Mark Hachman

Content protection company Macrovision plans to announce on Tuesday that it has developed a way to eliminate the vast majority of DVD copying. The technology, called “RipGuard DVD”, will be licensed to the company’s partners: studios who are part of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), executives told ExtremeTech. RipGuard isn’t foolproof, but the […]

The WiMAX Forum said Monday that its interoperability tests for the new standard will take place in mid-2005, consistent with its original timetable. The WiMAX Forum selected Cetecom Spain as its official certification laboratory, which will begin interoperability trials in July. Reports surfaced last week that the WiMAX forum was late in delivering interoperability tests […]

Motherboard maker MSI plans to make a splash at the upcoming CES show with X2 Media, a joint venture that plans an all-in-one portable video player and a business model that could have game retailers selling custom PCs. Although X2 plans to launch several new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, president Rex […]

Reports that IBM might spin off or sell its PC business have refocused attention on the evolving role of contract manufacturers and Asian ODMs, those companies who actually build the PCs that are later branded as “Dell” or “HP.” The same factors that have helped “original device manufacturers” such as Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) […]

ATI Technologies Inc. announced five new graphics chips on Wednesday, refreshing its X800 graphics line and adding a new option, the X850. ATI re-introduced the X800 and said it would ship an upgraded X800 XL part for the $250-$350 price segment, according to one analyst. ATI claimed that the X850, meanwhile, would offer 20 percent […]

Toshiba said Monday that four major Hollywood studios have signed on to release titles in the HD (high-definition) DVD format, a decision that should have a significant impact on the next-generation DVD Forum battle. Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Studios all released commitments to support the HD DVD format, Toshiba […]

Seagate Technology began shipping its first 400-Gbyte drive, the Barracuda 7200.8, this week. The 7,200-RPM drives are available in 200-GB, 250-GB, 300-GB and 400-GB capacity points, with either a native Serial ATA or parallel ATA interface. The drives feature either an 8-Mbyte or 16-Mbyte buffer, depending on the model. Seagate did not release a price […]

Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it will bring products using Blu-Ray next-generation optical technology to market in late 2005. In January, both HP and Dell announced their support for the Blu-Ray specification at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. On Tuesday, HP said it would incorporate the technology both in Media Center PCs as well […]

Intel Corp. is refreshing its 64-bit Itanium 2 processor line with six new chips based on the Madison core. The new processors represent the last single-core Itanium chips that the Santa Clara, Calif., company will roll out. The next step for Itanium is Montecito, which will have two cores on a single processor, Abhi Talwalkar, […]

Intel Corp.’s share of the CPU market fell slightly during the third quarter as smaller rivals nipped at the leading chip maker’s heels. Intel’s market share slipped to 81.9 percent, versus 82.5 percent a quarter before, according to data released Monday by Mercury Research Corp., of Cave Creek, Ariz. Rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. saw […]

Intel has decided not to bring to market a 4-GHz single-core Pentium 4 after all, following a July decision to push the chip out to the first quarter of 2005. As Intel executives explained previously, the decision is based on the company’s desire to accelerate the ramp of its various microprocessor technologies, including Vanderpool, its […]

At least one vendor is selling OEM copies of Microsoft’s new Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system online, possibly exploiting a loophole in Microsoft’s contracts. Houston, Tex.-based Directron.com Inc. is selling the OEM edition of Microsoft’s software on its web site for $129.99, as well as the accompanying remote control for $43.99. That’s […]