Topic: News

Software makers are getting smarter, but no less insistent, about product activation in the face of noisy customer protests, according to software executives gathered here. Product activation, an increasingly common antipiracy technique that links a piece of software to a specific PC, was one of the main topics at SoftSummit. The two-day symposium was sponsored by Macrovision, a leading supplier of tools for enabling activation, preventing copying of CDs and handling other rights management tasks.

Elaborate Bytes has just released an update of their CloneDVD software. CloneDVD allows you to copy existing DVD titles with just a few mouse clicks. Natively, CloneDVD cannot back-up copy protected DVDs but with some help of the AnyDVD software this problem is easily solved.

DVD mastering facilities such as Cinram, Deluxe, Sonopress, Technicolor and Warner Bros' WAMO have been working for months with the Hollywood movie studios to develop and implement forensically trackable DVD technologies specifically for the upcoming awards season.

Contract manufacturing prices for 4x recordable DVD drives have fallen by 30-40% in the last three to four months, according to sources at Taiwanese optical storage drive makers. The companies optimistically project that prices will drop just 10% in the fourth quarter of 2003.

Accesstek, a Taiwan-based optical drive manufacturer, will start mass-production of an 8x DVD-Dual drive this month, according to company officials.

Philips will demonstrate its new dual-layer DVD recordable technology at the DVD+RW Alliance booth at the CEATEC 2003 exhibition in Japan. Developed by Philips Research in cooperation with MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media)/Verbatim, the technology virtually doubles data storage capacity on DVD recordable discs from 4.7 Gbyte to 8.5 Gbyte while remaining compatible with existing DVD Video players and DVD-ROM drives.

'Trusted computing', as promoted by Microsoft, IBM and others, represents a threat to users' privacy, says a prominent digital civil liberties group. The paper, which was set to be released late on Wednesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, analyses the promised features of several different trusted computing initiatives. The efforts aim to develop next-generation hardware and software that can better protect data from attackers, viruses and digital pirates.

A research paper highlighting security weaknesses in a popular internet file-sharing network has raised concerns that innocent users could in theory be wrongly accused of sharing copyrighted music.

Two interesting new products are set to be previewed at Tokyo's giant Ceatec exhibition next week. Toshiba will show a prototype blue-laser diode for optical disc systems. It is expected to hit the market around 2006. The new technology is several times more powerful than current commercial models, and has what Toshiba claims is the lowest noise of any such laser diode yet developed. Sony, likewise, look set to unveil its all-in-one PSX game device to the public next week.

Frustrated by the lack of a copy protection standard that might help the digital content business reach the mainstream, a high-profile digital media group is taking matters into its own hands. MPEG LA (MPEG Licensing Association), a group of companies that hold patent rights that are related to the MPEG 4 audio and video standard, has created its own description of what features it thinks that digital rights management (DRM) technology should include.

Toshiba has announced it will start selling the RD-Style RD-XS41, a DVD recorder that comes equipped with a 160GB hard disk. The new recorder can record up to 208 hours of video on the disk. The personal video recorder features Toshiba's 4x DVD-R-enabled DVD Multi drive that supports DVD-RAM, DVD-R, and DVD-RW formats.

The reconstituted Napster music service will be unveiled on Oct. 9, according to CD and DVD software company Roxio, its new corporate parent. Roxio has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past year to position itself in the increasingly crowded online music distribution business.

Pioneer have unveiled the DVR-S606, a high capacity optical storage system based on the Pioneer DVR-A06, the company's sixth-generation internal recordable drive. Pioneer's first external drive has a sleek industrial design and comes with standard IEEE 1394 (Firewire) and USB 2.0 ports.

Sony have introduced its VAIO RZ series desktop PCs which integrate Windows XP Media Center Edition with Sony's own Giga Pocket Engine software. Giga Pocket engine includes an MPEG2 encoder that allows users to convert old family movies on analog tape to a digital format as well as Sony's exclusive 'Click to DVD' authoring software which offers real-time encoding and variable bit capabilities.

Hollywood has implemented an anti-piracy plan banning special DVDs and videotapes for Oscar voters, angering champions of smaller movies that have taken home an increasing share of the film industry's highest honors. Mindful of the piracy that has sucked profits from the music industry, studios feared that screener copies could be used by bootleggers to mass-produce pirated DVDs and tapes.

After years of playing the nerd, the PC is hoping to land the role of the hipster in the living room--a part Microsoft desperately wants to see the computer play. As expected, Microsoft have launched Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, an updated version of its Media Center PC. Of the new features the most notable are the ability to pause and rewind radio broadcasts, edit and print photos, and rip CDs onto a hard drive--all done via the Media Center's remote control interface.

Matsushita, best known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics, have announced the development of a network protocol technology that allows users to operate consumer electronics connected to the Internet in real time from remote locations using mobile devices such as mobile phones or personal computers.

A bevy of digital-media experts, led by the founder of the group that created the widespread MPEG set of media standards, launched an international forum on Tuesday that's aimed at standardising digital media and copy protection technologies. The new Switzerland-based forum, dubbed the Digital Media Project, is aimed at ending what members say has been a technological civil war that has badly hampered the spread of digital media content and technologies.

A beta version OF Xbox Media Center (XBMC) that requires a mod chip and a hacked BIOS is being made available on the Xboxmediacenter web site.The beta software can, the authors claim, play just about all video, audio and pic formats, and play files over a network from a PC using an Extream Server application.

Following in the steps of major brands like Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP), many Taiwanese notebook makers are set to launch new wide-screen models. The products will be available by year-end, mostly in October or November, according to the companies.