Pirate DVDs of the new Lord of the Rings film have been copied from a disc sent to Oscar judges. More than 10,000 illegal copies of The Two Towers have been seized in Britain according to the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Nintendo have announced plans to launch a next-generation home game console in 2005 or 2006 in a move to restore its clout in the lucrative home video game market. "We are developing a new home video game console with a plan to release the new system around the same time as rival makers do," President Satoru Iwata told Reuters in an interview.

Professionals or creative consumers searching for a fast and easy-to-use DVD drive that enhances productivity and extends their entertainment options should look no further than the DRU-500AX and DRX-500ULX. These latest additions to Sony’s award-winning range of Dual RW drives for PCs are the only devices on the market that support most of the existing DVD standards. What’s more, they deliver some of the fastest recording times available, going up to 4x speed. With the help of the supplied software, the internal 500AX (ATAPI interface) and external 500ULX (i.LINK and USB 2.0 interfaces) allow users to record high quality digital music, movies and data and to playback the files across virtually all DVD players and DVD-ROM drives.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., maker of Panasonic products, said it planned to boost its market share in the potentially lucrative global DVD recorder market to 50 percent by 2004/05.

Plextor, one of the leading companies for the development and production of CD-ROM drives, CD-Recorders and CD-ReWriters is expanding its range with the PX-504A, which writes DVD's at 4-speed, rewrites at 2.4-speed and reads at 12-speed.

Ritek has warned that the quoted price for CD-R discs may rise again in March. Gordon Yeh, CEO of Ritek, admitted that a price rise is possible but said it would depend on demand. Ritek has reached full utilization of its CD-R disc production capacity, he added. CMC Magnetics has also been rumored to plan to raise CD-R disc prices.

When it comes to home entertainment, the consumer electronics industry has never had a clearer success story than the DVD. More than 35 percent of all U.S. homes have a DVD player, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry trade group. Last year, more than 17 million DVD players were sold in the United States, and this year sales are expected to increase another 14 percent.

Suppose someone was handing out $20 bills and no one wanted one? That's what's happening in a massive price-fixing settlement paid for by the recording industry.

'DVD Jon' could be back in court if Norwegian prosecutors go ahead with their plan to appeal against the verdict that cleared him of any wrongdoing for distributing DVD encryption-cracking software.

MADRID, Spain - Police arrested 40 people and needed two large trucks to cart away more than 240,000 CDs and DVDs in Spain's biggest crackdown on pirate recording, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Monday.

Microsoft announced on Saturday new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry's side. Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or burning, new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers.

Here is the report by our resident DVD expert Flash on the new 4x Datawrite DVD-R...

It looks like the new 4 Datawrite 4 speed disc which is based on the RITEKG04 media will be an ideal replacement for the discontinued RITEKG03. I have just acquired a Pioneer A05 and trying the new Datawrite 4 speed media which has been manufactured for Datawrite by Ritek with the following ID code
00 6C 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 35 0E 0B .L...@....R..5..
FE FF 80 00 03 52 49 54 45 4B 47 00 04 30 34 00 .....RITEKG..04.
00 00 00 00 05 88 80 00 00 00 01 00 06 06 0F 12 ................

My test with these discs show that they live up to the Ritek standard that I have come to expect. The 4 speed burns were marginally less perfect than at 2 speed until I updated the firmware to 1.21.
I also did some burning in both my A03 & A04 which to my surprise they both recognised and burnt the discs at 2x speed with the latest official firmware. The resultant discs were perfect and Nero CD speed showed a perfect curve.

Click Here To View The Results

I tested my discs which were all movies and the playback right to the outer edge of the disc was perfect in all my DVD players. This disc is rapidly decreasing in price and will soon be a comparable price to the now discontinued RITEKG03 media.

I forwarded this report to Datawrite who made the additional comments

Your report confirms that we are the innovator in the DVD-R field. . From now on, Datawrite 4x DVD-R media users will be able to enjoy not only large capacity and high quality storage but also high-speed recording performance, all at affordable prices: We feel our disc is the only disc on the market which writes at four speed but still does not lose the playback quality which has previously been associated with high speed writing. The other bonus which our disc offers is that it is the only disc on the market which incorporates the Datasafe unique “Double protection” System which prevents the disc from smears and scratches.

A quick trawl of various discussion groups and forums on the internet has shown that Datawrite are possibly onto a winner with their new 4x DVD-R . Here are some comments we found about the disc, which according to Datawrite is the only 4x disc on the market, which actually works. Here are some comments we had on the new disc.

Tested on ps2 and four DVD players, two of which are sometimes fussy, but they all played back no problems. Even the ps2 which is usually jumpy at times on dvd-r playback.

I am well impressed with was the 4x Datawrite……….. they are the K9s Gonads. They burn perfectly at 4x approx 15mins to do a full 4.7 gb.

....yep agreed these discs are spot on 15 mins a disc no skipping or nothing play perfect as at 1x !! so cant go wrong still not gonna buy many at that price though another 30/40p off and then ill have some.

Bought 10 of these to try and burnt a movie at 4x it played without problems and as well as any ritek at 2x ive previously been doing.

The 4x Datasafe (DATAWRITE)(RITEK G04) are without doubt the best disc i have ever used.

Our regular Contributor Flash took delivery of 100 of these discs this morning and we will publish his indepth evaluation as it is made available.

Click Here for a Picture of the new Datawrite disc

Worldwide demand for recordable DVD discs (DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW) will reach 300 million units this year, but despite rapid growth, supply will continue to fall short, according to the Taiwan-based Photonics Industry and Technology Development Association (PIDA).

According to Wall Street Journal, the music industry association RIAA is about to join almighty technology companies, led by Intel, HP and Microsoft, to oppose so-called Hollings' bill which is strongly supported by the movie industry association MPAA. The bill would make it absolutely, totally illegal to copy or backup copyrighted material in the United States and would require hardware and software manufacturers to implement blocks to make it reality.

Though the stand-alone DVD recording decks destined to replace VCRs are drawing understandable attention, the selection of DVD burners for PCs continues to grow. Hewlett-Packard, TDK, Samsung, Archos Technology, Philips, and Yamaha are all among the vendors who have recently unveiled rewritable DVD drives. Most were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas.

Just a quick reminder about our monthly newsletter. Anyone who joins before the 30th of January will be entered into a prize draw to win a Pioneer A05 and 200 Blank DVD Discs. Details of how to join our mailing list are on the left hand side of our homepage.

Sonic Solutions announced at the International CES Convention that Sonic MyDVD(R), the world's leading DVD creation software, fully supports the new Plus! Photo Story feature in Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP, the photo, music and movie enhancement pack for Windows XP. This new support enables users to create great-looking DVDs with their digital photo albums.

Marking its entry into the emerging digital home entertainment Arena, Zenith Electronics Corporation introduced its first DVD recorder and hard-disc recorder at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Sony is launching a new series of Camcorders that record video to rewriteable DVD discs. Pricing for the low-end model, the DCR-DVD100, will start at around $1000 (£650.00), and the devices should be available as soon as this summer.