Audio Video News

CD is the dominant software medium today, but DVD will gradually replace it, according to panelists at the DVD-Audio Forum conference last week at the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the San Francisco airport. Higher storage capacity and greater versatility, including multichannel audio, mean greater value for consumers. The panel also predicted that the popularity of DVD-ROM will grow exponentially in the next three years, and the use of DVD-RAM---recordable media-----will easily triple within that period. Computers equipped with DVD "burners" are already on the market.

Build it and no one will come. That's been the broadcasting industry's worst nightmare since discussions about high-definition television began more than 10 years ago. Many executives have expressed dismay over the fact that the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> mandated their compliance with HDTV's launch---an effort that costs each station millions of dollars in new equipment and technical training---when there is almost no audience to see it. Dozens of stations are ready for the official nationwide launch of HDTV in just two weeks, but the few people who will see the first broadcasts will be engineers, journalists, and a handful of customers and salespeople in electronics stores.

Committees in the House and Senate have both agreed that 2009 is to be the year that analog broadcasts end in the US, but many details, including the exact date of the inevitable transition to DTV, aren’t yet resolved.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell and his Republican-dominated agency have gotten their hands slapped by a year-end move by Congress to block proposed changes to rules limiting ownership of broadcast media by any single company.