Audio Video News

In late January, the US Department of Justice began a preliminary inquiry into the Blu-ray group, a breakaway from the <A HREF="http://www.dvdforum.org">DVD Forum</A>. Composed of Sony Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Philips Electronics NV, seven other manufacturers&mdash;and recently joined by Dell and Hewlett Packard&mdash;the Blu-ray group is suspected of interfering with the Forum's progress in establishing a standard for high-definition/high density DVD technology.

In the wake of the nearly simultaneous introductions of Sony's Blu-ray capable PlayStation3 and the HD DVD external drive for the Xbox 360, some answers are already coming in on the impact these gaming consoles are going to have on the format war as a whole. And so far, aside from radically altering the install base of hardware for both formats, the gaming rigs are playing a big role in moving HD software off the shelves too.

Leading companies across a variety of converging electronics sectors have formed the High-definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) in an attempt to create “guidelines” that will increase capabilities and ease of use for networked high-definition components throughout the home, and include robust copy protection.

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&mdash;enough to put 40 two-hour movies on a 12-inch disc.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the organization that runs the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 140,000 people attended this year’s annual confab in Las Vegas, NV. In past years, attendance has typically hovered around 100,000. But with the shrinkage of the normally even larger computer show, COMDEX, in 2003, followed by its cancellation this past November, the Intels, IBMs, Apples, Hewlett Packards, and other assorted bits-and-bytes vendors, and their customers, descended on CES with a vengeance.

Remember Runco? The brand founded by larger-than-life personality Sam Runco, who built a company that became synonymous with high-end video projection, is being quietly laid to rest, according to a recent report in the trade magazine CEPro.