PS3, PS4 DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘PS3, PS4’ Category

Game Consoles – December 2009 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Friday, January 15th, 2010

We now have the figures for December, the busiest time of the year traditionally for video game sales. With the economy the way it is, the PS3 Slim and price cut led charge by Sony, and the up to this point fairly disappointing year for Nintendo, all eyes are on the final month of 2009 to see where we are in terms of the industry. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

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

Wii: 3,810,000 (Total: 27.1 million; December 2008: 2,150,000 – up 77%)
DS: 3,310,000 (Total: 39.4 million; December 2008: 3,040,000 – up 9%)
PS3: 1,360,000 (Total: 11.1 million; December 2008: 726,000 – up 87%)
Xbox 360: 1,310,000 (Total: 18.6 million; December 2008: 1,440,000 – down 9%)
PSP: 654,700 (Total: 16.9 million; December 2008: 1,020,000 – down 36%)
PS2: 333,200 (Total: 45.3 million; December 2008: 410,000 – down 19%)

NPD December 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

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

My prediction from last month was:

December hardware sales should be even higher than November’s based on past trend, but with MW 2 still selling in good numbers, it should help the Xbox 360. But I suspect it will be a closely fought race between the Xbox 360 and PS3 for the third place finish, behind the DS and Wii at first and second. Software wise, MW 2 should still be selling well, and should hold top spot, although Wii Fit Plus may make a surprise surge. But in all likelihood, both versions of MW 2 will probably beat New Super Mario Bros. Wii to furnish the top 3 spots. Overall software sales will be down, because it will be hard to beat this month’s figures.

The race between the PS3 and the Xbox 360 was indeed a close one, but one that the PS3 ultimately won, albeit by only a couple of percentage points (the PS3 had 12.62% of the console market, the Xbox 360 had 12.15%). The demand for Blu-ray was obviously higher than the demand for Modern Warfare 2, which did not do as well as I expected, or more precisely, other titles managed to break even more records. And by other titles I mean Wii titles. The Wii is the success story for December 2009, and reversed the trend for the entire 2009 in a single month. It was this hardware led surge by the Wii that helped several Wii titles, the ones that every Wii owner seems to have (and the ones that new owners must buy), that also helped Wii software to surge, taking the top 3 spots comfortably. This is why the second part of my predictions, the software based ones, proved largely to be incorrect, and I, and many others, underestimate the demand for the Wii (yet again, it seems, for another holiday season).

To highlight just how amazing and how against the trend the December Wii numbers are, here are some stats:

December 2009 sales of the Wii are 77% higher than that of the same period in 2008, which back then was a record in itself
From March 2009 to November 2009, the average growth rate for the Wii was negative 41.2% (in other words, for these nine months, Wii sales were down an average of 41% compared to the same months in 2008)
Wii sales for December 2009 was higher than April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November of 2009 combined!

And when you add in the amazing DS numbers, which also recorded year on (record) year growth, it seems Santa managed to bring a big gift for Nintendo, and exactly when they needed it as well.

Of course, the other success story for the second half of 2009 has been the PS3. The price cut and the PS3 slim has revitalized the console when it looked like coming a distant third in the home console wars for this generation. While there’s nothing to suggest the PS3 will dominate like the PS2 of the previous generation, not if Nintendo can do anything about it, but there are signs that it might yet beat the Xbox 360 given enough time. The increasing popularity of Blu-ray, and more importantly, the lower price of the PS3 (which makes it once again able to compete with standalone players, something that it couldn’t do in the first half of 2009), has helped it overcome the Xbox 360’s Modern Warfare 2 led hardware surge. The year on year growth figure of 87% is amazing, but probably more amazing than it actually is, considering how badly the PS3 was selling this time last year (behind the PSP, and half of the Xbox 360). If anything, the PS3 is only starting to sell at the levels that many had expected at this stage of its lifespan, and it had been seriously under performing before the recent changes.

With Nintendo sitting happy at the top, and the PS3 jumping over the Xbox 360, Microsoft might be worried, and they probably are. But that’s only because of the previous successes of the console, making the current numbers, which Microsoft would only have dreamed of at the launch of the console, seem so disappointing. Nobody expected the Xbox 360 to stay ahead of the PS3 for very long after the PS3 launches, not even Microsoft and not after all the RRoD problems. But while monthly sales have only started to lag behind the PS3, it still holds more than a 7 million lead over the PS3 on the console front, and that lead should last for a while yet at the PS3’s current growth rate. And, Microsoft will hope, that when Natal is out at the end of the year, it will give the console enough momentum to see out the rest of this generation, although it will have to ride out 2010 and hope that Sony doesn’t catch up too quickly.

