I am a computer geek that is pretty good with predicting trends.

Don't give up on USB yet.  I have noticed a ton of new USB 2.0
(480Mb/sec) devices that are at least as fast as Firewire (400Mb/sec).
In my humble opinion, most notebooks will have USB 2.0+ in the future
instead of Firewire.  I base this opinion of two things:  the fact that
USB is cheaper for manufacturers and Firewire (Apple product) is
slightly different than the IEEE standard.  The standards difference is
minimal but I have read that this sometimes causes some functionality to
disappear when the device is installed on a Windows machine.

Off the topic...  Take this idea in a home direction.  PC with TV card,
DVD drive; 5.1 surround; video output to a standard computer projector;
sound output to a standard surround amp and speakers.  I have this set
up in my house.  I don't have to buy a separate DVD player, Tivo digital
recorder, or large screen TV.  I also don't have a ton of living room
space devoted to it.  I can record TV, VHS to my hard drive.  I don't
have a way to copy DVD to VHS yet, but I may not want to.  I have the
projector displaying on a pull down screen that covers two windows.
When I am not watching TV, I can look out the window.  Being that I work
from home, this is goodness.  This also doesn't leave any walls
conspicuously barren.

Dana
'85 Westy with laptop DVD theater installed
dshowers@cpds.net

Better would be a 1Gz P4 processor.

Also USB will always be somewhat limiting.

Just can't get a lot of data thru that pipeline.

A better approach might be Firewire.