Archive for December, 2007

Weekly News Roundup and the Year in Review

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

So here we are, the very last blog entry of 2007. Not much in the news recently (not that I’ve been paying any attention), so I’ve supplemented this otherwise short blog with a brief look back at 2007, should be interesting.

But to get the news stuff out of the way first.

In copyright news, Antigua has won a fight against the US which will now allow it to (once again) become a pirate and gambling haven. Or something like that. While this decision has a lot to do with online gambling, it also has copyright implications. While I can’t talk about it directly on this website, many people are aware that Antigua is home to a particular software that does certain things to protected video content. It now seem that this software, and software like it, might have found a safe place to reside without being subject to copyright laws of other countries. But a safe home might not be needed for much longer, as DRM in music at least appears to be dying a quick death. Warner, the last major holdout, has just agreed to release all their music DRM-free on Amazon. The next obvious step will be to get rid of DRM on movies, although it probably won’t happen as quickly since the movie DRMs usually reside on discs, rather than online formats. It’s not like music where DRM obstructs portability, which is the whole point of digital music downloads. DRM does not, at the moment, interfere with the normal operation of movie discs, other than being not able to backup your movies (which you’d be hard pressed to do with Blu-ray and HD DVDs, what with them being so large in size).

Moving quickly onto HD movies, apparently The Bourne Ultimatum and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix HD DVDs are outselling all Blu-ray titles this week, including the Blu-ray version of OOTP. This is not too surprising because Bourne is a format exclusive hit movie, and that the Blu-ray version of OOTP has had several production and distribution problems. In the end though, Blu-ray still won the week by nearly a 2:1 margin again. All those PS3s are really helping Blu-ray’s movie sales – even if every PS3 owner just buys only one movie, that will still give Blu-ray a huge advantage even if HD DVD owners buy 3 or 4 movies per player. What I think will happen eventually is that the HD DVD movie sales number will go up due to the people who purchased the cheap $99 HD DVD players (and subsequent sales) finally starting to purchase some movies. Remember that all the HD DVD players came with up to 12 free movies, so there is no immediate reason for people to buy titles until they’ve finished watching the free ones. And once Universal and Paramount start releasing their catalogue titles (older classics, such as Back to the Future or The Godfather), then the numbers will be more even. That’s my prediction for 2008 by the way, and it’s the only prediction I’m going to make since I suck at them. Speaking of sales, don’t forget to keep looking at our special online sales page for high def bargains. The current HD DVD BOGOF sale is going very well, with more than 20 HD DVD titles in the Amazon top 100 movies at times (the top 100 includes DVD, Blu-ray as well as HD DVD sales). Amazon has even released a statement saying they they sold so many high-def players that it could have filled seven (American) football fields. If you’re still confused about Blu-ray and HD DVD, don’t forget to read my new Buyer’s Guide, which even if I’m saying so myself, is pretty useful if you still need more information to make up your mind as to whether to get into HD or not (or which one of Blu-ray/HD DVD/both).

And that’s pretty much it in terms of news.

So onto the yearly review. 2007 has been an interesting year for myself and Digital Digest. The biggest even happened in March. I still cannot legally say much about what went on, except to say that it was a legal matter and that, for a while at least, it appeared that Digital Digest might not have survived to its 8th birthday (which was celebrated in July this year). But survive I/we did, and I think the website is a better one for it – there’s no longer any confusion toward its legal status, and it has forced me to concentrate on some other parts of the website which has been neglected (such as the Blu-ray and HD DVD stuff).

But apart from that, I think 2007 is when Blu-ray and HD DVD finally entered into people’s thoughts, if not their homes (I think this will happen in 2008). This time last year, nobody really gave a damn about the format war or sales figures. Paramount was still format neutral, and you wouldn’t even think possible that a HD player’s price would fall under $100. But from what I have seen, people are starting to think about getting into HD, and while it may still take a year for most people to start caring, I think the trend is there.

