DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Making a DVD menu is made simpler by Womble EasyDVD

As expected, following last week’s news blitz, this week has been relatively quiet. Which is a good thing because I managed to fill the gap with a new DVD authoring guide for Womble EasyDVD. Having played with the software for a week, I can say that it’s very easy to use and mostly intuitive. There are a couple of missing features such as subtitle support and multiple audio support, which I hope Womble can fix in future releases (this being their first effort after all, so you can’t have everything), but it’s mostly what you would expect, and the menu creation offers a bit more flexibility than your average authoring suite, without ever going into the semi-pro territory (complete with the much steeper learning curve) of tools like DVD-lab Pro. The other thing that was available this week was the October NPD US video game sales stats, I wrote the analysis for it yesterday here. The PS3 didn’t manage to sell over the Wii as it had in September, but it’s the Xbox 360 that’s the loser in terms of the recent price wars it seems, although it’s doing fantastically in software (for now, thanks to its larger install base). The coming months should give us an even clearer picture of what’s in store for 2010, and Microsoft will be hoping to see similar scenes as last year this time as people enthusiastically grab their cheaper holiday bundles. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, onto this week’s news.

In copyright related news, the BBC’s proposal for adding DRM to their HD broadcasts has been denied by the British Office of Communications. But the idea isn’t entirely dead and the proposed DRM scheme may appear later on, with existing hardware likely to support such a DRM scheme if it is ever introduced.

The MPAA are still of course campaigning vigorously in the US to try and get the FCC to allow them to introduce  Selectable Output Control. The old “pro consumer” argument was brought out, to argue for SOC’s use in bringing new release movies faster to the home if the studios were more confident of its resistance to piracy. Many studios are already doing this without the fake security blanket that is SOC. But SOC is just a trojan horse for the MPAA, because once you can control one aspect of how someone watches TV, you can then control all aspects of it eventually. If the MPAA and their cohorts can get away with banning all  TV recordings, then does anyone really doubt that this is exactly what they would do? Pro consumer indeed.

Further prove that movie studios really don’t give a crap about the people that are supposedly their customers – a free community Wi-Fi service that brings tremendous benefits to a huge number of people has been shut down all because of a single piracy complaint, from Sony (who else?). It’s a case of the studios exploiting people’s fear over lawsuits, and an innovation that helps the local economy, local law enforcement, small businesses and visitors is attacked and destroyed. Obviously the people who decided to shut down the network, as the cost of adding anti-piracy filters is excessive, must shoulder some of the blame for this over reaction, but the MPAA’s reaction to the story shows the depth of their arrogance. Instead of calling for a reasoned approach and balanced response, that a single movie download does not constitute a widespread piracy operation, they used the occasion to further spread their anti-piracy propaganda. But that’s what they are. They are an industry lobby group and they’re paid to say and do these things. What is really wrong is politicians and others in power taking their word as gospel, and acting without taking into consideration the serious consequences  for issues like privacy, and the economic damage that would occur if the MPAA’s wishes were turned into reality.

iiNet's freezone: damned if you do, damned if you don't

It’s week 4 of the Australian AFACT vs iiNet trial, and it was closing statements time.  Once again, you can check out a summary of the week’s events here, but the arguments from both side remain the same. The AFACT thinks iiNet is basically a piracy provider, even suggesting that  the ISP’s use of phrases such as “happy downloading” was in fact an encouragement for people to download the latest Harry Potter movie. And even iiNet’s attempt at promoting legal content, through their freezone service, was attacked. You would think the movie studios should be delighted that ISPs are providing quota-less downloads for legal content as a way to to provide further incentives to go the legal route, but you would be wrong. The argument is that because quota is not used, it leaves more free quota for downloading pirated movies. The same argument was made for iiNet increasing download quotas for their customers, as the AFACT assumes anyone who needs a large download quota must be a movie pirate. This “sky is falling” and “you’re a pirate until proven otherwise” attitude that these lobby groups have adopted is working wonders in their political lobbying activities and have proved useful in the legal arena as well in the past. Our only hope is the judge can see through these exaggerated truth to balance the need for anti-piracy and the need to protect consumer rights, and the rights of ISPs to operate without being burdened by the responsibility to prevent piracy. Surely the industry that profits, often in record amounts, from the movies and TV shows that are being pirated should be the ones responsible, at least financially, for the anti-piracy operations, not the ISP or its subscribers. Either put up, or shut up.

Most independent game developers say that piracy is not a significant problem, at least for now, according to the latest survey. While most fear that it can become a big problem in the future, only 10% felt that it was a serious problem at the moment. One thing to note about  piracy, including games and movies, is that people who do have the ability to pay for content will usually do so. It is only those that never had any intention to pay for anything, some because they don’t have the capability, that are the more dedicated when it comes to sourcing pirated content online, and these people were never likely to provide any sort of income for the content owners, now or in the future. So the key is to at the very least increase the number of people who have the capability to pay for content, and that can only be achieved through pricing changes. Digital distribution allows this to occur without the cost being a huge issue (certainly compared to physical media and the associated costs like packaging, shipping  …), and even more reasonable pricing can open up previously untapped markets, such as developing countries where piracy rates are even higher. Or the alternative is to fight against logic and try to stop all piracy through technology that has proved inconvenient at best, and completely unworkable at worst, or through ever harsher legislation that completely disregard some of society’s basic principles in relation to justice and human rights.

Microsoft banning 1 million Xbox 360 accounts over suspected system modding (which allows for piracy) may seem excessive, but console piracy is actually not a huge problem and that’s worth examining. The anti-piracy success is largely to do with technology, all games consoles carry some form of DRM for games and being closed systems, they are easier to enforce (unless somebody decides to mod their Xbox 360, that is). The DRM systems used are also fairly straight forward, usually just a DVD check, and with digital downloads being available, even the DVD check won’t be necessary anymore. There are still many aspects of the DRM system that are inconvenient, such as when one needs to move from one console to another, but there are at least solutions and workarounds. And I guess more reasonable pricing comes into it. Games are expensive, but given the number of hours of entertainment they provide, it’s still better value compared to your typical movie or MP3. Consoles are also now very good at providing demos for new games, thus eliminating the need for people to “play before they pay” (which I admit is often used as an excuse for piracy, and play doesn’t always lead to pay). They certainly aren’t going out there lobbying the government to throw people off the Internet for downloading games, or getting ISPs to work as their spies, or suing individuals for using pirated games.

