They were just three young guys enrolled in a course called Engineering Science 340 at Simon Fraser University.

Students need to come up with an entrepreneurial idea, propose it as though they were dealing with management of a big company, make the product and do a wrap-up report and presentation on it.

Chris Mitchell, Matt Brown and Hani Mehrpouyan had an idea.

The germ of it came from friends who had tales of woe of having their laptops stolen. Bells went off in the minds of these three 20-something whiz kids.

The course was looming. “We bounced ideas off each other all summer before the course started and we kind of impressed the rest of the class by being prepared for it,” said Mitchell.

After much brainstorming, mind bending and pencil sharpening, the trio came up with a device that they hope will foil laptop thieves.

Their invention comes in two parts — one that is attached to your laptop and the other that you hold in your hand.

Step away from your laptop and the palm-held end of the device notifies you if your laptop is being moved. You then have five seconds to either disarm a siren on the other end of the device before it goes off, or let it blare out the news to the whole world that something is wrong.

The beauty of the electronic beast, according to Mitchell, is it allows the laptop owner to be mobile, which is, after all, the whole idea of laptops. There are few false alarms because of the deactivating device and the distance required between the laptop and its owner (about 15 feet) before the gizmo works.

“There are lots of systems out there that have just a thing that detects motion, so it blasts a siren just like the car alarms that no one listens to these days,” said Mitchell.

Then there are the cable locks you can use to lock up laptops, but these, too, have their drawbacks. “It really stops a person with a laptop, whose purpose is being mobile, from being mobile.”

Sixty-nine per cent of laptop thefts occur when the owners are on the road or in the airport, yet current devices don’t seem to address these circumstances.

“All these devices require you to remember to do something when you leave your laptop behind and really there is nothing that protects you when you are walking with your laptop,” said Mitchell.

“They are all primarily for when you are stationary at your desk.”

Their gadget caught the eye of judges last fall at the mammoth Telus New Ventures B.C. Competition for early-stage companies. Out of 130 entries, the trio came third, winning $20,000.

“We definitely had a good feeling,” said Mitchell. “That really gave us some recognition among local people. We really got excited and thought we could make this happen.”

Friends happily tested it. So did local companies and institutions like Simon Fraser University, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the law firm of Fasken Martineau, the Growth Works venture capital firm and the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification office.

The prevalence of laptop theft is difficult to determine. No figures are available for Canada. South of the border, companies reported average losses of $47,107 due to laptop thefts in 2002, according to a survey by the U.S. Computer Security Institute. About 63 per cent of respondents to the survey said they were victimized by laptop thefts in 2002, up from 55 per cent in 2001.

The young entrepreneurs figure their device will sell for about $95 when it becomes available for purchase about two months from now. They are currently applying for patents in Canada and the U.S. and hope to use contacts made through co-op work in companies, as part of their engineering studies, to manufacture and distribute it.

The three hope to sell a few hundred gadgets to local people and get the interest of early-stage financiers. Then they hope to go to the next level, which is to develop a chip that can be incorporated right into laptops.

So do the three have hopes of getting rich? “Hopefully, it will help people and prevent laptop thefts,” Mitchell replied diplomatically. But he has to admit that getting rich would also be nice.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

It took Peter Wilson only 20 minutes to install his Primus Internet telephone system and then make a call to his daughter.

CREDIT: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun

The package from Primus arrived in mid-afternoon on a Friday. Less than 20 minutes later I was making my first Internet phone call from my home office to my daughter in Kitsilano.

The line was clear. There were no delays, no garbled words, no pings or whooshes. In fact, if anything the connection was better than I normally get.

And not only that, but I could make the call on my ordinary office portable phone.

Unlike the bad old days of Internet telephony, no headset was required, no computer software had to be installed and, best of all, I wasn’t tethered to the computer. I could wander freely, phone in hand.

And had I wanted to sit in front of the computer and send e-mail or surf the Net I could have done so without problems.

It was, all in all, quite an impressive introduction to TalkBroadband, Canada‘s first VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone service aimed at the home user — launched last month for $19.95 a month by Toronto-based Primus Telecommunications Canada.

Not that Primus expects to be alone in this market for long. Bell and Telus and Rogers and Shaw are all expected to enter the home VOIP market soon.

If I had been a real customer, and not just testing the service for this story, I could also have taken my Telus phone number and switched it to the TalkBroadband service.

As well, if I wanted to take the VOIP box with me on a trip, I could plug it in anywhere there’s high-speed Internet and, because it would carry a Vancouver number, phone home without running up long distance charges.

