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Weekly News Roundup (13 June 2010)

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

What started as a pretty quiet week in terms of news turned a bit more busy in the last few days. E3, the US Copyright Group, Adobe, Sony all made the news later on in the week, whether it was new rumours, or new downloads, it’s all covered by this week’s Weekly News Roundup. Are you enjoying the World Cup? I’m not a big fan of the Vuvuzelas though, nor drums, bells, whistles, or anything else that makes artificial stadium noise. Cheering, singing, chanting, swearing, and the occasional round of claps, is what it’s all about. Hearing the crowd’s anticipation, nervousness, exhilaration, depression, makes the game a much better spectacle, and I think the players appreciates the interaction with the crowd as well. Vuvuzelas and other artificial noise drowns out all of these, and I think it takes something away from the beautiful game. But it also does drown out the Samsung plasma buzz, so silver lining and all.

Speaking of Samsung plasma TVs, I still haven’t gotten mine yet, so no watching the World Cup in 3D 🙁

Starting with copyright news, the Canadian DMCA is still under consultation, but the IFPI, the RIAA’s International wing, has come out attacking the proposed changes as not going “far enough”. You know what, if the RIAA and their axis of evil friends don’t like it, then perhaps there’s something to like about the DMCA.

I think the RIAA’s biggest problem with the bill is that it finally makes CD ripping legal, and format shifting as well (so CD to MP3 => legal). But there’s nothing they can do about that now, since CDs don’t have DRM, a decision the RIAA may forever regret (not that having DRM actually stops piracy or anything, but at least it makes ripping them illegal in the eyes of the law, with the caveat that prosecuting someone for ripping their own CD/DVDs for personal use is likely to end up a futile endeavour).

But it again just highlights the stupidity of making the breaking of DRM illegal (exemptions apart), regardless of the intentions behind the attempted break. If CDs don’t have DRM, does it then make it legal to pirate CDs? Of course not. The music labels still have the same level of legal protection as movie studios when it comes to DVDs that do have DRM. And is DVD DRM preventing DVD ripping or piracy? Of course not. And with DVD (and even Blu-ray) DRM so easy to break, it’s about as useful in stopping piracy as making users read those unskippable copyright notices at the start of the disc. Of course, in the area of placing limits on what users can do with their own stuff, then it’s a huge success. While the some studios and anti-piracy agencies claim they would never sue anyone for breaking DRM for personal purposes, the fact is that if they wanted to, they can. It’s having this level of power and control that made the studios fall in love with DRM in the first place, not its value (or lack of it) in fighting piracy.

Just what is freedom of speech, and what is "making available" pirated downloads?

And just how far can this power grab by studios go? Well, if you live in the Netherlands, then it can go very far indeed. A Dutch court has just ruled that even talking about piracy may be a crime. The case relates to an Usenet community, in which the user “spots” potential downloads. Not by linking or anything, by simply talking about the general location of where downloads are located. Apparently, this is just as bad as linking, which is just as bad as hosting, in the court’s eyes. What’s next? Guilty of copyright infringement for even thinking about illegal downloads? Thought-crime anyone? I think this is another instance of legal authorities not really understanding the way the Internet works. The Internet was designed by the US military as a way for communications to still work even after a massive nuclear attack, and this works by building a “web” of connections, allowing every server to potentially route to every other. And not only is the underlying connection all connected, web pages containing links can also link to potentially every other website in the world, depending on how many links you want to hop to. And then there are search engines like Google, which aims to be able to link to every resource on the Internet. So what does all of this mean? It means that if direct hosting, direct linking, indirect linking and now even indirect discussions are all illegal, then by the way the Internet works, every site can potentially link to the illegal download in question, every router can potentially carry the illegal download to the end user, every search engine can potentially allow users to find the illegal download in question, and so every website on the Internet is illegal. I now finally understand why the CEO of Sony Pictures said that nothing good has come out of the Internet being invented.

The RIAA wants the assets of LimWire and its creator to be frozen, because they want to seek billions in terms of damages. Billions! I think I’ve said this before, but I would really love for the RIAA to prove just how they derive their claimed losses due to piracy, and the only way may very well be for all pirated content providers around the world to stop for a month, just a month, and see how much more money the RIAA makes during this time (if any). Then time this by 12, and then the RIAA will have their annual “loss” figure. Would I be surprised if this figure turns out to be negative, in that the RIAA may make *less* money as people stop listening to their music (illegally, for free) for a month and they lose the free publicity the Internet provides musicians? Not really.

The ACLU is joining forces with the EFF to help users fight against mass BitTorrent lawsuits

The rest of the week was dominated by louder and louder condemnations of the way the US Copyright Group is going about its anti-piracy “pre-trial settlement” business. The EFF and ACLU are stepping in and they want a judge in charge of ruling on one of the USCG’s mass subpoenas to dismiss all but one of the subpoenas. They say that the USCG must present evidence that all of the John Does as part of the subpoena have been joined in the same lawsuit for a reason, that they were all part of the same transaction or have some kind of common connection. You see, some groups uses this kind of “subpoena spam” to greatly simplify things for themselves, and may only be using these subpoenas as a way to threaten people to pay up, with no real intentions of going to court. But the ACLU and EFF may very well want a full trial, and if they can get the right decision, then the USCG may have to stop their very lucrative business. If the ACLU/EFF can get in touch with many of those that claim they’re innocent of the acts that the USCG has charged them with, then perhaps winning a trial won’t be too difficult. These kind of mass mailings always catches a few innocents, those that have had their connection hacked, or IP spoofed, but most will pay up to avoid the trouble of going to court, especially when threatened with the possibility of $150,000 in damages that the USCG may seek. And the USCG is targeting more and more movies, with sources claiming that they are watching 300 illegally download films, and if they only record 500 IP addresses for each movie, then that’s 150,000 potential “pre-trial settlement” payments, and even if just 50% of those pay up the minimum amount required by the USCG, then we’re already taking about more than a hundred million dollars in terms of income.

