DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

I almost forgot about Digital Digest’s 9th birthday on Friday. It was 9 year and 2 days ago that I secreted the very first version of Digital Digest onto the World Wide Web. I chose an easy to remember day to launch the site (4th of July), so I would not forget the site’s founding anniversary. But I still forgot. Mainly because I don’t live in the US I think so 4th of July is just another day here. Anyway, 9 years and 2 day of hair pulling later, here we are. Yeah!

Anyway, back to the news roundup.

Let start with copyright news, while I will talk more about it in the HD section, but out of the news that Toshiba was going to pursue an updated version of the DVD specifications (basically turn HD DVD into DVD 2.0), there was an interesting tidbit about adding managed copy for DVDs. This is something Microsoft has demanded for a while now. Imagine Windows Vista Media Center that plays all your DVDs copied and stored on your PC (or external networked drive) – no need for discs, no need to search your library and find that movie you want to watch … everything at the click of a few remote buttons. Managed copy will allow movies to be copied but still retain DRM, as to prevent piracy – I think that’s a good compromise for those of us who want to “digitize” our DVD libraries. On the other end of the “fair use” spectrum is the MPAA’s latest attempt to prevent movie piracy, by introducing a new form of movie distribution using a system called DreamStream. Because this is a streaming service, and not a download one, the actual movie doesn’t end up on users’s systems (the cache is probably encrypted probably to prevent ripping of the movie through the cache). What this will mean for Internet congestion and bandwidth costs, one can only imagine. Remember that these are the same people who thought that disposable DVDs was a good idea without any environmental impact as millions of discs are thrown away every year under that system.

The fight against YouTube continues from Viacom (no doubt with support from other studios). The judge in the case has now demanded Google hand over logs of which users watched what, when and where, to Viacom. Will the fight against piracy lead to the death of privacy instead?

In HD news, the BD-Live/Profile 2.0 push is continuing, with both Sony and Disney make sure all their future releases will be Profile 2.0 enabled. Of course, this doesn’t mean that these movies won’t play on your Profile 1.0 or 1.1 player, just that if you want to get best out of what you’ve paid for, you’ll need Profile 2.0. It’s all a bit confusing and ultimately unnecessary, but what can you do? My last blog post talked about two polls I ran on the site which basically told me what I already knew, that Blu-ray was too expensive (and hardware more so than movies). Another threat to Blu-ray is gaming, and a new report has just come out showing that the gaming industry is now bigger than the DVD (and Blu-ray) industry in terms of revenue.

Still not fully satisfied being the loser of the format war, Toshiba is trying to start a new war with their DVD 2.0 format, which adds a lot of the features found on HD DVD onto the DVD format. The video will be at a lower resolution than Blu-ray, a sacrifice necessary to fit HD movies onto DVD. There is also something called DVD Download DL, which I’m not quite sure what it’s all about. I think it will be some kind of downloadable DVD service, given that the interactive HDi elements found on HD DVD (and DVD 2.0) can be used as both a download platform (to download the movies) as well as the usual interactivity element (menus …). It’s an interesting project, but you cannot see Blu-ray backers supporting this format unless they see no future for Blu-ray, in which case, they won’t have been Blu-ray backers in the first place. Of course, Toshiba through the DVD Forum can push through a format and make it mandatory for any manufacturer making DVD players to adopt this new format – including Blu-ray backers. Heavy handed, but effective, as this would mean all Blu-ray players will have to have DVD 2.0 support, or they will have to remove DVD playback functionalities altogether (ie. commit marketing suicide).

But regardless of whether DVD 2.0 wins or if Blu-ray beats Toshiba again, H.264 will be one of the codec that will be used for encoding the video. H.264 encoding is a painful process at the moment, because a typical 2 hour movie will take 10+ hours even on the fastest PCs. But Nvidia will try to reduce this to less than 30 minutes with their new range of graphics cards that has GP-GPUs (General Purpose GPUs). Basically, these are graphics card that have GPUs that can also act as CPUs for purposes such as H.264 video encoding. And because GPUs have optimized architecture designed to speed up these sorts of processing, the encoding speed will jump through the roof. A x264 encoder with GP-GPU support would be a very nice thing to have.

And finally in gaming news, PS3’s much awaited 2.40 firmware update with support for in-game XMB and trophies has hit a hitch. It has been pulled because it caused corruption problems, and so some more testing and waiting will be needed before PS3 users can enjoy the new features, which are really just a rip-off of Xbox 360’s in-game Dashboard and Achievements. The 360 launched with Achievements enabled, and a strict system that governs how each game will provide Achievements and Gamerpoints. Unfortunately for the PS3, this is not possible as Trophies is more of an after-thought. So if you want trophies in games you’ve already finished, you’ll have to play through them again as Trophies aren’t retroactive, for example.

