18 months ago, HP launched the Lightscribe.
This technology allows users thanks to compatible burner and specific media to burn on the other side of the DVD pictures, images and or text.
Clubic (in French) has tested 2 compatible DVD burner, and the conclusion is rather pessimistic. Compatible DVD media are difficult to find, and the time required to generate an image on the no-data side of the DVD media is around 20 minutes!!
It is quite clear that one will have to wait for a serious improvement in both burning speed of images and media/burner availability to expect this technology to become really popular.
The DVD burner market is going well and keeps growing. However, most of manufacturers are losing money. the reason? well quite simple: we reached the "plateau" regarding DVD burning speed, DVD+/-R can not be burned faster than 16x. So manufacturers have to compete on other features than raw performance.
The announcement of DVD+RW9 for Q3 2005 should help manufacturers to increase the price of their future DVD burner models.
Those media should support 2.4x burning speed at the beginning.
But there will be some problems with those new media and old DVD players. Indeed, the second layer of the DVD+RW9 media will not reflect strongly the laser beam, and only recent DVD player will have detectors sensitive enough to read it.
The European parliament has massively rejected the directive proposed by the European Commission related to software patent.
In addition there is no current plan to bring back the topic in a near future.
This is a really good news for most software companies and of course users; only some companies might be upset by this decision despite strong lobbying actions in the last few months.
For sure, those companies will try again to promote software patent regulation in Europe to replace the current copyright system that satisfies 99% of the software-developing companies.
So we have to remain vigilant.