In any case, December 2009 was an excellent month for gaming, the best ever in fact, and managed to easily beat the record breaking December 2008 largely thanks to Nintendo (and with Sony finally doing as well as it’s supposed to). The top 10 game sales also managed to beat the top 10 of December 2008, but 2009 still marks a largely down year compared to 2008. As mentioned previously, the Nintendo Wii surge helped Wii games to dominate the top 10 charts as well. The average new Wii buyer will almost always buy one or all of the following “must-have” titles: Wii Play, Wii Fit (Plus), Mario Kart and the new Wii Sports Resort – and all of these managed to get into the top 10, even if some have been missing from the list for most of 2009 due to lackluster hardware sales. The other consoles don’t really have these kind of must-have games, mainly because that Wii games age much better than their PS3 or Xbox 360 counterparts. Many still say the best title on the Wii is still the bundled Wii Sports, and it’s hard to imagine a game of this age on the Xbox 360 or PS3 that is still played as often. The Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 fell from the previous month’s record high to something that’s still quite respectable for a month old game, still selling above the PS3 version but by not as much since the PS3 version’s fall was less dramatic. This now means that almost one in three Xbox 360 owners now have a copy of Modern Warfare 2, which is simply amazing (it’s just over 1 in 4 for the PS3, which is still amazing, especially considering that not everybody likes shooters). MW2 was the only PS3 game in the top 10 though, but the Xbox 360 had two more. Assassin’s Creed II sales on the Xbox 360 nearly didn’t drop at all coming into the second month of release, and the semi platform exclusive Left 4 Dead 2 also recorded similar sales figures as last month. Overall, Wii games dominated with 64.6% of the top 10, with the Xbox 360 getting 22.6%, and the PS3 with 8.1%.

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

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii, Nintendo) – 2,820,000
Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) – 2,410,000
Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 1,790,000
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360, Activision) – 1,630,000
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3, Activision) – 1,120,000
Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 1,010,000
Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 936,000
Assassin’s Creed II (Xbox 360, Ubisoft) – 783,100
Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360, EA) – 728,500
Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS, Nintendo) – 656,700

January should see huge sales drop across the board, but that’s just a seasonal thing. And as such, it’s very hard to predict the order of things, although I believe the hardware sales ordering will remain the same. On the software front, January will be largely quiet, Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox 360 should do well, and the rest of the top 10 should have a familiar look to December’s. There are some big releases coming in February and March, so consumers can take a breather in January (and save up).

I should say “see you next month” as I usually do, but I will also have a 2009 year in review up in the next week or two, which will go through and summarize the stats for 2009, similar to what I did for 2008 around this time last year. So see you until then.

Update: As promised, the 2009 year in review is now up.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (10 January 2010)

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Now that’s more like it. A bit more news finally this week. In fact, there’s a lot of news mainly due to the CES 2010 currently happening in Vegas. Most of the news came out of the show, and most of it was about 3D, which was kind of predictable. While everyone was talking up 3D HD, I had to regress from HDMI back to component due to a broken TV, and then suffer the illogical copy protection system that’s present. Hollywood can be so freaking paranoid at times, and even if their fear is justified, they’re still fighting on the wrong front when it comes to online piracy. How is stopping someone from watching upscaled DVDs through component output going to help stop online piracy? I also took the time to update the MeGUI guides for Windows 7, which works quite well after some initial tweaking needed due to 7’s new built in codecs framework.

Let’s start with the copyright news. The Pirate of the Week award goes to Sony, who managed to not only leak a “still at the cinemas” movie to the PlayStation store in perfect digital quality, but also managed to make it a free download for those quick enough to grab this very special offer. But at least the file was DRM protected so that it couldn’t have been leaked online, right? Um, not quite, and if you search the regular BitTorrent networks, you’ll find a “PSPRip” version of the film which came from this Sony gift. Or should that really be “SonyRip”?

Sony like the movie ‘Armored’ so much that it decided to give it away free on the PlayStation Store

I know the MPAA has been talking about wanting to release movies digitally while they’re still showing at the cinemas, something that cinema owners are vehemently against, but what Sony has done here is probably not what the MPAA had intended. Although the MPAA still had time to roll out a new DRM scheme, which basically “pirates” Disney’s Keychest initiative. Basically, it’s a purchase once, view everywhere scheme, and they intend to do this by adding DRM and online authentication to everything. It seems that the lesson the MPAA learned from the RIAA’s failed experiment with DRM was that it failed because interoperability, that is the ability to play the file everywhere, was not ensured. That’s a valid lesson, but online authentication means that if people are away from the Internet, then their entire movie library becomes useless. And I’m sure there will be device manufacturers that do not buy into the MPAA’s DRM licensing scheme, and hence, interoperability will still be an issue. I think the biggest lesson from the RIAA’s DRM fiasco should be that consumers just don’t like DRM, and that in the end, it wasn’t really necessary anyway since DRM free or easily ripped versions of the music (or movie) will still be widely available and ready to be pirated online regardless of how many layers of DRM you put on the music (or movie).

In fact, just this week, the “consumers don’t like DRM” argument was put forward to the courts in relation to the appeal of the Joel Tenenbaum verdict, the student fined $675,000 of downloading 30 songs. The argument is that because DRM limits choice, the only choice then becomes piracy. I’m not sure I agree with this argument, and I certainly don’t think it will hold up in court, because DRM free alternatives were available in the form of CDs, which can then be easily made into digital form legally (not falling foul of the DMCA because CDs are not DRM’d). The other argument that Tenenbaum’s lawyers will use is that the rewarded damages are just too excessive, which is harder to argue against. It wasn’t as shocking at the $1.92m verdict awarded against Jammie Thomas-Rasset for 6 songs less than Tenenbaum, but the RIAA did it to send a message.

But Sony didn’t like ‘Moon’ at all and refused to support it for an Oscar in order to fight online piracy

While still stinging from the “SonyRip” incident, I guess the suits at Sony HQ decided to balance this kind gift out with something nasty, which came in the form of not supporting their own film, Moon, for an Oscar for which the film’s star Sam Rockwell actually has a chance of winning. The lack of support comes in the form of not releasing screeners to voters, which need to be watermarked to prevent piracy, but Sony doesn’t want to spend the money. Sony says they need the watermarking because the movie is yet to be released in the US, although even the Blu-ray version has been available in the UK since mid November, so there’s hardly a lack of a good source for the pirated version. Another quick check on the regular BitTorrent networks and a DVD rip of Moon is indeed available. The cost of issuing the watermarked screeners would probably be less than the cost of the PR campaign Sony now has to put out to counter criticism of this move from celebrities such as Iron Man Director Jon Favreau and Coraline writer Neil Gaiman. The next step for Sony would be to block the release of a film entirely from all channels, if it’s really that serious about piracy (although it might still get leaked online). Better to destroy the film just after it comes out of post production, than to suffer from piracy, right?

While not doing something as extreme, and for entirely different reasons, but Warner and a few other studios (surprisingly, not including Sony) put pressure on DVD rental vending machine operator Redbox by refusing to give the right to distribute their movies through this cheaper and potentially revenue hurting new distribution method. Redbox even had to use made up cover art as the studios wouldn’t give permission to use the original artwork, but even the made up art work has come under legal pressure, although Redbox denies any wrongdoing. Warner then attacked Netflix and forced them to delay the rental of their DVDs, although they did offer as a compromise an extended range of movies that will be made available via Netflix’s digital service. All of this is about fighting new delivery methods that are cheaper and more efficient, to protect the dying business model that studios rely on. DVD rental revenue is actually up (cheap stuff sells more, wh0 would have thunk it?), but while the studios were busy fighting online piracy, they forgot that the Internet could also have been used to deliver new services and acts as a new distribution method for their content, and instead passed up the opportunity to the likes of Netflix and Redbox. Just like how the music industry passed up online music selling over to Apple’s iTunes, which is now making huge amounts of money that the music labels should have been making themselves if they had the vision to embrace the Internet, rather than not seeing anything good having come from the Internet at all (to paraphrase Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton).

Well if you can’t stop the piracy at the source, then perhaps you can go to the other end. The French government, now the symbolic head of a global crusade against online piracy, plans to put a piracy tax on Google which will be quite a little earner, as well as doing absolutely nothing to stop piracy just like every other initiative.

High Definition

Onto HD, or more accurately, 3D HD news. Let’s just go quickly through just a small selection of 3D related news items, most to have come out of the CES. ESPN is set to launch a 3D channel for sports programming, including the opening game of the FIFA 2010 World Cup.

Sony, Discovery and IMAX are set to do the same, but we’ll have to wait until 2011 for the new channel. After Toshiba’s first solid, but otherwise uninspiring Blu-ray player, the company’s next three Blu-ray players will be a little bit more feature packed, and yep you guessed it, 3D enabled. Well actually, only one model will be 3D enabled and it won’t be available until later in the year, but the two soon to arrive models will have Netflix, Vudu, CinemaNow and Pandora streaming support, and Wi-Fi connectivity on the more expensive of the two models. On the PC front, PowerDVD maker Cyberlink demonstrated 3D Blu-ray on a PC. The PC should have an easier path to 3D, since most have the processing power required to decode the “twice the information” Blu-ray video stream (one stream for each eye), and everything else can be done in software. Of course, you’ll still need a new monitor and a pair of glasses.

Panasonic already has a range of 3D ready devices ready for release soon

Now there has been some confusion in regards to the requirement for 3D, and I’m still not 100% clear on all aspects of it, but basically, you’ll need a new TV or monitor. For the PC monitor, you’ll need one that can display 120 Hz, but most can only do 60Hz. The reason you need 120Hz is because due to the need to provide two separate pictures (one for each eye), a 60Hz monitor effectively only gives 30Hz to each eye, which is not nearly good enough to ensure a headache free experience. On the home theater front, there’s also some confusion as to whether HDMI 1.4 is needed for 3D Blu-ray. The answer is probably no, since the 3D Blu-ray specs say that the PS3 can be upgraded via firmware to support 3D Blu-ray, and PS3s don’t have HDMI 1.4 connectors. The part of the HDMI specs that provides for the higher bandwidth video transfer needed by 3D Blu-ray apparently already exists, but it was up to manufacturers whether they wanted to support it or not, and since there was no demand for it, most do not support it. HDMI 1.4 will mandate support, and so expect most new 3D ready HDTVs to use this version of the connector, although against it’s not strictly required. Panasonic’s 3D Blu-ray players will actually have both a 1.4 connector and a 1.3 connector for connecting to legacy equipment. And just because a HDTV displays at 120Hz (and even if it had HDMI 1.4), it doesn’t mean that it will be 3D ready. Most TVs display 120Hz by taking a the 60Hz input and then frame double, or even frame quadruple to 240Hz. However, 3D ready sets will need to be able to accept and process the true 120Hz signal that 3D Blu-ray players will output, and most can’t do that at the moment. That’s my take on it anyway, but basically, if the TV doesn’t say 3D ready, then it’s not 3D ready, probably. This information and the new logo for 3D Blu-ray can be found in this forum thread.

And it was a refreshing change to see LG announce a new Blu-ray player and it had nothing to do with 3D. Instead, it has a built in 250GB hard drive, not for storing managed copies (not yet anyway), but for storing downloads from VUDU as well as the user’s own content. Speaking of Managed Copy, there was hardly any mention of it at the CES, apart from Cyberlink demonstrating a jukebox system for Blu-ray which will utilize Managed Copy. Disappointing, but not surprising.

