Microsoft has said its new Zune music player will be sold at a price matching Apple's market-leading iPod and, as a result, lose money this Christmas.

In response to the the newly adopted, very controversial DADVSI French law, three French DRM activists have turned themselves in to Police for breaking the new law.

Sony's new PS3 games will cost punters a little more than a pretty penny when the machine is finally released. According to Japanese site Impress Watch, citing "multiple information sources", PS3 games will be concentrated in the £39-52 range. Currently only bigger titles on the PS2 reach the £39 mark.

Philips has revoked CD-R disc patent licenses for CMC Magnetics and Ritek, the top two producers of optical discs in Taiwan, as well as Prodisc Technology and Lead Data, two second-tier makers, according to a list of CD-R licensees published on Philips Intellectual Property & Standards' (PIPS') global website.

An international group of computer security experts and human rights workers has released an anonymous, fully portable web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. The Torpark browser comes pre-configured and requires no installation. It runs off a USB memory stick, and claims to leave no tracks behind on the browser or computer.

Fox is running a 30-second television spot with just one static image in an effort to reach viewers who fast forward through ads using digital video recorders like TiVos.

Although CMC Magnetics stressed that its Thailand plant operation has not affected by the recent Thailand coup, industry players still worry that the supply of CD-R may be aggravated amid a seasonal increase in demand.

Panasonic has unveiled what it claims is the world's first Blu-ray Disc (BD) recorders that can play back BD-Video discs.

A pair of in-house Warner engineers have developed and filed a patent for a triple format disc. The disc is of great interest, as it can store Blu-ray, HD DVD and standard DVD content, all on the same disc on the same side!

Traxdata has today anounced the launch of its HD DVD-R media, the eagerly awaited successor to the current DVD. This is the only HD DVD-R that is available to buy online and in-stores today, heralding the start of a new era in optical storage media.

TDK has followed Samsung and launched a hard drive replacement based on NAND Flash memory. The product, which is currently available in sample quantities, was announced by the company last week.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) needs to convince more makers of optical discs to increase production of LightScribe CD-R and DVD discs in order to remain competitive against LabelFlash, the other competing direct disc labeling technology, according to those makers.

Seagate late last week set what it claimed is the world record for the highest recording density achieved using a hard disk platter. The magic number: 421Gb per square inch. Crucially, Seagate said, the test used perpendicular recording heads and disc media based on production technology, so products based on the technology may not be far off.

Retail sources have revealed that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on will be released in November at £199.

Although several leading global brands have already launched or will soon offer 18x DVD burners, CMC Magnetics and Ritek, Taiwan's top two makers of optical discs, currently produce 18x DVD+R/-R discs only in limited volumes and the supply may fall significantly short of global demand, according to industry sources.

Derrow - the author of numerous mainly free audio/video tools - seems to have found his own way of protesting against people stealing his code. He has posted on his websites links to trial copies of popular DVD authoring tools Xcopy9 and Video Vault - as well as links cracks for them.

DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios.

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InPhase Technology, the leader in holographic data storage, demonstrated the world's first commercial holographic storage product at IBC 2006.' The Tapestry 300-R enables 300 Gigabytes on a single disk at 20 Megabytes per second.

Celebrating the 50-year anniversary since the birth of the hard drive, Hitachi is also celebrating an areal density achievement of 345 gigabits per square inch (Gbits/sq. in.) using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.