Jon Iverson

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.iblast.com">iBlast Networks</A>, which comprises 12 major television broadcast groups, announced that it has formed a national network that it says will use a dedicated portion of the digital spectrum assigned to local television stations to deliver a "wide array of high-speed, over-the-air broadband digital content and services" direct to consumers. iBlast claims that this digital content will include music, video, games, software, and other applications.

Just imagine if you could have this for your home theater system: <A HREF="www.ibm.com">IBM</A> announced last week the T220, which the company is calling the world's highest-resolution flat panel monitor. Unfortunately for us, IBM says that the new display will enable "photograph-quality" imaging for science, banking, engineering, publishing, medicine, and business-critical visualization tasks, and is not likely to appear in consumer living rooms anytime soon.

For businesses wanting to learn more about the digital TV future, a new report from <A HREF="http://www.phillips.com">Phillips Business Information</A> (not to be confused with Philips Electronics) is stuffed full of juicy information. The report, entitled <A HREF="http://www.phillips.com/PhillipsUK/dtvsummary.htm"><I>Digital Television Broadcasting</I></A>, predicts that DTV "is likely to involve a profound transformation in the consumer's use of the TV set, changing him from a passive receiver of a small number of scheduled programs to an active chooser from a massive range of programming and services, many increasingly available on demand."

The results of a recent study released by <A HREF="http://www.techtrends.net">TechTrends</A> last week reveal that consumer electronics manufacturers are poised to take significant market share from traditional set-top box makers. TechTrends reports that, by next year, half of North America's leading cable operators will deploy digital set-top boxes from Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer or Sony, at the expense of Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta.