News written by James Delahunty (March, 2008)

Today we have added another three guides to our Guide section. The first guide covers a program we forgot to cover long ago called VobBlanker. The guide shows basically how to "blank" anti-piracy videos, copyright warnings, studio logo videos and whatever else you are forced to sit through (by PUOs) before you get to the menu of the DVD disc you just bought. It also shows how to strip streams from features on the disc.

The other two guides were just basic guides to a rising piece of software that certainly makes your life easier; tsMuxer. A guide for taking an MKV with H.264/AVC and AC3 audio and converting it to an M2TS file (with AVC level changed if necessary) which will work with the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console was added and then semi-cloned for plain transport stream (.TS) rips (again, AVC / AC3, process may be necessary for H.264 Level change).

After launching a music service six months ago that only offers digital audio downloads without Digital Rights Management (DRM), Amazon has taken the No. 2 spot in sales after Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Last year, Apple and EMI announced a ground-breaking deal to sell digital music downloads without digital rights management (DRM) technology.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs had predicted that by the end of 2007, half of the iTunes catalog would be DRM-free. However, that simply didn't happen because Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group opted to sell DRM-free downloads through Amazon's service instead.

As it stands, iTunes offers about 2 million DRM-free songs from EMI and independent record companies, while Amazon has 4.5 million DRM-free downloads to offer. A situation such as this was to be expected however as many record industry figures loathe the control that Apple has over the market for digital downloads.

"Amazon's arrival removed some of the stranglehold iTunes had on the market," says Ted Cohen, a former EMI Music executive and managing partner of the Tag Strategic consulting firm. Pete Baltaxe, Amazon's director of digital music said that customers have sent a lot of positive feedback about the lack of DRM restrictions on the music sold.

Administrators of Microsoft's Xbox Live online gaming community have cracked down on those who are found to be tampering with their Xbox Live Gamerscore. "Today we took action on some of the accounts we have identified as the most serious offenders who have violated the Xbox Live Terms of Use by tampering with their Gamerscore and achievements." administrator Major Nelson wrote in a post on Tuesday.

Those who were caught suffered a variety of punishments, such as having their Gamerscore reset to zero, all registered achievements canceled and some had their accounts labeled as cheaters on the Xbox Live service and Xbox.com. The response from Xbox Live users has been mostly positive. Back in October, Nelson had warned against the cheating activity.

"I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and achievements. If you do decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen," a post read at the time.

For More Information: Gamerscore Cheating FAQ

Frank N. Magid Associates conducted a survey which has found that 59 percent of Americans are aware of the impending February 19th 2009 switch to all-digital television broadcasts in the United States. The same company had conducted a survey six months before which found that only 34 percent of Americans were aware of the switch, showing progress by the U.S. Government and other parties involved in educating the public about the change.

However, the implication that 41 percent of Americans are still unaware that the DTV transition will occur in less than a year is nothing to celebrate. Nevertheless, in homes where it matters - with reliance on over-the-air only broadcasts and analog TV sets - only 37 percent were found to be unaware of the impending change.

While the level of awareness has been raised to the digital switch in the past six months, there also was a rise in the number of people who believed that the transition means that all television programming will be available in High-Definition (HD). Six months ago, Magid found that 23 percent believed this falsity, and in late February the number actually rose to 29 percent.

In an email notification to users, Peerflix has announced that it will cease operations of its DVD trading service. Peerflix competed with rental services like Netflix, but differed because it instead let its users swap their own disc collections. Now Peerflix has decided to cut this service due to escalating operational costs.

Peerflix allowed users to post lists of films they were offering and films they were seeking. A transaction fee of 99c applied and each film was assigned a trade value by Peerflix. When a user received a film on their want list, they paid the sender for it.

The company had maintained that it was like "stock trading" and that users who traded heavily would inevitably earn higher profits from it (a cash-out fee of $10 applied for all accounts). However, problems with the service's trading model were spotted early on, with Techcrunch's Michael Arrington, for example, finding the faults irreconcilable and predicting it would "slide into obscurity."

According to a report from IMS Research, by the end of the year 2007, more than 13 million households worldwide subscriber to Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services. It predicts that by the end of the year 2012, that number will have grown to around 69 million households worldwide, translating into an average annual growth of 52 percent.

