Until now, the music industry was simply trying to put off home users from sharing music and sending out subpoena’s threatening to sue. Now, three men from Sydney face jail after pleading guilty last week to breaking copyright laws. The Australian recording industry believes this to be the world's first criminal prosecution for online music piracy; at least against users running off a home connection.

One of the most popular DVD-2-DVDR tools, DVD2One, has been updated. The latest version, DVD2One v1.3.0, introduces a new feature called "join mode" that allows, as its name suggest, joining multiple DVDs (or parts of DVDs) into a single DVDR compilation.

Both Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox are set to see price cuts in the coming month as the battle for Christmas sales dominance kicks off earlier than ever - with both companies also planning a range of other promotions.

Landmark Theatres have announced the largest permanent digital exhibition installation ever undertaken, with a nationwide theatre circuit outfitting all of Landmark's 53 U.S. theatres and 177 screens with Windows Media 9 Series systems to receive and play back movies.

Pioneer have announced the Elite DV-59AVi, a new industry reference DVD player that offers both a high definition multimedia interface (HDMI) and i.LINK connectors for the best in both digital audio and digital video connectivity. Pioneer have also added superior DVD video playback capabilities giving this DVD player the ability to scale a typical DVD video signal to HD quality as well as playback of both DVD-Audio discs and Super Audio CDs.

Microsoft is expected to show off later this month a new version of its Windows XP Media Center entertainment PC software. The upgrade, code-named Harmony, provides an extra interface to make it easy for people to view photos, listen to music and watch videos on a television hooked up to the PC.

321 Studios has released a new DVD backup tool called DVD X Copy Platinum which they claim is "a breakthrough in DVD movie backup technology, and is the most powerful DVD movie backup software ever. Along with the speed, ease of use and one-click convenience of DVD X Copy XPRESS, DVD X Copy Platinum adds brand-new TDF backup technology which allows complete customization and control over your movie backup. TDF is the breakthrough movie fans have been demanding, and allows for chapter by chapter control over compression. Create and share TDF files with others." It's currently available for $119.99 (£76) after a $30 mail-in rebate.

CTX, a manufacturer of monitors has predicted that by the end of next year, cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors will be obsolete.

The Japanese TDK website has announced that the company has released two new DVD-R media types which have an ultraviolet radiation protective coating. This coating makes the discs three times more resistent against sunlight when compared to normal discs. TDK has released two types of discs, the DVD-R47HCG for data (4.7GB) and the DVD-R120HCF for (120 minutes) video recording. Click for the babel translated TDK page.

Sony's new Vaio PCV-W1 centres on entertainment and aims squarely at the living room. On the one had it is a rather stylish 17.5 inch wide screen and on the other a P4 2.8GHz PC with 160GB of hard disk and a DVD-burner.

Big news from France today where EMI has landed in the soup for selling 'defective' copy protected CDs. A Nanterre court has ordered the music label to refund a woman who could not play her new Alain Souchon CD on her car CD player. Alternatively, EMI is to provide a full-working copy. The ruling applies to all people who have bought CDs which they cannot play on some CD players, computers and Walkmans.

Macrovision have announced that Artisan has signed a multi-year agreement renewal to use Macrovision's technology to copy protect 100% of its DVD releases. Artisan is a leading independent producer and distributor of DVD home entertainment with a library containing over 7,000 titles ranging from Academy Award winning classics such as "The Last Emperor" to action adventure blockbusters such as "T2," "Reservoir Dogs" and the "Rambo" series and cult favorites such as "The Blair Witch Project."

China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) recently negotiated a reduction in DVD player technology royalties paid by Chinese manufacturers to the 3C alliance, led by Philips, from US$5 to US$3.50, according to sources. The move is likely to be followed by Taiwnese makers, meanng further reductions in DVD player prices.

Prices for recordable DVD pick-up heads (PUHs) are expected to drop by an average of 7-10% in September due to increased supply and stronger pricing pressure from downstream customers, according to sources at Taiwanese optical storage drive makers.

Sales of video game consoles are expected to slump until a new crop of machines is introduced in a few years, according to an industry analyst. In an article published earlier this week, Jay Srivatsa, a senior analyst for research firm iSuppli, said console sales have slowed significantly this year, in contrast with the steady growth that has marked the industry until now.

The day after a report suggested the compact disc is heading the way of the 8-track tape, the world's largest music label conglomerate promised a steep cut in music CD pricing.

Once again it seems that net-based anonymity services are only anonymous until someone really wants to know who you are. After a recent 'technical outage', the popular anonymiser service AN.ON's Java Anonymous Proxy software reappeared with a few new feature built in: The new version of the JAP client software included text like "Loading Crime Detection Data".

Sony boss Ken Kutaragi has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 will feature backwards compatibility with the PS2 and PSone, ensuring continued support for older software formats in the new hardware.

JVC, Samsung and Sony have all used the IFA conference in Berlin to reveal their Blu-Ray recorders. Blu-Ray uses a blue-violet laser (hence the name) which has a much shorter wavelength when compared to today's optical storage media working with a red laser. Because of the shorter wavelenth the capacity of a Blu-Ray disc is around 25 GigaByte, more than five times as much as a recordable DVD.

A new DivX and DivX Pro version have been released and according to DivX this is the biggest improvement ever, even bigger than the jump from DivX 4.1.2 to DivX 5.0. Besides the new DivX version a new DivX Player version has also been released yesterday which is included in DivX 5.1 or available as separate download.