LATEST ADDITIONS

<I>Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey. Directed by Richard Rush. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (anamorphic). Dolby Digital Surround EX, DTS-ES, THX. Two discs. 130 minutes. 1979. Anchor Bay Entertainment 04526. R. $34.98.</I>

The four letters D, I, V, and X will trigger memories of horror for most DVD and home theater fans. The ill-fated pay-per-view DVD format from Circuit City died an ugly death a couple of years back. However, the acronym has been reborn as DivX, a video compression technology from <A HREF="http://www.divxnetworks.com">DivXNetworks</A> that is seeing the kind of popularity its former namesake only dreamt of.

Looking for a great home theater preamp that won't break the bank? Atlantic Technology's new A/V preamplifier/processor will perform flawlessly with "every consumer surround-sound processing format currently known to man," according to a recent announcement. It will also do so a price far below some of its big-ticket competitors. The P-2000 carries a suggested retail price of only $1699.

Ten HD-ready and two HDTV rear-projection televisions lock heads in a battle to the death.

Hi, my name is Mike, and I have a problem. My problem is that I open my big mouth during editorial meetings. Sure, I have some good ideas (like the van-speakers story, which I mentioned as a joke yet everybody loved it—you people are weird). But, for every good idea, there's a multitude of crappy ones. It's a statistical-average thing. Unfortunately, the ideas that editor Maureen Jenson seems to like are the big, time-consuming, and labor-intensive ones. Take this Face Off, for example. We had a couple of sets already. I figured I'd invite other manufacturers, get one or two more sets, and have a good, manageable comparison. It's just my luck that nearly every manufacturer decided to participate.