This growth is expected to elevate shipments of IPTV set-top boxes to 21 million in the year 2012, compared to the 4.7 million figure for 2006. According to the report, hybrid set-top boxes (set-top boxes that combine Internet Protocol features with traditional TV delivery technologies) will see growth too.

The hybrids will see shipments of 39 million in 2012 compared to less than 5 million in 2006. The IMS report predicts that prices of IPTV technology and services will "continue to fall as increased integration of multiple codecs into a single chip helps to reduce manufacturing costs over time."

CyberLink Corp. today released CyberLink MediaShow 4, combining photo and video management, enhancement, authoring, burning and sharing in one convenient application. The software features a next-generation 3D "liquid" interface that ensures ease-of-use and fun for users while working on their precious photos and videos.

"The ubiquity of mainstream digital cameras and mobile phones is prompting users to take more videos and photos, and accumulate thousands of them on their PCs," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "CyberLink MediaShow 4 is the ideal software to manage visual media libraries in a fun and easy way, allowing users to enhance their own videos and photos quickly, helping them to share their stories creatively, through slideshows, online posting and preserving their best memories onto DVDs."

MediaShow 4 lets users create cool and stylish content such as impressive slideshows, including the new, stunning animated "cell" style, which features beat detection technology for automatically synchronizing the animation of photos according to a soundtrack's rhythm. Users can therefore create unique slideshows from a single set of photos, simply by changing their music selection.

The next firmware update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has gotten much hype over the past couple of weeks, as it turned it into the first official Profile 2.0 Blu-ray hardware. There has been a lot of interest in BD-Live even though only two titles are currently available that provide extra web-based content (War and Saw IV) and two are scheduled for release in April (Walk Hard and The Sixth Day).

There was some speculation that the update would also bring "Portable Copy" support to the PSP as indicated at CES 2008, but that didn't happen. However, media integration with the PlayStation Portable (PSP) has been improved as reported and there is slightly better DivX support (file size limit addressed).

What didn't get as much media attention is the added support for Low to High LTH Blu-ray discs. These discs, included in "Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format Ver.1.2" specifications, use an organic dye recording layer. The technology will help to reduce the cost of making the discs because it eliminates the need for large-scale manufacturing plant investments, and will allow older modified CD-R and DVD-R manufacturing equipment to be used as part of the process.

According to Sony BMG Chief Executive Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, the music giant is currently developing a music download service that would offer unlimited access to the company's catalog on a subscription fee basis. The music will be compatible with many different brands of MP3 player including Apple Inc.'s iPod. The service was announced in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

While Schmidt-Holtz didn't give any time frame for when this service is expected to become available to consumers, he said that the subscription model would include a fee of about €6 -- €8 per month for unlimited access to Sony BMG's catalog, which includes artists such as Leona Lewis, Alicia Keys and Celine Dion.

Interestingly, he also that it was "even possible that clients could keep some songs indefinitely, that they would own them even after the subscription expired." The plans were confirmed by a spokesman of Bertelsmann, which owns a 50% stake in Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture with Japan's Sony Corp.

Samsung has launched a touch-screen mobile phone, thinner than Apple Inc.'s iPhone which delivers to the human touch senses through haptic feedback. The Anycall Haptic launched in South Korea on Tuesday, which has a large touch screen, has 22 different kinds of vibration built into the phone. For example, when a user changes the volume of the radio, the phone simulates the sound and feel of the clicks of an old-style volume knob on a real radio.

The phone features a 3.2-inch widescreen display, 2-megapixel camera, a full Internet browser, reception of terrestrial television programming and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. The phone will cost between 700,000 won and 800,000 won (US$700 to $800) in the country but so far there has been no announcements for availability in other territories.

It's not the only new mobile phone to target the human sense of touch either. LG also launched the LG-SH24, which, while not so high-tech as Samsung's model, has a layer of silicon over the front of the phone to simulate human skin. It costs 40,000 won

Netflix, one of the worlds best known DVD rental services, has revealed that it has been surveying its subscribers to analyze the level of interest in streaming Netflix movies to the Xbox 360 console directly over the Internet. Because the Xbox 360 console is connected directly to a television set in normal use, it allows Microsoft to offer a video download service that has a huge advantage over others that work only with computers.