Another war that has been brewing is the next-gen games console war, a three way fight between the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360 and the PS3. You might say that there are really no losers in this war, at least not for 2007, since in their own way all three consoles have made significant gains. The Wii has become a fad, attracting people who have never played games before. The Xbox 360 has held firm despite RROD problems, while the PS3 looks less like the whipping boy that it was at the start of the year. 2008 should probably see the PS3 make more gains, while we might yet see some new innovations coming the Wii’s way.

2007 is also the year music DRM finally died. To be fair, it was a short and bitter life for music DRM – it never really had any chance because it’s hated by the most important demographics – the actual consumers. Hopefully, 2008 will be the year video DRM dies too, with CSS, AACS and BD+ being hacked beyond all recognition, I don’t think DRM will be missed at all, not even by the studios.

So that’s it for 2007. I hope you’ve had an eventful and pleasant 2007, and if not, I hope that 2008 will be much kinder. Happy New Year from me and everyone here at Digital Digest. See you in 2008.

ATI Radeon HD 3870 versus NVIDIA 8800 GTS 512 MB

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

Not too long to go until 2008. For some reason, I keep on thinking it’s already 2008. Whenever a new year is reached, I usually feel quite strange writing out the new year in dates, but for some reason, I just don’t feel that way with 2008. Strange.

I’ve previously blogged about the GeForce 8800 GT, calling it the card that everyone has been waiting for (a bit of an exaggeration, I know). In the last month, both ATI and NVIDIA have released new/updated cards that I think is worth blogging about, because these cards now give serious competition to he 8800 GT.

ATI Radeon HD 3870First from ATI is the Radeon HD 3870 (3850 also available). I remember a time when ATI meant the fastest GPU that you can buy. But recently, NVIDIA has managed to keep ATI at arm’s length when it comes to performance, with the Radeon HD 2xxx series being rather disappointing. The 3870 aims to correct this. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really come close, and the low recommended price of the unit suggests even ATI knows this. 3D performance wise, you will be better off with any of the 8800 series – the performance of the 3870 is certainly better than that of the 2xxx series, but that’s not really saying much. But in video performance, especially HD acceleration, the 3870 is probably the best card available on the market, as it features ATI’s AVIVO HD and UVD acceleration. Both H.264, and possibly more importantly, VC-1, receive full hardware accleration, which will be much appreciated when people start to watch Blu-ray or HD DVD movies on your computer. You certainly can’t beat the price, so it would be a good card to built a home theatre PC around, a system that will give you excellent HD playback, as well as fairly decent gaming (which past HTPCs were mostly incapable of). The card comes with HDMI output, so ATI’s thinking behind the card is also HTPC oriented. You can read a full review of the 3870 and 3850 here.

NVIDIA 8800 GTS 512 MBThe other new GPU is actually just a refresh of an existing range, the 8800 GTS. The original 8800 GTS came in 320 and 640 MB varieties. Some will remember that I recommended this GPU for the first “If I were to buy a computer today” feature back in September. It now uses a version of the G92 chip first introduced in the 8800 GT, and scales back the RAM from 640 MB to 512 MB. The new chip uses the 65 nm process, as compared to the 90 nm process in previous chips, so clock speed can now be ramped up to levels exceeding the GTX version and closer to the Ultra. In other words, it’s just a more efficient chip and the reason why the 8800 GT performs so well. The reduced process means more power efficiency and a cooler chip, which allowed the 8800 GT to be a single height card (but the 8800 GTS is a double height card like the Radeon HD 3870). But what does this all mean? Well, it simply means the 8800 GTS 512 MB is a kick-ass card 3D wise that will often outperform the more expensive 8800 GTX. In video/HD wise, it gives you the same acceleration as the 8800 GT, which in itself was a big improvement over the acceleration offered by all the other 8800 GPUs. Pricing wise, it should be closer to the 320 MB version of the GTS, rather than the 640 MB version – it’s about $100 more than the 3870, and about $50 more than the GT. You can read a full review of the 8800 GTS 512 MB here.

So how does the new 8800 GTS compare to the Radeon HD 3870? NVIDIA’s PureVideo HD does not support full VC-1 hardware accleration (it only supports partial acceleration), so the video performance is not as good as the 3870. So instead of close to zero percent CPU utilization, you might be seeing something like 10 to 15% on say mid-range Intel CPU. For those with slower CPUs, the 3870 might be a good choice to prevent CPU spikes that cause break-ups in playback. Otherwise, the 8800 GT/GTS will offer more than enough acceleration power to give you smooth playback.

