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Blu-ray and HD DVD players will come out fighting this year. We reveal which format is best placed to be DVD’s successor.

The appearance of affordable DVD burners has given cause to celebration among the world's digital video makers – from hobbyists to professionals. The potential of DVD Video for corporate and wedding video makers is clear, but even the ability to present holiday videos in bite-sized, episodic and easily accessible chunks can't be sniffed at.

There are almost as many acronyms for the various standards of DVD as there are companies involved in DVD development.

Toshiba has now introduced a laptop with a HD-DVD drive. And gave us details on HD-DVD.

As well as being the first company to launch EIDE DVD burners into the mainstream IT marketplace, Pioneer is the company behind DVD-R and DVD-RW recordable media formats. In the last couple of years, it has fought hard to stave off competition from Philips' rival standard, DVD+RW, and until recently buying a DVD recorder meant locking yourself into one standard over the other.

FAQ: 10 Frequently Asked Questions about Sony DVD players

In order to control distribution of movies and prevent piracy, many most DVDs are region protected to ensure that they cannot be played outside of their region of issue. In short, this means you can't play American DVDs on an Australian player and vice versa. To further complicate the matter, PC and notebook DVD drives are locked to the least region set with DVD drives correspondingly locked after five changes of region code by the user.

The DVD standards battle on, and prices continue to drop, so is it worth buying a DVD burner now? We put an assortment of DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW drives to the test to answer that very question.

Always the enthusiasts favourite optical drive, Lite-On delivers as expected with its new range.

Although similar products have been available (with much controversy) in the US for a few years, the Samsung DVD-H40A is the first Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to reach our sunny shores.

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Uleads DVD Workshop (DW) is a pared-down digital video editor, designed specifically with DVD fans in mind. Its able to work natively with both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, as well as AVIs and even QuickTime movies.

It may be early days for the technology, but it's still interesting to look at Sony's Blu-Ray drive under the microscope.

HITACHI DZ-MV208E

A hint of things to come, but the first HD DVD and Blu-ray combo drive is very expensive.

Ulead has often been quick to respond to market demand and DVD Movie Factory is no exception.

In the latest twist of a heated battle over next-generation DVD technology, Paramount Home Entertainment said it would release high-definition movies in the Blu-ray format backed by a group led by Sony Corp.