Copyright DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (23 May 2010)

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

As promised, the NPD analysis for April was put up first thing on Monday. Looking at the stats, it’s easy to come to the wrong conclusion that video games sales are dying in the US, but just like with Blu-ray sales a few weeks ago, the different timing of Easter in 2010 compared to 2009 has meant some weird month to month comparison data. If May turns out as worse as April, then you may begin to worry. In terms of guides, I’ve added a “new” TVersity Setup Guide. It’s not new of course because other guides that I’ve written before, like the PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide had already included TVersity setup instructions, but because so many guides had the same set of instructions, and some were updated and others were simply outdated, I thought it was a better idea to just combine all of these into one guide and then refer the other guides to this one. It will make updates much less painful, and I’ve also taken the time to add a few more tips to make the whole process a little bit easier. Anyway, let’s get on with the news.

In Copyright news, it was revealed that the MPAA spent $370,000 in the first quarter of 2010 lobbying the US government. That may sound like a lot, but it’s actually down from the previous quarter, and from a year ago.

Now, what this means, I don’t know. Maybe the MPAA is spending less because its members are making less (unlikely). Maybe they’re spending less because they’re not as concerned about piracy anymore (unlikely). Or maybe they’re spending less because the government is more in line with their thoughts that ever before, and so they don’t need to pay as much to get their way. Getting the FCC to buy their claim about TV DRM helping to get movies earlier on TV may have cost them the majority of these lobbying efforts, but it was surely worth the money. Of course, now that the FCC has agreed that movie studios gets to decide whether you can watch/record something or not on your own TV, the MPAA is not so sure that bringing movies to your TV earlier, which was the whole “benefit” side of the TV DRM coin, is such a good idea anymore. Cinema owners were always going to be against something which reduces their showing window, and while the MPAA has tried to shorten the window, they’re not going to do anything that endangers the cinema business, which is one of the few areas that has seen significant growth recently (thanks to 3D showings, mostly). So basically people will be stuck with TV with DRM, losing the ability to record stuff that they could before, and all for nothing in return. Nice one, FCC.

The Swedish Pirate Party has come to the rescue of The Pirate Bay by providing bandwidth for the BitTorrent index website

The MPAA had another victory during the week, against The Pirate Bay again, but as again, it was a minor and eventually inconsequential victory. At best. Last week, they got a German court to order the web host of TPB to cut off connections to the BitTorrent indexing website, and while it took a while for the web host, Cyberbunker, to agree, they eventually did it and TPB was down once more. And a day later (possibly less than this), it was up again. Hooray. And apparently, the Swedish Pirate Party has stepped up to offer hosting for The Pirate Bay, and so the next time the MPAA tries to shut down TPB, it will be a political issue, as well as a legal one. The Pirate Party is willing to defend the TPB, saying the website is “legitimate” and calling on Hollywood to end the “cat and mouse” games with the website. The Pirate Bay buys bandwidth from other web hosts, and so it’s very likely that the next step for the MPAA would be to go after the Pirate Party’s web hosts, which might effectively shut down both The Pirate Party website, along with the TPB, somethings that the courts may be a bit more reluctant to do. Or not.

Bringing together the previous story about the MPAA’s lobbying efforts and this latest attack on The Pirate Bay, US lawmakers published a report in which it identified The Pirate Bay as one of six “notorious” piracy websites, which also included file hosting website RapidShare. isoHunt, Mp3fiesta, RMX4U and even Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, were all named and shamed. Both RapidShare and Baidu were interesting inclusions. The latter being China’s version of Google, which begs the question, whether the real Google is next under the crosshairs of the US Congress (or perhaps its lobbying efforts have prevented it so far). It’s certainly true for a lot of people searching for pirated stuff, Google may be the first destination they visit, which usually allows them to find the relevant web pages on sites like The Pirate Bay or isoHunt. The thing is, if you’re going to go after indexing/linking websites like The Pirate Bay (who link, but do not host, pirated content), and because the Internet is all about one site linking to another, then Google may be just as guilty as The Pirate Bay or isoHunt, although it may be more “second-degree” linking, rather than the “first-degree” linking. But linking is still linking, and it once again highlights just the fine line between a legitimate business enterprise, and what the MPAA/RIAA considers the root of all evil. The RIAA welcomed the US congressional report, which is no surprise, considering their lobbying efforts probably paid for it.

RapidShare has been targeted by the US Congress for providing pirated content as it wins an important court victory this week

And while RapidShare was being targeted by the US Congress, they had better luck in the courts, as the District Court of California found them not guilty of copyright infringement in a dispute with copyright holders Perfect 10. It’s an important decision, which Perfect 10 might appeal, and this time highlights the fine line between file hosting and file sharing. There are lots of pirated content on RapidShare, but like image hosting websites, it’s really up to the user to decide how they use RapidShare, and most I suspect use it legally for sharing large files that wouldn’t get through most email servers. Certainly, as the webmaster of Digital Digest, I’ve observed lots of independent software publishers that use RapidShare to host their perfectly legal downloads, to save on bandwidth costs. Of course, there are also users who upload and download a lot of pirated content, and this is becoming a more and more popular route with the global clampdown on P2P services worldwide. Does RapidShare remove pirated content on request? They do. But are they able to ensure that pirated content never appears on their site? I think, with millions of uploads per day (probably), that’s going to be a tough task. I think the simple fact is that online piracy may be impossible to prevent, and if this is the case, then content owners need to think of other ways to combat it. I know they don’t want to use the word “compete”, and they are right in that why should they have to compete with people that break the law and don’t play fairly, but it’s reality and it’s something they need to accept as soon as possible, or risk missing out on the opportunities the Internet presents.

The US Copyright Group may be facing up to a legal battle with the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, as the non-profit digital rights advocates signal their intention to fight the mass litigation and pre-trial settlement mailings organised by the anti-piracy firm. The EFF is hiring lawyers which may seek to duke it out with the US Copyright Group in court over one of their mass litigation attempts, possible over The Hurt Locker. And then we’ll see if the US Copyright Group has the guts to go head to head in court with the EFF, or are they just in this to rake in the pre-trial settlement fees. The MTV website also revealed a couple of interesting notes about the producer of The Hurt Locker, Nicolas Chartier, noting a rather nasty correspondence between Chartier and someone who emailed in complaining about the mass litigation attempt. And yes, this is the same Nicolas Chartier that was banned from attending the Oscar ceremonies for breaking the award campaigning laws.

