Long before constructing 108-inch flat-screen, liquid-crystal display televisions became de rigueur among electronics companies, the picture box was, indeed, just a box.

Hal Holbrook looks as if he is going to cry. The 89-year-old veteran actor may have good reason. He stares directly into the camera, delivering his lines with the gravitas he might employ when playing a u.s. president informing his nation's people they have only hours to ive before a meteor destroys the earth. He pauses melodramatically between each clause, his voicecatching - at times, even breaking - and invites you to linger on his glassy eyes, welling with tears.

Live, from the Internet ... it's Saturday Night Live (and everything else once relegated to the boob tube). The Hulu-YouTube-MySpace world of viewing video and commercials anytime on any screen is ready for primetime. Television, the living room shrine to a fading broadcast age, has become just one of countless screens in a broadband universe of smartphones, iPods and iPhones, video game consoles, laptops and cable set-top box servers. Students no longer lug tv sets up to their dorm rooms, because they can connect monitors to high-speed networks for any video imaginable.

Turning the old axiom on its head, digital signage is proving that what goes up must go higher. Walgreens' new signage system at One Times Square is the biggest video display ever built. "We took inspiration from the traditional billboard style, along with a healthy dose of influence from Blade Runner and Minority Report," says Greg Tribbe, managing director for the display's designer, the Gilmore Group.