Sony and NEC have announce that they have signed a definitive agreement to establish a joint venture company, Optiarc, which will take over both companies optical drive businesses.

Sony Pictures Entertainment plans to roll out 20 DVD movies that support the Blu-ray standard sometime in March or April.

Apple, the makers of the iPod, yesterday revealed that 1 billion songs have been downloaded from their online music store.

The so-called fourth generation of optical storage format has been highly promoted lately, and considering that neither the Blu-Ray nor the HD DVD has become a de facto standard for HD content, holographic systems may well be the future for terrabytes of storage.

The huge Chinese market seems set to turn the computer standards system on its head.

A new unit to tackle the multi-million-pound trade in pirated films is being launched today by senior police officers.

Ritek and CMC Magnetics, the top two makers of optical discs in Taiwan, respectively maintained the first and second largest share of global shipment volume for DVD+R/-R discs during the fourth quarter of 2005, according to Japan-based market research firm Fujiwara-Rothchild.

Swiss and Belgian police have shut down a major component of the eDonkey file-sharing network, used mainly to trade copies of copyrighted movies and music, the Motion Picture Ass. Of America have said.

Seiko Epson Corporation (Epson) have announced that it has started patent infringement proceedings in the English High Court against Medea International Limited in respect of UK patents belonging to Epson, which Epson believes are infringed by Medea International by importing ink cartridges compatible with Epson printers into the UK.

Sony will postpone the scheduled launch for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console from this spring until August, as the company is facing several issues with its production plans, especially concerning its inclusion of a Blu-ray Disc drive in the PS3, according to Sony's Taiwan-based contract manufacturers.

Five major US studios are suing Samsung for developing and briefly selling at least one DVD player which they allege was not properly secured to protect the contents of encrypted DVDs.

US government officials took Sony BMG to task over its controversial use of rootkit-style copy protection at a security conference this week. If the technology proves harmful to consumers, tougher laws and regulations might be proposed, a senior Department of Homeland Security exec warned.

Looking to ease user concerns regarding its first two HD-DVD players, Toshiba said Monday that the players will support interactive functions present on the first-generation of HD-DVD discs.

With the European Union expected to hand down a ruling over anti-dumping charges against optical-disc makers in Taiwan and China, this April, CMC Magnetics, Ritek and Prodisc Technology are setting up production bases outside Taiwan.

An unfixed bug in the USB driver of Windows XP Service Pack 2 can cause a laptop's battery to drain faster when there is a device connected to its USB port, Microsoft has confirmed.

With Plextor recently announcing its PX-760A 18x DVD burner (DVD+/-R/RW CD-R/RW), Lite-On IT stated it also plans to volume produce 18x DVD burners in the third quarter of this year, though BenQ currently does not have any plans for the segment at the moment, according to executives from the two companies.

Growth in DVD spending is expected to continue
Booming DVD sales in Europe have made it the most popular form of packaged entertainment, beating video and games.

Sony will definitely launch its new PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console this year, though the company still has not decided on a launch date nor pricing for the console, said Tetsuhiko Yasuda, managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Asia.

Nvidia have announced that the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 440 card, the company's four-display professional graphics solution, is now available as a configuration option in the HP xw6200 Workstation.

Japanese burner maker Logitec have announced its first external optical drive that burns DVD-RAM at 12x, DVD+ or -DL at 8x and DVD+R/-R at 16x.