PSP sales have been steadily decreasing. Is piracy responsible?

And finally, Sony says that piracy is the biggest problem for their troubled PSP portable games console. The April NPD analysis I linked to at the top does suggest that the PSP is in trouble, dropping a massive 44% in sales compared to April of 2009, and it has been steadily decreasing in sales for quite a while now. However, I don’t really buy Sony’s line that the PSP’s troubles are caused by piracy, even though I do believe their claim that piracy is robbing them of revenue. Nintendo a few weeks ago also complained about piracy on the DS as a revenue killer, and I believe them because DS piracy is notoriously easy, thanks to the easy availability of DS flash carts. But DS hardware sales are still going strong, certainly much stronger than the PSP (more than 6 to 1 margin in the latest sales figures). So how come the DS hardware seems to thrive despite piracy, and the PSP, which is actually harder to hack than the DS in terms of getting pirated games to work, is hurting so badly. The same goes for the PS3, which has not yet been fully hacked to allow pirated games to work, yet it it constantly being outsold by the Wii and Xbox 360, both of which are much easier to hack. I’m guessing that while piracy is an issue, it is not *the* issue, and that Sony needs to look inwards before they start blaming their own failures on others. Things like poorer pricing, poorer online experience, the very “young male” dominated marketing of both the PSP and PS3, as opposed to the more inclusive effort to get the casual gaming crowd, may all be contributing factors to the success and failure of each console.

High Definition

Let’s move on to HD news. And by HD, that also includes 3D apparently because 3D is truly everywhere, and all the Blu-ray, HDTV manufacturers are releasing their 3D stuff around this time.

Cyberlink, the makers of PowerDVD, has posted an article on Tom’s Hardware which is essential reading for anyone who wants to know just how all this 3D stuff works, and what you’ll need to get it to work for you at home. Which reminds me that I should probably post something similar, since this is one area that I’ve been researching on a bit now because of my recent pre-order of a 3D TV. I would like to say that I did most of my research before I made the impulse buy, but that would be a lie. Although to be honest, I would have bought an equivalent model without 3D if one existed, which is becoming rarer as manufacturers are adding the relatively cheap to include 3D function into their top of the line TVs, which then allows them to raise prices. So if you want the best 2D quality, you’ll probably have to buy a more expensive 3D TV.

Google’s Chrome browser support H.264, Theora and VP8, so one might expect them to be neutral in the HTML5 video codec war. But they’re not staying neutral for long, as they launch WebM, the renamed VP8, to become an official open source competitor to the industry standard, but proprietary, H.264. Early testing, from the developers of x264, suggest that WebM, or VP8, isn’t as good as H.264, but that’s as to be expected considering how established H.264 is. It was also the developer’s technical, not legal, opinion that VP8 may fall foul of H.264 patent claims, something to keep an eye on for the future. But one thing is clear though, VP8 is better than Ogg Theora, and with both Mozilla and Opera supporting WebM/VP8, that’s probably that for Theora in terms of becoming the official HTML5 video codec, so we’re realistically now down to just two: H.264 and WebM.

But if you really must have H.264 on Firefox, then Wild Fox may be for you. It’s a fork in the Firefox development that will allow for H.264 decoding, as long as you’ve got a H.264 decoding codec installed on your PC. But its legal status may be under question, since this probably violates the H.264 licensing agreement in quite a few countries, while possibly staying perfectly legal in others.

As for gaming, there’s not much else going on except for the NPD analysis. E3 will be here soon, and Microsoft will unveil Project Natal proper, and then the Move vs Natal war will finally begin. Of course, fanboys have been fighting the same war for a while now, it will just go into overdrive come next month. Fun times.

And that’s all I have to say this week. More next week. Have a good week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (23 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

No mid week blog or new guides, but plenty of news to make up for it. The NPD data for April is out, and it’s not looking like a good month for video games. I should have the analysis up by tomorrow, even with NPD providing less stats than before (only the top 5 games by units sold, and no more PS2 console numbers).

Starting with copyright news as usual, the biggest news of the week was the RIAA’s victory in court over LimeWire, and it could very well signal the end of the file-sharing service popular for music downloads.

LimeWire may be doomed due to recent court decisions

The judge awarded summary judgement to the RIAA, and judged the operators of LimeWire to be guilty of copyright infringement. Along with the Grokster verdict, this pretty much means the end of organized file-sharing services, although this verdict will have no effect on the wider P2P community, most of which are not funded or run by companies (which can be easily identified and sued), but by individuals.

And court decisions don’t always lead to action, as the MPAA has found out in their crusade to shut down The Pirate Bay. After several court decision in their favour, The Pirate Bay’s flag is still flying. The MPAA’s latest tactic has been to go after the ISP that hosts the BitTorrent indexing website, Cyberbunker. But even with the court decision, The Pirate Bay is still up and running, and so I’m not actually sure what is going on, and it appears Cyberbunker isn’t too sure either, having stated that they’ve received no notices from their solicitors to take any actions. If this affects The Pirate Bay, they will simply move to a new hosting provider, although which one, and where, remains to be seen.

Staying in Europe, a German court has found that Wi-Fi operators, including home users, are responsible for securing their connections and if their unsecured connection is used to commit a crime, such as downloading copyrighted content illegally, then the operators are responsible. I think this is a very tricky area, because many users are not aware of the need to secure their Wi-Fi connections. There are also cases where legacy devices means that a less secure Wi-Fi network has to be maintained. And even with safeguards, hackers may still find a way onto the network, and use its resources without authorization. And if this is the case, then the network operators are as much a victim as the content owners whose content was downloaded illegally from the connection, but because it’s easier to go after the operators, that’s what content owners are doing. It’s like someone stealing your car to use it to rob a bank, and because you left the keys inside, the court finds you guilty of armed robbery. Personally, I think WPA2 security should be enabled by default on Wi-Fi devices, as that’s the only way to encourage consumers to learn about the need to secure their Wi-Fi connections.

