For the last 25 years, about 1000 engineers from all regions of the world have gathered at the annual IEEE <A HREF="http://www.icce.org">International Conference on Consumer Electronics</A> (ICCE) in Chicago to review and discuss the emerging technology trends in the consumer industry.

On May 14, <A HREF="http://www.hitachi.co.jp">Hitachi</A>, <A HREF="http://www.panasonic.co.jp/corp">Panasonic</A>, <A HREF="http://www.sv.philips.com">Philips</A>, <A HREF="http://www.grundig.com/">Grundig</A>, <A HREF="http://www.sharp.co.jp">Sharp</A>, <A HREF="http://www.sony.co.jp">Sony</A>, <A HREF="http://www.thomson-multimedia.com/">Thomson Multimedia</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.toshiba.co.jp">Toshiba</A> announced that they have compiled a core home-networks specification for AV electronics appliances. The eight companies plan to actively promote this spec, called HAVi (Home Audio-Video interoperability), as a home-network standard for the AV electronics and multimedia industries.

Several manufacturers will be demonstrating state-of-the-art home-theater products at <A HREF="http://www.hifishow.com">HI-FI '98</A>, some of which have never been seen by the public before.

On April 30, <A HREF="http://www.gi.com">General Instrument Corporation</A> and <A HREF="http://www.divatv.com">DIVA Systems Corporation</A> signed a letter of intent defining an agreement to market DIVA's OnSet video-on-demand (VOD) service on GI's DCT-1000 and DCT-1200 interactive digital-cable set-top boxes. This joint effort will enable cable operators who use the GI system to commercially deploy an OpenCable-compliant implementation of the OnSet VOD service by this fall.