HD news now. Not much on Blu-ray to report, but the holiday season is upon us and there will be a steady stream of big releases to give the format a big boost. But HD is more than just Blu-ray, and the future of HD may be SD.

Blockbuster tries SD digital rental

Not SD, as in standard definition, but SD as in the memory storage format. Blockbuster is trialling a new way to rent movies by allowing customers to download them to their SD memory cards. These movies expire after 30 days if unwatched, or 48 hours after the first viewing. Obviously DRM is involved, but further details are a bit sketchy. If compatibility with hardware players, then the DRM used may be the SD card’s own internal DRM system, CPRM. This would then allow the actual video file to be unencrypted, and playable in a wide variety of players, probably. The lack of DRM on your common USB stick may be why they didn’t go with the more common format.

The other path for HD is digital distribution. The main stumbling block has always been bandwidth, and also processing power (many of the Netbooks you see today will struggle with 1080p content). But YouTube is not waiting around for things to catch up, and will roll out 1080p playback support next week. The link to the left has a couple of further links to test videos that you can already use to see if your system is fast enough for 1080p. On my Intel C2D E8500, I recorded 40 to 50% CPU usage, which is reasonable, but you can see why some Netbooks will struggle. With GPU assisted decoding (unfortunately Flash does not yet support ATI based solutions), the CPU usage can be greatly reduced. This was proven when I downloaded the YouTube 1080p video (about 100 MB for 4 minutes worth) and used PowerDVD 9 to play it back (as it supports GPU assisted decoding). CPU usage dropped to below 10%, and my ATI Radeon HD 4850 was hardly worked (about 5% usage) despite the CPU savings. So it seems for 1080p video delivered through YouTube, most modern computers should be able to handle it, some better than others depending on whether GPU assist is available or not now or in the future. The bandwidth usage is reasonable, roughly the same as downloading a DVD movie (so the 1080p quality isn’t as good as say Blu-ray, not really close yet), but it will still use a large chunk of people’s quotas.

And lastly in gaming, not much to link to, except for the NPD analysis, which I’ve already linked to above. I think we finally have a proper console war on now, where there’s not much between the three top consoles, the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wii has the superior hardware numbers, but is weak on games, especially third party ones and ones that appeal to hardcore gamers. The PS3 has only started to do well to suggest it may take top spot eventually, but there’s still some catching up to do both in hardware and software. The Xbox 360 is enjoying software sales, at least in the US, for now, but it won’t last forever if it the last two months becomes a trend and they continue to sell less consoles than the PS3. But they have a great multi-player community and that counts for more and more these days. And of course, Natal, which may be beaten to the punch, innovative software wise, by PS3 Eye Pet (a new category of games, using the buzz word  ”augmented reality”) . But if Eye Pet is a success, then that may actually bode well for Natal, since it plans to offer similar things but in a more mainstream, and technologically advanced fashion. The only problem is the late release date, now semi confirmed as November 2010, which may be too late to help if things stay the way they are.

See you next week.

We’re nearing the two busiest months of the year in November and December. Last month, we saw the PS3 take top spot thanks to the price cut and the new Slim model. At that time, I questioned the longevity of this bump in sales, whether it was a long term thing thanks to the lowered price, or whether it was a temporary bump due to people upgrading their existing consoles to the Slim. This month’s figures should give us a better idea as to what has occurred. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in October 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (October 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Wii: 506,900 (Total: 22.1 million; October 2008: 803,000 – down 37%)
• DS: 457,600 (Total: 34.4 million; October 2008: 491,000 – down 7%)
• PS3: 320,600 (Total: 9.1 million; October 2008: 190,000 – up 69%)
• Xbox 360: 249,700 (Total: 16.5 million; October 2008: 371,000 – down 33%)
• PSP: 174,600 (Total: 15.9 million; October 2008: 193,000 – down 10%)
• PS2: 117,800 (Total: 44.7 million; October 2008: 136,000 – down 13%)

NPD October 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of October 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

It’s time to make a prediction of October 2009’s results. For my money, I’ll say that the order of the hardware sales will remain the same, although the Wii numbers will be closer to the PS3 numbers. The PSP Go debuts, but based on an Australian report about the poor sales figures (a couple of hundred sales per week in an entire country, is not the best), the impact of the PSP Go may be muted. Sony will continue to have good month, but this time backed up in software sales as well with Uncharted 2. It might not sell enough to top the number one title, which might be Wii Sports Resort. Wii Fit Plus might take a place in the top half of the charts as well. I expect FIFA 10 to show up in one of more flavors in the top 10. Borderlands might make a showing too.

Some right, some wrong. The biggest surprise, if you can call it that, was that the Wii price cut managed to do enough to unseat the PS3 from the top spot. Part of this was also due to the price cut, Slim induced sales bump not lasting as long as one would expect. This is true of the Xbox 360 price cut as well, and if November wasn’t such a bumper month for sales, it might also be true for the Wii as well next month. My predictions about PSP Go sales being relatively subdued was also correct, with combined PSP sales of both the old and new models actually dropping compared to last month (but dropping less than it would have been had the PSP Go not been released). For my software predictions, I was right about Uncharted 2 doing well for Sony, but wrong about it not taking the number one spot. It did, and quite comfortably. Wii Sports Resort failed to keep its sales up, and was beaten in the end by Wii Fit Plus. FIFA 10 did show up, albeit in last place, but Borderlands did well on the Xbox 360 at least.

