Audio Video News

The Home Entertainment 2006 Show June 1-4, 2006 in Los Angeles at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel, has announced a special Benefit Concert to support the Elf Foundation, a non-profit charity that creates Rooms of Magic—private entertainment theaters in children's hospitals that bring the enchantment of uplifting music and film to seriously ill children around the country. A portion of the gate from the concert will go to the Elf Foundation to support their wonderful work.

Want to own a piece of the studio that produced <I>Saving Private Ryan</I>? If you're a big player, you may soon have a chance to do so&mdash;through your broker. <A HREF="http://www.dreamworks.com/">DreamWorks SKG</A>, the entertainment combine founded by Stephen Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, wants to raise $525 million through the sale of debt securities. The infusion of cash will be used to refinance old debts as well as to fund new productions, and will be repaid by worldwide box-office receipts, and video revenues from movies already in inventory or as yet unmade.

In mid-June, <A HREF="http://www.dtstech.com/">DTS</A> announced a new version of its DTS-ES Extended Surround Format for home theater. Designated DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, the system is a "new, proprietary technology for the playback of discrete, 6.1-channel content from DVDs and CDs," according to a company press release. The innovation is said to "elevate the performance standard for playback of the DTS 6.1-channel Extended Surround format introduced in motion picture theaters last year."