DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Some big software news this week. First up, DivX Plus 8 was released, all the tools in the package got updated, including the DivX Player, Converter. As usual, there’s a free codec pack for those only wanting to play DivX (and now MKV/H.264) movies. Then there was a new version of ImgBurn, with a suitably impressive, and long, list of changes. And finally, PowerDVD 10 was released, with some exciting new features – a brief overview in this blog post to tide you over before the full review is up, but if you like 3D stuff, this one’s for you.

But wait, there’s more. I managed to sneak in a new PS3 related guide over the week as well. This one uses AVIAddXSubs and lets you add subtitles to AVI files that will show up on the PS3. And not only that, you can add up to 8 subtitles per AVI file, and they can be switchable (obviously), and even turned off. All without having to re-encode the AVI file, and all taking only a minute or two per subtitle stream.

And let’s not forget, we still have news to go through.

In Copyright news, in a surprising turn of events, content owners no longer wants to call people who download their content illegally “pirates”. Not because they’ve had a change of heart and realised that there’s isn’t a huge connection between a penniless college student downloading a copy of  District 9, and the often violent, on the seas theft of commercial shipping.

Jack Sparrow: ruining a perfectly good word for music and movie studios

It’s all because, apparently, “piracy” is just too sexy a word to describe the horrific act of downloading bits of data from the Internet. It’s all Johnny Depp’s fault, I suppose, for making piracy look like good fun. Maybe the studios should sue Disney and Mr. Depp. Others have already speculated on what other words can be used to describe the inhumane act of downloading a copy of a file that can be copied an infinite number of times. Something that truly describes the full horror and the the immoral act of what we used to call piracy. File murdering? Song raping? Movie genocide?

These kind of hard decisions have to made somewhere, and soon, the rights holder may have a new global body to standardise these sort of things, if they get their way with the ACTA. Recent leaks suggested that a new body will be set up to oversee the global anti-piracy ACTA treaty, and that this body will be free to make changes to the treaty without governmental interference. In fact, the government won’t even be involved, unless by special invitations. US trade reps, allegedly, calls this body a necessary step to keep out consumer interest groups from ongoing copyright discussions. It’s becoming increasingly clear that these so called anti-piracy laws are nothing other than a desperate attempt to preserve the outdated business model of certain copyright holders, and through a scare campaign and big money lobbying, the various governments are nothing but props in this stage play. And now they want their own “OPEC”, so they can force their demands on the rest of the world and keep profits flowing.

The people, consumers, music lovers, movie fans, are increasingly being marginalized, even though they’re the ones paying the salaries of the government agencies so keen to hand over people’s rights to corporations, and they’re also the ones paying for the big bonuses that the music and movie studio bosses are no doubt getting. Speaking of disenfranchised, 10,000 UK voters have protested to their Members of Parliament about the controversial Digital Economy Bill, which is being rushed through parliament without debate at the insistence of the music and movie industry. So an unpopular bill may get passed without public consultation or even a debate (which would mostly have been an one way one anyway), while the corporations cheer the outcome that they’ve engineered. Is this still a democracy?

I couldn't find a higher resolution version of the back of the box, so one of the sections of the extremely small text says "Persistent internet connection required"

Gaming DRM is back in the spotlights this week, when EA announced that their new game, Command & Conquer 4, will use a similar DRM system to Ubisoft’s, which means an “always on” Internet connection requirement. Lose your Internet, or if the EA servers go down, then the game will kick you out. To be honest, none of this is really new, as many companies have tried “always on” DRM, and all have failed. Internet connectivity may have improved, but there are still many, me included, that don’t have access to a 100% stable Internet connections, certainly not stable enough to guarantee that a 2 hour gaming session won’t be interrupted. Futuremark’s Jaakko Haapasalo said it well last week – there are just so many games these days, and even on the PC, it’s still a relatively competitive industry. So if people don’t think they can play C&C 4 properly, then they’ll skip it for something else, or wait until it’s been “bargain binned” before buying. Why the game companies, who are already competing with *free* pirated games, want to add another thing that makes their product less attractive, I just don’t know.

In HD/Blu-ray news, I previously mentioned LG’s Blu-ray player, which is one of the few that doesn’t have 3D in it, and instead, adds an HDD. The new player is now available to buy, and what was interesting was to see that it includes CD ripping.

