Last September Hewlett-Packard launched a new style of personal computer that added the functions of a TV, VCR and music jukebox. Now more and more PC makers are taking to Microsoft's all-in-one entertainment-focused PC. HP doesn't break out sales figures on the machine, but it seems it has been surprised with the sales performance of the machine at retail--and others want in on the action.

A US court has ruled that video games should receive the same protection - in terms of freedom of speech - as literature and works of art. The federal appeals court panel has struck down a law that restricted children's access to violent video games, giving the software the same free-speech protection as that for works of art.

Press Release: AverMedia announces affordable DVD creation with its newly released DVD EZMaker USB 2.0. At just $89.99 (£55), the palm-sized unit captures full-resolution (720 x 480) video to both CD and DVD burners in real-time through a USB 2.0 port.

Press Release: Adaptec have announced the availability of VideOh! DVD Media Center, a comprehensive solution that enables consumers to convert their existing home PC into a media center. With Adaptec VideOh! DVD Media Center, home-PC users can easily create, control, store and enjoy digital content, including TV shows, home movies and photos. Users can choose television programs they want to watch from a free online programming guide, record, pause, rewind and replay live TV and edit and burn shows to high-quality DVDs or video CDs -- using their existing PC.

Kazaa, the biggest file-swapping network, is teaming up with marketing network Altnet on a rewards-based programme that will aim to increase peer-to-peer distribution of authorised files. A year after launching its sometimes-controversial alliance with Kazaa, Brilliant Digital Entertainment subsidiary Altnet is kicking off a new, ambitious stage of its peer-to-peer marketing campaign.

The Business Software Alliance has reported that the use of pirated software has fallen, but not by much. Corporations have cracked down on pirated software last year, trimming the glut by a percentage point, an industry report says.

Benchmark software company Futuremark has dropped its allegation that graphics card maker Nvidia cheated, ending the dispute between the two firms. "Futuremark now states that Nvidia's driver design is an application-specific optimisation and not a cheat," said Futuremark in a statement.

Archos has shipped its AV300 family of personal DVD players to the US retail channel, the company said today. The AV320 and AV340 - with 20GB and 40GB hard drives, respectively - sport a 3.8in, 320x240-pixel, 24-bit colour LCD. The machine uses MPEG-4 for video for "near DVD" quality playback. It also supports AVI, DivX and XviD. Playback resolutions range from 352x288 at 30fps to 640x368 at 25fps - there's also a TV-out port.

A deal between Microsoft Corp. and Landmark Theatres Corp. to digitize all 53 of Landmark's theaters -- 10 of which are in the Bay Area of California-- will be a boon for independent filmmakers, for, although movie-goers won't notice much difference, the cost of distribution is cut dramatically.

Zoran have announced that its advanced Vaddis DVD multimedia processor powers Toshiba's latest generation of DVD-R and DVD-RAM hard disk drive recorders now shipping to retail stores in Japan. Toshiba's new RD-X3 family of recorders, including the RD-X3, RD-XS30 and RD-XS40, allows consumers to record up to six hours of content on a single DVD-R or DVD-RAM disc. These recorders can create DVD-Video format on DVD-R media, as well as DVD-VR format on DVD-RAM media. Data files stored in DVD-R and DVD-Video format can be played back on most DVD players on the market. In addition to enabling cut, assemble, and edit capabilities, the RD-X3 recorder series provides reliable, high-performance authoring of multimedia content to a DVD disc.

Quanta Storage, the largest slim-type optical storage drive maker in Taiwan, expects to launch half-height, desktop-use DVD+RW drives in June and sample slim-type, notebook-use DVD+RW drives in August, the company said.

TiVo have that it will sell limited information about the viewing habits of its subscribers to advertisers and broadcasters. The company's new service will let broadcasters and advertisers subscribe to a quarterly audience-measurement report that will track viewing habits during prime-time shows. TiVo, which provides digital video recorder (DVR) services and devices, eventually plans to use its technology to provide data on consumer patterns for any show or commercial.

Software maker Pinnacle Systems have announced the release of a new version of Pinnacle Edition, the company's collection of video editing and DVD authoring tools for video professionals and advanced hobbyists. Version 5 includes under-the-hood improvements to speed processing, an expanded menu of special effects that can be viewed in real time as they're added to video segments and more editing tools for creating DVD menus and navigational features.

Datawrite: This week reported back huge sales increases following a minor dye change and a major price drop on their 4x Red DVD-R. They also inform us that they have a 4x version of their Yellow DVD-R due to arrive in Europe. They claim that the 4x Yellow which will be sold alongside the Red 4x, at an albeit higher price, is produced for them by Princo at the same factory, using the same production line, as their best selling 1x Yellow DVD-R.

O1ne Optical Products: Plan to introduce a Lead Data sourced 4x Disc in the next few weeks. Lead Data appears to be an excellent choice for 01ne Optical Products. The (relatively) new start-up media company said in a press release yesterday

“Our initial offerings to the market were sourced through a UK based brand; they have proven to be very successful. We felt it was time we started sourcing product direct from manufacturers and Lead Data is the ideal strategic long term partner for us. This new alliance will allow us to sell high quality products at a more competitive price and allow us to bring products to market faster due to Lead Data’s focus on R&D.”

Editors note: Lead Data, although relatively unknown in Europe, are one of the big four DVD manufacturers in the world and at the moment oem for Sony.

Memorex: Have dipped their toe into the UK market with their release of the new Memorex 4x DVD disc. The disc is produced for Memorex by CMC.

Flash has come up with the goods once again: you can read the world's first Pioneer 106 review here.

If the music and movie industry won't lower the price of CDs and DVDs, there's only one thing to do: punters should stop buying them. Just ask the Malaysian government. This week, Deputy Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk S Subramaniam told buyers to quit spending - temporarily, at least - to force the industry to reduce prices.

Sony's Japanese ISP is adopting digital rights management technology that lets consumers play downloaded movie files from the hard drive, while reducing piracy risks. A subsidiary of the electronics maker Sony is to sell downloadable movie files that self-destruct after a given time.

A study published this week in the journal Nature offers evidence that action video games can substantially improve players' visual and perceptual acuity. The research was undertaken in the US by scientists who sought to examine the effect of action video games on perceptual and motor skills. They found, through a series of four experiments, that habitual players of action video games -- particularly first-person shooter games -- tend to perceive objects more quickly and are better than non-players at handling simultaneous tasks.

Royal Philips Electronics has introduced a highly integrated chipset, optical pickup unit (OPU), firmware and reference design for the industry's highest-speed DVD+R/RW recorders. The design incorporates new technology to minimise recording errors caused by common disk defects such as fingerprints while the software and chipset, based on Philips Nexperia streaming media technology, will allow consumers to create 4.7GB DVDs of home videos, photo albums and PC data in less than 15 minutes or half the time of existing drives, Philips said in a statement.

The California Supreme Court appeared divided Thursday on whether courts can block computer users from posting on the Internet the computer codes to copy DVD movies. The dispute centers on San Francisco computer programmer Andrew Bunner, who in 1999 posted the code to an encryption program that the movie industry says is used to unlawfully replicate thousands of movies a day. The DVD Copy Control Association, an arm of Hollywood studios, sued saying the association, not Bunner or others, controls the program called the content scramble system, or CSS, which prevents unauthorized copying of a movie sold in the DVD format.