This makes me think that something will be done about the USCG’s actions, but it will be something that’s even worse I think, as the government can use the actions of the USCG to justify things like three-strikes, which they will promise that any new laws will come with safeguards to prevent companies that seek to profit too much from anti-piracy activities without at least giving users some warning first. Three-strikes is better than one strike, after all. If I was the head of the MPAA, I would use groups like the USCG to do all sorts of nasty things and then use this mythical bogeyman as a way to scare people into thinking that something only slightly better, but still very bad (like three-strikes), is the right, better solution. It’s better, but it’s not good (take note Larry David), and it may eventually become worse.

High Definition

Onto HD/3D news. I know in my 3D Blu-ray – What’s it all about? blog post I mentioned the lack of 3D Blu-ray titles for general sale, but it seems I spoke too soon, because Sony are readying their first general release 3D Blu-ray movie to be made available June 22nd. The title is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and it will be followed shortly by others titles.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Blu-ray 3D Version)

You can finally buy a Blu-ray 3D movie, but it's gonna cost you!

This is good news, and more “real 3D” content means it will be easier to benchmark the various 3D TVs so we can find out for sure which current technology, LED/LCD or plasma, is better for 3D, and which particular models are best at it. There’s a big question mark around using Samsung’s exclusive Monster vs Aliens, since some of the ghosting artifacts found when watching the movie may in fact be a problem with the movie encoding, as opposed to Samsung’s 3D technology. But it’s a bit pricey though, at $36 on Amazon, that’s twice as expensive as most other Blu-ray movies. Ouch.

3D notebooks will be everywhere, with Toshiba joining Acer and Asus, amongst others, to release a new 3D enabled notebook. This seems a bit gimmicky for me, even on top of the “gimmickiness” of 3D. 3D requires a big screen and controlled lighting environment for the best enjoyment, and I’m just not sure notebook screens can offer this. Plus, 3D gaming requires a lot of GPU power, and this is something that notebook cannot do, compared to desktops and consoles. But if these machines can be connected to 3D TVs and used as 3D Blu-ray players, then perhaps that’s where they may be useful.

Adobe has finally release version 10.1 of their Flash player. Despite the minor version number change, this one includes a lot of changes, and it took long enough to get from beta to gold as well. The most important new features is GPU assist support, which may make HD YouTube finally playable on certain netbooks and CULV laptops. My first impressions were that CPU usage was down, but playing a 1080p YouTube clip was still more processor intensive than playing a Blu-ray movie via PowerDVD, so hopefully more improvements can be made in this area (but the nature of the Flash plugin will always mean more overhead I suppose).

Blu-ray firmware updates are far too frequent it seems for the average user, many of whom don’t even know what a firmware is. This is one stumbling block for Blu-ray on its path towards mainstream acceptance. DVD players didn’t have this problem, and there’s always an inherent danger in firmware updates, since if the power goes out during the middle of an update, then the player could be fried unless it was well designed to prevent this sort of thing from happening (like some kind of firmware reset function).

And finally in gaming, with E3 just around the corner, there’s plenty of rumours about what each of the major companies will be promoting during the show. I’ve collected some of the popular rumours in this post, with ratings on how likely each rumour will turn into fact.

We know Sony will be promoting Move, Microsoft will be promoting Project Natal (or whatever they’re calling it by this time tomorrow), but will the 3DS be the only thing Nintendo has to show? Nothing for the Wii? Nothing like a Wii 2 or Wii HD to steal Move/Natal’s thunder? I find it all hard to believe. Watch this space.

Speaking of the 3DS, some developers that have had a chance to play with the hardware say that it is as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PS3. Now I find this even harder to believe. Can the 3DS give Xbox 360, PS3 like graphics on the lower resolution screen, perhaps, since what will look good at 720p on a big TV, will look similar at much lower resolution on the smaller screen. So perhaps this is what was meant. But graphics has never been what the DS (or any of Nintendo’s other consoles) are about. And 3D without glasses could be fun.

For 3D with glasses, the PS3 now has some 3D games for you to try out, no firmware update required since the required update had already occurred in April, so all you need to do is to update the supported games themselves (if you’ve already purchased them). Some people who have tried it say it’s fantastic, of course I can’t test it for myself because my 3D TV hasn’t arrived yet 🙁

And so we come to the end of yet another Weekly News Roundup. E3, and perhaps another round of NPD figures (for May), will ensure the next issue of the WNR will be fairly gaming dominated, for a change. Have a good one.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (13 June 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (6 June 2010)

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

What started as a way to avoid going through yet another week without doing any work, turned out to be a bit more work than I expected, but it was fun writing down all the things I’ve learned about 3D Blu-ray, and 3D in general, recently. Taking the form of an FAQ, my 3D Blu-ray – What’s it all about? blog posts looks at the basic principles behind 3D displays, and tries to clear up some common misconceptions behind the new technology (like whether you need HDMI 1.4 cables or not, if such a thing even exists). I’m sure I got some of it wrong, since there’s a lot of misinformation floating around. There’s also still quite a lot of stuff that I haven’t addressed, but I think I will save that for a full guide. Whether one should want 3D or not is a valid question, but I suspect with 3D technology relatively cheap to implement for TVs, there will come a time when 3D is a feature that comes with all the top-end TVs, whether you want it or not, and competition will ensure there isn’t a huge price premium to go along with it.

Let’s start with the new review, and starting as usual with copyright news. A reader of our newsletter kindly pointed out that I forgot to mention the demise of Newzbin, a Usenet indexer website that was accused of copyright infringement and subsequently shutdown.

The "new" Newzbin is online after being brought down due in early May

The news did totally escape my attention for some reason, but there’s good news for fans of Newzbin, as it has been resurrected just this week. It was actually good timing on my part since when I first posted the story in the forum, the resurrection was just rumoured, but by the end of the week, it had become a reality. Apparently, the source code for the website was “leaked” a couple of weeks ago, and with the domain names transferred to a Seychelles based company, and semi-anonymous announcements of the resurrection by someone known only as Mr White, all the pieces were there for the resurrection. The new site, dubbed Newzbin 2, may even eventually feature more than just Usenet indexing, but extended to cover torrents as well. As for the legal questions surrounding the website, it will still exist, but it’s a question of whether the real owners can be found, or if the web host can be sufficiently threatened to pull the plug on the website.