Not that CD ripping on a standalone device is new, many can do it, but having it on a Blu-ray/DVD player just reminds you how useful it would be if the player could also rip DVDs and Blu-rays. I know there are piracy movie genocide issues to consider, but the convenience would be much appreciated. But the movie studios don’t trust their paying customers, so we’ll just have to be happy that they even let us watch the movie at all, after paying for it.

I recently talked about how you may not want to buy the soon to be released Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray (the comments/ratings protest on Amazon is still going strong, I see – I don’t know if sales will be affected, but it’s only 65th on the best seller list right now), now there’s also reason why you may want to wait on Avatar as well. Despite the director’s wishes, Avatar on Blu-ray released in April won’t be the 3D version, and you’ll have to wait for the (first of many, no doubt) “Ultimate” version coming in November, in time for the holiday season. That one will have 3D and more extra features, and maybe even a longer cut, no doubt. This is actually a bit more understandable than the decision to not release the extended version of the LOTR movies, since I doubt many people would have the equipment to play the movie in 3D right now, or even in November. And it’s not as if the extended cut of the film has been released for years beforehand already, so a double dip here is understandable. But I recommend you do an “one and a half dip”, rent the Blu-ray if you really want to watch the movie right now, and then buy the Ultimate Extended Special Collector’s 3D Extreme edition to be released later in the year.

Redbox about to become Blu, when Blu-ray movies are added to the collection

And you may just be able to rent Avatar on Blu-ray on a Redbox vending machine, since Blu-ray is now being added to fill the empty spaces in these machines. Unfortunately, the studios are still keen on trying to kill, or at least curb, Redbox, which they accuse of committing Content Manslaughter (act where studios profits are affected – at least it’s not murder). Studios insist on a 28 day window between releases making their way to Redbox vending machines, which the studios think will help their profits, but DVDGuy thinks will actually just encourage movie genocide. Feels to me like another self inflicted wound on behalf of the studios, since they can easily work together with Redbox and profit together.

There’s some musing from Microsoft about Blu-ray and the Xbox 360, but I’ll save that for the often neglected gaming section. But Microsoft did make another headline during the week when they revealed that IE9 will feature HTML5 support, which isn’t a surprise, but will also support the H.264 codec. Which isn’t that surprising either, since Microsoft owns several patents on H.264 and so they would like to see it succeed. Plus, they can easily afford to pay for the H.264 licensing costs just by digging for spare change in Steve Ballmer’s sofa. Mozilla’s Firefox won’t support H.264 though, since it’s against their open source principles, plus it also costs money. So that’s Chrome, IE and Safari in the H.264 camp, Firefox, Opera and Chrome (again) in the Ogg Theora camp.

And finally in gaming, with the PlayStation Move still making headlines, Sony are keen to keep the hype going and have released a TV ad that, well is either very funny, or very arrogant. Or both.

Spot the Difference

It portrays one of their VPs communicating all the way from the future, in November of this year (when the Move is released), and mocks the Wii’s for its limited playing style, and the button-less design of Natal. Of course, the “inferior” Wii is kicking the PS3’s butt on so many levels, why Sony wanted to make the comparison, I don’t know. Also, if Sony’s idea of “the future” is November, then maybe they’re even more shortsighted than I thought. This from the same company that dismissed the Wii before they wanted to be just like one. At least Microsoft is trying to be different with Natal, although sometimes different is just another word for “not very good”.

But Sega doesn’t seem to think so. They think the Natal really has potential and that we’ll see “brilliant innovations” in the next year or two. Sega plans to make games for both the Move and Natal, but it’s quite clear that they are a bit more excited at taking advantage of Natal, but only if they can solve the lag issue.

And Microsoft says that Blu-ray has ruined the PS3, at least until now that is. While I would like to say that this was Microsoft’s attempt at hitting back at Sony for the Natal mockery, but the truth is that Microsoft made this statement earlier than the ad itself. A lot of people will disagree with this statement, because many see Blu-ray as the one saving grace of the PS3 while its prices were sky high, and now that prices have come down, Blu-ray could be decisive. While I agree with this wholeheartedly, the fact is that the PS3 would be doing a lot better right now if it was cheaper, but it couldn’t be cheaper because of Blu-ray support, and so, Microsoft is partially correct as well. The PlayStation brand has gone from 80% market domination in the last round, to only 20% of the home console market in the current generation (in the US), and while it still has time to catch up, you can’t say that the PS3 has been as successful as the PS2, and that’s given the Wii and the Xbox 360 some room to breathe. I’m sure Sony doesn’t regret the decision, because it won them the HD format war, and that will bring its own rewards – they just had to sacrifice the PlayStation brand to do it, and they will hope it’s only a temporary setback.

