Topic: News

In an effort to encourage consumers to select the Blu-ray hardware and enjoy the high definition video titles at full resolution, Sony has reportedly decided not to down-convert the resolution of the HD signals coming out from analogue connections.

BenQ today reported an unexpected huge loss of NT$6.02 billion (US$185.2 million) for the fourth quarter of 2005 due to restructuring costs for the takeover of Siemens’ handset division.

The first indication of Apple's plans to sell full-length feature films through the iTunes Music Store surfaced on Tuesday, with a Disney Channel original movie discovered for sale through the service.

Plans are under way to produce a combination or dual format laser player that would play competing HD-DVD and Blu-ray format video-discs. The new hybrid player, known as 'Ultra-Multi', could hit the market later this year or early next year, according to industry sources at the CeBIT computer fair in Germany.

The much-ballyhooed launch this month of the next-generation HD-DVD format promises to be more of a whimper than a bang.

France is pushing through a law that would force Apple to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker's popular iPod player.

Pioneer have announced three new HDD/DVD recorders supporting the HDD add-on function, the DVR-540H (160 GB HDD), the DVR-640H (250 GB HDD), and the DVR-RT50H (combination VHS/DVD with a 160 GB built-in HDD), and a 250 GB add-on hard disk drive HDD-S250.

Online Media Technologies announced at CeBIT the release of AVS Disc Creator 2.1 freeware, the first free CD/DVD/BD-compliant burning software at the today's market of multimedia solutions.

Indian pirates may soon find themselves at the receiving end of their own weapons of mass distribution, the DVD-recordable drives, if what happened at Manipal is an indication.

Security researchers have uncovered new techniques to hide the presence of malware on infected systems. By hiding rootkit software in virtual machine environments, hackers have the potential to avoid detection by security software, boffins at Microsoft Research and the University of Michigan warn.

In the battle to attract viewers to digital TV, cable has been at a disadvantage. For both Sky, with its excellent Sky+ box, and Freeview, with models such as the Humax PVR-8000T, boast hard disk-based video recorders that work seamlessly with their services to make recording programmes very easy.

Following LG's lead, Fujitsu-Siemens has announced that it too will avoid taking sides in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war, and will support both platforms. "We don't take a stand in that fight, and actually we're very sorry that fight is happening," a Fujitsu-Siemens exec has said.

Sony is in strife after being forced to remove a poster which advised consumers to "Take a running jump" from tram and train stations across the country after transport staff expressed safety concerns.

Flash memory manufacturer Samsung has developed a 32 GB Flash drive which they are packing into a notebook to replace the harddrive.

Soon you could be running your laptop computer all day without a recharge as commercial versions of fuel cells go on sale.

Press release: A South Korean company called Kevis has launched a CCTV digital video recorder series, the KR-5300. The recorders in the range all use M-JPEG compression and support DVD-RW, CD-RW and USB. They also features triplex operation and jog-shuttle search.

NEC is demonstrating at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover a recently developed optical disc drive that can write to HD-DVD media.

BenQ have announced its first 'Trio' writer - the BW1000 - a triple writer that encompasses BD, DVD and CD format support.

InterVideo and their partner Ulead are demonstrating Blu-ray (BD) authoring, burning, content navigation and playback software at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, this weekend.

A new online music service called La la Media, aims to offer full-length CDs for $1 (60p), by letting users trade discs, in a bid to avoid legal pitfalls that face online song trading.