Gary Shapiro is after the US Congress to reconcile House and Senate versions of the Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA). Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA), has asked legislators to incorporate provisions of a recent agreement between direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service DirecTV and the National Association of Broadcasters, allowing DBS services to transmit local TV signals—a practice known as local-into-local—as cable companies have always done.

The following review was scheduled for publication in the print edition of SGHT, but we were recently told by Sony that the VPH-20U has been discontinued. Although this review won't run in SGHT, we thought some of you might find it useful if you're interested in purchasing a projector soon, as there will undoubtedly be some VPH-20Us in stores for a few weeks.—Ed.

Curiouser and curiouser. Wonderland's Alice would feel right at home in the topsy-turvy world of Silicon Valley, where companies never have to show a profit to make their founders wealthy, and where probable courtroom adversaries invest in each others' businesses. That's exactly what happened August 17 at RePlay Networks, which received a whopping $57 million in financing from a group of investors including Time Warner Inc., The Walt Disney Co., Liberty Media Group, United Television Inc., Showtime Networks Inc., and a division of industrial giant Matsushita, whose Panasonic company makes one version of the RePlay hard-disk-based video recorder.

Fans of Disney's animated films are about to finally get what they've been asking for this past year. Nine films are scheduled for release on DVD, starting October 26 with Pinocchio—which was also the studio's first animated classic to be released on video, back in 1985. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disney's home-video division, will release the remaining eight features on DVD over the next four months as part of what the company calls a "once-in-a-millennium celebration."