The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show earlier this month featured all manner of professional high-tech toys, from HDTV cameras to the latest video-production devices. But among the broadcast-industry announcements, several products of interest to cutting-edge consumers were also presented.

Lately, there's been a deafening buzz in the high-tech community: Developing digital networks for consumers' homes is going to be the Next Big Thing. There are some skeptics, but the clamor has caught the attention of every big computer company out there; everyone from Sun to Apple to Microsoft to IBM is getting in on the act. However, there hasn't been much noise from the consumer-electronics companies---until now.

In early March, The Sync, an Internet audio/video broadcasting company, announced that history has been made with the first modern feature film to be offered for viewing on the World Wide Web: American director Erica Jordan's acclaimed 1994 independent film, Walls of Sand. This important debut ushers in a new era in entertainment: video on demand from your PC, with feature films available at any hour of the day. Net surfers can watch Walls of Sand for free in the RealVideo format on The Sync's "ondemand" page.

Due to the astounding box-office success of James Cameron's Titanic, Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox have scrapped their plans for releasing the film's home-video version early this summer.Taken by surprise at the unending box-office interest in the film (over $300 million so far), the studios say that they will have to completely rethink the home video release. Rumors are that Titanic will be released on video for the 1998 holiday season.