And in gaming, not much other than more 3D stuff, with the PS3, Microsoft still showing off Project Natal, although it won’t be here until 10 month or so from now, so it’s hard to get excited over it yet. Nothing much for the Wii, except it may support Netflix at some stage.

The CES concludes today, so there will be more digestion of the news over the coming week I suppose, as well as any last minute announcements. I’m getting a bit tired of this 3D thing anyway, because I still can’t see past it as just another short lived gimmick, which 3D will always be until the type where you don’t need glasses becomes mainstream. See you next week.

Posted in 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 (10 January 2010)

Copy Protection Silliness, HDMI, Component and Upscaled DVDs

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Ever tried to play an upscaled DVD on your DVD or Blu-ray player through component cables? Well, unless you have one of those Asian players that the MPAA hates, then you won’t be able to, all thanks to a quirky copy protection rule that’s frankly just silly. I’ve been aware of this little bit of copy protection silliness, but it hasn’t really affected me since I use HDMI, that is until last weekend.

What happened was that my 5 year and 1 month old Pioneer plasma TV, which came with a 5 year warranty, decided (one month out of warranty for those that are paying attention) to break. Actually, everything works except for the HDMI input, and even that works except when you feed it a copy protected source. Anything that required HDCP no longer worked, and apparently this is a well known problem with early Pioneers.

Diagnosing the problem was difficult at first, because I could get my DVD player’s startup screen, but once I played a disc, everything would go black. But when playing a non commercial disc, everything worked. A little bit of brain work pointed me towards the fact that the HDCP chip for the TV had probably fried. I have a PS3 connected to this TV as well, and nothing would even show up, since Sony took the extra step of ensuring no picture at all if HDCP wasn’t enabled.

As I am in the planning stages of buying a new TV (most likely one of those Panasonic Viera plasmas, since they are now the new Kings of plasma now that Pioneer has pulled the plug), I decided it wasn’t really worth it to try and fix the problem, at least not until I’ve got my new TV. Everything would still work if I connected through component, and to be honest (and even using fairly poor quality cable), the differences were minimal. And that’s when I encountered the silliness I mentioned above.

No HDMI? No problem, on the PS3, sort of ...

The PS3 was connected via a new set of PS3 component cables I got (the fact that Sony only bundles composite cables with the PS3 is an insult the PS3’s HD capabilities, in my opinion – I know that most people use HDMI, but *some* people can’t and by using proprietary connectors, it makes the situation even worse). It took a while to get the picture right (see Addendum below), but once it was working, Blu-ray played great, not as good as HDMI, but hey what can you do, right?

But when it came to playing a DVD, the picture wasn’t so good. While you can watch a 1080p Blu-ray movie in 1080i (or 1080p if your TV supports that kind of thing through component), but you cannot actually watch a 576p (or 480p) DVD upscaled to 720p or 1080i, not legally anyway. Apparently, this is done to prevent copying. Except I can still copy Blu-ray movies outputted to 1080i (or 1080p). To sum up, Hollywood doesn’t want you to make copies of upscaled DVDs (ie. fake HD), but is perfectly happy for you to make copies of Blu-ray movies (ie. real HD). Does this make sense?

A little bit more brain work from me and I think I figured out why it actually does make sense, at least in the twisted logic that Hollywood employs. You see Blu-ray uses a new copy protection mechanism called AACS and as part of the specifications is something Image Constraint Token (ICT), which all Blu-ray movies carry. Basically, this allows component output to be disable or limited to lower resolutions if the studio wishes, which when activated will bring the Blu-ray situation in line with the upscaled DVD situation when it comes to output via component. In order to promote Blu-ray, manufacturers and studios came to an agreement not to implement ICT until later on, I guess they didn’t want to turn off people who had invested heavily in analogue equipment. And, this is the twisted logic part, because Blu-ray *has* the ability to prevent HD output via component (even though it wasn’t turned on), this is why Hollywood deemed it okay to allow HD output via component for now. If the DVD copy protection scheme *had* the ability to also limit HD output via component at some stage in the future, and chances are, it might have been allowed until studios realised that they have nothing to fear on this front at all. But because the DVD copy protection scheme was invented before upscaling was the norm, the sledgehammer approach was deemed the only solution, and that meant disabling all HD output via component.

There is also another set of twisted logic in play. Analogue means reduced quality, everyone knows that. So Blu-ray via analogue means the copy made is an inferior version compared to the original, which might be okay in Hollywood’s eyes. But if you take a digital standard def DVD, upscale it to high def, and then output that via analogue, and then re-digitize that, then you might end up with a copy that’s fairly close to the original. And that, in Hollywood’s eye, is not okay. Of course, anyone can just rip the DVD and retain 100% of the original quality, which is what everyone does. Just how many DVD and Blu-ray movies are actually pirated via component is quite debatable, not when there are much easier ways to make 1:1 copies. Ironically, DVD ripping may be the only way to watch your legally purchased DVDs upscaled via component, as non copy protected discs are still upscaled perfectly.

