An investigation in the UK by The Sunday Telegraph has highlighted the startling lapses in cinema security that is fuelling Britain's illegal trade in pirate films. Undercover reporters last week smuggled camera equipment into five of London's busiest cinemas and, unchallenged by anyone, filmed several big-screen blockbusters.

CMC Magnetics, a leading producer of optical discs in Taiwan,have announced that it has gained certification for DVD+R DL (single-sided double-layer) discs from Philips and is so far the only disc maker in Taiwan to do so.

Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology (TSST) recently introduced its DVD burners to the Taiwan market, adding its products to an already competitive market, according to sources in the channel.

Taiwan OEM quotations for 16x DVD burners have slipped by over 10% to less than US$80 (£45) amid decreased component costs and competition from Japanese OEM makers, according to Taiwan producers of optical disc drives.

Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes, enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store as much as one terabyte of data (200 times the capacity of a single layer DVD), with a transfer speed of one gigabyte per second (40 times the speed of DVD).

Lyra Research have surveyed more than 1,000 video renters and found the people who owned the most DVDs - that is, 50 or more - also were the heaviest renters.

Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., better known by its FujiFilm brand name, is planning to begin sales of 16X DVD+R media and dual-layer DVD+R media from the fourth quarter this year, the company have said. Pricing details were not announced.

A world wide ring of pirates based around five Poles has been penetrated by police. A spokesperson for the Polish cyber cops have told Reuters that it had wound up an organised group, involving more than 100 people in Poland, the United States, Australia, Britain and Slovakia.

Manufacturers are making only $1 on each DVD player they sell, as mass production and competition take their toll on prices.

Sony have introduced its seventh generation of DVD writers, cutting the burning process of a DVD to about six minutes. The drives are among the first to reach a speed which many view the physical recording limit of DVDs.

NEC is the latest vendor to announce a laptop with a built-in embedded Linux based media player option. The NEC Versa S3000 will use InterVideo's InstantOn technology to enable users to listen to music, watch DVDs, and more without having to wait for Windows to load.

In an exclusive series of articles our resident DVD guiding light Flash is comparing all the latest burning hardware to see which measures up. So if you are thinking of buying a DVD writer check out our Battle of the Burners.

Until recently, printers that print directly onto printable discs were a bit pricey. But now there's a new disc printer that sells for $139.95 (£77) and it's from Primera, the same people that make the Bravo II optical media burner and printer.

Leading manufacturers of optical discs in Taiwan have decided not to match the CD-R prices quoted by their competitors in China and India (Moser Baer) since the prices would be below the Taiwan makers’ production costs.

Ritek, the second-largest producer of blank optical discs in Taiwan, on August 30 will introduce DVD+R DL (single-sided double-layer) discs as well as announce plans to market own-brand optical discs in China, according to Ritek.

Philips, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC) and TDK have obtained certification for producing 16x DVD+R discs, according to a recent DVD+RW Alliance announcement, which also included a remark that Philips will have discs produced by its OEM partner CMC Magnetics.

Ridisc sales and marketing Manager, Tim Smith announced today that the whole Ridisc Portfolio would now be available in Europe. Previously the company had concentrated on the sales of DVD products into the European market and cd-r products into the African and middle eastern markets . Today saw the launch of the Ridisc brand CD-R products being introduced into the European markets.

The battle over the standard for DVD production began heating up on Wednesday in a sleepy village near Tokyo. Memory-Tech, one of Japan's largest optical disc makers, demonstrated production of HD-DVD discs using a slightly modified DVD production line at its factory in Akeno. The company said it will be able to produce HD-DVDs initially at a premium of about 10% over current DVDs and rapidly move to near-DVD prices.

Press Release: Sonic Solutions have announced that Pioneer has chosen to bundle five of Sonic's top software solutions for digital media with its new 4X Double Layer DVR-A08XL DVD writers.

Philips have announced that its new 'All Speed' DVD+R blank media is the first to be approved for 1x up to 16x recording speeds. This allows consumers to use this single disc at all recording speeds - from real-time 1x video recording up to the maximum achievable 16x. A 16x DVD drive writes the full 4.7 GB DVD+R disc in about 5 minutes. Mass volume shipments of this new 16x DVD+R medium will start in August.