There are plenty of free CD/DVD burners for Windows, and to be honest we haven't often been tempted to look beyond CDBurnerXP and InfraRecorder, which both seem to handle pretty much any tasks you can throw at them. But while reading an article about BurnOn over at Life Rocks 2.0, we noticed a link in the comments to StarBurn. And while we might check out BurnOn later, we were kind of blown away by StarBurn.

The application can handle all of your basic tasks like burning data, audio, and video discs. It supports a wide variety of formats including CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. And it has some nifty features like the ability to either rip audio CDs or compress audio already on your computer to MP3, WMA, or OGG formats.

One StarBurn feature that you don't often see bundled with disc burning utilities is a virtual drive mounting application. In other words, you can use StarBurn to create a disc image or ISO file, and then mount that file as a virtual disc so you can see how it performs without actually burning the file to a disc and sticking it in a drive. This can come in handy if you want to see check an image before burning it, or if you want to mount an image you've created or downloaded on a system that doesn't have a working optical drive.

StarBurn is free unless you want the network version, which offers network burning features and costs a whopping $495. The full functionality is included in the free version, but you can only use the network features during a 30 day free trial period.

Looking for an inexpensive (read: free) alternative to the CD/DVD burning utilities currently dominating the market? BurnAware Free looks to fill that space nicely.

BurnAware is a free utility that enables you to perform most common disc burning tasks:

• Burn data to most any type of disc, including DVD+R and DVD-R
• Create audio CD's from WAV, mp3, or WMA files
• Create disk images (.ISO's)
• Write DVD video files (e.g. VOB files) to a DVD

The interface is very clean and easy to use. BurnAware has a simple home screen where you can see the different burning options. Once an option is selected, the home screen minimizes to the taskbar (similar to Nero and Roxio's functionality) and a new window is opened, allowing you to customize whatever function you selected.

An added bonus of BurnAware is support for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats (provided that you have the appropriate drive, of course). Though BurnAware supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, we found it peculiar that it only advertises Blu-Ray support. A pointed jab at HD-DVD, or simply an oversight? Only time will tell...

BurnAware Free is currently in beta, with support for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP and Vista (32 and 64 bit).

There's a cat and mouse game that goes on between those who produce professional videos and those who want to watch those videos on their own terms. Every time the folks behind DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, or HD-DVDs serve up a new DRM scheme, hackers go to work trying to figure out how to circumvent that encryption.

You can look at this as a noble or malicious act: either the hackers want to make sure you can watch the movie on any machine you choose, or they want to make sure you can upload the videos to file sharing sites. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

Earlier this year SlySoft released a commercial application for ripping HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. The only problem is that disc manufacturers could keep offering up new encryption keys that would make the software obsolete.

Now SlySoft has released an updated version of AnyDVD that it says it "future-proof," because it includes an artificial intelligence agent that figures out how to strip DRM from movies even if those movies are encrypted using a previously unknown key.

Update: It looks like the "AI Scanner" only works with DVDs, not HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. Considering it's been pretty easy to rip DVDs for some time now, that makes this "future-proof" guarantee a bit less exciting.

[via Extreme Tech]

Despite its name, CDBurnerXP is not just a CD burning application for Windows XP. It's actually one of the most full featured free CD and DVD burning utilities you're likely to find for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

CDBurnerXP 4 was recently released, and it has some impressive new features:

• Support for burning Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and Double layer DVDs
• Support for FLAC audio files
• Disc to Disc copy for audio and data
  
• Save discs and compilations as ISO files
• Support for WPL playlists

While Windows XP and Vista include some basic CD and DVD authoring features, CDBurnerXP is about as full-featured as many commercial applications out there. And it's free. The program is donateware, so if you want to download the latest beta versions you'll need to make a contribution.

[via freeware genius]

Nero 8 is due out next week, although if you look around, you might be able to find a download link today. The latest version of Nero's popular CD/DVD burning suite includes support for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD videos, uploading videos to websites including YouTube, and MySpace, and a new disc recovery tool that lets you salvage data from corrupted CDs and DVDs.

Probably the most striking thing about Nero 8 is how clean and simple the user interface is when compared with Nero 7. We caught up with Nero technical director Craig Campbell at ShowStoppers in New York, and he told us that the company has put a lot of work into improving the interface. But there are also some improvements under the hood. Campbell says Nero 8 loads faster, and is optimized for dual-core and quad-core processors.

A full version of Nero 8 will set you back $100 if you buy it in a box, $80 if you download it from Nero's website, or $60 if you're upgrading from Nero 7.

Nero has announced that it will release the next version of its popular CD/DVD burning suite on October 1.

Nero 8 will include a new interface for burning and ripping audio and video discs. The software is optimized for Windows Vista, and includes support for creating Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video discs.

Other updates include:

• Upload videos to Youtube, MySpace, and My Nero with one click
• Nero RescueAgent lets you restore deleted files and recover data from damaged discs.
• Run Nero DiscCopy gadget from the Windows Vista sidebar to copy discs with one click

Nero 8 will cost $100 if you buy the retail box. Or you can save $20 by downloading it from Nero's website.

You know those numbers that could change the world? No, not the ones on Lost, the HD-DVD key code that could lead to the end of Digg as we know it.

Well, the sixteen hexadecimal digits are just numbers when it comes right down to it. And you can do all sorts of things with numbers, like use them as a basis for web-colors and make them into a pretty picture that may or may not be illegal to share with your friends.

But why stop there when you can go one step further and design a T-shirt based on those colors and sell it for fun and profit? It'll be interesting to see if the T-shirt gets a cease and desist notice from the MPAA, or if they'll send out letters to anyone caught wearing the shirt in public.

[via Boing Boing]

The ongoing saga of HD-DVD's failing Digital Rights Management scheme continues to be of great interest. First the in-memory keys were found with a little bit of prying. Useful for making a backup copy of one movie, but if you wanted to copy another, you needed the accompanying key. This week we found out that a member of the notorious Doom9 forums found the other key details making a non-industry approved decoding library only a few academic steps away. It's not the holy grail of HD-DVD decryption (as DeCSS was to DVDs) but, through a quirk it's actually a very serious rights management hack, for now.

Alex Halderman of Freedom To Tinker explains, "due to a strange quirk in the way the processing keys used on existing discs were selected, the key Arnezami published apparently can be used to decrypt every HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc on the market. For the time being, knowing Arnezami's processing key is as powerful as knowing a device key. For instance, someone could use the processing key to build a player or ripper that is able to treat all current discs as if they were unencrypted." Halderman's write-up of the events over the last few weeks isn't riveting, but for any DRM-geek, or DRM-geek wannabe, it's a must read.

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. We keep reminding the content producers that DRM is a failed experiment, and reminding you that DRM isn't a content protection scheme, but rather a customer lock-in strategy. At least you're listening, the content distributors are still missing the boat. We're only weeks (if not days) away from the first in a long line of HD-DVD decryption apps, libraries and utilities.

Remember the other day when we told you that hackers had cracked the AACS copy protection scheme on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs? Remember how I said it probably wouldn't take long for someone to wrap the hack into an easy to use GUI?

Well, SlySoft is already out with a beta version of AnyDVD HD, a program designed to remove copy protection and region codes from DVDs and HD-DVDs, allowing you to create a backup copy of your disc. Sure, it's not legal in the U.S., but SlySoft's not an American company, so there you go.

AnyDVD HD beta only works with HD-DVDs at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Blu-Ray support added soon. The final version will likely carry a hefty price tag. AnyDVD runs $49, meaning you can expect AnyDVD HD to run at least as much.

[via Engadget]