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The details surrounding my technical background are really quite inconsequential. Summers in retail, winters in correctional facilities for the perfectly capable. Desperate for the dollar, I'd often drug customers and dress them up like French maids. When they'd awaken, my friends and I would thank them for shaving our backs and assure them we wouldn't tell anybody. This was the sort of activity that would keep food on the table and our young bodies healthy for the beach. In the springtime, we'd make capacitor helmets with heatsinks on them. Then, we'd test each other's knowledge of schematics while running downhill. It was really quite breathtaking . . . you should try it sometime.

"Timber!" was the first word out of my mouth as we rolled Philip's high-definition television into our evaluation room. I could have sworn the TV was going to fall over and crush John, our burly assistant. Fortunately, the cabinet's attractively curved front baseboard makes the set more like a Weeble than a Suzuki 4 x 4 in a Consumer Reports road test. It didn't take more than a nudge from the back to make the TV lean forward; however, no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't make it crash to the floor. Satisfied that John was safe from being squashed, I dissected the display's performance.

It would appear inevitable that digital video recorders are going mainstream when one of the largest manufacturers of conventional taped-based VCRs leaps into the market with a competitive product. This is exactly what was announced last week, when <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony Corp.</A> revealed that it has released the SVR-2000 Digital Network Recorder, based on the <A HREF="http://www.tivo.com">TiVo</A> Personal TV Service.

According to figures released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) last week, early sales of digital television (DTV) outpace those of color TVs, video cassette recorders (VCRs), and digital broadcast satellite (DBS) systems combined. Speaking at the International Electronic Cinema Festival (IECF) in Portland, Oregon, CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro called DTV "our biggest blockbuster yet," while expressing concern about limited DTV and high-definition television (HDTV) programming availability.