So let’s take a look at the PS3 numbers first. After a great month in which it took top spot amongst the home consoles for the first time since I’ve started analyzing the figures, it quickly felled back down again, but at least it managed to beat the Xbox 360. We’ll still need a couple of months to see if the price cut has any long term effects, but one thing is for certain, that last month’s bump for the PS3 had parts of it which were very temporary in nature. I would expect a price cut to be more long term, and the introduction of a new model to be more short term (due to the number of people who upgrade, which only occurs once), and so one can conclude that what made the PS3 the number one selling home based console in September was down to a fairly even combination of both events (price cut and new model), but that the temporary has started wearing off for October. Certainly those that expected the PS3 to be selling over the Wii from last month onwards were a bit too optimistic in their predictions, perhaps. In any case, Sony can still be extremely happy with the results, as the PS3 recorded what was the only year-on-year sales increase of all the consoles (more on that later).

The Wii’s sales bump is welcome news for Nintendo in what has been a fairly miserable year, especially in the last quarter. The price cut, while occurring in the last month, seems to have had the full effect in October as the Wii was the only console to record growth compared to September. But the overall picture is still not a happy one for Nintendo, as the year-on-year sale of the Wii saw a huge 37% drop, the largest of any console. Part of this was due to how incredibly the Wii was selling this time last year, way above any expectations. The other part is the slow decline in Wii sales that has occurred over 2009. At least the DS is still doing relatively well, keeping a firm grip on the number one spot and only recording a small year-on-year drop.

The Xbox 360 figures are again not looking great for Microsoft. A huge year-on-year drop breaks the trend for 2009, in which the Xbox 360 was pretty much the only console to record year-on-year growth (or negligible losses in a couple of months). This suggest the PS3 price cut has really hurt the Xbox 360 where it counts, and the fortunes have been reversed for the two consoles post the PS3 price cut, as the PS3 was the one recording large year-on-year sales drops up until the price cut. With Project Natal not coming until this time next year, later than PS3’s motion controller, which might be able to steal the Natal thunder if it’s properly integrated with the PS3 Eye and with useful software, time is running out for Microsoft to do something. To be fair, it was always a difficult struggle for the Xbox 360 to beat the PS3, and it has outperformed everyone’s expectations up until this point. Price cuts had allowed the Xbox 360 to outperform the PS3, but price cuts are not something that can go on forever, and given similar prices, the PS3 with its Blu-ray functionality and more advanced design will always win. So it may not be a case of the Xbox 360 losing to the PS3, but rather, both consoles finding their rightful place now that the PS3 ridiculous pricing has been removed as a factor. For Microsoft, Natal is a step in the right direction, but the November 2010 release date may just be too late to change things. The only thing that Microsoft has in its arsenal is the larger install base of the Xbox 360 over the PS3 in the US, which should at least mean that it will take some time before the PS3 finds parity, and will still allow them to sell software in good numbers until then. And the better multiplayer platform in Xbox Live over the PlayStation Network, and add to that the larger install base, does still give the Xbox 360 some momentum (the “if my friends are already on the 360, I have to be on it too” principle). Making Xbox Live Gold free is probably the only other weapon left for Microsoft to use.

Looking at sales as a whole, October performed badly compared to September and certainly compared to the same time last year. There might be a recession related thing going on at the moment, or just the lack of really big titles, but the stimulus given by the price drops, or new models being released, seems to be the only things keeping the figures from sliding further down. Things will be on the up in November for sure, but the numbers will be extremely interesting to see if there is a year-on-year growth or decline, and whether how well the PS3 numbers do compared to the Wii (and to a lesser extent, the Xbox 360), both to see if temporary factors were responsible for the Wii’s sales increase this month, and again to confirm the longevity of the PS3 price cut boost.

Moving on to software, things are slightly better, although a year-on-year decline was still the order of the day. The top title was a PS3 title for only the second time since I’ve started keeping track (the previous one was Metal Gear Solid 4 in June 2008). Uncharted 2 was the top selling title in question, and being an exclusive, that’s exactly where it should be. But compared to last month’s number one, which was also a follow-up game in a series and also a platform exclusive (Halo 3: ODST), the sales are still somewhat disappointing (Halo 3: ODST outsold Uncharted 2 by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1). Getting more out of platform exclusives, especially high profile ones such as the Uncharted series, whether that’s through more extensive marketing or other tactics, is something Sony can work on to better its software sales. There was only one other PS3 title in the top 10, NBA 2K10, a multi-platform release. There were only two Wii titles in the top 10, Wii Fit Plus as predicted and Wii Sports Resort, which saw sales drop compared to last month. The rest, apart from one DS title, was all Microsoft. 5 titles in the top 10, and even though the highest placed was only third, it still managed to grab 44.3% of total sales, the third best set of results in 2009. Wii games accounted 25.1% of the top 10, and the PS3 was third once more with 25% of sales.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) – 537,000
2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) – 441,000
3. Borderlands (Xbox 360, Take-Two) – 418,000
4. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 314,000
5. NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360, 2K Sports) – 311,000
6. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 271,000
7. NBA 2K10 (PS3, 2K Sports) – 213,000
8. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 175,000
9. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS, Square Enix) – 169,000
10. FIFA 10 (Xbox 360, EA Sports) – 156,000

Prediction time. This is a hard one. Sales will go up considerably compared to October, that’s for sure. The DS will be top, the number two spot will be closely fought between the PS3 and Wii, although I’m leaning towards the Wii winning that battle right now. The Xbox 360 is 4th, followed by the other two PlayStation consoles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the number one selling game, and the controversial game will be a record seller if the hype is anything to go by. The Xbox 360 version of this multi-platform game should be the one occupying the top spot. Other titles that will do well for the Xbox 360 include Assassin’s Creed II and the console platform exclusive Left 4 Dead 2. For the Wii, a new Super Mario Bros game will always be a hit, and it could give CoD: MW2 some competition (although mainly for the PS3 version, one suspect). Dragon Age: Origins, from the same people that gave us Mass Effect, could make the top 10 as well, since I’ve been hearing a lot about this game recently.

See you next month.

Some weeks you couldn’t buy a news story, this week, there’s enough for two weeks. Don’t really know why, perhaps the MPAA is upping their lobbying efforts, or the courts have resumed their cases, and parliaments are reconvened to pass new legislations. Who knows. On my end, I finished the review for WinDVD 2010 as promised. A summary? Well, I’d rather you read the full review, but suffice to say there are things that I like about WinDVD, and there are some things that its competitors have done that it has not. Is it a great Blu-ray player? Yes it is. Can it be better, that’s a yes too.