But if gaming is a concern, than both the 8800 GT and GTS 512 MB are simply better choices. The latest games, like Crysis or Call of Duty 4, all require massive amounts of power and the 3870 is just not able to give you that. You feel that the 3870, had it been released about a year ago, would have been the card to have, but it really feels like too little too late from ATI at this time. For about $50 or $100 more, you can get the GT or GTS which will provide 15 to 25% better performance – the GT is even more suitable for a HTPC environment since it is a single height card and even a passive cooling version is available. The inferior HD acceleration found on the NVIDIA range is something I hope NVIDIA will address soon, but it’s not a huge deal considering the low price of mid to high range CPUs these days.

As for whether you should get the GT or GTS, it really depends on how much you are willing to pay for the extra 3D performance. For $50 more, it’s probably not a huge risk to go with the GTS.

Weekly News Roundup (23 December 2007)

Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

Welcome to the penultimate WNR of 2007. I love the word penultimate, I once thought that it was just a short way of saying the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”. I think I know what the word means now. It’s been a relatively quiet week, mainly because I haven’t been paying much attention as I’ve been writing my penultimate buyer’s guide for Blu-ray and HD DVD.

First up in copyright news is a legal analysis of the Sony BMG rootkit scandal, a look at why a company would try and do something so stupid and harmful to themselves. Speaking of doing harm to yourselves, TorrentSpy has lost their case against the MPAA because they were found to have destroyed evidence. If only they had been upfront about it, it might have made a more interesting and penultimately more successful legal battle. As someone who has personally being involved in a legal battle, I can honestly say that being truthful is your best weapon, especially if you truly believe you were correct in doing whatever you did to get you into trouble. Once you start destroying evidence and being evasive, it becomes a reflection of your guilt and the lawyers on the other side, as well as judges, can see it as clear as day.

Next up is HD  news. Digital Playground is releasing their first ever Blu-ray adult title after having released about a dozen ones on HD DVD. Ironically (or not), the movie “Pirates” is a spoof the popular Blu-ray hit “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Digital Playground was initial format neutral before giving up Blu-ray due to resistance within the US to adult Blu-ray disc pressing. They have now gone back to Blu-ray due to user demand, and Sony’s less harsh views towards pornography. The PS3 has been upgraded to Profile 1.1 as expected (so all those who took my advice about buying the PS3 for profile upgradability will be happy to read this news). The same update, also as I had predicted (in a forum post somewhere), also included DivX/XviD support, although initial tests show that it’s a bit disappointing compared to the 360’s support (no GMC/QPel support, which makes it equivalent to a standalone player from about 2 years ago). Meanwhile, hackers have redirected the Blu-ray website to point to the HD DVD one. Will Blu-ray supporting hackers retaliate? Are there any Blu-ray supporting hackers? I would think not many due to Blu-ray’s love for DRM, but you never know. And it’s been a bad week or two for Warner Brothers, as no less than three of their new Blu-ray releases contain glitches that will require disc replacement. I wonder how they managed to produce Blu-ray discs that were actually HD DVDs (don’t they use different manufacturing presses?), and how duplicated discs managed to get past quality assurance. Putting my Michael Bay Tin Foil Hat® on for a second, could this be a signal of Warner’s decision to go format exclusive early in the new year? Perhaps they just don’t care for Blu-ray as much as they do for HD DVD. Maybe the extra manufacturing cost and lower yields for Blu-ray discs means less money and time for QA? Or perhaps the Blu-ray manufacturing plant has had one hell of a Christmas party a few weeks ago that people are still being affected by it. Who knows. It is curious that they have not managed to stuff up any HD DVD discs, which have had the same number of releases as Blu-ray ones from Warner. HD DVD had glitches with the first batch of combo discs, but that was understandable since it was a new type of disc. Blu-ray’s recent glitches also include Disney’s “Pirates: Curse of the Black Pearl”, which had framing problems, and a replacement program is available for the disc.