And people could call me on my home number, also without extra cost.

A disadvantage, of course, is that if I were to lose my high-speed Internet connection, I’d lose my phone. As well, you can’t make 911 emergency calls on a the TalkBroadband service.

Now, while it’s true that installation might not go so quickly for those less used to connecting devices to the Internet, my experience was basically, glitch free. And I’d had no coaching from Primus. I just just the same set of instructions everyone gets.

Really, if you’ve already run an Ethernet cable from your ADSL or cable modem to your computer (or to a router for a home network) and you can read directions, then installation should be a relative snap.

So why, you might ask, would anyone want such a thing? Sure, it’s fun to play with new technology (even to tell people you’re calling them over the Internet) but what are the advantages from the aspect of the home consumer?

After all, those are the people, and not businesses, at which Primus is aiming its initial pitch. So maybe the travelling advantage isn’t that important.

Not unexpectedly, the biggest push by Primus has been to emphasize the possibility of saving money.

Not only is the initial outlay $19.95 a month for a basic phone line but you can add call answer, call waiting and call display for $29.95 a month. What Primus calls its ultimate bundle — with call answer, visual call waiting (including call display), five-way calling and call forward is $34.95 month.

Primus compares these charges with what it calls traditional phone service at $23.50, $44 and $47 a month, respectively.

TalkBroadband long-distance calling to Canada and the U.S. costs $2.95 monthly for 60 minutes; $10 for 250 minutes and unlimited for $20.

(Keep in mind that you need a high-speed Internet connection — whether broadband cable or ADSL — on top of these charges, but many households and businesses pay for these services separately from their phone service already.)

Primus Canada’s director of technology and services planning, Matt Stein, said the overwhelming majority of people who have signed up so far are residential or home office users, although there have been enquiries from smaller businesses.

“It’s going very, very well for us,” said Stein, who, for competitive reasons, didn’t give specific numbers. “I think it’s safe to say that it’s going at least as well as expected, if not substantially better.”

He said that a large percentage of customers were also opting for second and third numbers in other area codes. That means that those living in other cities, say Calgary or Toronto, can call without running up long-distance charges.

“I don’t have the hard numbers in front of me, but I would say it’s probably 40 per cent that are doing that.”

Stein said that he wouldn’t go as far to say that everyday wireline telephone service was dead.

“But I would say that telephone service, more and more, is going to be piped to your house much like the way cable TV is now. You’ll see the early adopters drifting more and more to this sort of a service because the features are easier to roll out.”

In fact, said Stein, with VOIP the old 12 button phone — zero through nine, plus star and pound — will be a thing of the past.

“If I started pressing digits now over a normal phone you’d be annoyed because you’d be getting it in your ear. But with voice over IP I can press all sorts of buttons, modifying the call flow or adding people to the call without your necessarily being inconvenienced.”

Stein said that his own office VOIP phones have about 20 buttons with ones for things like voice mail or e-mail or browsing the Internet or turning on do-not-disturb.

As for the threat of others entering the market, Stein said that Primus is prepared for that.

“I think being first into the market gives us a bit of an advantage, but I wouldn’t say we were going to rest on our laurels. the market is riddled with people who were first in and first out.

“We consider this a very key part of our business and we’re going to make investments and make effort to make sure it stays that way.”

[email protected]

– – –

TALKBROADBAND BASICS:

How much? $19.95 a month for basic service. Rises to as much as $34.95 a month with six features, including call answer, visual call waiting, five-way calling, call transfer and call forward.

What kind of Internet connection do I need? Cable or DLS or DSL Lite. Does not work on a dial-up connection.

How long does it take to install? After reading and understanding instructions, no more than half an hour.

Is it hard to use? No, you just attach a telephone to the voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) box and use it the way you did before.

What’s the voice quality? As good as, if not better than, your home phone’s today.

Can I switch my present home phone number to this service? Yes.

Do I need to have my computer running? No. All you need is a high-speed Internet connection. However, you can do anything you want to do, including surf the Net, without causing problems with your phone service.

Can I use the service on a wireless home network? Yes, but the box still has to be connected to your router with an Ethernet cable. However, you can use portable phones with the system, so you’re not tethered to your desk or computer room.

What happens if my high-speed Internet service goes down? You lose your phone line.

Can I call 911 in emergencies? No.

