Audio Video News

Here's proof that the early adopter plays a dangerous game: Less than a year after the official release of their hard-disk-based video recording system, <A HREF="http://www.replaytv.com">RePlay Networks</A> announced last week that it is releasing a major upgrade to its system. RePlay says the new device, named the RePlayTV 2020, is a personal video recorder with twice as much storage capacity as the company's current best-selling model, and&mdash;here's the part that tweaks early adopters&mdash;at no increase in price: 20 hours of storage for $699.

Veoh Networks, Inc., the first Internet television peercasting network, last week announced it has completed a Series A round of financing led by Shelter Capital Partners. The company's goal is to create a new category of television networks that take advantage of existing broadband infrastructure to deliver standard-definition, full-screen video programming directly from producers to consumers.

One of the stories of CES 2007 that didn't make it into <A HREF="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/ces2007/"><I>UAV's</I> Blogs</A> is Sony's Internet TV, which is a two-part concept that includes an add-on module for its BRAVIA TVs and streaming broadband content provided by Sony's music and movie arms and partners like AOL, Yahoo, and Grouper. The BRAVIA Internet Video Link requires an Ethernet connection and is compact enough that the BRAVIA LCD flat panels can still be wall-mounted with the module in place.

Video streaming on the Internet is a few years away from offering any real competition to cable television, but technological limitations haven't prevented entrepreneurs from exploring the entertainment frontier. This year's recently completed <A HREF="http://www.sundance.org/">Sundance Film Festival</A> saw a huge increase in the number of Net startups&mdash;many without active sites&mdash;looking to sign deals with independent filmmakers for short features.

HDTV has been broadcast via the Internet2 (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?529">previous story</A>), and several companies such as <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?687">Lucent</A>, Motorola, and <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?886">2NetFX</A> say they have been working on the technology. But <I><A HREF="http://www.internetweek.com/">InternetWeek</A></I> announced last week that they have conducted what they claim is the first ever high-definition television (HDTV) broadcast over the Internet.

Hollywood studios are going to have to defend their jealously protected distribution systems in an antitrust suit filed in US District Court in Los Angeles.