Topic: News

The encryption on high-definition DVDs has been bypassed, the consortium backing the copy protection system on discs has confirmed.

Video-sharing site YouTube has said it will start paying users for their content, the company's cofounder said in a video displayed on the site.

The Wii has allegedly been hacked by the 'Ninja team' who claim to be offering a modchip for sale from the 1st of February.

It's still early on to tell whether this is actually true, but HD DVD cracker muslix64 is back, and with the help of another anti-DRM cracker, Janvitos, claims to have also broken the Blu-ray's implementation of AACS.

In view of Toshiba's recent launch of an inexpensive HD DVD player with a retail price of US$599, Taiwan optical disc drive makers think an entry-level HD DVD player priced at up to US$500 (£253) may be available in the second half of 2007.

Lite-On IT added two new versions of its first 20x DVD burner, the LH-20A1S (SATA) and the external LH-20A1PU.

The claims of Sealand, a former military platform off the coast of Sussex, to nationhood are complete nonsense, a leading international and maritime law expert says. Piratebay, the Swedish file-sharing links site, says it is in negotiations to buy the platform.

Microsoft has announced that at the same time as retail availability of Vista, it will be offering 100% electronic download of the DVD as well.

Microsoft's HD DVD peripheral landed in 92,000 US homes since it was launched in November, but comparing its success to that of Sony's competing Blu-Ray is tough. Researchers at the NPD group tallied all sales for the add-on over the last two months of 2006.

The HD-DVD has been cracked, and high definition content is now being distributed freely over BitTorrent. We all knew this would happen sooner or later, looks it was “sooner”. The first HD-DVD to be uploaded to BitTorrent is Serenity, the Firefly movie.

In a run up to the next generation console war between Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Bill Gates said that HD-DVD and Blu-ray are not important, since they represent the last generation of optical media anyway. While many people overlooked the statement, that's pretty much right on target.

The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most popular websites for the illegal downloading of films through filesharing, has said it wanted to buy its own "island" in a bid to avoid copyright laws.

It seems that, contrary to Sony's stated aims for the nascent format, porn is indeed already available on Blu-ray discs. At least in Japan, the adult film studio “Glayz” already produces and distributes content on Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and UMD.

It is no secret that the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations track down alleged pirates by uploading fake torrents. Up until now it was always unclear where those files came from, and how to identify them.

Warner Home Video has made a splash at CES with its announcement of the company's Total High-Def disc, a disc that will put an HD DVD-formatted movie on one side and a Blu-ray version on the other.

ADS have unveiled a usb-memory-stick-style gadget that contains a hardware-accelerated video converter for Windows which it claims creates MP4 (H.264) video footage up to 15 times faster than a computer - and be the first of its kind available.

Redford founded the Sundance festival in 1981
The Sundance Film Festival has struck a deal with Apple to allow festival films to be sold through its iTunes store.

Experts at Princeton University have said that the recent release of software that can be used to decode encrypted HD DVD and Blu-ray movies is the first step toward making the encryption standard used by these next-generation video players obsolete.

Ritek is showcasing HD DVD-R (write once) and Blu-ray Disc (BD) blank discs at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).