Topic: News

Sony have announced that its first dedicated Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-S1 model, has begun shipping to major consumer electronics retailers and specialty dealers nationwide.

Music downloading site AllofMP3 has come under renewed pressure after negotiations taking place between the US and Russian authorities. The site, which offers cut-price music, was named as an illegal distributor in a document debating Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

It looks like enterprising hackers have figured out a way to dump (backup) Blu-ray movies using nothing more than a PS3 and Linux.

Droppix have shipped the latest version of their dVD authorinf software - Droppix Recorder 2.0. This new release sports a brand-new graphical interface, adds support for Blu-Ray discs and Windows Vista, introduces Droppix SmartDisc -- a new wizard designed by Droppix to simplify all recording and printing projects -- and comes with a new music CD creation module and a new built-in search wizard to find any document in seconds.

Nearly 20 leading Chinese manufacturers will stop making DVD players from 2008, replacing them with EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc) players, the next-generation players based on a Chinese home-grown standard.

Samsung Electronics has recently slashed prices for its 18x DVD burner in both the China and North America markets, according to sources. Samsung now is offering its 18x DVD burner at 299 yuan (US$38) in China, down 16.7% from 359 yuan, making the prices level closer with 16x DVD burners from vendors such as Pioneer, Asustek and BenQ, noted the sources.

Time Warner, the world's largest media company, plans to offer services that let consumers download movies from the Internet that can be burned onto DVDs in 2007, its top executive has said.

BitTorrent, a peer-assisted digital content delivery platform, today announced a slate of partnerships with a wide variety of leading film and television companies.

Before deleting that television show you just watched courtesy of TiVo, you'll be given the option to view a commercial, the latest in a series of enhancements the DVR pioneer will launch in an effort to profit from the proliferation of ad-skipping.

People are increasingly unwilling to wait for their favourite shows. If you are a fan of TV drama Lost, for example, but are not able to watch it on US TV, it is not hard to find episodes on the internet.

Ritek, the second largest producer of optical discs in Taiwan, recently announced it will be raising its prices for CD-R discs to US$0.12, up from US$0.11, according to company vice general manager Chang Yu-Kun, (transliterated from Chinese).

HP has entered the high-definition optical disc foray, on the side of HD DVD. The external drive, the hd100, can read HD DVD-ROM, DVDR/RW and R double-layer discs. It can also read CDR/RW and CD-ROM discs.

US television makers are slashing the price of their HD-TVs in the run up to Yule.

ATI and Nvidia are working hard to polish their drivers before the OEM announcement of Vista that is due in just seven days. G80, Geforce8800 GTX and GTS still don’t work with Vista at all and cards such as 7950 GX2 or 7900 GTX have some serious driver problems for games.

UK broadcasters the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five have hailed the trial run pumping out HD content across the Freeview free-to-air digital TV network a "technical success", paving the way for terrestrially broadcast nationwide HDTV in the very near future.

Staffordshire police are after a hijacking gang who turned over a £500,000 lorryload of Xbox 360 consoles and games in the early hours of Monday morning.

The Japan Recording-Media Industries Association (JRIA) predicts that global demand for write-once DVD discs will reach seven billion units in 2007 while supply for the discs will only reach 6.3 billion units, today's Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) reported.

Nero released Nero Premium Reloaded v7.5.9.0, currently available for download.

On the occasion of the first anniversary of its video game and entertainment system, Xbox 360, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday launched a digital video download service, allowing gamers to own TV shows and rent movies.

As final PlayStation 3 units continue to trickle into more and more hands, additional details about how the system works and what it can and can't do are hitting the web. The latest (rather major) tidbit is how the console treats the upscaling and downscaling of 720p titles on televisions that don't support that resolution -- specifically those that are only 1080i capable.