Mitsubishi Chemicals is on the edge with DVD-R technology. Now they are the first to introduce 4x speed media.
TOKYO, JAPAN (Dec. 25, 2002) -- Mitsubishi Chemical Media Co., Ltd., (MKM) today announced the launch of a new lineup of 4x DVD-R discs for video and data use. The new products will be available at selected retail outlets in Japan from early February 2003.
MKM spokesman and CIO Shigeru Tamura said, "Our new 4x DVD-R discs will offer superior compatibility, and most DVD-ROM drives, DVD players, and game computers should be able to use them. We think these discs will serve as excellent media for recording of video images and data backup. They can be used as library media, or they can act as media for distribution."
The new DVD-R discs are based on MKM's proprietary DYN-AZO technology, which produces recording layers with 5%greater power margin and 20% better recording sensitivity than current MKM 2x DVD-R discs. This assures stable yet faster recording, achieving the same accuracy as other discs get with 1-2x recording and boosting compatibility between discs and 4x high-speed writers. In addition, the company uses the precision molding technology it proved with production of high-speed CD-R and CD-RW discs to make sure the new DVD-R 4x discs are the ideal flat shape.
We already published a little news blurp about the laser optics suitable for 16x speed DVD recording, but now I just found a PCWorld article on the topic that gives one a lot more information.
Each bump in the speed of optical drives means the laser, which is used to create the light beam that burns data into the disc, has to be made more powerful. When DVD writers first came out, they required 50 milliwatt lasers. The jump to 2X speeds required a 70 milliwatt laser and, beyond today's 4X drives, the next generation of 8X drives will need a 140 milliwatt laser. Such products are already well on the way to being commercialized.
For users, the eventual arrival of 16X drives will bring big benefits. At that speed drives will be capable of writing data at 176 megabits per second (mbps) which means a complete 4.7GB DVD disc can be written in three and a half minutes, according to Mitsubishi. That compares with around 14 minutes for today's fastest 4X drives and almost an hour for a first-generation drive.
Samples of the new laser are expected to become available in June 2003. With the introduction of the new laser, Mitsubishi says it expects its monthly laser production to increase from the current 1 million to 1.5 million during 2003 and reach 2 million units in 2004.
The CDFreaks have posted a translation of a press release by Mitsubishi. According to the source, Mitsubishi has already scheduled the mass production of high speed 8x and 16x laser optics for DVD-R drives (or DVD+R).
According to AV Watch, Mitsubishi Electric announced the development of 200mW laser for 16x DVD±RW on December 24, sample shipment to start from June 2003 and mass production from 2004. The company has also plans for 140mW laser for 8x DVD±RW to start 1.5 million units of monthly production from April 2003.
The AfterDawn staff will be taking a few days off, as I'm sure will most of you, our readers and visitors. So you won't be seeing too much updates in the next few days, but we will return! We always do.
Fast-Talk Communications is developing an interesting technology for searching text strings within audio files. Unlike audio search tools released so far, Fast-Talk's engine converts speech to phonemes, the basic units of sound in a language, and indexes them. A written search string is also converted to phonemes, then that string of phonemes is searched within the index, and the resulting timecodes are returned.
Fast-Talk offers an a trial evaluation kit of their engine. The company, however, is not looking to make a product for the end user, but instead offers the engine and the software development kit to companies willing to utilize the features in their own products.
Warren Lieberfarb, one of the the driving forces behind the DVD format, has quit Warner Brothers' home video arm. Warner Bros. did not comment on the reasons for Lieberfarb's resignation. He had worked for Warner Home Video for the past twenty years, and will now be replaced internally - most likely by Ed Burns, Marcia King, or Jim Cardwell, who were executive vice-presidents below Lieberfarb.
Lieberfarb began investigating alternatives for VHS in 1992, because he felt that the home video market would soon be made extinct by video-on-demand -services, which were both easier for the consumers and offered far better quality than VHS. As a response, Digital Versatile Disc (then Digital Video Disc, or DVD) was developed in co-operation with Toshiba Corporation.
