Topic: News

Gateway, scrambling to reinvent itself in the midst of a difficult PC market, is expected to unveil four new TV models today. The new sets--two high-end plasma screens and two LCD sets--build on Gateway's successful introduction late last year of its first TV set. That model--a 42-inch plasma screen priced well below competitors--generated more sales than expected and cemented Gateway's strategy to recast itself as a purveyor of interconnected consumer electronics devices.

Manufacturers are adding Wi-Fi wireless connections to media adapters that let home-electronics equipment play music or show photos stored on personal computers. New Wi-Fi connections allow stereos to play downloaded music and TVs to show photos stored on PCs.

Watching movies or television on a conventional PC is not the most comfortable activity, but Sony are trying to make it easier to keep a PC in the living room with an updated Vaio desktop model designed for small spaces. Sony released the Vaio W series in 2002, and the PCs have enjoyed a great deal of attention from consumers in Japan and around the world. The new Vaio W comes with enhanced components and features, such as a PVR (personal video recorder) and DVD recorder.

An Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) study into the effect of music piracy estimates that 3.6 million Australians illegally burned a CD in the six months prior to the survey. The sales impact indicated that 82 per cent of these people would rarely or never buy that CD after it was burned.

Denon Electronics and Dolby Laboratories have announced the US debut of Denon's D-M71DVXP, a DVD receiver system that is the world's first audio/video product to incorporate Dolby Virtual Speaker surround sound technology. Comprised of an integrated DVD/receiver unit, two satellite speakers, and a subwoofer, the system provides a 5.1-channel surround listening experience. Key to the D-M71DVXP's picture and sound reproduction quality is the inclusion of advanced video D/A converters and digital video processing, as well as the same advanced Analog Devices Hammerhead SHARC 32-bit DSP audio processors used in Denon's acclaimed AVR-5803 and AVR-3803 audio/video receivers.

Toshiba, the top seller of DVD players in the U.S. last year, will double production capacity of DVD recorders as it prepares to introduce its first major model outside Japan.

Digital Peripheral Solutions Inc. is shipping the Que! DVD 2i, a dual format dual interface drive that features direct-to-disk recording (DDR). The Que! DVD 2i can be used as an external DVD burner. Or by utilizing its DDR capability, you can use a digital camera or camcorder to record directly to DVD media in real-time without saving images onto your hard drive. Advantages are: saved time (you don't have to transfer video from the camcorder to the hard disk then to the burner) and saved hard disk space.

Press Release: Intersil Corporation, a world leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog and wireless networking solutions, today unveiled the world's first laser diode drivers (LDDs) that integrate write strategy waveform generators for all DVD and CD formats, including DVD-RAM. Intersil's new Elantec EL691X programmable LDDs offer the flexible architecture needed to support different media, DVD or CD standards and read/write speeds in today's high performance recordable disk drives.

Press Release: AOpen, well known worldwide as a leading and award-winning manufacturer of a wide range of PC components, today announced a snappy, cutting-edge new DVD burner that not only writes DVDs at 4X speed, but also is the first DVD drive on the market that has the ability to re-write DVD media at 4X speed: the DRW4410.

More than one billion illegally copied compact discs were sold last year, in the latest sign that the beleaguered music industry is failing in its bid to wipe out piracy, according to a new industry study. The illegally copied CDs are thought to be worth $4.6bn (£2.9bn).

"This DVD will self-destruct in 48 hours." This could be the warning message on a new type of DVD to be launched next month. The disc, called an EZ-D, will be sold in an airtight envelope. Once the package is opened, the surface of the disc will start to react with the air, slowly changing colour from red to an opaque black over the next two days.

Press Release: Alera Technologies unveils its new DVD Quad Cruiser, the external DVD recorder that solves the DVD format dilemma. The new DVD Quad Cruiser is based on Dual Standard 8-in-1 DVD- and DVD+ R/RW Technology and supports all popular DVD formats. Now customers will be able to use DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and CD-ROM discs all with one product.

The legal battle between Taiwan-based MediaTek and VIA Technologies continued last Friday as MediaTek said it had requested in a US court a preliminary injunction against VIA and its client AOpen on direct and indirect import of products using VIA's CD-ROM firmware, which allegedly violates MediaTek's copyright and trade secrets.

Panasonic is bumping up the storage limit in its line of combination DVD-digital video recorders, a promise of longer recording times that could help the company hang onto its market lead. The consumer-electronics maker said Monday that its DMR-E100H device will feature a hard-drive capacity of 120GB, compared with a maximum of 80GB in earlier DVD-DVR hybrids. The device, set for release in August at a price of about $1,200 (£745), allows people to record live television shows to either the hard drive or to a DVD-RAM or DVD-R disc.

Pioneer have released an upgrade for their AO6. Details are few and far between at the moment - so watch this space - but you can download the new firmware here. Pioneer website: pioneer.co.uk.

Several high-profile acts are offering free music on the Internet. The catch? Fans need to buy a CD to get it. Moving one step beyond the trend of packaging a second CD or DVD in the jewel box, the latest CDs by such acts as Metallica, Liz Phair,50 Cent, Wilco and Kelly Clarkson invite purchasers to access bonus content online.

Press Release: The boundaries of multimedia have been extended by the introduction of NEC's MultiSpin dual format DVD writer. This drive offers users a maximum 12x DVD-ROM read speed combined with a maximum 40x CD-ROM speed. In addition this drive gives users: DVD-R: 4x, DVD+R: 4x, DVD-RW: 2x, DVD+RW: 2.4x, CD-R: 16x, CD-RW: 10x. The DVD-RW ND-1300A has 2MB cache, and a claimed access time of 140ms for DVD-ROM and 120ms for CD-ROMs.

Press Release: Lite-On, the Taiwanese manufacturer of ultra-Speed CD-RW/COMBO ReWriters, have announced their first half-height ATAPI/E-IDE 4X DVD+RW ReWriter - the LDW-401S. This DVD ReWriter is able to write DVD+R media at 4X maximum, rewrite DVD+RW media at 4X, and read DVD-ROM media at 12X maximum. It only takes around 15 minutes to backup 4.7 GB data on a certified DVD+R/DVD+RW media at 4X.

Plextor are set to launch the fastest dual format (DVD-R/RW and +R/RW) internal and external DVD-Recorders on the market. With recording speeds of 8x, the PX-708A and PX-708UF can burn a full DVD (4.7GB) in less than 10 minutes. Both drives also have fast CD capabilities: recording at 40x, re-writing at 24x and reading at 40x.

Taiwan-based Quanta Storage is set to challenge for the top place among global slim-type combo drive makers in the fourth quarter of this year, when the company expects to ship up to 500,000 combo drives per month, according to company president CC Chien.