And other news for those who, like us, think it's great to watch a large screen movie without getting Cracker Jack stuck on the soles of their shoes.

Those Divx players, you’ll recall looked just like other DVD players and could in fact play DVD titles. However they could also play specially-coded discs, which would play for a couple of days, say, and then would lock up. Oh, unless you "authorized" the machine to dial a phone number and give your credit card number to the film producers. Even so, it would play only on that machine. Upgrade your gear, and you lose your software.
     Dumb idea? In UHF No. 56 we suggested that the people flogging this brain-dead system had had lobotomies, and we needed Divx like we needed a hole in the head.
     Later in the summer, the plug was pulled on Divx.
     Yes, we know, you never intended to buy one of these machines anyway. No one did, but while they existed normal DVD was stymied. Consumers hesitated to buy a machine that might not play this future standard (if standard it was to be), and they didn’t hedge their bets with Divx machines, because they cost more (another marketing screwup in the Divx ranks, but don’t get us started). And some studios which liked Divx because they were afraid that normal DVD’s were vulnerable to piracy, were sitting on their movies.
     Is it coincidence that Titanic, the biggest grossing movie of all time, finally came out on DVD just as Divx died? Just asking.

Flat screen TV’s
     Yes, everyone who is anyone in video has launched a large, flat, thin plasma screen (see The Markham Show elsewhere in this issue), but of course they cost way more than even most rich people will pay, and everyone knows they’ll drop by half in the next year anyway.
     So in the meantime the manufacturers have been working to entice customers who like the idea of a flat screen but aren’t prepared to pay five-figure prices. Sony was first out with its Wega series of flat screen sets. Of course TV manufacturers have claimed to have flat screens for years: they would place a square mask and a flat chunk of glass in front of the tube. But the lines were never straight, and of course the corners were still rounded. The new sets really do look flat. Samsung has since followed suit.
     "Conventional" Sony Trinitron sets have long been flat in the vertical direction, of course. The new ones are flat both ways, and that reduces room reflections...handy if, for some reason, you watch it with the lights on.
     But flat screen sets cost about 40% more than the conventional sets of the same size. That’s a big price to pay for a set that looks wonderful compared to the other sets in the store, but which-- trust us--will look old alongside the sets of tomorrow.

How big a set?
     There is a formula used by stores to counsel you on the size of TV set you should get. It goes roughly like this: Measure the distance you’ll be watching from, divide by 3.3, and you have the maximum picture tube size you should consider. Let’s say you watch from 3 meters (10 feet). Your picture tube should be a maximum of 91 cm, or about 36 inches...by a handy coincidence a standard TV size in North America. Get a bigger one, and the scanning lines will be too evident.
     Of course, if you’re in a country that use the PAL or SECAM television system, with 625 lines instead of NTSC’s 525, the divider would be about 2.8. Lucky you!
     But that rule of thumb will be less and less useful. It has become totally meaningless for wide screen TV sets, because, although the extra width means a longer diagonal measure, the height of the picture is not increased. Or perhaps it is...it all depends on whether you fill the screen with an anamorphic film ("squeezed" the way CinemaScope films used to be squeezed), or whether you enlarge a letterbox movie (and the scanning lines with it) to fill the wide screen.
     And enhanced resolution films, such as those from LaserDisc and DVD, are more bearable on big screens than videocassettes and broadcast TV, because the greater sharpness and the broader tonal scale helps you forget the visibility of the scanning lines.
     You might consider another criterion: how big a set can you get into your video room? Our video room (we don’t yet call it a video reference system, though that will come) now has a 36" (91 cm) Sony in it. That 120 kg set was within one centimeter of not making up the stairs and through the doorway of the room. Do some careful measuring before you order that big rear projection TV. You could wind up like the handyman who built a yacht in his basement... without worrying how he was going to get it out.

Your next TV?
     Will it be HDTV-ready? Probably. It may have a plasma screen, but talk to your stock broker first. It will possibly have a wide screen, progressive scan (as opposed to interlace, which "paints" one line in two, and then comes back and paints the others), and it may well have a line doubler: 1050 lines without special sources. Stay tuned. 

In the print issue of UHF 57, the video section includes a ready-to-adapt letter from movie fans to TV honchos and honchas who think they're pleasing us with the movies they play on their wretched networks. Use it well!