LATEST ADDITIONS

The American broadcasting industry needs an attitude adjustment, according to <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> chairman William Kennard. At last week's <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</A> convention in Las Vegas, Kennard took the industry to task for the slow rollout of digital television, mandated by his agency for more than two years now. The consumer electronics industry has embraced the promise of digital television from the beginning.

The <A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/">British Broadcasting Corporation</A> is creating a new film division that will develop projects with American producers and distributors for theatrical release in the US and elsewhere in the world, according to an official announcement made April 4 in London. The new division is part of a corporate restructuring that will free up $318.5 million annually for dramatic programming, according to the BBC's new director general, Greg Dyke.

S<I>tar Wars</I> fans might prefer to watch <I>Episode 1&mdash;The Phantom Menace</I> on DVD, but they aren't saying "no" to the videotape version. More than 5 million copies of the VHS version were snapped up within 48 hours after the tape went on sale April 4, accounting for almost $100 million in retail sales. The 133-minute film, which debuted last year, reached #2 in all-time box-office statistics.

Both <A HREF="http://www.dwin.com/">Dwin Electronics</A> and <A HREF="http://www.faroudja.com">Faroudja</A> announced satisfaction last week in the resolution of a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by Faroudja a little over one year ago. According to Faroudja, the patents included in the settlement relate to detecting the 3:2 pulldown sequence of film-originated video and deinterlacing techniques used to improve the picture quality of high-resolution and large-screen video displays. Financial terms of the settlement agreement between the parties were not disclosed.