Topic: News

The DVD Forum has published the latest resolutions announced in the 31st meeting of its most significant organization, the Steering Committee. The specifications of the forthcoming dual-layer recordable HD DVD (HD DVD-R DL) format as well as the 6/8-X recording speed for DVD-R DL and 16x for DVD-RAM were approved.

A huge haul of fake DVDs with a street value of about £1m has been seized in a raid at a house in west London. Police said the operation in Park Lane, Southall was the largest uncovered in Western Europe and was capable of producing 50,000 fake DVDs a day.

Both the Recording Industry Ass. of America, the RIAA, and Hollywood lobby group the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the MPAA, have signed up to the Internet2 project which is exploring high-bandwidth DRM.

Sony is recalling 3.5m faulty power adaptors which were sold with the black PlayStation 2 slimline version between August and December 2004.

Although Toshiba has recently admitted that it may delay its HD DVD launch until 2006, Mark Knox, an HD DVD advisor for Toshiba, was quoted as saying that reports of the format's delay are greatly exaggerated and that a 2005 launch is still a possibility, according to Ultimate AV.

The number of pirate DVDs made in the UK rose 133% in the first half of 2005, anti-piracy campaigners have said. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) seized 386,569 UK-made fake DVDs from January to June, as UK seizures of pirate DVDs from abroad fell.

Toshiba has developed a networked DVD recorder boasting advanced features such as the ability to set up and record TV programmes via email. Toshiba's newly developed RD-XS54 Multi-Drive (DVD-Ram, DVD-R and DVD-RW) recorder, which ships with a 250GB hard disc drive, can be connected to other devices over a home Ethernet network.

Samsung claims it has developed a 16-Gbit NAND Flash memory chip. Built in a 50 nm process, the new chip sets a new record in the storage density race and could be incorporated into memory cards with up to 32 GByte capacity.

Dolby Laboratories have announced a new advancement in lossless audio technology, the Dolby TrueHD. TrueHD is designed to be paired up with the most recent developments in high-definition optical disc formats, says Dolby. Apparently, the audio is equal to that of the "highest-resolution studio masters currently available."

Microsoft plans to cooperate with Taiwanese software and hardware companies to jointly promote Taiwan's next-generation DVD format, the forward versatile disc (FVD), an alternative format to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Press Release: Verity Systems have released the latest in their range of on-demand disc duplicating system with the new CopyStack 100. Designed specially for office and home applications, the CopyStack 100 is described as the ideal solution for desktop duplication. Its compact design means that it will comfortably fit into any workstation environment and as no PC connection is required, it will happily copy up to one hundred DVDs or CDs unattended whilst the user continues to work.

Toshiba is debuting a portable LED pocket projector at the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA) 2005 in Berlin, with the company stating the projector can be used to connect to 3G multimedia handsets.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief, has taken the wraps off of two new products. One is a new iPod model - the iPod nano. Its two models priced at $199 (£110) and $249 (£137) hold 500 and 1,000 songs in memory; there's no hard drive, which helps the nano crank out 14 hours of music on a charge.

Sony's handheld game and media player experienced the strongest UK launch of any console in history, according to market analysts Chart-Track, selling about 185,000 units in the first week.

Blu-Ray drives for the Playstation 3 will cost Sony a small fortune. It turns out that at the release of the console in the first half of 2006, Sony will have to pay more than $100 (£54) per drive it builds in Playstation 3.

Mobile phones capable of transmitting data at blistering speeds have been demonstrated by NTT DoCoMo in Japan. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute!

Three west London men are due in court today after police seized more than 50,000 fake DVDs worth about £150,000.

The Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC) unveiled the world's fastest Rewritable DVD products at its IFA press conference. The new 16X DVD-RAM products are being displayed at the RAM Promotion Group "RAMPRG" exhibit #221 of Hall 1.1 at IFA.

Toshiba may not launch HD DVD products until 2006, breaking its previously stated deadline for the introduction of the technology.

Norway's best known IT export, DVD Jon, has hacked encryption coding in Microsoft's Windows Media Player, opening up content broadcast for the multimedia player to alternative devices on multiple platforms.