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Weekly News Roundup (15 February 2009)

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I hope you had a nice Valentine’s Day. I spent mine alone, in a windowless room, eating day old pizza and watching re-runs of Friends. So it was a good day for me too.

Didn’t get to write any blog entries this week because I’ve been cleaning up the innards of the Digital Digest website, adding new functionalities and fixing some problems, but all on the web admin site of things, not the front-end so you won’t notice anything different yet. But it’s all for a purpose, and the sooner I can get these boring things done, the sooner I can start adding some new content and functions to the site.

As you know, last week I reported on the bushfires here in Victoria, Australia. The full extent of the damage and loss of life wasn’t really known to me at the time I posted the blog, but it has now been revealed as much worse than first feared. Donations are very much needed as many people have lost homes, and those are the lucky ones. The response so far has been fantastic, despite economic harsh times, people are giving more than they can afford and it’s great to see something good come out of a very bad situation.

On with the copyright news, Sweden is well known for being the home of The Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party. But Sweden is no home for pirates, it seems, as piracy rates in Sweden are lower than that of many other countries with much harsher views towards copyright.

While politicians in Washington are trying to get the right economic stimulus package through, there’s always someone trying to squeeze a bit of pro-MPAA agenda into the bill, this time it was Senator Dianne Feinstein. Under the guise of preventing child pornography, the language used by the amendment to the bill was, as experts testify, clearing MPAA produced and with the child pornography bit thrown in for dramatic effect. I don’t know what is worse, that the MPAA compares people who download movies to child abusers, or that they think child pornography is only as serious as movie piracy. And all this beneath the table stuff while Congress is debating serious issues such as how to prevent people from losing their homes and jobs just shows how tasteless the MPAA is, and how politicians are being led by the nose by those with money in Washington.

Apple trying to prevent iPhone jailbreaking with DRM

It’s not often that you find Apple, and the RIAA/MPAA on the same side of anything, but when it comes to DRM for the iPhone, those three are the best of buddies. Apple argues that DRM protects their business model, while the RIAA/MPAA argues that DRM is the best thing since Sliced Bread 2.0 added SecuROM protection that required users to dance a jig before use. Jailbreak on iPhone allows you to install custom apps without going through Apple, and that’s why Apple don’t like people breaking their DRM. It’s not even about piracy in this case, as it’s all about closing down competition and making sure Apple makes money from everything you intend to use the iPhone for. It’s something you expect Microsoft to do, not Apple.

And the EU has just extended copyright protection from 50 years to 95 years, at the behest of the RIAA. Royalty free music helps it to survive longer culturally because anyone can (and will) use it – from TV commercials to independent films to even YouTube clips – but extend copyright protection to 95 years, and I can see some music disappearing from society’s consciousness for good, all because money. The RIAA, who represent the studios, argues this is to protect artists, who they rip off quite brutally without remorse. This will just ensures the rip off lasts longer, that’s all.

High Definition

In HD news, the news is that Blu-ray prices have now dropped to DVD levels. This is from looking at Amazon though, so it may not be indicative of the overall market, as Amazon always has lots of Blu-ray deals.

Blu-ray prices have dropped, but do the studios really want that?

Looking at the situation here in Australia, I buy DVDs at under $10 mostly ($US 6.50), and special offers take that down even further most times. Obviously I’m not buying the new releases, but wait a couple of months and they’re almost always $15, and then $10 another couple of months later. Blu-ray has dropped in pricing here, but it’s still $25 for old releases, and $35 to $40 for new titles. So for Blu-ray prices to actually drop to DVD levels, then it still has a long way to go and I’m not sure what the point of that would be for the studios. I mean, Blu-ray was invented to make up for losses in DVD due to falling prices, so dropping Blu-ray prices will hurt the studios more than it helps them. In fact, looking at the latest Nielsen VideoScan figures show that, if this supposed drop in price has occurred, than Blu-ray is now doing worse despite there being no barriers left for its total domination. Blu-ray sales have dropped back to pre-Iron Man levels, although that’s largely due to lack of decent releases that titillates the core demographic of the young, male, techno-savvy crowd. I think the movie studios were a bit naive in thinking that consumers would be willing to pay more for something they’ve been paying less and less for ages, despite the upgrade in quality. The sooner the studios realise this, and stop trying to make Blu-ray into the saviour of home video, the sooner we’ll see more reasonable prices and Blu-ray finally replacing DVDs on all levels, not just as a premium alternative. But maybe that’s not what the studios want?

What is clear though is that while the PS3 has been the pick of the Blu-ray players right from the start, it no longer is the most attractive. Lower prices for standalones coupled with Sony’s insistence on not dropping PS3 prices has seen “PS3 as a Blu-ray player” sales drop, which may account for the year-to-year sales drop of 24% in the US for the PS3. Is Sony deliberately sacrificing the PS3 to help standalones? Standalones bring in parts of the demographic the PS3 cannot attract, and I’m sure the CE firms that backed Sony in the HD format war want to see some returns on their investment, as opposed to the PS3 dominating all things Blu-ray. Do I still recommend the PS3 as the Blu-ray player of choice? Yes, but with much more reservations compared to before. If you need more than one of the following: a media hub, game console, good (but not great) quality DVD upscaler, highly responsive Blu-ray player, then the PS3 is a good choice. It may no longer produce the best quality output, nor offer the best price, but it does much more than your usual Blu-ray player, but only if you really need those functionalities. I still like it the most because it’s just so damn fast and responsive – no waiting for button clicks to register, or minute long loading screens, and the Bluetooth remote means I can slouch all the way on the sofa and can control everything without even lifting my arm.

And in the “well that looks a bit desperate” section for this week, Sony is thinking about releasing hybrid game/movie Blu-ray discs, that feature a Blu-ray movie and the PS3 version of the crappy movie-to-video game conversion all on one disc. I can see Sony releasing this as the sole version for the PS3, meaning if you want to play the PS3 game, you’ll have to also buy the Blu-ray movie in a package that will cost more. This should help inflate the Blu-ray sales figures at the expense of the gaming side of things, which Sony is very good at doing, to gamers frustrations. Is this also Sony’s way of admitting that PS3 games don’t really need the up to 50 GB of space on Blu-ray discs (considering the equally good 360 port only needs 8 GB), and that the only way to fill up the space is by including a movie on it?

Kuro: Still the best on the market, but soon to be discontinued

And in the “I thought they were dead” section, S3 is releasing a new graphics chip designed for media PCs and Blu-ray playback. “S3 are still in business?” was my first reaction too. I should probably write a feature on graphics cards for media PCs, but you know, this is something that S3 may have a chance in. These cards don’t need gaming capability, which is what separates the best GPUs from the rest, so as long as they emphasis on output quality, low heat/noise, and quality driver/software packages, then there will be a market for these type of cards.

Panasonic is betting 3D Blu-ray will take off, I hope they’re right, but I have my doubts. Another thing Panasonic might have to prepare for is to take over Pioneer’s plasma division, because Pioneer are pulling out of the game altogether. HDTV enthusiasts will acknowledge the Pioneer Kuro plasma range as being the best HDTVs on the market, and it’s a shame to not being able to see a new series being released. Panny plasmas are okay, maybe even pretty good (and about to get better with the new 09 models), so hopefully they can absorb the (albeit small) demand for being able to own the best damn TVs on the market. I paid $US 7,000 for my Pioneer plasma a bit more than 4 years ago, which is crazy I know, but I don’t regret it one bit and I would still be willing to pay $US 4,000 for another one right now. If I wasn’t broke, that is. LCDs with LED backlights are promising, as are OLED displays, but nothing beats a Kuro plasma right now and nothing will for a little while I suspect.

Not much gaming news this week. The NPD figures for January are out, I know, and I’ll get the analysis up early next week. The figures was again alarming for Sony, as the PS3 was outsold by the 360 again (and the Wii, of course). I’ve already mentioned that year-to-year sales for the PS3 is down 24%, which is not all that bad considering lack of price drops, cheaper Blu-ray standalones, economic conditions and all that, but when 360 sales rose by 25% and Wii sales by nearly 60%, it makes the figures look even worse by comparison. And it’s happened 3 months in a row, and during the busiest time of the year. Some are saying the PS3 peaked in 2008, and it’s now on a slow decline to oblivion, which I don’t really buy. But if you’re not growing, then you’re shrinking and the PS3 market share is shrinking rapidly each and every month that PS3 prices remains high. Software news is even worse for Sony, as not a single PlayStation (2, 3 or portable) title made it to the top 10, with only a single, lonely PlayStation title in the top 20 as well (Call of Duty: World At War for the PS3) – 8 Xbox 360 titles and 9 Wii titles were present. Oh dear.

Okay, enough Sony bashing for this week, there’s plenty of time for that next week. Unless the PS3 gets a surprise price drop and outsells everything, then won’t I look stupid? Or simply proved right? There is indeed a very thin line between being right and being stupid. 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, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (15 February 2009)

Weekly News Roundup (8 February 2009)

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

A record hot Saturday (48 C/118 F), plus the recent dry spell, meant deadly fires have killed at least 36 people (update: the death toll has risen to 65 in the two hours since I started writing this post … damn) and destroyed many many homes in my home state of Victoria (Australia), with some entire towns wiped off the face of the earth. The heat was uncomfortable for people like me in the city, but it’s nothing compared to the devastation felt by others in the bush fire regions, and they will need a lot of help to rebuild, despite the brave efforts of firefighters. Everything else covered by this week’s WNR will seem trivial compared to what many have had to endure over the last day or two, but as they say, the show must go on.

I’ve posted a new poll to decide the “Game of the Year” for 2008. GTA IV is currently winning, but it’s still early days. My pick, Fallout 3, isn’t doing too badly, but I would still like to see it win without me having to rig the poll. Just kidding, of course. No really.

Let’s get on with the copyright news. BitTorrent researchers say that copyright will be obsolete by 2010. I’m not sure I can agree with this. Sure, copyright will be hard and maybe impossible to enforce in 2010, but without copyright, anarchy would ensue. Nothing like a doomsday prediction to scare people.

No DRM doesn't mean No Copyright

Nobody is saying that content owners don’t have rights over their content. People create stuff to make money, and that’s what copyright is for. However, some of the measure employed to “protect” copyright just doesn’t work at best, and at worse, are seriously counter-productive. Online music sales have showed that it is possible to have a world where artists, studios, consumers and even pirates are all happy, perhaps not as happy as they could be, but still relatively content. And all this occurred after DRM died is no coincidence. Content owners need to respect the wishes of consumers, not fight them, and once you do that and once you give the people what they want, the money will naturally come. Hopefully the MPAA can learn from this and offer us easier, cheaper ways to get movies into your PCs – and once they do that, while it won’t stop piracy, I doubt the studios will care all that much when they’re raking it in. The gaming industry also needs to see that if people wanted to pirate your stuff, they’ll find a way to do it, so why bother inconveniencing legitimate customers? Fair Use is all that people want.

But they’re not getting it. Dubbed the “YouTube January Fair Use Massacre”, YouTube has thrown Fair Use out the window, where videos after videos have been banned or rejected, and many do not break any copyright laws. This “guilty until proven innocent” approach, no doubt demanded by studios, is exactly what’s wrong with the anti-piracy approach these days. The more the content owners push people, the more they are making the act of piracy a political statement, even by people normally who respect copyright. I would really like to see an “International Day of Piracy”, where people are encouraged to download something pirated on that day to protest the way legitimate users are being treated by the anti-piracy crusade. Now that would really send a message to the people in charge.

Selectable Output Control is MPAA's new plan to stop people from watching movies

The MPAA’s attempt to add more DRM to broadcasts through Selectable Output Control failed when the FCC rejected their claims, but they’re not giving up. Or rather, the man behind the curtains has taken up the crusade. Sony will now take on the FCC to get SOC into people’s homes. Some people are surprised that the same company that fought the infamous Betamax case against Universal Studios has now done a 180 on the principles. It’s no surprise really, because principles were never in play – Sony were defending their own interests back then as a CE manufacturer, and now they’re defending their own interests as a studio, which they did not become until 1989. The MPAA’s withdraw might be due to the current economic climate, as they’re shedding a huge number of staff. While it would be easy to point and laugh, but for many of the people laid off, it was only a job to them, and the real “bad guys” are the people financially backing the MPAA.

The EU is trying to ban The Pirate Bay, while Danish ISPs being forced to also ban the torrent site has reacted negatively to the request and will fight this move. Meanwhile, TorrentSpy will try to appeal the $111 million judgement made against them. In Australia, our second largest ISP iiNet’s court case has started and iiNet has labeled studio efforts to sue them to being “like suing the electricity company for things people do with their electricity”. Quite right. The law firm representing the AFACT, Australia’s own version of the MPAA, is Gilbert & Tobin, the same law firm that sued Kazza in Australia and a firm that I’m not totally unfamiliar with.

High Definition Onto HD new now. Reports say that $150 Blu-ray players are coming soon, which is good news for those still think prices are too high. However, $100 might be the perfect price for Blu-ray players, and people might still wait until this price is reached.

Netflix on the Xbox 360: Already a million subscribers

I say they should just sell players at cost, and then get studios to subsidize CE firms through future revenue sharing. If everyone has a Blu-ray player, then Blu-ray wins against DVD, even if not all people are buying Blu-rays. Of course, CE firms came into this wanting to make more money, not less, and studios the same, and revenue sharing won’t help either party achieve all that they had wished for. To further illustrate this point, this week’s Nielsen VideoScan sales figures, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, shows that for every extra dollar earned by Blu-ray, DVDs are hemmoraging an amazing $7.20 in lost sales compared to the same time last year. The pro Blu-ray people will say that’s an extra dollar that otherwise wouldn’t have been earned, while the anti Blu-ray people might point to the cost of upgrading to Blu-ray forcing people to spend less in the short term at least. Either way, the effects Blu-ray has on the home video market is currently quite underwhelming.

The latest research now says that Blu-ray will thrive until at least 2017, and only then will video on demand take over. I think that’s a bit optimistic, because VOD is already here. Even in a typically technological backwards country like Australia (well not for gadgets and such, but for things like broadband and infrastructure), we have two types of VOD (near, and push – see the linked news item and my posts in the discussion thread for more info) available to almost every home already (through paid subscription). IP based VOD will be here as soon as broadband speed and bandwidth catches up, there’s no other piece of technology that needs to be invented, and most people already have several devices capable of viewing VOD (any device with Internet connection, phones, game consoles, and now even TVs). And a million people in the US has already subscribed to the Netflix service on the Xbox 360, the speed of uptake indicates there is very much a market for VOD and that the technical barriers are quickly falling.

And finally in gaming, Sony might start using a 45 nm process to make cell processors (or rather, Toshiba will and Sony will buy it from them), which could cut costs as well as make the PS3 run even cooler. Anything that goes towards making the PS3 cheaper can’t be a bad thing.

Microsoft has finally fixed the HDMI issue introduced in the NXE update. Better late than never, I suppose.

And Amazon is launching a game download service. Mostly small, independently produced titles at the moment, but everything is moving towards downloads these day, aren’t they?

That’s all the news I found this week. Will try to bring you more next week if I can find them/make them up in time. See ya.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (8 February 2009)

2008 Game of the Year – Vote Now!

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

I have just published a poll that you can vote in to choose the best game of 2008, on all platforms. All the best selling games of the year are on the list, and also some games that, although did not top the monthly top 10, were still innovative enough to be considered. I hope I haven’t missed out on any obvious candidates, but I probably have, and if so, please post a comment to let me know.

Once the votes are in, the results will be published here and analysed.

You can vote in the poll by going to this page.

Posted in Gaming, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on 2008 Game of the Year – Vote Now!

Weekly News Roundup (1 February 2009)

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

It’s been deadly hot here in Melbourne, Australia. Above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) weather, compounded by the electricity grid melting down, causing the A/C to fail. The Windows “Hibernate” feature became a familiar friend as I turn on the computer to do some work and then had to quickly hibernate to prevent the CPU from blowing up.