In gaming news, most gaming sites now have results up for their “games of the year”. Halo 3 is on almost everybody’s list, as is Bioshock. Super Mario Galaxy is a sure thing as well. Mass Effect has received lots of awards and critical acclaim, and I’m not surprised at all after discovering the developer’s previous effort, Knights of the Old Republic II, a year or two ago. You can submit your vote for the game of the year on Digital Digest here. And having just tried the Call of Duty 4 demo on my 3 year old PC, I was surprised to find that it ran quite smoothly even though I was barely able to get Call of Duty 2 running in 640×480 on the same computer a year ago. And it looked quite good too, unlike most new games that I play on my aging system. And in something I will talk about more next week, there are a few new GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA that improves 3D performance and HD video acceleration – will they take the crown away from the 8800 GT, my currently recommended GPU? Find out next week.

See you next week.

Blu-ray, HD DVD Buyer’s Guide – Now available

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Lately, I’ve received more and more questions regarding either HD formats. It seems more and more “average Joe” types are starting to get interested in HD movies, which is not that surprising considering the amount of public attention (on the Internet, anyway) that the format war has been gathering, as well as the price war that is going on (I’m sure a lot of people heard about the $99 HD DVD player sale from a month or two ago).

Now normally, I would just refer people to my High Definition DVD FAQ – my goal in behind writing this FAQ was so that I didn’t have to answer the same old questions again and again. But as the FAQ was written a long time ago, before you could even buy into Blu-ray or HD DVD, it does not cover a lot on buying tips and such. And I don’t think this kind of FAQ should cover shopping tips anyway.

So with this in mind, I’ve decided to write a Blu-ray/HD DVD Buyer’s Guide. This short guide will cover these points:

  • Why you should want to buy into Blu-ray/HD DVD
  • Blu-ray vs HD DVD
  • Blu-ray buying tips
  • HD DVD buying tips
  • HD sound systems
  • Buying accessories
  • And more …

Update (26th December): I have now finished the guide, which you can read by clicking on the link below:

The Blu-ray and HD DVD Buyer’s Guide

Weekly News Roundup (16 December 2007)

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

Only three more weekly roundups for 2007, assuming I’m arsed to do them just before and after Christmas. This is the 13th roundup that I’ve done, setting a personal record for keeping up with anything for so long. I hope you’ve all done your holiday shopping, and that the shopped items include some of the very things covered by this blog (HD, gaming, movies). If so, then I think the people that will be receiving your gift will get a very nice surprise indeed.

The big news in the last couple of weeks, in regards to copyright/DRM, has been the Western Digital portable hard-drive scandal. WD apparently added certain DRM provisions in the bundled software that prevented sharing of popular media files due to “unverifiable media license authentication”, in other words, they couldn’t tell if your files are pirated or not so they basically assumed so. Now, the actual issue has been exaggerated a bit, some going as far as suggesting that WD drives have hardware control built in to prevent media sharing, but this is not the case. The software that comes with the drive is optional, and the drive supports other methods of file sharing that is not restricted. The software itself isn’t even very good. But what is clear is that DRM has gotten so out of control that even large companies such as Western Digital are too afraid to include software that do basic things such as media sharing on your own home network. And while the first step is a simple software control that can be easily bypassed, if the trend continues, then who knows where we will end up. The public outrage is a welcomed sight though, because as long as we’re angry enough to demand a DRM-free world, then we will get a DRM-free world (just look at online music buying and how public pressure, along with companies that aren’t afraid to listen to consumer demands, have basically killed off DRM in that arena). But if we don’t get angry, then the media owners are going to get more and more greedy and demand more and more control over “their” content (or rather, content they’ve gotten comparatively cheaply from artists forced into the studio system) – perhaps something like not being able to rip your CDs to MP3 because the RIAA thinks that’s copyright infringement (even though CDs are not protected, and even if you don’t share the MP3s with anyone other than yourself).

But I did find this news story about porn companies suing a certain YouTube-style adult video site quite funny for some reason. The Internet has probably been the worst thing that could have happened to the porn industry – who needs mail order videos when you could just log online and get unlimited porn. But it appears the increased competition has meant every increasing production values of pornos, umm … or so I’ve been told.