And on that note, I shall end this week’s WNR. Expect much much less stuff next week, in relation to new software releases, guides or even news, although I shall faithfully attempt to get the PowerDVD review online as soon as possible. And by faithfully attempt, I mean whenever I feel like it. See you next week.

The February NPD analysis has been posted. The analysis looks at video games sales stats in the US based on figures released by the NPD. The big surprise for February was that the Xbox 360 actually managed to beat both the Wii and the PS3, something that I don’t remember happening before. Both Nintendo and Sony blamed stock shortages though. I keep on expecting Xbox 360 sales to disappoint, but good game releases seems to come along just at the right time for the console to give it a much needed bump. For all the talk of the PS3’s strong year on year growth, it’s worth noting (again) that it’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges, due to the price cut and Slim and everything. Or more precisely, it’s like comparing apples with rotten oranges, thanks to the PS3’s dismal sales figures for most of 2008 and 2009. To further illustrate this point, for the month of February, the Xbox 360 enjoyed a massive 66% increase in sales between 2008 and 2010, to the PS3’s 28% bump (and the Wii’s 6% drop). Basically, the PS3 is now enjoying figures that it should have been enjoying this time last year. With some hit games coming to the PS3 in March, Sony will hope this will be yet another important milestone for the console, much like the price cut/Slim back in September last year.

Anyway, there’s a few news items to go through today and it also happens to be my birthday as well, so yeah!

Let’s get started with some copyright news. The Ubisoft DRM controversy keeps on going this week with a couple of related news stories as well. With Assassin’s Creed II released, the Ubisoft DRM servers came under some serious test, and unfortunately it failed.

Ubisoft blamed a DDoS attack for the server downtime, which caused paying gamers to not be able to play the games that they paid for, while those pirating it weren’t affected. Ubisoft still says that the only complete version of the games are the legitimate ones, since some files or content can only be accessed through Ubisoft’s servers. I think it’s safe to say that the games hasn’t been completely cracked, but it might also be safe to say that it will be sooner or later. But that’s all beside the point. The point is paying customers weren’t able to play the games because of a situation that Ubisoft hadn’t anticipated (the server attack), and there will be plenty of situations that Ubisoft hasn’t and won’t be able to anticipate. Is this really fair to gamers? Following the Ubisoft controversy, a lot of other game companies have come out with their opinions on the matter. Futuremark, the makers of 3D Mark and the upcoming game Shattered Horizon, says DRM that “gets in the way” is only going to harm the game companies because “it’s not like there is a shortage of other games demanding my attention”. How many gamers have decided to buy some other game because they don’t want the hassle associated with playing Silent Hunter 5 or Assassin’s Creed II (and for the latter, they can still get the console version if they really want to play it).

Steam's popularity shows that there are still some kinds of DRM people might accept

Valve’s Gabe Newell, the guy behind the Half-Life series, and also the successful Steam platform (which has just been made available for the Mac, finally) also says something similar. While accepting an award at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, Newell believes game companies should adopt a ”what have I done for my customers today?’ attitude. Basically, Newell thinks DRM is a negative that takes something away from games, and if you do that, then you better also give them something extra to make up for it, which is what the Steam platform attempts to do. But if one goes overboard with DRM, as Ubisoft appears to have done, then it’s going to take a lot of positives (more than just online save games) to be able to justify something like this. The Steam platform does have DRM as well, but it seems to offer enough for paying customers to accept the limitations. The often discounted games might also help gamers ignore the inconvenience of needing the Steam client and having to be online before playing a game.