Speaking of Usenet, it is a very frequently used place to download pirated content, despite all the media attention over BitTorrent. And this is one area that governments are a bit clueless about when it comes to copyright enforcement, with the agencies they’ve set up to monitor three strikes mostly ignoring this part of the online piracy trade. It just shows that whole anti-piracy crusade is nothing more than moral panic designed to make politicians feel like they’re doing something, even though they have no idea what exactly they’re doing, and give away our rights bit by bit to corporations. This trend started with the the US DMCA, and it’s been slowly exported to other countries around the world.

Canada is the latest country to adopt a US style DMCA, with the initial draft of the proposed changes finally released this week. But it’s not all bad news for consumers. The DRM provision that made the US DMCA so controversial is, unfortunately, still in. This means that if content has DRM, you can’t bypass the DRM to make backups (or to even use the damn thing). There are some exemptions, such as for research or parody, which provides at least some semblance of fair use. The changes proposed does finally give a clear legal position on the legality of time-shifting (recording TV shows for later viewing), format-shifting (ripping CDs to MP3s) and backups – all as long as you don’t break the DRM, of course. In other words, consumers have the right to do all the things they’ve been doing before, but if content owners start adding DRM to everything, then they can ensure these rights no longer exist and consumers have no say in the matter. What would have been better, and there is still time to make further changes, is to have an exemption for breaking DRM for the aforementioned fair use scenarios. DRM was always intended to stop piracy, it was and should never be used to prevent fair use, things like format shifting or time shifting. I mean, where is the danger in breaking DRM to make a backup, or to convert the DVD to DivX, as long as you only use the copy for personal use and don’t share the copy with anyone? There is no harm there, and nobody has ever been fined or gone to jail for this type of legal usage. If people want to share content illegally, then they are already breaking the law, and whether they broke DRM or not to do so is beside the point. So in Canada, there will be the situation where people can make unlimited copies of CDs or convert them to MP3 for personal use, yet if they do the same with DVDs, they’re breaking the law. The studios and music labels will point out that they’ve never gone after anyone for breaking DRM for personal use, but that’s also beside the point, since the law says it is illegal. Just because studios haven’t gone after someone for breaking DRM for personal use, doesn’t mean they will never, because if they do, they will win because of the DMCA.

The US Copyright Group is at the center of the "pre-trial settlement" controversy in the US

The US Copyright Group, which sounds like an official organisation, but really is just a law firm that specialises in making money off anti-piracy activities, has been in the news a lot recently. Ars technica provided a rough breakdown of what the US Copyright Group could stand to make this year off these “pre-trial settlements”, and we’re talking about millions and millions of dollars here, so it is big business. While what they do isn’t illegal, there are ethical concerns, and groups like the EFF and ACLU are not happy with these types of actions, actions that others in the past have called “legal blackmail”. And it looks like the EFF and ACLU are stepping up their campaign to challenge this type of activity, and they may be preparing to reject one of these “pre-trial settlement” offers and take the thing to a full trial. This is the last thing groups like the US Copyright Group wants, because one, they could lose and that would set a bad precedent. And two, there’s not profit is a legal battle that could take months to resolve. But it looks like the EFF and ACLU want to prove a point in court, and this could be a very interesting trial indeed. Watch this space.

Somebody else wanting to have a fair trial is the 18-year old admin of a Danish BitTorrent tracker, whose home was searched in January this year, and now faces a legal claim of more than $260,000 by Danish anti-piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen. Antipiratgruppen’s opposition group, Piratgruppen, has promised to aid 18 year old Jonas Laeborg financially.

And the Ubisoft “always on” DRM continues to make headlines, this week after analyst Michael Pachter publicly came out to support the controversial DRM measure. Those that have read my NPD US games sales analysis blog series will know of Mr Pachter, and this predictions that, well, don’t always pan out. But it seems Pachter felt the need to comment on Ubisoft’s annoying DRM, even though from his statements, it appears he’s not aware of the finer differences between what Ubisoft has done, and what other companies like Steam are doing. I’ll let you read the news story in full from the link, since some of the stuff that’s said is just too ridiculous and embarrassing to repeat on these pages. If there can be such a thing as a war of analyst, then we have the exact opposite opinion from the founder of gamesbrief.com, Nicholas Lovell, who labels Ubisoft’s DRM as “draconian”. He goes to question whether pirates are now having a better gaming experience than legitimate customers, and even suggests the slightly controversial idea of giving games away for free and making money off downloadable content, and using piracy as a way to promote games. Free games would be nice, but I don’t think game publishers even need to go this far. Cheap games is all that’s needed to stop piracy dead in its tracks, to nurture a new generation of paying gamers (much like how iTunes has nurtured a generation of paying music lovers, or basically what Steam is already doing with games). Stop trying to come up with ways to punish pirates, which almost always fails and only ends up punishing paying customers, and instead, try and entice them to go legit. And as for piracy promoting games, I think this already happens to a degree, and many that pirate games do eventually pay for the game, or at least the sequel or something. Companies spend insane amounts of money trying to generate Internet hype, viral marketing and all that, but game companies are getting it for free through piracy. Of course, if the game itself isn’t good, then the news of that spreads quickly as well, and sometimes I think that’s what game companies are really concerned about, that people will find out how bad their product is all without enough people being sucked in to pay full price for it. I think maybe movie studios may feel the same about bad movies being leaked online and thus failing to trick people into paying. The companies that are confident of their products tend not to worry too much about piracy, since they know enough people will buy it anyway.

High Definition

Let’s move onto HD news. I’ve already covered the 3D related HD stuff, so there’s nothing more to add on this front, other than to reiterate my opinion that people who haven’t seen 3D since the red/blue glasses days really should go and check out one of the 3D TV demos that are everywhere right now. It still may not be for you, but some I think will be surprised to find out just how impressive the whole thing is.

