In Brief

Pipeline

Sharing: Sonicblue's new ReplayTV 4000 digital video recorders, due in November, have ethernet ports and hard drives that store up to 320 hours of video and TV clips. Use them to stream video from one unit to another on a home network, or to share programs over the Net.

$99 Studio: The Intel Play Digital Movie Creator provides everything a budding filmmaker needs: a camera that can record up to a full minute of 320-by-240-resolution video with audio (or 4 minutes of 160-by-120-resolution video with audio, or up to 1200 still photos), plus software that renders downloading and assembling clips (with dissolves and effects) a snap.

Small: Olympus says that its cigarette-pack-size D-40 Zoom digital camera is the world's smallest 4-megapixel digicam. A built-in speaker allows immediate video and audio playback, a rare feature. It also has presets to handle common lighting situations. Estimated street price is $799.

Did You Know?

In August 2000, 51 percent of U.S. households surveyed reported they had one or more PCs in their home, up 10 percentage points from December 1998.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. Internet users who actively use online banking services now number 13.6 million, an increase of 7.5 million since the end of 1999.

Source: Gomez Advisors.

Tidbyte

Paying postal: The U.S. Postal Service now offers electronic services such as Pay@Delivery, an e-version of Collect-On-Delivery (COD). It lets a buyer--say, an auction winner--deposit a payment that's electronically released to the seller upon delivery of the package. Also available are Send Money (like a Postal Money Order) and Electronic Postmarks.

Site to See

Tired of airline entertainment that's as bland as the food? Try InMotion Pictures , a service that allows you to rent DVD players and movies to watch during your flight--or flight delay. You can get one-way (if both airports have the service) in-airport rentals of a DVD player, a headset, and a movie for $10--additional movies go for $4 each.

Round-trip rentals are $10 a day and include a movie. DVD rental is $5 for each movie as long as it is returned to an InMotion airport drop box or mailed back within five days. A player's batteries last about 4 hours. Additional headsets and batteries are available. Service is currently offered in over a dozen major North American airports; more are planned.