In 360 land, Microsoft is planning to have a series of price cuts around the world (it’s already official here in Oz). The rumours of a new 60 GB version of the console won’t go away either, as are the rumours of a motion controller. There is now even a rumour that a new Dashboard update will make it controllable using motion controls, much like how computers were operated in Minority Report by Tom Cruise.

That’s it for this week, more of the same next week probably. In the meantime, don’t forget to read my new guide: RipBot264 PS3, Xbox 360 H.264 Encoding Guide – it makes encoding H.264 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 very simple indeed. So easy in fact, that the new Quantum of Solace trailer I made was made using this method. Try it out for yourself, although I recommend you start with a very short clip as encoding can take hours.

Welcome back to another edition of WNR. Not a hugely busy week in terms of news, but still some interesting bits and pieces to chew on. Let’s not waste any time and get to it.

Starting with copyright news, in the war against torrents, torrent site The Pirate Bay are upping security measures by introducing encryption. This is mainly due to new laws in Sweden which came into effect last week that allows the government to spy on private communications, including Internet traffic. It was always a matter of time before technology makes torrent downloading impossible to track and stop. The whole idea of torrents itself was to de-centralize file sharing so it cannot be stopped, and encrypted communications channels and privacy filters is just the next natural step. But the war goes on for now and in the courts, the MPAA has scored another victory, this time against torrent site EliteTorrents.

DRM is still refusing to die, but progress is being made to make it a bit fairer. Microsoft is the latest to come out with a new piece of software for Xbox 360 owners that allows DRM’d content to be moved to another 360 box, which was previously not possible before.

Onto HD news now, here in Australia, Blu-ray is in a good position as the PS3 is the leading console here, not the Xbox 360 as in Europe or the US/Canada. Of course, Blu-ray prices are still high, for both hardware and software, and not just high compared to DVDs, but high compared to Blu-ray pricing elsewhere in the world. A local newspaper here has written a piece that urges users to wait before investing in a new Blu-ray player, as better and cheaper stuff will be coming soon. It does make sense, because Profile 2.0 players will soon become the norm, which will drive down prices of Profile 1.1. players, and it’s only a matter of time before Chinese manufacturers get in on the act. In the meantime, it might be worth studying just what else you will need to upgrade to Blu-ray. You can of course read my Blu-ray (and HD DVD) Buyer’s Guide, but Dolby has released their own guide which, obviously, concentrates on their new high bitrate audio formats designed for Blu-ray. The audio aspect of Blu-ray is something that will confuse quite a few people, with nearly a dozen new audio formats and output combinations to contend with. The short answer is to get an AV receiver that supports HDMI audio input, and that will almost always give you support for all the new audio formats, in combination with a proper Blu-ray player that can decode everything to PCM first.

There’s a bit more movement on the PC front too, which to be honest, hasn’t seen the mass acceptance that DVDs received at this stage, despite prices being lower. PowerDVD is now certified for BD-Live (Profile 2.0) and AVCREC (HD on DVD, using MPEG-4 AVC).

But Blu-ray has to hurry before other distribution methods start eating into its market share. There’s a whole bunch of news about new download services, even including one from Sony, so there’s an obvious trend towards that kind of distribution. Sony has struck a deal with DivX to provide movie downloads for Sony products (PS3, PSP, most likely). It will be DRM’d, but the DRM is user based, not device based, so movie files can be moved from place to place without problem. The PS3 will get the movie download service soon in the US, and then later on in Europe and Japan. So if even Sony is investing heavily into downloads, you can see why other analysts might question the future viability of Blu-ray. Netflix recently launched their own download service, requiring a hardware box from Roku. But Xbox 360 owners can now get around this hardware requirement through a Media Center plugin, and get access to Netflix’s services. Official support for Netflix services might be on the way too.

And in gaming news, Sony has revealed figures showing that the PS3 has cost them $3.32 Billion so far. That figure is still growing though, as every PS3 sold still loses money for Sony. Even Microsoft, who launched the 360 a full year before the PS3, has only just started making a profit, despite having superior software sales which is the real money earner in the industry. The PS3 will get a new graphics chip soon, which might help reduce costs a bit. And there is news of the upcoming 2.40 firmware, which promises to be a big one that finally adds in game XMB and a bunch of other features that Xbox 360 users have taken for granted.

The Xbox 360 might get a price drop soon, to take it below $USD 300. That should help recent flagging sales. On the other end of the scale, you can now buy a custom made Xbox 360, that also plays Wii games and acts like an iPod, for as little as $25,000. Hope this one doesn’t RRoD after 3 month!

I think that’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more WNR, unless posting news is outlawed by the MPAA before then. See you then.