Topic: News

Apple has shutdown a back door that allowed software called PyMusique to buy songs from the iTunes Music Store without Apple's DRM. Calling it an exploit, Apple have issued a statement saying that only users of iTunes 4.7, the current version of the software, would be able to access the iTunes Music Store.

The new Nintendo DS handheld console has set a new record for opening sales of consoles in the UK. Nintendo sold 87,000 DS consoles in the two days after the handheld device was launched last Friday, beating the record set by the company's GameCube almost three years ago.

14 million games console owners are still at risk of waking up to find their Xbox has become an ex-box. For when Microsoft issued a safety advisory for Xbox customers last month, it failed to address the underlying problem.

A new UK website has launched, offering cash in exchange for second-hand phones. Mopay says that if you send off your used phone - Freepost - to them they’ll send you a cheque in exchange.

Described by its developers as "the fair interface to the ITunes Music Store," PyMusique is a new application that lets users connect to Apple Computer's ITunes Music Store and download songs without Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions. PyMusique does so by bypassing the ITunes application interface all together--a clear violation of the ITunes Music Store's Terms of Service.

The Indian film and music industry has long been suffering due to CD and DVD piracy. The UK, allegedly accounts for 70 per cent of the market of pirated Bollywood films and music. And Pakistan is the biggest exporter of pirated discs.

CMC Magnetics and Ritek, the top two producers of optical discs in Taiwan, expect revenues from the sales of DVD+R/-R discs to exceed those of CD-R discs sometime this year because of growing global demand, according to the two companies.

Commercial grade optical recording applications are rather rare on the Linux platform, but now Nero steps in to fill in the void. Clearly aimed at the evergrowing numbers of Linux newbies that are attracted to the free and powerful software that Linux offers but are still attached to the point and click ease of Nero, NeroLINUX is free for registered Nero 6 owners.

Once again reports of the demise of Sony's PSX PVR-meets-PS2 have proved premature. Last month's move to suspend production appears to have simply heralded the launch of a new version of the product.

DVD recorders are beginning to drive the market for non-PC DVD hardware, a trend that keeps the overall global DVD hardware market on the rise, according to a report from marker research firm In-Stat. The DVD recorder market (not including units connected to PCs) doubled in size in 2004 and will grow by 87 per cent in 2005, the high-tech market research firm says.

Police have discovered a massive DVD copying factory in a raid on a house in Haringey. Officers seized more than 50,000 films, including many not yet released in British cinemas. Dozens of DVD copiers and thousands of labels were also removed.

Scientists at Philips have developed a material for non-volatile memory chips that's not only better than Flash in almost every respect, but keeps on getting better the smaller you shrink the memory cells.

Press Release: BenQ have announced two new additions to its award-winning LCD monitor lineup that feature superior response times and resolution capabilities. The new 17-inch FP71V+ model is the first 5ms gray to gray fast response time LCD monitor on the market, and the new 19-inch FP91V+ features an ultra-quick 6ms gray to gray response time.

A self proclaimed "Duplicate King" who sold thousands of pirate DVDs at markets across the south east of England has been jailed for two years. Richard Harris, 35, of Victoria Road, Edmonton, sold obscene material and employed a team of Filipino women at his home to produce and package copies of unreleased Hollywood blockbusters.

TCL, a leading manufacturer of consumer electronics in China, extended its production to DVD+R/-R discs earlier this year, a surprise to Taiwanese makers of optical discs.

Taiwanese company LuxPro has been asked by Apple representatives at CeBIT to remove what it calls the "Super Shuffle" from its display case. To the casual observer, at first sight the LuxPro Super Shuffle looks nearly identical as Apple's recently released iPod Shuffle except for some minor changes.

Apple's online music ambitions are broadening - if the latest round of rumours are anything to go by. The Mac maker is said to be in talks to acquire digital music start-up HipSolve Media, and to have made a hire that could indicate it is laying the groundwork for the launch of a music subscription service.

The next step of DVD+RW format evolution will become real later this year with 8x rewriting and double-layer (DL) recordable DVD+R disks, the DVD+RW Alliance announced at CeBIT. “We expect products such as DVD+RW 8x (rewritable) media, recorders and drives to become available in coming months,” said Frank Simonis, worldwide chair of the DVD+RW Alliance product promotion group and strategic marketing director of Philips optical storage division.

Sonic Solutions, Philips & BenQ have debuted Blu-ray Disc recording/playback solutions that will allow consumers to burn and play back discs in the new high-capacity BD digital media format. In a joint demonstration Sonic unveiled its AuthorScript Blu-ray Data Recording Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Blu-ray support in its popular Roxio- and Sonic-branded RecordNow and CinePlayer HD consumer software applications.

Of the millions of people who illegally download free music using various peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, only about 8,400 have been sued by the recording industry—including, last month, an 83-year-old dead woman from West Virginia. Those odds seem pretty good, until it happens to you.