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey revealed the surveying efforts on Monday but declined to say whether or not it should be taken as an indication that both companies will announce a partnership soon. He did say however that Netflix is interested in delivering movies to its customers "in as many ways as possible."

While Netflix already announced a partnership with LG Electronics to produce a Set-Top Box to stream movies directly to a television, a deal with Microsoft or Sony to integrate the service on either company's consoles would immediately provide a large installed base of compatible hardware, and guarantee tens of millions of further units to be brought to homes in the near future.

Netflix, a leader in online video rentals, suffered a "technology breakdown" on Monday that affected many areas of the Los Gatos-based company's operations. The company's website, a vital component of its business, suffered downtime of about five hours. Netflix has a base of subscribers that amounts to about 7,500,000 people, so quite a lot may have been inconvenienced by the outage.

The web-site was not the only area affected either, apparently some customers may now have to wait a bit longer for their next due rentals to arrive. Company spokesman Steve Swasey said the overall problem hit several distribution centers and so a lot of the DVDs due to be mailed out Monday have been delayed.

The trouble started for Netflix around 7AM PDT and the website was still down in the afternoon.

The Fiscal Police in Catania (GdF) raided an organization involved in the production and distribution of pirate CDs and DVDs in Catania, East Sicily, early in March. The operation led to the seizure of 63 high speed CD burners more than 15,000 illegal CDs and DVDs, in addition to seven professional printers. Two individuals were arrested during the raid.

In the past couple of years, there has been quite a lot of anti-piracy news from Italy. In November 2007, Four people were questioned on suspicion of illegally uploading music on the Internet following a raid near Milan. Six computers, seven external hard discs and more than 2,300 CDs were seized.

The Discotequezone DirectConnect (DC) file sharing hub was also shut down by Italian police in October 2007. A total of 11 computers and more than 110,000 illegal MP3 music files were seized in the operation which was carried out between Rome, Milan and Brescia.

However, last month, news out of Italy showed that the Italian parliament may have accidentally legalized some P2P music.

Digg founder Kevin Rose says that Apple's 3G version of the iPhone will have video chat capabilities. His past predictions about the first generation iPhone turned out to be largely false but he is citing different sources for this information. In a recent "Diggnation" podcast, Rose told viewers that Apple is restricting third parties from authoring applications that run in both the foreground and background partly because it doesn't want rivals to its own upcoming iChat software.

He claims the newer iPhone will have two digital cameras; one on the back of the handset and one behind the transparent touch-screen. The camera will allow video-conferencing over high-speed 3G data networks and according to Rose, users will be able to chat with iChat users on other iPhones or using software on their computer.

While Rose did get a lot of details wrong before the iPhone was released (reported a slide-out keyboard and CDMA support), he has made many good predictions in the past; the most relevant to this article being his last minute report of an iPod Nano before it was unveiled in 2005.

The proposed $4.59 billion purchase of XM Satellite Radio by rival Sirius Satellite Radio has been given antitrust clearance by the U.S. Justice Department on Monday. The investigation into the proposed merger that would combine the only two providers of satellite radio in the United States concluded that nowadays things are much different than they were when Sirius and XM were licensed.

These days, consumers have portable audio players and mobile phones that can play digital audio. Other services can now also be considered competition such as HD Radio. "Competition in the marketplace generally protects consumers and I have no reason to believe that this won't happen here," Justice Department antitrust chief, Thomas Barnett, told a conference call with reporters.

Consumer groups and traditional radio bodies criticized the proposed merger as anti-competitive. In 1997, both companies were barred from acquiring the other. A source has told Reuters that while the FCC must determine whether the purchase is in the public-interest, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has not proposed what should be done just yet, but has request staff to draft documents for different possible outcomes.

Coinciding with an update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console to support Blu-ray Profile 2.0 titles, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be rolling out its first two BD-Live Blu-ray movie titles. The studio announced the release date of these titles; April 8th. These discs will features bonus material and extra features that can be retrieved from the Internet by supporting hardware.

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "The Sixth Day" staring Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the first two titles from the studio to offer the extra functionality. Eventually all Blu-ray players on the market will be Profile 2.0-ready. A software update for the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) will make it the first Blu-ray hardware to support Profile 2.0 titles.

