Toshiba Corp said Friday it has developed the world’s first high-definition DVD drive for desktop personal computers that can read, and write to, HD DVD disks as well as standard DVD disks.

Sample shipments of the large memory-capacity drive to manufacturers are scheduled to start this month, the company said.

Toshiba’s SD-H903A integrates a blue-violet laser diode to read and write HD DVD-R discs and supports high-density HD DVD-ROM discs, including high-definition movie and video images.

With dual layer discs, HD DVD provides 30GB of storage capacity, which can accommodate up to eight hours of HD DVD movie content with extended cuts and interactive features, up to five full-length standard DVD films, up to 7,500 MP3 songs or up to 30,000 high-quality images, Toshiba said.

Product Specifications:

• Write
  HD DVD-R SL*: 1x CLV; HD DVD-R DL*: 1x CLV
  DVD-R SL*: 8x CAV; DVD-R DL*: 2.4x CLV
  DVD+R SL*: 8x CAV; DVD+R DL*: 2.4x CLV
  DVD-RW: 2x-4x ZCLV; DVD+RW: 2.4x-4x ZCLV
  DVD-RAM: 2x-3x ZCLV; CD-R: 16x CAV
  CD-RW: 4x; High Speed CD-RW: 10x
  Ultra Speed CD-RW: 10x
• Read
  HD DVD-ROM SL*, DL*: 1x CLV
  HD-DVD-R SL*, DL*: 1x CLV
  DVD-ROM SL*: 8x CAV; DVD-ROM DL*: 6x CAV
  DVD-R SL*: 8x CAV; DVD-R DL*: 6x CAV
  DVD+R SL*: 8x CAV; DVD+R DL*: 6x CAV
  DVD-RW, DVD+RW: 6x CAV
  DVD-RAM: 2x-3x ZCLV
  CD-ROM: 24x CAV; CD-DA: 8x-12x PCAV
  CD-R: 24x CAV; CD-RW: 24x CAV
• Interface SATA
• Buffer capacity 8MB

There’s been radio chatter this week of a possible new addition to the Windows family: a “Home Server.” If the chatter is right, Microsoft will unveil it at CES, which kicks off next week. “Home Server,” according to my sources, is about centralized storage, home automation and security. More on that in a minute.

There’s some confusion among the pundits as to what this product will be, and most of it stems from the scary word “server.” This is not a product based on the Windows Server 2003 codebase. It’s a consumer-oriented product that is quite similar to Media Center Edition, in that it’s less of an “edition” of Windows Server than it is a special application (like Media Center) that runs atop a version of Windows. And, much like the original days of Media Center, I believe that Home Server will be sold as a standalone hardware product that you drop somewhere on your network.

Source: arstechnica

The Internet’s key oversight agency has revived a proposal it earlier rejected to create an online red-light district, after adding stronger provisions to prohibit child pornography and require labeling of Web sites with sexually explicit materials.

The use of the proposed “.xxx” domain name would remain voluntary, but any porn sites that choose to use it instead of the more popular “.com” would be subject to the new terms issued late Friday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The idea of a separate “.xxx” domain has generated significant opposition from conservative groups and even some pornography Web sites.

But ICANN officials said they initially rejected the proposal in May not because of the opposition but because of concerns that the agency might be put in a difficult position of having to enforce all of the world’s laws governing pornography. They noted that various nations’ speech-related laws sometimes conflict with one another.

The new proposal does not directly address any potential conflicts in laws, but it calls for the company backing it, ICM Registry Inc. of Jupiter, Fla., to hire independent organizations to monitor porn sites’ compliance with the new rules.

Source: AP

An analysis of Google’s blacklist of suspected phishing sites found that eBay, PayPal and Bank of America together account for almost two in three (63 per cent) of suspected scam sites.

Security researcher Michael Sutton also discovered that Yahoo! hosts a significant number of bogus websites - as identified by Google’s blacklist) - that try to trick surfers into handing over Yahoo! login credentials. Information from the list is used by anti-phishing technology within the Firefox 2 browser and by the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

Source: The Register

Forget about iPod versus Zune. As popular as portable music devices are, they no longer represent the cutting edge of the digital music market today.

The next phase of digital entertainment innovation will take place in the home, and a bevy of consumer electronic manufacturers, from unknown startups to blue-chip bellwethers, are introducing products designed to bring digital media stored on personal computers to home entertainment systems.

Leading the news in the coming weeks are Apple Computer and Microsoft, both expected to introduce competing systems. Although details are still scarce on Apple’s iTV streaming media device, company CEO Steve Jobs last fall said it would allow users to stream wirelessly any content — movies, music or video — downloaded from the iTunes store. The official launch of the device reportedly has been pushed back until after the January 8-12 MacWorld expo in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, analysts expect Microsoft to outline its home media server, code-named “Quattro,” at the Consumer Electronics Show January 8 in Las Vegas. The company’s Media Center PCs have struggled in past years to make a real consumer impact, but the media-extending capabilities of the Xbox 360 show the company still believes there is a market for sharing digital media across multiple devices.

Other brand name manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics and Sony also say they plan to unveil new products this year. They join existing, music-streaming products from Roku Labs, Sonos, Logitech and others.

Source: Reuters

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world’s largest provider of thin-film transistor, liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels announced today that it has created the first LCD panel that can produce independent images on each side of a mobile LCD display. Samsung’s new double-sided LCD can show two entirely different pictures or sets of visual data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen.

Source: Samsung