A consortium of companies holding patents attached to the MPEG-4 multimedia standard released its license for the technology, raising hopes for widespread adoption. The license released Monday is essentially the same as one proposed by the consortium, MPEG LA, in July. That proposed license set a cap of $1 million per licensee, as well as a threshold that exempts MPEG-4 users with fewer than 50,000 implementations from royalty payments.

Ritek, the world’s largest CD-R disc manufacturer, said that fueled by the rising popularity of recordable DVD drives, it projects worldwide consumption of recordable DVD discs will conservatively reach 320 million units in 2003, with an optimistic projection of 400 million to 500 million units.

An optical-storage standards group has taken a step forward in efforts to improve compatibility between PCs and consumer electronics devices.
The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) have released MultiPhoto/Video (MPV) 1.0, specifications that aim to make it easier to retrieve data on CD and DVD players from discs created on PCs.

After months of focusing on improving Web services and design, Macromedia is returning to an old favorite--the CD-ROM.

The software maker is set to announce on Monday a new version of Director, the multimedia authoring tool that is one of the company's oldest franchises and helped kick off the CD-ROM boom of the early 1990s.

The DVD6C Licensing Agency (DVD6C), the industry body representing the seven leading developers of DVD technology and formats -- AOL Time Warner Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., IBM Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Toshiba Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) -- today announced that it expects to start global licensing of essential patents for DVD-Audio and recordable DVD products on or about January 1, 2003. Licenses will cover both drives and media, including DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R.

Due to a number of queries we have had from our members, it seems many people are pretty confused about the range of firmware versions that there are for the Pioneer A04. Well, thanks to our regular contributor Flash we have a new review which explains the whole can of worms. We have also upgraded our download area to include all the possible A04 files you might want.

Sharing the podium at the Comdex Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC) press conference today, Andy Parsons, senior vice president for Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., and Tony Jasionowski, North American RDVDC managing director, took a "no smoke, just fire" approach to presenting the facts about the new milestones that are driving DVD burner sales. After making their presentations, Parsons and Jasionowski left little doubt that the new DVD drives eliminate the performance, compatibility and price barriers to creating and sharing home movies and personalized videos.

Philips is to highlight its focused technology strategy at COMDEX 2002 by showcasing several new products and solutions based on core competencies in display, storage, connectivity and digital video processing.

The DVD6C Licensing Agency (DVD6C), the industry body representing the seven leading developers of DVD technology and formats -- AOL Time Warner Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., IBM Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Toshiba Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) -- today announced that it expects to start global licensing of essential patents for DVD-Audio and recordable DVD products on or about January 1, 2003. Licenses will cover both drives and media, including DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R.

Recordable DVD drives, media and applications will experience dramatic growth next year and through at least 2006, Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, told attendees of the Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC) ISV meeting here today. Speaking to more than 100 executives from hardware, software and solutions firms prior to the beginning of Comdex, he emphasized that sophisticated consumers and digital Darwinism or the laws of nature should guide firms' product plans, not bold new experiments.

Ahead Software, creators of the world-renowned CD/DVD recording software Nero, have announced plans to integrate full MPEG-4 audio support (AAC -- Advanced Audio Coding) within Nero Burning ROM. Available soon as a downloadable plug-in, the Nero AAC encoder is the result of extensive in-house development work by Ahead in MPEG-4 technology.

Imation, a worldwide leader in removable data storage media, will feature its complete portfolio of optical storage solutions during COMDEX. New offerings feature the latest speeds in recordable optical media, including 4X DVD+R media, 4-16X High-Speed and 8-24X Ultra-Speed CD-RW media, as well as the Imation FlashGO!(TM) 2.0 device -- the latest in flash/memory card reader/writers.

Kano Technologies, a new DVD+RW/R storage-solutions company, is introducing its first product at COMDEX on Monday. The K2EXTREME DVD+RW/R internal drive features award-winning NTI Backup NOW! Combo software, and is a complete solution for desktop backup and restore. Designed for system builders, it takes full advantage of the DVD+RW format and 4.7GB storage capacity. It can also record to CD media. A retail version of the drive will be available at a later date.

Ulead Systems, Inc., a leading developer of video editing, image editing and DVD creation software, today introduced Ulead(R) DVD MovieFactory(TM) 2.0, the latest version of one of the top selling consumer-level DVD creation software in the market. DVD MovieFactory 2.0 gives home and office users an affordable and easy-to-use tool for sharing high-quality videos and digital image slideshows on DVDs and CDs. The software's innovative DVD technology lets anyone easily and quickly transform videos and photos into polished DVDs while providing flexible editing and archiving options.

Nearly 100 executives from system, software and solution firms nodded in agreement at the RDVDC Independent Software Vendors (ISV) meeting today as they heard industry leaders explain that the demand for Forum-approved Recordable DVD products is being driven by the burgeoning home video market.

Ricoh Company, Ltd, a co-technology developer of the CD-RW and DVD+RW rewritable formats, announced its next generation DVD/CD writable drives and media products.

Deltron Technology E-mailed us to let us know of a new product they have just launched: the Cinema Disk portable digital MPEG 2 video player series. Cinema Disk is a revolutionary video storage product that offers high speed, high volume storage for MPEG 1/MPEG 2/JPEG/MP3 files and instant playback on TV/Projector through S-Video and Composite Video output.

Click here for Smart Media DVD-4032 (Superslim) review

Princo have provided us with a compatibility chart for their media. Princo manufacture the following brands of dvd media: Bulkpaq, Whitelabel, Datasafe Yellow.

We have compiled a list of DVD players and their compatibility rating with DVD-R discs. You should check this list for your brand and model of DVD player if you haven't played a DVD-R disc in your player before. The list is organized by manufacturer and model number. Use your browser's Find feature to search the page for your model.

Click here for the Princo Compatabilty Chart

Click here for the CyberHome CH-DVD 402 DVD Player review.