Early Blu-ray players lack the support for Internet connectivity and extras such as picture-in-picture (PIP) functionality, which then were touted as selling points of the rival HD DVD format. BD-Live titles will become more complex with time, eventually providing services such as mobile phone ringtone downloads, live virtual events, social interaction and games.

Earlier this month, four men were found guilty in a £5 million illegal operation in South East England. The pirate CD traders had imported professional-looking discs from the Czech Republic which were then sold over a wide area. The recording industry's UK and international trade bodies, BPI and IFPI, welcomed the verdict at Snaresbrook Crown Court the found the men guilty of conspiracy to infringe copyright.

The operation involved the manufacture and distribution of unlicensed pirate urban music compilations. Some of these became brands in their own right with the "In The Club" series running for more than 15 editions. The IFPI's forensic facility was used in the case to determine the origin of the music CDs, which was a manufacturing plant in the Czech Republic.

The operators of the plant then identified the four UK traders. Waseem Mir was arrested and his storage facilities raided by police. During that raid 25,000 infringing discs were recovered and again samples were sent off for forensic examination by IFPI. It is estimated that more than 400,000 boxsets containing between two and five CDs, some with DVDs, which sold for around £12 a title, were imported during the fraud.

According to reports floating around the net, of which sources include PC World, the upcoming firmware update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console would allow a "Portable Copy" feature for the PSP. Basically, the feature would allow owners of a PS3 and a PSP copy a standard-definition version of a movie from a Blu-ray disc to the PSP's MemoryStick DUO. One could assume that if was true, these copies would be protected somehow.

What isn't part of the report however is exactly "how" this would work. Would it be a standard-definition copy of the movie on a Blu-ray disc that can be directly downloaded to the PSP (or other supporting portable device) -- as has been reported and demonstrated -- or could the PS3 itself be used to create an SD copy from any currently available Blu-ray title? The latter is probably unlikely, but the former has been known to be in plans for quite a while.

Lately we have been working hard on catching up on some guide requests and getting much of the site's content updated. Most of the time we have been forgetting to write our progress to news items. A short while ago, we added two short guides to the AfterDawn guide section. The first guide shows how to Edit and Delete buttons with PGCEdit.

The guide is by no means a "PGCEdit" guide and avoids posting excessive information on DVD structure or VM commands as such. It simply is there for users who have cut out content (extras, subtitles, audio) while backing up DVDs and want to remove the option to use them from the menu, or to copy the commands of certain buttons (like English language selection, or country selection) to all of the other options that are no longer on the disc.

Edit and Delete DVD Menu buttons with PGCEdit:
https://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/edit_and_delete_dvd_menu_buttons_with_pgcedit.cfm

The second short guide is just a continuation of the playback guide series. This time the topic is "How to play AAC" as it has increased in popularity in audio trade on the Internet due to its higher-than-MP3 quality. It covers the three easiest players for AAC (VLC, iTunes, Foobar 2000) and also shows how to play AAC with any DirectShow-based player (Windows Media Player etc.). It is by no means a guide for an experienced user, but is a good reference for new users on the forum who might ask about the format.

Chilean police investigators with the help of IFPI Chile have shut down a DirectConnect hub in the country which housed millions of illegal MP3 files on user's hard drives. The "Metal Hub" required that users have 1GB of music files to share, quite a low figure as some DC hubs require hundreds of GBs to be shared to gain entry.

Local internet and physical anti-piracy teams worked together to identify the hub's location and owner. The hub owner and the ISP he was using received "cease and desist" letters informing them of the copyright infringements that resulted from their activity. With the advantage of having the identity and location of the operator revealed, the hub was down three days after these notifications were sent.

The action was part of the IFPI's Latin America strategy that is targeting P2P services. Several other DC hubs are being watched in Chile according to the IFPI. In the past year, several DirectConnect hubs have been targeted by anti-piracy investigators due to the typically large amount of illegal files being shared.

In a technological briefing held in Japan, Sharp revealed some of its plans relating to Blu-ray laser diodes. The company is a pioneer in the field after mass-producing the industry's first infrared laser diode for use in CD players in 1982. Sharp showcased its latest High-Power Blue-Violet Laser Diode for Blu-ray recorders that could achieve 6X writing speed.