Can I get multiple phone lines? No, but you can have additional numbers attached to the same phone. Each number will trigger a specific ring. You can even get an alternate number with a different area code so that, for example, people could call you from Toronto without running up long distance charges. Outgoing calls, however, are charged to the main number.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

All the doors and windows are electronically alarmed and monitored, the motion detector’s red eye would blink at the drop of a hair and the smoke detectors won’t let toast burn without complaint.

The question is: with all the gadgetry and gizmos of the home security system, are you safe from burglary or the awful consequences of fire?

The answer is a resounding no, according to local security experts.

And that might come as an unpleasant surprise as more homeowners than ever are turning to monitored alarm systems for security and peace of mind.

Last March a Surrey couple fitted their home with an alarm system.

On November 5, while the husband was away on business, a fire broke out early in the morning.

By the time the alarm went off and Surrey firefighters were called, the house was engulfed in flames and the man’s wife died.

It made the news.

But what didn’t was the fact that after he moved to other premises, thieves broke in over Christmas and stole valuables including his wedding ring.

He had another alarm system installed but it malfunctioned and the installing company wouldn’t come and fix it because it was New Year’s Day.

While the system was down he was robbed again.

Alarm fatigue caused by false alarms and the reluctance of some police forces to respond to unsubstantiated calls renders the average system “virtually useless” in preventing burglaries, according to Michael Jagger, founder of Provident Security, probably the fastest growing security company in the city.

“The fundamental problem with most security alarm systems is that once the alarm goes off the response is typically non-existent,” said Jagger.

“Ninety-nine per cent of all alarms are false. In Vancouver the police will not even accept a phone call from an alarm company until a verification call has been made by the company to the client to ensure there is a problem,” he said.

And monitoring companies — often located outside the province — cannot call 911 to report an emergency but have to phone the non-emergency number before being switched through to dispatch, further delaying the response.

Such intrinsic delays benefit only thieves, who exploit the flaws in the verification-first process.

“Thieves aren’t bothered by an alarm system. They’re quite scientific in how they approach it. If they trip the alarm, the next thing they hear is the phone ringing and that’s the security company making a verification call, so they know no one’s been dispatched yet and they’ve got enough time to rob you before there’s a response,” said Jagger.

His company has astutely positioned itself to disrupt the comfort zone that false-alarm syndrome has handed criminals.

Provident, which controls its own monitoring system, guarantees to have a security guard at a client’s home or business within five minutes of an alarm’s being tripped.

“With us there’s no such thing as a false alarm. The only way to prevent our showing up is for a client to call us off,” said Jagger.

“We don’t do verification calls. We respond to everything.”

Jagger counsels residents against keeping their most precious belongings in the bedroom — the first target of burglars.

“If you put your valuables somewhere else these guys won’t have the time to find them before we arrive,” he said.

Strengthening doors, installing alarms, putting in video surveillance cameras are all useful and Jagger’s company does this but “you can spend $1 million protecting your home and still someone will still break in,” he said.

“If they’ve got time to think about it they’ll find a way. The best thing is to detect them while they are making an attempt and respond immediately,” he said.

The no-false-alarm and five-minute response strategy has won the company 3,500 residential and corporate clients including the Kerrisdale Business Association, the South Granville Business Association, Gordon Campbell’s constituency office, the Four Seasons Hotel, QLT Inc., and Angiotech Pharmaceuticals.

John Leyburn, who runs the Surrey company RobberStoppers, is as busy as Jagger thanks to an onslaught of robberies against businesses and homes that have reached such proportions that the Insurance Bureau of Canada now says they are having a measurable effect on the economy.

“People who rely on their alarm have a false sense of security. Some B.C. police departments won’t respond to home alarms unless they are accompanied by a 911 call, which leads you to wonder what people are paying for,” said Leyburn.

“Alarms don’t deter crime. They have their place and if you’re at home they will alert you to trouble. But it can take anywhere from eight to 24 minutes for the police to show up and yet the average burglary takes only three to five minutes to complete,” he said.

“What you have to do is keep thieves out. Make it so hard for them they’ll go somewhere else,” he said.

Leyburn’s company specializes in hardening commercial and residential properties against burglaries by making it physically difficult to gain access.

This has resulted in some companies taking the kinds of measure developed by the U.S. to protect its embassies in the Middle East.

In January alone Leyburn installed 93 anti-ramming barriers — 6.5-inch diameter iron pipes embedded in concrete and sticking up 40 inches — outside 16 Lower Mainland businesses that have suffered from thieves ramming stolen cars through the front doors or windows of their premises.

