DVD is said to be to movies what CD was to music. Well-filmed DVD movies are better in all respects than those recorded on VHS, so the idea of a digital video camera recording direct to DVD disc would appear sound.

According to analysts at IDC (International Data Group),DVD is now the fastestgrowing consumer electronic technology ever.

How will you be computing in the next 12 months? PC Authority brings you 2005's big technology stories - before they happen.

Hitachi pioneered the concept of recording digital video direct to DVD . Now into its third generation of DVD cameras, a few competitors have appeared on the horizon with its first generation models

Sometimes people have good ideas but desperately need some advice on how to put them into action. This survivor's guide is a case in point.

One of the great mysteries that confronts modern man is his inability to program a VCR, so you would have thought that it was incumbent on manufacturers to make programming a DVD recorder simpler. Unfortunately nobody told the author of the Philips DVDR890 instruction manual. It omits a vital step from the general instructions for programming the device to record a show in advance - it took three attempts to get the feature to work, and only after stumbling across the missing instructions in the section for using G-codes (though I wasn't planning to use G-codes).

How many acronyms can a monitor have before it chokes on its own resolution? We have all come to expect CRTs, LCDs, TFTs and God knows what else but now Samsung has come up with a monitor with so many acronyms it will leave you gasping.

Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.