Two variations of the diode will begin mass-production next month; the GH04P25A4G which is suitable for notebook PC Blu-ray drives and the GH04P25A2G which can be installed in Desktop Blu-ray writers. Both have a power output of 250mW. However, the more enthusiastic news came when Sharp revealed its post-6X plans.

The company is developing a 300mW laser diode that will be capable of recording Blu-ray discs at 8X speed. This will likely reach mass-production in 2009 with a future planned diode with a power output of 400mW possibly in line for mass production in 2010.

CyberLink Corp. announced earlier this month that the latest update to the company's multimedia disc authoring software, PowerProducer Ultra 5, was ready to create high-definition compilations for Blu-ray players. Supporting authoring of Blu-ray Disc (BD) compilations and AVCHD, PowerProducer Ultra 5 lets users create high quality discs from their HD recordings that have significant hardware support.

With support for the AVCHD video format, users can also create DVDs featuring highly compressed high-definition content. In version 5 CyberLink has made major improvements to product usability, providing a simpler, re-stylied interface, and new design tools for creating customizable disc menus with imported photos and videos.

"Now with the release of CyberLink PowerProducer 5, it is not only the Hollywood studios that can produce high-quality discs like Blu-ray Discs and AVCHD DVDs," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "By offering easy-to-use features and the latest format support, PowerProducer 5 lets consumers quickly author and burn their high-definition home videos with professional-looking results."

Plextor announced earlier this month availability of the one-touch-operation PlexTower series of CD/DVD disc duplication towers, designed as small footprint, slim profile towers to deliver high-quality recording for low-volume applications. The duplicators feature 18X DVD and 48X CD recording speeds making it possible to record either 8 DVDs or 22 CDs in an hour per drive -- useful for a small business.

In addition to DVD video, the drives also support dual-layer DVD-R/+R and DVD-ROM recording. Prassi Zulu 2 disc mastering software is included, while a simple interface and LCD readout make it easy to perform common functions like copy and verify.

The PlexTower series features three different models; the single-drive PlexTower PX-DTS100, a three-drive PlexTower PX-DTS-300, and a seven-drive PlexTower PX-DTS-700. The USB 2.0 interface is used for simple connectivity and reliable data throughput with computers running either Windows (2000/XP/VISTA) and Apple Macintosh.

According to a survey conducted by the NPD Group during the week ending February 20th, millions are set to buy Blu-ray hardware within the next six months. Of all respondents, about 10.8% said they would buy a Blu-ray player within the next six months, helping to lead NPD to a prediction of two million player sales in that time frame.

The figure is based on the assumption that 25% of people who reveal intent to purchase something usually do so. So far, less than one million Blu-ray stand-alone players have been sold, but the numbers are considered higher because the multi-million selling PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has its own built in Blu-ray player.

While NPD did acknowledge that "intent to buy" figures are not enough to go on in the market, it noted that the increased interest is impressive considering this is the traditional down season for consumer electrionics. "This (increased interest) happened during a quiet part of the year after the Super Bowl, and there was bad weather for shopping," an NPD spokesman said.

LG will be offering up a nice and fast DVD burning solution to consumers with the GH22, which offers a 22X recording speed capable of writing a full DVD disc in four and a half minutes. The announcement follows Samsung's SH-S223 DVD burner which is scheduled to arrive in summer this year, also offering DVD writing speeds up to 22X.

Specifically, the GH22 will write DVD+R and DVD-R discs at 22X, DVD+RW DL at 16X, DVD-R DL and 12X and DVD-RAM at 12X. It provides 2MB memory buffer and buffer underun protection for recording safety. The burner comes with support for Lightscribe technology, enabling the user to burn on professional-looking labels to the disc.

SecurDisc technology is also included providing support for password-protected discs and content, data encryption, data reliability advancements and data integrity checks. It uses the E-IDE interface to connect to the motherboard.

SanDisk is supporting more than 50 emerging and critically acclaimed artists and promoting DRM-free audio on a MicroSD card. This U.S.-based program from a leader in the MP3 player market is the first of its kind to use microSD cards, and helps launch the new 8GB Sansa Fuze MP3 player. The so-called "Sansa Sessions" microSD card is comprised of a collection of rock, pop, and hip hop songs, music videos, and photos from more than 30 labels.

