Microsoft has officially denied that it’s working with a Taiwanese manufacturer to develop a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.

If, as previously reported, Microsoft adopts built-in Blu-ray Disc (BD)-ROM drives for a new version of its Xbox 360, sales prices are likely to be lower than the corresponding production costs since current OEM quotes for BD-ROM drives are as high as US$95-100, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

Philips has said that it wants to create clarity for companies that manufacture Blu-ray Disc products and has therefore decided to introduce licenses for the use of the Dutch company's patents relevant for Blu-ray Disc.

Following the introduction of its 500GB PC-to-TV consumer multimedia player into the market earlier this year, Plextor is extending the range to add a 750GB version.

Many small and midsized disc duplicators invested their time in HD DVD for all the obvious reasons. To make HD DVDs duplicators only had to make a few adjustments to their existing DVD duplication lines, but Sony's Blu-ray Discs require new equipment. But what should they do? Invest in a new line, or wait and see?

According to a new study from Solutions Research Group, women are more likely to stream TV shows from network websites than men, and they are more likely to time-shift their TV viewing with a personal video recorder.

Lite-On IT is developing built-in Blu-ray Disc-(BD) ROM drives for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console, according to industry sources. Lite-On declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

Following last month's announcement of an official "three strikes and you're off the Internet" policy, it seems that Virgin Media could be the first UK ISP to implement the scheme.

While Samsung launched its Super-WriteMaster SH-S223 22x DVD burner in early March 2008 and LG Electronics will follow suit to launch its latest Super Multi series GH22, in the second quarter of 2008, 18x and 20x are still the mainstream burning speed levels, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

Mitsubishi has announced two models from its new "REAL Blu-ray" Blu-ray Disc recorder series. The two models are the "DVR-BZ200" with a 500-Gbyte HDD and the "DVR-BZ100" with a 250-Gbyte HDD. These are Mitsubishi's first Blu-ray recorders.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have launched a website streaming every South Park episode ever made, all for free.

Now that Blu-ray is the high-definition format, and prices of Blu-ray content and hardware are still high, we can expect a showdown between the HD format and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).

iPhone operator partner O2 has announced it will team up with Napster to offer the UK's largest full track mobile music download service.

The BBC has moved to fix an exploit in its video on demand iPlayer service that was letting users download and save programming DRM-free, as we reported in Get BBC Programs On Your Mobile Device.

Nine Inch Nails' experiment with selling a new album almost exclusively by itself has netted more than $1.6 million over just the space of a week, the band have claimed.

Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world's toughest measures against online piracy, a report said Saturday.

Becoming the first major studio to issue an extensive next-gen price cut, Fox has announced it is discounting 22 of its top Blu-ray catalog releases.

The Eee PC sold great last year, and continues to sell even better. Many sub-notebook fans can hardly wait for the next-generation of Asustek's ultra-mobile Eee. While the Asus Eee PC is getting
more and more popular, rumours regarding the premature wearing out of its different hardware components are frightening its users.

It has been described as the worst deal ever, but a brown bag full of crappy items is proving to be a huge hit amongst computer geeks throughout the UK.

Online retailer Big Pockets, bigpockets.co.uk, is struggling to keep up with demand for its quirky bag o’ crap offer which is selling at the knockdown price of £2.99. They have sold 4000 of them in the last 48 hours.

It has emerged that you can now download the shows on the BBC iPlayer using the MP4 format, which is used by devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and systems such as the Eee PC.