Jon Iverson

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.

If it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, then <A HREF="http://www.dvdpreview.tv"><I>DVD Preview</I></A> is likely the ultimate review "magazine" for new DVD releases. Arriving on newsstands in a cardboard package the size of a small magazine (think <I>The Reader's Digest</I>), <I>DVD Preview</I> bills itself as "a new kind of magazine coming to you on the very medium it reports on." To bring this point home, the magazine's website even has one of the recently minted ".tv" domain names (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?269">previous story</A>) instead of the ubiquitous ".com."

Last week <A HREF="http://www.jvc.com">JVC</A> announced that the final touches have been applied and the D'Ahlia 61" D-ILA hologram HDTV rear projection television (official model number AV-61S902) has begun shipping to several retailers nationwide and will soon be available to consumers at a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $13k.

One of the primary obstacles to getting high-bandwidth video such as HDTV to the home via cable is the limited signal-carrying capacity of what is termed "the last mile." Currently, cable modem users share a data pipe with TV channels that can carry about 30 megabits-per-second (mbps) into their homes.