“Thieves are becoming very brazen. They’re not stopping at prying open doors any more. They’re stealing vehicles and driving right through. Stores have made it harder for them to get in so they’ve upped the stakes,” said Leyburn.

This latest trend in smash and grab is inflicting horrendous losses on small businesses in damage and stolen property — often compromising their ability to insure their premises — not to mention the costs to insurers and the owners of stolen cars.

“I don’t know if you could call it an epidemic but Langley alone has had 18 of these robberies so far this month,” said Leyburn.

“And they’ve been happening in Newton and other areas of Surrey too,” he said.

“Normally you’d expect to see one a week in the whole of the Lower Mainland,” said Leyburn in an interview Jan. 29.

Less than a day after the interview, thieves rammed a stolen car through the front of the Rogers Video Store on 64th Avenue and Scott Road.

It’s a tactic being used against video stores, sporting goods stores, electronic or computer equipment stores, stores that sell video games or cellular phones. Even restaurants haven’t escaped.

Leyburn can rattle of the names of some the latest victims: “Mad Dog Sports, Riverside Golf, Blockbuster Video, Rogers Video, Willow Video. Great Clips, Smart Cell, Fraser Valley Wireless, Toy Traders, New China Kitchen . . . .”

“In the New China Kitchen they were after booze,” he said.

Some customers such as Madison Properties, which controls the Langley Mall, wanted something less stark than a grim line of iron in front of their stores and have asked Leyburn to design barriers shaped liked an “M” to match their logo.

“It’ll still do the job,” he said.

At one time store owners would place concrete barriers in front of their premises in the hopes of dissuading a ramming but an SUV driven hard enough either pushes them aside or rides along with the vehicle to breach the door.

RobberStoppers has retrofitted the front doors of some Surrey schools with “lexan,” a form of plastic that can’t be broken with an ax, to keep out thieves who would smash out the glass and ignore the alarms while they stole equipment.

“We’ve helped thousands of different customers, everything from people with garden sheds to the Federal government,” he said.

Financial institutions that have lost computer equipment now have their computers enclosed in a steel cage anchored to the floor. Steel shutters and steel screens are not uncommon in business, he said.

“When I’m called out I’ll go and listen to their story and sympathize when they tell me the alarm system didn’t work they way they expected and the police didn’t show up in time and I’ll say ‘just look at your building; if you were going to break in how would you do it?’

“They see there’s no anti-pry bar on the door and the windows can be easily broken. The fact is there’s thousands of places left unsecured. all containing something worth stealing,” said Leyburn.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Time: the near future. You’re at the supermarket and your shopping cart is piled high. But there’s no need to stop at the checkout.

Every can of cat food, each bag of nacho chips, every tube of Crest, and even that single pineapple carries a readable tag that’s recorded by sensors.

Instantly, your order is scanned, totalled and — because those sensors can also read the debit card in your wallet — paid for.

When you get home, another sensor detects the arrival of the groceries while they’re still in the bags. Each item is entered in a digital household inventory.

Once you’ve Hoovered your way through a bag of nacho chips and its out of the house and no longer detected by the sensor, it’s deleted from the inventory and added to your grocery list.

Oh, and if you’re worried about getting fat on those nachos, your scale will record your weight every day and store that securely and encrypted on your computer — along with other health information like your blood pressure or blood sugar.

Then, just before you visit the doctor you can select the pertinent health stats and send them ahead.

– – –

Okay, I can see you rolling your eyes. Here we go again with that futuristic tech pie in the sky, you’re saying. And just, where, exactly, Mr. Smartypants is that home gyrocopter we were all promised back in the 1950s?

Fair enough. Tech happens, but never the way we expect. Today we have the likes of spam filters and personal digital assistants and WiFi hotspots — which might well mystify someone from the ’50s — but our garages still contain gas-guzzlers with internal combustion engines.

This time, however, there might just be a better chance of things going as predicted.

First of all, as we near the end of 2003 we are at a technological tipping point, where the advent of the WiFi home network has made something being called “the connected home” possible, even on a budget.

No longer do we have to have homes wired from top to bottom to connect our computers to our printers to our laptops to our MP3 players to our digital cameras to our home entertainment centres to our cellular phones to our DVD players.

Now, all we have to do is to set up a wireless network, based on 802.11 and Bluetooth technology, and add things as we need them. Look, Mom, no wires.

– – –

And it is indeed Mom — for our second point — who is going to make all of this happen, at least according to the Internet Home Alliance (www.internethomealliance.com, a tech future-gazing mindmeld that includes the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Sears, Sun, Cisco, Westinghouse, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Samsung, Sunbeam and Bell Canada, all of which want a piece of that tech pie in the sky, if there’s any to be had.

