US online DVD rental service Netflix Inc has announced a version of the Longitude prize for film geeks - a $1m (£529.6m) bounty to the first person to develop software to improve its movie recommendation system by 10%.

Troubled manufacturer Sony is to start selling two Blu-ray recorders in Japan this December, according to nikkei.net.

A Fagin-style crook who ran a pirate DVD racket has been jailed for almost three years. Glasgow-based Donald Daisley used teenage girls to help him peddle counterfeit films and football DVDs.

Although advanced technology attachment packet interface (ATAPI) is the mainstream interface standard for optical disc drives (ODDs) currently, serial ATA (SATA) stands a chance of replacing the former in the second half of 2007, according to sources in Taiwan's ODD manufacturing industry.

DivX have released version 6.4 of their software suite that includes new players and codecs offering play-back and encoding of full HD (1,920x1,080 pixel) DivX video files.

The first Multi-Drive Blu-Ray system with both duplication and recording functionality has begun shipping from Microboards Technology.

DRM-buster DVD Jon has a new target in his sights - the company behind the propietary format and DRM loving iTunes and iPod. He has reverse-engineered Apple’s Fairplay and is starting to license it to companies who want their media to play on Apple’s devices.

Toshiba has launched a slimline HD DVD drive for notebook computers in a bid to boost support for the next-generation optical disc format. The drawer-mechanism unit not only reads and writes all ther usual DVD and CD formats, but also HD DVD recordable and rewriteable media.

Lite-On IT plans to begin volume production later this quarter, according to industry sources.

The leader of the pro-filesharing Swedish Pirate Party is co-ordinating a pan-European electoral assault for 2009's European Elections.

Apple is apparently leaning on Hollywood studios telling them to co-operate better with its plans for global domination of online distribution of flicks.

Another file-sharing software maker has been found guilty of causing copyright infringement. A US judge has said the Morpheus software produced by StreamCast breaks the law.

A Mandarin-dubbed version of Superman Returns is to be released early on DVD in China to deter piracy.

According to reports, HP has introduced three high-definition products based on the Gen-Next HD-DVD digital media format.

Microsoft has filed a federal lawsuit against an alleged hacker who broke through its copy protection technology, charging that the mystery developer somehow gained access to its copyrighted source code.

A long-running digital music royalties spat between record companies and organisations collecting on artists' behalf has been settled.

Microsoft has said its new Zune music player will be sold at a price matching Apple's market-leading iPod and, as a result, lose money this Christmas.

In response to the the newly adopted, very controversial DADVSI French law, three French DRM activists have turned themselves in to Police for breaking the new law.

Sony's new PS3 games will cost punters a little more than a pretty penny when the machine is finally released. According to Japanese site Impress Watch, citing "multiple information sources", PS3 games will be concentrated in the £39-52 range. Currently only bigger titles on the PS2 reach the £39 mark.

Philips has revoked CD-R disc patent licenses for CMC Magnetics and Ritek, the top two producers of optical discs in Taiwan, as well as Prodisc Technology and Lead Data, two second-tier makers, according to a list of CD-R licensees published on Philips Intellectual Property & Standards' (PIPS') global website.