Tokyo -- The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan last week detailed two optical-disk formats, developed with Taiwanese suppliers, that it has submitted to the DVD Forum for consideration as industry standards for high-definition DVD recording disks based on blue lasers.

The week ending 16 March 2003 was the first ever in which DVD rental revenues exceeded VHS rental rentals in the US according to trade organisation Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA).

Sonic Solutions announced today that Plextor(R) Co., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance CD-related equipment and software, has selected MyDVD(R) to bring DVD and Video CD creation capabilities to the PX-504A, its first-ever DVD recordable DVD+R/RW drive.

Drivers from nVidia 41.09 and onwards include "stringent checks" to comply with Macrovision requirements, the company has said. That could mean if you have a TV encoder that does not support Macrovision, you may well get an error message depending on what DVD software player you are using, the company has said.

Sony has released a firmware patch for its highly-popular dual format DVD recorder series. The new firmware, v2.0e, allows your Dual RW drive to record at 4X on 4X compatible DVD+R media. You can download the updater here. Sony also claim that the firmware, "improves reading and writing performance and reliability" and "reduces vibration noise for the discs with unbalance or eccentricity." The Sony website is here.

Pioneer has released a new firmware for the mega-popular DVD-R drive Pioneer DVR-A05 (also known as DVR-105). You can download the firmware here.

Flash has done it again: a new review of the Panasonic DVD Multi-Drive SW-9581-C/SW9571-CYY.

Following the press release from Bulkpaq this morning regarding their 4x DVD-R disc Datasafe Media have sent us a press release outlining two products they plan to release onto the European market.

Our friends at Bulkpaq have sent as a picture of their new 4x DVD-R disc. Click for a picture of the disc. The disc, which is manufactured by Princo using an exclusive dye formulation for Bulkpaq, is reputed to smash the £1.00 price barrier for 4x DVD-R. <a href="http://www.bulkpaq.co.uk/" target=_blank">Bulkpaq also tell us that they will start shipping the disc in volume by the end of the month.

Sony is responding to consumer demand for DVD with an impressive array of new product announcements, including progressive-scan players, SACD-compatible DVD changers, a 400-disc changer, and a "dual compatible" DVD recorder. This last item bridges the gap between the DVD-RW and DVD+RW camps by working with both formats.

Microsoft on Thursday added Creative Technologies to its stable of manufacturers developing Media2Go portable devices that are capable of playing digital video and music. Microsoft made the Creative Media2Go announcement at CeBit 2003 in Hannover, Germany. Creative will join iRiver, Samsung, Sanyo and ViewSonic, which also plan to develop Media2Go devices. But Creative's success in delivering PC audio and video technologies makes the company's support potentially the biggest endorsement to date for Media2Go, say analysts.

Thanks to our regular contributor Flash we have a review of the new Nanya DVD-R discs. Click here for review.

CenDyne Inc. today announced that it will expand its popular line of 4X DVD-R/RW drives with a new external drive with a USB 2.0/FireWire interface. The new DVD recorder connects to USB and FireWire interfaces to allow home and business users to quickly and easily store video and photos on DVD.

US authorities are seeking the extradition of a man accused of leading one of the Internet's oldest piracy groups. The suspected leader of one of the Internet's oldest piracy groups has been indicted and his extradition from Australia is being sought, a US federal attorney said on Wednesday.

Addonics Technologies today announced one of the smallest optical super combo drives, which has all the functions of a DVD Player, DVD Recorder, CD Player and CD Recorder stuffed inside an enclosure that's not much larger than a double stack CD jewel case. The Addonics Pocket DVD-R/RW does it all. The drive supports all current optical media formats and is perfect for corporate, government, professional photographers or mobile users who need a portable DVD/CDRW burner for creating DVD or CD material.

Format and vendor rivalry helps drive revenues to $1Billion this year. According to new research from Strategy Analytics, DVD video recorders are set to become the next hot trend in digital consumer electronics. The findings, released to subscribers to the Broadband Device Strategies service, show that worldwide sales this year will reach 2.7 million units and be worth $1 Billion in retail revenues. By 2005, consumers will spend more on DVD recorders than on play-only DVD players. Falling DVD recorder prices are being driven by competition between different format vendors and by new suppliers in the Far East and China.

We have a glimpse of the future with a review of Sony's new BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Recorder. Available in Japan on April the 10th, and at an RRP of approximately £2,400, it may be a while before you or I get out hands on one.

Notebooks will soon gain more onboard capacity for storing data, thanks to new 80GB hard drives introduced this week. Fujitsu on Monday announced its new MHT line of notebook hard drives that offers manufacturers the ability to boost their notebooks' maximum storage capacity from 60GB to 80GB. A new drive family from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies provides a similar boost.

Ahead Software is about to drop the bomb at CeBIT. They will be expanding their product line even more to the DVD and video compression field. New Nero products include an M-PEG4 digital compression codec, a new DVD player software package and updates to there range of media manipulation suites.

Thanks to our regular contributor Flash we have a review of the most popular DVD-Rom Readers. Click here for the review.