Topic: News

Reflecting the increasing overlap between the worlds of B2B and consumer electronics, Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a menu of PC-centric solutions designed to help home users leverage their computers for digital media and entertainment.

CHART CDs, computer games, DVD movies and hardcore porn films were among thousands of counterfeit items seized when police raided two properties in the Braintree area. Goods and equipment discovered included pirate CDs by stars like Blue, Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams and fake DVDs including the latest Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films.

Microsoft and Panasonic announced on Wednesday that their media access technology known as HighMAT will soon work with DVDs. The companies said they would extend support in their High-performance Media Access Technology (HighMAT) specification to DVD-RAM and other major recordable DVD formats by the end of the year. Currently, the technology, which is included in Windows Media Player 9 and Windows Movie Maker 2 for XP, only supports CDs.

A major overhaul of the Xbox Live platform is in the works, with the console set to get new online functionality including the ability to talk to friends outside of games and use streaming video and audio services.

Mitsubishi have announced that they have developed a new Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which incorporates two new technologies. The first is called "Compression Feed-forward Driving" (cFFD), a technology that produces a clear, moving picture display. The other is called "Natural Color Matrix" (NCM), a color management technology. Mitsubishi will demonstrate their new LCDs at a booth at WinHEC 2003.

The material girl's foul-mouthed revenge on music traders could be interpreted as a deceptive trade practice, or even outright fraud.

It's no joke. Lobbyists for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to glue this hacking-authorization amendment onto a mammoth anti-terrorism bill that Congress approved last week.

The DVD+RW Alliance, one of the sponsors of WinHEC 2003 to be held this week in New Orleans, will demonstrate the Mt. Rainier capabilities of the DVD+RW format's writing and editing capabilities at its WinHEC booth. Mt. Rainier is the DVD writing specification to be included in the next version of Windows. "Once Mt. Rainier becomes available in the next version of Windows, DVD+RW drives will work like any other drive on your computer, with drag-and-drop file-editing and file-moving, random-access file writing and built-in defect management," noted Maureen Weber, Worldwide Chair of the DVD+RW Alliance. "DVD+RW is the only format on the market designed from the beginning to take full advantage of the writing and editing capabilities of Mt. Rainier.

The convergence of consumer electronics and computing devices is spurring major growth in the front-projector home theater market, with unit sales expected to grow sevenfold from 2002 to 2007, iSuppli/Stanford Resources predicts.

If you thought we had forgotten about our latest DVD film releases page then you should check out our new and improved list for May.

Never wanting to miss news of wars or rumours of wars, a little snippet that appeared on VE3D has proved interesting. According to an alleged employee of Gamestop in the US, console makers are about to drop their prices. The ever more vicious rounds of skirmishing between the top three names is interesting. According to the news piece the Xbox is due to drop to $149 (£93) in the US. Sony will also be pitching its PS2 at that price. Meanwhile, Nintendo will be dropping the Gamecube down to $99 (£62).

The Bush administration have said some countries are failing to provide adequate protection against copyright piracy of U.S. products such as movies and computer programs. The Ukraine has recieved the worst ranking in the area of intellectual property rights, accused of making a large number of pirated versions of compact music and video discs and computer programs. The administration said it would keep in place $75 million in economic penalties imposed in January 2002 because of the piracy problem.

There are plenty of people who think that the MPAA is bad but, as the phrase goes, they ain't seen nuthin' yet. Microsoft had been floating around on the horizon off the California coastline watching Hollywood with interest. Now they have parked a whacking great big battleship just offshore. It has announced its own DVD format and has backing from some insiders in a move to make Media Player the new standard in DVD playback.

Building on its technological strengths and market leadership position in recordable DVD products, Panasonic introduces two DVD recorders as part of a new worldwide “DIGA” DVD recorder line. Model DMR-E60, which features an SD Memory Card slot, a PCMCIA slot and a DV input terminal, is an extremely versatile unit designed for easy interaction with digital still cameras and digital camcorders. The DMR-E60 has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $599.95 (£375) and will be available at retail in May. The new DMR-E80 DVD/hard disk recorder features 80GB of built-in memory. It provides up to 104 hours of recording time on its hard drive and up to 6 hours on a removable 4.7 GB DVD-RAM disc (both in Extended Play mode.) The DMR-E80 has an MSRP of $699.95 (£435) and will be available at retail in July.

In a new 'educational' tactic, the recording industry plans to send instant messages to those offering music tracks through peer-to-peer services, warning them that they are likely to be breaking the law.

As your old record and cassette collections gather dust, a new listening format revolution is quietly under way that could replace your shiny, new compact discs. Two new disc formats have emerged: super-audio compact disc (SACD) and DVD-Audio. Both promise a superior listening experience over regular CDs, with music remixed in higher-resolution digital audio.

321 Studios has released a new product in their DVD X Copy family called DVD X Copy XPRESS. Unlike it's predecessor, DVD X Copy XPRESS allows backups to be fitted on one DVD-R.

Who would believe a $1,000 (£625) remote control is a revolutionary product just because it runs Windows? Especially when many people spend a similar sum for an entire home theater system, with speakers, a television, a DVD player, and an included wireless remote? The ViewSonic Airpanel V110 Wireless Smart Display with remote-control software called Nevo, from Universal Electronics Inc. (UEI), may just be such a device and could become the third (maybe even second) computer in your home. This remote is a Web-surfing, e-mail–reading computer at heart. And a Smart Display may be cheaper, easier to use, and more flexible than a dedicated device.

Even as the public's love affair with the DVD blossoms, the tech world is hard at work in the lab creating the next generation of high-definition disc.

We may someday call it the shot heard 'round the world'. On February 17th, the Xbox Linux Project wrote an open letter to Microsoft discussing its desire to run somebody else's software on the company's gaming console. Microsoft hasn't been too friendly toward those efforts. Last fall, it shut down a maker of "mod chips" -- circuitry that can be soldered onto the motherboard of the Xbox to make the machine run Linux. The letter politely demanded that Microsoft stop "restricting choice" -- and rid itself of the mod market to boot -- by publishing the code required to run unapproved programs without modifications to the Xbox.