Topic: News

If you use a multimedia PC as the center of your home-entertainment system, waiting minutes for your computer to start can be frustrating, since traditional electronics come on instantly at the push of a button. But a company called InterVideo has released the InstantOn PC, which allows things like TV tuners, DVD players and Internet radio services to run from the PC's memory.

Global demand for DVD recorders will soar by 205% from 4.42 million units in 2003 to 13.5 million units in 2004, according to Nobuyuki Kokubo, president of Pioneer's Taiwan subsidiary Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan.

Pioneer British electronic label Warp Records has struck a blow for computer users by making its entire back catalog available for download - unencumbered by the DRM restrictions that the music industry typically insists on.

Sony will use image-reading software from IBM in its DVD recorders and flat-panel TVs to be launched in the next business year, a newspaper has reported. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said that Sony was expected to embed a modified version of IBM's "DB2 Everyplace" personal computer database software into the products, allowing users to search and index image data at faster speeds.

Kano have introduced its ArchivMedia DVD+R double-sided media. Kano collaborated with Verbatim to develop the new media for use with Kano XFiniti optical libraries, but the company notes that it's compatible with all DVD+ recorders and players. The discs have 9.4GB capacity.

Lite-On IT, Taiwan's largest producer of optical disc drives, will begin to deliver 8x half-height (H/H) DVD Dual burners to Sony in February, according to the company. Sony, because of uncompetitive costs, stopped own production of DVD drives beginning with 8x models late last year.

Apacer officially launched yesterday its second generation of portable digital photo CD burners, the Disc Steno CP200. With no PC needed, the CP200 allows users to copy digital photos from a digital still camera's flash memory card to CD-R or CD-RW disc.

It's always a bit of a chore isn't it? Your burner kindly ejects that nice, shiny and newly burnt disc. You need to label it somehow so you get that marker pen and ouch! it aint so pretty anymore. Well Hewlett-Packard has come up with a simple solution: use the same laser that burned the data to make the label for the other side of the disc.

Sony have announced a free firmware upgrade for their 530 DVD recorder series which will allow the dual format burner to support 8x recording to DVD-R media and 4x recording to DVD-RW media. According to the announcement people will be able to download the new firmware from the Sony website before the end of February.

The British music industry will sue Internet song swappers unless they stop putting their music collection online for others to download, a top UK music official said on Tuesday.

Press Release: Memorex has announced the availability of 8x DVD media in both DVD+R and DVD-R formats. Consumers can now record a full two hours of video in approximately 10 minutes.

When it comes to televisions, bigger is better. But for most other gadgets, thin is in. That's the consensus of electronics manufacturers and industry analysts in Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. About 110,000 visitors are gawking at wares ranging from a flat-screen TV slightly bigger than Michael Jordan to a digital camcorder about as small as a Pez dispenser.

Film and video companies must accelerate adoption of digital media technologies or face a surge in online piracy, according to RealNetworks chairman and CEO Rob Glaser.

CyberLink have announced its flagship product, CyberLink PowerDVD, is the world's first DVD software to support Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) on the PC. Users will now be able to watch their CPRM-standard discs on their computers using PowerDVD.

The Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF), comprised of 10 leading consumer electronics companies, formalized the next steps in establishing Blu-ray Disc as the next generation optical disc format.

Newly-promoted Sony Europe boss Chris Deering has revealed that the company is planning to roll out the PlayStation Portable worldwide by the end of the year, with a global launch aimed in November 2004.

RealNetworks plans to announce a major release of its media player that has a digital music store built into it, beating perennial rival Microsoft to the punch.

Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), the industry pioneer in small form factor storage, today announced the development of a 0.85-inch hard disk drive (HDD), the first drive to deliver multi-gigabyte storage in a sub-one-inch form factor. Expected to be available in 2GB and 4GB capacities, Toshiba will start sampling the new drive in summer 2004, with mass production to begin in late 2004.

Sony have unveiled a revamped mini-disc Walkman that doubles the recording capacity of current discs and a new 1-gigabyte mini disc that records up to 45 hours of music, up from the current 80 minutes.

Press Release: Sony have announced the introduction of its first 8x DVD-R and DVD+R media for the consumer market, providing end-users with high-quality audio and video combined with a 30 percent increase in the recording and accessing speed of its previous high-speed offerings.