Press Release: BenQ have announced two new additions to its award-winning LCD monitor lineup that feature superior response times and resolution capabilities. The new 17-inch FP71V+ model is the first 5ms gray to gray fast response time LCD monitor on the market, and the new 19-inch FP91V+ features an ultra-quick 6ms gray to gray response time.

A self proclaimed "Duplicate King" who sold thousands of pirate DVDs at markets across the south east of England has been jailed for two years. Richard Harris, 35, of Victoria Road, Edmonton, sold obscene material and employed a team of Filipino women at his home to produce and package copies of unreleased Hollywood blockbusters.

TCL, a leading manufacturer of consumer electronics in China, extended its production to DVD+R/-R discs earlier this year, a surprise to Taiwanese makers of optical discs.

Taiwanese company LuxPro has been asked by Apple representatives at CeBIT to remove what it calls the "Super Shuffle" from its display case. To the casual observer, at first sight the LuxPro Super Shuffle looks nearly identical as Apple's recently released iPod Shuffle except for some minor changes.

Apple's online music ambitions are broadening - if the latest round of rumours are anything to go by. The Mac maker is said to be in talks to acquire digital music start-up HipSolve Media, and to have made a hire that could indicate it is laying the groundwork for the launch of a music subscription service.

The next step of DVD+RW format evolution will become real later this year with 8x rewriting and double-layer (DL) recordable DVD+R disks, the DVD+RW Alliance announced at CeBIT. “We expect products such as DVD+RW 8x (rewritable) media, recorders and drives to become available in coming months,” said Frank Simonis, worldwide chair of the DVD+RW Alliance product promotion group and strategic marketing director of Philips optical storage division.

Sonic Solutions, Philips & BenQ have debuted Blu-ray Disc recording/playback solutions that will allow consumers to burn and play back discs in the new high-capacity BD digital media format. In a joint demonstration Sonic unveiled its AuthorScript Blu-ray Data Recording Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Blu-ray support in its popular Roxio- and Sonic-branded RecordNow and CinePlayer HD consumer software applications.

Of the millions of people who illegally download free music using various peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, only about 8,400 have been sued by the recording industry—including, last month, an 83-year-old dead woman from West Virginia. Those odds seem pretty good, until it happens to you.

The U.S. film industry on Friday hailed a raid by Swedish police against an Internet service provider as a major blow to European piracy of movies and music on the Web.

BenQ has unveiled a series of its latest storage products, including BD Triple Writer BW1000, BD Recorder BR1000 Concept, 16X DVD Writer DW1625 with LightScribe, and Slimline 8X DVD Writer TW200D at CeBIT 2005 in Germany.

CMC Magnetics will add US$6.29 million to its investment in Fortune (Jiangsu) Multimedia, a China-based joint venture that produces blank optical discs, and the company is also adding US$20 million to its investment in one of its subsidiaries, Vigobyte Tape Corporation, a maker of pre-recorded and blank optical discs in Mexico, according to the company.

The Linux GNOME project has recently released version 2.10 of the desktop environment. GNOME is free this latest version incorporates a video player and a CD-ripper into the software suite.

Sony have launched a new lineup of cheaper Walkman portable music players in another attempt to grab back share from market leader Apple Computer and its popular iPod device.

Apple have announced that it would support Blu-ray as its choice for the next generation of DVDs at CeBIT. Blu-ray has been locked in a battle for industry support with competing format HD-DVD since last year. Apple will become a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will hold a seat on the group's board.

Three men have pleaded guilty to copyright charges following the US Justice Department's largest-ever investigation into computer piracy. Albert Bryndza, 32, from New York, Seth Kleinberg, 26, from Los Angeles, and Jeffrey Lermanm, 20, a student from Long Island all admitted distributing thousands of X-box and Playstation games.

A report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation confirmed what many parents already suspect: Young people have become viewing, listening and surfing addicts. And, the kids are super at multi-tasking, able to simultaneously listen to music, use a computer and do homework.

Panasonic has announced that it will showcase its revolutionary P2 (Professional Plug-in) technology in Dubai at CABSAT 2005. P2 technology is the world’s first solid-state memory card technology, based on Panasonic’s patented SD (secure digital) memory card.

A bill that would let parents and children filter the swear words, sex scenes and violence out of movie DVDs moved closer to approval by the United States Congress.

Press Release: macProVideo.com, an online video training site for Apple Pro software applications, announces the official release of it’s "A.Pack: Complete Training".

Rimage Corporation announced that it will launch an important new addition to its Desktop product line, the Rimage 360i CD/DVD publishing system, at the CeBIT trade show in Germany. Initial shipments are expected to start in May 2005.