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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.

Like its nymphet namesake, <I>Lolita</I> seems to create nothing but trouble for those who fall under its spell. Director Adrian Lyne's cinematic interpretation of Vladimir Nabokov's still-controversial novel about a middle-aged man's obsession with a teenage girl spent a year in the Hollywood revolving door because no major studio was willing to risk a distribution deal---until now. <A HREF="http://www.viacom.com/press.tin?ixPressRelease=40000482">Showtime Networks</A>, a cable-TV unit of <A HREF="http://www.viacom.com">Viacom</A>, has picked up the film's US rights.

Plans by the NBC and CBS networks to transmit 1080i HDTV this fall are "suicidal," according to John Malone, chairman of <A HREF="http://www.tci.com/">Tele-Communications, Inc.</A> On May 5, at the <A HREF="http://www.ncta.com/">National Cable Television Association's</A> annual convention in Atlanta, Malone vowed that TCI won't carry HDTV in its ultimate form. A single channel of full-bore HDTV occupies the same transmission bandwidth as 12 low-resolution channels or several standard-resolution channels.

Merger news: <A HREF="http://www.IMDb.com">IMDb</A> to <A HREF="http://amazon.com">Amazon.com</A>. If this sounds like a chess move, it certainly is for a few folks at the top of the Web's food chain. On April 27, the Internet Movie Database became part of Amazon.com, the world's largest online bookseller.