Firmware HQ - All your optical drive firmware needs

But work is work, and I can finally reveal what I, and many others, have been working on in secret (well, not really) all this time. Say hello to Firmware HQ, the new firmware download site for your CD, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray (and whatever comes next) drives. ImgBurn‘s LIGHTNING UK! came up with the idea and worked on many of the finishing touches, I worked on the php/mysql stuff and Digital Digest is hosting the site (as well as the official forum), ImgBurn beta testers and our forum members worked on getting the data entered in, and many others contributed in many other ways. It’s not a huge website by any means, but it has nearly a thousand firmware files for download, and more will be added as time goes by.

For Digital Digest, this will be the first of many projects over 2009 as we try to expand the website by taking some existing popular content and to expand on them. I can’t say much now, mainly because I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about yet. To be blunt, 2008 was a bit crap in many ways for many people, and while 2009 hasn’t started well with Shingles and whatnot, I’m more determined than ever to get more work done. That is unless another game like Fallout 3 is released, then I might have to take a month off (and yes, I did download Operation Anchorage).

A new version of the ATI Catalyst drivers were released, along with a new version of ATI Video Converter. At first, I thought it has improved support for ATI Stream, ATI’s GPU assisted video encoding engine, but it didn’t turn out that way, in fact, it might have been a bit worse. ATI needs to get their act together to battle Nvidia’s CUDA, and that means proper video encoding acceleration that uses close to 100% of the GPU, not the intermittent 15% that ATI Video Converter current uses.

Okay, that’s it for … oh wait, I haven’t done the weekly news review yet.

Anyway, let’s start with Copyright news. Monty Python video clips were one of the most pirated clips on YouTube, until the Monty Python people decided to take action. Instead of hiring teams of lawyers, they decided to open their own channel on YouTube and offer free high quality video clips of their most popular content. And guess what, sales of Monty Python DVDs are now up 23,000%, all thanks to pirates who pushed content owners into taking action, but not through litigation, but by giving people what they want. How’s that for fighting piracy?

Comcast: "Arresting" the wrong people for piracy "crimes"

But those stuck with the idea that litigation or policing action are the only way to prevent piracy are still at it. AT&T and Comcast are now copyright policeman for the RIAA, by spying on their customers, following their every click, and then making judgement on whether what they’re doing is illegal or not, without a judge or jury in sight. And to nobody’s surprise, cases of mistaken identity and perfectly innocent users have been persecuted by Comcast, due to Comcast’s own stupidity it seems. There is a reason why you need judges and juries, and not rely on policeman to make all judgements, especially policeman owned by a private corporation. And to pay for all this, or perhaps as an alternative to policing action, is to label everyone as a pirate and then make them pay for it up front by introducing a piracy tax. I’m actually not totally against the idea provided that the tax is a small amount, maybe $5 a month, and that this allows unlimited downloading of pirated stuff without penalty, as technically, it’s not really piracy if I’ve already “paid” for it. But I’m sure the RIAA/MPAA is looking at $50, rather than $5.

The DRM approach once again shows the weakness of the system, when purchases become merely rentals that content owners can at anytime revoke your right to them, even if you’ve already paid them time and time again. This time, it’s PC DRM for the game Gears of War, which “expired” along with other games that use the same DRM because the DRM publishers forgot to issue updated certificates for the game. People with pirated versions enjoyed playing their games through this “black-out”, so there’s yet another incentive to “go pirate”.

If “go pirate” is a slogan that you like, then perhaps you might want to consider becoming a fully paid members of the US Piracy Party, which is launching itself in California.