"The Sansa Sessions microSD card is an innovative medium for music distribution, and great exposure for our artists," said Matt Lunsford, co-president, Polyvinyl Record Co., which represents Of Montreal and other artists featured on the card. "This promotion benefits all involved, aligning the interests of the musician, label and consumer. We look forward to doing more together."

"We're excited to be working with labels and artists to create a new ecosystem for music," said Daniel Schreiber, general manager and senior vice president for SanDisk's Sansa audio/video product line. "The Sansa Sessions music card gives customers a simple way to enjoy, manage, and discover new music. This is just the beginning of our efforts to bring consumers a simplified and highly enjoyable music experience."

Mitsubishi has announced the development of two new Blu-ray recorder models that come with a touch-screen remote control. The two new and first models to the "REAL Blu-ray" series are the DVR-BZ200 and the DVR-BZ100, housing a 500GB HDD and a 250GB HDD respectively. Along with the normal remote control, Mitsubishi has also thrown in a touch-screen LCD remote control aimed at making the hardware easier to use for owners.

The controller will display necessary buttons on the LCD panel in accordance with the option chosen by the user. The models feature two tuners for each of terrestrial digital, BS digital and 110-degree CS digital broadcasts, and an analog tuner. As such, they can simultaneously record two different broadcast programs in High Definition (HD)

For top quality recording, the H.264/AVC format is used and the records support writing to DVD media without degrading quality when the AVCREC function is used. The models also support recording to and playback back from SD cards. The recorders will be first available in May in Japan with currently no suggested retail price.

Due to unprecedented interest in a Convert FLAC to MP3 guide posted on AfterDawn last year that has since grown, we decided to add an article on how to play FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) on your computer. While we usually stick to video playback guides, we noticed that many users may have been converting to MP3 out of a perceived necessity, but since FLAC is lossless we thought we would save those users from reducing their audio quality.

The article covers simple methods to play FLAC including built-in support for VLC & Foobar 2000, but more importantly covered configurations to get FLAC audio playing on DirectShow-based players like Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player, the latter which also shows how to add support for FLAC audio tags in the Media Library.

After years of repeated requests, AfterDawn has finally added two forum rooms that allow users to buy and sell goods using our forums and private message system. Up until now attempts at trading on the forum were usually blocked, but since so many people asked for dedicated forums, we finally decided to facilitate.

Sell your stuff
http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/226

Buy stuff
http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/227

There are of course limitations on what you can advertise for sale and what you can request in these forums, as well as stricter rules. Bare in mind that these forums are presented as is, AfterDawn does not actually offer a new "system" specifically for trading goods, just appropriately named forums where users can choose to do so. The responsibility for items or money exchanged is with the users involved.

According to the Irish Examiner on Tuesday, the Irish arms of the four largest record companies in the world are taking the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Ireland to the High Court. Eircom revealed in October to the music companies that it is in no position to install web filtering software on its network to tackle growing illegal file sharing in the state.

The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) has previously targeted heavy sharers of illegal music files with litigation, but according to IRMA chairman, Willie Kavanagh, this selective targeting of file sharers proved to be very time consuming and costly. Meanwhile the music companies believe the action was not sufficient to safeguard their intellectual property.

CD sales in the country have suffered a €44 million loss in the past six years with a decline in total sales from €146 million in 2001 to €102 million in 2007, or a 30% decline overall, according to Kavanagh. Now the music companies seek to force Eircom to filter the traffic on its networks and stamp out illegal file sharing by its users.

Once an innovator in the field, Pioneer Corp. has confirmed on Friday that it will stop the production of Plasma display panels (PDP) as it attempts to change the fortunes of its money losing business. The company is reportedly in talks with rival Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. about purchasing plasma panels for use in its flat-panel televisions.

Pioneer fell behind Samsung, Matsushita and LG Electronics Inc. in PDP technology despite being one of the leading developers at a time. "We have judged that maintaining the cost competitiveness of plasma display panels, or PDPs, at projected sales volumes will be difficult going forward," Pioneer said in a statement.

