Until recently, the ticket price for consumers wishing to get into the high-definition TV game was $5000-$6000. With a new receiver/monitor combination that began shipping the first week of October, <A HREF="http://www.rca.com/">RCA</A> has slashed that price in half. The model MM36100 is a 36"-diagonal digital high-resolution television monitor with a suggested list price of $2499. A companion receiver/converter box, the DTC100, carries a suggested retail price of $649. The pair are expected to sell together for around $3000.

Less than four years old, <A HREF="http://www.directv.com">DirecTV</A> announced last week that its subscriber base has hit the four-million mark, which puts it in one of every 25 TV households in the US. Other interesting statistics about DirecTV: 120 million pay-per-view movies and special-event purchases have been made; a total of approximately 200,000 hours of professional and collegiate sporting events have been broadcast; and a monthly churn rate of 1% has been maintained. (This is the percentage of subscribers who disconnect; DirecTV claims its churn rate is the lowest in the multichannel-video industry.)

Last week, the DVD Forum announced that its Steering Committee has formally approved the physical format of the DVD-RAM discs for 4.7 gigabytes (GB) as version 2.0. The Format Book for version 2.0 (Physical Specifications) will be published in the third quarter of this year. The DVD Froum says that the 4.7GB DVD-RAM format will be compatible with the existing 2.6GB (v.1.0) DVD-RAM format, as well as with other DVD formats established by the DVD Forum. The new 4.7GB format is expected to impact both PC and audio/video applications.

Bringing digital television to your home is not going to be cheap. And it's not only consumers who are going to have to pony up. Broadcasters and their distribution partners, whether cable or satellite, will be investing heavily in new digital technology that will require major upgrades to existing networks. But if someone's got to pay, then someone else will certainly benefit.