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.

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?

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.

Despite the fact it's aimed at professional users - corporate and event videographers and advanced home-video enthusiasts are the target market - Ulead DVD Workshop 2 retains many of the ease-of-use features for which the company has become known.

Encarta Premium Suite claims a base of 130,000+ articles, along with 25,300+ photos and illustrations and 1.8 million map locations. That's more than a bit of bedtime reading, although of course there are really only two reasons why people buy digital encyclopedias these days -- either they've got kids to educate, or they're after some verifiable and quotable facts for a research project. For almost anyone else, of course, there's Google.

Microsoft prepares to take on the portable music player industry's heavyweight: Apple. Would you believe it?

The future of storage is expensive, for now. That aside, how do Blu Ray drives compare to DVD drives?

There are many things that are given the 'instant' moniker, but usually products from the IT world are not among their number. Slow PC boot times (whatever happened to instant-on PCs?) and a whole mess of configurations takes the instant gratification out of most technology...

2003 is going to be remembered as the year of the Matrix glut, with two movies, A multi-platform computer game and DVD releases across the year. Rumours are that there is even another game coming out, although this one may not hit until 2004. For now, in between Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions theatrical releases is the release of the companion DVD, Animatrix.

If you're looking for a Blu-ray player with the lot, LG's YouTube-enabled BD370 could be the one for you.

Improved interface, object and layer handling, plus integrated 3D painting add greatly to power, usability and value

Back in November we wondered just what you could buy for $1500 and Modtech and PC Express showed us two near identical systems (the latter being A-Listed). This month’s submission from PC Market offered few surprises.

Bose-s 3-2-1 is a 2.1 speaker DVD, CD and MP3 CD player whose claim to fame is the ability to produce accurate surround sound from just three speakers. Each satellite contains two discreet drivers that redirect audio in specific directions to mimic 5.1.

This notebook has been designed with classic Sony style: rounded edges, hidden IO inputs and a sleek widescreen footprint. From a connectivity point of view, this 'book has it all, boasting front-mounted Memory Stick Pro port, iLink 4-pin FireWire port and three USB ports.

Thou shall not cast the name 'Zeus' around with careless abandon, unlesseth one can backeth up claims of PC godliness.

Built-in tracing and improved drawing, formatting and colour correction make X3 the best CorelDRAW upgrade in years.

The system as a whole looks great and we can't find a weak spot.

Sacred first graced the pages of PC Authority just nine months ago, at which time we rated it as a solid RPG experience that would hold its own in a tough environment. Re-released with the Plus upgrade (also available via download), Sacred Plus improves a strong title and implements many of the suggestions made by the game's loyal online community.

Had enough of hearing about Crysis? Codemaster's latest effort does to road racing what Codemasters’ Colin McRae: DiRT did to off-road racing.

Acer's latest Aspire has the familiar Acer look we've come to expect in recent months but with a few nice tweaks.