Blu-ray takes another tentative step towards the mass market, but is now the time to buy?

Blu-ray writers are more affordable than ever. We look at four internal models to find the best way to go high-def. The last time we did a round-up of optical drives, the former war was in full swing. But now Blu-ray has at last seen off HD DVD and taken its place as the industry standard for high-capacity optical media.

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.

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

It's big, portable and laughs in the face of hardcore number crunching.

The use of DVD media for data storage hasnt been as quickly adopted as many people may have thought. However, building a PC without the capacity to use this format would be severely limiting. As was t

So you want to make yourself a new gaming rig, one that’s capable of playing Crysis at more than two frames per second, but won’t blow the budget?

Since the release of the Eee PC 701, the 'Notebook' has dominated. Easy to use, cheap and able to be left on the coffee table next to the remote, Notebooks are true appliance computing. The choice of which one to buy comes down to personal preference, but it's hard not to prefer those with the best usability. Our rundown of your options covers their performance, battery life, and design.

Is there still good money to be made in digital media? Read on to discover insights from Mark Pesce, Accenture, Brainwaave, and Allen & Buckeridge.

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

Surprise, but not regret: I dont have any doubt about the relative importance of what Im doing compared to what I was doing as a painter, even as a successful painter. Back in the 1960s I was one of a

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, has a vision for newer, smarter web. Tim Dean looks at how the future of the web might work.

An often irreverent look at some of the past week's other news.

Nick Ross ponders a future where 'Apple' doesn't mean 'music'.

The work of McCulloch and Pitts was critically important in changing our conception of the brain. They made it possible to think of the brain as a network of interacting cells that could be analysed l

The research thats being done now is often aimed at exploring the mental space that brains operate in without necessarily trying to duplicate the way they work. At the Free University of Brussels and