The producers of The Hurt Locker is suing thousands for illegally downloading the Oscar winning movie

More lawsuits, this time across the Atlantic over in the US. The producers of the Oscar winning film, The Hurt Locker, is suing thousands of individuals for downloading the film illegally. And once again, the firm known as the US Copyright Group is handling the case. They are the ones who has already engaged in mass litigation on behalf of a few independent filmmakers, including the infamous Uwe Boll, although they are facing some trouble with that case, with Time Warner Cable not playing along. TWC feels the US Copyright Group has reneged on an earlier promise to limit the flow of subpoenas for subscriber information, but now that they have requested details for 2100 subscribers all at one time, TWC feels this “discovery abuse”. For many anti-piracy firms, anti-piracy is about making money, and if you can get others to do your work, at their own cost, then it all adds up to more profits in the long run. The entertainment industry are aware of the bad name some of these firms give to anti-piracy efforts, as well as their monetizing policies, but these mass lawsuits are about fear as much as anything, and if they scare people away from illegal downloads, then that’s mission accomplished. Of course, it could just drive people to use encrypted networks and run blocking software, and thus makes it harder, if not impossible, for groups like the US Copyright Group to monitor downloads.

Adobe is adding DRM selectable output control to Flash, which could mean the end of Flash movie playback on non HDCP compatible devices. It’s all about giving content owners their security blanket, even if it comes at the cost of everyday customers.

And soon after Nintendo promised to fight piracy on the upcoming 3D version of their DS console, the 3DS, by implementing more anti-piracy features, they’ve also taken to court sellers of R4 flash carts. These flash carts allow illegally downloaded games to be played, as well as adding some additional features to the portable console (like video playback). Nintendo has previously requested the same company to cease and desist in selling these carts, and while the company complied at first, they also allegedly created a virtual mirror of their store and continued selling R4 carts on the new store. If this is the case, then your really can’t blame Nintendo for suing them, although there are still plenty of places where R4 carts can be purchased from. And you might have to agree that the DS’s success so far, easily beating Sony’s PSP, might have something to do with the ease in which pirated games can be played on the console, a fact that even Sony agrees when talking about its earlier PSP successes. If Nintendo really wanted to stop DS piracy, then it should have cracked down hard on R4 and earlier carts when they first came out, not several years later after the DS has successfully cornered market share. Maybe this is just the cynical side of me thinking that Nintendo’s timing may not be an accident …

It’s not all bad news in the courts though. President Obama’s nominee for the about to be open Supreme Court position may be someone that has at least considered the issue of fair use, and may have even fought for it in court against the very same entertainment industry that wants to see fair use killed off. Elena Kagan has been instrumental in hiring pro fair use people in her time as Dean of Harvard Law, and has argued for fair use against the entertainment industry in a case related to Cablevision’s attempt to create an online based PVR system. Of course, the Obama administration as a whole has been very friendly towards the RIAA and MPAA, but that’s no surprise considering Joe Biden has always been a friend of the copyright lobby.

The Myth ASCII logo was found in the executable for the game Max Payne 2

Another game developer, this time Rockstar, has been found using game crack code, this time for the game May Payne 2. They needed to produce a version of the game that didn’t require the original game disc for Steam, and instead of creating their own no CD patch, they apparently used code from the game crack released by defunct group Myth. Ubisoft, the company now notoriously known for their harsh “always on” DRM scheme, has also done something similar, stealing code from active group RELOADED for the game Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I won’t make judgement on who is stealing what, but the fact that game developers *need* “no-disc” patches created by crack groups suggest to me that the consumers wants something, and that something is less DRM. Last week I talked about the Humble Indie Bundle (which is now over, sadly), and that was really an experiment to see if giving consumers what they want – good pricing, no DRM, was really the way to go. The fact that this one week event raised more than $1.2 million suggest that it was a success, although Wolfire, the game company that ran the event, suggest that there were still a lot of people who still pirated the bundle, despite it costing only a penny. So the conclusion seems to be that some people will pirate games regardless of the cost, and Wolfire thinks that the convenience of pirate downloads may be the reason behind this phenomenon. But for those that did pay, most paid way more than the minimum amount, suggesting that people are still willing to pay for games, but please just don’t make it too difficult for them to do so.

But EA is not too concerned, and is determined to ban the sale of second hand games, so important to many gamers due to their limited funds. You can see why EA is concerned, since they do not get a cut of any second hand sales, and each person that buys the second hand game, is one less person that will buy the new game. Of course, if game pricing weren’t so ridiculously high, then maybe gamers won’t need to sell their games, or buy second hand ones. And if their games were any good, people also wouldn’t get rid of them after a month or two. EA’s solution is to sell digital distributed games that can’t be resold, or use one time voucher codes that enables multiplayer play, and second hand buyers must buy a new code if they want to play online.

High Definition

On to HD news now. Managed Copy is still pretty much non existent, despite the date after which MC becomes mandatory passing long ago. If MC is the compromise solution between being able to use the content in ways the consumers wants, but also taking into account the industry’s self interest, then it appears this compromise is one sided and that the content owners simply don’t want people to separate the content from the physical media. Or that with the 3D hype, CE firms are too busy to think about MC.

But one of the key components of MC is some kind of payment system that unlocks the managed copy (MC is not going to be free). At least this hurdle may be overcome with news that PayPal payments could soon be available for Blu-ray’s BD-Live system, as well as Internet connected TVs. This could also open up downloadable content for Blu-ray, DLCs being a success for video game consoles. The key to success for DLCs and Apps has been easy to manage micro payment systems, and this is one area in which Blu-ray has to improve.

And I know I promised to never mention the horrible Lord of the Rings Theatrical Trilogy Blu-ray again, but I must, since it has just received a price drop on Amazon.com (thanks to Digital Digest’s Amazon Blu-ray Price Index service, it’s easy to track when such price drops occur). And this has helped it to go up in the sales ranks as I type. The set is now $49.99, down from $63.99, which makes them alright value. Cynics will say the price drop confirms the failure of the set, while Warner will probably say that this was always planned and that any money they make before the Extended Editions come out will be a bonus for them (okay, maybe Warner probably won’t admit to this last part). Avatar is still selling like hotcakes (I’ve never bought a hotcake though, whatever it is). But every copy of Avatar sold adds to the carbon output due to the manufacturing process and paper, plastics used, something that’s not an issue with digitally distributed movies though.

