A lawsuit filed Friday, July 31, in a Los Angeles US District Court could delay by many months Seagram Ltd.'s widely publicized takeover of PolyGram NV. The international mega-merger, valued at $10.4 billion, has ground to a halt because of a $100 million suit brought by Image Entertainment Inc., a video distributor based in Chatsworth, California.

The set-top box could eventually become the center of your attention, which is why several turf wars have broken out to win control over this part of the home-theater market. With DTV on the horizon, cable and satellite companies will be upgrading the services that feed your TV with some mix of standard and high-definition digital audio and video. And as movie distribution moves toward a pay-per-view future, the gateway to these services---the set-top box---will have more prominence in most home-theater systems.

On July 30, Thomson Multimedia announced a five-way agreement with a consortium of high-tech companies to produce its next generation of interactive TV software and hardware. Microsoft, NEC of Japan, DirecTV, and Alcatel SA of France will each take a 7.5% stake in the company to start the new venture. The nation of France, which owns parent company Thomson SA, will hold the remaining 70% of Thomson stock.

The lack of local programming has long been perceived as an obstacle to the growth of Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) television. However, this assumption might be in error, according to two studies recently conducted by the Strategis Group, a communications marketing research organization with offices in Washington DC, London, and Singapore.