Audio Video News

Film director John Waters will lead off the <A HREF="http://www.dvdconference.com">DVD Entertainment 2001 Conference & Showcase</A>, to be held August 22 & 23, 2001 at the Hilton Universal City & Towers, in Universal City, CA. Conference organizers announced on June 5 that Waters would give a keynote presentation entitled "From the Lens to Plastic: A Typically Unorthodox View of DVD," detailing how the format has brought his work to a new audience.

If companies like <A HREF="http://www.nCUBE.com">nCUBE</A> have their way, hard-disc-based PVR manufacturers such as TiVo are going to have a tough time finding customers. nCUBE announced last week that it will demonstrate its scalable "network-based" personal video recorder (nPVR) systems at Cable 2001, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's (NCTA) Convention in Chicago, June 10&ndash;13.

<I>Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw. Directed by Terence Young. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (widescreen). Dolby Digital mono. 115 minutes. 1963. MGM Home Entertainment 1001093. PG. $26.98.</I>

There's a curious three-way war being fought over Direct Broadcast Satellite television. Further court action has been put off until June 12 in the antitrust suit brought by DBSer EchoStar and its parent company Hughes Electronics Corporation against competitor DirecTV. The lawsuit alleges that DirecTV has conspired with retailers to shut EchoStar out of the expanding market for satellite TV. DirecTV has approximately twice the number of subscribers as its smaller rival; in all, there are approximately 40 million DBS subscribers in North America.

Digital television sets are interesting, but not compelling, because there's not much to watch on them. That seems to be the consensus among Japanese consumers, who are giving the new sets the cold shoulder, according to a May 25 report from the Japanese news agency Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc.