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Weekly News Roundup (3 January 2010)

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Welcome to this side of 2010. Feeling any different yet? More futuristic? More spacey? Well, it is the year we make contact and all. As expected, news is fairly non existent, so I’ll spend most of this WNR looking forward to the new year. But first, let’s go through the news …

The proposed UK anti-piracy law will cost more than expected, says the UK government, which still plans to press ahead with the changes. The cost is estimated at half a billion pounds a year, or around $USD 807m, and could see up to 40,000 households lose the ability to pay for the Internet. Remember that this is all the government’s own projections, which might even be far too optimistic. And the most worrying thing about this all is that it might not even stop piracy, as encrypted P2P is now more and more popular and the proposed system will not be able to monitor or stop such activities. It is also unknown why the supposed beneficiaries in this arrangement, the copyright holders, aren’t putting money where their mouths are to solve their own problems (the money paid to lobbyist withstanding).

Blu-ray sales have done extremely well in the second half of 2009, and the last two week’s worth of available data were both record breakers in terms of weekly revenue (see stats). The continuous stream of hit releases in the second half of 2009, many of which are just the right kind of movies for your typical Blu-ray high spender (young, male, home theater enthusiast), have really helped the format. We’re nearly at the stage where 1 in 6 movies sold are on the Blu-ray format, which is still someway away from becoming truly mainstream, but at the present rate, it should get there. Whether Blu-ray can keep going at the present rate, or hit some resistance later on as the user base changes from enthusiast based to your average Joe (who may not care about HD, or even own a HDTV that can truly take advantage of Blu-ray), is hard to say at the moment. This next crucial step is always the hardest, although with HD becoming standard (both in terms of broadcast and TV set sales), Blu-ray seems to be the natural next step. There was also the news that even higher capacity Blu-ray discs may be available without the need (for most) to change hardware, thanks to new techniques developed by Sony and Panasonic.

And that’s the news part over. Let’s take brief look at 2010. Instead of making predictions that probably won’t come true anyway, I will simply go over some of the things that I hope will happen in 2010.

In copyright, I wish that common sense will prevail, but I think that’s unlikely. Instead, we’ll probably see a couple of more victories in the courts for the “bad guys” (and I know I said I won’t make predictions, but I can’t help myself). Governments will take these victories as mandates to radically destroy our rights to help big business, which has been an ongoing theme in the last year and a bit. The ‘P’ in ISP is also likely to change from “Provider” to “Police”.

BitTorrent will change to adapt of course, because if there’s one thing that digital piracy has shown us is that it can adapt much quicker than the time it takes copyright holders to even consider change. VPN and encrypted BitTorrent to make file sharing anonymous will make the task of monitoring piracy that much harder, which the powers that be will complain about, but they only have themselves to blame really.

But all is not lost, not if copyright holders finally see the light and give people what they want, when they want it. The “how” may mean some compromises by both sides, and by that I mean some form of DRM but not too harsh. Portability and “on demand” will be the driving forces behind this, and while we may never see the day when, for example, movie studios will let us make personal copies of our movies without restrictions, we might just get the next best thing through the likes of Managed Copy and Disney’s Keychest initiative. Speaking of Managed Copy, we shall see whether studios are serious about it in just a few months time, when it becomes truly mandatory and studios have no choice but to support it. If it does work, then it will probably cost money at first to be able to unlock the feature on discs, but as with “Digital Copy” and combos, competition will force studios to package MC in the same “combo” package, with an initial temporary price hike, which will soon dissipate thanks to the ever decreasing Blu-ray pricing. How long before studios start complaining that they’re not making less and less money from Blu-ray, just like what they’ve been doing for the last couple of years with DVD?

High Definition

It should be another bumper year for Blu-ray, since as mentioned above, the natural next step is to go all HD on every front, including home video. The previously mentioned portability and “on demand” are two things that Blu-ray is going up against, but Blu-ray players, ironically, may be the hardware behind enabling both. Managed Copy (or Digital Copy) can provide portability, which could be a lot more convenient and at least copies that don’t expire, and the Blu-ray player’s Internet connectivity and upgradeable software/firmware makes them perfect set top boxes for on demand services.

It would be nice if MC is properly supported and we see the emergence of Blu-ray servers, large storage devices that can store your managed copies for instant and disc less playback. Basically a Kaleidescape box for Blu-ray’s that won’t get sued by studios.

3D will make some impact, although the more I look at the hardware requirements, the more I think it won’t succeed. It’s one thing to watch 3D movies at the cinema, it’s another to watch it at home on your much smaller screen. And with hardly any TVs available to support the various nascent 3D standards, 2010 may just be too early for 3D adoption to occur. The whole gimmicky idea behind 3D, and the still ongoing debate as to whether 3D makes a film experience better or not, means that there’s a steep hill to climb for home based 3D.

And in gaming, expect the battle between the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 to heat up even more, as any of these three could end up the monthly top selling console by the end of 2010. The PS3 will have its Wii remote competitor out, and it will be interesting to see if this will hurt the Wii, which when I look at the their game lineup, is pulling further and further away from the mainstream (which may not be a bad thing). The Xbox 360’s Natal, if the rumored release date of November 2010 is true, will come too late in the year to make a huge impact. Although if it does work, then it could take gaming to the next level in the same way the Wii did a couple of years ago. And if it does work, expect a similar “camera” in a range of electronic devices, that will operate through gesture, face and voice recognition. Don’t be surprised to find that the Natal camera will work in Windows 7 with little fuss and that Media Center can now be gesture and voice controlled.

Okay, enough day dreaming for now. Hopefully, real news (that is, news that is made up by real journalists) will be forthcoming in the next week. See you next week.

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

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)

Weekly News Roundup (13 December 2009)

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

I’ve just finished compiling the November 2009 NPD US video game sales analysis. November is the second busiest month of the year, and competition between the three home based consoles has really hated up in the last couple of month, with the previously poorly performing PS3 challenging not only the Xbox 360 but also the Wii’s sales position, thanks largely to price cuts and the introduction of the PS3 Slim. But as you’ll read in the analysis, November was really only about one game, and that’s the controversial Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I’ve played the controversial level in question, and I wouldn’t exactly call it disturbing. It’s about as disturbing as shooting computer generated characters can get, and you do plenty of that during the rest of the game anyway (even if they’re all supposed to be bad guys, whereas the people you shoot in the airport level are “good guys”). And there is the option to skip the level if one wishes anyway. If one wants disturbing, try playing Fallout 3 as a player with evil karma, and relying on cannibalism to survive from one day to another.

Let’s start with copyright news. The second of the high profile RIAA versus civilians trial has just had its verdict finalized. Student Joel Tenenbaum now officially owes the recording industry $675,000 for 30 song downloads. The RIAA will be happy with how the trial went, although the negative publicity is something they probably wanted to avoid.

While feeling confident over the outcome, the RIAA ridiculously asked to censor Joel Tenenbaum’s speech, to prevent him from ever whispering the words “file sharing”, but the judge thought that this was a bit over the top, as there is this little thing called the US constitution that sort of frowns upon speech being blocked and proves that nothing is sacred when it comes to pursuing or protecting profits.

The Canadian Record Industry Association has been sued for copyright infringement

Nothing is indeed sacred, not even obeying the very principles that the recording studios are basing their fight on. Copyright, it seems, is only important if someone else breaks it. When studios have been doing it for nearly 30 years, then it’s no biggie. A class action lawsuit has been launched in Canada to sue the Canadian version of the RIAA for massive copyright infringement, with damages of up to $6 billion. Apparently, Canadian copyright laws allows copyright payment to occur after copyrighted works have been used, as long as they add the work to an updated list, and the studios have been exploiting this with back payment dating back to the 1980’s. And the list is now 300,000, that’s 300,000 copyright works that the studios have made profits that they have yet to provide payment for, and that’s apparently fine as long as they promise to do so at some unspecified time in the future. Sounds like a good excuse that downloaders of pirated materials can use: “honestly, I was going to pay for it at some unspecified time in the future”.

A couple of weeks ago, a woman was arrested for recording a whole three minutes of the new Twilight movie. And she hadn’t even intended to record the movie for piracy, she simply recorded a small part of it while filming her sister’s birthday party, which took place at the cinema. But regardless, she was charged with a felony and faced three years in prison, I guess one for each minute of the film she recorded or something. New laws were introduced at the lobbying of the MPAA to punish cinema cam recording pirates, and as with most new copyright laws, intent is no longer important as it is much too difficult to prove, and the MPAA wants to put in as many shortcuts as possible when it comes to prosecuting pirates. In this instance, there was obvious no intent in pirating “New Moon”, and yet there was an arrest and charge, and it’s exactly what happens when shortcuts exists. It was only until last week, and after public pressure and even support for the accused from the director of the new Twilight film, that the charges were finally dropped. The MPAA apparently didn’t want to go through with the trial. I guess no harm done, except for one ruined birthday party, a traumatized woman and apparently the lost recording of the party, as the recording has been confiscated (can’t let those three minutes get leaked out or anything). In unrelated news, US and Canadian cinema box office receipts show 2009 to be the most profitable year ever, finally breaking the $10 billion dollar mark and a whole billion dollar more than 2008. This online piracy thing seems to be really hurting the movie studios.

And yes, one can argue that while cinema income is up (I would guess that has a lot to do with the quality of releases this year, versus the strike affected 2008, plus the popularity of the cinema only 3D experience), disc sale income may be down because online piracy affects it the most. DVD revenue is down compared to last year, that’s for sure, but actual disc volume may not be down much in a recession year, it’s the drop in retail pricing that has affected DVD revenue more than piracy ever will. And with Blu-ray added in, total revenue is not as down that much at all. And that’s before you even take into account digital delivery. Put it this way, the increase in online piracy, and it has increased, has been much more dramatic than any decreases in either cinema or home video sales. And as I’ve just done the video game sales analysis, home console game sales have dropped compared to 2008 as well, but piracy for the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 have always been quite low, certainly compared to DS and PC gaming. So it’s really questionable what percentage of the DVD revenue decreases can be blamed on piracy.

Speaking of video game piracy, EA’s CEO says that pirates are customers too, and they shouldn’t be ignored or attacked. Speaking about the increasing popularity of Downloadable Content (DLC), EA’s boss thinks that while pirates may be pirating the retail boxed versions, they are still paying for DLCs, mainly because it’s often inconvenient to download these illegally, especially if the games and DLCs are multiplayer oriented. If true, then I think all this proves is that people are willing to pay, just not as much as game publishers have been wanting for the boxed retail version. If full games were priced at the same price point as your typical DLC, would anyone actually bother to pirate them? And if PC piracy rates are as high as some claim, then we could be talking about hundreds of percentage point increases in sales, which would more than make up for the 50 to 80% drop in revenue per game. A bit simplistic perhaps, but the principle is sound I think (ie. cheap stuff sells more).

High Definition

Moving on to HD news. More details have been revealed about the implementation of Managed Copy by Scenic Labs, which produced the first three Blu-ray discs to feature Managed Copy. For fans of MC, it doesn’t look great to be honest, because while we already know that MC supporting hardware is some ways away, the actual implementation is nothing more than a serial number and an XML file at the moment. Ars technica’s headline describing Managed Copy being nothing more than “serial nos., prayer” probably says it best.

And even the instructions on how to obtain the ISAN serial number and the content of the XML file was something that Scenic Labs found hard to obtain, eventually having to contact the AACS-LA directly (they are responsible for the MC specs). At this rate, it could be another year or two before we see the first MC supporting hardware, and it’s very likely that by then, Scenic Lab’s discs might not even work with the future MC implementation. Scenic Labs have done the honorable thing and said that if their discs don’t work, they’ll give away free downloadable versions of their discs if one can prove ownership via a photo of the purchased discs. Not exactly 21st century level authentication, but it’s still much more realistic than relying on MC at this stage. One can only hope one of the electronic firms and studios, most likely Pioneer and Disney (both company’s products were seen in the recent demo of MC), will push ahead even if all the others seem disinterested. Having MC, and being able to make a 1:1 copy of the movie without the need to have the original disc, would be fantastic for home theater enthusiasts who have already built digital media servers full of content that they’ve had to rip illegally as no legal alternative existed. Of course, this means giving more control to consumers, and less to the studios, and this perhaps explains their reluctance in pushing forward with MC.

Toshiba's Blu-ray player is now available, but it's a bit underwhelming

Toshiba’s first Blu-ray player has been released and reviewed. While it’s a quite capable Blu-ray player, it seems that’s all it is. There’s no video streaming, and it doesn’t even feature Toshiba’s XDE upscaling technology. It seems Toshiba was content to be conservative with their first Blu-ray player, which I guess is understandable in many ways following their failure with HD DVD.

The other bit of HD related news was that the WHDI specs have been finalized. Think of WHDI as wireless alternative HDMI, of which there are several competing formats. WHDI seems to be one of the better supported at the moment, with Sharp, Sony, LG, Hitachi, Motorola and Samsung all behind the format. Unfortunately, many of these companies also support the WirelessHD standard, of which Toshiba, Panasonic, Philips, NEC and Intel are additional supporters. You would think that these companies could just get together and adopt a single format, for the benefit of all, but you know that was never going to happen. And wireless technology is especially tough to get consensus it seems, what with Wireless N only taking about 50 years to get finalized or something.

And in gaming, I guess I should talk a little bit more about the November US video games sales figures, although there’s not much I can add to what I’ve already posted in my analysis. A lot of people were surprised at the Xbox 360 figures, as was I, but I think the real surprise was the bias in Modern Warfare 2 sales on the Xbox 360, which outsold the PS3 version by more than the 2:1 margin that the 360 holds over the PS3 in hardware numbers. Almost one in four Xbox 360 owners in the US purchased a copy of the game, and that’s only the stats from the first 20 days of release.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360 sold more than 4 million copies in the first 20 days

The explanation for this, according to Microsoft, is Xbox Live, the multiplayer service. There is some truth in this, and it’s backed up by stats as well, where Xbox Live stats showed that 2 million unique users were online on MW2 launch day, and 5.2 million hours of gameplay was recorded. There is a kind of loyalty that exists with respect to multiplayer games, because if you’ve played the first game on Xbox Live or if your friends are all on it, you’ll have to get on it too, even if your favourite console in the PS3. Microsoft’s focus on improving Xbox Live has obviously paid off, compared to the somewhat lackluster approach Sony has taken with the PSN.

Over in the UK, apparently Xbox 360 sales are on the up as well, at least according to a popular voucher website. We’ll have to take this news with a pinch of salt, since official figures are not available to back this up, but if true, then the lower pricing of the Xbox 360 may be appealing to recession hit Europe and UK. And the introduction of Sky Player on the UK Xbox 360 may also be a factor.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on long enough. Have a great week and see you in seven days.

Posted in 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 (13 December 2009)

Weekly News Roundup (6 December 2009)

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

Welcome to the last month of 2009. Usually, I would put something like “well, hasn’t 2009 gone by quickly” stuff, but I realise now that this isn’t true for everyone. Some people might have had a good 2009 and then it might seem to have gone by too quickly. Others might have had a horrible 2009, and will be happy to see the back of it soon. Some of you may actually be an artificial intelligence, and so time would seem rather constant to you and 2009 has gone by at exactly the same rate as you had expected.

There wasn’t a whole heap of news this week either, but rant on I shall.

In copyright news, more has been revealed about the “secret” copyright treaty being worked on, the ACTA. This secret treaty is being discussed by governments from around the world in full secrecy in South Korea, which could bring US style DMCA laws and French style “three-strikes” laws to every participating country. Now why any of them thinks this requires secrecy, I don’t know (the US quoted “national security” as a concern), perhaps they just don’t want the public backlash that such a discussion would ultimately bring about.

But we have the Internet. And nothing secret remains for long these days, and so through various leaks, the full picture of the ACTA has emerged, and it isn’t a very pretty one. The US submission to the treaty is particularly interesting, considering the “change of regimes” that occurred last year with Obama becoming president. But as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and the US proposals are, if anything, even more one sided when it comes to the treatment of copyright, with industry getting plenty of input (read lobbying), while opinions of experts, consumer activists, not to mention the public, is generally ignored. Or in this case, completely barred from even being part of the discussion. The US proposals basically plans to wind back all the gains made by anti-DRM activists, particularly in Europe, by removing the interoperability requirement, meaning DRM can be used as a way to force people to use proprietary formats. Lack of interoperability is bad for the industry and bad for consumers, but would seem attractive to short sighted companies wanting to maximize their profit potentials in the short term without benefiting anyone else in the process. The EU has recognized that interoperability is something EU citizens should enjoy, and have taken to court companies like Apple for preventing it through DRM. And this is why the EU is set to protest the removal of this requirement. The US proposals also back the French style “three-strikes” system, although it goes short of actually suggesting it be part of the treaty. 1,700 European ISPs have also lodged a complaint against “three-strikes”, but as they are not invited to the meeting, they will probably not be heard.

Web Giants like Yahoo and Google are against clauses in the Digital Britain copyright laws

Staying in Europe, UK is about to massively change their copyright laws to respond to the threat of online piracy, through recommendations made in the Digital Britain report. However, the Internet’s biggest players have all come out to argue against the recommended changes, and in particularly one clause which removes the need to have any sort of public or governmental consultation process when it comes to making changes in the future, the so called “Clause 17”. Faceboook, Google, Yahoo, eBay have all come out against Clause 17, calling it a destabilizing influence (if the government change, without notice, change the law at any time, then it makes it impossible for businesses to plan for things), and a bad thing for consumers which could lead to ever harsher penalties for online users (three-strikes can turn into one-strike, just by the say so of a minister). The government maintains that Clause 17 is needed to keep pace with technology and innovation. I guess they mean to keep pace with technology and innovation so they can stifle it at every turn. Governments around the world seen intent on using online piracy as an excuse to bring about anti-democratic laws, whether it’s to allow private companies to spy on people, or to use government’s resources and authority to do the biding of corporations.

Danish anti-piracy group says DVD ripping is okay, but their friends in the US still sues companies like Kaleisescape and RealDVD for offering commercial solutions

Remember the Danish home theater enthusiast that turned himself in to the country’s anti-piracy outfit, in order to highlight the conflicting laws in relation to breaking DRM? Henrik Andersen ripped his legally purchased DVDs so he can play them, without the original discs, off his media server. Under Danish law this is both illegal and a legally protected right, and Mr Andersen wanted to clear up the confusion by making this issue public. That he has done, and the anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen was supposed to reply to him personally by the 1st of December. The date went and past without a response, so Henrik decided to turn himself in to the police to escalate the issue. But Antipiratgruppen did eventually respond, and they have given the common sense reply that what Mr Andersen did is not something that they would sue people over. They didn’t say it was legal, just that they wouldn’t sue him, at the moment. Of course, groups that Antipiratgruppen supports and gets support from, like the MPAA, have sued companies offering commercial solutions to what Mr Andersen, like Kaleidescape, or products like RealDVD, so when groups like Antipiratgruppen say that they have no interest in suing consumers that have purchased legitimate products, it does not prevent them from suing companies that offer the same solutions to these consumers it seems.

And finally some good news in the courts in relation to copyright, with a Swedish court rejecting the MPAA’s demand to sue the web host of the BitTorrent tracker OpenBitTorrent for copyright infringement if they fail to shut down the tracker. The judge ruled that a web host must do a lot more than simply providing a paid for service to its customers for its customer’s actions to be ruled the responsibility of the web host. The MPAA even tried to imply that The Pirate Bay’s recently closed tracker was simply renamed to OpenBitTorrent, despite the fact that OBT existed long before The Pirate Bay’s tracker was closed last week. The fact that the owner of OBT might be one of the co-founders of TPB means nothing, as I’m sure many of the people who are experts in the field of BitTorrent in Sweden are in some way related to TPB, the most famous BitTorrent website in the world.

High Definition

Let’s move on to HD news. The last week might prove an important turning point for the Blu-ray format, but you wouldn’t know it based on the reactions from the major studios. Last week, well to be exact, last Thursday was the point after which all Blu-ray movies released had to be compliant with AACS’s mandatory Managed Copy requirement.

Now there seem to be some confusion as to the start date of MC, with some saying March 31 2010 to be the actual date. Well, both December 4th and March 31st are important dates for MC, the recently passed date being the date that, after which, all newly released Blu-ray movies are to support MC, while the March 2010 date is when it will be mandatory to label discs as supporting MC, and for companies to start promoting MC. Neither date will be as important as the date when the first hardware (or PC based software) comes out to actually support MC, up until then, MC is unusable.