And finally in gaming, without talking about the awful April NPD figures, there’s still a few other news items. The PS3 “Other OS” thing is getting a bit boring to me, but it’s an serious issue for the US Air Force who may have foolish invested in thousands of PS3s thinking the “Other OS” feature would always remain.

They used the “Other OS” feature to install custom software which linked all the thousands of PS3s to act as a cheaply built supercomputer. Sony removing “Other OS” is not an issue as long as the USAF doesn’t upgrade their PS3s to the new firmware, but of course broken PS3s cannot be repaired without losing “Other OS”. They should have copies of the older firmware downloaded though, so perhaps it’s not a big issue until their fat PS3s are no longer repairable.

But there is a good lesson for consumers here. Always purchase something based on their “core” features, which for the PS3 means gaming and Blu-ray/multimedia playback. Any other features that are not main functions of the device may and probably will change over time. And if you’re relying on some kind of loophole or workaround to do something with the device that it wasn’t intended for, then that’s even more dangerous. And the lesson for device manufacturers is that don’t advertise features you don’t plan on supporting.

Project Natal may be available in October

The PS3 is at least finally profitable for Sony, which means they will have more room to offer price cuts, although there are many reasons why they will be reluctant to do this (first being not wanting to go back to a loss state after finally becoming profitable, second being not wanting to make standalone Blu-ray players too poor in value in comparison). But perhaps including the PS Move accessories in a bundle without price rises may be on the cards. For the Xbox 360, it too is looking at adding 3D gaming, just like the PS3 will be doing in June. Project Natal is also set to launch later in the year, with rumors suggesting an October release date, which should give it plenty of time in the run up to the major holiday sales period. I still don’t know what to think of Project Natal – it’s certainly different, but that could lead to either success or failure if it isn’t implemented correctly. But I can see it being something people want to try out personally, as opposed to the PS Move, which anyone that have played the Wii would be familiar with, or more importantly, *think* that they would be familiar with (even if the overall experience is quite different thanks to the more accurate controller). You can read more about all of these stories in this forum thread.

Okay then, that’s that for the week. NPD analysis on Monday, perhaps some new guides or guide updates during the week, and of course, more news as always this time next week. Have a good week.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (9 May 2010)

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

This week marks a milestone in my Blu-ray sales stats analysis, in that I finally have two year’s worth of stats analysed, graphed, poked, prodded and posted. So it was a perfect time to post my semi-regular Blu-ray – The State of Play analysis, which looks at sales trends and see if Blu-ray’s state is healthy or not. I would like you to read the analysis, and so give this poor website another much needed pageview stat, so I won’t reveal too much here other than say that if you want to see a very clear Blu-ray sales trend developing, then look at the analysis. Also, if you want to see how Avatar did in relation to other releases, it’s all in there as well.

As for the TV I talked about in the last WNR, I did the very uncharacteristic thing of pre-ordering it without having even looked at the set with my own eyes. This is the TV in question. Our 7000 series is the same as the US 8000 series. I had a very interesting experience trying to buy the TV. Went to the the Harvey Norman store in Nunawading, this is the place that I get most of my stuff from in the past, including my what looks very much overpriced Pioneer plasma TV about 5 and a half years ago. They didn’t have the plasma in stock yet (nobody has), but I wanted to pre-order anyway, so I asked the salesperson to give me a good price after telling him the best online price that I found, and basically got into an argument. The funny thing was *I* was the one trying to convince the salesperson why I would prefer to purchase from this store, as opposed to online, as the salesperson refused to even discuss prices, saying instead that if the price I found was so cheap, I should get it from that place instead. The fact that I was still there asking for their best price even after being told they couldn’t match the lowest price I found should have been a hint to the salesperson that I really did want to buy it from their store for a reason I guess the salesperson couldn’t fathom (hence why I had to try and explain why I wanted to buy from them). Also the fact that I was there to buy something that hasn’t even been released yet, should have been a sign that I was pretty serious about it. Thinking back now, I can’t fathom why I would want to buy the TV, or any other item in the future for that matter, from Harvey Norman Nunawading again. Anyway, I went to The Good Guys next door and got a great deal on the TV, and I think I just found a new store to buy all my stuff from.

Anyway, onto the news.

Let’s start with the copyright news. With some of the secrecy surrounding the controversial global anti-piracy treat, the ACTA, being lifted thanks to efforts by the EU, the true and proper public debate on the treaty has started, although the powers that be won’t be listening anyway.

A senior counsel at Google, Daphne Keller, has attacked the ACTA for being “gollum like”. Google has their own reasons for opposing the ACTA, which will try to fight online piracy by getting rid of the “unwanted”, which is not good for Google’s business model since they want more and more people online, not less. Keller, speaking at a Standard University conference, questions why a treaty that was supposed to be about counterfeiting and border security has been turned into an online piracy thing. And she’s right too. Obviously, interest groups have hijacked the treaty negotiations to further their own goals, and all you have to do is to look at who is in support of the current draft of the ACTA to know who are the people behind this. In unrelated news, the MPAA hailed the ACTA as an “important step forward”. Hmm …

The MPAA may finally get the FCC to approve their plan for Selectable Output Control, or basically adding DRM to TV broadcasts

The MPAA has been busy lobbying the FCC as well, and their efforts might be about to bear fruit. The FCC is about to give in to the MPAA’s demands and allow DRM to be added to TV broadcasts. This would allow the studios to selectively turn off the output of your TV or PVR for content that they don’t think you should be able to record. The MPAA argues that this is for innovation, since it allows them to release movies to the home much faster if they didn’t have to lose sleep over people recording and distributing their precious movies. This argument appears to have worked, despite many studios already releasing movies prior to DVD releases, with no considerable effects on piracy. But one things studios love is release windows, and this is yet another one. One window for movies at cinemas with 3D, another for cinemas without 3D, another for PPV, another for DVD sales, another for Redbox rentals and then another for Netflix streaming services. This all somehow is supposed to make them more money, and the principle of artificially creating supply issues is sound if one wants to maximize profits. Except piracy does exist, and movies are put online the moment (or several just before) they are released to the cinemas, and so all these artificial barriers the studios are putting up that stops consumers from buying, only ends up helping to push people towards piracy. But that’s okay, the ACTA will be here soon to solve that problem, and then all they have to do is to figure why banning people from the Internet, and thus denying them the opportunity to buy stuff on the Internet, may end up affecting their revenue.

