Using a var as agrument 2 in addChild method for writing XML

Here i parse some data from a webpage.

I want to write it to an file. It all works ok when i use some test strings in

$xml->addChild('alink', 'test');

But when i try and write in the data i actually need to use

$xml->addChild('alink', $value);

It doesnt work.

Message is :

Warning: SimpleXMLElement::addChild() [simplexmlelement.addchild]: unterminated entity reference .wvx= in C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Downloads\XAMPP_1.7.1\xampp\htdocs\PhpTest2\index.php on line 96

Complete code. Why does addChild not let me use a var there as agrument 2 in that method? And what is the word around to getting that working. Can find no explanation on php.net

    $dom = new DOMDocument(); 
@$dom->loadHtml($html);

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

    $articleList = $xpath->query("//body/div/div/div/table/tbody/tr/td/a");

    $xml = new SimpleXmlElement('<links></links>');
    $xml->addChild('dvd');

    foreach ($articleLis开发者_JAVA百科t as $art)
    {
        $value = $art->getAttribute('href');
        $xml->addChild('alink', $value);
    }

    $xml->asXML('/simplexml_create.xml');

Many Thanks, -Code