Spam messages exploiting the publicity surrounding the release of the latest instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise are being used to trick users into installing Trojan horse malware.

Support for Hewlett-Packard's direct disc labeling technology, LightScribe, appears to be on the decline.

Pioneer Japan officialy announced today the shipments of its new DVR-S12J, a 18x DVD Multi-burner with SATA interface.

Press Release: Nero announced today that Nero Linux 3 is now available worldwide. The first Linux application to offer Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD data burning support, Nero Linux 3 has been redesigned to maximize ease of use, efficiency, and speed with next-generation disc formats.

Apple is prepared to launch its DRM-free catalog of music from EMI this week, according to French sources familiar with negotiations for multiple online music stores.

Not content with announcing an 80GB Playstation 3 this week, Sony has, within the last few minutes, released details of the 1.80 PS3 firmware upgrade.

Seagate has released free versions of Disc Wizard and Maxtor's Max Blast 5, but what makes these utilities highly on the "me want" list is the fact that both are based on the OEM version of the excellent True Image app.

News from the Blu-ray Disc Association suggests that the impact of PlayStation 3 on sales of Blu-ray Disc movies in North America and Japan after the launch of the console last November has been "significant".

Ritek has received the certification for both HD DVD-R (recordable, write once) and HD DVD-RW (rewritable) formats, becoming the only Taiwan-based producer of optical discs to receive certification.

The popular burning/multimedia suite Nero Burning ROM has been updated to version 7.9.6.0.

Dell is expected to begin selling on Thursday three models of its long-awaited laptop and desktop computers loaded with Ubuntu Linux.

The mail-in rebate program that has helped TiVo gain widespread adoption is finally heading to the Series 3 high definition TiVo.

While ATAPI has been popularly used in optical disc drives (ODDs), SATA (serial ATA) stands a good chance of replacing the former as the mainstream interface standard for DVD-ROM drives and DVD burners in the second half of 2007 due to increasing adoption of the latter by global OEM/ODM clients such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, according to ODD makers in Taiwan.

Microsoft issued a firmware upgrade for its HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360.

Primera has integrated Panasonic SW-5582 Blu-ray Recordable Drives in its Bravo SE Blu and Bravo XR-Blu Disc Publishers.

Amazon.com has announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels.

The BBC series Planet Earth on HD DVD was the best seller among all high definition titles in its second week at retail. The Blu-ray version came in second place.

Panasonic today announced the availability of the DMP-BD10A, Panasonic's next generation Blu-ray Disc player, at a suggested retail price (SRP) of $599.95 (£302, €443). The DMP-BD10A features an audio upgrade package that brings high end surround audio to the viewing experience via the inclusion of 7.1 channel surround, Dolby True HD and dts-HD High Resolution Audio decoding technology.

iTunes and other paid video download services will be going the way of the dodo sooner than later, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

MySpace has launched some new copyright protection software for video content called 'Take Down Stay Down' which is designed to prevent users from reposting videos that have been removed at the request of the copyright owner.