Sony, one of the world’s top three manufacturers of DVD burners, will phase out production of DVD burners beginning with 8x models and instead seek OEM production in Taiwan, according to Taiwanese makers of optical disc drives.

Microsoft's career page contains a very interesting job advertisement. The ad says that the Xbox Team "is looking for a strong PM/Engineer to manage the design and development of the Xbox Game Disc for the next generation Xbox console."

Ahead Software have released the latest Nero Vision Express packagewhich contains the widely-anticipated Recode v2 program. Recode is designed to fit large films on a single 4.7gb DVD by removing unwanted material (e.g. foreign language sound tracks or bonus material) from the DVD (9 GB). Then the film is converted, but this time with an optimized bit rate so that it fits on a normal blank (4.8 GB).

MediaTek, a major Taiwan-based optical storage chip design firm, today introduced its third-generation integrated DVD player chip, which it claims to be the world's first RF-integrated DVD system-on-chip (SoC) solution supporting the DivX Pro MPEG-4 video format.

Prodisc, one of the top three producers of optical storage media in Taiwan, on December 12 opened a factory for blank CD-R discs in a bonded industrial zone located in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province (China), according to the company.

Managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment in Australia, Michael Ephraim, has promised that the functionality of the forthcoming PSX console will be significantly improved before it hits markets outside of Japan in late 2004.

Four of Taiwan's leading optical disc manufacturers - CMC, Ritek, Lead Data and GigaStorage - achieved record revenues in November. A fifth company - Prodisc - enjoyed its second-highest monthly revenues.

Contract manufacturing prices for DVD recorders in Taiwan are likely to fall 20-30% in 2004 from the current average to below US$250 (£143), according to sources at Taiwanese manufacturers.

Recode is a new feature from Nero that enables users to fit a whole film on a normal DVD blank (4.7GB) without suffering terrible compression rates. Recode does this by removing unwanted material (e.g. foreign language sound tracks or bonus material) from the DVD (9 GB). Then the film is converted, but this time with an optimized bit rate so that it fits on a normal blank (4.8 GB).

Teac's new drive, the DV-W58E, is a DVD+R recorder which supports 8x recording for DVD+R media and 4x recording for DVD+RW media. The drive can of course also record CD-R and CD-RW media and does so at speeds of up to 32x for CD-R and 16x for CD-RW media.

The owner of Kazaa has taken legal action against a hacked version of the file-swapping software, threatening DMCA action against anyone hosting the download.

Independent film producers have won a major court battle when a federal judge stopped big movie studios from enforcing the so-called 'Oscars screener' ban that prevents advance copies of films being sent to movie award judges.

Scotland's most famous market, the Barras in Glasgow, is earning the reputation as Europe's epicentre of trade in counterfeit DVDs and CDs, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

Taiwan's three largest producers of optical discs - CMC, Prodisc and Ritek - indicated that they will not adjust their prices of blank CD-R discs for the first quarter of 2004.

Prices for integrated MPEG-2 chips used in DVD recorders are expected to drop from about US$40 currently to below US$30 in the second half of 2004, as a result of intensified competition and greater pressure from clients to lower costs, sources at international chip suppliers said.

Taiwan's second-tier optical disc makers are preparing to begin production of 8x DVD+R/-R discs in the first quarter of 2004. The second-tier makers include GigaStorage, Lead Data, Daxon Technology and Nan Ya Plastics. The first tier consists of three companies: CMC Magnetics, Prodisc Technology and Ritek. Nan Ya Plastics is a leader in Taiwan's plastics industry but its production of optical storage media is small in comparison to its other business divisions.

Police in Edgewater, Maryland say they have uncovered the cause of a friday night shooting incident. Robert Preston Kersey, 34, angered by his flatmates playing their X-box loudly in the early hours stormed into their living room and fired a single gunshot into the game system, disabling it, police said.

Senior officials at Philips Semiconductor, Europe's third largest chipmaker, said yesterday that the outlook for DVD recorder sales next year is rosy. "We see a great role for the DVD recorder in the home," Indro Mukerjee, an executive vice president at Philips, told reporters in Taipei yesterday. "We see DVD [recorders] becoming more pervasive as the price comes down and more and more recorders go into the home."

Xbox has proved to be the biggest hit at Sitex 2003 as more than 2,000 units of the Xbox Limited Edition Holiday Bundle were snapped up over the four-day exhibition in Singapore. The Limited Edition Holiday Bundle contains the Xbox console, 3 games (Halo, Tetris and Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and the Xbox DVD Movie Playback Kit.

Taiwan's top three producers of optical discs - Ritek, CMC and Prodisc - have started or will soon start production of 8x DVD+R/-R discs, according to the companies.