On the PC front, we have some interesting developments, and perhaps the emergence of a new form factor – the Blu-ray + SSD drive. Hitachi/LG is releasing a portable Blu-ray reader/DVD writer drive, that also contains a SSD drive. By combining two storage systems in one, it saves space inside today’s already cramped portable computing devices, and offers support for two of the latest storage techniques. The SSD drive can be used as a cache to speed up everyday operations, or use to store system files for almost instant system loading. I’m actually constantly surprised to see top of the range laptops and computer systems, the ones that cost $4000 or more, not including a Blu-ray drive at all. The premium for Blu-ray reader drives, or even writer drives, is so insignificant compared to say the cost of even high speed memory, that it’s just a mystery for me why Blu-ray drives aren’t standard already on *all* system, let alone the top-of-the-line gaming/multimedia systems. And even Sony has been guilty of this on their Vaio range, as I would have thought every Sony product would be including Blu-ray support by now.

And finally in gaming, the section I’ve been ignoring recently, there’s still not a lot of news. But E3 is just around the corner, and the flood of news will follow short after. For this week though, there is only the news that Japanese PS3 owners will get the 3D gaming patch in the next few days – whether PS3 owners in other countries will get it or not, I have no idead.

Project Natal, now white a white coloured camera accessory, needs E3 to be a total success

It’s good timing too, because some people already have their hands on 3D TVs, but without a lack of content, the PS3 3D games might just fill the void. And for those too cheap to pay for the games, there’s even a demo version of Motorstorm 2 that will have a 3D mode. However, there is still no firm date for 3D Blu-ray support, other than the now standard “before the end of the year” line from Sony.

As for E3, I guess I could still wait until next week to spill my thoughts on the whole Move/Natal thing, but I might just say it here. Microsoft is being very secretive regarding its Natal announcement, which makes me suspect that they’ve got something big lined up. With all due respect to Move, Sony has already said and demo’d quite a lot of the technology and games already, and with the “similarities” between it and the Wii, E3 probably won’t hold too many Move related surprises. But with Project Natal, we don’t know the pricing, or even the final product name, or any other games other than Ricochet, so there’s a lot of work Microsoft needs to do at E3. It could be make or break time for Project Natal, and I think Microsoft realises this, hence all the secrecy, as if they’re saving everything all at the same time for a truly “shock and awe” unveil. Cynics, and fanboys of the other platforms, will say that the secrecy is because Microsoft knows Project Natal is a big fail that won’t really work, and is more laggy than a thing that has a large amount of lag. But those that have had recent plays with the technology, with the updated Ricochet mainly, have only good things to say about it, and this suggest to me Microsoft is confident it will work, but it wants maximum impact at E3. The fact that MTV is going to air the E3 Project Natal launch event is further evidence of this strategy. And with the World Cup, maybe will there be some kind of football/soccer based game demonstration in there. The caveat here is that I’m often wrong about these things, so I could be wronger than a thing that is very wrong indeed.

I don’t think Move is a game changer for the gaming industry, or even for the PS3, but Project Natal has the potential. And for the same reason, it could also fail miserably and take the Xbox 360 with it, so the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the outcome of the current gen console war.

I think that’s all I have for this week. Have a good one.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (6 June 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (30 May 2010)

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Didn’t post a blog or article during the week, you can’t seriously expect me, lazy as I am, to do it two weeks in a row, can you? In terms of news, it was relatively light as well. Just an update on my purchase of the Samsung 3D plasma TV – still no news of when it will be in stock, although I haven’t really asked. I probably should/will do so early next week, but there’s a definite stock shortage due to the World Cup or manufacturing problems, depending on who you talk to. I wouldn’t say that it’s the huge demand for 3D that’s causing stock shortages, but I think it’s more the price drops on the new 2010 models (compared to 2009 ones) that are making these TVs quite popular – when you can get a 63″ plus everything you and your family needs to watch 3D movies (4 pairs of glasses + 3D Blu-ray player, and even a 3D Blu-ray movie that’s not available to buy elsewhere) for lower than the price of last year’s 3D-less 58″ model, then demand will surely go up, plus with the World Cup around the corner, everyone wants a brand new big screen TV to watch it on (and being able to enjoy the 3D broadcast of the games is just a bonus). It’s just a shame that Samsung hadn’t anticipated this demand. Anyway, onto the news.

Starting with copyright news, more bad news in court for BitTorrent indexer isoHunt as a judge ordered permanent injunctions against isoHunt, and gave music labels and movie studios various ways to stop isoHunt from providing torrents of copyrighted content.

isoHunt Lite, an attempt to show isoHunt is just a search engine, has failed to impress the courts

One of which is that isoHunt must ensure they do not list any content based on lists provided by music/movie studios, and that the isoHunt search engine must be crippled when it comes to searching for words associated with piracy, such as “warez” or “cam”. This will make running isoHunt in its current form very difficult indeed, and it appears the judge was not pleased at recent efforts by isoHunt to show that it is really just a search engine, much like Google. The isoHunt Lite interface, which mimics the simplicity of search engines such as Google or Bing, and removes a lot of the functions normally associated with BitTorrent index websites (such as well defined categories for things like “TV shows” or “Movies” or “DVDR Rips”), and tries to paint a picture of isoHunt as a search engine, much like Google, and not a “provider” or host of pirated content. But the judge didn’t buy this argument, saying isoHunt still allows torrents for pirated content to be located, and that’s enough to grant the permanent injunction and force the limitations on torrent listing and searching. So what’s next for isoHunt? Nobody knows. The website is actually hosted in Canada, one of the axis of evil countries in the eyes of the copyright groups, but the owner is located in the US, and so they have to comply.

Moving over to the Britain. Details of how the UK three-strikes system would work has finally emerged, after information released by regulators Ofcom. Apparently, there will be a big list of names and addresses of people that have been suspected of online piracy, and music and movie studios will have free access to this constantly updated list. Every time someone is caught potentially downloading pirated content, their name will be added to the list or the list amended to include the latest offence, and the offender will also be sent a letter warning them of their actions. The copyright holders cannot take legal action against the offender until three letters have been sent out (therefore, three-strikes). There will be an independent appeals process, although information on how it will work is still sketchy. The letters will address the issue of hacked connections, but it seems that if your connection has been used without your permission, that still counts as a strike. Two things may happen. One, the list will grow large rather quickly and Royal Mail will be kept busy. Or two, people will get their pirated content from places that Ofcom and others cannot monitor, and so the stats will show less piracy, with no real world effects. I know know, but it seems copyright holders may very well be content with the latter of these outcomes, since I guess a false sense of security is better than none, especially if you know there’s not much you can do to stop piracy anyway (other than, you know, innovate and stuff).

