Topic: News

A far-reaching project for stopping copyrighted song-swapping could raise serious privacy objections, not least from the ISPs who will be expected to implement it. The ambitious project is nearing completion though technical problems have forced its developers to limit their plans.

Big Brother technology that already allows people to be tracked through their mobile phones could soon be installed in household objects, tipping off police if they are stolen. Televisions, DVD players and computers could be fitted with microchips identifying their location and their normal proximity to each other, automatically alerting police if they change unexpectedly, according to an industry boffin.

Maxell has announced that it will increase prices on all of its CD-R media products effective immediately. The company added that the amount of the increase was still under consideration, but expects it to be from 10% to 15%.

Have you noticed the strange markings that have started to appear during some recent movie screenings? The dots, which may appear in a 'T' shape on only one or two frames are barely visible to the naked eye but are most likely used by MPAA to track the source of illegal movie copies spread on the internet.

News Corp chairman and media mogul Rupert Murdoch says the satellite television industry is likely to offer personal video recorders for free or at very low costs within a year, as it fights to retain subscribers and win customers from the cable industry.

Sharp has announced the introduction into the Japanese market of two new combination hard disk/DVD recorders, the DV-HR350 and DV-HR300, which are set to be the industry's thinnest recorders at just 59 mm thick.

About a quarter of men in Britain would rather spend the evening alone with a new gadget than with their wife or partner, a new survey claims.
The Stuff magazine-commissioned survey of 952 people, conducted by NOP, showed that one in four men have avoided the marital bed in favour of playing computer games, Web surfing or late-night DVD watching. "The revelation... confirms many wives are now widowed by a gadget rather than by a love rival," the men's magazine concluded.

Verbatim have announced the industry's first 32x Ultra Speed + CD-RW discs. With the ability to write and rewrite at speeds of up to 4.8MB/sec -- the industry's highest rewriting speed -- users can burn a 10MB file in about 2 seconds.

Sony has set a new course for its Memory Stick memory card with the announcement in the last two weeks of several products that target mobile video applications. The new devices make it possible to record hours of television or other video onto a Memory Stick and then watch it on the move.

Say good-bye to traditional notions of a PC company. Times have changed and PC vendors will increasingly move away from selling just computers and peripherals to also offering consumer electronics products, including television sets, according to the chief executive at one of the world's largest semiconductor makers. The result is a home computing environment that will be more tightly tied into areas, such as entertainment, that were once considered the domain of consumer electronics companies.

Barely 24 hours after suing alleged file swappers around the United States, the recording industry has settled its first, agreeing to drop its case against a 12-year-old New York girl in exchange for $2,000 (£1,257).

If Disney gets its wish, an experimental type of DVD will begin flying off store shelves today -- and self-destructing and thursday. Disney movies on disposable DVDs are set to arrive in convenience stores, pharmacies and other outlets in a four-city test of whether Americans will pick up a limited-life DVD rather than dropping by a video rental store.

Adding to the mainstream adoption of recordable DVD, Panasonic have announced that HEURIS has introduced DVD ConnexIT for Apple OSX and QuickTime -- the first QuickTime plug-in specifically developed for A/V and PC convergence between Panasonic DVD-RAM products. Now making movies on DVD is possible without any cables or wiring, and Apple users can simply play or even edit their recorded movies in one easy step.

Pioneer have announced a new DVD and CD writer for people who don't want to take their PCs apart. The external DVD/CD writer, the DVR-S606, is Pioneers first external drive and comes in response to consumer demand that DVD writers should handle various formats in order to reduce confusion in the marketplace. The drive supports discs using DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW formats. It works with both IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and USB 2.0 ports.

It is believed that the RIAA is considering an "amnesty plan" for alleged P2P users. The plan would let P2P pirates off the hook if they change their habits. RIAA has refused officially to comment the alleged plan, but according to various news sites, P2P users who have been "caught" by RIAA would be able to get off hook if they destroy all the copied material they own, including copies on harddrives, CDs, etc, agree not to participate in illegal file sharing ever again and to submit a photocopy of their ID to RIAA. Users who wish to apply for the amnesty would have to sign a notarized contract.

A bug has been discovered in versions of the popular CD and DVD authoring software Nero. Versions 6.0.0.15 & 5.5.10.50 cannot over-burn the 700MB limit on CD-recordable discs regardless of the 'Enable overburn' setting in the expert features.
Until this bug is corrected, use Nero 5.5.10.42 or Nero 6.0.0.11 if you need to write an oversized disc. You can download those versions here.

A new British film entitled "This is Not a Love Song," by Simon Beaufoy, writer of the movie "Full Monty," has been released on the Internet. No this is not another case of piracy. In fact, "This is Not a Love Song" is the first movie to be launched via the Internet. The movie is a low-budget thriller that was shot in just two weeks for a budget of around £500,000.

The Japanese Logitec company has announced a new dual format DVD-recorder that supports 8x DVD+R recording. Besides that the drive, model LDR-X840AK, supports 4x recording to DVD+RW and DVD-R media and 2x recording to DVD-RW media.

Until now, the music industry was simply trying to put off home users from sharing music and sending out subpoena’s threatening to sue. Now, three men from Sydney face jail after pleading guilty last week to breaking copyright laws. The Australian recording industry believes this to be the world's first criminal prosecution for online music piracy; at least against users running off a home connection.

One of the most popular DVD-2-DVDR tools, DVD2One, has been updated. The latest version, DVD2One v1.3.0, introduces a new feature called "join mode" that allows, as its name suggest, joining multiple DVDs (or parts of DVDs) into a single DVDR compilation.