Next week, new HD DVD movies will hit the shelves that won't play on some players, the first countermeasure by the content and software industries to combat intensive efforts by hackers to break copy-protection technology.

News Corp. and NBC Universal will challenge Google Inc.'s YouTube for online eyeballs and advertising dollars by launching a video-streaming Web site by the third quarter, News Corp. announced Thursday.

Consumers wanting to take home this year’s best picture, be it Babel or The Departed, have the choice of DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. According to Frank Simonis, European chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, consumers three years from now will only look to Blu-ray.

The BBC will soon offer trailers, classic clips and news on Google's YouTube video sharing website.

At Sony's Open House event today in Las Vegas, the company showed its second-generation Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-S300, due out this summer.

July 27th, mark it in your calendars!

Sony has confirmed that it will not be supporting the production or replication of pornography on Blu-ray discs, closing off a potentially lucrative market.

The Japanese electronics giant said last week that it had a long standing policy against the use of its media to distribute pornography.

South Korea's LG Electronics is introducing a single DVD player that supports both next-generation, high- definition DVD formats, offering a solution in an escalating war between Blu- ray and HD DVD.

Retailers are told the value of DVD sales are likely to fall further, and analysts remain sceptical about the introduction of new Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.

According to the FT report, the new Sony digital video service is slated to begin sometime in early 2007. This new service will allow users to download movie content onto their PCs and then transfer them onto Memory Stick Duo, which can then be played on the PSP. For example, a 4 GB Memory Stick Duo could hold 10 full-length movies.