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Sure, a mirror reference was the obvious route to go with the intro. After all, how many DVD players do you know that sport a fully mirrored front panel? Still, I'll try to keep the analogies to a minimum.

High-definition television isn't just about movies. Another killer app is making the case for an HDTV in every home: sports. Highfalutin videophile talk about the ability to see what the director intended pales beside the sports fan's visceral need to follow the ball and watch the action develop. Sports bars are where many fans get their first taste of sports on HDTV. The falling price of HDTVs has created the irresistible urge to bring the experience home. Plus, at home you can add a good surround sound system. A Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that captures the roar of the crowd only adds to the excitement.

As the Greek mathematician Zeno stated more than 2400 years ago, traveling half the distance toward one's destination, then half of the remaining half, and so on, might mean that one never gets there. The ability to re-create visual reality on a video screen improves with each generation of whichever new technology you choose—LCD, DLP, D-ILA—but they seem to be merely continuing to halve the distance remaining from the still-unrivaled performance of the decades-old cathode-ray-tube (CRT) projector. Longtime readers might think that I sound a bit like a skipping CD, but even this late in 2002, the CRT video-projection technology continues to reign as the king of video fidelity.

<I>Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer. Directed by Ron Howard. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (anamorphic). Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French). Two discs. 136 minutes. 2001. Universal 21450. PG-13. $29.98.</I>