Audio Video News

Your local mom-and-pop video store might be on its way to extinction because of pricing benefits offered to large chains, complained the Independent Video Retailers Group last week at the <A HREF="http://www.vsda.org/">Video Software Dealers Association</A> trade show and conference in Las Vegas. According to the independents, mass-market outlets like <A HREF="http://www.blockbuster.com">Blockbuster</A> are given an unfair advantage by movie studios eager to increase rentals by putting more copies of hit movies in stores.

Thursday, July 9, was "an important day for artists," according to Robert Chapman, attorney for film director, producer, and writer Francis Ford Coppola. On that day, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury imposed $60 million in punitive damages on <A HREF="http://www.wb.com">Warner Brothers,</A> the defendant in a lawsuit brought by Coppola.

Yesterday, Japan; today, America; tomorrow, the world: <A HREF="http://www.disney.com">Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment</A> and <A HREF="http://www.wb.com">Warner Home Video</A> have signed a pact to distribute DVDs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Distribution of more than 100 titles to more than 30 regional territories will begin this fall. Studios to be represented include Warner, Disney, <A HREF="http://beta.choicemall.com/hollywoodpictures/">Hollywood Pictures</A>, and <A HREF="http://beta.choicemall.com/touchstone/">Touchstone Pictures</A>. Some independent films have also been picked up for distribution.

July 1, 1998---"These presentations always attract more Hollywood lawyers than engineers." That's how Dick Davies of the <A HREF="http://www.1394ta.com">1394 Trade Association</A> summed up Brendan Trawl's update on DVD Copy Protection issues at the second annual FireWire Developers' Conference last week in San Jose, CA.

At the <A HREF="http://www.digitallivingroom.com/index.html">Digital Living Room</A> conference last week in Laguna Niguel, California, <A HREF="http://www.warnerbros.com">Warner Bros. Online</A> claimed that they have "blended DVD and Internet technology to simultaneously break through the online bandwidth barrier and create a completely new breed of entertainment." Not surprisingly, this DVD/web hybrid technology is called WebDVD.

Move over, fiber optics; good-bye, T1 lines. The unexploited potential of ordinary copper telephone wires will soon be mined by a consortium of computer and communications companies. Known as the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (or HomePNA), the recently formed group intends to deliver affordable, high-speed networking over existing phone lines.

On June 17, <A HREF="http://www.unitymotion.com/unity/home.asp">Unity Motion</A> announced an agreement with <A HREF="http://www.turner.com/">Turner Engineering</A> under which Turner will supply high-definition television (HDTV) broadcast-engineering expertise to Unity Motion, which this year begins transmitting multiple channels of HDTV via satellite to subscribers in the US. In addition, Unity Motion announced that it will broadcast the first national satellite-based HDTV signal in the US on June 23-25.