A major distributor of pirated DVDs of Bollywood films has been sent to prison for three years. Jayanti Amarishi Buhecha from Cambridge was found guilty of two trademark offences last month, and sentenced at Harrow Crown Court, London, on Tuesday.

We have just managed to get some images of the new Guranteed AAA+ Grade Ritek Taiwan G05 dye RiDisc Xtreme, this is the much anticipated disc announced by Ridisc earlier in the week.

Panasonic introduced five new models of its DIGA line, demonstrating continuing advances in ease of use and picture quality of its DVD recorders.

Mexico has seen one of its biggest crackdowns against music piracy, with a series of raids resulting in the seizure of approximately one million pirate music discs and the arrest of 25 individuals.

Following on from Ridsc’s announcement yesterday, Datawrite have also announced that they have renewed their partnership with Ritek Taiwan with the imminent release of their new Datawrite "Blue" range of Ritek G05 Dye manufactured DVD media.

Plextor is expanding its range with its first slot loading Double layer Dual Format drive. The PX-716AL writes at 16X for DVD+R, 16X for DVD-R and 4X for DVD+R DL (Double Layer).

CMC Magnetics have recently decided to shut down its factory for CD-R, CD-RW and DVD blank discs in Ireland; the company will ship the manufacturing equipment back to Taiwan.

JVC have introduced a new line of full-featured multi-format DVD recorders, including a series of combination units that combine DVD recording with hard disk drive (HDD), VHS and Mini DV recording.

A former consultant for Fox Cable Networks has been acquitted of charges that he made pirated movies and software available for downloading through the company's computer network under his username which, he claims, someone else must have used.

I recently had an interesting chat with Mr Tim Smith, Sales and Marketing Manager for Ridisc, where we discuss with him Ridisc's background, its development and its product range and the new range of Ritek manufactured products codenamed Xtreme. Click Here for the full Interview.

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.