Marin Digital, a leading digital media development and production company based in San Rafael, California, is using DVDMaestro(TM), the flagship web-enabled DVD authoring system from Spruce Technologies, as the foundation for its DVD-only service bureau.

The combination of Spruce's exclusive Convergence(TM) WebDVD toolkit and DVDonCD(TM) technology is helping Marin win new clients among corporate customers that had been previously slow to adopt DVD for presentations and corporate communications.

"Spruce's Convergence and DVDonCD tools have actually proven to be a way to unlock some corporate clients that have been slow to accept DVD," said Marin Digital President Chris Armbrust. "DVDonCD lets us introduce them to the quality and depth of the work we can do using DVD while delivering the project on the CD-ROM format that they are already equipped to run. Linking these titles to the web using Spruce Convergence then opens their eyes to a whole world of possibilities. It gives me a very competitive way of selling against Video CD and at the same time leading this client base to adopting DVD."

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In a recent nationwide survey, members of the class of 2000 were polled to determine their preferred graduation gifts. Parents of soon-to-be-grads might be surprised to learn that traditional graduation gifts such as pens, watches, and clocks no longer hold the same appeal they once did. Instead, the class of 2000 showed the heavy influence technology has played in their lives by expressing an overwhelming preference for high-tech devices such as DVD players, Palmcorders and digital cameras.

    Top 10 Graduation Gifts for class of 2000
    1. Trip to Europe                   6. Digital palmcorder
    2. Computer                         7. Digital camera
    3. Airline tickets                  8. Stereo
    4. TV                               9. Hotel stay
    5. DVD player                      10. One year gym membership

    Worst 10 Graduation Gifts for class of 2000
    1. (Worst) Paper Weight             6. Photo album
    2. Pen                              7. Picture frame
    3. Tie clip                         8. Food basket
    4. Money clip                       9. Daily planner
    5. Desk clock                      10. Flowers

Other popular items included PalmPilots, gift certificates, mobile phones, and pre-paid Internet service. When asked about their ultimate graduation gift if money were no object, almost 40% of respondents chose a new car.

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The final chapter in the $300 million box office franchise sensation that reinvigorated the suspense-thriller genre and introduced a new generation to a clever combination of horror and cutting-edge humor, ``Scream 3'' makes its bone-chilling video rental and DVD debut on July 4 from Dimension Home Video.

The VHS format will be available in Spanish subtitles and as an added bonus will feature the music video ``What If'' by Creed. In ``Scream 3,'' critically acclaimed filmmaker Wes Craven (``Music of the Heart,'' ``Scream'' and ``Scream 2'') brings back his principal cast of popular characters from ``Scream'' 1 & 2, including David Arquette, Neve Campbell (TV's ``Party of Five''), Courteney Cox Arquette and Liev Schreiber (``A Walk on the Moon'').

The film also introduces a new cast of characters portrayed by Parker Posey (``House of Yes''), Jenny McCarthy (``Diamonds''), Patrick Dempsey (``Can't Buy Me Love'') and Scott Foley (TV's ``Felicity''), who makes his motion picture debut.

The ``Scream 3'' DVD will be priced at $29.99 (S.R.P.) and showcase behind the scenes bonus footage from all three ``Scream'' films. The special features will include outtakes, deleted scenes with commentary tracks from Wes Craven and the crew, an alternative ending, theatrical trailers, Creed's music video ``What If,'' as well as cast and crew bios. A special ``Scream'' Trilogy Box Set will be available on Sept. 26 featuring a fourth bonus DVD-ROM disc.

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GEAR Software, Inc. joined Panasonic Industrial Company today in announcing that GEAR Pro DVD(tm) v2.0 supports Panasonic's DVD-RAM drive. By combining the products in a Windows® 9X/NT environment, DVD game title and video content developers can use a single, rewriteable DVD disc for testing, review, pre-production and archiving of digital audio, video or game titles. The 5.2GB DVD-RAM media provides about eight times the capacity of a CD-R/RW disc for a storage cost of only $.008/MB.

