Intensified competition among suppliers have pushed prices for DVD player single-chip solutions down to US$7 recently, compared to US$8 in the second quarter, according to sources.

Toshiba have announced new optical drives for mobile computers and portable projectors with updated features. The company's storage device division said its new optical disk drives will provide higher media recording speeds for mobile computers.

Security software and service company Symantec has added a controversial type of antipiracy technology to the new version of its main virus-zapping program. Norton Antivirus 2004, which Symantec announced Monday for release next month, will use product activation, an increasingly common technique to tie a copy of an application to a particular PC. Symantec plans to add activation to the rest of its consumer software line over the next year.

The US Department of Justice have said they have accepted a guilty plea in a criminal copyright case involving the former leader of a Net music piracy group called the Apocalypse Crew. The defendant in the case, 21-year-old Mark Shumaker, faces a prison sentence of up to five years and a maximum fine of $250,000 (£157,998). Shumaker helped coordinate the supply and release of albums online before they hit retail stores and ran the Apocalypse Crew's Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, federal investigators charged.

The BBC's director general has floated plans to make its television content available on the Internet for free download. The BBC plans to digitise its archive and let people download television programs, according to a recent speech by Greg Dyke.

Targeting graphics and digital editing professionals, Maxtor will release a new version of its external hard drive with one-touch backup capability. The upgraded product comes in a sleek aluminum casing, with new features such as expanded system backup, the ability to launch applications with the drive's main button and retooled power management.

Adobe have announced the release of Adobe Video Collection, a new package that combines several of the company's video-related applications. The standard version of the collection includes the Premiere Pro editing applications, the After Effect 6.0 special effects program, the new Audition sound editing package and the Encore DVD authoring tools. The professional version of the collection adds version 7.0 of Photoshop, Adobe's popular image-editing application.

The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Web publisher could be barred from posting DVD-copying code online without infringing on his free speech rights. The state's high court overturned an earlier decision that said blocking Web publishers from posting the controversial piece of software called DeCSS, which can be used to help decrypt and copy DVDs, would violate their First Amendment rights.

Toshiba has launched what it claims is the thinnest, lightest and smallest hard drive-based portable music player yet to grace the market. And, looking at the pictures the company supplied, we have to say, probably the sexiest one too.

In Hollywood, 2003 is rapidly becoming known as the year of the failed blockbuster, and the industry now thinks it knows why. No, the executives are not blaming such bombs as The Hulk, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or Gigli on poor quality, lack of originality, or general failure to entertain. There's absolutely nothing new about that. The problem, they say, is teenagers who instant message their friends with their verdict on new films - sometimes while they are still in the cinema watching - and so scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns designed to lure audiences out to a big movie on its opening weekend.

Hitachi have announced that it is now shipping qualification samples of its 4GB Microdrive to consumer product manufacturers worldwide. The one-inch diameter drive features a data transfer rate that represents a 70 percent increase from the previous-generation Microdrive. The new drive will also continue its tradition of offering a significantly lower cost-per-megabyte than competitive solid-state memory solutions.

BenQ today announced the world’s first 8x DVD+R writer which is only the second time that claim has been made this summer. Plextor, in July, were the first to make this claim. BenQ DW800A records speeds of 8x DVD writing on DVD+R and 4x DVD rewriting speed on DVD+RW.

Despite staunch legal opposition from Hollywood, a new package of DVD-copying software is headed for online and offline retail shelves. DVD drive company Tritton Technologies has agreed to distribute software called DVD CopyWare, created by United Kingdom-based Redxpress. Like software from rival 321 Studios, which has been sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the CopyWare package will make a perfect copy of DVDs to a blank disc.

An anonymous California computer user has gone to court in Washington, D.C., to challenge the recording industry's file-trading subpoenas, charging that they are unconstitutional and violate her right to privacy.

The campaign launched in May by the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) to target individual music sharers appears to be scaring punters away from file-sharing services, the latest figures from market watcher NPD appear to show.

Nine major players in the DVD market have announced the formation of an industry group to increase the awareness and use of the DVD-RAM format. The RAM Promotion Group members are Hitachi, Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Hitachi Maxell, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Samsung Electronics, TEAC, Toshiba and JVC.

Earlier this month, DVD-drive maker CenDyne was ordered by the Superior Court of California to shut down. The company has been placed into receivership, according to its voice mail message. CenDyne is no longer shipping products and is not servicing warranties or honoring rebates.

Matsushita, better known for its Panasonc brand, is considering setting up a European production plant in Germany as it seeks to maintain it's 50 per cent share of the booming DVD recorder market. As the machines gradually supersede video cassette recorders, the company expects the global market to grow to 4.42 million units in the year to March 2004 and to 13.65 million units in the following year.

While Sony and Microsoft see their consoles as hubs for various forms of living-room entertainment, Nintendo takes an opposite tack (perhaps hamstrung by its proprietary disc format) and continues to emphasize games while downplaying the importance of non-gaming features like DVD-playback.

Matsushita, the world's second largest consumer electronics maker, have said they aim to double their share of the fast-growing flat-panel television market by the 2005/06 business year. Matsushita, maker of Panasonic products, had a 16 percent global market share in 2002/03, but wants to capture 30 percent within three years.