Note the two pronged PS3 Slim power cable, which probably means no more component inteference problems on the PS3

So in my situation, until I get my new TV, I’m stuck with watching DVDs in SD, while still being able to enjoy Blu-ray movies in HD glory. At least until some studio implements ICT. Luckily, this problem is largely a problem of the past, as HDMI is now far more common and comes in greater numbers of connectors on TVs than even component, and so it won’t be a problem most people will have to suffer. That is unless your TV’s HDCP chip is fried …

Addendum: I mentioned earlier about taking a while to get the picture right on my PS3 via component. The problem I ran into was the common PS3 component interference problem (horizontal or diagonal wavy lines), as described here on the official PS3 board, and luckily with solutions. My solution to the problem was to follow the information in the posted thread and remove the ground prong from the power plug, and the interference went away. This type of interference doesn’t affect the HDMI output, so that’s why I’ve never noticed it probably until now. Just why I need to do this with what is otherwise a high quality piece of electronics, I have no idea. I have never run into this problem with the dozens and dozens of low, and high quality equipment I’ve ever used, or help install for other people. And I did notice that neither the Wii nor the Xbox 360 uses the ground connector, and apparently the PS3 Slim doesn’t have it anymore either. Design fault anyone?

Posted in Electronics, PS3, PS4 | 10 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (27 December 2009), 2009 Year In Review (Sort of)

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Welcome to the last WNR of 2009. As expected, news was extremely light during the height of the festive season, so this WNR will be a year in review of sorts, although it’s mostly based on memory, and a bad one at that. But first, we’ll go through the news that did manage to turn up this week.

MPAA wins against IsoHunt, and a trial wasn't even needed

The big one was isoHunt losing its lawsuit, but it wasn’t really much of a surprise. In fact, the judge didn’t even see the need for a full trial, giving Hollywood studios an Christmas present in terms of a summary judgement against isoHunt, based on past cases involving Napster and Grokster. isoHunt itself is happily running in Canada, but it is also now under pressure from the CRIA, the Canadian version of the MPAA. isoHunt’s argument that it was only a search engine did not really work, and evidence uncovered showed that the operators actively promoted pirated content, which is really just common sense when you consider torrent sites and what their main purpose is. Take Mininova for example, since it went legit just under a month ago, traffic to the site has dropped 60 to 70%, according to Alexa. The argument that torrent files are just text files won’t really work in court either, not when courts have been happily citing even just simple web links as being infringing content.

Speaking of pirated content, Torrent Freak has compiled data for the most pirated movies of 2009. Leading the chart is Star Trek, closely followed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Coincidentally, these two are the top selling Blu-ray titles of 2009. I don’t know if there’s any relations between the two set of numbers, other than the fact that these two movies are really popular, and that popular stuff get purchased, or pirated, a lot! The question of how much money has been lost to piracy is extremely hard to answer. There will always be people who, no matter what, will simply not pay for movies. There are those that downloaded the pirated version, liked it, and got the movie on DVD or Blu-ray. There are also those that went to watch it at the cinema and then downloaded the pirated version. How many people would have forked over cash if the pirated version didn’t exist is unknown. Perhaps the studios can try and focus their anti-piracy efforts on one particular movie, and basically go on a huge offensive, getting torrents removed as they are uploaded. I’m skeptical whether any action, even the most extreme, can prevent piracy, but it’s worth a try, even if it means spending 50 million dollars or something. Then see how the revenue of this movie compares to similar releases. Maybe they can then try to prevent a movie from being show on free to air TV or being rented, and see if it helps with DVD sales, and the music labels can get in on the act and prevent a single from being heard on radio, to see if it helps CD sales.

While the studios haven’t prevented a movie from being rented to increase DVD/Blu-ray sales, they have prevented movies from being rented in specific ways. Redbox, the new common enemy amongst several studios, has felt the brunt of the studio’s actions, which claim the DVD rental vending machine operator is hurting rental and sell through income for their movies and have barred Redbox from doing several things, including using box art in their digital displays. Fortunately for Redbox, the law still allows them to rent movies as long as they buy it from retail channels, and that’s what they’ve been doing with releases from Warner, Universal and Fox, and making up their own cover art at the same time. What I don’t understand is why these studios don’t simply do what the others (Disney, Sony, Paramount …) have done and work out a deal with Redbox that benefits all.

It’s this and new methods of viewing that the studios fear though, because they’re losing control. One in three Australians now use DVRs to watch TV, and that’s seen as hurting TV stations what with ad skipping, although our local version of TiVo has removed the ad skipping feature. If the studios (and TV networks) get their way, TiVo and other DVRs won’t exist, which is not good for the consumer (or the electronic firms that sell DVRs). But ads are important, as they are the main source of revenue for TV stations, so a compromise has to be found. The TV networks as we know it will have to change anyway, what with the emergence of TV on demand. Expect this to be yet another battle front in the digital wars.

A cheaper sibling to the Oppo BDP-83 will be available soon, but Oppo's are still hard to find outside of the US

And moving on to HD news, Oppo will release a cheaper version of their highly rated, but as yet unavailable world wide, Blu-ray player. It’s unknown what features will be cut in order to reduce the cost, but most likely it will be the DVD-Audio and SACD features, since most people don’t really need support for these formats. Will it also come with HDMI 1.4, which is also set to be released around January? HDMI 1.4 itself seems to be still in flux, as the HDMI consortium wants to add 3D broadcast support to the standard, along with the new two way audio support and built in Ethernet capabilities that are the headline features of the new version. I for one hope that there will be no more HDMI revisions in the future, because it’s ridiculous that all HD devices sold so far will become obsolete next month as a result of this HDMI change. Of course, most of the newly added HDMI features are not “must haves” that will force people to buy new TVs, and backwards compatibility is being maintained, but still.

And that’s the news for the week, so I guess the rest of the WNR will be for my brief and fairly incomplete year in review.

Starting with copyright. It’s been a year of lawsuits. And most of them have brought success to the copyright holders. We’ve seen The Pirate Bay lose time and time again, and then sold, although it doesn’t seem to affect the website’s operation.

