If the first week of Olympic Games coverage is any indication of NBC's performance in Sydney, the best the network can hope for in the race for viewers is a bronze medal. The network's carefully orchestrated tape-delayed broadcasts aren't pulling in sports fans the way live action from Atlanta did in 1996. Even the Barcelona games in 1992 attracted more viewers, according to polls conducted during the first week of the Sydney Games.

If there's no computer in your entertainment system—or no entertainment in your computer—there probably will be soon. Texas Instruments has announced two new digital-to-analog converters (DACs) that accept and output all available video and PC graphics formats—including HDTV signals. The new chips may make "all-formats video" economically viable for many manufacturers.

Texas Instruments continues to push the envelope of projector technology, and high-end manufacturers continue to adopt TI devices into ever-better projectors. TI's latest Digital Light Processing (DLP) devices are known as "DarkChips" for their improved contrast, a result of narrower gaps between mirror elements, smaller mirror hinges, higher reflectivity, and in a seeming paradox, better light absorption thanks to a new coating. DarkChips are said to offer better color uniformity and much lower dithering effects than their predecessors.

A soon-to-be-introduced bill in the US House of Representatives could severely alter the legality of behavior so commonplace that most Americans take it for granted.

Canon, Sharp, Sony and JVC have teamed up on proposed specifications for high definition digital videocassette tape.

When the retransmission of local TV signals by direct satellite broadcasters became legal, analysts and industry insiders expected an increase in business. They did not expect the surge in new subscribers that came in the wake of the decision. EchoStar, the perpetual runner-up to dominant DBSer DirecTV, added 455,000 new subscribers to its DISH network in the first quarter of this year, bringing its total customer base to more than 4 million as of the end of April.