LATEST ADDITIONS

Video streaming on the Internet is a few years away from offering any real competition to cable television, but technological limitations haven't prevented entrepreneurs from exploring the entertainment frontier. This year's recently completed <A HREF="http://www.sundance.org/">Sundance Film Festival</A> saw a huge increase in the number of Net startups&mdash;many without active sites&mdash;looking to sign deals with independent filmmakers for short features.

The Internet's video parallel to the controversial MP3 free-music phenomenon&mdash;currently being contested in US courts&mdash;quickly reached crisis proportions last week. A judge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ruled against <A HREF="http://www.icravetv.com/">iCraveTV.com</A>, a Canadian startup that late last year began retransmitting Canadian and American TV programming over the Internet without permission. On January 28, the judge found in favor of a coalition of plaintiffs, including three of the four major television networks, several movie studios, the <A HREF="http://www.nba.com/">National Basketball Association</A>, and the <A HREF="http://www.nfl.com/">National Football League</A>. At the moment, iCraveTV's site has a notice informing visitors that "access to stations and program listings is not available."

Consumer-electronics writers are a curious group. We'll look at a product on paper and decide whether it's going to be any good long before we actually get our hands on the gear. That's not a very shocking admission. Think about it: You see Kevin Costner is making another baseball movie, and you have to figure it will be decent. It's sort of the same process for writers. Being cynical, most of us writer types looked at Sony's SACD format on paper and agreed it would probably sound good, as long as it's surrounded by good-enough gear to bring out the difference over traditional CDs and maybe even the long-awaited DVD-Audio. Some even argued that the product is of questionable value, since it's only aimed at the high-end, tube-amp crowd. Why muddy the water? Why mess things up for the upcoming (and more-mainstream) DVD-Audio? Isn't Sony just being arrogant?

Computer sales are climbing as Internet traffic doubles every 100 days. With progressive-scan DVD players finally hitting the market, DVD-player sales are expected to reach $3 million or more by year's end. Regularly broadcast HDTV programming is up from last year's one hour a week to almost 30 hours a week of prime-time programming. How do you find a display that can take advantage of these technologies without breaking the bank? Look for a multimedia display. This growing segment of the television market makes the most of your imaging resources. With products like Hitachi's 36SDX88B, your house doesn't have to look like NASA's control room.