The Humble Indie Bundle promotes the "pay whatever you want" model for game pricing ... and NO DRM!!

While the MPAA holds the view that more DRM, more laws, are the solution, a group of independent game developers holds the view that fairer pricing, more innovation and no DRM may be the answer to gaming’s piracy problem. Partly to also help raise funds for the EFF, who is bravely fighting our battles against the RIAA, MPAA and all those in favour of more DRM, and also the Child’s Play charity, the game developers have released The Humble Indie Bundle. The bundle includes popular games including World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Aquaria and Penumbra Overture, and instead of paying the $80 retail price for the bundle, you, the consumer gets to decide how much you want to pay for it. And not everybody is paying just the minimum either. I’m not saying that this kind of “honor system” would really work for a mainstream game, but issues of pricing, ease of use, innovation should be addressed before extremely harsh DRM is even considered. It’s a fact that high prices promote piracy, as do consumer inconvenience caused by overly harsh DRM, and yet game publishers still whine about piracy and not knowing what causes it. You can either have a high price, and high piracy rate, or you can adjust your pricing model so that people don’t have a reason to pirate the game (and get rid of DRM too) – they’re trying to have it both ways, by having high prices and then trying to defeat piracy through technical or legal means, neither method proving to have any success at all. Sell games at $5 a pop, and piracy disappears tomorrow, guaranteed. And if you take advantage of the power of the Internet in terms of cheap and wide spread distribution, then game publishers can get more people to buy their games than ever before, and still end up on top in terms of revenue. This might even work for music and movies too.

NEC has developed a new tool that can detect copyrighted video clips using only 60 frames of content, which should aid the monitoring of “three-strikes” and YouTube type copyright filters. Another technical measure that has cost millions of dollars to develop, which will no doubt be eventually circumvented.

High Definition

Let’s go on to HD news. Avatar has been making all the right and wrong headlines recently. The wrong headlines are the ones where the new Blu-ray DRM used on Avatar caused playback problems, which had to be quickly fixed by manufacturers via firmware updates (but some were quicker than others, unfortunately).

The right headline comes this week with the sales stats becoming available and analysed here. Avatar broke all records, but only marginally above the ones held previously by the week in which District 9 was released, in terms of both market share and sales revenue. Still, the results were very impressive, especially since we’re not in the holiday sales period at the moment. It was also interesting to see Lord of the Rings trilogy Blu-ray completely disappear from the top 10 – three movies whose combined box office is greater than that of Avatar by a significant margin, being released on Blu-ray for the first time, and now being outsold by 2 year old Blu-ray releases.

In Australia, Samsung is giving away for free all you need for 3D Blu-ray

The Avatar Blu-ray release is 2D only unfortunately, much to the chagrin of Avatar director James Cameron. The 3D version won’t be here until later in the year, or possible Spring 2011. The lack of 3D content right now is a huge argument against buying 3D TVs, which is a strange statement to make by someone who has just pre-ordered one. For people who are not actively looking for a new TV, then I suggest you wait until more 3D content is available, and until 3D technology matures and drops in price, which should all happen next year. The yet unreleased Panasonic 3D plasmas will probably have better 3D quality than the current Samsungs, which is now better than when they were first released thanks for improvements made in firmware updates. So the technology is still maturing, and since there’s hardly any real 3D content anyway, you’re not missing anything by waiting. However, for those that need to buy a new TV, and I’m one of them, then at the very least, you should demo the 3D TVs, most stores should have it set up, and decide for yourself how much it is worth. For me, 2D quality, price are still far more important than 3D and other features. For the Samsung I’ve chosen, 2D quality is pretty good (not the best, I know), and the price is fantastic, and so the 3D and all the free 3D stuff Samsung are giving away just makes the deal sweeter, but I wouldn’t buy this TV if neither 2D quality nor price were attractive. Of course, even if 3D isn’t a hit right now, will you want it in the future? Calculate how long you plan to use your current TV or your next purchase, and then ask yourself whether 3D will be important to you at the end of this period, and then you can decide whether 3D is something you want to buy right now.

The Flash vs HTML5 and H.264 vs open source codec war intensified this week after Microsoft formally declared their allegiance to HTML5 and H.264. For Microsoft, it’s a no brainer because while H.264 has royalty fees, its quality and industry support cannot be questioned, nor the fact that Microsoft is one of the patent holders behind H.264. Speaking of royalty fees, there’re not excessive, and you can find it explained here. Microsoft can easily afford it. Mozilla probably could too, but they will feel it’s an unnecessary expense, and one that doesn’t fit into their open source model. Even if royalties were waived for H.264, Mozilla might still have a hard time accepting the non open-source code for decoding H.264. Meanwhile, Apple may face an anti-trust investigation into the fact that it forces developers to use Apple’s development tools, as opposed to third party tools, when developing for the iPhone/iPad. This of course means Apple can prevent developers, like Adobe, from implementing certain tools for the iPhone/iPad, such as Adobe’s Flash. Apple’s boss Steve Jobs went on a rant last week attacking Flash for being a proprietary piece of software, which it is, but Apple’s no saint on this issue either. The iPhone/iPad are very much tethered devices (and I’m not talking about the 3G Internet type of tethering), meaning you can’t really use it without tying it to Apple’s services, and Apple is cracking down on jail-breaking.

And finally in gaming, we have a couple of Sony news. First up is great news for Sony PS3 and PSP owners worried about protecting their consoles beyond the standard one year warranty period. Sony now offers a factory extended warranty plan that you can purchase directly from them.

