Audio Video News

An ambitious plan to bring high-speed interactive video services to cable subscribers in the New York area has been announced by <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation</A> and <A HREF="http://www.cablevision.com/">Cablevision Systems Corporation</A>. Sony will supply approximately 3 million set-top converter boxes to Cablevision customers.

Movie fans don't normally associate an organization as stodgy as the <A HREF="http://www.AICPA.org/">American Institute of Certified Public Accountants</A> (AICPA) with the glamour of Hollywood, but as of Tuesday, September 14, the accountants' group will have had an everlasting effect on the industry and its notoriously loose accounting procedures. A new set of rules about the way the industry figures profits and losses will soon cause some irrevocable changes in the financial picture of the movie business.

Years ago, Brian Eno pushed the artistic envelope with "sonic wallpaper," or background music as art. Artists working in film and video have exploited the concept too, using their cameras to record campfires, roaring surf, sleeping people and animals, stationary buildings, and other excruciatingly boring subjects. In playback, such fare tests viewers' patience and challenges their assumptions about art.

Competition in the personal video recorder market heated up considerably on September 8, when <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation of America</A> announced that it had made an equity investment in <A HREF="http://www.tivo.com/">TiVo, Inc</A>. TiVo is a Sunnyvale, California-based maker of personal video recorders (PVRs), a new category of product using hard-disk technology for time-shifting television viewing.

The recently released "World DVD Planning Report" is predicting that US sales of DVD software this year will reach 57 million discs (worth $1.5 billion), and that by 2005 more than 1.3 billion discs will be shipped annually (worth $36 billion). Annual sales of DVD players are predicted to reach 9.1 million units in 1999, a growth rate of 128%, and will continue to soar, reaching 52 million by 2005. More forecasts: Video titles currently account for over 90% of the software market, but by 2005 their share will have fallen to 43%, while DVD-ROM will account for 28% and games formats 24%.

One of the most respected makers of video projectors is back in action. On August 31, Vidikron of America announced that it has been sold by its parent company, Vidikron Technologies Group, Inc., to a group of international financial investors. Vidikron of America is now an independent company for the first time in its 11-year history. The investment group backing the company has access to funding in excess of $250 million, according to VOA's public relations agency, JB Stanton Communications, Inc.

I<I>an McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave. Directed by Bill Condon. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic). Dolby Digital. 106 minutes. 1999. Universal Collectors Edition 20584. R. $34.90.</I>