Movie studios may complain about other stealing their stuff, but are they also stealing other people’s stuff? A company has sued Warner Bros. for allegedly stealing their anti-piracy technology, relating to watermarking films. So has Warner Bros. pirated anti-piracy technology? I wonder if they can blame it on their hacked Wi-Fi connection …

Starcraft II has removed LAN multiplayer, is it an attempt to reduce piracy?

And wading into the gaming DRM debate, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce say that game developers are wasting their time on adding DRM to games, time they should spend on improving the games, the gaming community and other innovations (there’s that ‘I’ word again). Pearce say that there’s no foolproof DRM system, and that it is such a tempting target for hackers and crackers, that even most complicated system (are you reading this Ubisoft) will be cracked eventually. Instead, game developers should try to add value to game purchases, and to promote gaming communities where gamers will want to have the legitimate version so they can be part of this community. Blizzard’s own eagerly awaited Starcraft II won’t use an Ubisoft like “always on” DRM system, but it has removed LAN multiplayer, which some say is an attempt to force people to use Blizzard’s Battle.net system, which would then ensure the players all have legitimate versions of the game. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach, as long as offline play is still possible for the single player campaign. There’s little sympathy for those that still want multiplayer with pirated versions of the game. There has been quite a few developers that have come out against DRM, so the movement is growing, but most of them are developers that are quite confident in their products and the “value added” content that’s only available to legitimate buyers. But I think the last few years have proved that people are willing to put up with a little bit of online based DRM if they see value in connecting online, such as on the Steam platform, Xbox Live or Battle.net. And in the end, this solution is more long lasting than any DRM that companies like Ubisoft can come up with.

High Definition

Onto HD news now. Corel’s WinDVD is the latest PC based Blu-ray playback solution to get 3D Blu-ray certification. Corel have promised that a free patch will be available for WinDVD Pro 2010 users to add 3D Blu-ray support later in the year, the same deal that Cyberlink announced earlier with PowerDVD.

NVIDIA has also announced that 3D Blu-ray support, in the form of GPU based decoding, will be available via a driver update for a most of their recent GPUs. 3D Blu-ray movies carry more data than traditional 2D movies, and so will require more processing power – with GPU assist, this reduces the need to rely on the CPU. Expect ATi/AMD to make a similar announcement soon.

Only Blu-ray movies carrying the 3D Blu-ray logo are certified, and there's only a couple available, and none for standalone purchase

I think one of the best developments recently has been the certification of the 3D Blu-ray standard. Without it, every manufacturer would have used their own system, and there would have been no way to guarantee that a Blu-ray marked “3D” would play on all 3D Blu-ray players connected to 3D TVs. But luckily, we get a standard that includes a wide range of technologies, and so it seems all the bases are covered when 3D Blu-ray movies become available for general purchase. Unfortunately, there’s no definite 3D broadcasting standard, and there’s no standard for the 3D glasses that TVs use, with each manufacturer using their own systems for now. Speaking of 3D Blu-ray movies, there still isn’t a certified 3D Blu-ray movie that you can buy at the shops, except as part of Samsung’s 3D Starter Kit (which includes the certified 3D Blu-ray movie, Monsters vs Aliens). The glasses as part of the kit will only work with the new Samsung 3D TVs, but the included movie should work on any 3D Blu-ray player connected to any 3D TV, thanks to the 3D Blu-ray standard. The 3D kit comes free with Samsung 3D TVs in selected countries, including the US and Australia. Most of the other 3D Blu-ray movies are only available exclusively to other manufacturers, and you can’t even buy them even as part of a pack – for example, Panasonic is bundling the 3D Blu-ray version of Ice Age 3 and Coraline with their 3D TVs. Note that there is a “3D” version of Coraline available on Blu-ray, but it isn’t 3D Blu-ray certified – it only includes the anaglyph version of the movie, the one that requires those old red/blue glasses. The 3D Blu-ray certified version is the only one that will work with the modern 3D systems, mostly based on shutter glasses technology.

Coraline standard and 3D Blu-ray Comparison

Both say they have a 3D version of the film, but only the one on the right has the Blu-ray 3D certification

There’s still some debate as to whether plasma or LED/LCD is better for 3D. Early evidence suggest that plasma is, because pixel response times are much lower than LED/LCD, and if the response time is too high, then you’ll get what’s called the ghosting effect. There’s certainly not enough 3D TVs out on the market to make any firm conclusions though.

But one display technology that won’t do 3D, or anything else for that matter, is SED. SED, which stands for Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display, was being developed by Canon as being the next big thing in TV, with blacks as black as the old cathode ray tube sets, but with the thickness of modern LCD TVs. But after lawsuits, patent claims and high production costs, Canon has decided to drop development of SED TVs. So that pretty much leaves OLED as the sole successor to LED/LCD and plasma TVs, which is not a bad thing, because if all research is dedicated to this technology, then we might see something available for purchase soon (that’s reasonably priced, more so than that Sony OLED TV anyway).

And straddling the line between HD and gaming news is Sony’s announcement of a partnership with HBO to stream shows to the PS3, at a cost of $2 to $3 per episode. If you think the price is high, then the worst is yet to come, as shows will be delayed 11 month from when they first premier on cable to when they are available on the PS3, making all of this rather pointless to be honest. But HBO must also straddle the line between distributing their shows on new platforms, and not offending current partners such as the cable operators. The Internet is changing things much more widely and quickly than anybody has anticipated, and if fast (as in 100 Mbps or faster), cheap Internet is available to everyone tomorrow, a lot of today’s established business models would seem rather outdated, including that of non interactive cable TV. Cable operators not investing in IPTV, on demand technology will find themselves in a very bad position in the near future.

