Are You Ready for Some Digital TV?

Getting into online video is a bold move on CBS's part, USA Today reported: "Virtually every major media company is recognizing that as people begin to feed Internet signals to TV sets as well as computers, millions may want to pick news, entertainment and sports they want to see off the Web rather than from packages of conventional TV channels offered by a cable, satellite, or phone company. ... Content owners love the idea of a medium without gatekeepers who can kill shows or reject channels. 'There's going to be television out the wazoo,' CNN/US president Jonathan Klein says. He ran online video service The FeedRoom before CNN hired him last fall. 'It'll be pausable, searchable, with all the customizable on-demand advantages of the Internet. It's a future that's not very far away.'"

And you won't need a freakin' converter box.

Philadelphia's Freedom to Sue

It's hard to provide a citywide wireless Internet network when a bunch of online businesses are stiffing you on their tax bills. At least that's what Philadelphia's legal team thinks.

The city sued Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity -- and 13 other online travel companies -- claiming that they aren't forking over as much as they should in hotel occupancy taxes, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Here's more: "The suit alleges that the agencies collected and paid the city's 7 percent hotel tax based on the discounted room rates rather than the higher rates charged to consumers. In other words, the suit contends, the city thinks the services should be collecting $7 in tax on a room that a hotel customer pays $100 for. But the services contend that they are required to pay only $6.30, or 7 percent of the discounted rate of $90 that they paid the hotel. The Philadelphia lawsuit is not the first that the online services have faced. The City of Los Angeles filed a similar suit against travel services in December."

Art Sackler of the Interactive Travel Services Association told the Inquirer that the lawsuit fails to compute: "Sackler said he was 'quite bewildered' by the city's suit because the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, in a June 2004 ruling, agreed with the travel services' position."

The city's solicitor, Romulo L. Diaz Jr., said he did not know how much the companies owe the city.

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