Topic: News

Western Europeans are being offered a new ITunes-like digital music store that is accessed through Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9 Series software. The pay-per-song service launched Thursday in the U.K. and is being branded by both the MSN Music Club and the Tiscali Music Club. The store draws from On Demand Distribution's music catalog of more than 200,000 tracks from the five major labels and a handful of independents.

In a move that may speed the death of floppy disk drives, M-Systems on Tuesday said its USB flash memory storage device can now start a PC's boot-up process.

Press Release: InterVideo have announced that its family of WinDVD video editing and Digital Video Recorder (DVR) software have been enhanced with a new Dolby Digital Consumer Encoder (DDCE). With the new two-channel Dolby Digital audio encoder you can now create DVDs with high-quality Dolby sound for a more in-depth listening experience.

Digital song-tracking company Audible Magic is striking a deal with Universal Music Group for song information, getting another leg up in its quest to be able to identify--and potentially block--music as it is transferred online. The new arrangement, expected to be announced Tuesday, will see Universal give Audible Magic a "fingerprint," or digital identification tool, for each song it releases, before albums are shipped to retailers. The company uses those fingerprints to identify copyrighted songs online or in other venues such as CD-manufacturing plants to help guard against unauthorized copying.

Press Release: 321 Studios, the software house behind the popular DVD X Copy, have announced the release of its latest breakthrough in asset protection technology: DVD X Rescue and CD X Rescue. These two new products recover and restore data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective DVDs or CDs (CD-R and CD RW.) Utilizing a DVD or CD burner, DVD X Rescue and CD X Rescue create brand new, perfectly playable DVDs or CDs from the damaged original.

In a bid to show it is living up to its WTO obligations, China has pulverized 42 million smuggled and pirated CDs and DVDs.

Hewlett-Packard have introduced the DVD Movie Writer dc3000 as one of it's 158 new products. When connected to a computer and VCR, the device transfers content from VHS or other tapes to DVDs.

Our regular contributor Flash has contacted us very excited. The reason? He's been helping to beta test a new software which he rates very highly. DVDInfoPro is a tool which combines the functionality of other DVD info tools like ADVDinfo, CDSpeed and DiscInfo into one neatly designed package. DVDInfopro gives full details of the functionalities and speeds of all types of DVD and CD drives and full information for inserted DVD media. You can find this fine piece of software with screenshots and the latest downloads here. Nb: the software is updated regularly.

HP plans to introduce a number of specialized PCs in the coming weeks, including a desktop machine aimed specifically at gamers. The new PCs will serve as a follow-on to the collection of scanners, cameras and printers that HP introduced on Monday as part of a strategy aimed at convincing consumers to stick with HP for all of their tech purchases.

The Japanese company Nintendo has temporarily halted production of its GameCube consoles until the autumn. The struggling games maker says it needs to clear its warehouses of unsold machines before it makes any more of them.

Strict antitrust sanctions that European regulators are contemplating against Microsoft could lead to a clash with US authorities and put the software giant in a quandary about whether to sell separate US and European versions of Windows.

Microsoft is to update its Xbox consoles with a new, cheaper TV output system. Focus Enhancements' FS454 chip is now shipping to Microsoft for incorporation into future consoles.

Apple announced yesterday that DVD Studio Pro 2.0, the company's professional level DVD mastering solution will start shipping August 18. DVD Studio contains several new features and has been "rebuilt from the ground up" for Mac OS X using Cocoa, according to Apple.

Taiwan-based Asustek Computer presented its own-brand 4x half-height DVD-Dual drive at a product launch event yesterday, saying it expects to ship 10-12 million optical storage drives in 2003, compared to six million units sold last year. The new DVD drive, DRW-0402P/D, uses Pioneer’s pick-up heads (PUHs) and NEC’s chip sets, and enables 4x writing speed with DVD-R discs, 2x with DVD-RW, 4x with DVD+R and 2.4x with DVD+RW. It also allows 16x writing for CD-R and 10x for CD-RW discs, according to the company.

Press Release: Thrill-seeking fans and athletes can burn their favorite songs, photos, even extreme sports stats to Memorex Action X CD-R media, the first CD-R media geared toward the extreme sports culture. Memorex brings adventure to the front of each disc with surfing, skateboarding, motocross, snowboarding and BMX biking disc prints.

The European Commission outlined for the first time on Wednesday remedies it intends to impose on US software giant Microsoft for what it called continuing abuses of its dominant market position. The EU executive said it was giving Microsoft a final chance to comment before it orders the global leader to share crucial interface information with competitors in the server market and requires it to allow fairer competition for media players.

Collaborating engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba have wrapped up the design for the inner workings of a mysterious new chip called "Cell." The new multimedia processor, touted as a "supercomputer on a chip," is well on the way to completion, IBM says. The chip could end up inside the PlayStation 3, and elements of its design will be seen in future server chips from IBM.

Sony has unveiled a plasma TV with built-in broadband networking that is linked to a Web pad-like remote control by wireless LAN technology. The intention is clearly that Sony's screens can become part of an intelligent home network.

A proposed directive heading for the European Parliament next month could have disastrous consequences for consumers and smaller businesses, while benefiting large copyright holders, according to civil liberties groups. A draft EU directive designed to protect intellectual property rights will undermine small technology companies and criminalise the blind because it gives too much power to large companies, according to a UK-based Internet policy think tank.

Game players can have their PC games automatically update themselves whenever a new patch is released - a model that is also finding increasing favour in the application and OS software market. Software developer Aardwork has launched a subscription-based patch management service for PC gamers. GameShadow identifies which games are stored on a user's PC or network and then uses the company's database to find and install available patches.