DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to March. I love March. Not only because my birthday is in this month, but you know it’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and Autumn in the south, both lovely seasons to have after the cold/heat. Spring time means spring cleaning, and I’ve done a bit of it by rounding up some of the news posts that I’ve been posting and starting a new section for them. That new section is the Deals & Freebies section. This new section will have all the latest and best bargains and the occasional free stuff, for everything from Blu-ray to PowerDVD to free games. Even some stuff totally unrelated to this site will be covered, because a bargain is a bargain whatever it is about, right?

On with the news. Copyright news first, President Obama’s pick for the new boss of the FTC is a bit controversial. The new man, Jon Leibowitz, is a former MPAA lobbyist and this already has many concerned as to the direction the FTC will head in.

Fortunately, Mr. Leibowitz is not a current MPAA employee, and hasn’t been associated with them since 2004, when he became the Democratic FTC commissioner. Consumer groups have welcome the appointment, which is usually a good sign.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - get it cheap for $4.99

Last week, I talked about how cheap games equals less piracy and more profits through specific examples on Valve’s Steam download platform, and this is interesting again because of the new Deals & Freebies section. Even though Steam has DRM, when you’re paying peanuts for games, it doesn’t really matter all that much, does it? It’s only when you’re paying full price and then find out that you can’t play the game because haven’t fulfilled the DRM’s usually ridiculous requirements, such as  finger on nose counting backwards from 10, that legitimate consumers are a bit peeved. In one of the latest deals I posted, you can now download Lost Planet: Extreme Condition for only $4.99 on Steam, part of their weekend only 75% off offer (as I posted last week, 75% off seems to be the sweet spot in terms of sales/profit). Now the game is pretty good, although nothing special, but it is still on sales at Amazon and other places for $19.99, so $4.99 is a bargain really. And I know people who paid the full release price for it too. This might be one of those games you never thought about buying, but you might have downloaded it (illegally) anyway since there’s no financial risk. By putting the game on sale for $4.99, you attract the same people since $4.99 is nothing these days, and you get a fully licensed and legal copy for online multiplayer, and that makes it even more attractive than a torrent. If game companies can get more of these types of buyers, and cut down these “casual” piracy by turning it into profit, then they fight both piracy and loss of revenue, grow their user base and it’s a fantastic way to get less than stellar games to sell. And no, I’m in no way associated with Steam, either through an affiliate program or otherwise, so I don’t get anything for promoting this. But as someone who doesn’t want to see game companies go crazy in their fight against piracy, this is a much better approach that should be applauded and promoted.

In HD news, Panasonic is launching a new Blu-ray player in the UK that has a built in HDD to record programs from free to air broadcasts using the built in digital tuners. This isn’t a Blu-ray recorder, per se, but it’s half way there.

The reason I posted this is also to highlight how something like this may not be available in the US due to concerns of copyright. These concerns are usually much less of a problem in the UK, and here in Australia, where DVD recorders and HDD PVRs are a dime a dozen. Another reason for highlighting this is my believe that Blu-ray recorders aren’t necessarily a must-have. Of course it would be nice to record 1080i/p broadcasts onto Blu-ray, but with the cost of media added, there’s almost never a justification for doing so. I have a DVD recorder with HDD recording, and 99% of the programs that I do record are only to the HDD and erased soon after watching – there’s only a handful of programs that I will want to archive to DVD, and for these, DVD is enough. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that if I had to make a choice between having a Blu-ray recorder without a HDD, or a Blu-ray player with HDD recording, then I would choose the one with the HDD.

VUDU now allows you to buy HD movies, not just rent them

Now I’m not saying “death to optical media”, but optical discs are great for archiving, but not good enough for most other things. Cataloguing them is a pain, and they break or get lost and storage is another problem. With all digital stuff, everthing becomes much easier. VUDU will start to sell permanent HD downloads soon, compared to before when they only made HD stuff available for rental. This is what I like to see. With permanent HD downloads, you can watch the video as many times as you want, and if you accidentally lose or delete the video, you can re-download free of charge as many times as you need to. In other words, your movie library while being stored locally, is also available remotely and that also means backups are not necessary. The only problem now is download speed and HDD size, but these problems will be solved in time.

Back to Blu-ray. There is a perception that Blu-ray is too expensive, which is not really entirely true anymore if you look through Amazon’s extensive range of Blu-ray deals. But perception is reality, as they say, and that’s where Blu-ray is still suffering. Take millionaire basketballer Shawn Marion, when asked about switching to Blu-ray:

Hell, no! Blu-ray [Discs] cost too much. They cost like 35, 40 bucks apiece. I’m going to stick with the $19.99s. $14.99, $19.99, widescreen, I’m good.

He then mentioned that he was happy with his existing HD setup, which suggest DVD upscaling. So the perception of many people, even people as rich as Mr. Marion, is that Blu-ray is not worth the extra cost when upscaled DVD gets you 90% of what you already wanted anyway at lower prices.

The new Intel Atom processor can handle 1080p video. Or not.

Part of the problem with Blu-ray pricing is the licensing fees, which can get very complicated when you have a dozen different audio formats, video formats and disc technologies you have to pay for. So much so that Apple boss Steve Jobs even called Blu-ray licensing “a bag of hurt”. The people behind Blu-ray have finally realised that this is a problem, and have decided to simplify, if not reduce the cost, of Blu-ray licensing. It’s a move in the right direction, at the very least.

Wallpaper that doubles as a TV screen? Not so far-fetched, and could lead to huge TV walls just like in those sci-fi movies. YouTube’s 720p H.264 experiment is still going on, and there’s a guide that tells you have to test it out if you have the patience to upload up to a GB of video at a time. With even web video requiring fast CPUs for decoding, Intel is promising their new GN40 Atom chipset will be able to do 1080p video decoding, although many are doubting the claim. Assuming it is true, this could mean netbooks that can also double as Blu-ray players, once you add the external drive to it. At the very least. 720p YouTube videos should now play without stutter.

And finally in gaming, there’s the somewhat hard to believe rumous of a PS3 without Blu-ray, as a way to reduce cost. This one has popped up time and time again, just like the “Blu-ray add-on drive for Xbox 360” rumour. Neither has any element of truth to it, I suspect.

First of all, how would a Blu-ray-less PS3 even work? All PS3 games are published on Blu-ray discs, so do you then have a PS3 that won’t play *any* of the current released games? Will publishers have to produce and release two versions of the game, one on DVD and another on Blu-ray, to satisfy users? How much would this cost, and how many developers would simply stop making Blu-ray versions of the games? Most likely, if the rumour has any truth to it, is that the PS3 will still come with Blu-ray hardware, but it would no longer play Blu-ray movies. This would save a bundle on licensing, although most of this money goes to Sony anyway, so it’s not a 100% saving. And with Blu-ray hardware still required, and the PS3 hardware still the same, there’s almost no justification to doing this even in terms of purely financial reasons. But then again, the Wii doesn’t play DVDs and look how well it is selling, so maybe there’s something to it. Most likely not though.

And just to give you some cause for concern, too much gaming can cause a skin disorder from holding the controller for too long at a time. It can also make you lose social status, gain weight, cause another skin disorder called pimples and basically behave like an idiot on web forums arguing about how much more awesome the PS3 is compared to the Xbox 360  (or vice versa). Too much of anything is bad for you, and that includes writing a blog that’s too long.

So see you next week right here, and also on the Deals & Freebies section hopefully. Have a great week.

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

Firmware HQ - All your optical drive firmware needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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