Leading Taiwanese optical drive manufacturers, including Lite-On IT, BenQ and Quanta Storage, are aiming to begin volume production of slim-type portable DVD players this quarter, according to the makers.

Lite-On IT, Taiwan's largest manufacturer of optical disc drivers, will start volume production of 16x DVD Dual (+RW & -RW) burners for ODM/OEM clients by the end of this month, according to general manager of the company's Optical Disc Drive Business Unit, Michael Gong.

Around one in four Internet users have downloaded a movie, according to a new survey of 3,600 Internet users. When peer-to-peer (P2P) services are taken into account, more than 2.6 billion files are copied each month, according to the Internet piracy study.

Sony have announced plans to debut the successor to its market-leading PlayStation 2 game system by April of next year. The company also plans to show off a demonstration version of the new machine at next May's Electronic Entertainment Exposition (also called E3), the video game industry's giant annual confab.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has endorsed a plan to distribute about 6,000 special DVD players to members. Specially encrypted discs, known as screeners, would be earmarked for a specific academy voter and would play only on that person's machine. The player also would imprint an invisible watermark on the disc each time it is viewed.

Press Release: Ridisc has begun shipment of the Ridisc Brand Double Layer DVD+R media. This exciting new advancement in DVD technology is one of the first to the market offering a single-sided disc with an amazing 8.5GB of storage capacity. This incredible capacity is enough for up to 4 hours of DVD quality video, 16 hours of VHS quality video or over 120 hours of MP3 audio. Compatible with all current DVD video players and DVD-ROM drives as well as new DVD+R DL drives, the disc is ideal for virtually any business or household application.

Bulkpaq has issued a press release about their new 8x DVD-R which is apparently manufactured by Fuji. No doubt our resident DVD guru flash will be testing their claim that they offer "the fastest burn time and the highest performance available" sometime soon.

More than one third of the software installed on the world's computers is pirated according to a survey by the Business Software Alliance. The annual survey of global software piracy shows that 36% of software was being used illegally in 2003 according to figures prepared for the BSA.

An Essex man has secured the title of the world's thickest DVD pirate after walking into a Chelmsford Trading Standards office and offering his illicit wares to the gobsmacked staff. Priceless.

Press release: Memorex have announced their new D2 drive which burns single layer discs at 16x and double layer DVD+R 2.4x. They also write to DVD-R discs at 8X and CD-R discs at 48X; rewrite DVD+RW discs at 4X, DVD-RW discs at 4X and CD-RW discs at 24X; and read DVD-ROM at 16X and CD-ROM at 48X speeds.

Taiwanese DVD drive manufacturers, including Lite-On IT, BenQ and Quanta Storage, intend to increase production of car-use DVD players by next year, according to the companies.

Apple has said the global launch of its popular iPod mini, which contains a Hitachi 4GB hard drive, will take place on 24 July, selling for £179 in the UK.

The Recording Industry Association of America said Thursday that it will add sales of digitally downloaded singles to its longstanding gold and platinum sales certification program.

Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge.

Production oversupply has pushed down OEM prices for DVD+R/-R discs since the beginning of the year and prices are not expected to stabilize until the fourth quarter, according to major optical disc manufacturers in Taiwan.

The average selling price of DVD recorders is expected to fall by as much as 50 percent later this year as Taiwanese shipments of DVD recorders increase sharply, a government-backed market research firm in Taipei says.

Sony have announced yet another attempt to displace the iPod from the top of the digital music hardware charts. But unlike the clunky-looking players launched in the Japanese market, the European model appears a serious challenger for Apple's market leadership.

Dell wants your old iPod and is willing to pay to get it. The PC maker will give US consumers a $100 rebate on its Digital Jukebox if they surrender their iPod.

Australia's main record industry group says it is not opposed to a certain amount of copying by consumers, as long as it can be controlled.

Japanese consumer electronics behemoth Panasonic has said it has released the DMR-E700BD, which it claims as the first DVD recorder to support dual layer single side Blu-ray disks with a capacity of 50GB.