In the good old days of over-the-air (OTA) broadcast TV, before the proliferation of cable and DBS, pointing your rooftop antenna was a common ritual when switching between channels. OTA HDTV has brought those days back, as viewers carefully orient their specialized HDTV antennas to lock in fussy signals.

Digital cinema has begun to pick up speed in movie houses (see previous story), but finding ways to deliver the huge datafiles needed to present theater-grade imaging has remained an obstacle. Hoping to provide a solution to the problem of digitally storing high-resolution feature-length films, Constellation 3D announced last week the impending demonstration of its Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD) videodisc technology at a satellite-delivered digital cinema film premiere of the film Bounce, to be hosted by Miramax Films.

Last week, EchoStar Communications Corporation announced that, starting this week, its Dish Network will begin showing HDTV versions of popular motion pictures, beginning with the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. EchoStar claims that the Dish Network currently serves more than 4.3 million customers.

Testifying last week before the House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president and CEO Gary Shapiro described what he called a "successful consumer transition" to digital television (DTV), this characterized by broad product offerings, increased programming from alternative media sources, steady sales, and high consumer satisfaction with DTV products. But all is not rosy: According to Shapiro, broadcast-industry delays in delivering significant HDTV programming and the industry's potential misuse of the DTV spectrum to provide subscription data services could seriously slow the transition's current momentum.