Workplace smoking bans may be good for workers' health, but could open the back door to sneaky hackers.

Sharp has developed a Blu-ray Disc recorder that cuts costs by doing away with the tuner. Instead, the BD-HP1 will use the tuner present in a television set to record TV programs, the company said on Wednesday.

MySpace will use software to monitor videos posted to the site in a bid to block unauthorised use of copyrighted content. The social networking giant will use technology to analyse videos' audio tracks to identify infringing posts.

The well-known BBC consumer affairs show Watchdog has recently looked into a number of complaints about hardware faults on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, particularly complaints that it often packs up shortly after the warrantee runs out.

Pioneer today officially announced the availability of two new internal 18x DVD writers. The DVR-112 multi-format drive and, the DVR-112D dual-format drive, integrate a wide range of technologies to optimise DVD writing.

New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) on February 5 issued a final ruling in favor of Royal Philips Electronics in the company's patent infringement case against Taiwan-based optical disc makers Gigastorage and Princo.

Microsoft has upgraded new Xbox 360 consoles with a quieter DVD drive. Apparently the new BenQ drives - the BenQ VAD6038 - is not only quieter but also subtly improves load times and streaming.

The spiritual leader of the Apple cult, Steve Jobs, has called on the four major record companies to dump DRM and start selling music without copy protection.

Experts are predicting a siugnificant price cut for PlayStation 3 after new figures revealed that the console is being heavily outsold 4-to-1 by Nintendo Wii.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has urged Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to intercede in a computer piracy case against a Russian headteacher.

Windows-using iPod owners have been advised to wait for the next release of iTunes jukebox software before upgrading to Windows Vista if they want to avoid "compatibility issues" between their favoured player and the new operating system.

Alex Ionescu, co-developer of the Windows API clone ReactOS, says he has found a way to crack digital rights management (DRM) in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. If so, it would be possible to read the high-resolution content of media protected by DRM without encryption.

Defending the high price for Sony's latest games console UK Sony boss Ray Maguire has said that the UK will be getting just 220,000 60GB consoles for launch on 23 March out of a possible 1 million shipping to Europe.

Alert cargo staff in Malaysia have discovered that some huge PVC pipes have been used by DVD smugglers as containers to store pirated optical discs.

Pioneer have confirmed the availability of its new 'BDC-202' Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive which has BD-ROM compatibility and includes read support for single and dual-layer Blu-ray disc formats together with high-speed read/write compatibility with a range of DVD and CD medias.

The reported breaking of HD DVD's AACS (advanced access content system) encryption at the end of 2006, followed weeks later by a similar circumvention of the equivalent protection system used in Blu-ray Discs (BD) by anonymous programmer "muslix64" together with the current licensing issues associated with dual-format devices such as LG Electronics' Super Multi Blue products, may cause a delay in the establishment of a global blue-laser standard, either Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD or both, according to Taiwan optical disc drive (ODD) makers.

A UK supermarket giant is selling a DVD player for less than the price of the discs you play on it.

A PSP haceker going by the name of Noobz has released a new downgrader for PSP that can wind back v3.03 PSPs to v1.5.

The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.