Pioneer is facing a loss of 15 billion yen ($145.6 million) at the end of its fiscal year (March 31st) after previously forecasting a profit of 6 billion yen ($58 million). After opting out of plasma panel production, Pioneer faces a one-time fee of 19 billion yen ($184.5 million), but expects to return to profitability by the fiscal year ending March 2010.

In 2007, Pioneer partnered with Sharp Corp. to procure Sharp's liquid crystal displays and the company is reporting that the partnership is going very well. The two will also work on Blu-ray Disc recorders and players.

DivX Inc. has announced the DivX Certification of an upcoming Panasonic-brand Blu-ray Disc player. The Blu-ray player joined an array other Panasonic products that sport the DivX Certified logo on packaging, and is scheduled to begin shipping in March. It will be the first DivX Certified Blu-ray player available in Europe and Russia.

"In order to give our users access to the extremely popular, high-quality DivX format, we have introduced the first DivX-Certified Blu-ray Disc Player for Europe and Russia," said Yuki Kusumi, Group Manager of Product Technology, Video Business Unit, Network Business Group, Panasonic AVC Networks Company, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. "The timely launch of this strategic product is a direct response to the strong demand for DivX playback among consumers. We are very confident this product will be very popular in the European and Russian markets."

SanDisk has announced that it has doubled the capacity of its CompactFlash 5000 flash memory cards for industrial markets. The cards provide a high level of durability as well as high read and write speeds, and the extra capacity makes it a more suitable accessory for mission-critical applications including medical instruments, military applications and gaming systems.

The new 16GB CompactFlash card was unveiled at the CeBIT trade fair in Hannover, Germany this week. An 8GB version of the product was unveiled last spring. It is designed by SanDisk to achieve a sustained read and write performance of up to 30 megabytes (MB) per second. It supports a transfer mode of up to UDMA 4, an industry standard that enables high data transfer rates and includes performance boosters and on-the-fly error detection.

"There's a substantial market for this type of industrial-strength card in mission-critical applications, especially those in harsh environments," said Scott Deutsch, vice president of OEM sales and marketing for SanDisk. "In addition to providing high-performance and high-capacity, the CompactFlash 5000 is a mass storage solution that can be trusted to meet the demands of industrial users and applications."

According to the Financial Times, online social-networking site Facebook has approached the world's largest record companies about the possibility of opening a music download service. The report cited people familiar with the matter. This comes after Reuters recently reported that the big four record companies were talking to MySpace about launching an online music service as well.

So far neither Facebook or any of the record companies have commented to news agencies about the FT report. Social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook are home to millions of members who use the services on a daily basis. Since they attract all types of users, the target audience is wide and it makes it perfect for music download services.

Using complex tracking software, social networking sites could utilize the mountains of data on their servers to make recommendations to users based on their own profiles and habits on the sites.

According to Greenpeace, consumer electronics are slowing becoming greener but still have a long way to go to eliminate the use of more hazardous and toxic chemicals and to become more energy efficient. At the CeBIT tech fair in Hanover, Germany, Greenpeace praised several products made by Sony, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Apple.

Greenpeace tested 37 products picked out by 14 different major electronics brands that agreed to pick out their greenest product for testing, awarding points for energy efficiency, recyclability and substitution of toxic substances. The Sony Vaio TZ11 notebook, Sony Ericsson T650i phone and Sony Ericsson P1i PDA were the top three products, achieving just over half of the available 100 points.

"We have already witnessed the arrival of greener products in the market, such as Apple's new laptop, the MacBook Air, and Nokia's new phone, the Evolve," Greenpeace international toxics campaigner Yannick Vicaire said. "Manufacturers still have a long way to go, but more and more are now taking the environmental impacts of their products seriously."

Nine file-sharers in Iceland have been convicted of Internet piracy offenses for sharing movies using the DC++ software. Eight of the nine defendants received two years probation, while the ninth defendant who was singled out, Bjarki Magnússon, received a 30 day suspended sentence by the Reykjavík District Court.

Magnússon received a different punishment as he had established a portal for DC++ on dci.is. "Since the judgment has ruled in favor of the Icelandic copyright holders, nobody can share now without risking arrest," a reader told The Register.

SMÁÍS chairman Snaebjörn Steingrímsson expressed disappointment at the lenient nature of the punishments handed down by the court. The organization which represents the interests of film rights holders made the complaint that led to the arrest of 12 suspects in 2004.

