What's the best Blu-Ray player on the market? Our quick shopping guide to features to look for, compatiblity issues, connectivity, and our top pick.

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.

Digital content and cheaper chips driving market.

From Silicon Valley to Station X during the Second World War, why Romania is teeming with software developers, and Zhongguancun in China where Microsoft is building its Chinese headquarters.

Want to skip the Christmas crowds, or nab a once in a lifetime bargain? Online shopping could be the answer. Tim Dean looks at the glory and the pitfalls.

When everything from your movie collection to your photo album is digital, why would you want to watch it all on a tiny monitor with tinny speakers while your big television and surround sound sits idle in the lounge room?

But researchers warn of customer apathy and other risks.

But Tiananmen Square still never happened.

Closed source software seen as greater security risk.

Contract chips, DRAM and Flash drive growth.

Big Blue moves east.

This unit plays more than just your rental movies and existing DVD discs, it's also capable of VBR MP3, WMA, JPEG, PhotoCD, HDCD Xvid, AVI, MPEG layers 1, 2, and 4 play, the latter of which is more commonly referred to as DivX, named after the compression codec.

Region's chip foundries dominate global market.

Offshoring could help to stabilise Middle East region.

Security software is one of Israel's specialities and it's easy to see why. The region has a volatile history and a strong military tradition. In fact, Israel hasn't stopped warring with its neighbour

Presumably the ones who bought iPhones.