Let’s get to the high definition news. People who read the WNR knows that you cannot ever accuse me of being biased *towards* Blu-ray. But those who read my weekly Blu-ray sales figure analysis will have seen that I have been pretty kind towards the progress Blu-ray has made, and make no mistakes, it has made progress, especially in the last two month. The progress has largely been made by The Dark Knight (and Iron Man), followed by a series of key catalogue releases by studios previously favouring HD DVD. King Kong, is the latest example. As is Band of Brothers. Bourne Trilogy, sales figures available next week, will be a hit too. These titles have allowed Blu-ray to gain significant market share easily, because hardly anyone is still buying the DVD versions of these films, most already owning them, and this allows the mostly Blu-ray exclusive editions to dominate. For example, 89.62% of all King Kong movie sales were on Blu-ray in the week it was released. And we’ve already established that the people buying Blu-ray movies are early adopters or enthusiasts who don’t care that much about pricing, and so in a very week DVD sales environment, Blu-ray is thriving.

Max Payne, also recently released, is an interesting example. A movie that flopped, but got to the top of the sales charts, ahead of The Dark Knight, on Blu-ray. The connection of the movie being based on a video game, and Blu-ray relying on a video game console, is not lost. Time to release Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter and all those awful Uwe Boll movies on Blu-ray?

Sensio 3D: Now the official 3D standard for the DVD Forum

If crap video game adaptation can’t help Blu-ray, then perhaps 3D can. And maybe it can help DVDs too. The DVD Forum has chosen a 3D standard which it will now consider official: Sensio 3D. That may sound like big news, but remember that HD DVD was the official DVD Forum approved HD format, and we all know how that ended. The official 3D standard for Blu-ray is still to be decided, hopefully it will be Sensio 3D as the last thing we need is another format war.

And while not strictly HD news, but the US is nearing a Digital TV only age, with analogue to be cut off. Not everyone is happy of course, but with these type of big changes, you can never please everyone. There was talk of a delay to get more people on-board the digital train, but it looks like to have been defeated in the senate. Come the cut off date, a lot of people are going to be wondering why their TV suddenly stops working. Here in Australia, we’ve already delayed the cut off date by 2 years. This is despite DTV boxes available for the price of a Blu-ray movie these days, and almost all new TV sets having one built in.

And also not exactly HD, but since we’re getting near to the gaming section below, it’s better if I put it here. Xbox 360 and Netflix’s video streaming deals seems to have paid off, with up to 400,000 new subscribers being predicted for Q1 2009. If this pays off, then the chance of Blu-ray coming to the Xbox 360 has just went from slim to none.

And onto gaming. Sony say no again to price cuts, but this time there’s no rubbish line about the PS3 being good value or even too cheap.

No, instead, it was a very honest assessment of the current situation by SCEE’s David Reeves in which it was admitted that while the PS3 is too expensive, Sony cannot afford price cuts because they’re in trouble financially, with losses of more than $2 billion predicted for 2008. Remember that Sony still loses money on each and every PS3 sold, so a cheaper PS3 means more losses pre console, which is compounded by the fact that a cheaper PS3 will sell more. But then again, without a significant hardware presence, Sony will find it hard to make money off the games, which is the real money earner for the industry. So short term pain could equal long term gain, but with jobs on the line, nobody is going to want to take such risks. So overpriced PS3s for the short and medium term it is then, at least according to Reeves.

Operation: Anchorage adds to the Fallout 3 Universe, but only for the PC/Xbox 360

New downloadable content for Fallout 3 was released during the week, dubbed “Operation: Anchorage”. Unfortunately for PS3 owners, it is available for the PC and Xbox 360 only. The next DLC will be “The Pitt”, and “Broken Steel” in March. PS3 owners will miss out on all of these DLCs, thanks to a Microsoft exclusive deal, but missing “Broken Steel” would be the biggest blow because this patch will allow after-ending play and upgraded level caps, thus turning Fallout 3 into a whole other beast when it comes to longevity. This is what happens when you don’t have the most number of consoles in the US (and don’t have control over the PC gaming industry like Microsoft has thanks to the DirectX and Games For Windows platforms) – developers will be more likely to sign exclusive deals with the platform that’s most likely able to sell the most copies of their games. Something for Sony to think about I think when they decide to cut prices or not.