There’s a real battle in the UK over the future of the Internet, with the music industry being represented by the BPI who wants three-strikes, ISP monitoring and all that good stuff. The ISPs, and pretty much everyone else, don’t want it. In a new tactic, the BPI is trying to entice ISPs to get on board by luring them with the possibility of huge amounts of extra revenue from working with the music industry and selling legal music. I don’t see any problem with this, except why do we need three-strikes to make this a possibility, since this is something the music industry should have been working on ages on (and perhaps if they did, piracy wouldn’t be such a big problem now). ISPs are not impressed and one spokesman questioned the ‘value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models’. Touché. The music industry has been slow to adapt to the new digital and Internet revolution, there’s no greater evidence than the fact that the most popular online music store is being owned and operated by a computer company, Apple, and not one of the big music labels. But a new study also shows that even with the dominance of iTunes, there’s still a significant number of people that don’t know where to buy music online legally. While most know of Amazon or iTunes, 20% didn’t know any online stores. This isn’t to say that the cause for piracy is due to people now knowing where to buy music, because people who pirate will always pirate, and people who buy will find a way to do it. But it does highlight that the music industry has plenty left to do before it can declare that they’ve done all they could and that it’s time for the government in intervene with harsh legislation. The music industry was quick to try and discredit the new study, by saying their own study shows that 96% of Internet users were aware of either Amazon or iTunes.

Hadopi, the French agency overseeing three-strikes, only regulates P2P networks for three-strikes

But does three-strike actually work to one, deter pirates, and two, increase revenue? The French have had three-strikes for a while now, and the results are not promising. Piracy is actually up three percent compared to before three-strikes was introduced. While noting that the habits of downloaders have changed, less people now use P2P and more use HTTP or streaming sources to get their pirated content (these sources are not covered by three-strikes), the overall number of cases of piracy has actually increased. It’s also worth noting that secure P2P means that it’s hard to track just exactly what is being downloaded and by whom, and so the figures could be higher depending on how the study was conducted. In any case, it definitely shows that three-strikes is not the cure all solution that the music and movie industries thinks it is. The same study also found that 50% of people who pirate stuff also buys stuff online, and of course if all of these people are kicked off the Internet by three-strikes, then that’s going to mean a direct revenue drop for the music/movie industry, not to mention other online based industries. The reality is that many users see purchasing and illegal downloads as two possible ways to get what they  want, and it’s up to the music/movie industry to convince them that one way is better than the other. Instead, they’re trying to punish these users for choosing the wrong option, and all that does is to close off both possible ways to get content. Pricing and convenience will win this war, not bannings.

And then there’s also the theory that even illegal downloads help sales eventually. The number of people who have been introduced to new music, new artists, new TV shows, new games, through pirated content at first and then leading them to buy more stuff, cannot be underestimated. Pirated content offers “try before you buy” and sometimes that’s the only way to get new customers. Then there’s also the Internet hype effect, and the more people that talk about the content (and logic says that the more pirated the content is, the more users there are that have experienced it, and therefore, the more discussions there will be about it), the more hype it generates and that can help sales. Of course, bad content might get found out faster, and I sometimes wonder if that’s what really the studios and labels are worried about, that bad content are being “filtered” out too quickly and they may actually be forced to produce good content consistently in the future. For the movie studios, the last few years has been bad ones in terms of piracy, but the MPAA was happy to note this week that global box office receipts have jumped a massive 30% since 2005, and 2009’s global earning was just shy of the 30 billion dollar mark, a new record for the industry. So is piracy really hurting the industry at all? We know that increases in box office receipts may have more to do with 3D screenings that are becoming standard for big releases, and that if piracy affects anything it will be home video sales. Home video sales have dropped, although with Blu-ray revenue increasing, studios are relatively confident in this area. But I just don’t believe the Internet has had no effect on box office receipts, since it has had an effect (both positive and negative) on everything else in our lives.

Let’s move onto Blu-ray and HD news. Manufacturers are rolling out their 3D TVs and Blu-ray players in droves, but the cost of getting 3D for your home may just be too high for some, if not all.

3DTV is going to cost a lot, as you'll need a new TV, new Blu-ray player and new 3D glasses

For one, you’ll need a new TV. One thing that has been confirmed is that 3D capable TVs will carry a premium over standard ones, up to 50% more expensive for Sony Bravias for example. And then you have the need to upgrade your Blu-ray player to one that is capable of 3D, although you can skip this requirement if you have the PS3 (another reason to recommend the PS3 as the Blu-ray player of choice). But if you can’t skip it, at least 3D capable Blu-ray players should not carry a huge premium over standard ones (although you might need to buy a new HDMI cable as well). Then you will have to get glasses. Most of the systems use active shutter glasses, which means expensive glasses that cost upwards of $150 per pair. Some of the 3D TVs will come with a few sets (for 50% more, you’d expect them to come with at least 4 pairs), but if you want the whole family to enjoy a 3D nights in, then be prepared to pay for it. And then lastly, you’ll need to get 3D movies to feed your 3D system, which has now cost you several thousand dollars probably. This may mean that you’ll need to double dip and buy new versions of recent movies that have been released on Blu-ray as 2D versions only. And knowing studios, they’ll release a 2D version of the movie first on Blu-ray, and then hope for the double dip with a 3D version later on, which is exactly what Fox is planning with Avatar. And with plans to re-release classics like Star Wars on 3D again, be prepared to buy some of your movie collections again (again (again)) if you want to watch it in 3D.

