TOKYO--An expanding list of Japanese electronics makers are finalizing plans to start making set top DVD recorders, aiming to stake out territory in one of the industry's most promising growth markets, company officials said Monday.

An Industry insider revealed that Datasafe media have clawed back a huge share of the market with the launch of the Datasafe classic DVD-R disc. This disc is based on a dye formulation last used by Datasafe in June and according to our friends at media forums who beta tested the disc this was the most compatible 1 speed DVD-R on the market.

Philips today announced an alliance with Intersil to jointly develop a reference design based on a Philips chip set and Intersil laser driver for DVD+RW/+R (DVD+ReWriteable/+Recordable) drives. The reference design for both PC and standalone DVD recorders will support 4X record speeds, and has the potential to support record speeds up to 12X.

Pioneer have launched a new website exclusively devoted to DVD-R/RW. The site is called Pioneer :: All about DVD-R/RW and contains information and advice on Pioneer's products including info on the types of writable DVD and tips for video recording and data storage.

Click here to visit the site.

Sony Electronics today introduced its Dual RW drives, the first combination
drives for the PC to support the DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD-R formats.

Toshiba Europe GmbH Storage Device Division today announced the SD-R5002 DVD-R/RW, a high quality optical disk drive that comes complete with everything needed to create a comprehensive and effective home movie-making kit. The SD-R5002 is one of the fastest combination rewriteable DVD drives available. It can also read DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD-RW as well as CDs. It can write at 16x speeds for CD-R, 10x for high-speed CD-RW and 2x for DVD-R, as well as being able to write to regular CD-RW and DVD-RW disks.

Pioneer have released a couple of new firmware updates for the A04 and A03 DVD writers. The changes add 2X DVD burning on CMC and Ritek medias

Click here to download them.

Hongkong customs officers have for the first time seized DVD replicators used by a syndicate to produce pirated DVD games for the PS2 and Xbox games systems, a spokesman said yesterday.

Taiwan’s major CD-R disc makers all reported sharp declines in first-half net profit from a year ago, hurt by slumping disc prices. Meanwhile, the future direction of CD-R prices remains unclear, as manufacturers take a wait-and-see attitude before rivals make pricing moves.

Verbatim Corporation and Peripherals Group, Inc., the exclusive licensor of Verbatim(R) optical hardware products and subsidiary of CenDyne, Inc., today together announced the Verbatim "Producer" DVD+R/RW internal drive, the next generation in storage technology for businesses and consumers.

Choice consumables Have launched a 1x generation 3 dvd-r which they claim is one of the most compatible in the market. The disc which is priced at 89p is available from most good retailers.

Following tremendous sales last month following the release of the Bulkpaq generation 3 DVD-R Bulkpaq media have just unleashed their latest offering. A spokesman for the company claimed that this disc (Generation 3 R2) which is a “glow in the dark” Purple colour is the most compatible dvd-r they have ever produced.

Click <a href="http://www.bulkpaq.co.uk/dvdbig.gif" target=_blank">here for a picture of the new disk.

A high-capacity replacement for current DVD technology has been announced by NEC and Toshiba. But the replacement will be incompatible with a rival technology proposed by nine other companies in February.

Looks like whitelabel-media.com have invested in a new web site: The new Whitelabel-Media Website.

The Datasafe generation 3 disk was widely regarded as the best budget DVD-R disk according to our friends over at Media Forums
Read the full review here

You read it here first the new pioneer firmware will be available on 12 september 2002. You will be able to download it from here!