RiDisc have announced that they have renewed their partnership with Ritek Taiwan in the imminent release of their new Ridisc Xtreme range of DVD media.

The UK leads the world in downloading television programmes, according to internet monitoring company Envisional. Over the last year Envisional monitored illicit downloads of hit programmes such as 24 and saw an average of 95,000 downloads for recent episodes. Around 18% of shows monitored were downloaded to the UK, closely followed by Australia, but well ahead of the US at around 7%.

Samsung have introduced their new 16X DVD rewritable drive with 5X Dual speed recording, the ever more powerful Writemaster TS-H552U.

An Italian DJ has been fined a record 1.4 million Euro (£965,000) for using hundreds of pirate music files in a well-known local nightclub near Rome.

Sony, which 25 years ago changed the way the world listened to music with the Walkman, said it would release a product by the end of the year in hopes of dethroning Apple's hot-selling iPod.

DVD specialist Flash has kindly posted in his most recent review of Datawrite Transprint 8x DVD-R.

We have heard rumours from several trade insiders that RiDisc are launching a new range of DVD and CD products next month. The new line up has been referred to by our insiders as the RiDisc eXtreme Range. As of yet, we have had no official confirmation as to the dye formulation or the price bracket. However I am due to meet their Sales and Marketing Manager for a "pie and a pint" next week so no doubt he will be shedding some light on the rumours.

Whilst waiting for supplies of 16X media our DVD expert Flash has been trying out his two new 16X SPEED Drives, the Pioneer DVR-109 and the NEC ND-3520. His first choice being the Datawrite Transprint Hub Printable 8x speed DVD-R
See how they all perform together in his review

Analyst firm Gartner said that shipments of PCs worldwide are expected to be 199 million this year. Media Center PCs, however, aren't likely to make a big difference to sales, because of several problems with them, Gartner warned. It suggests that the PC industry hasn't done enough to make them easy enough to use.

Software giant Microsoft has said it is recalling power cords on 14.1 million Xbox consoles worldwide. The firm said it was doing so out of concern for consumer safety, and the replacement cords are designed to protect consumers and consoles from electrical component failures.

Movies launched on the PlayStation Portable's UMD format in the USA will retail for between $20 and $30 (£10 - £15), in line with local DVD pricing, while Chinese movie House of Flying Daggers has now been added to the line-up.

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM) have announced the world's first dual layer DVD-R disc made to DL standards to be launched this spring.

Philips is planning to market early next year anti-pirate software it has developed for identifying film files illegally on the internet, according to Ronald Maandonks of Philips Research.

The Linspire operating system, due out this quarter, will ship with a number of additions you might expect from a version of Linux aimed at average consumers. Things such as improved music, photo and DVD applications, better Wi-Fi support and a fancy instant messaging product are there. What you might not expect - the weird part of the equation - is a new package called MP3beamer that turns any Linspire PC into a music hub for the home.

CMC Magnetics recently again raised the average OEM quotation for its CD-R blank discs to US$0.145 (7.7p), the second hike this year, and has gained handsomely from pre-selling DVD discs pre-recorded with Kung Fu, a Chinese-language movie produced in Hong Kong, in the China market, the company indicated.

A bug has been discovered in Windows XP's Service Pack 2 that reduce the write speed of many dual-layer DVD drives.

DVD wizard Flash has been excercised by some DVD+R sample media he recieved that had the mid code RITEKR04. He had been assured that this was 16x media, but on checking it with DVDInfoPro (using a Pioneer DVR-109 & NEC DVD_RW ND-3520A - both the latest 16x speed drives) he was very angry to find that both these drives would only support a maximum of 4x burning to this media.

Several second-tier manufacturers of blank optical discs and many small makers of the product in Taiwan are trying to shift their production to pre-recorded optical discs, according to local market experts. The attempted move is motivated by profitless or even money-losing production as a result of competitive price-cutting.

A silicon valley software outfit has invented a new technology that it claims blocks 97 per cent of DVD copying software. Macrovision says its RipGuard system does not interfere with the DVD’s playback or picture quality.

CyberLink have announced that their PowerDVD 6 suite of DVD burning programs has passed the "Designed for Windows XP Media Center Edition" testing conducted by Microsoft.