Tag Archives: Digital media

News: The Future of Music and DRM

 For those of you interested in the debate about copyright protection for music (digital rights management, or DRM, as it’s called) here’s an interesting article from the industry point of view — and a lively discussion on the lively Slashdot forum (some contributions are more, er, erudite than others).   Something I think hasn’t been… Read More »

News: DVDs Go To Eight GB

 Soon you can burn more than 8 gigabytes onto a DVD. Technology co-developed by drive maker Philips and media specialists Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku, adds a second recording layer to a standard-thickness DVD+R disc The Register reports. That’s enough for four hours of DVD-quality material, 16 hours of VHS-quality content or two hours’ archive footage.… Read More »

Software: Retrieving CD Data

 Here’s an option to recover data from unreadable CDs. (I haven’t tested this.) CD/DVD Diagnostic “works to retrieve a consumer’s damaged files corrupted by a defective drive, bad software or from user error”. It works on unreadable, scratched, or corrupt CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW discs. Unlike programs that use Windows’ file system to access… Read More »

News: The Dark Side of Backing Up

 From the We Should Have Known This Dept comes news that CD-ROMs degrade in months, even at room temperature without sunlight. Dutch magazine PC Active tested data disks from 30 manufacturers that were recorded 20 months ago. Several data CDs developed serious errors, or became virtually unreadable, The Register reports.   It’s perhaps too early… Read More »