And that’s all we have for this week. I can’t promise more next week, especially if I get delivery of my new Samsung 3D TV, which means I’ll be spending most of the time playing with it. If you see me post a mid-week blog or a new guide, then you’ll know I’ve received bad news about the availability of the TV. Have a good one.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (30 May 2010)

Game Consoles – April 2010 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Monday, May 17th, 2010

It’s that time of the month again, and NPD has released the April 2010 US video games sales figures for this little blog to analyse. March was a big month for the PS3, and all eyes are on the Sony console to see if it can repeat the stellar performance in April. NPD itself has a few changes, in that they are no longer counting PS2 sales (perhaps Sony should take the hint and formally declare it end of line), and they are also not providing all the figures for the top 10 game sales, which makes analysis a little bit more difficult. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in April 2010 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (April 2009 figures also shown, including percentage change):

DS: 440,800 (Total: 41.7 million; April 2009: 1,040,000 – down 58%)
Wii: 277,200 (Total: 28.8 million; April 2009: 340,000 – down 18%)
Xbox 360: 185,400 (Total: 19.9 million; April 2009: 175,000 – up 6%)
PS3: 180,800 (Total: 12.3 million; April 2009: 127,000 – up 42%)
PSP: 65,500 (Total: 17.3 million; April 2009: 116,000 – down 44%)

NPD April 2010 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of April 2010)

My prediction from last month was:

I think the PS3 will outsell the Wii in April. This is based on the strong software numbers for March, plus the stock shortage issue being resolved finally which will give the PS3 a bump in sales. While there’s no new major PS3 exclusive in April, Super Street Fighter IV will be available, and based on the non Super version of the fighting game, the PS3 version should outsell the Xbox 360 version as well. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction, which is a console only exclusive for the Xbox 360 (there’s also a PC version), should do well, and God of War III should still be charting. So another good month for the PS3, with better hardware numbers, but probably slightly lesser software domination, for April.

What I failed to take into account was the Easter sales effect, and with Easter sales event coming in March this year, as opposed to April of last year, this accounts for quite a bit, but not all, of the sales drops recorded for April (compared to March). The double whammy is that while the Easter sales event happened in March, the Easter holiday period occurred in April, and so sales were further subdued as a result. And therefore, none of the consoles sold better in April than in March. The PS3 did not outsell the Wii. The PS3 didn’t even outsell the Xbox 360, but only losing to it narrowly. The game predictions were pretty much spot on, but with overall sales down 26% compared to April 2009 (21% of it attributed to Easter, probably), everything sold in fewer numbers.

The PS3 stock shortage appears to be continuing, at least when looking at Amazon. So this is perhaps one of the reasons why the PS3 isn’t dominating as it should based on recent game releases. This stock shortage has been going on far longer than it should have – I don’t know what the reasons are, but it can’t be helping Sony. PS3 sales still grew by 42% compared to the same month last year, but April 2009 was a bad month for the console, as it had the dubious record of being outsold by the PS2 during that particular month. What is more worrying for Sony is the PS2 and PSP. As mentioned earlier, the NPD has stopped tracking PS2 numbers, giving Sony a hint as to the future of the last-gen console. Perhaps it’s time Sony finally retires this ageing console, so they can concentrate all efforts on the PS3. They certainly won’t be concentrating efforts on the PSP, which has recorded yet another month of dismal sales. Recording what is the worst set of results since release, the PSP is seriously out of ideas, being outsold by the DS by almost a 7:1 margin this month, the total units sold gap between the DS and PSP has grown from 15.6 million units in April 2009 to 24.4 million just a year later.

The Xbox 360 continued to outsell the PS3, and continues to grow in a year-to-year comparison, a modest 6% increased compared to April 2009. If Sony is hoping to close the gap between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 total units sold in the US, then they’re doing about it the wrong way in regards to managing the stock shortage, and if anything, the gap has grown wider in recent month. And if Sony is hoping the PlayStation Move will help the PS3, then they have to hope Project Natal flops for the Microsoft console. E3, which will occur around this time next month, will give us a strong hint as to whether Move or Natal will dominate holiday sales based on the reception both demos get at the expo. But as long as the Xbox 360 is outselling the PS3, even if only by a small margin, Microsoft can’t be too unhappy with the results.

For Nintendo, the picture isn’t great this month. The DS recorded a huge 58% drop in sales compared to the same time last year, and even if you take into account the Easter effect, there’s still a drop in sales. The Wii continues to drop in sales, down 18% compared to last year. The Wii’s sales decline can be traced to April 2009, when it started to show signs of weakness. But the DS is still outselling the PSP easily, and the Wii is still outselling both the PS3 and Xbox 360 relatively easily, so it’s not time to panic yet for Nintendo. But they need something up their sleeves for the Wii if they want to continue to dominate after both Sony and Nintendo release their motion control systems.

On to software sales now. The month’s most popular title was Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360, outselling the number two title, which was also last month’s number two title, Pokemon SoulSilver, by more than a 2:1 margin. Conviction was a console exclusive for the 360. God of War III slipped to 5th place after last month’s monster 1st place finish. And as expected, Super Street Fighter IV on the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 version, by a 1.3-to-1 margin – the previous Street Fighter game also sold more on the PS3 than on the Xbox 360. The usual Wii titles are in the mix, New Super Mario Bros, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, and also Just Dance, which refuses to go away. The other Xbox 360 title in 7th place was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which outsold the PS3 version by around a 1.6-to-1 margin. Note that NPD did not provide figures for Wii Fit Plus this month, but knowing the sales numbers for the titles just above and below it, we can estimate sales at between 144,000 units and 166,000 units. For the sake of compiling market share percentage figures, sales for Wii Fit Plus can be estimated to be 155,000, and if using this figure, the Wii games had 32.5% of the top 10 with 4 entries, closely followed by the Xbox 360 games on 31.2% for just two titles. The PS3 had two titles in the top 10, with 15.5% of the top 10 units sold. The two Pokemon DS titles accounted for the rest. It was interesting to note that both Final Fantasy versions not only disappeared from the top 10, they disappeared from the top 20 as well.