Mininova was probably the biggest casualty, having removed all of its illegal content last month, and as mentioned before, seeing a 60% traffic drop as a result. isoHunt is the latest casualty, having lost the lawsuit just last week, but the website is at least still operational. Expect more closures next year.

Nicolas Sarkozy: Most hated figure in 2009, copyright wise

Then there’s the Australian lawsuit against ISP iiNet, dubbed the iiTrial. The case went over many of the issues in the piracy debate, specifically about responsibility of ISPs, and whether they should act as copyright cops. We’ll find out the answers to these questions early next year when the verdict is due. This trend of attacking ISPs isn’t just an down under thing, this has been the new strategy of the copyright holders in 2009. From the French introduction of the, albeit watered down, three-strikes legislation, to the MPAA asking for something similar to every government that’s willing to listen, we could see some big changes in 2010 when it comes to the relationship between the government, your ISP and you.

But that’s not to say that the copyright holders haven’t been attacking individuals. Two high profile trials concluded with unbelievable damages being awarded to record profit making Hollywood, $1.92 million and $675,000 against a single mother and a student respectively. This was supposed to put the fear into downloaders, but the fact is that pirated downloads have actually increased during the year.

The positives of 2009 for copyright include the death of DRM for music, when iTunes went DRM free in April, which saw other online music stores doing the same before and after this date. DRM is still well and alive for everything else though and happily ruining user experiences and even movie previews. Several free music services popped up in 2009 as well, as an alternative to illegal downloads, but only time will tell if their business model works in the long term, and on a global scale. 2009 also saw the increasing popularity of Digital Copies, bundled with both DVD and Blu-ray packages. These DRM protected, time limited video files have at least provided a free alternative to DVD ripping, although Managed Copy for Blu-ray is set to do much more, if it ever gets implemented. But we can still say that 2009 saw the first Managed Copy Blu-ray being released.

High Definition

Which moves us neatly onto HD news for 2009. It was a very good year for Blu-ray, most noticeable in the last quarter thanks to some very high profile releases. The record breaking release of The Dark Knight during December 2008 was only recently shattered by Star Trek and the holiday sales period, but there is no denying the fact that Blu-ray sales have double or more in the year.

Most of this has been due to price cuts, which sees Blu-ray hardware and movies quickly approaching DVD levels, and at times, below that of new release DVDs. Consumers spent less as a result, although this may largely be due to the poor economic conditions, and the growth in Blu-ray revenue was not enough to cover up the losses on DVD, although the situation is not nearly as bad a year ago. Digital downloads and streaming, as well as rental, saw amazing growth during the year as well. Netflix, who offers both digital and traditional rentals, grew strongly thanks to integration with first the Xbox 360, and then the PS3. This is not to mention the increasing number of Blu-ray players that now come with some sort of online streaming support, and Blu-ray players are fast becoming replacements for set top boxes, which everyone always thought would have been necessary for a large scale rollout of digital services.

Blu-ray Sales Percentage - 4 May 2008 to 29 November 2009 - Click to see larger version

Blu-ray sales grew healthily in 2009

2009 also saw the HD format war loser, Toshiba, come out with their first, albeit modest, Blu-ray player offering, and thus officially end their ill fated HD DVD adventure. And although HD DVD has died, the innovations that the format provided still lives on in Blu-ray, with the mandatory Internet connectivity on HD DVD players now all but mandatory in name on Blu-ray in BD Live, which has allowed the aforementioned online streaming services to be used through Blu-ray players. And the emergence of Managed Copy, which was first made mandatory for HD DVD, is now coming to Blu-ray, albeit with some resistance. And even the good old double sided Combo is coming back through HD DVD backer Universal.

Most studios still prefer the separate disc combo method, and combo now usually means both the DVD and Digital Copy version of the movie. Digital Copy has made headway as well, now available not only on DRM’d WMV files, but also through iTunes on PCs and Macs, and thus, playability on iPods and iPhones. Digital Copy has been so popular, that it’s hard now to find a new hit release without it. And the general idea of Combos have been popular as well, with Warner recently announcing that all their major Blu-ray releases next year will be combos with both the DVD and Digital Copy included on separate discs. Blu-ray’s value for money has increased as a results, as the ever smaller premium you pay for movies over the DVD version is made up by the inclusion of the DVD version on a separate disc. Disney even made combos the first and only package available to buy for a few of their hit titles, and stats have shown that even after the exclusive period, people preferred to buy the better value combos.

Blu-ray on PCs are still somewhat of a disappointment, but GPU assisted decoding is now available in most systems, even some of the netbook offerings though Nvidia Ion. Will we see a mainstream PC game released exclusively on Blu-ray disc in 2010?

3D promises to be the studios’ next target in 2010, hoping to bring HD 3D to the home via the now finalized 3D Blu-ray specs. Only the tough set of requirements, such as a new TV, rule out the guaranteed success of 3D Blu-ray.

And finally in gaming, 2009 unfortunately didn’t reach the highs of 2008 in terms of sales. The year started somewhat flat, and then soon saw Wii sales tumble along with most other consoles. Then Sony did what everyone wanted them to do and reduced the price of the PS3, and surprised many with the introduction of a brand new Slim version of the console. Both of these factors revived the fortunes of the PS3, taking it from last place amongst the home based consoles to nearly topping the monthly sales of the Wii. The holiday period, and the biggest release in the history of music, movies or gaming, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, helped the Xbox 360 regain some of the lost momentum after the PS3 Slim/PS3 price cut. Even the Wii had a recovery of sorts during the holiday sales, but is still easily 30+% down compared to last year, although 2008 was crazy in terms of Wii sales.

