With DVD-based video recorders and disc burners for personal computers now coming on the market, a video industry coalition has announced a comprehensive watermarking technology for digital video that it hopes will prevent a copyright-infringement nightmare like the one now plaguing the music business. The Millennium Group, consisting of Philips Electronics, Macrovision, and Digimarc, claims that its system will inhibit unauthorized copying of DVDs and will prevent illegal copies from playing.

Last week, Thomson Multimedia and hard-disk manufacturer Seagate Technology announced an equally owned joint venture to form an independent company, called CacheVision, that the companies say will be focused on "value-added storage-centric systems" for home consumer electronics. The companies are anticipating that advanced consumer-electronics hard disk–based storage modules may soon be needed in many consumer-electronics devices, including TVs, set-top boxes, Personal Video Recorders (PVRs), and DVD players (see previous report).

Musicians and record labels have long been able to back up their bragging with gold records hanging on their walls, but film directors and movie studios have had to rely on mere sales statistics when it came to a DVD's success. But last week, the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) announced the first eight titles to qualify under its new DVD Certification Program to recognize "outstanding sales performance" of DVD titles. The titles were announced during the Association's 19th Annual Convention in Las Vegas by VSDA president Bo Andersen.

Last week, semiconductor developer Silicon Image announced that it has completed the acquisition of DVDO. Silicon Image says that this acquisition positions the company to extend its Digital Visual Interface (DVI) technology leadership beyond the PC market and into emerging digital consumer-electronics applications such as digital TVs, DVD players, and set-top boxes for high-definition video.