Topic: News

As part of a new marketing blitz to promote the Xbox 360 as a "family friendly" video game console, Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out a new feature called Family Timer, which will show up in the Family Settings Screen.

Microsoft is set to launch its next generation of Zune players on November 13th and to help sell off stock of the existing models, J & R and Amazon have both recently dropped the brown 30GB Zune price to US$99.99 with the other colour models selling for $149.99.

The Pirate Bay is developing a new software standard for Internet downloads in a move that could make it easier to swap media files, which is illegal in many countries.

Ticketmaster and Apple have formed a partnership where digital albums of artists would be sold alongside concert tickets on Ticketmaster's website.

Verbatim have introduced the world’s first color-background LightScribe 16x DVD-R and DVD+R media. The 4.7GB discs are available in vibrant shades of red, orange, yellow, blue and green in addition to the original gold color.

Macrovision has patched a security hole in a driver file used for their SafeDisc copy protection system. The flaw could allow an attacker to completely take over an affected Windows XP or Server 2003 computer. A Microsoft security advisory indicates that Vista is immune to the problem.

CyberLink have launched CyberLink DVD Suite 6, a complete package of retail software for playing movies, editing videos, burning and backing up data, copying and authoring discs.

Transcend announced its largest capacity SD product to date: a 16GB Class 6 SDHC card.

In an effort that could help to fend off market share challenges from rival second- and third-tier TV brands, Philips said it is now offering consumers who purchase its 37-inch and larger flat-panel HDTVs a service plan with "lifetime technical support, next-day scheduling of in-home repairs and a simplified exchange program for those living in areas without authorized service support.

Toshiba have decided that 2560 x 1600 just isn’t high enough and announced a 22.2-inch TFT color LCD boasting a headache inducing QUXGA-W screen resolution of 3840 x 2400 resolution.

In Japan, Toshiba have shipped a new digital video recorder (DVR) with HD DVD drive that integrates key new features that bring greater freedom of recording to the HD DVD, including recording of HD video to standard DVD discs.

Copy and burn firm Slysoft reckons it has cracked the beefed-up copy protection on Blu-ray disks, BD+

While the new Buffalo DVD burner can never compare to the wall-rattling speed of Samsung's Super-WriteMaster (which blazes through at 20x when hitting DVD±R discs), the 19x offering from the Japanese peripheral manufacturer ain't too shabby.

A man in Texas has spent more than $3.4 million to equip a room in his house with flashy home cinema gear.

Walgreen plans to put kiosks that can make DVDs of popular movies in drugstore photo departments next year, using a new system that would increase selection while avoiding piracy.

Asustek has announced the release of the new Intel G35 chipset motherboards featuring on onboard HDMI connector, the Asustek P5E-V HDMI.

Toshiba is aggressively promoting its HD-A2 second generation HD DVD player through mega-retailer Wal-Mart, which has begun selling it for less than $200.

Slysoft have released a new version of their AnyDVD software, which they claim can bypass the 4th generation HD DVD and Blu-Ray copy protection (MKB v4), found in latest high-def movie releases.

After seeing an on-year decline for the first two quarter of this year, PDP (plasma display panel) shipments rebounded in the third quarter of 2007, rising 9% on year and 33% on quarter to a new record high of 3.1 million units, according to DisplaySearch.

The Pirate Bay said Friday that it was working on bringing back OiNK, a BitTorrent tracker that featured music files from "hundreds of thousands" of music albums.