Macrovision is the latest of several in the anti-piracy business to license Windows Media Audio technology for copy-protected CDs. Microsoft sank its claws a little deeper into the music business on Wednesday, as copy-protection company Macrovision agreed to license the company's Windows digital rights management technology for CDs.

Intersil have announced that its laser diode design will be used in a new Hitachi-LG Data Storage disk drive, the GSA-4040B, which will support multiple DVD and CD recordable and rewritable formats. The Hitachi-LG drive will be available in June and will support DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R and CD-RW formats.

321 Studios, a US company that sells DVD-copying software, will have its day in court this week, mounting one of the most serious challenges so far to the movie industry's anti-piracy efforts. Hollywood's movie studios will face a key test in their battle to defend their copyrights from digital pirates, when a federal court in California this Friday hears a case filed by the maker of DVD-copying software.

Sony will soon introduce what it claims to be the word's first dual-format home DVD recorder. The RDR-GX7 will be the only home DVD recorder that supports the DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-R recording formats, the company claimed in a statement.

Probably the world's most popular MPEG-4 codec, DivX, has been updated. The new version, DivX v5.04, includes various bug fixes and improvements over the last (v5.03) version. You can download both the Pro and Adware-free versions here.

Hewlett packard have unveiled a new range of PC's that have all-in-one multimedia functaionality: they can mix and burn CDs, DVDs; record your favourite TV shows; and store your digital photos. unfortuneatley they have hit the market a month late and 35 per cent over its intended price.

Sanyo has unveiled a new technology that doubles the amount of data that can be stored on conventional CD-recordable discs. This development follows Plextor's announcement last week that its new CD writers can squeeze 40 percent more data into a standard CD-R.

Japanese electronics company NEC has unveiled a new all-in-one chip that can act as a digital video broadcast decoder and power next-generation entertainment devices that record to either a DVD or a hard disk.

Just a quick reminder about our monthly newsletter. Anyone who joins before the 30th of March will be entered into a prize draw to win a Pioneer A05 and 200 4 speed Datawrite DVD Discs. Details of how to join our mailing list are on the left hand side of our homepage. This competition has been sponsered by Datawrite. Producers of Datawrite "Red" DVD-R. Europes best selling 4x dvd media.

Sony has released a new firmware update for their Sony DRU-500 A/U DVD burners. The firmware version is 2.0f and here is what's new: Improvement of entry and reading efficiency as well as better burns on crap (ie mass eccentric) media and better CD Audio compatability.

You can download the firmware here.

Accesstek announced a new DVD recorder supporting both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW formats. The supported DVD-R/+R writing speed is the 4x, while the Sanyo HD-BURN feature is included to offer twice recording capacity on CD-R media.

We have just had an email from Datawrite with stats which show that their 4x Datawrite DVD-R disc is the best selling 4x DVD-R in Europe. The disc which has had some rave reviews is outselling everything added together!! on a 4:1 basis.

Related Stories:
Here is Flash's review of Datawrite's budget 4x DVD-R's.
Will Bulkpaq Catch Up On Datawrite's Lead?

Plextor has announced a new CD-RW drive that can squeeze 40 percent more data into standard blank discs. The Plextor Premium can pack in 980MB of data into a 700MB (80 minute) disc and 1.2GB into an 880MB (99 minute) disc, according to Plextor.

A DVD will debut this month in an unusual dual pack: Two discs will contain the same video, but one disc is for your PC, encoded in WM9 (Windows Media Player 9), and the other is a standard DVD for your living room player. Why view the WM9 version at all? It offers higher playback quality, say Microsoft representatives. They claim the quality is more than two times better than standard DVDs.

Seeing surging demand for DVD-R discs, Taiwan’s Nan Ya Plastics has made plans to boost its DVD-R disc production in the near future, according to company sources. According to the Chinese-language Commercial Times, Nan Ya plans to spend over NT$2 billion to build more than 30 DVD-R disc production lines. The paper also reported that the company expected to become the largest DVD-R disc supplier in Taiwan by mid-2003.

A prominent computer security researcher has proposed a technical solution aimed at forging a middle ground in the increasingly bitter battle by Hollywood and Silicon Valley over the best way to protect digital content from consumer piracy. Cryptography Research has begun circulating its proposal, which it calls Self-Protecting Digital Content, among entertainment companies. It plans to make it available publicly this week, in an effort to break the impasse over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which Congress passed in 1998 with strong lobbying support from Hollywood and other creators of intellectual property.

A new Linux-based set-top box has been announced by Video Without Boundaries Inc. (Ft. Lauderdale, FL). The VWB-3000 "MediaReady Internet/DVD Player", which is roughly the size of a normal DVD player, combines the functions of DVD player and Intenet access. Consumers can use the new device to browse the web, play streaming media, access their email, watch DVDs, and "even sing karaoke from any television," the company said.

Sony Computer Entertainment, which makes the best-selling PlayStation 2 home game console, said on Monday it would add a rewritable DVD player to machines sold in Japan while nudging the retail price slightly higher. The new consoles, due to hit the market on May 15, will be able to read the DVD-R/-RW and DVD+R/+RW formats used by many home DVD recorders, although it will not be compatible with the rival DVD-RAM recording format.

Taiwanese IC ('Integrated Circuit' or 'chip') designer Sunplus Technology’s decision to partner with Samsung Electronics may be aimed at challenging Mediatek’s dominance of the IC design market, industry insiders said. The move could have a lasting effect upon the type of chips you will find in future DVD hardware.

While the DVD Forum continues quibbling over a new blue-laser based HD-DVD standard, it looks like Microsoft has been busy developing a new video compression method that can show high quality HD video at bitrates similar to current DVD's (between 5-8mbps).