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

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (Xbox 360, Ubisoft) – 486,100
Pokemon SoulSilver (DS, Nintendo) – 242,900
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii, Nintendo) – 200,300
Pokemon HeartGold (DS, Nintendo) – 192,600
God of War III (PS3, Sony) – 180,300
Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 179,000
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox 360, EA) – 166,000
Wii Fit Plus w/Balance Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 155,000 (estimated)
Just Dance (Wii, Ubisoft) – 144,000
Super Street Fighter IV (PS3, Capcom) – 143,000

Prediction time. The PS3 shortage continues, and so it will still do poorly in sales I think, and probably outsold by the Xbox 360 with the hardware sales order remaining the same as this month. On the software front, the Xbox 360 version of Red Dead Redemption should be the top seller, with the PS3 version closely behind. Alan Wake, the much hyped Xbox 360 exclusive, should be in the top 10 as well. There might be room for the PS3 exclusive 3D Dot Game Heroes as well. Along with the usual Wii titles, the new Super Mario Galaxy 2 should rank in the top 10 as well. Overall sales should pick up compared to April, but probably still down year on year at least for the hardware figures.

See you next month.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 2 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

No mid week blog or new guides, but plenty of news to make up for it. The NPD data for April is out, and it’s not looking like a good month for video games. I should have the analysis up by tomorrow, even with NPD providing less stats than before (only the top 5 games by units sold, and no more PS2 console numbers).

Starting with copyright news as usual, the biggest news of the week was the RIAA’s victory in court over LimeWire, and it could very well signal the end of the file-sharing service popular for music downloads.

LimeWire may be doomed due to recent court decisions

The judge awarded summary judgement to the RIAA, and judged the operators of LimeWire to be guilty of copyright infringement. Along with the Grokster verdict, this pretty much means the end of organized file-sharing services, although this verdict will have no effect on the wider P2P community, most of which are not funded or run by companies (which can be easily identified and sued), but by individuals.

And court decisions don’t always lead to action, as the MPAA has found out in their crusade to shut down The Pirate Bay. After several court decision in their favour, The Pirate Bay’s flag is still flying. The MPAA’s latest tactic has been to go after the ISP that hosts the BitTorrent indexing website, Cyberbunker. But even with the court decision, The Pirate Bay is still up and running, and so I’m not actually sure what is going on, and it appears Cyberbunker isn’t too sure either, having stated that they’ve received no notices from their solicitors to take any actions. If this affects The Pirate Bay, they will simply move to a new hosting provider, although which one, and where, remains to be seen.

Staying in Europe, a German court has found that Wi-Fi operators, including home users, are responsible for securing their connections and if their unsecured connection is used to commit a crime, such as downloading copyrighted content illegally, then the operators are responsible. I think this is a very tricky area, because many users are not aware of the need to secure their Wi-Fi connections. There are also cases where legacy devices means that a less secure Wi-Fi network has to be maintained. And even with safeguards, hackers may still find a way onto the network, and use its resources without authorization. And if this is the case, then the network operators are as much a victim as the content owners whose content was downloaded illegally from the connection, but because it’s easier to go after the operators, that’s what content owners are doing. It’s like someone stealing your car to use it to rob a bank, and because you left the keys inside, the court finds you guilty of armed robbery. Personally, I think WPA2 security should be enabled by default on Wi-Fi devices, as that’s the only way to encourage consumers to learn about the need to secure their Wi-Fi connections.

The producers of The Hurt Locker is suing thousands for illegally downloading the Oscar winning movie

More lawsuits, this time across the Atlantic over in the US. The producers of the Oscar winning film, The Hurt Locker, is suing thousands of individuals for downloading the film illegally. And once again, the firm known as the US Copyright Group is handling the case. They are the ones who has already engaged in mass litigation on behalf of a few independent filmmakers, including the infamous Uwe Boll, although they are facing some trouble with that case, with Time Warner Cable not playing along. TWC feels the US Copyright Group has reneged on an earlier promise to limit the flow of subpoenas for subscriber information, but now that they have requested details for 2100 subscribers all at one time, TWC feels this “discovery abuse”. For many anti-piracy firms, anti-piracy is about making money, and if you can get others to do your work, at their own cost, then it all adds up to more profits in the long run. The entertainment industry are aware of the bad name some of these firms give to anti-piracy efforts, as well as their monetizing policies, but these mass lawsuits are about fear as much as anything, and if they scare people away from illegal downloads, then that’s mission accomplished. Of course, it could just drive people to use encrypted networks and run blocking software, and thus makes it harder, if not impossible, for groups like the US Copyright Group to monitor downloads.

Adobe is adding DRM selectable output control to Flash, which could mean the end of Flash movie playback on non HDCP compatible devices. It’s all about giving content owners their security blanket, even if it comes at the cost of everyday customers.

And soon after Nintendo promised to fight piracy on the upcoming 3D version of their DS console, the 3DS, by implementing more anti-piracy features, they’ve also taken to court sellers of R4 flash carts. These flash carts allow illegally downloaded games to be played, as well as adding some additional features to the portable console (like video playback). Nintendo has previously requested the same company to cease and desist in selling these carts, and while the company complied at first, they also allegedly created a virtual mirror of their store and continued selling R4 carts on the new store. If this is the case, then your really can’t blame Nintendo for suing them, although there are still plenty of places where R4 carts can be purchased from. And you might have to agree that the DS’s success so far, easily beating Sony’s PSP, might have something to do with the ease in which pirated games can be played on the console, a fact that even Sony agrees when talking about its earlier PSP successes. If Nintendo really wanted to stop DS piracy, then it should have cracked down hard on R4 and earlier carts when they first came out, not several years later after the DS has successfully cornered market share. Maybe this is just the cynical side of me thinking that Nintendo’s timing may not be an accident …

It’s not all bad news in the courts though. President Obama’s nominee for the about to be open Supreme Court position may be someone that has at least considered the issue of fair use, and may have even fought for it in court against the very same entertainment industry that wants to see fair use killed off. Elena Kagan has been instrumental in hiring pro fair use people in her time as Dean of Harvard Law, and has argued for fair use against the entertainment industry in a case related to Cablevision’s attempt to create an online based PVR system. Of course, the Obama administration as a whole has been very friendly towards the RIAA and MPAA, but that’s no surprise considering Joe Biden has always been a friend of the copyright lobby.

