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Weekly News Roundup (10 January 2010)

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Definition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (10 January 2010)

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)

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Archive for the ‘Video Technology’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (10 January 2010)

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)

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