Said Tim Woods, the IHA’s vice-president for eco systems:

“Technology companies have for years and years developed technologies for teenage boys and for male business executives.”

All sorts of gizmos, gimmicks and, basically, toys with a tech twist have been aimed at men because, said Woods, “quite frankly, that group of people will put up with a lot of poorly executed technology because it’s ‘cool’.”

But women — who make 80 per cent of the purchase decisions in the home, added Woods — don’t want “cool,” they want tech that works intuitively and easily and benefits their family in some useful way — particularly if it improves their health or increases their safety. Otherwise, they walk away.

– – –

That’s why the IHA’s first big experiment, Mealtime, which starts this month in Boston, is centred around the home. Twenty families will have a Sears-installed Whirlpool Polara stove — which both refrigerates meals and then cooks them — installed in their kitchens, along with a Whirlpool fridge and Web tablet.

Utilizing an IBM system to integrate the technologies, the families will be able to put a meal in the stove the night before and arrange to have it kept refrigerated and then cooked at a set time the next day.

From a cell phone, the mobile tablet or a Web-enabled entertainment/command centre, the family can adjust the schedule or cancel the meal entirely.

During the day family members can get text messages on their cell phones from the oven, confirming cooking instructions. For example, “Do you still want me to have this dish ready at 7?”

In turn, the family can even call the oven from the cell phone to turn it off.

The special command centre provided by Icebox will allow family members to surf the Net for coupons, create shopping lists and even e-mail the lists to an online grocer. There’s a special kitchen-oriented printer from HP.

Oh, and the keyboard in the kitchen is washable. Just put it under the tap.

“This will open up technology to consumers in a way that makes sense as to how they live their lives — not the way we want them to live it, but the way they truly do,” said Woods. “At the end of three to four months, those moms, those dads, those kids will tell us through their actions if this deployment made sense.”

Based on interviews — with Woods, IBM’s Bill Bodin, the IHA’s chief technology officer, and Microsoft Canada‘s Greg Barber, director of the home and entertainment division — here are some other scenarios of our digital home future:

– Kitchen: As in the IHA Mealtime experiment, food preparation and storage will change.

Now that your house tracks every grocery item in it, you can ask the kitchen computer to put together recipes to suit what you have available. At the same time you’ll know that you can’t make a certain dish, because you’re out of oregano.

Also, if you have a fridge that, say, keeps a list of food as it goes in and out, you’ll always know if you left the milk out on the counter too long. The same with meat and vegetables.

Oh, and the fridge, if you remember to store the milk in the proper place, might weigh it to tell you you’re close to being out and automatically put it on the grocery list.

And all of your appliances will have their operations accessible through a Web page. If something’s gone wrong, at least you’ll know what it is, even if you can’t do anything about it.

– Health: It’s one thing to have your blood pressure recorded, but quite another to be wired up as you sleep. This could be done occasionally to check you for an extended period of time, monitoring things like respiration, heartbeat and even detect if you’re suffering from night sweats. It will detect current problems and predict those you might face in the future.

– Security: A home alarm can help protect you from break-ins and fire sensors awaken you when you’re in danger, but motion detectors might also note your location in the house. This means that when fire trucks arrive they can connect with your alarm system and find out the last location of everyone in the household. Also sensors can tell the firefighters where the fire started and how far it has spread, and where the structure of the house might have been damaged to the point of being dangerous.

– Entertainment: Your music, digital images and movies will follow you everywhere. The minute you walk into your home, devices like your PDAs, phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and video recorders will start downloading new content to the home system. If you have a new video of Susie’s soccer practice, it will be downloaded for viewing that night or later. MP3s downloaded from the Net by Johnnie that afternoon can (if you want) be loaded on to your MP3 player. And it’s likely the various songs, films and digital images you were carrying with you were also loaded into your car’s entertainment system as you drove home.

You no longer have to drag people into your home office to look at photos, say, because now they can view them anywhere, even in the kitchen.

(One thing that the IHA has discovered in its research is that while portable memory, in the form of those slide-in compact memory cards we use in cameras and PDAs, has become common, the average person doesn’t realize it can be shifted from device to device. We’ll know it soon, because that kind of memory will be as common as batteries are today.

– Home Office: It will no longer be in one spot, but will travel to where you are. Sure, you can do that already with the laptop, but even the lightweight LCD screen with your desktop computer will move with you and you can use touch to operate it without a keyboard.