Moving onto online content. The war between HTML5 and Flash is intensifying. A benchmark review was attempted recently to find performance differences between HTML5 and Flash, but it appears to have failed because compatibility meant that it was almost impossible to compare apples and apples. The problem is that the latest beta of Flash has GPU assisted decoding, but not on all platforms, and then you have HTML5, in which some browsers will support H.264 content, while others like Firefox won’t. It would be nice if a proper standard like HTML5 can supersede the need to install third party plugins like Flash, to allow all browsers to play interactive and video content out of the box, but if HTML5 doesn’t set a standard for whether H.264 support is mandatory or not, then it’s next to useless and I’d rather have Flash, which promises universal support (even if some won’t have GPU assist enabled). My opinion is that HTML5 must make H.264 mandatory. I know there are licensing issues with H.264, and more needs to be done in this area to ensure free and open source browser makers can continue to do their excellent work, but H.264 has industry support and that’s crucial in terms of performance and compatibility. It would be nice of Ogg Theora or another open source format become widely adopted, but it just hasn’t happened and it’s unlikely to do so unfortunately. Perhaps if someone like Nvidia added Theora acceleration support to their GPUs, then the situation might change.

Speaking of Nvidia, they’ve not had a good time in the graphics card market recently, with ATI/AMD dominating with the Radeon HD range in both the price and performance criteria. Then there was the whole failing GPUs in Macbook disaster a year and half ago. Now it seems Nvidia’s new driver is killing GPUs. Those that have upgraded to 196.75 need to perform a downgrade immediately, or face the possibility of having their GPU, or even mothergboards, fried due to overheating. Nvidia has since removed the offending version from download, and has urged users to downgrade as their soonest convenience.

And finally in gaming, with Sony officially naming their Wii like motion controller, the PS3 Dildo Move has been in the news this week. Will it kill the Wii? What about Natal? And why does it look like a dildo?

The answer to all these questions might be a simple “wait and see” (except the last one, since the answer to that is it’s a combination of the need for the strobe light to interact with the PS3 Eye Toy and some unfortunate design decisions). It’s easy to see why it can kill the Wii, with the PS3 superior 3D graphics and more accurate controller bringing us what we think the Wii 2 will be like. It’s also easy to see why it will fail, since failure is exactly how you would describe the efforts of third party game developers when it comes to taking advantage of the Wii. Can Sony make fun games like Nintendo seems to be able to do in their sleep?

The PS3 controller now has an official name, the PS3 Move

For the Natal question, again, it’s far too early to say anything about it. For one, we don’t know what kind of games will benefit from Natal, and we still don’t even know if the whole concept works, due to issues with lag and whatnot. Obviously, the controller-less Natal seems a far bigger leap than the PS3 Move, but bigger leaps can succeed like the Wii or fail like the proverbial Virtual Boy. If it does work (that is, if the lag issue can be resolved), then it would be easier to market than the PS3 Move, which for the average Joe, seems too much like the Wii (even though it’s not). Some have suggested the lag is around 0.1 seconds on average, but others have likened it to what the original Wii remote was like when people play tested it, which I guess worked out just fine for Nintendo. I think for Natal to succeed, it needs integration with the traditional controller. Instead of making games that require you to use the Wii-mote, or the Move all the time, Natal’s camera system and the ability to map your body movements, plus facial and voice recognition should allow you to hold the good old Xbox 360 controller and then use body/limb movements, and voice controls, to enhance the normal gaming experience. Think taking penalties during football/soccer games. Throwing grenades in a FPS. Navigating the Xbox 360 interface like your garden variety Tom Cruise. Giving competitors the finger in a racing game, etc. The possibilities are endless!

But if I had to use the Wii-mote or the Move or Natal to play traditional games that already work perfectly fine with a controller, then I’m not really interested in that, since if it works, it works and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

That’s it from me this week. Off to enjoy what’s left of my birthday today. See you next week when I’ll be older but definitely not wiser.