First DVD players were commercially launched in March, 1997. The format has been a huge success, finding its way to homes all over the world faster than any other electrical appliance in the history.
A site aimed to protect the consumers' right to fair use was launched yesterday at ProtectFairUse.org. The site provides information about fair use as well as easy means to contact your congressman, and let him or her know you value your rights as a consumer.
Visit Protect Fair Use at:
http://www.protectfairuse.org/
A Carnegie Mellon University research group has developed a peer to peer streaming video content distribution system called End System Multicast (ESM). The system constructs a self-organizing and adaptive overlay network using the receivers that are tuning into the broadcast events.
The group is currenlty looking for more users to test the system more thoroughly. Amongst the streams currently available are Triumph of the Nerds by Bob Cringely, distinguished lecture by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, ACM SIGCOMM conference paper presentation by Dave Clark, and 2002 Sony Legged Robot Soccer Championship.
Once again rumours appear about a sale of Goldenhawk CDRWIN. This time the source hints towards a Japanese buyer - a buyer interested in technology, not the CDRWIN brand. This sounds a bit odd though since CDRWIN's burning core is hardly the best available, or even modern by current standards. Why would anyone buy it?
Translated with Altavista Babelfish
Again it bubbles in the rumor kitchen around Goldenhawk's CDRWIN. From a quite reliable source the Goldenhawk was by a Japanese company bought is very probable to experiences. However it is to concern to the new owners more the technology of the software than around the preservation of the software "CDRWin's" - even Jeff Arnold is to have said good-bye to some contact people... The despite do not appear occasionally on the Website still new versions. To the more or less experienced user thereby however surely it will have been noticeable thereby always at new functions liking ELT. Does Goldenhawk stand now thus nevertheless endguelig before the FROM?
The European Union Copyright Directive, EU's own little clone of notorious DMCA law, should be implemented by European Union member countries into their existing legislation by 22nd of December, 2002 -- this upcoming Sunday. But now it seems that none of the countries is ready to do so in schedule.
According to various sources, the only country who might be able to implement the required changes into its existing legislation is Denmark. Other countries seem to miss the deadline -- some of them, such as United Kingdom, badly.
The EUCD, once implemented, basically makes it illegal to sell or distribute any device or software that makes it possible to circumvent a technical copy-protection mechanism. Good example of such tool is DeCSS which allows circumventing the CSS copy-protection found on DVD-Video discs.
Each member country can have their own little alternatives of the law, but basically most of the countries seem to adapt the worst possible methods for implementation. Only handful of countries, including Finland where AfterDawn.com is located, have allowed the use of such tools in their draft laws-- even though distributing is still illegal. Finnish draft of the new copyright law makes a mentionable exception -- it states that DVD region codes are not considered as "effective technical copy-protection" and allows region-free DVD players and tools that circumvent the region coding.
According to a research concluded by In-Stat/MDR, the DVD player shipments grew by 61 percent in 2002 compared to the numbers in 2001. The growth was fuelled partly by super-cheap Chinese players and partly by increasing sales of DVD recorders.
According to numbers, the U.S. will remain the biggest market for DVD players until 2006 when China surpasses it and becomes the biggest single market in the world for DVDs. The growth rate in the European Union will surpass the rate in the U.S. through 2005.
Study also predicts that the prices of DVD recorders will drop under $300 (£187 or €300) by end of the year 2003. The sales growth of DVD players will stop in 2006 when all of the growth in the market is provided by the DVD recorders.
The trial Norway vs Jon Johansen ended today with both sides delivering their closing arguments to the court. Prosecution is seeking $1,400 in court fees, three-month probation sentence and taking Johansen's computers away from him.
Johansen's attorney, Halvor Manshaus, said Johansen had to copy DVD movies to test the DeCSS software. Manshaus called copying a few bits of DVD data no different from copying parts of an encyclopedia for studying later.
