They're putting their shows out online in a million different ways (you can even download 30 Rock, The Office, Conan and Leno direct to your desktop now) and more than happy to pipe 'em to you, as long as it's in a controlled sandbox of some sort. NBC Direct requires a walled-garden player install with loads of DRM, and they wanted copyright controls from Apple and Microsoft to give just two examples, not to mention Hulu. It's sorta surprising that the QuickTime feed for iPhone is unprotected, but theoretically it's restricted to two devices. You know, if they'd just relax a bit, overall, they'd be in a good place online. [Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks Peter!]

Regardless, simultaneous release dates with new hardbacks, availability (eventually) of the entire Penguin back catalog and the planned September launch date of the initiative are all promising for the snow-balling ebook movement. Now, where's my Apple ebook reader, dammit? [Telegraph]

The WriteMaster SH-S223 will offer high-speed DVD burning on low speed media; 16X and 8X media will be written to at 22X and 12X write speeds, respectively. The SH-S223 will be able to write at the following maximum speeds; 22X DVD±R recording, 12X DVD-RAM recording, 16X DVD+R Dual Layer recording, 12X DVD-R Dual Layer recording, 8X DVD+RW recording and 6X DVD-RW recording. Time wise, 4.7GB of data can be burned to a DVD±R disc in approximately 4 minutes and 26 seconds. That kind of performance puts even Speedy Gonzalez to shame. All around, it looks like it has been a fantastic record-breaking weekend for our chums at Samsung. Well done, chaps. [Gizmag]

No cheap Chinese-made players will be flooding the market to push it down either, not until the BDA decides to license the tech to them, and Glasgow implied it's gonna be a while before that happens. Anyone else wants a license? Sure. But not them, in part it was indicated, because of piracy concerns. Not that the price matters too much right now, since Sony is "struggling to keep up with the demand."

The mighty morphin' PS3 SKU—from 60GB to 40GB, backward-compatible or not—isn't going to stop shape-shifting. When asked "Will there also be another PlayStation with Blu-ray built-in? Glasgow answered that "there's going to be continual evolvement in the PlayStation line" before talking about feature upgrades with software.

Other points that came up at the roundtable:

• Sony dropped Memory Stick slots from its TVs, even ones that do photos and music playback. Not sure what that means for the underdog format.

• When people are asked what brand they think of when it comes to HD, Sony "is far and away the leader"—close to 36 percent, compared with 10 percent for the runner-up.

• Around 50 percent of their LCD HDTVs sold last year were 1080p—the shift to 1080p is happening now and Blu-ray will help that.

• Sony is not sweating the recession.

• The company is "working very hard" on an answer to Apple TV, though it all seems to center around a Blu-ray player one way or another, and doesn't necessarily rely on the ill-fated Bravia Internet Video Link. Sony is "working on many other avenues to deliver downloaded content," like the PlayStation Network, which will be "spread that over the next year or so to many other products of Sony."

The E-book reader function will ensure you need to wear spectacles within a week's usage, whilst the earphone jack will save your eyes and let you rock out to your stored tunes. Video plays back at 20 fps, so you really couldn't get any good viewing done, but V3.0 of the Multimedia Watch is going to be mega for sure. [Chinavasion via Geekalerts]

Karmazin on post-merger packages and pricing [Orbitcast]

Go online to xbox.com and register a new gamertag with an email address not associated with any previous account. Then make sure you set your country to either Japan or America—perhaps making one tag for each. Then when that's done, go on your Xbox 360 and choose "recover gamertag" to grab the info from this tag onto your 360. Now you can see all the Japanese games you've been missing out on. – Jason Chen

Bypass the Xbox 360 country lock [Sagn]

Piratpartiet, a Swedish political party that shares similar views on copyright as TPB does said that the raid is illegal. Piratpartiet also accused the Swedish government of being pressured by American media giants. As we mentioned earlier today, TPB also believes that the raid was illegal and has vowed to get the site back up in a different country.

Honestly, DoS attack on a police website isn't always the best idea. Yeah they were baddies taking away the TPB servers, but having the official police website down could harm the country even more by hindering levels of communication within the police force. Come on pirates, couldn't you have just egged the police stations? – Travis Hudson

Yarr! Swedish police site broadsited after Pirate Bay raid [Arstechnica]

There is a backup plan which involves moving the servers to another country, such as Russia or Holland, the SpokesPirate said.

This is pretty obvious. BitTorrent is pretty much unstoppable and TPB is a brave group of... erm... pirates? – John Biggs

The Pirate Bay is not dead [TheInquirer]

Because the Internet is so small, it will be almost impossible to recreate or even find a service similar to TPB, ever, so we might as well all go back to using iTunes Music Store. I hear you can get an entire season of The Office for about $40. [Thanks, Everybody!]

Page [ThePirateBay]

Ok, I've dealt with Europe and Asia getting the cool phones first. But come on: They get HBO on demand from 3G too? That's OUR channel! Looks like Vodaphone is announcing a global Mobile TV service, which will offer series like Sex and the City, Six Feet Under or Curb Your Enthusiasm on its Vodafone Live! service. Bastards. And to rub it in, they'll also get Eurosport, Twentieth Century Fox Television, The UEFA Champions League, Discovery, MTV, Chilli TV and Fashion TV in countries like New Zealand or UK. All this will work on any 3G-enabled phone in eight of Vodafone's operating countries: Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and the UK; three associate networks—Belgium, France and Switzerland; and one partner network, Austria. All we get are crappy ringtone downloads—MIDI Gold Digger!—and a kick in the ass.

Watch HBO in Europe on Vodafone global Mobile TV [i4u]