logo in a substantial number of its trade advertisements to inform video retailers that its DVDs are copy-protected.
Ready or not, here it comes. Last week, <A HREF="http://www.broadcast.com/">Broadcast.com</A> announced that it will begin streaming movies over the Internet this month, starting with the Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman classic <I>Casablanca</I>.
The two biggest names in the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) business are about to become one. On Monday, December 14, Hughes Electronics Corporation announced that it will buy <A HREF="http://www.ussb.com/">United States Satellite Broadcasting Company</A> (USSB) for $1.3 billion in stock and cash.
TV life used to be pretty simple: Stick a pair of rabbit ears on the set, and if you lived near a big city, pull in a dozen channels or so---more if you had a UHF tuner. Now we have cable as well as satellite dishes big and small. In the near future, even your phone company could get into the act with some form of digital subscriber line (DSL) service. But of all these choices, which offers the best value? Two recent studies attempt to unravel the choices facing consumers with an analysis of the options.
Gary Shapiro, president of the <A HREF="http://www.cemacity.org/">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> (CEMA), lashed out last week at technology-trends research firm Forrester Research after FR issued a November <A HREF="http://www.forrester.com/Marketing/0,1051,58,00.html">report</A> dismissing consumer interest in high-definition television (HDTV). The report, authored by Josh Bernoff, foresees that digital TV will take off, but that most consumers won't be sufficiently smitten with hi-def pictures to go for the technology in a big way---or at least not in a way that will fully benefit makers of HD receivers.