(KRT) - THE GIZMO: Hot news on entertainment software fronts.

DOWNLOAD THIS: A pair of learned mathematics professors recently made headlines with a contrarian study.

They concluded that rampant music file downloading had no negative effect on purchasing decisions and nothing to do with the dramatic decrease in album sales in the last four or five years.

Using complex (and largely unfathomable) mathematical formulas, professors Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard and Koleman Strump of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill concluded, "It would take 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by one copy."

Having plowed through the 50-page summary of their study - which was not peer-reviewed - I can see how their "strictly by the numbers" findings may have reached such an odd conclusion.

Tracking 260,000-plus downloads of songs from 680 popular albums that hit the Billboard chart in the second half of 2002, the professors found that a song that was getting serious play on radio and music video channels would be downloaded most often.

Yet the rest of the album was snubbed by file-sharers. Half of a typical album's songs were never downloaded, 75 percent of the songs were downloaded no more than two times and 90 percent were downloaded fewer than 11 times.

Because these freeloaders only went one song deep, the "numbers" argue that sales of a 12- or 15-track album shouldn't have been "hurt" more than marginally.

Frankly, I had to read between the lines to get to this conclusion out of the obtuse study.

The professors suggested that music downloaders don't make the serious investment - of time, searching or bandwidth - required to download more than the hit track. Thus the math whizzes concluded that most downloaders of current popular songs are of a different species than album buyers. The downloaders are a more casual, less caring listener drawn to free music but unlikely to spend money to acquire albums.

This, in my not-so-scientific (but music-loving) estimation, is nuts! Who among us has not purchased an album for one adored track?

Vinyl and CD "singles" were essentially abandoned by record labels in the 1990s, specifically to kick up sales of higher-priced albums. And in 2002, when this study was conducted, major labels still resisted the idea of purchasable downloads of current hits, for fear this activity would eat into album sales.

No wonder that so many younger, penny-pinching music fans were drawn into file sharing, an act of "thievery" that some in Congress are pushing to make a jailable offense.

Thanks to the success of Apple's iTunes service, labels are finally seeing the error of their ways.

Now, will the learned professors admit the fatal flaw in their formulas?

FLIPPING FOR JEFFREY: A new, improved version of the dual-sided, DVD Plus disc debuts May 25 with "Jeffrey Gaines Live" on the Artemis label.

Recorded in November at Philadelphia's Theater of the Living Arts, this "flipper" disc is the first to pack a full-length DVD video concert on one side and an even longer audio CD version of the same show on the other side.

The latest version of a DVD hybrid disc measures 1.41 mm thick, very close to the 1.2 mm norm of a CD or DVD, and therefore less likely to jam up in a slot-loaded player.

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German disc developer DVD Plus International has threatened a patent-infringement action against the five major U.S. music labels that have test-marketed a similar, dual-sided DVD/CD as "DualDisc."

All parties involved envision the double-sided disc as an invention that meets consumer needs, can't be bootlegged, can't be downloaded and thus will greatly benefit the music industry.

SUPER PACKED VIDEO: Almost all movie marketers pack in extra features on their films' home DVD releases. But nobody's pushing the envelope quite like Lions Gate Home Entertainment, with its double-disc DVD release of "Step Into Liquid," hitting stores April 20 at $29.99.

This is a spectacular-looking, action-packed documentary about surfing, presented in widescreen format and surround sound.

More newsworthy, this is the first DVD to include a full-length video game for Microsoft Windows-based PCs - appropriately, "Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer," which Activision issued in PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC versions just a few months ago.

And while you've got that bonus materials disc inserted in your DVD-ROM drive, go ahead and download the Windows Media Player 9 software. You'll then be able to view a super-sparkling, high-definition version of "Step Into Liquid" encoded in the 720p format.

Microsoft is pushing WMP9 technology as a logical matchup for robust Windows XP computers and higher-resolution monitor screens.

It's even more appropriate for the new breed of "living room-friendly" Windows Media Center PCs designed to be hooked up to big-screen HDTV monitor or video projector. But be forewarned: If your XP PC doesn't have a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 or better processor, the movie won't run smoothly.

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Ten IMAX movie conversions (starting with "Coral Reef Adventure") are also coming home in this format from MacGillivray Freeman Films. AtomFilms has started to offer downloads of high def shorts at hidef.atomfilms.com.

WMP9 also is being considered for use in the high-res disc successor to the DVD.