Topic: News

Oxfam is launching a music download service to help raise money to fight poverty around the world. The charity will offer 300,000 songs to download through its Big Noise Music website, which launches this Wednesday.

The first dual-layer DVD+R recording media are set to go on sale in Japan at the end of this month and overseas in June, disc maker Mitsubishi announced.

Officials from Sony's Super Audio CD Project used this week's Home Entertainment 2004 event to provide an update on the format's progress to date. Included in the update was news of some key upcoming SACD titles slated for release later this year and some new SACD hardware announcements.

Thanks to DVD wizard Flash we have a new review of the new 8x grey discs from Datawrite. Flash seems impressed, saying of them, "what can I say but repeat myself again: these are a good 8x speed disc at a budget price and I would highly recommend them". His review is here.

Dutch company Dvdstream claims it can deliver movies to customer's TV sets digitally without having to pay additional performance rights.The company charges €12.42 a month for an unlimited supply of movies in a 768 x 576 resolution format. Movies are delivered through Palmbutler, a set-top box that streams digital media to TVs and stereos in the home. The company has currently 500 movies from all the major studios, but will eventually offer more than 2000 titles.

Millions of holidaymakers going to Greece this summer have been warned they could be jailed for buying pirated CDs after a buyer was imprisoned. A man was jailed for three months by an Athens court for buying illegal CDs in the country's first case of its kind.

Sony ahve announced that it has developed a three-wavelength optical head, which is able to record and play back discs in three formats: the standards DVD and CD formats, as well as the all new Blu-ray discs.

OEM prices of mainstream 8x8 DVD Dual (+R/-R and/or +RW/-RW) burners have slipped by more than 20% to below US$100 (£56), down from their launch price of US$120-130 (£67-£73) in the first quarter, according to Taiwanese makers of optical disc drives.

Philips and major optical disc manufacturers in Taiwan are negotiating new royalty charges for using CD-R patents owned by Philips, with a consensus not being expected till the end of June at the earliest, according to the Taiwanese makers.

Three men have been questioned by police after a quarter of a million pounds worth of fake CD's and DVD's were seized in County Durham. They were taken to Durham City police station following the raids on homes in South Stanley yesterday.

Jon Johansen's iTunes decryption software PlayFair has been given a new lease of life after Apple successfully lobbied for it to be removed firstly from Sourceforge and later from SourceForge's Indian counterpart, Sarovar.

According to recent research worldwide unit shipments of PVR products grew from 1.5 million in 2002 to 4.6 million in 2003. More than 11 million unit shipments are projected for 2004. Despite a slow start with consumers, Personal Video Recorder (PVR) products are finally making headway, according to In-Stat/MDR. Despite an almost continuous stream of rave reviews from satisfied PVR users over the past 5 years, most consumers still failed to see why they needed to hook up yet another set top box to their TV set.

The United States Congress has taken a step toward revising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has attracted extensive criticism over the past six years. A House of Representatives subcommittee have convened for the first hearing devoted to a proposal to defang the DMCA, a 1998 law that broadly restricts bypassing copy-protection technologies used in DVDs, a few music CDs and some software programs.

Thanks to DVD legend Flash we have a review of the new Ritek manufactured disc from Datawrite - the Datawrite Yellow v2. As usual, Flash hasn't been taking any prisoners but Datawrite must be doing something right for Flash concludes, "This is the disc I would personally go for in wanting a quality media at a very economical price". Nice one Datawrite. You can read the full review here.

Video game giant Nintendo, facing increased competition in the market for handheld entertainment, will have a new portable out this fall with twin color screens, sharper graphics and the feel of a PDA. The Nintendo DS — short for dual-screen — will be unveiled Tuesday morning at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo game industry gathering.

Microsoft announced today that will offer a lineup of arcade, puzzle and card games on its Xbox Live online service, targeted at casual video game players. Starting this fall, Xbox Live Arcade will offer a range of puzzle and board games and older arcade titles, with pricing roughly set at $10 apiece.

Sony yesterday unwrapped the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and pledged to put PlayStation 2 visuals in the palm of players' hands around the world by next Spring.

Set to hit the market July 1, Toshiba's RD-XS33 is a personal DVD video recorder that comes equipped with a 160GB hard disk and a DVD-RAM/-R/-RW multi drive.

A computer science professor and graduate student have been awarded a patent for a method of thwarting illegal file sharing on peer-to-peer networks by flooding the network with bogus files that look like pirated music.

DVD guru Flash has just managed to climb out from under the avalanche of correspondence he's had from readers interested in learning some of the secrets of his disc testing wizardry. Quite generously, we think, he's posted in a handy guide on the subject. You can find that review here.