The new version of GEAR Pro DVD incorporates the Optical Storage Technology Association's (OSTA's) recently announced Universal Disc Format (UDF) and MultiRead2 specification support. The specifications ensure that all CD and DVD drives that conform with the standard will read 2.6GB DVD-RAM rewriteable media. When used with Panasonic's DVD-RAM drives, the software allows users to create hybrid ISO 9660/UDF discs that are backward-compatible with the ISO 9660 standard. As a result, game titles and video content developed with GEAR Pro DVD v2.0 can ultimately be produced on lower-capacity CD or high-capacity DVD media and played back on all MultiRead2-compliant drives.

``In addition to being able to produce their own DVDs, DVD-RAM users will be able to create, edit and modify DVD materials in real-time before producing the final disc,'' noted Jeff Saake, Group General Manager of Panasonic Industrial Company's Computer Technologies Group. ``By incorporating MultiRead2 support in GEAR Pro DVD, GEAR is delivering a product that will protect consumers from compatibility issues and eliminate confusion. The OSTA standard support they have added ensures media interchangeability of recorded media.''

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Released This Week: Cradle Will Rock

As labor strikes break out throughout the country during the 1930s, the art and theater world of New York City is a growing cultural revolution. Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) commissions Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades) to paint the lobby of Rockefeller Center, while Italian propagandist Margherita Sarfatti (Susan Sarandon) gives Da Vincis to millionaires who help fund the Mussolini war effort.

An alcoholic ventriloquist (Bill Murray) tries to rid his vaudeville troupe of communists, while a 22-year-old Orson Welles (Hank Azaria) defies a court order and performs his controversial musical "Cradle Will Rock."

"Cradle Will Rock" is rated "R" and has a running time of 132 minutes.

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Hoping to overturn a preliminary injunction order barring publication of DeCSS software on dozens of websites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation appealed the order to the California Sixth Appellate Court Monday. DeCSS is a controversial program that breaks through the DVD's encrypted code, and is at the center of a long-standing battle between the motion picture industry and a group of hackers who say they're not doing anything wrong.

The EFF says the injunction interferes with free speech.

"The trial court simply ignored the defendant's First Amendment right to publish DeCSS on his website," David Greene, EFF executive director, said in a statement. "The court's injunction is a prior restraint on free expression, one of the most severe civil penalties in our legal system. Even a momentary deprivation of the right to speak or publish causes serious and irreparable harm, far more grave than any monetary loss."

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MGI Software, a technical and market leader in digital video, today announced MGI SoftDVD MAX with Dolby Headphone. The product is the world's first DVD software for PCs to integrate Dolby Headphone technology, which delivers home theater-like surround sound through any regular pair of headphones. MGI has collaborated with Dolby Laboratories and Lake Technology, the developers of the technology, to fully incorporate the capability into a new version of SoftDVD MAX, which is now available for purchase from the MGI Web site at http://www.dvdmax.com.

``Dolby Headphone is a totally new experience in headphone listening,'' said Roger Dressler, Director of Technology Strategy for Dolby. ``Using sophisticated room modeling techniques, the Dolby Headphone process transforms conventional audio into a believable 3-dimensional reality that you can enjoy with any pair of headphones. The result is the natural, spacious sound you would experience from a stereo system or a 5.1-channel home theater, using regular headphones.''

``Dolby Headphone will be incorporated into a variety of consumer electronic devices, but MGI is pleased to be the first to deliver this exciting technology for the personal computer,'' said Ihor Petelycky, General Manager, Digital Video, at MGI. ``Dolby Headphone is one of those 'must have' features for any desktop or laptop computer user who wants to experience the immersive Dolby Digital sound, which is part of almost every DVD movie available.''

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Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd said on Monday it will launch its first recordable DVD player in Japan in June, mounting a challenge to rival Pioneer Corp and possibly setting off a DVD ``format war''.

Matsushita, whose brands include Panasonic, National, and Technics, said its unit will use a 4.7 gigabyte Digital Versatile Disc-Random Access Memory (DVD-RAM) disk and sell at 250,000 yen ($2,300) -- the same price as Pioneer's DVD-RW player.

Pioneer's DVD-RW player was the world's first recordable DVD machine, but it uses a different format which