Jon Iverson

<A HREF="www.dlp.com">Digital Light Projectors (DLPs)</A> are clearly coming into their own this year, based on what we saw at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Joining Sharp and its groundbreaking XV-Z9000 ($10,000)&mdash;and also based on Texas Instrument's 1280 x 720 DLP chip&mdash;are the new Sim2 HT300 ($14,995), the DWIN TransVision 2 ($12,999), and the Marantz VP12S1 ($12,499).

In a perfect home-theater world, <I>all</I> consumers would demand ever-better video technologies with which to watch films and other programming at home. We would enthusiastically support companies that brought us video displays of increasing size and resolution, and we would favor movie studios that supported our quest for images and sounds of the highest definition. But the real world could be an unfriendly place for HDTV fans, according to a report just released by the <A HREF="http://www.mcgweb.com">McLaughlin Consulting Group</A>.

There are a variety of reasons you might want to watch a DVD while listening through a pair of headphones: You're on a plane, you need to be quiet while others sleep/work, or you've got a portable DVD player and no decent sound system to hook it up to. But there's also one big reason you wouldn't want to use headphones: no surround sound.

While the music business is experiencing harrowing declines in CD sales (12% down in the first quarter of 2002, compared with last year), DVD movie sales are growing at a fantastic pace. According to figures released by the <A HREF="http://www.dvdinformation.com">DVD Entertainment Group</A> (DEG), more than 120 million DVD movies and music videos shipped in the first three months of 2002, which represents an impressive 74% increase over the same quarter last year.