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Sirius Radio has added an entertainment industry heavyweight to its board of directors.

On October 2, the satellite radio service announced that DVD pioneer Warren N. Lieberfarb had joined its board. Widely considered the "architect of the DVD," Lieberfarb is the former head of Warner Home Video, which he ran for two decades. He was intensely involved in developing the DVD format, and led the fight to defeat Circuit City's discredited DivX pay-per-view system.

The emergence of the single-format DVD was largely his work. He also pushed the home video industry to adopt an affordable pricing structure for DVD, which helped make the format the most successful in the history of consumer electronics. The Financial Times called Lieberfarb "Warner's Man of Steel," and also wrote, "Without his commitment and sharp elbows, the market would probably still be waiting for the DVD explosion. At best, digitally recorded films would be available in a muddle of incompatible formats."

Wired magazine selected him as "one of the 20 people reinventing Hollywood," and in 2001, Entertainment Weekly named Lieberfarb one of the "101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment." In 1999, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) presented him with an Emmy Award for the development of DVD technology. Last year, Lieberfarb was named the first recipient of the Wharton/Infosys "Technology Change Agent" award for his pioneering efforts in developing and bringing the DVD to market.

Prior to joining Warner Home Video, Lieberfarb worked at Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox, where his emphasis was pay television, home video and cable. He has rarely been wrong in his predictions about what consumers want in entertainment, or how they want it delivered. His presence on the Sirius board is seen as a strong indicator that satellite radio has a bright future. "This company has already, in my opinion, revolutionized radio by bringing it into the digital era, just as DVD did for home video," Lieberfarb said.

"Warren brings not only extensive entertainment industry experience, but also exceptional insights to our industry," said Joseph P. Clayton, president and CEO of Sirius. "His expertise will be tremendously valuable as we continue to expand, and as we develop new entertainment and information offerings for our growing base of subscribers."