LATEST ADDITIONS

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.Thomson-multimedia.com">Thomson Multimedia</A> and hard-disk manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/">Seagate Technology</A> announced an equally owned joint venture to form an independent company, called <A HREF="http://www.cachevision.com">CacheVision</A>, that the companies say will be focused on "value-added storage-centric systems" for home consumer electronics. The companies are anticipating that advanced consumer-electronics hard disk&ndash;based storage modules may soon be needed in many consumer-electronics devices, including TVs, set-top boxes, Personal Video Recorders (PVRs), and DVD players (see <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?735">previous report</A>).

Musicians and record labels have long been able to back up their bragging with gold records hanging on their walls, but film directors and movie studios have had to rely on mere sales statistics when it came to a DVD's success. But last week, the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) announced the first eight titles to qualify under its new DVD Certification Program to recognize "outstanding sales performance" of DVD titles. The titles were announced during the Association's 19th Annual Convention in Las Vegas by VSDA president Bo Andersen.

Last week, semiconductor developer <A HREF="www.siimage.com">Silicon Image</A> announced that it has completed the acquisition of <A HREF="http://www.dvdo.com">DVDO</A>. Silicon Image says that this acquisition positions the company to extend its Digital Visual Interface (DVI) technology leadership beyond the PC market and into emerging digital consumer-electronics applications such as digital TVs, DVD players, and set-top boxes for high-definition video.

Plastic film may soon be coming to a home theater near you&mdash;not as a food wrap, but as a video screen. London-based <A HREF="http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/">Cambridge Display Technology</A> (CDT), in association with its Japanese partner, Seiko Epson, has announced a new development that bonds light-emitting polymers (LEPs) to such film. Properly charged, the red, blue, and green pixels will emit bright light while using very little power. Unlike liquid-crystal displays, LEPs require no backlight and have a wide dispersion pattern.