Moving on quickly, in HD news, Blu-ray player prices have dropped, for the first time, below the $300 mark. Samsung’s BD-P1400 can be had for less than $280 now on Amazon (I just checked), and at that price and with HD DVD‘s already low price, as well as PS3s being discounted all over the place, there’s very little reason not to get into HD now (especially if you already have a HD screen), and even more reason to project yourself from the format war and become HD neutral. Be warned though that the BD-P1400 is only profile 1.0 compatible, so I would save up and buy the PS3 instead for about a hundred dollar more (and for the extra price, you get a pretty decent media hub, Internet browser and of course, games console). I’ve decided to set up a page where I will list and update all the HD deals on Amazon (including both hardware and software deals) – there are some good savings to be had. The war of stats between the two camps have intensified, with both sides claiming some sort of victory in the Black Friday sales. The HD DVD people say that they captured 62% of the market during the sales, most likely not including the PS3. There is also research from them showing that the next wave of buyers might favor HD DVD over Blu-ray. I’m sure the Blu-ray people have similar stats showing the exact opposite. Or if not stats, than just more rumors about Warner Bros. going Blu-ray exclusive will do (despite Warner having already denied the rumors twice – and again, the HD DVD people will find some “clues” that suggests Warner are going HD DVD exclusive too). But even when you add both HD DVD and Blu-ray sales, they only amount to 10% of combined high def and standard def DVD players sales in the same period – there’s still a long way to go before people stop buying DVD players and start buying high def ones, if we ever get there. I don’t like the notion that somehow high def is fighting a war against SD (in this case, HD will eventually win, just like HDTVs won over SDTVs). I think the war is against user confusion and apathy towards HD – the confusion comes from the format war, and the apathy comes from the high prices of HD movies. But hopefully, the confusion will slowly go away we more dual format players, like the LG BH200, are released. Right now, it’s the real dedicated, early adopters that are getting into HD and confusion and apathy are not issues, and even life and death is a trivial matter when it comes to your home theater equipment.

And finally in HD, last week I mentioned something about Michael Bay saying Blu-ray is superior. Michael Bay seems to like posting on his forum, and this should be applauded, but there’s probably a reason why famous people like Mr. Bay need to be more careful when it comes to public speech. His statement about Blu-ray suiting the look of his movies better, apparently irregardless of trivial things like the video codec, bitrate, transfer process, is funny to the extreme. By his reasoning, CDs sound better than MP3s because MP3s don’t even have a physical medium. It’s like a ghost format, and how can a ghost defeat something that is real? Unless of course the ghost uses it’s ghostly powers to scare away physical beings – perhaps this the reason the RIAA is so against MP3s is because THEY ARE AFRAID OF GHOSTS!!! Well, it makes a little bit more sense than Mr. Bay’s statements anyway. As as for his conspiracy theory about Microsoft, of course Microsoft has come out to deny all of his claims (but their response was expected, just like how government deny the existence of UFOs and yet already have spacecrafts that can travel thousands of light years to make deals with alien races in regards to the enslavement of mankind). And to show that Microsoft cares about HD DVD, they’ve released an emulator for testing HD DVD/HDi compatibility, quite ingeniously I might add – it works simply through the Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live account (and $2,999 to buy the emulator, of course), no need to purchase dedicated hardware at all.

In gaming, the November NPD figures were just released and you can read my full analysis here. But to sum up, sales of everything was up for the holiday shopping season, with the Nintendo DS leading the way and the Wii following only because of stock problems. Xbox 360 was next, followed by the PSP and PS2. And propping up the whole group is the PS3 once again, even though sales quadrupled, it was not enough to even get past the PS2 sales. The Xbox 360 “only” doubled (or nearly) it’s sales numbers from last month, but because the 360 sells more games per console (6.9 per console), they are the most profitable when it comes to third-party revenue in the US – more than both the PS3 and Wii combined. Which means they can cut prices even further without feeling it, unlike Sony.

Ok, that’s all for this week. I’ll be back the same time next week, just two days before Christmas, to bring you more news updates. Until then …