Audio Video News

<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.

Excessive caution over copyrights could inhibit the already slow rollout of digital television, electronics industry executives told a US Senate committee last week.

Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology has been gaining ground in the home theater market over the last several months, in large part due to the implementation of Texas Instrument's native 16x9 display chip as seen in Sharp's popular XV-Z9000U projector, released late last year.

<I>Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, John Leguizamo. Directed by Baz Luhrman. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic). Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, Spanish Dolby Surround 2.0. Two discs. 128 minutes. 2001. Fox 2000870. PG-13. $29.98.</I>

HDTV fans rejoice: The magic formula needed to bring high definition video into millions of consumer homes may be near. Nine of the major audio/video consumer electronics companies announced last week that they have jointly established the basic specifications for a next generation large capacity optical disc video recording format called "Blu-ray Disc."