Scott Wilkinson

A new study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) reveals that only 33.6 million (12%) of the 285 million television sets in the United States are used to watch over-the-air (OTA) programming. CEA issued its data in a letter delivered to the leadership of the Senate and House Commerce Committees to assist them in "their deliberations on how to ensure the needs of all Americans are addressed when analog broadcasting ceases." The House Commerce Committee is preparing to consider legislation currently under development by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) that will set a hard cutoff date for analog broadcasts. The Senate Commerce Committee is poised to release draft DTV legislation later this month.

Despite the ongoing rumors of back-room talks aimed at averting a format war over the next generation of blue-laser optical discs, each camp is continuing to develop its own standard. In our <A href="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/news/051605HDDVD/">last report</A> on this game, Toshiba had announced a 3-layer HD DVD with 45GB of storage capacity. Now, TDK has upped the ante again by announcing that they've developed a 4-layer Blu-ray Disc (BD) prototype with a total capacity of 100GB; each layer holds 25GB, just as in single- and dual-layer BDs.

I first saw the Samsung SP-H700AE almost two years ago at the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) convention in Las Vegas. The company had hired video guru Joe Kane to help them design a single-chip DLP projector that would meet his exacting standards, and he invited me to come see the result (admittedly, in prototype form).

Normally, <I>UAV</I> wouldn't pay much attention to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, May 17-20, 2005. But at this year's show, there were some announcements that perked up my ears a bit: new game consoles from the Big Three (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo), at least some of which will have high-def capabilities, making them much more interesting to home theater buffs.