Computer equipment and many discs were seized during the raids with one of the defendants being caught with 2.5TB of pirated material. The nine sentenced file-sharers now owe legal fees estimated at ISK 2.6 million (US$39,000).

TiVo Inc. has defied the predictions of analysts by making a quarterly loss of $6.4 million. Improved sales of older DVR hardware and reduced expenses influenced the loss, which is about 6 cents per share, much lower than the 20 cents per share (about $19.5 million) loss made in the fourth quarter of the previous year. TiVo has never held a profitable quarter but Chief Executive Tom Rogers thinks its day is coming soon.

Analysts had previously forecast on average a loss of 11 cents per share for the fourth quarter. However, with the better results, Rogers assured investors in a phone conference on Wednesday that the company was narrowing the gap towards profitability as it keeps adding cable and satellite providers to its list of partners.

Cox Communications announced on Wednesday that it will be running a trial in New England markets with a set-top-box that uses TiVo technology, the same technology rolled out in the fourth quarter by Comcast. Rogers also said that sales for stand-alone DVRs would rise responding to demand for content downloaded from the Internet.

Members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) have settled an Internet piracy case with Chinese company Beijing Jeboo Interactive Science & Technology Co. The five Hollywood studios had accused Jeebo of providing cybercafes with illegal copies of their movies, and responded by suing the company in Shanghai in September and December.

Jeebo was providing Internet cafes with software that allowed users to download and watch movies that were owned by the studios without approval. Twenty titles were named in the lawsuit including Hitch and Pirates of the Caribbean 2. The Hollywood studios involved are Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures.

The terms of the deal are confidential but the MPA has stated that Jeebo apologized for the activity and paid a significant amount of compensation. According to the MPA, over 90% of the DVDs sold in China are pirated.

Apple Inc. is looking to attract more business users for its iPhone product by improving e-mail capabilities. The iPhone's abilities for corporate e-mail have been cited as a big reason why business users buy competing products from other manufacturers. To attack this weakness, Apple is adding support for Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange software, becoming more competitive with Blackberry and Treo Smartphones.

The company is also intensifying its search for developers interested in creating third-party applications for the device, but Apple's approval policy is likely to turn many developers off the idea. Previously, Apple allowed developers to produce applications only through the web and not with the same tools as Apple developers.

To lure developers to the iPhone, Apple has enlisted the help of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, providing a $100 million "iFund". "That should be enough to start about a dozen Amazons or even four Googles," Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr said. "And if we're running out of money we'll run around and look for more."

Circuit City has tripled the period in which a customer can return a HD DVD player from the previous and standard 30 days to 90 days. The move is made at a time when the industry is moving rapidly to the Blu-ray Disc format after Toshiba discontinued production of HD DVD equipment. Circuit City spokesman Jim Babb said the company is seeking to "take care of its customers" during this period.

"The recent resolution of the next generation of video disc formats is an important and singular development in the marketplace," Babb said. Now that the industry has largely settled on a single option for distribution of high-definition video content on DVD-sized discs, consumers can buy hardware with more confidence than before.

The fall of the HD DVD format does however leave over 1 million customers worldwide with players that will have no new content coming for them very soon. Some however have chosen to buy up the remaining HD DVD player stocks for their DVD upscaling capabilities, or have ordered HD DVD titles that have dropped dramatically in price.

German Police and Customs Officials investigating claims of patent violations have seized dozens of boxes of tech gadgets and equipment at CeBIT, a tech fair held annually in Hanover. The alleged patent violations primarily concern devices with MP3, MP4 or other digital video playback, as well as several DVD players and blank media.

Police said that over 180 officials were involved in the searches on Wednesday, but did not reveal the targeted individuals or companies, just stating, "the background is the number that has been rising for years of criminal complaints by the holders of patent rights in the run-up to CeBIT."

Overall, 68 boxes of mobile phones, navigation devices and flat-screen devices along with advertising material were seized. Of all the exhibitors affected, only one failed to co-operate with the officers and had to be taken to a nearby police station. 24 were from mainland China, 12 from Taiwan, 9 from Germany, 3 from Hong Kong and one each from the Netherlands, Korea and Poland.