As well, wherever there’s a screen, like the big one with your home entertainment system, you can call up information from the central computer or server.

How you’ll deal with those inevitable piles of paper that pile up wherever a computer resides will be your problem.

Voice Activation: As voice technology improves, commands for household appliances, computer systems and even things as mundane as lighting will be done with the voice. The cat, however, will still not pay attention to you.

Computer security and encryption: As with everything, there’s a downside to all this new technology. Every time you add a function, you create a chance for it to go wrong or be, well, subverted. You don’t want your personal health information flowing to just anyone and you don’t want the teenager next door to be able to turn your oven on and off at will. This means that security is going to have to be much better than it is today.

© Copyright  2003 Vancouver Sun

Shaw Cable customers using the company’s digital service can now use the Internet to order movies they can fast-forward, rewind or pause at any time during a 24-hour period, the communications giant announced Thursday.

As well as its new Shaw on Demand system, Shaw also announced a new decoder will enable its Lower Mainland customers to make proper use of their high-definition (HDTV) sets for the first time.

The On Demand system, which Shaw began testing in Calgary last September, was expected to be up and running by Thursday night, allowing people who subscribe to both Shaw’s digital cable and high-speed Internet service to purchase a movie like Goldmember, the latest Austin Powers flick, and have access to it digitally for 24 hours.

In that time, they are able to watch as often as they want just as they would a DVD or a videotape.

“Once you have the digital set-top (box) and Shaw high-speed Internet access, you have everything you need for Shaw On Demand. You’re in business,” said Michael D’Avella, senior vice-president of Shaw Communications.

Of Shaw’s 630,000 Lower Mainland customers, D’Avella estimates 25 per cent have digital cable service.

Customers order a film through the Shaw on Demand Web site and receive almost instantaneous access.

“It’s a great combination of technologies and we think that customers that have both will see a tremendous value added,” D’Avella said.

The biggest difference between the new Shaw on Demand system and the long-standing pay-per-view system is the greater access to a wider range of programming and the ability to use it more flexibly.

D’Avella said there are about 250 movies available on demand right now, but the library will grow and will also include TV programs.

“We will build up this library over a period of time and you’re going to have access to every movie and every television program that was ever created.” he said. “It’s total choice.”

Boxing, concerts and professional wrestling — the big-event fare that originally stoked the pay-per-view fires — will also be available.

Shaw is still working on pricing all aspects of the service — TV programs do not yet have a set price — but the average movie will cost $3.99.

“It will be typical pay-per-view pricing,” D’Avella said.

The second part of Shaw’s Thursday rollout of new services is more pricey and, for now, mostly the domain of videophiles.

TV manufacturers have been making television sets that are capable of showing HDTV and electronics stores have been selling them, but people in this part of the world, at least, have not been able to watch HDTV programs.

HDTV offers a crisper picture by using more lines of resolution. It requires the programs — primarily U.S. sporting events at this point — to be shot on special cameras.

Shaw is now offering a new box, the DCT 5100 HD, that decodes HDTV broadcasts for people with televisions with HDTV capabilities.

HDTV is still in its nascent stages, however. Right now, Lower Mainland subscribers would have access to only three U.S. channels in HDTV.

D’Avella pledges that will change.

“There will be other services available. Some of our movies are in HDTV,” he said.

Viewers looking for Canadian content in HDTV will be hard-pressed to find it, but D’Avella said that will gradually change.

“I think they realize that this is the next wave of television and viewers will gravitate towards that,” D’Avella said.

The cost is quite prohibitive, too.

“It is a high-end product, and it is really designed for high-end users,” D’Avella said.

Shaw is selling the new boxes for $700 and the least expensive TV with HDTV capabilities being sold at Future Shop in Vancouver is a 30-inch model for $1,800.

WHAT YOU NEED

Shaw customers with both a digital cable box (either DCT 2000 or DCT 5100 HD) and Shaw’s high-speed Internet access can get Shaw on Demand 24 hours a day. The cost of a package that includes both is $73.95 a month. New customers must purchase the unit for about $200.

HOW YOU DO IT

Customers log on to shawondemand.ca and look for the movie or program they want to see. They can search by a performer’s name or browse a Top 10 list. About 250 titles are currently available.

WHAT YOU GET

For $3.99, customers get digital access to a movie for 24 hours. You can watch it as often as you like and use all normal VCR functions such as pause, fast-forward and rewind.

© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun