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According to the Digital Content Association of Japan, some recordable DVDs are so unstable they could lose data and become unplayable in just a matter of years. A new longevity test by the Japanese Association of 18 brands found massive differences between brands from Japan and Taiwan. Rather unhelpfully, the group has refused to identify [...]

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Fox will significantly ramp up the number of DVDs offering secondary digital copies of a movie, after agreeing to use Apple’s DRM technology and iTunes. As many as 40 Apple-friendly titles will be released this year, beginning with the new Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest cartoon. The new Apple Digital Copies will be available on [...]

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Copy-protection company Macrovision is in the process of acquiring assets from Cryptography Research which will give it ownership of the controversial BD+ technology (aka Self Protecting Digital Content) used by Fox Home Entertainment on its Blu-ray releases. Explains Fred Amoroso, CEO of Macrovision: “The integration of SPDC into our product portfolio will enable us to [...]

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Classic spy spoof Get Smart has walked away with the Best in Show award at this year’s American TV DVD Awards. Sponsored by a selection of trade groups, Get Smart: The Complete Series took top spot through its use of innovative packaging (a phone booth box design) and extensive extras, including bloopers, commentaries and interviews. [...]

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This week the DVD Copy Control Association will once again attempt to outlaw products which rip DVDs for use in home servers. The move follows a failure earlier this year to ban Kaleidescape from making and supplying high-end video server product. The DVDCCA proposes that it would become a violation of the DVD license for [...]

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Toshiba has announced an HD DVD recorder able to record high definition video onto standard DVD media. The VARDIA RD-A301 includes a new HD Transcoder, which allows the recording of hi-def video onto standard DVD discs in HD quality and achieves longer recording time for high-definition video. The Transcoder converts MPEG2 video, the standard for [...]

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Panasonic will become the first brand to ship a Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player. The company, which itself has kept a low-profile in the format war, says it will ship its ‘Final profile’ DMP-BD30 into US stores in a matter of days. The deck, which will be priced at 500 dollars, will support BD Java picture-in-picture [...]

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As the price of HD DVD players hits an all time low in the US, as Wal-Mart and Amazon push the format into the sub-200 dollar mainstream, a new report from industry analyst Jupiter Research suggests that consumer interest in HD discs remains low. It says just 24 per cent of those polled have considered [...]

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