Audio Video News

Recent studies by the <A HREF="http://www.recordingmedia.org/">International Recording Media Association</A> and <A HREF="http://www.cemacity.org">Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Association</A> have revealed strong sales for home-theater products. DVD-player sales are up 179% over 1997, with over 1 million players sold this year vs. 400,000 last year, while sales of DVD discs jumped 22%. VCR sales are up 7.5% in 1998, with sales in the first 11 months of the year totaling 16.5 million units. Forty four television stations have already begun broadcasting digital TV, indicating a good start for the new format. Within five years, all 1600 stations in the US are required to be broadcasting in digital.

Adhering to all the rules imposed by the DVD Copy Control Association apparently isn't enough to keep high-end startups out of court.

In the spirit of "if at first you don't succeed . . .," Hollywood is attempting every combination of interactive DVD/Internet "synergy" it can think of. Warner Home Video will be taking its latest stab at convergence January 17 when the company will be hosting a "Virtual Theater" event for their DVD release of <I>The Perfect Storm</I>.

After bleeding money for two years, <A HREF="http://www.hollywoodvideo.com/">Hollywood Entertainment Corporation</A> has announced that it is pulling the plug on <A HREF="http://www.reel.com/">Reel.com</A>, its high-profile online video sales operation, whose losses have been in the range of $4 million to $5 million monthly. The announcement came June 13, in which Hollywood Entertainment stated that it has laid off all 150 employees of Reel.com and arranged a deal with <A HREF="http://www.buy.com/">Buy.com</A> to fulfill orders. The Reel.com site is still active, with a pop-up advisory telling customers the bad news.

No one who's ventured into a computer store recently could have failed to note the amount of space devoted to video capture and editing technology. Most of it is being marketed to amateur videomakers and would-be cinematographers, but there's an obvious implication that the next step is bit-for-bit copying of commercial DVDs.