Copyright news first, and there are quite a few to go through. Right after my last WNR, news came that torrent tracker UK-T was shut down, and some kind of police action was involved, but as no anti-piracy agency had claimed responsibility at that time, nobody was really sure what went down. Still not really sure what happened, but from leaked reports, it suggest that the police had raided the homes of several of the site’s admins. The database was wiped before the police could get their hands on it, and so the subscribers are safe. One tracker down, only 362,621 to go.

Demonoid: Tracker back online. Database corruption, or something more sinister?

But while one torrent tracker was down, another came back up. Demonoid has been down for ages now, supposedly due to a database problem, but the tracker is at least up again, if not the main website. I’ve noticed that several torrent sites have experienced similar database problems recently, so it could be just a coincidence, or perhaps something more sinister? If it was just an accident, then these accidents have actually done more to stop torrent sites than all the legal actions. Take The Pirate Bay for example. The latest attempt to shut the site down, or at least prevent access to it in Norway, has failed. The entertainment lobby had asked the Norwegian court to get Norway’s largest ISP Telenor to shut down access to the torrent site, but the court said “Nei” as they didn’t think an ISP should be the one deciding which websites its customers get access to, and which it should block. And the implication of this ruling is that ISPs are not really responsible for what their customers get up to, since if they were, then the court would have told them to shut off access. To me, this is common sense,  and Telenor’s spokesman’s analogy of not being able to sue a ladder manufacturer because someone used the ladder to commit a burglary again seems to make sense to me. But common sense is in short supply these days when it comes to the copyright debate.

The failed attempt to shut down The Pirate Bay again deals another blow to the MPAA and their friends, but do they really want the torrent site to be shut down? According to a new study, they should be careful of what they wish for, because during the few days that The Pirate Bay was down, the number of torrent trackers and websites dramatically increased, and downloading continued. The way modern torrent clients work, even without a working tracker, downloads can continued thanks to a technology called DHT (Distributed Hashed Table), or so called trackerless downloads. The download speed is sometimes affected, but not always. And with TPB down, many sees it as an opportunity to become the new TPB, and so naturally, the number of torrent and trackers will surge during this period. It just shows how hard it is to actually try and stop file sharing, and I think it may actually be impossible. All the resources that have been spent on trying to stop file sharing seems like a big waste to me. And even more so when you consider the stats that show that people who download illegal songs actually spend more on music than those who don’t. This again seems like common sense to me, because people who download music (legally, or illegally) are the ones that love music, and many are using free downloads as a way to search for new songs and artists. This “buy before you try” argument has been made for other content as well, like games, although the percentage that converts from try to buy is rather low, nevertheless, there is a percentage. Music especially I think is something that you do need to try before you buy, that’s why we have radio stations that broadcast songs, for free. The music industry, and others, should be exploiting this phenomenon to their advantage instead of trying to shut it down. Spotify, the free online music service, seems to signal a possible future direction, basically taking the radio model online.

The MPAA's propaganda ministry is busy these days

There’s still more copyright news, we’re barely half way through. The MPAA has been busy lobbying the FCC for various things. And as a concerted campaign, they had the US 60 Minutes broadcast a copyright propaganda film that tried to link file sharing with organized crime. There are links between counterfeit goods and physical media piracy with organized crime, but online file sharing that’s mostly free? The downloading communism poster immediately springs to mind (see right). More propaganda as the MPAA says the Internet will die if piracy is not stopped. This is the same MPAA that has been trying to kill the Internet for ages now, that its members and supporters have publicly stated their wish that the Internet had never existed, so why are they so worried about its health now? And the MPAA is not just happy pushing their agenda on the US, they’re going global as well. You can just see their dirty fingerprints over the proposed copyright treaty that will be discussed in South Korea this month. The worst part is that the treaty is being kept super top secret, even though it affects everyone. Of course, the Internet being the Internet, part of the discussions were leaked and it was indeed what we fear most. Three-strikes, global DMCA, ISP policing … are just some of the MPAA’s favourite things, and all will be tabled at the secret discussions later this month. Sigh.

Sarkozy's defence of major US corporations' interests has even led to a fight with the EU

Three-strikes and ISP policing, very popular at the moment, but the EU has decided that something needs to be done to protect consumer rights, even if what they did was not nearly enough. But it’s a start. The EU has decided that Internet access is a basic right, and as such, cutting people’s connections off will require more than just an email from the MPAA. The EU has ruled that a fair process must be in place before bannings can occur, which is less than the full criminal trial that consumer and Internet advocates had first wanted. This all came after France wanted to introduce something that legalized their three-strikes plan (the original one that didn’t require the judicial system, which their own constitutional council found to be, well, unconstitutional), and that angered pretty much everyone at the EU, and the battle has been fought ever since, leading to this latest compromise. Just what has happened to France, a country that I’ve always considered to be quite liberal and would usually be at the front lines fighting *against* the three-strikes nonsense, and not on the side of mega US corporations. Freedom and liberty is also another thing I associate with France, but they just seem to be one the wrong side of that as well because time and time again, it has been shown that copyright laws have been abused to stifle free speech and the critics of corporations. The Electronic Frontier Foundation even has a Hall of Shame for the companies and organizations that have abused copyright laws for their own (non copyright related) benefits. It just shows that when laws are so biased towards one side, they are prime candidates for abuse. And for me it’s hard to digest the fact that a country like France is in there arguing to make these laws even more one sided, and even more open to abuse. But with a guy like Sarkozy at the helm, now using the nations divisions for his political gain, no one expect anything less really. Hall of shame indeed.

The global DMCA thing is particularly annoying, although not that much of an impact since most countries have adopted some draconian form of it. One country is Denmark, and one citizen is doing his unique way of protesting the illogical nature of the laws. Under the DMCA, or the Danish equivalent, any attempt (even unsuccessful) at breaking DRM is considered illegal. However, Danish law allows for DVDs to be ripped for legal home use, and so the two Danish laws actually conflict each other. This is why Henrik Andersen confessed his “crimes” of ripping hundreds of his legally purchased DVDs for use in his home theater setup, to a Danish anti-piracy agency. Under the DMCA, Mr Andersen is guilty and should be fined, if not jailed. But just whose interests has he actually hurt? Certainly not the movie studios that he purchased his DVDs from.