The Myth ASCII logo was found in the executable for the game Max Payne 2

Another game developer, this time Rockstar, has been found using game crack code, this time for the game May Payne 2. They needed to produce a version of the game that didn’t require the original game disc for Steam, and instead of creating their own no CD patch, they apparently used code from the game crack released by defunct group Myth. Ubisoft, the company now notoriously known for their harsh “always on” DRM scheme, has also done something similar, stealing code from active group RELOADED for the game Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I won’t make judgement on who is stealing what, but the fact that game developers *need* “no-disc” patches created by crack groups suggest to me that the consumers wants something, and that something is less DRM. Last week I talked about the Humble Indie Bundle (which is now over, sadly), and that was really an experiment to see if giving consumers what they want – good pricing, no DRM, was really the way to go. The fact that this one week event raised more than $1.2 million suggest that it was a success, although Wolfire, the game company that ran the event, suggest that there were still a lot of people who still pirated the bundle, despite it costing only a penny. So the conclusion seems to be that some people will pirate games regardless of the cost, and Wolfire thinks that the convenience of pirate downloads may be the reason behind this phenomenon. But for those that did pay, most paid way more than the minimum amount, suggesting that people are still willing to pay for games, but please just don’t make it too difficult for them to do so.

But EA is not too concerned, and is determined to ban the sale of second hand games, so important to many gamers due to their limited funds. You can see why EA is concerned, since they do not get a cut of any second hand sales, and each person that buys the second hand game, is one less person that will buy the new game. Of course, if game pricing weren’t so ridiculously high, then maybe gamers won’t need to sell their games, or buy second hand ones. And if their games were any good, people also wouldn’t get rid of them after a month or two. EA’s solution is to sell digital distributed games that can’t be resold, or use one time voucher codes that enables multiplayer play, and second hand buyers must buy a new code if they want to play online.

High Definition

On to HD news now. Managed Copy is still pretty much non existent, despite the date after which MC becomes mandatory passing long ago. If MC is the compromise solution between being able to use the content in ways the consumers wants, but also taking into account the industry’s self interest, then it appears this compromise is one sided and that the content owners simply don’t want people to separate the content from the physical media. Or that with the 3D hype, CE firms are too busy to think about MC.

But one of the key components of MC is some kind of payment system that unlocks the managed copy (MC is not going to be free). At least this hurdle may be overcome with news that PayPal payments could soon be available for Blu-ray’s BD-Live system, as well as Internet connected TVs. This could also open up downloadable content for Blu-ray, DLCs being a success for video game consoles. The key to success for DLCs and Apps has been easy to manage micro payment systems, and this is one area in which Blu-ray has to improve.

And I know I promised to never mention the horrible Lord of the Rings Theatrical Trilogy Blu-ray again, but I must, since it has just received a price drop on Amazon.com (thanks to Digital Digest’s Amazon Blu-ray Price Index service, it’s easy to track when such price drops occur). And this has helped it to go up in the sales ranks as I type. The set is now $49.99, down from $63.99, which makes them alright value. Cynics will say the price drop confirms the failure of the set, while Warner will probably say that this was always planned and that any money they make before the Extended Editions come out will be a bonus for them (okay, maybe Warner probably won’t admit to this last part). Avatar is still selling like hotcakes (I’ve never bought a hotcake though, whatever it is). But every copy of Avatar sold adds to the carbon output due to the manufacturing process and paper, plastics used, something that’s not an issue with digitally distributed movies though.

And finally in gaming, without talking about the awful April NPD figures, there’s still a few other news items. The PS3 “Other OS” thing is getting a bit boring to me, but it’s an serious issue for the US Air Force who may have foolish invested in thousands of PS3s thinking the “Other OS” feature would always remain.

They used the “Other OS” feature to install custom software which linked all the thousands of PS3s to act as a cheaply built supercomputer. Sony removing “Other OS” is not an issue as long as the USAF doesn’t upgrade their PS3s to the new firmware, but of course broken PS3s cannot be repaired without losing “Other OS”. They should have copies of the older firmware downloaded though, so perhaps it’s not a big issue until their fat PS3s are no longer repairable.

But there is a good lesson for consumers here. Always purchase something based on their “core” features, which for the PS3 means gaming and Blu-ray/multimedia playback. Any other features that are not main functions of the device may and probably will change over time. And if you’re relying on some kind of loophole or workaround to do something with the device that it wasn’t intended for, then that’s even more dangerous. And the lesson for device manufacturers is that don’t advertise features you don’t plan on supporting.

Project Natal may be available in October

The PS3 is at least finally profitable for Sony, which means they will have more room to offer price cuts, although there are many reasons why they will be reluctant to do this (first being not wanting to go back to a loss state after finally becoming profitable, second being not wanting to make standalone Blu-ray players too poor in value in comparison). But perhaps including the PS Move accessories in a bundle without price rises may be on the cards. For the Xbox 360, it too is looking at adding 3D gaming, just like the PS3 will be doing in June. Project Natal is also set to launch later in the year, with rumors suggesting an October release date, which should give it plenty of time in the run up to the major holiday sales period. I still don’t know what to think of Project Natal – it’s certainly different, but that could lead to either success or failure if it isn’t implemented correctly. But I can see it being something people want to try out personally, as opposed to the PS Move, which anyone that have played the Wii would be familiar with, or more importantly, *think* that they would be familiar with (even if the overall experience is quite different thanks to the more accurate controller). You can read more about all of these stories in this forum thread.

Okay then, that’s that for the week. NPD analysis on Monday, perhaps some new guides or guide updates during the week, and of course, more news as always this time next week. Have a good week.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

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Archive for the ‘PS3, PS4’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (13 June 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (6 June 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (30 May 2010)

Game Consoles – April 2010 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

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