Johansen said in his testimony that he owns almost 200 original DVDs, each costing appx. $35 in Norway and said that he has only used those movies that he owns to test the DeCSS software, that allows breaking the weak copy-protection found on DVD-Video discs, called CSS.
Manhaus also argued that the DVDs were copyprotected by technical methods, but not protected by Norwegian law. Johansen is accused of breaking into a computer system -- in this case, into a DVD that he owns.
The verdict in the case is expected in beginning of January, 2003.
According to this German source, the KiSS Technologies are the first to provide support for OGG Vorbis in a stand-alone home player. OGG Vorbis is an audio file format that is similar to MP3, but is totally free of patents or license fees. OGG also delivers possibly the best audio quality for low bitrates (<128kbps) in current audio formats.
Translated with dictionary.com
Of the MUSE kissed starting from Wednesday, 18 December, is to play the Kiss DP-450 also Ogg Vorbis Audiotitel - as first Hardwareplayer at all. Almost already secondary matter: With the updating the DVD player outputs also Pal pictures progressively. Advantage Denmark is called it, if it concerns the DVD player with the most supported video and audio formats. The Kiss DP-450 (500 euro, test in video 2/2003) (www.kiss technology.com) already in front away from the start with the support of the MPEG-4-basierten DivX 4 and 5 as well as Apple Quicktime 6 the nose had video codecs. Now the Danes put after: Starting from that 18. 12. 2002 are to be able to play the Kiss owing to new firmware (version 2.53) also audio data in the datareduced Vorbis format (www.vorbis.com) - as the first hardware playing device for this standard at all. Vorbis gemausert itself in shortest time for the favourite of audiophiler computer users: Differently than AAC, MP3, MP3pro or WMA the Vorbis Audiokompression is according to specification of its honorary developers license and patent-free - everyone may use her as desired. Since Ogg Vorbis besides with low as with high bit rates sounds clearly better than most contention modes, many music fan their own music collections even change over from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis.
In very, very weird legal issue, the prosecution, representing the people of Norway, has presented amended charges against Jon Johansen in the case that's well-known as the "DeCSS case".
According to various Norwegian sources, the changes in the charges mostly add new aspects to the prosecution's case. Most notably, prosecution wanted to add charges that Johansen also cracked code that revealed a repository of protection keys.
At first, Johansen's defence opposed the changes, but because raising a formal objection would mean that the defence would also have to present fresh evidence against the new charges and that would delay the case, the defence counsel dropped the formal objections at this point.
The delays in the case, all of them caused by the prosecution, have pushed the case's closing arguments to be presented on next week's Monday instead of this week's Friday.
321Studios just released the latest version of their DVD to DVD-R (as well as DVD+R, DVD-RW or DVD+RW) software, DVDXCopy.
New version, DVDXCopy v1.3 has couple of much-requested enhancements, most notably a fully-integrated burning engine of Ahead NERO. The changelog is here:
Full integration of the new, advanced burning engine
New low calorie download: The full installation of DVDXCopy is now just over three megabytes.
Advanced Options on the main screen lets you set Player compatibility mode to be either UDF/ISO or just UDF. Just UDF mode helps some players recognize DVD+RW discs as valid media (although UDF/ISO is the correct selection by DVD specs).
New "no questions asked" mode for users who have separate DVD writer and DVD-ROM drives. You can now put the output disk in your writer and the source disk in your reader and check the "Output disk is ready" box and once the first disc is processed, it will start burning it immediately to the blank disc in writer drive. After that, program will continue by processing the disc 2. Now the checkbox is unselected again, but you can switch the burned disc 1 to a new blank disc and check the box again while the software processes disc 2 and it will do the 2nd burning automatically as well.
DVDXCopy now remembers what drive was last used to burn, and will automatically attempt to use that drive again.