Still more copyright stuff, bear with me. The third week of the Australian AFACT vs iiNet trial continues, and please refer to my summary forum post to keep yourself updated on this rather important trial, possibly the most important in the world right now concerning the copyright issue, as it seeks to decide if ISPs should be turned into copyright cops.

And in all this bad news, there’s a glimmer of hope for a fair solution that everyone can live with. Google/YouTube is finding that their compromise solution to the copyright issue, of sharing revenue with content owners if they choose not to remove stuff from YouTube, might be working. And working well, as a third of all their YouTube revenue is coming from this trial program. And it’s not just the extra revenue, the exposure on YouTube leads to more business opportunities for content owners, like the case of Mr Bean, the popular UK comedy series, in which the content owners decided to keep the user uploaded clips online, as opposed to removing it, and then found that it actually led to deals with TV stations countries that have never heard of Mr Bean before. So a bit of technical piracy actually led to a successful TV deal, and all while still making money from YouTube  profit sharing. And yet others, like Viacom, are still hell bent on suing YouTube into oblivion. Shorted sighted or what?

Well that was a big section wasn’t it. On to HD news now, although it’s still copyright related, I’m afraid. Managed Copy, the so called legal solution to movie ripping, will soon be upon us. December 4th marks the date that MC becomes a reality on Blu-ray.

Managed Copy in a Pioneer demo for the movie Bolt

I’m excited about MC, because it signals the first step that the movie industry has taken to legitimize the need for people to be able to separate the movie from the disc that it came on. With today’s increasingly digital world and sophisticated home theater solutions, being able to have everything as pure digital data is increasingly useful. Imagine having all your DVD and Blu-ray movies stored digitally and accessible with a few clicks of your remote. It makes categorizing easier, searching even more so, and it will be faster as well, and quieter due to the lack of a spinning optical drive. But to make this reality requires you to break several laws at the moment, but MC might be just what is needed to solve this problem.

But while I’m excited, the movie studios are less so apparently, as there’s just no support for MC despite the December 4th deadline. I suppose this is something whose success and popularity will only be apparent after it has been introduced, and just like the “Digital Copy” feature that the movie studios have only now grown to love, it’s going to take a time before they overcome their fears. And this could be the feature to keep Blu-ray in the game when it eventually goes head to head with digital distribution  (with Best Buy the latest to get into the digital download market). Whether you get it from the Internet, or from a USB stick, or on a Blu-ray disc, in the end, it’s the digital movie that’s important, not the way it arrives to your home. And for HD content, Blu-ray disc (sent via the postal system) may still be the best solution, from a cost and even speed perspective (see pigeon test).

And lastly in gaming, Sony’s losses from the PS3 have now topped $4.6 billion. But Sony is hoping to add perhaps a couple of more billions to this figure, as the more they lose, it means the more PS3 consoles they are selling, and that’s a good thing for them in the long term, if extremely hurtful in the short. In the post I made there are also links to the losses being made by Nintendo and Microsoft. The amazing figures for Nintendo, in which they’ve been in profit every year since the stats were first available, shows that even though they’ve had a few failed consoles in between, their strategy of concentrating on fun first, and technology second, is still paying off.

And that’s the news for this week. I’m willing to bet that next week will be super quiet as news sources regurgitate this week’s news items in various flavours. Oh, I got my graphics card back from warranty (the first one, with the broken fan). It’s now working great and the average temperature was about 10 degrees (Celsius) lower than when I first got the card, meaning that even when the fan was spinning, it was still overheating.

It’s November already. 60 something days until 2010 is here, and not long to go until 2012, the end of the world. I’m talking about the movie of course, which is in cinemas in 2 weeks time and I already have the trailer made and ready for upload. Speaking of trailers, I’ve been uploading them with a bit more regularity recently, and I’ve ensured all of them are now 1080p resolution (H.264 video, AAC audio) – you can find them all in our movies section. I’ve also made sure they’re all Xbox 360 and PS3 compatible, meaning they’ll play on these consoles without the need for further conversion. This means limited audio (no 5.1 audio, and LC only), but the original source files for most of them come only with stereo tracks anyway. A pet peeve I still have is that many H.264/AAC files that you find on the Net are not PS3/Xbox 360 compatible without further processing – both consoles, the PS3 in particular, make excellent media centers without the complexity, and if more files are compatible without transcoding or editing, it makes the whole process a lot easier. Anyway, the news, not much going on again, but I’ll turn up the rant knob to 11 and hopefully that will be enough.

Let’s start with the copyright news. Anti-piracy or anti-terrorism? Which is more important? Now this might seem a fairly straightforward question to answer, but it isn’t so in the UK.

Britain's spy agency is against the three-strikes anti-piracy law

The country’s chief intelligence agency, MI5, has come out against the government’s plan to implement a three-strikes anti-piracy legislation. And the police are siding with them as well. It’s not so much that they’re against the notion of anti-piracy, it’s just that the means in which the government wants to pursue it will make their anti-crime and national security operations much much more difficult. The reason is that by making your average ISP a spying organisation, it also makes every Net enabled citizen the subject of spying, and it’s not the secretive kind either, it’s all out in the open. This will then force even the average Joe to adopt better security to overcome this spying, which effectively means encrypted Internet connections might become the norm. This thus makes police and intelligence agencies’ work much harder, as even “listening” in on to characters of minor importance might mean an expensive and time consume decryption process. And of course, the encryption means that the anti-piracy operation will also fail. So the government has a choice to make, to either protect the country from real criminals or to go after kids who download three MP3s. The government, unfortunately, seems to have chosen the latter, and they plan to have the banning system up and running by 2011. I guess the anti-terrorism and crime lobby just doesn’t have the pull of the pro-copyright one.