For $45, you can extend the warranty of your PS3 by a further year. $60 buys you a two year extension. Similarly for the PSP, you can extended the factory warranty by one year or two for $30 or $40. And I would recommend people buy the 2 year extension for the PS3 due to the firmware update drive reading problem, which although not widespread, could be potentially costly if it happens outside the warranty period ($150 per repair). So $60 is well worth the price for the extra peace of mind.

The PS3 “Other OS” story continues to ramble on, with the story that Sony may have made legal threats against Geohots, the hacker who claimed he was able to hack the latest Sony firmware to allow “Other OS” to be kept. The PS3, like the iPhone/iPad, heavily relies on services that Sony provides, such as the ability to play online, and improvements via firmware updates. This is a relatively new concept, the constant firmware updates, and having features disabled if you don’t have the latest firmware. I mean how many firmware updates did you make to the PS2? And five year ago, would have ever consider updating the firmware of your TV? But it’s common place now. And all of this means the manufacturer has more control over how you use your Internet connected devices, and they can take away features just as they can add them. Remember when Amazon removed copies of 1984 from people’s Kindle devices remotely? It’s the same thing. It’s all as if we’re just renting devices from manufacturers like Sony, and that ultimately, they have full control of what you can and can’t do with the device you’ve paid for. I think consumers need to be made aware of what could potentially happen, whether features that were present when they purchased the device will always be present.

Okay, enough ranting for this week. See you next week with more rants, ramblings and a sprinkling of news.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (9 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (2 May 2010)

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Ever since my current TV’s HDMI connection broke, I’ve been looking for a new TV. I almost got a Panasonic in February before discovering the black level problem, and other factors meant that I would be wiser to wait until buying a TV later in the year. Well, it is now later in the year, and what with the 3D hype and everything, I thought it wise to get a 3D ready TV since I could then test various 3D related products, something I found hard to with with the recent review of the 3D enabled new version of PowerDVD. Here in the land down under, the only 3D TV available right now is the new Samsung range, and their pricing is extremely good and I have my eye on the 58″ (the 63″ is a bit too big for my normal viewing distance, I think). The Sony 3D range would be too expensive, and I still prefer plasma, so that leaves only the Panasonic, which the whole black level things has made me think twice about buying a Panasonic TV, plus it’s not out yet and will most likely be more expensive. So barring any unforeseen events, I’ll probably buy the Samsung 58″ (it’s the Aus 7000 series, which is equivalent to the 8000 series in the US). Plus, Samsung is giving away all sorts of free stuff with the TV, including 2 pairs of active shutter 3D glasses and a 3D Blu-ray player, and 2 further pairs plus the 3D Blu-ray version of Monsters vs Aliens for those that get the TV quickly enough. If this is a preview of the type of promotions companies are going to be running for 3D TV, then the next few months could be a very good time to purchase a new TV, even a 2D one, which I’m sure will be discounted accordingly. Anyway, let’s get to the news.

In Copyright news, the MPAA won an important court case against The Pirate Bay in what seems like ages ago, but The Pirate Bay is still up and running, and the MPAA are not too pleased.

The Pirate Bay is still going strong despite losing court cases, so the MPAA is not happy at all

The MPAA wanted TPB to be closed down, but all the co-founders did was to close down the tracker, and the MPAA now wants the co-founders to pay the court imposed fine for not closing down TPB. TPB’s ownership issue has always confused me. I don’t know who owns it and who’s running it, but it seems the co-founders say they aren’t really involved with the website anymore, and that closing down the tracker was probably the only thing they were able to do. But as we all know, trackers are far less important than previously. The MPAA’s various actions to close down trackers has meant the development of open trackers and also decentralised tracking technologies. In other words, the MPAA’s attacks have made BitTorrent much more resilient, and shutting down Torrent download websites or a few trackers won’t really stop file sharing. Even .torrent files are somewhat unnecessary now thanks to magnet links, and DHT means you don’t even need a tracker. And, as we’ve seen in the UK, France and other countries that have adopted three-strikes type laws, people will be moving to anonymous/encrypted BitTorrent services, and this will make even monitoring downloads a hard task for the MPAA. Maybe this will make them happier, you know, ignorance being bliss and all. But somehow, I doubt it. And when this happens, when the MPAA is powerless to stop BitTorrent file sharing or even to find out what people are downloading, then perhaps they’ll redirect their efforts back to tracking down the source of these uploads. While many files are uploaded by individuals, others are done so by well known groups, and it will be hard work for the MPAA to track down and stop these groups, which is probably why they’ve been focusing on the easier job of targeting downloaders.

The Pirate Bay itself has asked for a call to arms, for its users to fight the recently passed UK anti-piracy bill. They want people to speak out against a bill that, in their eyes, is a direct assault on human rights and people’s freedom of expression. The UK general election is just around the corner, but I’m not sure people are able to use this event to protest against the bill, since both major parties seem to support the new anti-piracy measures. Maybe a shock result like the one in Sweden, where The Pirate Party won a seat in the EU parliament, will be the best result from the elections. But for those still unconcerned about the new laws, just ask yourself if you think whether it is appropriate that the government should be spying on your activities, and thus sacrificing your right to privacy, for the sole purposes of protecting the profit of multinational corporations. Don’t buy into all the crap about piracy funding terrorism and crime, because the majority of pirated content are uploaded and made available free of charge, so how would terrorists and organised crime benefit from that? Counterfeit goods, now that’s something else altogether different and it’s big business to sell fake software, movies and games. But three-strikes does absolutely nothing to stop the sale of these goods, and in fact, may promote it further as people too afraid to download pirated content online, and too poor to be able to afford the real stuff, may seek cheap counterfeit goods offline.