TEAC is kind of an odd ball in the optical storage sector. It has been around for a long time, but it seems that it has never been a very popular brand. On the other hand it has always been one of the most respected CD-R manufacturers, up there with Yamaha and Plextor. TEAC also introduces their first DVD-R drive. And yes, TEAC also has chosen the "minus", which isn't a negative thing at all.(See our glossary for DVD+R)
With the new TEAC DV-W50E (4x DVD-R, 2x DVD-RW, 16x CD-R and 8x CD-RW), recording DVDs on
the PC is now quicker and easier than ever. TEAC brings the new burner to the market
together with the award-winning Studio software, version 8 from Pinnacle, which has
comprehensive video editing and enhanced publishing functions. Creating diapresentations
and holiday or company DVDs is consequently made significantly easier.
The TEAC DV-W50E burns DVD-Rs at 4x speed and DVD-RWs at 2x speed. CD-Rs are burnt at 16x
speed, CD-RWs at 8x speed. In addition to current CD and CD-R/RW formats, the recorder
supports DVD-ROM and DVD-Video (single + dual layer) as well as DVD-R and DVD-RW.
According to the producers, transfer rates of up to 5.54 MB/s are reached in the DVD-R
mode, 2.77 MB/s in DVD-RW mode, 2.4 MB/s in CD-R and 1.2 MB/s in the CD-RW mode. Access
times are 140 ms in the DVD-ROM mode and 130 ms with CD-ROMs.
DVD CCA's (DVD Copy Control Association) president and COO, John Hoy, testified today in mockery of lawsuit that we know today as the case of Norway (government sponsored by MPAA) vs Jon Johansen. His testimony took the farce even further, since he was allowed to testify over the phone from the U.S. (mental note: if AfterDawn.com ever gets sued, I will make all my court appearances via email). He is one of the prosecutions main witnesses.
The case, which has history dating back from 1999, relates to a weak copy-protection mechanism found on DVD-Video discs called CSS and a program called DeCSS which allows users to crack this copy-protection. The prosecution claims that Jon Johansen has created this tool and has sued him for breaking into a third party data system, when he in fact has merely broken into a DVD-Video disc that he owns.
And as the DeCSS history tells us, Jon Johansen hasn't even cracked the code, he has merely bundled the original code into some other functional parts and created the package -- but he hasn't programmed the CSS cracking algorithms. And as the history tells us as well, the CSS was never actually cracked, but merely opened with codes
I think we are the first to show you something about the much anticipated upcoming MP4 audio encoder.
It will be very interesting to see if this encoder has an effect on the audio scene. MP4 AAC is the commercial audio alternative for the future. Basically it has similar uses than the open-source OGG Vorbis. MP4 AAC will get a flying start with the user base of Nero, which is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, CD-R applications out there.
Thanks to our friends at the Ahead Software, we are able to show you a little sneek-a-peek about the upcoming MP4 audio encoder. It should be included in the next Nero release. No in depth reviewing or analysis here - just some pictures and introduction to some of the functions.
One of the world's biggest mobile phone operator's, Japan's NTT DoCoMo and Apple announced on this week series of 3G phones in Japan that use 3GPP, a mobile phone video standard based on MPEG-4. Apparently Apple's QuickTime core will act as a decoder in these phones.
While 3G hype has failed to materialize in most of the phone-crazed countries in the world -- Orange UK announced on last week that their 3G schedule will be delayed dramatically -- Japan seems to be pushing the technology ahead.
NTT DoCoMo will offer services that its customers can subscribe to such as watching news and sports clips in QuickTime. Customers can also watch movie trailers on their phone, find out where the movie is playing and then buy tickets. For Apple this is also an opportunity to make its QuickTime brand more widely known brand and get customers to associate it into multimedia content.
MPAA(Movie Picture Association of America) has sued several American eBay sellers for allegedly selling pirated DVDs through the auction site. Association claims that individuals, from eight different U.S. states, have sold totally over 1,000 pirated DVDs during the last 30 days.
Auction site eBay is not involved with the lawsuit, but according to its spokesperson, it is "delighted" that copyright owners have directly responded to illegal material sales in its service and have not dragged it into the process.