As for “Operation: Anchorage”, I’ve nearly finished it having started it only yesterday. It gives the Lone Wanderer a bit more interaction with the Brotherhood Outcasts, and you get to see the world as it was before the nuclear holocaust, albeit one that’s freezing cold and in the middle of a war zone. It’s not a huge add-on, probably not worth the 800 Microsoft points that it costs, but if you’re like me and a Fallout 3 freak (mutant?), then you’ll buy it without a second thought.

I think that’s all I have for next week. Don’t forget to visit Firmware HQ!

Posted in 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 (1 February 2009)

Weekly News Roundup (25 January 2009)

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve, also the eve of Australia’s national day – celebrations here in Australia are going to be doubly big tomorrow, lots of flag waving and dragon dancing. I’m almost over my Shingles outbreak, not really feeling much discomfort anymore, although I’ve been quite busy lately with a new project that will soon be made public. It’s not a Digital Digest thing, but it’s related, and that’s all I shall say for now. But that’s not the only reason I was busy, because I had the December 2008 NPD figures to analyse plus write a yearly NPD roundup, both of which are now up. I love graphs.

Let’s start with the copyright section, the last one of the Year of the Rat, which has been a pretty bad year (for us Monkeys, anyway). Unless you’ve been living (or is that hiding) under a rock for the last week, you should have seen the amazing pictures of the Obama inauguration. Change starts this week, but on the copyright front at least, things seems to be moving in a bad direction.

Obama is now the President, but will he stay true to his pro-consumer stance

Another Obama pick for a top level position has been revealed as yet another anti-piracy advocate, previously working for the BSA. I must say that Obama, who said all the right things during the election campaign in regards to consumer rights, and had the backings of all the pro consumer rights groups, is really taking this whole “team of rivals” thing a bit too far with these picks. We all knew that Joe Biden was a friend of the RIAA, but all this pro big media stuff just doesn’t really fit in well with the rest of Obama’s agendas. Let’s once again hope that these moves are just there to balance out the administration’s views, and that in the end, it will be Obama’s pro-consumer views that will be the policies of the administration, not those of these anti-piracy advocates.

In the “taking copyright control too far” segment for this week, the website in the spotlight it YouTube. They are now apparently blocking material and then asking questions later, blocking legal material and forcing the rightful content owners to lodge a dispute before their content will be uploaded. That’s the problem with algorithm based copyright detection, it’s not very accurate, but to have a human pair of eyes look at everything would be cost prohibitive, unless the RIAA/MPAA want to foot the bill. YouTube is now offering downloads on selected videos, so you can imagine why they might be a bit more paranoid in regards to copyright.

The Dutch have commissioned a report which says that P2P actually benefits the economy. You know what, this doesn’t surprise me one bit. People used to the convenience of P2P will naturally consider other forms of legal Internet distribution. A track you downloaded off P2P illegally just might lead you to buy the album legally. Same with games, movies and all sorts of other things you can buy and download online. It’s like the modern day shareware floppy, try before you buy. Plus there are the other benefits to bandwidth saving and reduction is hosting costs, which will benefit businesses that host a lot of downloads.

In High Definition news, I want to clear up something first. I get asked why this section is called “High Definition News” and not just “Blu-ray News”. Well, that’s mainly because while Blu-ray is obviously the main focal point of HD at the moment, HD covers much more than just Blu-ray. Topics such as H.264, HDTV, HD downloads, GPU acceleration and even 3D TV are all covered here, so calling it simply “Blu-ray” news would be a bit misleading. Besides, I’ve got the Blu-ray logo to represent this section, and the writing is in blue, so that should appease the fanboys somewhat I hope.

To prove the above, the first story I’m going to post is one about how 3D HDTV is going to fail. I’ve said something similar before, because as long as uncomfortable glasses are required, nobody is going to take it all that seriously. And when glasses aren’t required anymore (holographic vision? HDHV?), will Blu-ray or even TV still exist? Holorooms, perhaps?

Porn is driving the HD industry, Blu-ray and HD downloads included

Pornos. Now that has gotten your attention, it looks like you’re not the only one who is interested, because once again, porn is driving the new HD industry. However, the article mentions not only Blu-ray, but also HD downloads, which are possibly a better idea for porn as it’s easier to hide. It’s again interesting to see industry mention HD, but talking not only about Blu-ray, but about the emerging download market.