Showing the complete lack of class, and the arrogance that we’ve expected from them, a meeting of anti-piracy groups has produced this pearl of wisdom, that child pornography is “great”. Great as in being a great scaremongering tool to use in their efforts to lobby governments, by saying that the same network where people download the latest episode of Stargate Universe is also the same place where child porn is apparently also easily accessible. What nonsense. Based on what I’ve read, downloading of most of these deplorable images and videos are done so on the wider Internet, through public and private forums, private networks, the “darknet”. You certainly won’t find them (or torrents for them) on The Pirate Bay, or the Mininova of old (which didn’t even allow pornographic content of any kind). And does the groups that spy on users for three-strikes even monitor the transfer of child pornography, or images for that matter, or are their filters and tools only set up to detect pirated songs and movies? It’s scaremongering, and making light of an issue that is a million times more serious than college kids downloading a copy of The Hangover, and we’ve already heard from law enforcement agencies that laws like three-strikes actually makes their job of tracking down these criminals much harder, as monitoring of ordinary citizens will force more of them to encrypt their connections to protect their privacy, making it much harder to trace, monitor the truly illegal and dangerous activities of criminals.

And despite evidence that three-strikes actually increases piracy, at least in France, the IFPI, the global trade group for the music industry, says they have evidence that music industry revenue has risen in 2009 for countries where three-strikes has been passed. In countries other than France, at least. And while music industry revenue has risen in Australia, we don’t have three-strikes here, and a federal court even ruled that ISPs are not responsible for the downloads of its subscribers. Revenue increases in the UK also has no correlation to any new government anti-piracy initiatives, which did not pass until just recently. This once again shows how far groups like the IFPI, the RIAA and MPAA will use misleading, if not entirely made up, stats to further their crusade. Overall, the music industry globally recorded a 7% drop in sales. This might sound like a bad thing, but if you have a look at all the competition for our hard earned cash these days, everything from movies to gaming, 7%, with actual growth in 13 territories, is a great result. And all the other forms of entertainment has been seriously innovating, like 3D movies for example, and Blu-ray, and of course gaming, while the music industry has mostly stood still, apart from the move towards DRM-free digital sales, which the music industry was heavily resistant at first. Had they been a bit more enthusiastic at the beginning, they would be the ones with the revenue growth, not Apple with its iTunes store.

And one should not underestimate the amount of damage DRM did for the music industry, but unfortunately, it’s a lesson that the gaming industry is unwilling to learn from. News broke this week that Ubisoft’s “alway on” DRM has been broken. It took a while, given the relatively new status of the DRM, but it’s now finally broken, for both Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers 7. So Ubisoft is now left with an expensive DRM service that they have to keep on maintaining, that does not stop piracy, and whose sole purpose now is to make the overall experience more frustrating for legitimate customers. So basically the story for every single DRM system that has been released so far. When will they learn?

High Definition

On to HD news now. Avatar has been released and by all accounts, it’s a record breaker for Blu-ray. I will have the weekly numbers posted and analysed on Tuesday in usual place, but the early numbers suggest that overall Blu-ray market share could go above 30% for the first time, and may in fact be the best selling Blu-ray title of all time, even compared to titles like The Dark Knight or Star Trek that has been selling for much longer than a week.

Avatar should break all Blu-ray records

The only reason that Blu-ray wouldn’t reach this historic milestone is that because Avatar is so popular, the DVD version is likely to sell in huge numbers as well. However, the Blu-ray package is a combo, which includes the DVD edition, and most retailers are either only stocking the combo version, or are pricing it only slightly above the plain DVD version, I suspect this will even make non Blu-ray buyers think twice about buying the DVD only version. I mean, the combo version will be much more future proof, and paying an extra $4 to get the Blu-ray version (the current actual pricing difference between the combo and DVD editions, on Amazon.com) makes the combo version the best value.

Meanwhile, the sub-standard Lord of the Rings trilogy Blu-ray has slipped to 19th on the Amazon Blu-ray charts, just barely outselling the 3 year old nature documentary Planet Earth. I’ll leave you to come up with the conclusion for this one.

Decoding of online HD videos on Macs can now be accelerated by the GPU thanks to Adobe’s new preview version of their upcoming Flash version. Name “gala”, the preview provides GPU assisted H.264 decoding for various Macs and Macbooks. Say what you will Flash, and Apple’s Steve Jobs had plenty to say about it (more on that later), but if you want multi-platform H.264 online video support with GPU acceleration, you can’t really beat Flash at the moment, and with the new 10.1 version released in the next month or two, you’ll be hard pressed to find a computer that can’t use its GPU chip to speed up H.264 video decoding. And it’s very much needed as well, because 720p is fast becoming standard for YouTube, and 1080p YouTube videos may finally be watchable on netbooks.

But Flash is still a proprietary third party plug-in, and Apple’s Steve Jobs is not a fan at all. Citing security issues, lack of stability, poor performance for mobile computing, and of course the proprietary nature of the software, Jobs heavily criticized Flash in an open letter published on the Apple website, explaining the lack of Flash support on the iPod Touch, iPhone and now the iPad. Jobs has a point, but Flash still lacks a competent competitors, even just in the limited field of online video, let alone richer applications, and so unless Apple provides an alternative (which would still be proprietary), or if the HTML5 mess is cleaned up, Flash is still very much needed. In fact, one of the bigger criticisms of the iPad has been the lack of Flash support, so perhaps this is Apple trying to deflect some criticism against their new device. Adobe hit back quickly, saying Apple should leave it to consumers to decide whether Flash is good or not, rather than impose the decision on them by not supporting Flash on their devices. They have a point, I think. Look, in a perfect world, we would have an open standard for Flash content, but we’re not there yet. I mean, the whole HTML5 mess, which I’ve tried to explain in this forum post, is only playing into Adobe’s hands.

For PC software news, x264, the popular open source H.264 encoder, is now officially Blu-ray compliant. x264 has been able to encode H.264 clips for use in Blu-ray compilation for some time now, but it has just passed official compliance tests, and so it is quite a big deal. This now allows Blu-ray movies to be converted to DVD, and still maintain Blu-ray compliance (at least for the video stream), and thus making the disc playable in most Blu-ray players (the PS3 apart).

And finally in gaming, more PS3 firmware related news as the latest firmware adds the first steps towards making the PS3 3D capable for gaming. The 3D gaming feature will be available around June/July, but 3D Blu-ray support is only coming later in the year, unfortunately.

In the same update, Sony also laid the groundworks for Sony VAIO PC integration, allowing VAIO PCs to access content stored on the PS3 sometimes in the future.

