Audio Video News

The <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> reported last week that manufacturers' shipments of video products grew by "an incredible" 30% during March. "The strong March increase brought total first-quarter sales to 13.3 million units, a 21% increase over the first quarter of 1999. The growth in March was reflective of a larger trend of prosperity in video product sales, as all categories posted double-digit increases for both the month and year-to-date," stated the organization.

Your local mom-and-pop video store might be on its way to extinction because of pricing benefits offered to large chains, complained the Independent Video Retailers Group last week at the <A HREF="http://www.vsda.org/">Video Software Dealers Association</A> trade show and conference in Las Vegas. According to the independents, mass-market outlets like <A HREF="http://www.blockbuster.com">Blockbuster</A> are given an unfair advantage by movie studios eager to increase rentals by putting more copies of hit movies in stores.

Last week, in a statement coinciding with the International Broadcasting Convention taking place in Amsterdam, <A HREF="http://www.equator.com">Equator Technologies</A> and <A HREF="http://www.snellwilcox.com">Snell & Wilcox</A> announced that they have developed what they describe as the world's first end-to-end, optimized digital video platform enabling low-cost consumer products to deliver "better-than-VHS-quality" video at sub-megabit bandwidths. The companies claim that the newly developed technology, which they have dubbed "VHS-plus/Megabit-minus," will be available near the end of 2000.

Hoping to fulfill the long-awaited promise of delivering broadband entertainment direct to the television, <A HREF="http://www.intertainer.com/">Intertainer</A>, <A HREF="http://www.uniview.com/">uniView Technologies</A>, and Microsoft have buddied up and announced that they will join <A HREF="http://www.zoomtown.com">ZoomTown.com</A> to market-test a service that will provide asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband entertainment directly to consumers' televisions. ZoomTown.com says it expects to deploy the service to its more than 35,000 subscribers next year following completion of the trial.

Video-on-demand (VOD) is coming soon to more than 1.2 million homes in Los Angeles, courtesy of <A HREF="http://www.chartercom.com/">Charter Communications, Inc.</A>, the fourth-largest cable operator in the US. Charter has completed an agreement with Redwood City, CA&ndash;based <A HREF="http://www.divatv.com/">DIVA Systems Corporation</A> to provide VOD software and hardware for customers in Long Beach, Pasadena, Alhambra, Monterey Park, Glendale, and Burbank.