The PSP Go largely flopped, while the DS, with the updated DSi, now completely dominates the handheld market.

The PS3 Slim, and the price cuts, helped the PS3 to stage a brilliant comeback in 2009

In terms of games, Call of Duty: MW 2 was easily the best selling game of 2009, and of all time possibly, at least for the release figures. The PS3 had a couple of hit exclusive titles (Kill Zone 2, inFAMOUS, Uncharted 2) that did well enough, but there still aren’t enough consoles in the US to really make these sell. Game sales are down as well compared to 2008, even though the biggest hits of 2009 were bigger than the hits of 2008. But 2009 was still the best year outside of 2008 in the history of gaming, and things only look to improve as Sony and Microsoft both bring out their motion control systems next year, although in Microsoft’s case, it will be towards the end of 2010. You can vote for your game of the year here.

A more detailed 2009 roundup will be written up as soon as the December figures are released in the middle January.

And that’s pretty much 2009 in review, very brief I know and missing all of the crucial events that I’ve failed to remember. News is likely to be hard to find next week as well, and so if there’s nothing to write about and if I remember more stuff, then perhaps you’ll see part two of the 2009 year in review then.

But until then, I hope you’ve had a great 2009 and everyone here at Digital Digest wishes you a happy and prosperous 2010. HNYIA (Happy New Year In Advance)

Posted in 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 (27 December 2009), 2009 Year In Review (Sort of)

Weekly News Roundup (20 December 2009)

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

We’re in the final weeks of 2009, and the first decade of the 21st century, or are we still a year away from that, I don’t know. You know sometimes I wish there was actually a year zero, since it makes all of this much less confusing. This could very well be the last WNR for 2009, it all depends on how much news there is next week, and I suspect there won’t be a lot. Still, I’m sure I will write something next week, even if it is just a yearly in review type of thing. There’s quite a big of news this week, I guess everyone wanted to get their stories in before leaving on holidays or something. And please also vote for the best game of 2009 in this poll.

Copyright news is first up. The US Congress has gotten into the Christmas spirit and decided to give $30 million dollars to the MPAA crusade against online piracy. I guess it makes sense that the only industry that managed to make record profits this year is the one to receive this latest “bailout” package.

Much of the money will go towards fighting online piracy, although the MPAA was eager to tout its other, and probably more important, roles in stopping piracy. Counterfeit goods is a large problem and this is the one area where actual money exchanges hands and individuals or groups profit from these illegal activities, as opposed to some teenager downloading a copy of a movie they never intended to buy anyway.

Biden heads the list of pro-RIAA, MPAA members of the Obama White House

The increased funding comes after Vice President Biden held roundtable talks with all the interested parties in the copyright debate, well at least all of the people on one side of it anyway. Invited were the RIAA, MPAA, movie studios, music labels, publishers, the FBI, Homeland Security and even the Secret Service. Not invited were consumer rights groups, IT companies, the Internet industry, and anyone that might have had a bad word to say about the group that were invited. Biden has a long voting history in the senate in support of the RIAA, so this isn’t really much of a surprise. What is surprising is the same group of invitees coming out to publicly attack the rights of the vision impaired. With the various new layers of DRM and technology to protect content, it’s making things extremely difficult for the vision impaired when it comes to text to speech services and other helpful tools which are locked out by the DRM as well. To address the situation, a change to the copyright law was proposed to build in an exception, but to the surprise of pretty much everyone, it was met with fierce opposition. What the publishers and others didn’t like was the relaxing of copyright law, regardless for whatever reason (and this time, it was for a very good one), because they want to see the opposite and the ever tightening of copyright laws, not the reverse. When it comes to their moral crusade against downloads, there is no such thing as friendly fire, it seems. President Obama did the sensible thing and came out to support the proposed amendments.

Everyone knows my disdain for DRM. But it really only extends when it is used badly to prevent piracy, which usually means that it doesn’t prevent any piracy and only decreases ease of use for consumers. But DRM does have its place, as it is used to restrict access to certain files, while allowing access to it by others. It’s much easier than say using a password to lock a file, which means you’ll have to give the password to those that need to access it, and pretty soon, the password becomes an open secret. Encryption has the same drawbacks. So a proper DRM system with user based access control is then the preferred solution. But the problem is that with managed DRM systems, you’re relying on authentication servers and such to grant and deny access, with deny being the default. But if the authentication system goes down for whatever reason, then you end up with unusable files, which is exactly what happened to companies using Microsoft Office’s Rights Management Services. Apparently someone forgot to renew a certificate, and when it expired, the whole thing failed, locking people out of their own files. I recently read an interesting article that questioned the longevity of digital file storage. Not only are the media used to store the digital files susceptible to failure, over time, you could also find it difficult to find the right hardware to access the media. Take for example, 5.25″ floppy disks and how difficult it may be for many to get files off it and imagine how much more difficult it is in say another 20 year’s time. DRM compounds the problem by adding encryption and authentication to the file. Will the authentication servers be around in 50 years time? And will people remember what the encryption algorithm used was? Of course just before the DRM system fails, the owner of the file should unlock it, but what if they forget, or what if they don’t have rights to do it, like consumers that purchased DRM’d MP3s from just two years ago that now find the files useless.