And they just might need downloads to exceed, because home video is suffering in the face of threats it now faces from the video gaming industry. Blu-ray may help get back some of the money that DVD sales have lost, but even Blu-ray is only alive because of a game console, and the more money people spend on Wii, 360 and PS3 hardware and software, that’s less money they have to spend on movies. It is now a highly efficient process to extract money from consumers, and so there’s little room to get people to spend more money, which is what Blu-ray was all about. Not more money, but money better spend, is what people want, and you can’t really beat the interactive goodness and the longevity the average game provides, rather than the (rather short) 2 hour movie, even if it is in glorious HD (and games are now too, don’t forget).

This brings us nicely into gaming. Let’s start with something a little more tasteful, and that’s the news of another PS3 firmware update. Version 2.6 adds a photo gallery, plus DivX 3.11 support. As usual, wait until other willing guinea pigs have sacrificed their PS3s before attempting to update, and also be careful of the well known, but unacknowledged (at least officially), firmware update bug that’s borked more PS3s than any other problem, mine included.

Then we come to the less tasteful stuff, all from Sony (or at least SCE Chairman Kazuo Hirai) as they try to defend their pretty terrible set of figures from the latest NPD figures (all PlayStation hardware actually sold less in November and then in December, then the same months last year – the only game consoles to suffer this fate even in these harsher economic situations). First up, he bashes the Xbox 360 and Wii by saying that the 360 will soon be forgotten, no doubt in the long shadow the PS3 will cast over the entire gaming industry (my words, not his), and that the Wii isn’t even considered a competitor to the mighty PS3. No, that doesn’t sound arrogant at all, why do you ask?

The "soon to be forgotten" Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 in 2nd half of 2008

I mean the Wii has only outsold the PS3 by 7 million consoles in 2008 (in the US), which is actually more than the total number of PS3 sold (that’s right, the number of Wii’s sold minus the number of PS3’s sold in the US in 2008 is larger than the total number of PS3’s in existence over there). And the soon to be forgotten Xbox 360, which even outsold the PSP, let alone the PS3, only has double the number of consoles in people’s homes than the PS3, and only had 31% of the top 10 games sold last year, compared to the PS3’s mighty 5.77%.

And that’s not all folks. Hirai continues by saying that the PS3 has been made intentionally hard for programmers because they want developers to take longer to do what the PS3 is capable of doing, to extend the life of the PS3. Gobsmackingly hilarious, but it does explain why most multi-platform games are the same or better on the 360, despite the 360’s inferior hardware. So Sony are admitting they made things harder for everyone so developers can produce sub-standard games at first and only produce games that’s worthy of the PS3 later on, all to make the PS3 last longer? How about making games that are great and better than the competition from launch (I know, controversial), so you can establish yourself as the dominant console for years to come. And better graphics and less buggy controls is not what people want anymore – it’s the innovative concept of the games that people want, and you don’t need 8 cell processors to allow this to happen (cf. Wii). Of course, their strategy worked perfectly for the PS2, but you only have to look at what other consoles the PS2 was in competition at that time, and what the PS3’s competitors are this time round, to see why it might not work for the PS3. Plus the pricing differences between these consoles.

Say the PS3 is a superior piece of hardware. Say that the PS3 was the last console to be released compared to the Wii and 360. Say that the PS3 is better value because it is also a high quality Blu-ray player. But don’t try to justify your mistakes, and the PS3’s many flaws, by making stuff up like this. And I still hold up hope that all of this is just lost in translations stuff, and not really what it appears to be right now.

Sorry for the rant, but I’m not alone in thinking Sony aren’t doing all they can to make the PS3 the best console on the market, and it’s hard to hear them say that this was all intentional and part of their plan.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this week. Hope the year of the Ox is as good for you as it appears to be for us Monkeys, and that ox (bull) is a good omen for the stock markets. See you next year/week.

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 (25 January 2009)

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