Audio Video News

<B>DirecTV And TiVo Partnered Into 2010</B>
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DirecTV and TiVo have extended their partnership for three years, allowing DirecTV to continue to offer TiVo's DVR services to its subscribers, and preserving an advertising relationship between the two companies. The partnership, set in the original agreement to expire in February of 2007, will now run through February of 2010.

<B>Blu-ray Launch Pushed Into June</B>
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The writing has been on the wall with this one for a while. Sony and the other studios participating in the Blu-ray launch have moved off the originally scheduled May 23rd release date, pushing out to late June. This news comes weeks after Samsung announced that its BD player would not be ready for release until June 25th. Shockingly, Samsung's player is currently scheduled to be the first Blu-ray player to market, beating Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer.

<A HREF="www.thomson-multimedia.com">Thomson Multimedia</A> announced July 12 that it has joined the Motion Picture Engineering Group Licensing Authority's (MPEG LA) LLC MPEG-2 patent pool as of July 1. The MPEG LA LLC licensing program was launched in 1997 to assure the growth and interoperability of digital video by "providing fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to worldwide patent rights that are essential for the MPEG-2 Video and System standards," the announcement stated.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell has replied to criticism from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) over FCC insistence that new television sets include digital tuners. The CEA has long maintained that digital tuners are superfluous additions in a market where most viewers use cable provider&ndash;supplied set-top boxes, and that cable compatibility problems and lack of HD programming were far bigger impediments to the digital television changeover. "What continues to be a mystery to us is why the cable industry's view on compatibility continues to be so different," said Thomson Multimedia spokesman Dave Arland.

Bowing to criticism from investors, <A HREF="http://www.cablevision.com">Cablevision Systems Corporation</A> announced August 8 that it would cut its capital expenditures by nearly half. The cable giant plans to reduce its staff by approximately 7%, sell its Clearview Cinema theater chain, and close 26 THE WIZ electronics stores. There are 59 Clearview theaters in the New York metropolitan area; most THE WIZ stores are also concentrated there.

Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (<A HREF="http://www.cablelabs.com">"CableLabs"</A>) has issued a new set of specifications for high-definition-compatible set-top converter boxes. The Louisville, CO&ndash;based organization released its "Advanced Host and High Definition STB Host" specifications last week, describing requirements for retail set-top boxes that decode all formats of high definition signals used on digital cable plants. The specs are available to manufacturers, content developers, and the public through the <A HREF="http://www.opencable.com">OpenCable website</A>.

Set-top box (STB) maker Scientific-Atlanta reached its lowest stock price in almost four years on Friday, October 18, after posting quarterly results well below expectations. The company's stock closed at $11.45, a drop of 14%, making it one of the biggest losers on the New York Stock Exchange that day.