If I was a bit negative towards GTA IV last week, then I apologise. After another week with the game, I must say I’m now hooked. It’s always this way with games, first impressions can be a bit weak because you’re still finding your feet within the gaming world, but after a while when everything becomes second nature, it all feels like a much better experience. The one problem I have with the game so far (only 30% complete) is that there’s not a lot of things you could buy, no assets, only 3 different types of clothing store so far … I’ve got nothing to spend the couple of grand I’ve already saved up, only on ammunition which doesn’t cost that much. I’m sure I’ll have a different experience next week. Okay, onto the news.
In copyright news, in a preview of what a DRM infested future might be like, NBC-Universal accidentally enabled what is known as a “Broadcast-Flag”, which prevents recording of the content through software that supports the flag. One such software was Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center, and when it detected the flag, 
it immediately shut off the recording function, forcing many people to miss out on NBC programs that they had planned to time-shift (time-shifting means recording and then viewing programs after their original airing date, which is perfectly legal and a protected right under US law). NBC says it was an accident, and perhaps that’s what it was. But the design and incorporation of Broadcast-Flags into software is no accident, and in this case, it worked exactly as it should have. A worrying sign for the future, I’m afraid.
Before moving off to HD entirely, in a possible bid to fight against piracy, studios are planning to offer HD Video-On-Demand shortly after their theatrical debut, long before the movie becomes available on DVD or Blu-ray. Will it work? If the price is right, anything could work. Unfortunately, I suspect the price won’t be right.
Onto HD news proper, Wal-Mart will soon offer a sub-$300 Blu-ray player, possibly from Japanese firm Funai. The player will be Profile 1.1 compatible, but as you would expect from a budget model, would be missing out on a few features. Considering that HD DVD broke the sub-$100 barrier back in November of last year, this isn’t really something to get excited about, and with fully featured Samsung Profile 2.0 players and even Sony players to be available at retail for $50 to $100 more, this “budget” player may not find a market. Once Blu-ray reaches the sub-$200 mark, adoption rates should increase dramatically. For those using the PS3 as their Blu-ray player (me included), I still believe it is currently the best Blu-ray player on the market. Performance (quality and speed), features (Profile 2.0, large storage, wireless connection) and format support (decoding of all major audio formats to PCM 5.1) is what sets it apart from other players. Pricing is a bit higher, but remember you also get a media center/hub, Internet browser and of course, games machine for the price. 
But the PS3 as a Blu-ray player does have some limitations, but if you click on the link and see the comments, you’ll find that these are minor irritations at best. The one thing that the article has not mentioned and which I think is the biggest drawback of the PS3 as a Blu-ray player is that it’s not a standalone Blu-ray player … everyone knows it’s a game machine, it looks like a game machine and it just doesn’t fit in with your other HT equipment (there’s no LED display on the machine, for one).
While somewhat related to Sony’s victory in the HD format war, their profits are up as well to almost record levels. This is despite them still losing money on every PS3 sold, with claims that it is as high as $260 per unit. With PS3 software sales fairly limp (and software sales are where money is made in terms of game consoles), it would explain why PS3 price drops are just not happening at the moment, at least not as frequent as Xbox 360’s. But as a Blu-ray player and as a player that helped Sony win the HD war, the loss is probably worth it, because defeat in the format war was unthinkable.
But winning the HD war may have only decided which format loses the war against DVDs and downloads. A survey by well respected Harris Poll indicated that only 9% of non Blu-ray owners wanted one in the next year, despite being told that Blu-ray is the definitive HD format. Polls, stats, lies, damned lies and all that of course, but the general apathy is understandable as many people don’t know or care about the difference between composite and HDMI (I even know people who connect their PS3 using composite to HDTVs with HDMI inputs). It’s hard for people like me and people reading this to believe, but when you add in the good quality picture you get from upscaling DVDs, Blu-ray’s higher prices doesn’t seem all that attractive. And speaking of polls, I recently ran a few and while they are hardly scientific, but they do paint an interesting picture just before and just after the collapse of HD DVD … a future blog entry will hopefully analyse the results in detail.
While Blu-ray uptake might be relatively sluggish, the uptake of H.264, one of the video formats used by Blu-ray (actually, it’s now the most favoured format used by Blu-ray) is doing well. A couple of months ago I reported DivX purchasing MainConcept, which developed their own H.264 codec. The takeover is beginning to bear fruit with a beta program now available to test DivX’s own H.264 decoder, which is said to be even faster than CoreAVC. A decoder is only a step away from a encoder, and it’s easy to see where DivX’s future is headed (and one that I predicted long ago … pat on back for myself!). The project is codenamed “Project Rémoulade”, which is a reference to Project Mayo, the one that started the modern DivX codec.
