Five major US studios are suing Samsung for developing and briefly selling at least one DVD player which they allege was not properly secured to protect the contents of encrypted DVDs.

US government officials took Sony BMG to task over its controversial use of rootkit-style copy protection at a security conference this week. If the technology proves harmful to consumers, tougher laws and regulations might be proposed, a senior Department of Homeland Security exec warned.

Looking to ease user concerns regarding its first two HD-DVD players, Toshiba said Monday that the players will support interactive functions present on the first-generation of HD-DVD discs.

With the European Union expected to hand down a ruling over anti-dumping charges against optical-disc makers in Taiwan and China, this April, CMC Magnetics, Ritek and Prodisc Technology are setting up production bases outside Taiwan.

An unfixed bug in the USB driver of Windows XP Service Pack 2 can cause a laptop's battery to drain faster when there is a device connected to its USB port, Microsoft has confirmed.

With Plextor recently announcing its PX-760A 18x DVD burner (DVD+/-R/RW CD-R/RW), Lite-On IT stated it also plans to volume produce 18x DVD burners in the third quarter of this year, though BenQ currently does not have any plans for the segment at the moment, according to executives from the two companies.

Growth in DVD spending is expected to continue
Booming DVD sales in Europe have made it the most popular form of packaged entertainment, beating video and games.

Sony will definitely launch its new PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console this year, though the company still has not decided on a launch date nor pricing for the console, said Tetsuhiko Yasuda, managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Asia.

Nvidia have announced that the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 440 card, the company's four-display professional graphics solution, is now available as a configuration option in the HP xw6200 Workstation.

Japanese burner maker Logitec have announced its first external optical drive that burns DVD-RAM at 12x, DVD+ or -DL at 8x and DVD+R/-R at 16x.

There is confusion still over unresolved copy protection issues and questions about when the new high definition DVDs will work on HD DVD.

A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department sting last week resulted in the arrests of nine people involved in the illegal sale of the DVDs on Metro Rail's Blue and Red lines -trains which run from Long Beach to Universal Studios.

Gun smugglers in the States have found a novel way to traffic their deadly goods - by packing the weapons into the spare space found in the cases of humble DVD players.

Security firm F-Secure confirmed yestarday the presence of a rootkit on two german DVDs.The rootkit comes from a new copy protection scheme that needs to be installed into a Windows PC to play two german video-DVDs.

The Motion Picture Ass. of America have filed seven lawsuits in Los Angeles federal court against online auctioneers in four US states who they allege have been selling counterfeit DVDs of popular movies such as "Batman Begins" and "Million Dollar Baby."

Microsoft and its hardware partners will continue to develop new digital media devices aimed at challenging the dominance of Apple's iPod music player, according to chairman Bill Gates.

India-based Moser Baer India (MBI), a leading global manufacturer of optical discs, last week announced halting capacity expansion for CD-R and DVD+R/-R discs, a move that will avoid a potential oversupply of DVD+R/-R discs.

Reports are emerging of a dubious practice being employed Stateside by online DVD rental service Netflix. It would appear that under their operating policy customers paying a fixed monthly subscription that become identified as 'heavy users' typically will have their rental requests delayed and put at the back of the queue.

Pirate DVD shops might not normally be considered outposts of free expression, but they are among the many gaps in the great wall of Chinese propaganda, which is being breached by a motley crew of bloggers, copyright dodgers and curious consumers.

A Channel 4 film directed by Michael Winterbottom is to be distributed in cinemas, on DVD and online simultaneously for the first time.