Microsoft have announced it will shut down its Internet chat rooms in 28 countries, saying the forums had become a haven for peddlers of junk email and sex predators. From 14 October, the software giant will shut down its MSN chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America, forcing millions of message board users to find alternative online forums to discuss the topics of the day.

Aladdin Systems is now shipping StuffIt Deluxe 8.0, a new Mac OS X version of the access and compression utility. The update lets you schedule backups and burn to CD/DVD, adds plug-ins for Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator and offers a performance boost.

BenQ have presented its 8x DVD-Dual drive, the DW800A, at Computex. The new product, at a suggested retail price of about NT$12,000 (£215), allows 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+RW writing, 12x DVD-ROM reading, 24x CD-R and 10x CD-RW writing and 40x CD-ROM reading.

Thanks to the firmware genius of >NIL: over at the Firmware Forum the hacked version of the new Pioneer A06 firmware version 1.07 has bee released. The hacked version now allows 2x burning to any 1x speed media, is RPC1 region free and has had the DVD-VIDEO rip speed limit removed, the drive is now enabled to rip at up to 12x speed. You can download the firmware here.

The CEO of Nvidia, Jen Hsen Huang, introduced three new products at Computex today. The product line up includes Forceware, a set of software tools to deliver digital media across a number of different platforms including desktop and mobile PCs using Geforce and Nforce products.

Software giant Symantec last month announced that it will add product activation technology to all of its consumer products, starting with Norton Antivirus 2004. The idea is to prevent large-scale piracy operations from thieves who counterfeit Symantec programs and offer them to customers on the Web. The company estimates at least 3.6 million bogus copies of its programs are sold annually. The measure may help alleviate the counterfeit problem, but the product activation itself is not exactly waterproof. The Register had no problem of finding a key generator on the Web and installing a full version of Norton Antivirus 2004 on several PCs without Symantec knowing it.

Sonic is currently rapidly expanding it's product line and announced today RecordNow! 6. This version brings the version number in line with competing products of Ahead (Nero Burning ROM 6) and Roxio (Easy CD/DVD Creator 6) and also the package of Sonic contains all tools needed to record CDs and DVDs. The software is targeted at the OEM market and according to the press release bundled by several hardware manufacturers. But the package is also available on the retail market in the United States.

Ahead has released two new patches for Nero Burning ROM v5.5.10.50 and v6.0.0.15. These patches seem to fix a bug that Nero had with the Plextor PX-708A drive which caused the drive not to finalize a DVD recording session properly. The Nero Burning ROM Patches are, of course, available for download from this site.

A Norfolk man has been arrested on suspicion of deception after claims by hundreds of customers of an internet auction site that he had taken their cheques for DVDs but failed to deliver the goods. Following an investigation by Yarmouth police, 33-year-old Adrian Bailey, who traded under the name of zippymilk on eBay UK was arrested on Friday.

Ritek, CMC Magnetics (CMC) and Prodisc Technology, Taiwan's three first-tier optical storage disc makers, all presented their new 8x speed DVD-R and DVD+R discs at Computex.

Audio technology company Dolby Laboratories have said it had purchased a small digital rights management company, hoping to cement its role in digital movie distribution.

Our regular contributor and DVD guru Flash has contacted us with further details of the new hacked version of the Pioneer firmware. He tells us, "I am happy to have been part of the testing team for this firmware. The latest firmware 1.07 just released this weekend has been hacked to allow 2x burning to any 1x speed media. RPC1 region free and DVD-VIDEO rip speed limit removed, the drive is now enabled to rip at up to 12x speed. I have successfully burnt at 2x speed to Datasafe Classic RitekG03, Choice GSC, Traxdata RITEKG03 and 3A Media. All that remains to be patched now is the Upgrade tool and that should be completed within the next 24 hours and the firmware will then be released." So watch this space, as we'll have the hacked firmware for download here very shortly.

Pioneer have released a new firmware for their popular DVDR-106 also known as the A06. At present there is some mystery surrounding what the upgrade actually achieves. Some users have reported no noticable change in their drive's functionality although Pioneer's Australian website is making brief (and somewhat vague) mention of DVD-RW Writability Improvement, 2X DVD-R Writability Improvement and DVD Playability Improvement. There is also the usual warning: "Caution! Once the drive has been updated to this version, the drive will NOT be able to be restored to an earlier firmware version." Click to download Pioneer firmware upgrade.

There's a war that's being fought in home video, and the battleground is those black bars at the top and bottom of your television screen. Depending on your perspective, those black bars are either a major annoyance or a minor inconvenience necessary to view movies in all the wide-screen glory that their directors meant for them. But one thing is clear: When it comes to America's retailers, those who prefer that their entire television screen be filled may be winning the wide-screen vs. full-screen DVD debate.

Taiwan-based Ritek, CMC Magnetics (CMC) and Prodisc Technology could begin volume production of 8x-speed DVD+R/-R discs as early as next month, according to sources.

Sony has displayed its next DVD writer model at the ongoing WPC Expo in Japan. Compared with the DRU-510A the DVD+R write speed has now increased to 8x and CD-R/RW write speed has increased to 40x/24x which makes the specifications comparable with Plextor's PX-708A.

According to new research, the vast majority of films circulating online are preproduction copies that could have been made only by studio insiders. The idea of the computer users copying or "ripping" DVDs for upload to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks seems to be a myth, according to new research.

Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox sued a handful of small software companies, alleging that their distribution of DVD-copying software violates copyright law. The studios filed suit against Tritton Technologies, QOJ, World Reach and Proto Ventures in New York federal court, asking for unspecified damages and a court-ordered halt to the distribution of the various software packages.

Sonic Solutions have announced the launch of MyDVD Studio Deluxe 5, a major upgrade to their DVD creation software. MyDVD Studio Deluxe 5 includes powerful new features such as fully-integrated video editing, Dolby Digital audio encoding, unlimited MP3 ripping, automated backup and archiving, exact CD and DVD disc copy, and other product enhancements.

Hitachi's Ubiquitous Platform Group will release September 25 the MSP1000, a hard disk drive-equipped DVD video recorder. The hybrid system comes with a 120GB hard disk that can record up to 120 hours of high-quality video.