And Blockbuster have turned a profit despite the video rental industry suffering a bit recently. The profit comes from sales of PS3s, Blu-rays, video games, which is in growth right now compared to the slowing video market. Why is this important news? It is important because it shows the convergence of the key video, electronics and video games markets, with the PS3 a prime example of “swiss-knife” type gadgets that aims to do everything. This very website/blog/newsletter is example of this convergence, as it’s hard now to cover Blu-ray but not the PS3, for example.
And so we converge seamlessly onto gaming news, there’s still no concrete solution to the GTA IV freezing problem on the PS3, which seems to only affect older models. A firmware update was released for the PS3 with “stability fixes”, but it does not relate to GTA IV, although it does add YouTube integration with a Japanese only game, which may be signs of future YouTube integration (allowing you to record and upload gameplay video, for example). Your best bet is to contact Sony support if you’re having the freezing problem, as they might have some solutions which they do not yet want to release publicly until further testing.
And so with good timing, April’s NPD US video game sales figures have been released while GTA IV is still the topic on everyone’s lips. So did the PS3 out-sell the Xbox 360 that analysts like Michael Pachter have predicted for two months running? Unfortunately for Mr. Pachter, he was wrong for two months running as the Xbox 360 out-sold the PS3 again, although only by a thousand units. So that’s 16 out of 18 weeks since the PS3 was available in which the 360 has reigned supreme, but will they be able to keep this up as the PS3 is catching up rather quickly. But the real shock of the NPD figures was that the Wii out-sold both the 360 and PS3 combined again, and not only that, it increased its lead in a month that should have been dominated by the 360/PS3 exclusive GTA IV. Both 360/PS3 sales were actually down quite a bit, so it looked like GTA IV had no positive effect on hardware sales at all.
Of course, April included the Easter holiday period which traditionally don’t sell well in terms of game consoles, and perhaps May will be more indicative of GTA IV led hardware sales, but the Wii express is not slowing down. In software sales, GTA IV dominated the software charts as expected, with the Xbox 360 version out-selling the PS3 by 1.85:1 also as expected (1.85 million units versus 1 million on the PS3). More information and analysis on the NPD figures in my blog post.
Despite what looks like two victories (one clear, one not so clear), Microsoft should be a bit worried about the Xbox 360’s performance. They need to compete with the PS3 not only on content, in which they are winning both for games and their multiplayer community, but also on “coolness” of the console. Jasper based Xbox 360’s will be available soon, and after that, Microsoft plans Opus and Valhalla codenamed redesigns that should make for a quieter, cooler and more reliable Xbox 360. I can see plenty of people upgrading their 360 consoles if the new builds are indeed quieter. And perhaps when the 360 is quieter and better able to stand up to comparison with the build quality of the PS3, we will finally see that Blu-ray add-on drive. And while it’s a bit late, the Spring update for the Xbox 360 should be coming soon and you can tell because the rumours have started flying around the Net. It’s pointless to guess what’s going to be in it, since most guesses have turned out to be completely wrong. Time will tell …
And that’s it for this week, good night and good luck.
Home
But enough about H.264 for now. let’s first look at the more mundane, but still somewhat interesting news in regards to the latest range of CPUs. Intel is just about ready to launch it’s new “Nehalem” CPU range in Q4 2008, which looks set to redefine CPU performance once again. But for now, there’s a few new CPUs from both AMD and Intel, and some price movements, at least here in Australia. Starting with AMD, their new Phenom X3 (triple-core) and X4 (quad-core). The original Phenoms were a bit of a disappointment, especially when up against the Intel Core 2 Duo range. But these new X3/X4 Phenoms are a different proposition, and they give genuine competition to the market dominated by the Intel E8200 and E8400, as well as finally providing a price/performance reasonable upgrade path to AMD’s ageing Athlon range. The X4 9750 come at an excellent price, and the 9850 occupies the region (both price and performance wise) between the 8400 and 8500. The X3s are all very competitively priced too. Remember, you get an extra core or two with the Phenom over the E8400/E8500 as well, so while performances are similar for current day apps, future apps that take advantage of the multiple cores will run better on the X3/X4s.
The same principle can also be applied to video encoding, and Nvidia recently demonstrated H.264 encoding on it’s new GTX range of GPUs. These are now dubbed GP-GPUs (General Purpose GPUs), and the GP means that these GPUs can do other tasks other than graphics processing. Because GPUs have unique architecture that helps them do certain tasks really quickly, these same optimizations apply to video processing too, and that’s why video encoding, particularly the very processor intensive H.264 encoding, can greatly benefit from GP-GPUs.
Let look at some specific examples. A 2 hour HD movie will require 10 hours of encoding on a 1.6 GHz dual-core system with integrated graphics. The same movie will take 5 hours and 33 minutes on a 3 GHz quad-core system also with integrated graphics. But on a GTX 280 with the slower 1.6 GHz dual-core system, the same movie only took 35 minutes to encode thanks to the GTX 280’s GP-GPU. 10 hours down to 35 minutes … now that’s what I call acceleration!
