Topic: News

If the music and movie industry won't lower the price of CDs and DVDs, there's only one thing to do: punters should stop buying them. Just ask the Malaysian government. This week, Deputy Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk S Subramaniam told buyers to quit spending - temporarily, at least - to force the industry to reduce prices.

Sony's Japanese ISP is adopting digital rights management technology that lets consumers play downloaded movie files from the hard drive, while reducing piracy risks. A subsidiary of the electronics maker Sony is to sell downloadable movie files that self-destruct after a given time.

A study published this week in the journal Nature offers evidence that action video games can substantially improve players' visual and perceptual acuity. The research was undertaken in the US by scientists who sought to examine the effect of action video games on perceptual and motor skills. They found, through a series of four experiments, that habitual players of action video games -- particularly first-person shooter games -- tend to perceive objects more quickly and are better than non-players at handling simultaneous tasks.

Royal Philips Electronics has introduced a highly integrated chipset, optical pickup unit (OPU), firmware and reference design for the industry's highest-speed DVD+R/RW recorders. The design incorporates new technology to minimise recording errors caused by common disk defects such as fingerprints while the software and chipset, based on Philips Nexperia streaming media technology, will allow consumers to create 4.7GB DVDs of home videos, photo albums and PC data in less than 15 minutes or half the time of existing drives, Philips said in a statement.

The California Supreme Court appeared divided Thursday on whether courts can block computer users from posting on the Internet the computer codes to copy DVD movies. The dispute centers on San Francisco computer programmer Andrew Bunner, who in 1999 posted the code to an encryption program that the movie industry says is used to unlawfully replicate thousands of movies a day. The DVD Copy Control Association, an arm of Hollywood studios, sued saying the association, not Bunner or others, controls the program called the content scramble system, or CSS, which prevents unauthorized copying of a movie sold in the DVD format.

As millions of songs figuratively fly off the shelves of Apple Computer's recently launched iTunes Music Store, analysts are looking at Amazon.com as one of the likeliest candidates to take the next crack at the retail music-download business.

AOL Time Warner's settlement with Microsoft yesterday brings the software giant a powerful ally in extending its digital media technology--part of Microsoft's plan to keep Windows the world's dominant computer operating system and expand onto new devices. The deal allows--but does not require--AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series software and future versions of the multimedia technology, including its digital rights management (DRM) tool for securing music and video files from piracy.

Sony have introduced the PSX, a follow-up to the hugely popular PlayStation 2, and touted it as a device that creates a new entertainment category. In addition to the basic features of a game console, PSX will offer a DVD recorder, a 120GB hard drive, a TV tuner, an Ethernet port, a USB 2.0 port and a Memory Stick slot.

Dvd-Recordable.org has, since its inception last year, become the premier site for DVD writing, news, reviews and help. We are the first in the world to have the new Pioneer 106 drive to test review. Our DVD guru Flash has been putting this drive through its paces so you can expect a comprehensive review here in the next few days.

If you would like to see some pictures of the new market leader from Pioneer click here.

Remember: you saw the pics and read the review here first :)

Futuremark have said in a statement that Nvidia tweaked software needed to run its new GeForce FX 5900 processor to distort performance in Futuremark's 3DMark 03 testing application. The company said drivers for the new Nvidia chip were altered to detect activity characteristic of a benchmark and adjust performance accordingly.

Philips sees the stagnant market for its semiconductors recovering to 12 percent growth, driven in part by dvd recorders which will become home entertainment hubs, its executives said today.

While Apple Computer grabs publicity for its new 99 cent music download store, Microsoft is quietly preparing for a counterattack by improving its own technology for supporting subscription music services. Services such as Pressplay, which uses Microsoft technology, have been put on the defensive with news that Apple has sold more than 2 million downloads since April 28, the day its iTunes Music Store launched. But Microsoft is betting that new security enhancements planned for later this year could make renting music, rather than owning it, more attractive to consumers.

Sonic Solutions announced today that NEC Europe, one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions, has selected Sonic MyDVD(R)4 and Sonic CinePlayer(TM) 1.5 as the DVD creation and PC playback software to power their ND family of DVD recordable drive products.

Japan-based Pioneer recently stopped ordering DVD-ROM chip sets from VIA Optical Solution (VOS), a Taiwanese optical chip designer, according to VOS parent VIA Technologies.

DivX Networks have released their much anticipated DivX encoding software. This could really make video encoding mainstream.

South Korean firm Samsung will show off a 21.3-inch TFT-LCD at a conference in the States today which it claims is a breakthrough in low temperature poly silicon (LTPS) technology. The TFT-LCD uses thin film crystallisation technology called which lets it put panels and driver circuitry on the substrate that will eventually allow sheet computers, and even "wearable" displays, a somewhat bizarre thought.

BenQ announces that in the second half of May, it will launch the world's fastest DVD+RW drive-the BenQ DW400A. The DW400A offers 4x write and 4x re-write speeds, handily surpassing the DVD burner products of its global competitors. Utilizing key components from Philips BenQ Digital Storage (PBDS) and through the efforts of BenQ's elite R&D team, the company makes the optimal use of the most advanced DVD burning technology in the DW400A.

Dell Computer, Gateway and others will release PCs today featuring new chipsets and processors from Intel that are expected to enhance the desktop experience. The 865 series of chipsets, formerly code-named Springdale, accelerates the flow of data between the processor and various computer components, leading to richer graphics and better performance from applications such as audio- or video-editing programs.

Plextor has entered the digital video market with the announcement of ConvertX, a hardware real-time digital video converter and editing device. This straightforward box captures video from a wide range of sources -- such as camcorders, DVD players, VCRs, and television -- and automatically converts the analog video into a digital format for editing, authoring, and recording on media. With support for a variety of MPEG video/audio compression standards, including the latest MPEG-4 technology, ConvertX is easily the most flexible and versatile product in the video converter market.

Digital media software vendor Roxio said yesterday that it had acquired the online music service Pressplay, which it plans to use as the foundation for a new Internet-based music service under the Napster brand.