Digital TV to reach 500m by 2011

Over 500 million homes around the world will have digital TV by 2011, reports BBC News.

Informa`s Global Digital TV report estimates that 40 million more homes will get digital TV by the end of 2006 with a further 46 million in 2007. "Digital growth will accelerate as the decade progresses, especially outside North America and Western Europe," said Informa`s Adam Thomas.

But 60% of TV households will still receive analogue signals by 2011. By the end of this year there will be an estimated 183 million digital homes, said the report. More than 344 million digital homes will be added to the total between the end of 2005 and 2011, predicted Informa.

UK`s Royal Mail has started an online service allowing customers to buy and print postage in the comfort of their homes, The Register reports.

Payment can be made by prepay account, credit card or debit card and allows the user to print a unique bar code onto a label or envelope. Prices are the same as for normal stamps.

Royal Mail`s marketing director Alex Batchelor said: "We have launched this service in response to demands from the general public, who want to be able to buy and print their postage online. Online postage gives customers more choice and flexibility in the way they pay to send their mail."

Warner Bros has applied for a patent for a three-layer optical disc, which would be capable of being adapted to any of 22 different configurations, reports BetaNews.

Work on the disc started in December 2005, when three optical disc engineers, now identified as working for Warner, began work on the US patent application. One configuration enables a hybrid DVD/HD DVD or DVD/Blu-ray configuration, and another would allow for a hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray disc.

The patent application, dated 10 August 2006, may have used the strongest language put forth by a representative of a major studio against the notion that either format would ever win the high-definition format war.

The newest zero-day flaw in the MS Windows implementation of the Vector markup language is being used to flood infected machines with a massive collection of bots, Trojan downloaders, spyware and rootkits, reports EWeek.

Less than 24 hours after researchers at Sunbelt Software discovered an active malware attack against fully patched versions of Windows, virus hunters say the Web-based exploits are serving up botnet-building Trojans and installations of ad-serving spyware.

"This is a massive malware run," says Roger Thompson, CTO at Atlanta-based Exploit Prevention Labs. Thompson confirmed the drive-by attacks are hosing infected machines with browser tool bars and spyware programs with stealth root kit capabilities.