Topic: News

Microsoft does not expect an immediate return on its outlay for its upcoming "Zune" media player, predicting a three- to five-year investment period for the new device.

Optodisc Technology and Prodisc Technology, both second-tier producers of optical discs, are facing financial pressures and are eagerly competing for orders of 8x DVD+R/-R discs by lowering OEM quotations from US$0.15 to US$0.12 per disc, according to industry sources.

European Commission competition officials are looking into the licensing strategies behind the two rival next-generation DVD formats.

Samsung said it will introduce a 4GB solid state drive which will act as a high speed NAND flash cache for machines running Microsoft Vista. The device is compatible with Windows Ready Boost which, Samsung said, is a feature of the OS that uses flash memory to improve the speed of systems.

Huang Jen-Hsun Huang has publicly backed Sony's Blu-ray technology and its use in the PS3. Then he would, given that NVIDIA are supplying graphics processors for Sony, having jumped from Microsoft's Xbox.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group have become the latest division of a major Hollywood studio to offer television shows, including the hit sitcom "Friends," for sale on Apple's iTunes Web site.

Roxio, part of Sonic Solutions, have announced the availability of Toast 7, which is the first software to offer Blu-ray Disc (BD) support for the Mac.

A wealthy american software developer is set to make a stand against the MPAA and it's controversial use of the legal sytem by going to court over it's claims that he downloaded a film from bittorrent.

Microsoft has confirmed it is developing a "Zune" portable music player which analysts believe will compete directly with Apple's iPod.

Moser Baer has announced the launch of HD DVD-R (high-density digital video recordable discs). The HD DVD-R has a capacity of 15 GB - more than three times the data storage capacity of a standard DVD.

Rumour has it that DVD cicerone Flash is going through a mid-life crisis and has branched out into the world of fashion. He has currently been spotted on dshirt.co.uk, working as a moderator for their newly thriving t-shirt design community. Fans of Flash, and we know there are many many of you out there, can only be impressed.

Nero has announced that the ShowTime application of its Nero 7 digital media software suite received Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) certification.

Yahoo! Music has started to unofficially offer an MP3 version of the new Jessica Simpson song "A Public Affair" without DRM constrains, for $1.99 (£1.08).

ComicBase, the leading comic book collection management software, is the first commercial PC product available in the new Blu-ray format.

SanDisk has introduced the Extreme IV CompactFlash digital film card for professional photographers. The company claims it is the highest performance card in the world, with 40 MB per second minimum read and write speeds (266X).

Health officials in sunny Queensland are prosecuting the Sensual Pleasures adult shop for selling a substance said to enhance sexual climax under the rather unraunchy label of DVD cleaner.

Fed up with continued piracy of DVDs and software, a Chinese city is offering retailers the chance to swap fake discs for real ones.

Sky is the latest company to get on the convergence wagon by offering broadband internet access alongside other comms services.

Sony has released its BWU-100A Blu-ray disc burner, a multi-format disc drive that supports recording to Blu-ray, DVD-R, DVD+R and CD-R/RW discs.

With the retail big boys clearing out their inventory, prices for 16x DVD burners have recently dropped 7-10%, and they are now little more expensive than DVD-ROMs.