Most of the individuals named in the lawsuit have remained silent in the public, but some of them have come forward to the press and have claimed that they've been merely re-selling DVDs that they've purchased from so-called "eBay Power Sellers" that have claimed that their products are legal and official Asian releases of hit movies, not yet released in the States.
The DeCSS trial got underway today in Oslo, Norway. As anticipated Jon Johansen, or DVD Jon, like the Norwegians like to call him, pleeded not guilty to the charges on developing a software, that makes it possible to copy movies. Namely he is charged with helping to crack the CSS code, and develop and distribute a program taking advantage of the cracked code.
According to prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde, Johansen collaborated with people from Germany, Russia, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States on making and publishing DeCSS in 1999 and 2000. At the time Johansen was 15 and 16 years old.
Even though it's true that Johansen took part in developing DeCSS, he had nothing at all to do with cracking the CSS code, which makes the already weak case against him even weaker.
Just to refresh our memory, here's a quote from a three-year-old article written by deZZY/DoD about DeCSS and cracking the CSS code.
Lately, Jon Johansen of MoRE has been pretty much all over the news in Norway, though he had NOTHING to do with the actual cracking of the DVD CSS protection. Yes, it was MoRE who did DeCSS, but the actual crack was not a team effort, MoRE didn't even exist back when the anonymous German (who is now a MoRE member) cracked it...
Jon Lech Johansen, also known as 'DVD Jon', goes to court next week in Oslo, Norway.
Johansen co-authored DeCSS, the software which makes it possible to bypass the CSS copy-protection used on most DVD-Video discs. Norwegian prosecutors, the MPAA, and the DVD Copy Control Association claim that the software can contribute to illegal copying of DVDs. It's basically about consumer right versus the authors' rights to control the content of their product.
Professor Olav Torvund, a law professor at the University of Oslo, says that the case is weak. In his view all that Johansen did was broke into a product that he had bought and thus owned. It's like buying a car, picking it's lock, and then being sued by the car manufacturer. Torvund says that the industry is trying to shove the consumer rights aside by setting technical barriers on the product. Copying videos for personal use is perfectly legal in Norway, as it is in most countries around the world. All Johansen ever did was spread the information on how to open the DVDs using something else than an expensive DVD-player.
President George W. Bush yesterday passed bill HR.5469, aka the Small Webcasters Settlement Act. The bill, however, is very vague in serveral aspects.
There have been three drafts of the bill so far. The latest version, created by Senator Jesse Helms' office, doesn't specify any rates, but instead gives the parties involved, RIAA and the webcasters, until December 15 to reach a settlement. It is, however, unknown who actually will be taking part in the negotiations.
Blue-Hardware has interviewed the author of BlindWrite Suite - one of the most advanced CD-R replication tools.
VSO-Software is a software editor specialized in burning softwares, it publishes in particular BlindWrite Suite and CopyToCD. The first is able to reproduce CDs (protected or not) : Audio CD, Data CD, etc... For its part, CopyToCD is a rather original software making it possible to back up quickly and easily data on CD by a right click mouse.
Perhaps you know these softwares, perhaps you even already used them, but do you know that "VSO-Software" is a team of French developers? In order to have more informations about VSO Software, about their actual software and the futures, we have realised an interview of Fabrice Meuwissen. I invite you to discover it. Follow the guide...
Liquid Audio, one of the online music pioneers, will disappear soon. Company's board of directors has voted to dissolve the company and return the remaining assets to company's shareholders.
Company has been known one of the first companies to develop legal methods of delivering and selling music online in digital format. Company sold its DRM technology to Microsoft earlier this year for $7M.
321Studios has been busy over the last couple of days fixing some of the issues found in DVDXCopy v1.2 and in the v1.2.1 patch released after that.
Now they've released a latest version which fixes various installation problems that might effect on other software items installed on the same system. Latest version is DVDXCopy v1.2.2.
RealNetworks will continue on its chosen open-source path on Monday when it will release Helix Producer, a streaming media producer, and its source code on public.
