Topic: News

The DVD+RW Alliance recently held talks with Taiwan-based manufacturers of blank optical discs about adjusting royalty charges for DVD+R and DVD+RW discs from US$0.06 to US$0.04, according to the makers.

ratDVD v0.7.1235 has been released with several changes made from the previous release. The software takes a full featured DVD movie and puts it into a highly compressed .ratDVD container format file - while preserving all the features of the original DVD. New features include direct burning, an ISO creation menu (both require Nero), multi-language support, codec quality/speed optimizations, shut down after convert and many bug fixes.

OEM quotations for 16x DVD burners have dropped to about US$40 (£23) due to intense competition for orders from leading vendors such as Pioneer, NEC, Lite-On IT, BenQ, HLDS (Hitachi-LG Data Storage) and TSST (Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology), according to Taiwan-based makers of optical disc drives (ODDs).

SolidBurn is a new self-learning feature that will ensure optimal writing conditions for any recordable DVD media. This advanced writer feature executes a series of tests on an 'unknown' DVD media to determine the optimal writing strategy.

Norwegian developer Jon Lech Johansen has issued a patch for Google's Video Viewer - and taken a sideswipe at the press for sensationalizing the event.

A 22-year-old man has become the first person in the UK to be convicted for modifying a video games console. The Xbox was fitted with a 200GB hard drive packed with games. The Cambridge graduate was sentenced at Caerphilly Magistrates Court to 140 hours of community service.

CMC Magnetics and Ritek will raise their quotations for DVD+R/-R discs by 3-5% each month this quarter, with the total price increase amounting to about 10% for the quarter, according to the two companies.

CMC Magnetics will increase its production capacity for blank DVD+R/-D discs by gradually transferring its existing CD-R capacity, and the company aims to have a monthly capacity of 80 million DVD+R/-R discs by the end of September and 90 million discs by the end of the year, according to company vice president Andria Wong.

The 7th Data Storage Expo & Conference, currently being held in Tokyo, Japan, where TDK demonstrated its four layer Blu-Ray Recordable disc (BD-R), capable of holding up to 100GB of content.

It is being reported on some news sites that some raids took place today against Internet "warez" groups. It has been confirmed so far that there was at least one arrest against a Fremont man.

In his latest review, Flash details how well DVD burners perform in an external case!.

Sony has launched arange of new DVD recorders in North America, including a hard disk drive model with HDMI, a dual deck DVD recorder and VCR, and DVD recorder with slim-line styling.

The DVD Forum organized on Monday, 27th June, its "HD-DVD JAPAN 2005" conference, in the Akihabara Convention Hall, Tokyo, Japan. Attendees had the chance to see the latest updates in the HD-DVD format industry, the HD-DVD Video format details and the developments in hardware and software.

Maxell Corporation of America is now shipping double-layer DVD+R media. This latest recordable media increases per-disc capacity on a single side to 8.5 gigabytes, supporting high-capacity backup applications. One double-layer DVD+R will hold up to four hours of DVD-quality video.

The HD-DVD Promotion Group announced that several manufacturers in the disc replication and equipment industry simultaneously confirmed the manufacturability of HD-DVD discs at high volumes.

Yesterday we speculated that HD-DVD might find its way into the Xbox 360 - today Bill Gates has confirmed that we might have been correct.

Sun Microsystems' Java technology will be built into Blu-ray DVD players, according to company officials, a development that advances the technology in the consumer electronics market for which Sun originally developed the software.

Overturning an earlier decision, an Australian federal court has ruled that two Swiftel sysadmins can be sued by the music industry for alleged music piracy.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Internet file-trading networks like Grokster and Morpheus can be held liable when their users copy music, movies and other protected works without permission.

One in three music discs sold worldwide is an illegal copy, creating a €3.8bn (£2.5bn) music pirate market.