Coral Reef Aquarium, one of the first Blu-ray titles to support Managed Copy

In any case, any Blu-ray movie with a original release date after December 4th will support Managed Copy, and all eyes was on which titles were to be the first to meet this requirement. It wasn’t a major Hollywood studio though that got the honors, but Scenic Labs’s trio of visual display discs that are now officially the first discs to support MC. Scenic Labs is a big supporter of Managed Copy, and were delighted to be able to offer it to consumers before anyone else, even if they do fear that the specifications will change before the first MC capable players are out and that their efforts this week would have been in vain. They are also offering to provide MC at no extra cost, unless there are operational costs that are not under their control like licensing and authentication costs. Scenic Labs quoted one of the major advantages of having disc-free version of the products is that the eliminated disc spinning noise will make “The Classic Fireplace” or the “Coral Reef Aquarium” much more life-life.

That’s another point of confusion with MC. Many people think it will be free, or that it used to be free but somehow studio greed got it changed to a fee based service. MC was never intended to be a free offer, although like Scenic Labs are proposing, studios could give it away if they wanted to.

Universal plans to bring HD DVD's combos back on Blu-ray, but is it really a good idea?

There was room for another innovation for Blu-ray, this time from Universal. You may ask why bring this up now, because this was reported several weeks ago, but we now have more details and it isn’t the same style of Blu-ray+DVD combos we’ve gotten used to from studios like Disney, where you basically get a separate disc for the DVD version of the movie. Universal were the champions of the HD DVD combo format, having the HD DVD movie on one side of the flipper disc, and the DVD version on the other. And now they are bringing the same thing to Blu-ray, starting with the Bourne trilogy. It’s not really that much of an innovation, now when the new ingredient is simply glue, but still marks a first for Blu-ray. Whether the consumer likes these sort of combos is another thing though, because unlike the Disney effort, you don’t get an extra disc that you can play in another player simultaneously (or one of the kids to destroy, another for the parents to keep). There might also be compatibility issues, even with such a simple change to the format, as was the case with HD DVD. And without a picture side, the discs looks less nice in my opinion, and it’s always difficult to tell which side is which because the center ring label is hard to read. And fingerprints, scratches, is another issue. In any case, with dual sided combos, along with Internet connectivity and mandatory Managed Copy, that’s all of HD DVD’s unique features transported over to Blu-ray, the same set of features that the Blu-ray people derided or fought against for much of HD DVD’s short lived life. You might also want to add sub $100 players to the list of “copied” features, you know the same pricing landmark that the Blu-ray group said marked the death of HD DVD.

But Blu-ray is going to die. Year to date Blu-ray sales stats were posted this week as well. As expected, Blu-ray sales are way up and is now very close or just above 10% in terms of both disc based calculations and dollar based. This will probably go up yet again by year’s end. What was also interesting is that DVD sales are also up from the same period, and this should mean that DVD sales should also beat the 2008 figures. The Blu-ray figures (year to date) have already beaten 2008’s total figures, quite comfortably. So combined, it should be a good year for the home video industry, despite the doom and gloom reports of how Internet piracy and DVD ripping is destroying the marketplace.

Speaking of market destroying, there is a fear that TiVo and other DVRs may DESTROY TELEVISION AS WE KNOW IT! It’s funny because there was once a time when people said TV would destroy everything else, and now we’re actually worried about the destruction of TV itself. In any case, the evidence is mounting and more and more people are changing their way of watching TV, and using DVRs to record programs, as opposed to watching it live. I think technology has changed the way people watch television, giving viewers much more power over deciding what to watch and when. Television will not survive if it does not adapt, and I think the traditional thinking behind “television programming” will change, as on demand takes over and programming decisions are left to the viewer, not some network executive. And that’s a good thing. But before that can happen, people will use existing technology to give themselves similar versatility, to record and then watch at their pace. This interim could spell bad news for networks though, as DVRs can skip the revenue generating ads that keep television free, unless they negotiate terms which sees ad skipping blocked on TiVo like here in Australia (but non TiVo devices will still skip ads happily).

Not much happening in gaming this week, so I’ll end this edition of WNR right here. This is the last week of the Womble EasyDVD competition, so don’t forget to get your entry in on time. See you next week.

Posted in News Roundup | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (6 December 2009)

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Archive for the ‘News Roundup’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (3 January 2010)

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

Weekly News Roundup (20 December 2009)

Weekly News Roundup (13 December 2009)

Weekly News Roundup (6 December 2009)

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