A federal judge is handling very deliberately a request by movie ...

of three scheduled for a preliminary-injunction hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco -- Judge Marilyn Patel set aside May 7 and 8 to resume. There’s no guarantee that the closing arguments can get done by then, both sides said. In testimony this week, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser showed a prototype livingroom player, code-named “Facet,” to use the RealDVD technology. When Patel issued a temporary restraining order against RealDVD in October, Real had announced plans only to start selling imminently $30 downloads for copying discs to PCs. A Facet owner could copy hundreds of DVDs to the device’s hard drive and easily choose and switch among the movies and TV shows, Glaser testified. He said Real foresaw the Facet, at about $300 retail, as a mass-market alternative to the high-end Kaleidescape media jukebox and a possible source of licensing revenue from original equipment manufacturers of similar boxes. Glaser said Real had held discussions with companies including TiVo, LG and Sharp. He said Real would do what it could to discourage RealDVD users from copying discs they don’t own. He conceded that it couldn’t prevent that without technical cooperation from the studios. Patel has twice closed the hearing, over protests by CNet, for testimony about CSS encryption from the DVD Copy Control Association. It’s vigorously contended that the information qualifies as trade secrets though the protection was broken years ago. The public version of papers filed in the case are replete with blackouts to protect technical information that the association, the studios or Real considers confidential.