Judging by last week's European DVD Summit conference at Dublin Castle, the Digital Versatile Disk crowd looks set to become as overloaded with techno-luvvies as its forerunner, the CD-Rom digerati-hood. DVDs, which are almost certain to replace the CD, have seven times the capacity of the older medium. Listening to speakers, it seems the DVD folk also have seven times the capacity for gushing embarrassingly about their colleagues and the medium's possibilities. The audience was subjected to fawning introductions, in-jokes, first-name banter with the Elect in the crowd of 200, and a three-day, full-fledged meeting of the DVD Mutual Admiration Society.

Fortunately for us, the one thing they seemed to love more than each other was Dublin - not only did the conference bumph refer, astonishingly, to Temple Bar views of "the lovely Liffey", but they've elected to return to Dublin next year for their third annual conference.