It's a DTV jungle out there, with manufacturers, broadcasters, consumers, and other market forces fighting for their ecological niches. Always an aggressive participant in the struggle, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission last week, stated that "ensuring that today's viewers continue to enjoy free, over-the-air service should be the primary focus of the digital television (DTV) transition." While new services should be "permitted and encouraged," argued the CEA, they should be consistent with broadcasters' "continued delivery of free over-the-air programming in the digital era."

On December 4, Intel executives announced plans for future digital television products. Noting that, as we move toward a digital TV broadcast model, there will be 230 million TVs to replace, Intel has targeted the heart of nearly 100% of American homes.

Last week, interactive television developer TeleCruz Technology and Zenith announced a product development agreement intended to integrate TeleCruz's technology inside Zenith's multimedia television platform. The two companies claim this will result in the first generation of integrated interactive television sets.

Here's proof that the early adopter plays a dangerous game: Less than a year after the official release of their hard-disk-based video recording system, RePlay Networks announced last week that it is releasing a major upgrade to its system. RePlay says the new device, named the RePlayTV 2020, is a personal video recorder with twice as much storage capacity as the company's current best-selling model, and—here's the part that tweaks early adopters—at no increase in price: 20 hours of storage for $699.