The immediate plan is to introduce a warning system in the UK, where ISPs spend huge amounts of money spying on its own customers and send those suspect of piracy warning letters. If this plan doesn’t reduce piracy by 70% by April 2011, an impossible target (and possibly a deliberately chosen impossible one), then the banning penalty will be introduced. For those in the UK that plan on passively protesting this, might I suggest that you increase your piracy activities so that by April 2011, piracy will not only have not reduced, but have actually increased thanks to the warnings. Of course, I would never condone piracy, so delete those illegal files after you download them please, but this again highlights another flaw in the proposed system. Even if you do as I suggest and delete the pirated file immediately after download, you will have been recorded as having downloaded the illegal file, yet you did not use it and did not even intend to use it. Under the proposed system, intent appears to not matter, nor does actual usage of the pirated materials – the fact that you downloaded it is enough. Except it isn’t, not under any fair legal system. Further reason to protest, so Britains, download away (and delete right afterwards, of course).

If piracy means less movies like All About Steve, then that's just a bonus

The charm offensive, if you can call it that (although I do call it “offensive”), has already started from the movie studios. This week, it’s Sony Picture’s CEO writing a blog about just how bad piracy is and how it hurts the poor multi-billion dollar corporations. Hurts them so much that, they might even make less movies. And they have made less movies, apparently. Yet they have still made record profits, even in an economic downturn, so what exactly is going on here? Perhaps they’re making less crappy movies because the power of the Internet, a system designed for word of mouth type communications, has meant that crappy movies are spotted as such and flounder at the box office much faster than previously (see Bruno, and the tweets that might have savaged its box office earnings). There’s much less room, and much less tolerance for crappy movies these days. And the alternative source for releasing them is straight to DVD/Blu-ray, which I’m not sure if the movie studio CEO counts as a produced movie. Then there’s also the rising budget for movies, which leaves less for others to be made. And the credit crisis has meant that movie funding hasn’t been as free flowing as in the past. Yeah, but let’s blame it all on piracy shall we?

Of the various trials, many of them are on a break at the moment. The Pirate Bay trial, or appeals trial, has been delayed until next year as reported recently, but the movie studios aren’t happy that The Pirate Bay will still be operational until then. So they have asked the Swedish court to fine the founders of the website if they do not close it. The only problem is that the founders have consistently denied any further involvement in the running of the website, and so the website will probably remain open, if the founders get fined.

Enough copyright stuff, let’s move onto HD. If you don’t have a Blu-ray player, but want one, then the upcoming holiday sales may be just what you need. Rumours suggest that Blu-ray players will be available for as low as $49 for this year’s Black Friday sales.

Now I wouldn’t recommend you buy these players. They’re mostly superseded Profile 1.0 and 1.1 players – Profile 1.1 is still okay if you don’t need the Internet features, or video streaming service support, but 1.0 players really shouldn’t even exist on the market anymore.

But even the fully featured Profile 2.0 players can be had for less than $100, although those wanting to make their own Blu-ray movies or AVCHD/custom discs, might need to do a bit more research on just which cheap player is for them.

Netflix is coming to the PS3, first via a Blu-ray disc

But if you have a bit more cash lying around, then you might consider a PS3, because Netflix will soon be available on the console. At first, it would be a (free) Blu-ray disc with a BD-Live connection to Netflix to drive the service, but eventually, a built-in service will be available. With the recent price drops, the PS3 still represents good value as a Blu-ray player and media center, especially compared to name brand players with comparable features. This is good news for supporters of the next generation of home video (the one after Blu-ray), which many believe to be digital distribution.

This move, obviously a way to play catch up on the digital distribution front that has been spearheaded by the Xbox 360 in terms of game consoles, may also signal Sony’s reluctant move towards digital distribution. Sony will always prefer their own in house solution, using proprietary formats, and Netflix has made huge strides in the area, thanks to Blu-ray players and the Xbox 360, and Sony may not have any other choice other than to embrace a third party service. And while this won’t really hurt Blu-ray, it has the potential to do so in the future. Netflix has already said so themselves that their streaming service is gaining at the expense of the disc rental side, and once HD streaming becomes a reality (mainly waiting on bandwidth, at the moment), then the good old optical disc (and the mechanical drives that read them) might then seem quite quaint.

There’s not much gaming news that I found interesting, so I’ll keep on going with this Netflix on PS3 thing. Many have come out to say that this is a huge blow to the Xbox 360, since Netflix has been exclusive on it up until now. And since the PS3 is a better media center, which I agree thanks to its low noise, this means that the Xbox 360 will lose or something. The only problem with this argument is that Netflix isn’t exclusive to the Xbox 360, and has never been. Blu-ray players have it, your PC obviously supports it, and there were many ways to get Netflix streaming without having to use the Xbox 360. And just how many people have actually bought Xbox 360’s because it had Netflix? This isn’t a victory for the PS3 or a defeat for the Xbox 360, it’s just simply a victory for Netflix and for digital distribution. And to further drive the point, the world’s most popular home video game console doesn’t even play DVDs, let alone have any sort of media center ambitions.

And the other interesting line I heard over the week is that the recent PS3 successes is good news for PS3 owners. I think it’s good for Sony, but I’m not sure how well the PS3’s success translates to being good news for PS3 owners, especially those who shelled out full price for the console a few months before the price drop. I guess in the short terms, there will be more users for the multiplayer games. And more buyers may mean cheaper games, but that’s a highly questionable assumption. Will there be more games for the PS3? Or rather, would the PS3 have gotten less games if it had been less successful? Probably not, as the PS3 was never in danger of dying in the same way as the Sega Dreamcast. Will PS3 games be of higher quality? Possibly, but that’s more to do with developers still learning to get the best out of the PS3, as opposed to not bothering to put in the effort. But it is good news for those invested in the phony console war, to have their decisions justified, even though they can justify it everyday themselves by using it and  having fun on it. Just like those who purchased and thoroughly enjoyed their Dreamcasts.

So on that note, have a great week, enjoy and appreciate every minute, because 2012 isn’t that far away (not talking about the movie).

