The new Media system described yesterday on the Chessbase web site is
very nice. It is part of this week's new Fritz upgrade. I had
difficulty loading this upgrade earlier last week, but the next time I
went on the Chessbase site with Fritz8, it upgraded automatically
without my clicking on the upgrade menu.

Today I went to try out the new media system, which allows one to see
videos online (there are videos in the latest Chessbase magazine, but
I don't have that) - see the Chessbase web site for information.

There is a new menu on Fritz8 under the tools menu for media whatever.
I clicked on that, then I went to the new room for media. When I
clicked on "free", I got a "page not found" error. It turned out that
you have to click on "games" in the left window, then choose one of
the games, which are actually meultimedia presentations by people like
Mig Greengard and Judit Polgar (whoa!... whoa!.. walk, don't run...).

The free presentations are really elementary, but show the capability
of the system, where you can see the speaker and the board in two
windows, and the speaker can highlight moves, zquares, pieces and so
on.

The board is clear and OK, but the faces are too small and dark.
Chessbase needs to ask a media expert how to illuminate a face for a
camera and how best to fill the screen with a person.

This system has a lot of promise, it will probably be used to give
demonstrations or lessons on the web.They might even consider putting
commercial CDs on the web, er even better, demos of some of the best
CDs or videos. It would be good advertisement. Free sessions could be
online comments of championship games by grandmasters.

Oh, and you have a limited number of free tries per day, which is
about four videos. Since there are only about that many free videos,
that is not a big problem. You can watch otehr videos by paying
ducats.

Henri