Another aspect of DRM is its use in anti-competitive behaviour, something that Apple has been questioned about in Europe. This story of a garage door opener having both DRM and a DMCA warning notice, all to prevent the use of third party door openers, is case in point. The same company apparently already lost a lawsuit in relation to the DRM use. I could, as an example, implement a simple system that prevents copy/paste being used for this article so you can’t copy parts of it to post elsewhere, and if you attempt to break this simple encryption system, then I can sue you under the DMCA. But just like DRM, it doesn’t really prevent those serious about copying your work (they could do it the “analog” way and simply retype everything), and it adds inconvenience to readers. And in the long terms, it’s bad for me, the content owner, as others pasting parts of your article around is actually a good thing (as long as they link back to the original article). So this is why I find it so funny that the likes of Rupert Murdoch would come out against Google and news aggregators for daring to link to their content, because I would love to have people link to the stuff I write. The death of the newspaper business has more to do with an outdated model of information delivery, the ever decreasing quality of “journalism” being produced, in my opinion. There is certainly less trust towards what newspapers publish even compared to anonymous blogs, since political bias and monied interests have ruined it as a platform for trusted information.

DRM ruins 3D Avatar preview screening

But that’s a discussion for another time, perhaps. But back to the theme of how DRM ruins lives, in Germany, a 3D preview screening of the hit movie Avatar was ruined by the DRM system now employed by studios and cinemas to prevent piracy. Instead, the excited cinema goers had to settle for a 2D version of the film instead, which I’m told is definitely not the way to watch Avatar. DRM systems are not so complicated, the cinema ones involve authentication servers, certificates, time-sensitive data, encrypted hardware devices and whatever else they would manage to squeeze in – any failure in any of these components means the film won’t play. And even with all these precautions, a screener version of the film has still made its way online, although the fact that a pirated version was available hasn’t really affected the box office figures for a movie that everyone knows would be best seen in the cinema (and preferably in 3D). It’s this reason that I think why Hollywood box office receipts broke all records in 2009, and there’s a new article that provides further analysis of the record breaking figures, and why Hollywood tries to hide their success.

And the lies don’t stop there. The MPAA also claims that everything they do is for the good of the consumer, to give them more choices. This is from the same group that sued Real Networks and Kaleidescape for offering consumer more choices when it comes to how consumers chose to watch their legally purchased DVDs. While nobody denies that piracy is a problem, and it’s a problem that’s on the rise according to recent studies, but I think the differences lie in how to solve this problem, and nobody really thinks Hollywood’s solution is the best one, since it has proven so far to be very ineffective. So perhaps instead of trying to fight change, they should embrace it and come up with new innovations that can protect their profits, as well as give people what they want. It seems that in their bitter crusade, many have lost sight of the latter part of the previous statement, that companies exists not to protect their profit, but to give people what they want and need. Apple managed to it through iTunes, and the only losers were the music industry, which in their single minded approach against online piracy handed the immense opportunity to a computer company instead. The movie industry cannot make the same mistake again.

The party of French President Sarkozy, UMP, and the hardliners in the global anti-piracy fight with their introduction of three-strikes laws, is again at the center of copyright infringement. The first was when they used a song without permission in an online video, the next was when they were caught pirating 500 DVDs of a documentary that promoted Sarkozy. And now, their third strike, is lip dub video that used a song they were expressly prevented from using by the content owners, who did not want to associated the song with politics. But the UMP decided to ignore the wishes of copyright owners and used the song anyway. They’ll no doubt only get a slap on the wrist, and they should consider themselves lucky that they don’t live in a country with harsh copyright laws. Oh.

In a similar incident, video sharing site Vimeo was sued by EMI for promoting the use of lip dubs. EMI says that most lip dubs use full length songs without having obtained license for this public broadcast, and that by promoting the creation of these lip dubs, Vimeo is not only condoning but promoting piracy.

High Definition

In HD news, the specifications for 3D Blu-ray has been finalized, hopefully more finalized than the whole Managed Copy debacle which you can read about in previous issues of the WNR. The specifications includes notes about the PS3, which can be upgraded to support 3D Blu-ray through a firmware update. There is less detail about other Blu-ray players, but I would expect that only the ones with powerful processors will be able to be upgraded through firmware to support 3D.

The specs are finalized, but a TV upgrade is most likely needed if you want to watch 3D Blu-ray

The other good news is that 3D discs will carry 2D versions of the film, which means that studios won’t have to produce two packages for consumers. The bad news is that you’ll most likely have to get a new TV to enjoy 3D, since there’s only a handful that supports it at the moment. No doubt with the finalization of the specs, more TV manufacturers will come out with 3D TVs, but whether people want to watch 3D at home is another thing, as it’s not exactly the same experience as watching 3D on a big cinema screen.

There’s not much in gaming, but I will mention the 2009 game of year poll again. I suspect Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will win, it is easily the best selling game of the year, and it really is a good game, combining the excitement of previous Call of Duty games, plus a pretty good storyline this time. Add a splash of controversy, and you have a winner.

That’s all we have time for this week, and possibly this year. Have a good week, and a good holiday period. See you next week … or next year.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (20 December 2009)

DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘PS3, PS4’ Category

Game Consoles – December 2009 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Weekly News Roundup (10 January 2010)

Copy Protection Silliness, HDMI, Component and Upscaled DVDs

Weekly News Roundup (27 December 2009), 2009 Year In Review (Sort of)

Weekly News Roundup (20 December 2009)

Pages

Links

Categories