Topic: News

Ooh arr, Jim lad: a huge counterfeiting business responsible for making thousands of pirate DVD copies of the latest movie blockbusters has been discovered during two raids in Bristol (UK).

Pioneer have announced today the introduction of the DVR-A07-J (white) and DVR-A07-J-BK (black), new DVD/CD internal writers that offer the fastest rewritable drives, capable of writing at up to 8x speed on DVD±R discs, and at up to 4x speed on DVD±RW discs.

The war between the audio CD follow up, DVD-Audio and the Super Audio CD (SACD) has taken another turn. Both formats promise an improved sound quality and better surround but require new equipment. SACD have in the past come in dual-sided disks with one side being the easily playable CD version of the recording. This has been to ensure the playback of the purchased items and to encourage people to try SACD. For now this has always been a strong marketing point, but it seems DVD-Audio has learnt from this.

Nintendo today announced a new portable games console with two screens and two CPUs. However, the company denied the product was intended to go head-to-head with Sony's upcoming PlayStation Portable (PSP).

The British and Irish record industries have struck a mighty blow for consumers by forcing online retailer CD Wow to stop selling CDs imported from outside the EEA. Upshot: customers will have to pay an extra £2 for each CD.

Hewlett-Packard has said that it will start selling an HP-branded version of Apple Computer's iPod this summer as part of a broad expansion into consumer electronics.

Lead Data, a second-tier producer of optical storage discs in Taiwan, will begin deliveries of blank 8x DVD-R discs to a Japanese client in February. The client is one of the world's top five optical disc brands, Lead Data said.

The FBI has confirmed that it has entered the case of the pirated "screener" videos sent to Academy Award voters. It is looking into four films -- "Something's Gotta Give," "The Last Samurai," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "thirteen." According to multiple studio sources, illegal copies of those films that have appeared on the Internet have been traced by their respective studios to screeners intended for use by character actor Carmine Caridi, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

If you were one of the fortunate few that purchased one of Sony's new DVD camcorders (DCR-DVD100/200/300) incorporating an 8mm DVD-RW drive over the past month, you might be feeling a little smug ? or a little miserable, especially if you are hunting for blank media. There's a shortage.

Press Release: CyberLink, a leading developer of digital video software and training solutions, announced the availability of its PowerDVD Linux, the CyberLink flagship DVD playback software that can be operated on Linux platform, for OEM customers.

Promoters of a new disposable-DVD technology tout the product's convenience, but environmentalists condemn the self-destructing movie disks as a step backward in developing reusable products.

Sanyo, Japan's third-largest consumer electronics maker, have said it plans to more than double its production capacity of DVD recorder pickups to 35 million units in the business year starting in April.

Authorities in the U.K. seized 1.75 million pirate DVDs in 2003, five times more than the previous year.

Among several products debuted by Pacific Digital at CES were an 8X dual-format DVD recorder and a 52X CD recorder. Mach 8 and Xtreme-8 are two 8X multi-format DVD recorders for PCs. Mach 8 is an internal IDE drive; Xtreme-8 is an external USB 2.0 drive.

Optodisc Technology, a major DVD disc manufacturer in Taiwan, will expand its monthly production capacity to between 28 million and 30 million discs in mid-2004 from 14 million discs currently.

If you use a multimedia PC as the center of your home-entertainment system, waiting minutes for your computer to start can be frustrating, since traditional electronics come on instantly at the push of a button. But a company called InterVideo has released the InstantOn PC, which allows things like TV tuners, DVD players and Internet radio services to run from the PC's memory.

Global demand for DVD recorders will soar by 205% from 4.42 million units in 2003 to 13.5 million units in 2004, according to Nobuyuki Kokubo, president of Pioneer's Taiwan subsidiary Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan.

Pioneer British electronic label Warp Records has struck a blow for computer users by making its entire back catalog available for download - unencumbered by the DRM restrictions that the music industry typically insists on.

Sony will use image-reading software from IBM in its DVD recorders and flat-panel TVs to be launched in the next business year, a newspaper has reported. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said that Sony was expected to embed a modified version of IBM's "DB2 Everyplace" personal computer database software into the products, allowing users to search and index image data at faster speeds.

Kano have introduced its ArchivMedia DVD+R double-sided media. Kano collaborated with Verbatim to develop the new media for use with Kano XFiniti optical libraries, but the company notes that it's compatible with all DVD+ recorders and players. The discs have 9.4GB capacity.