DVD creation is a hot topic at this year's Comdex (news - web sites) computer show, with new products available for everyone from the amateur to the movie industry professional. For example, Roxio announced the latest edition of its Easy CD Creator, the 5.3 DVD Edition. The market-leading product now includes a DVD authoring application called DVD Builder, which allows consumers to capture digital video, add transitions and background music, create animated menus, organize clips and photos into custom slide shows and burn to a DVD or CD that can be played in set-top DVD players. MedioStream released All-in-One, an alternative product that also enables consumers to burn audio, video and data onto DVDs. It provides access to all of its capabilities via a taskbar that appears on the computer screen once it's launched.

Both products will be made available for consumers to purchase and for original equipment manufacturers to license.

At the other end of the spectrum were several companies offering high-volume data storage arrays and other essential foundation products.

The 23rd annual Comdex information technology confab launched Sunday evening with the traditional keynote speech by Bill Gates (news - web sites), chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp. Other keynote speakers included News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin.

A conference spokeswoman said Comdex expected about 125,000 attendees, which is the same as last year but far fewer than the years before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She added that there were just more than 1,000 exhibitors this year, 400 fewer than last year and 1,300 fewer than in 2000.

This comes in the wake of Comdex producer Key3Media Group's announcement that it was considering a sale, restructuring or bankruptcy, having reported a third-quarter net loss of $315 million.