Topic: News

US federal agents may gain the power to pursue people swapping copyright material online.

BenQ, a major optical storage drive maker in Taiwan, recently started shipping a 4x half-height DVD+RW drive and expects to launch 8x half-height DVD+RW and DVD-Dual drives in the second half of this year, with volume production of the 8x DVD+RW drive expected to start in September, the company said.

A BUS firm is installing DVD recorders linked to cameras on its fleet to capture thugs and vandals on film.

TDK is now shipping its Multi-format DVD Burner capable of 4x writing for both DVD+R and DVD-R formats.

DVD movie rentals for the first time surpassed that of videocassettes last week, making DVD the most popular home video format in the United States.

The High Court of Hong Kong decided that a Hong Kong-based mail order company Lik-Sang to stop immediately selling devices that could be used to make backups of Nintendo Game Boy's console games.

The most dramatic thing is probably the proposed rate for the media levy -- the levy (or stealth tax or whatever you want to call it) would add a decent SEK31 (appx. £2.40) to each blank DVD-RW or DVD+RW disc despite its existing retail price. The proposed levy for recordable discs (whether a CD-R or DVD-R or other digital medium) is SEK0.0025 per megabyte and SEK0.007 for re-recordable discs (such as DVD-RW, CD-RW or DVD+RW). This would make the additional levy on a typical CD-R about £0.13-£0.14 and £0.88-£0.90 for a DVD-R!

Nero, leaders in digital media technology, have announced that Nero Express 5.5, the highly successful, easy-to-use DVD/CD application software, is to be included with all U.S. retail versions of the latest Pioneer DVR-A06 DVD/CD writer.

A computer memory chip based on carbon nanotubes has passed a manufacturing milestone, according to the US company developing the technology. The prototype chip would store information using hundreds of billions of nanotubes with a theoretical capacity of 10 gigabits of data, says Nantero, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Press Release: CyberLink, a leading developer of digital video software and e-learning solutions, announced today the release of PowerDVD 5, a new version that is built upon the company's technological strength and market leadership to deliver the ultimate DVD entertainment on the PC. "In general, consumer electronics delivers better video and audio quality than the PCs," stated Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp. "With our new technologies, PowerDVD 5 significantly improves video and audio quality, enabling a rich home theater experience on the multimedia PC that is comparable to any home theater device."

As sales of recordable DVD products continue to skyrocket, feature-rich, stand-alone consumer recorders based on the DVD-RAM format are leading the way, having captured 70.2 percent of the U.S. DVD consumer recorder market in the first three months of 2003, according to leading market information company The NPD Group.

In a survey released today by 321 Studios, makers of DVD copying software, 76 percent of respondents stated that they would not be interested in renting a self-destructing DVD. This survey was conducted in response to the recent reports that Flexplay and The Walt Disney Co. home video unit, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, will launch a DVD rental program in the US this August that makes DVDs unreadable after 48 hours.

Mitsui Chemicals, Japan's fourth biggest chemical maker, have said it had decided to withdraw from the recordable disc business and focus its resouces on optical filters and other growth areas. Mitsui said in a statement it had sold its subsidiary Mitsui Advanced Media Inc -- a maker of CD-R and DVD-R recordable optical discs -- to an unlisted Italian company.

Sony Music have said it would begin selling music downloads in Britain for its top artists, making it the last among the major recording labels to join Europe's music download bandwagon. But the long-awaited announcement comes with a hitch. Sony, home to such artists as Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, will not sell song downloads to European Internet users outside the UK.

Taiwan-based Ritek has maintained the number one position in the recordable DVD disc market since the second half of last year, seizing a global market share of about 30%, according to the company.

Hackers working on breaking the copy protection systems employed by Nintendo's GameCube have caused a stir by posting binary images of several Cube games to the Internet - but their claims are more than slightly exaggerated.

Iomega is taking multiformat DVD burning a step further, unveiling this week the Super DVD Drive, which combines all three rewritable DVD formats into one drive. The internal drive can write to DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM and is slated for release in August. An external USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 model is scheduled to ship in September.

Prices for both half-height CD-RW and combo drives have dropped sharply since early 2003. Contract manufacturing prices for 52x half-height CD-RW drives have dropped to US$35-40 (£21-24) early this quarter from US$50-60 (£30-36) in the first quarter. The lowest contract price in June is reportedly at US$28 (£17), down by about 50% compared to early 2003, sources said.

It’s all about the AAC these days, mostly thanks to the hype that Apple iTunes have created. Poikosoft has announced an updated version 5.1.0.4 of their powerful audio CD ripper/encoder/burner with AAC support. Besides being one of the oldest and most popular audio CD rippers, the Easy CD-DA Extractor is best known for it’s powerful anti-copy protection routines.

Recently the RareWares published an open AAC / MP4 audio encoder listening test and now the results are ready for you to review.