Mark Fleischmann

Don't you just love this bright new Blu-ray world we're living in? To celebrate the great transition, the studios now have hip high-def copyright warnings. This one came from Warner's 10,000 BC. Notice the forceful graphics, the festive colors, the 4:3 aspect ratio. The rounded screen corners that remind me of a 1950s B&W Magnavox--the first TV I remember, delivery medium for countless episodes of Captain Kangaroo. Best of all, it stays onscreen a real long time, and is invulnerable to the track-skip and fast-forward keys, so you have plenty of time to meditate on 5 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON before your evening entertainment. That'll stop those bootleggers and analog-hole deviants from stealing our precious bodily fluids! Uh, I mean our intellectual property. Or perhaps the studios are just as tone-deaf as ever, wasting the time of law-abiding Blu-ray renters and purchasers to send a message to other people who are impervious to copyright warnings. For the record, I have no intention of ever bootlegging a Blu-ray disc. But all those moments spent watching dopey copyright warnings add up. Couldn't they be shortened to three seconds, or made skippable, to really celebrate a new age of great HD entertainment? I want my life back.

EchoStar has signed an agreement with CableLabs to bring Tru2Way to Dish Network satellite subscribers.

Manufacturers are shipping more more television sets than ever, according to the latest figures from DisplaySearch.

Panasonic wants to set the record straight about plasma TV longevity. The company says plasmas are getting a bad rap on the sales floor. It cites a study by J.D. Power and Associates that states a "high proportion of recommendations of LCD sets is primarily due to retail salespersons' lack of knowledge regarding recent improvements in plasma technology."