Company shocked the streaming media world earlier this year first announcing its plans to release much of its propietary software under open source license and when it delivered the Helix media player software for community couple of months ago.
What we who live in Western countries consider to be the top-of-the-range in personal digital video, is getting pretty antique in Japan. Here in the UK Philips and others are pushing strongly stand-alone DVD-/+R/W recorders to the markets, but the devices are priced so that only early-adopters can afford them. Meanwhile in Japan, combined DVR (think of TiVo) and DVD-R devices are getting rapidly more popular.
Now, Toshiba has set a new storage capacity record for these type of devices, by releasing a 160GB DVR device that's combined with DVD-R/W recorder. Short blurp from their press release:
The RD-X3 offers home users a 160GB HDD, the largest drive of any HDD & DVD video recorder*1, capable of recording a maximum of 208 hours*2 *3 of programming. The recorder also supports a DVD-RAM/-R drive that can record up to 12 hours of video on a 9.4GB double-sided DVD-RAM disc.
A wide range of enhancement technologies supports superb image quality. A progressive scan video circuit delivers the impressive 540 horizontal line resolution that brings out the best of DVD images, while a Ghost Reduction Tuner (GRT) assures clearer, sharper picture reproduction. Other imaging technologies include Digital Noise Reduction (DNR), a 12bit 108MHz Video Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), and D1 terminal input that enables reception of high-quality images from other tuners.
Chicago federal judge Marvin Aspen issued a temporary restraining order against P2P operator Madster, demanding company to shut down all of its servers that are connected to the Internet.
The order came after RIAA complained to the court that Madster (formerly known as Aimster) is violating court's earlier order to cease all illegal activity in its network. Judge said that Madster should shut down the service because it is still violating copyright owners' rights with its service. Judge also said that if the company doesn't do it by itself, judge will grant a permission for RIAA to ask Madster's ISP to shut down the service.
The case against Madster is not over yet, but the temporary restraining order will stay in place until the court makes its final decision on the case. Court scheduled a hearing on December 19th to discuss whether Madster's owner, Johnny Deep, should be held in contempt of the original song-blocking order.
In a surprise move, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson, delayed his decision on FastTrack P2P case where both parties -- RIAA and MPAA and two of the FastTrack P2P software vendors, Grokster and Streamcast(owner of the Morpheus) -- are seeking for summary judgment motions before the case goes to an actual trial.
The third FastTrack company, Sharman Networks, the owner of the Kazaa and the owner of the FastTrack technology, didn't attend to the court hearing, because the court still has to decide whether the U.S. court has jurisdiction over the company or not. Sharman Networks has headquarters at Australia, is incorporated in small island of Vanuatu and doesn't have any servers in the U.S. soil.
Basically in the hearing both parties referred to a famous P2P case of Napster -- copyright owners' lawyers stating that FastTrack operators are identical to that of Napster and "FastTrack companies" arguing that because they don't operate any central servers (unlike Napster did), the Napster ruling doesn't apply to them.
Judge basically stated after the hearing that he is not ready to issue summary judgments at this point and needed more time to determine if the case should go to trial or not. Also, he probably needs time to determine whether or not the Sharman Networks should be included to the case.
According to a blurp at Slashdot, there's finally a working DivX player for Sony Playstation 2 available.
The player obviously requires a modchip in order to work correctly (otherwise you can't load "homebrew" software items) and according to the Spanish site that hosts the software, it is capable of playing all flavors of DivX (DivX3.11alpha, DivX4.x and DivX5.x).
The CD-RW.ORG interviewed Ivan Dimkovic, the man responsible for the upcoming Ahead Software Nero AAC encoder.
As I write this Ahead Software, the makers of famous Nero Burning ROM, are about to release an AAC audio encoder as a add-on to Nero. The creator of this new AAC encoder is a well known character in the "Hi-Fi audio compression scene" due to his excellent PsyTEL AAC Encoder. We asked Ivan to tell the readers of this site about the nature and benfits of AAC.
Warren Lieberfarb, one of the the driving forces behind the 
