The term Inconvenient Truth has been popularized by Vice President of the USA Al Gore in his climate campaign. Now the IFPI, International Federation of Phonographic Industry, has made the lamest campaign gimmick ever, by using the same slogan in their anti-piracy efforts. They have today announced a list of 10 ‘inconvenient truths’ on their website. Some of their points are valid, but others just plain propaganda.

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Finland has one of the hardest implementations of the EUCD copyright directive, and it is now being tested in the Finnish Court. Basically the law currently criminalizes decryption and bypassing of copy protection mechanisms. It also bans the distribution of decryption tools, and even organized debate of copy protection decryption. On the 25th of May the District Court of Helsinki ruled that decrypting the CSS protection, which is used on almost every DVD video disc, is not a criminal act.

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Arstechnica predicts that Apple might be releasing their non-restricted DRM free music catalog at iTunes later this week - perhaps as early as on Tuesday? Apple and record company EMI have been working on a deal to distributed non-protected music via iTunes for quite some time, and the source beleive that an agreement has been reached and the content should be available shortly. This is great news for every iPod user and will most likely shape the whole digital music industry to a better direction of real fair use.

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Target Technology has sued Sony for violating a patent it holds on reflective layers used in optical storage media, according to Ars Technica. Target Technology’s complaint doesn’t tell exactly how Blu-ray infringes on its patents and it’s unlikely that the lawsuit will affect Blu-ray in any significant way. One option may be for Sony and other Blu-ray backers to use a different technology.

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According to DigiTimes, Ritek announced it has received the certification for both HD DVD-R and HD DVD-RW formats, becoming the only Taiwan-based producer of optical discs to receive certification. The technological barrier for HD DVD-R is quite high and that for HD DVD-RW is higher, Ritek indicated.

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VSO released a major update to the famous ConvertXtoDVD software. Most important change is that the speed has improved and X2D is now up to 20% faster!. Another addition is a support for interlaced digital video camera (DV) material, so you can now use X2D to convert your home videos to DVDs painlessly. Included are also a bunch of bug fixes and feature enhancements as well. Our editor Siku was quick to update the guide to the v2.2 level covering the new features.

Download ConvertXtoDVD 2.2!
Read the ConvertXtoDVD v2.2 step-by-step guide!
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Panasonic, today announced the availability of the DMP-BD10A, Panasonic’s next generation Blu-ray Disc player, at a SRP of $599.95. The DMP-BD10A features an audio upgrade package that brings high end surround audio to the viewing experience via the inclusion of 7.1 channel surround, Dolby True HD and dts-HD High Resolution Audio decoding technology.

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Windows Vista is a cause for many software updates, and here’s one more. A new version of CloneDVD has been released as a public beta version to tackle compatibility issues with the Vista. There were problems with the product registration and with the ElbyCDIO driver.

Get it from SlySoft (Head over to CloneDVD forum for latest beta)

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At 18x, the Serial-ATA PX-810SA is still one of the fastest drives in the world. It also incorporates multi-format (DVD+/-R & DVD-RAM) technology to satisfy the demand for high-end SATA drives from enthusiast/professional users.

The growth in SATA is for a number of good reasons: it is scalable, allows more flexibility in system design and adds future-proofing for the computing platform. In addition, it enables system reliability improvements to airflow and thermal dynamics, as well as easier installation and upgrades.

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{mosimage}Pioneer Press-Release, Melsele, Belgium – 8 May 2007: HD movies are here. And consumers can now enjoy this new ultra clear, high-performance film experience at a low cost with Pioneer’s new Blu-ray ‘Combo’ Drive for PCs. It comes in two versions (with black and beige colour options): the BDC-202 will be included by PC companies and systems integrators in their machines; consumers can also buy and fit the BDC-S02 to their computers by purchasing the retail version of the drive that includes bundled software. To entertainment, add practicality; the drives read single and dual-layer Blu-ray disc formats and provide high-speed read/write compatibility with a wide range of DVD and CD media.
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