Not a busy weeks in terms of news, but a busy for me in any case. I wrote up the NPD September 2009 video games sales analysis on Tuesday. A very big month for Sony as the PS3 becomes number one for the first time ever, although Microsoft will be happy to dominate total sales, especially with software. Nintendo will be concerned, and will hope that the PS3 numbers are at a temporary high due to the release of the new Slim SKU. But then later on in the week, my computer’s graphic card’s fan stopped working, and so I had to quickly buy a replacement while I wait for warranty service. A blessing in disguise perhaps since I was about 2 weeks away from the end of the warranty period. Anyway, I got Radeon 4550 as a temporary replacement which I can then use in a new home theater PC build sometime next year. The best thing about the card is that it’s a passive one, no fans that will make noises and then break and force me to get a replacement. The computer is a bit more quieter than it was before, and sometimes I have to check twice just to make sure it is actually on. This card should work great in a home theater system, and I tested Blu-ray playback (see earlier test) and CPU usage was still very low, hovering at under 10% under PowerDVD 9. Gaming performance is average as you would expect, but still playable. Anyway, onto the news, which as I mentioned before, was few and far between due to various factors (such as the launch of Windows 7).

In copyright news, The Pirate Bay appeals trial should now be delayed until next year. This is because of the bias allegations that the TPB defence team has filed against two of the judges that were supposed to sit on the case. TPB had earlier requested a delay which was rejected, so they get what they want now anyway.

And believe it or not, this was pretty much all the news I managed to find. Sure, there were lots about MPAA’s boss saying he will quit next year when his contract runs out, but that was sort of covered in last week’s WNR in regards to the MPAA restructuring due to the studios’ assertion that the MPAA has been too soft. A few others have already left as a result.

You can tell it’s a quiet week piracy wise because when you search for piracy on Google News, most of the news stories were about the maritime kind. And maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be. Copyright holders like to make a big fuss about online piracy, but compared to what’s going on over in Somalia, I mean, it’s pretty non consequential. When I think of the Somalian pirates, I think of the “you wouldn’t steal a car” anti-piracy ads – heck, not only would they steal the car, they’ll steal the cargo ship the car was being transported on as well, get the crew’s DVD library, rip them, and upload them onto The Pirate Bay just for fun. Now that’s piracy!

Disney's "Keychest" sells you viewing rights, not just the movie files

And then there’s this story about Disney’s new Keychest initiative. Upon the first read, it seems just like another pointless DRM exercise, but this one might lead to something interesting, maybe even revolutionary. When you buy a movie today, you are not actually buying anything other than the movie in a particular format. And unless you get a digital copy with it, it’s pretty much locked to that format. Some argue you should be able to rip it and then convert it into another format, but if you read the license stuff and observe the US DMCA (or your country’s equivalent), then ripping it would be very much illegal. So if the digital copy was not present or isn’t iPod compatible, then to get an iPod version, you’ll have to buy it through iTunes, despite the fact that you may already have purchased the movie on Blu-ray and DVD (very likely if you’re buying a Disney Blu-ray, which usually comes with the DVD version now).

The idea behind Keychest is that instead of you buying a movie locked to a format, you simply buy a license to watch the movie, regardless of the format. Using this license, which can come in the form of a digital key or certificate, you can then download various versions of the movie for various formats. The key might come bundled with the Blu-ray/DVD version of the movie, allowing you to download the iPod version from the Internet. And, from what I’ve read, you can have multiple copies and each can be played simultaneously (obviously there would be some limit, as you don’t want one key to be able to supply the entire world with access to the movie).

Why is this a good idea? I’ve always thought that buying a movie means you’re buying the viewing rights anyway, and that you should be able to transcode it to another format. This holds true for CD to MP3 ripping, for example, but does not hold true for Blu-ray and DVD simply because there is copy protection mechanisms in the way. But buying a license technically means that regardless of where you sourced the movie, you have the right to view it since you’ve paid for it, even if the source may be of a less than legal kind. Of course, the license could limit you to downloading the movie from approved sources, for legal or commercial reasons, but you are again locked into buying formats, the only difference being that you have more choice over which format to get it on. But for a true revolution, it should mean that as long as you have a license, you can download it from anywhere, or perhaps even offer an exception that allows you to break the copy protection on discs to get the movie into the format you want. And it would all remain legal. Of course, the license may cost more than the cost of your average DVD, but such a license would also mean that you can supply your various devices and your immediate family’s various devices with copies of the movie, a “home license” if you will, and that would be very convenient indeed. And to extend things further, how about a yearly license subscriptions that allows you to enjoy all Disney movies being released for the home video market for the year?

Buy why is it also a bad idea? In one word? Control. With Keychest, you may end up giving more control over to the studios as to how you watch movies. Because while a “home license” is a good thing, the opposite means that for those without this kind of license, or those who simply purchased the DVD version and not the Keychest license, then trying to do anything other than to watch the DVD in your DVD player could be illegal. Right now, you can argue that since there’s no legal alternative, you have to rip the DVD and make a version for your portable media player. With Keychest being the legal alternative, you won’t have this argument anymore. But that’s not really a huge problem since ripping a DVD is already illegal anyway. The bigger problem is that Keychest is still another form of DRM, and that means while you may be given a huge amount of freedom with this new kind of licensing scheme, that freedom is still being “given” to you by the studios, and something given can be taken away. If Disney one day finds that Keychest is losing them a lot of money, then they can simply pull the authentication servers, and those with Keychest licenses will find them useless. This is the pitfall of all DRM schemes.

DRM free, monthly subscription, all you can download, unlimited viewing and access to all back catalogues through your set top box, game console, PC or iPod/iPhone. Now that’s what I call real freedom.

Let’s move onto high def news. I did the Blu-ray sales analysis last week, and Blu-ray sales were way up as expected. I deliberately chose not to look at the DVD sales numbers since I wanted to concentrate on how Blu-ray was doing, but when one does take into account the DVD numbers, the news isn’t as rosy.

