An update to our story regarding pre-release versions of the Pioneer 105 being in circulation: Our regular contributer Flash has managed to get his hands on a manual from a company that has one of these Pioneer 105.

If you want a look at a manual for the Pioneer 105 in PDF format click here.

An update to our story regarding Datasafe selling 2x discs as 1x speed discs.

Bulkpaq have reacted fiercely to this practise and will next week be launching a highly compatible 2 speed disc at a bargain basement price. The disc, which is already for sale in mainland Europe, has received rave reviews.

Our sources tell us that bulkpaq are planning to annihilate the 2x DVD-R market in the UK with the pricing of these new discs. Check out your local disc retailer next week :)

Click here for a picture of the New Bulkpaq Disc.

Pre release versions of the Pioneer 105 are now being touted around the market. One midlands internet retailer has one for sale on his website for £4999.99 another well known internet retailer is offering customers the chance to win one in a raffle. So if you cant wait for 6 weeks for the official product you know what to do :)

Datasafe Media Ltd have introduced a budget DVD-R disc which will be available for sale from Monday from all retailers. As of yet we have no indication of street price.

Click here for a picture of the New Disc.

Mitsubishi published a press release today notifying of a problem with their DVD-R disks unable to burn successfully on the new Sony 4 speed DVD writers. They have initiated a DVD-R media exchange program in Japan.

Pioneer have just released version 1.33 of their firmware for the Pioneer A04/104. This firmware allows 2x burning on CMC manufactured media but not on Ritek manufactured media. Click Here For New Firmware.

Vnunet.com has an article about Hauppauge Computer Works who have launched a product that brings digital broadcasts to any TV or PC.
The DEC2000-t is not the first digital device to provide free-to-air digital terrestrial broadcasts to TVs, but claims to be the first that links to a PC for added functionality.
When hooked up via the USB port, the bundled software allows the PC to replay recorded programmes. Programmes can be recorded to disk and played back, or recorded onto a DVD-R drive for saving and playback on any DVD player.
Click Here For The Full Article.

"The Tag Company, a leading provider of electronic security tagging solutions, has launched the Red Tag(R) DVD and Game Security System to home entertainment retailers throughout the UK and Europe.

Znet has an update on the Microsoft about turn on DVD copying in their new operating system.
Take me to the Znet Website.

The DVD forum is in the middle of deciding the fate of "DRT-DM" (Distributed Read Time Defect Management) for DVD-RW format. The DVD+RW format already has announced plans for adopting Mt. Rainier with the 3rd generation DVD+R/+RW recorders, while so far, the DVD Forum didn't announced anything similar. Now DVD Forum considers to adopt similar technology to Mt. Rainier for the DVD-RW format!
The following article comes from original Japanese text so there might be errors:

"...The main difference between DRT-DM and the Mt.Rainier, is that DRT-DM refers not only for data record, but also for real time uses (like DVD-Video recording format). The DRT-DM format will adopt the "UDF v2.0" as the file system. There will be 5 stages of protection, two levels for real time record and three levels where high reliability is required The three levels are "Light Weight Defect", "Heavy Weight Defect" and "Media Hard Defect". At the first level (Light Weight Defect) the error can be restored using the error collection, but it won't protect against future serious errors. At the second level (Heavy Weight Defect), errors are recovered with the retry and error collection, but also there is the possibility that future errors will not be recovered causing seeking error. The two levels cannot be used with AV record since there would be a decrease of performance.

When the new DRT-DM format adopted, it would need Microsoft's support for WinXP and future operating systems..."

Microsoft has made a dramatic about-turn in its attempt to prevent end users from recording TV shows onto their hard drives and then burning them onto DVD Media and distributing them to friends.HP is the exclusive US Distributor for the new Windows XP “Media Centre” edition of Microsoft’s flagship operating system Windows XP.
One of the key features of the computers running this operating system is that it allowed consumers to record TV shows to the hard drive, this would allow consumers to stop live action TV for instant replays or schedules recording of future shows. Microsoft had initially integrated into the operating system a copy protection system that meant TV recordings could only be viewed on a single pc. Last Tuesday a spokesman for Microsoft confirmed this copy protection system had been removed from their latest operating system.
This decision has now put HP on a level playing field with Sony, who sell Vaio pcs and laptop than can record shows to CD or DVD and also be distributed across a home network.
This good news has left HP with a rather embarrassing situation of having to do software fixes on its entire range of “Media Centre” Computers.
The HP “Media Centre” range has integrated DVD rewriters as standard will be available in Europe within the next four weeks.
Calum Lind.

The shortage of key components could put off ongoing and planned shipments of DVD-RW and DVD+RW drives in the current quarter, with the delay likely to extend into next year, Taiwan’s computer drive makers said.

Click here for more details.

Gradius and NIL from forum.firmware-flash.com have worked together very hard to produce a firmware upgrade for the pioneer A03 enabling it to write to Traxdata at 2 speed. Click to go to download page.

Panasonic has begun shipping its new $999.99 DMR-HS2 DVD/hard disc recorder to US retailers. The new model is Panasonic's first DVD-RAM and DVD-R recorder coupled with a built-in hard drive, which, the company claims, offers "great flexibility and compatibility," including features such as "Time Slip" and "Chasing Playback." Those features allow users to program the unit to record a show and then to watch it from the beginning, even as the show is being recorded.

Gradius over at the firmware forum has managed to crack Pioneer's 1.68 firmware for A03 / 103 drives to allow the unauthorised burning of Ritek disks at 2x speed.
"Okay, today I succefully test Ritek @ 2x on A03/103 drive, and... works perfectly.
Of course, I have hacked my v1.68 (RPC-1) firmware in order to do this one possible.
I burned a DVD-Video with 4436MB in 28:45 (mm:ss) using Nero 5.5.9.9.

Unfortunaly I don't have any CMC media here, if someone need CMC (aka CMC00RG200) support, let me know. I'll post this firmware (Ritek @ 2x on A03/103) asap.
Of course, since we are using the firmware as binary form, and not the source one, I was forced to delete another media on the table, in this case was TDKG02000000. The possibility to buy a TDK media in my case is near to "it will never happen".

I do tests with a DVD-ROM DRD-8160B (LG 16x) and a PlayStation 2 (us v4) and was 100% okay on both."

The firmware forums.

Our Japanese correspondent who is visiting the Ceatac show in Japan provided us the following snippets and exclusive preview images.

NEC UK today announced the launch of the , the world’s first DVD drive able to write both DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speed.Available through NEC UK’s distribution channel, the ND-1100A provides a complete solution for data backup, storage and distribution – from sharing films and music to archiving a massive 4.7 Gb/s of content on one DVD disk alone.

CMC Magnetics, announced Taiwan’s first Philips-certified DVD+RW disc with a 4.7GB memory capacity on October 2, estimated that the by the end of the year DVD drive demand would surge and the price of a DVD+RW drive would drop to US$200 from US$380 at present."

Faced with sluggish economic conditions and the battle among DVD drive standards, several Taiwanese optical storage device makers have decided to take a wait-and-see attitude towards launching rewritable DVD optical drives.