According to new data gathered from market research firm NPD Group, the vast majority of video consumers still prefer physical Blu-ray and DVD discs “more than all digital-video options combined.” The NPD Group surveyed roughly 10,000 US consumers over the age of 13 regarding their personal video habits from January to March of this year. more »

Publishing giant Hearst is set to enter the e-reader market in 2010 and will team up with Sprint to offer an e-reading service platform for mobile devices, smartphones and netbooks. The platform, called Skiff, will provide magazine and newspaper content with “high resolution graphics, rich typography and dynamic updates.” Sprint will offer Skiff powered products more »

The Wall Street Journal, in a bid to survive the growing shift of newspaper readership from print to online, has announced it will implement a new micropayment subscription model on its website.

Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, told The Financial Times that “a sophisticated micropayments service” will launch this autumn. The system would charge small fees to occasional users who may not be willing to pay more than $100 a year for a subscription to WSJ.com, Thomson said.

The WSJ is not the first paper to try and maximize its online profits. In February, Newsday announced it will soon start charging for access to its online content. With print newspapers struggling to survive amid sinking ad revenue and dropping readership, expect more and more of them to start experimenting with online revenue ideas. These days more and more people go online for their news and it makes sense for the papers to do what they can to profit from it.

You don’t have to be Bill Gates to have that techy, futuristic home hard-wired for your every electronic whim (although it wouldn’t hurt). D-Link, the end-to-end networking solutions developer for consumers and businesses, just dropped its new Coax Ethernet Adapter Kit (DXN-221) that will revolutionize your home electronics experience with a few simple connections. The kit is designed to seamlessly connect into your existing coaxial wiring and extend internet, music, games and other applications anywhere you need them.

Nokia has filed a patent that will allow a user to digitally write on the back of digital photos. The patent allows a user to “flip” your picture over and label it. This label can be written on a keypad, or, if your camera device has some sort of stylus, you can write on them just like a photo print.

This patent has just been filed, so it is not known when it will be approved. Something tells me that cell phone giant Nokia will probably find a way to get this program into the hands of the consumer and into one of its cell phones as soon as possible. Once it does work, it will probably look something like a photo-viewer on the iPod.

Digital Foci has announced its new and upgraded Photo Safe II. This portable digital photo storage now either comes in 80GB or 160GB storage capacity and a built-in memory card reader that supports practically all card formats including CF Extreme III, IV, UDMA, MMC, SD/HC card, miniSD, Memory Stick, MS PRO, MS Duo, MS PRO Duo, and xD-Picture card. The Photo Safe II card slot also offers rubber covers for added protection from dust.

In addition to the increased storage and wide range of memory card support, it also has a nifty “Auto Copy” button which copies all the content of a memory card, including all file formats (RAW images and videos) without changing their file name and file structure. Adding more value to the Photo Safe II is the fact that it can be used as a back storage device as well when connected to a computer thought the USB port.

Buffalo has announced a new digital media player that links users digital content into their home entertainment center – the LinkTheater HD DMP (LT-H90LAN). The LinkTheater allows users to view videos, pictures and music stored in users computer, network-attached-storage (NAS), USB hard drive or DNLA media servers. Compatible with both Mac and Windows computers, the Buffalo LinkTheater HD has an auto-backup feature which automatically performs back ups of any content stored in either a flash memory based video camera or USB drive.