While Blu-ray sales are up 66% compared to a year ago, Blu-ray and DVD sales combined are actually down 13.9%. What has been observed is that the drop in DVD sales has been way faster than any growth on Blu-ray, and that the industry is still hemorrhaging. I theorized before that Blu-ray might actually be partially causing the decline in DVD sales, as people upgrade their equipment and buy more expensive movies leaves then with less cash to buy movies that are not what you would call “must have’s”, especially during these economic times. I for one have cut down my movie buying to a minimum, still buying Blu-ray’s and the occasional $5 DVD movies, but I can’t justify buying “meh” movies just because they’re on sale anymore, not when I’ve just paid full price for a copy of Taken on Blu-ray. So even just looking at my own buying habits, Blu-ray sales (buys) are way up, and DVD sales are way down, and I probably end up spending less on movies as a result. Which is good, because I’d rather spend the money on video games anyway. And there in lies the problem.

DeadLands 2: The last movie to be released on HD DVD?

And then there was the whole HD DVD disaster, which wasted the time, effort and money of a lot of people, although for simple movie viewing, it was a great time and it still is if you can grab some HD DVD movies for as low as $1. Some who supported HD DVD from the get go will have lost confidence in the home video industry that allowed this sort of thing to happen (again). Those who got into HD DVD after its fall to take advantage of the fire sales, like myself, are still somewhat satisfied, but certainly won’t bother to re-buy those movies on Blu-ray again, especially when most of these movies were hardly the “must-have” variety. Either way, the whole thing a negative effect on Blu-ray and on DVD at time when it could least afford to lose more ground to video games and new forms of entertainment. But I bring up HD DVD again as it’s near to Halloween, and it has risen from the grave, sort of, for one more time at least. A new movie is being released on the dead format, and suitably, it is a zombie movie. It’s a limited collector’s edition as well, numbered and comes with a certificate and everything. The movie, DeadLands 2, is not available on Blu-ray.

And speaking of rising from death, that old “Xbox 360’s gonna have a Blu-ray drive, OGM LOL” rumour has surfaced again. This time after a misquote from Steve Ballmer, possibly taken out of context, where he was supposed to have said “you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories”. But he was referring to the PC (in relation to Windows 7’s launch), and not the Xbox 360, but it didn’t take long for the Net to be filled with headlines of “Microsoft CEO: Xbox 360 definitely getting Blu-ray drive”. Definitely!

Ballmer said in the same interview that “the future of movies is on-demand, actually, as opposed to distribution via physical media”, which I think tells you all you need to know about Microsoft’s strategy on movies. Downloads Yes. Discs, Blu-ray in particular, No. But Windows 7 supports Blu-ray burning out of the box (although you’ll still need a software Blu-ray player to play Blu-ray movies, perhaps taking advantage of the 70% Off WinDVD Pro 2010 deal that’s available right now – a deal that was leaked, but linked to the launch of Windows 7), so Microsoft is not abandoning the format in any way. It just doesn’t see the Xbox 360 needing it.

I don’t know why this rumour gets thrown about every couple of months. There’s almost no demand from Xbox 360 users for a Blu-ray drive accessory, especially considering how cheap a standalone Blu-ray player is these days, not to mention how much better even a cheap standalone would be compared to playing movies on a game console (Sony PS3 is only acceptable with the remote add-on, but “serious” HT people still scoff at it’s lack of bitstreaming of the original PS3, its looks and the lack of an LCD display). It seems there are certain segments of the public that would view having Blu-ray on the Xbox 360 as the ultimate concession of defeat by the HD DVD group (which no longer even exists, btw), and by Microsoft for supporting the ill fated format. Toshiba’s indirect issue of a “mea culpa”, by releasing their first Blu-ray player, wasn’t enough apparently. And it’s not just admitting defeat on the HD DVD front, but if Microsoft does go Blu, then it vindicates Sony’s decision to include the Blu-ray drive in the PS3 at the cost of delays, huge losses, and slowed market penetration. Microsoft will point to their 2:1 sales lead (albeit a diminishing lead if September’s video games sales results become a norm) as vindication that not giving a crap about a built-in HD movie disc player was the right decision. The funny thing is that nobody accosts Nintendo for not even including a DVD player in the Wii, despite it having a DVD drive. Where are the rumours that the Wii is getting a software update or a Wii Shop purchase that enables DVD playback, as that would be much more believable in my opinion.

And moving on finally to gaming, despite having moved into this area about two paragraphs ago, the PS3 firmware kills the Blu-ray drive story continues, not just in court, but also with some independent PS3 fans and developers/hackers wanting people’s dead PS3s so they can do their stuff and determine just why they brick after a new firmware update.

A group is taking the PS3 apart to find out why firmware updates brick it (possibly not literally though)

They have already narrowed their suspicions down to a file that is part of the firmware package, which updates the Blu-ray drive’s firmware. Firmware updates are dangerous. The frequency in which Sony releases firmware updates has always been a cause for concern, as is their strategy of “adding value to the PS3 through software”. It’s good in theory, but you better make damn sure you do enough beta testing, on all SKUs, and to put in safeguards to prevent a bad firmware update bricking the machine. But with the frequency of updates, and the jumble of hardware (even under the same SKU), I can’t see a way for Sony to be able to ensure their firmware is 100% safe. And despite so many updates, none of them were even as big in sale (in terms of changes) as the New Xbox Experience update. The PS3 interface still looks pretty much the same as the one that came with the launch machine, except now some of these PS3s won’t play any discs at all anymore. And it’s also important to differentiate between a firmware update and a software update. With game consoles, the lines more blurred than compared to say Windows, since the hardware is much more specialised and linked with the software (hence the need for firmware). Software updates can be frequent, but firmware updates should be kept to a minimum.

It would be really interesting to know what the repair process is for this kind of problem at Sony tech support. If they’re simply ripping out the drive and replacing it with a new one, then it’s probably a hardware issue with the drive. And I’ve theorized before that the firmware simply detects faulty drives and turn them off to prevent further damage, so it’s not a case where the firmware causes the drive to fail – the drives were already failing to begin with. Another theory is that the firmware update process is buggy on certain drive models, not the actual firmware itself. But if the repair process is simply some kind of low level hardware reset, and if they’re charging people $150 (or $250 here in Australia) for that, then well, that’s not very nice. Maybe this is the sort of thing that will be revealed in the court case, if it proceeds.

And that’s it for the week. Thanks for reading, but no need for burning afterwards though. It’s bad the for environment!