PS3 will have 3D gaming support added via firmware soon, but it's what's been removed from the firmware that has fans angry

But as Sony adds more features via firmware, users are still displeased at the removal of the Other OS feature. The expected class action lawsuit has been launched. I think the issue most people have with the removal of Other OS is not so much that it was an essential feature, but rather, because Sony had promoted it so heavily, and removing something like this makes people insecure about Sony’s future intentions. Sony’s “It only does everything” tagline for the PS3 is not helping people get over the fact that, well, it no longer does what it did just a few months ago. The other major issue people have is that this effectively stops development on several very promising Linux based media center packages, which can turn your PS3 into a fully fledged media center, a much better one than the default Sony solution. A good third party media center software can really help the longevity of the console, just look at the original Xbox, which is still being used today thanks to software media center mods like XBMC. So while it’s understandable that Sony removed Other OS to prevent a way in for hackers, or the development of emulators, the price of losing a competent third party media center is just too high to pay, perhaps.

And that was that for the week. I’ll have more ranting and complaining for you next week, so until then, have a good one.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (2 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (25 April 2010)

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Early in the week, I posted the March 2010 NPD US video game sales analysis. March was a good month for Sony, despite the PS3 coming fourth again and being outsold by the Xbox 360, although it may be due to stock issues. It was game sales that gave the PS3 one of the best month since release, with the 4 titles in the top 10, including the number one, and 40% of the top 10 in terms of units sold. It was almost the perfect storm, with two of the PS3’s biggest exclusive (and formerly exclusive) franchises (God of War and Final Fantasy) seeing new releases in the same month.

Since I’m running a bit late today, let’s not waste any more time and get to the news roundup proper.

Starting as usual with copyright news. We’ve already seen the recently passed UK anti online piracy bill being the inspiration behind several scams, but the real question is whether the new law will actually help to prevent piracy. The answer seems to be no, based on the French experienced, and also on figures that show the popularity of anonymous BitTorrent usage, which prevents the authorities from finding out what you’re downloading, increasing in recent month.

BitBlinder, a free tool, promises to block "Marketers, corporations, criminals, and governments" from monitoring your activities

And this is a paid service too, so people are actually spending money now on services which help to protect their privacy, and also their downloading habits, which means that’s less money people will be spending on legitimate purchases, although free services and tools that protect BitTorrent users from prying eyes are available too. And all of these services and tools will make monitoring and tracking illegal downloads much harder, if not impossible. And if the government does ban people from the Internet, these banned users will also be banned from being able to purchase things online, a side effect that the content holders that lobbied the government to introduce such a draconian measure probably didn’t input into their calculations. Remember that these are groups of very short sighted people, so who knows what other effect the sledgehammer three-strikes approach will have in terms of actually hurting legitimate sales.

But having the laws introduced will be seen as a huge victory for copyright holders, and they will continue their crusade to get other countries to adopt similar legislation. Next up on the agenda is UK’s neighbour, Ireland, where the music labels have just won an important court case against the country’s largest ISP, which should now open up the way for three-strikes to be introduced. Expect anonymous BitTorrent usage to go up in Ireland next, I suppose.

The NFO file from SKiDROW's Assassin's Creed II crack, detailing their work in defeating Ubisoft's DRM

From one set of short sighted people to another, Ubisoft’s “always on” DRM may have finally been cracked, at least for the game, Assassin’s Creed II. Cracking group SKiDROW has released a crack which they claim will make pirated copies of AC2 fully playable, after what they claimed was a “challenge”. Comments posted on torrent websites suggests that they really have done it. Ubisoft will point to the fact that the crack came out more than a month after the game was originally released, which is much longer than the typical 2 or 3 days wait for the crack (and sometimes not even that). But this being the first proper crack for this new DRM system, it was always going to take longer than usual, and perhaps this will make future cracks that much easier. So on one hand, Ubisoft has prevented people from playing the full game without buying, for the first month at least, and that may have helped to get them a few more sales. On the other hand, the crappy DRM may have driven off even more customers, to competing games, or even to piracy to protest the harsh treatment of legitimate customers. So only Ubisoft knows if it has all been worth it or not.

Copyright on YouTube has been put in the spotlight again this week when the Downfall Hitler parodies started disappearing, due to copyright complaints. I think at this point everyone who has heard of YouTube has seen at least one Hitler Downfall parody. While it is true that these clips use copyrighted content, but the fair use protects parodies, since it is a fundamental aspect of free speech. And even if fair use didn’t exist, and it’s slowly becoming this way, is the copyright holder really being hurt by people posting these types of clips. I reckon a lot of people who have seen the clips have not watched the movie Downfall (which is highly recommended), and I suspect many have gone out to buy or rent the movie after seeing the parody clips. Surely, this is a good thing for the copyright holder, as many of them are spending millions trying to artificially produce and promote viral clips of their own, and none of them can beat Downfall Hitler in terms of popularity. Plus, they can actually make money off these user uploaded clips. YouTube’s stance on this is measured. They’re fighting their own copyright battles in court at the moment, and they’re the ones that made it possible for copyright holders to easily find and remove copyrighted clips through their Content ID system. But YouTube saw fit to post a blog post that tells people how to appeal against these types of removals. Once an appeal is lodged, the video is immediately back online, and if the copyright holder wants to get it removed permanently, then they’ll have to resort to the DMCA, which does protect parodies. But with the recent RedLetterMedia Star Wars review removal, and now Downfall Hitler, it seems copyright holders are abusing copyright law to help nobody, and in fact, may be causing damage to themselves.

Avatar may just be the biggest Blu-ray release ever, but many users are finding that their copy simply won’t play in their Blu-ray players. Apparently, this is due to a new version of the BD+ copy protection system, BD+ 5, being deployed. Some Blu-ray players will require a firmware update to fix the playback issue, but you would think that with such a big release, you wouldn’t risk putting such a new copy protection scheme in place. Or at the very least, make sure manufacturers have the firmware updates out *before* you release the new DRM scheme. But that would assume studios care about their customers, which they don’t.

High Definition

Because if studios cared about the customers, then they wouldn’t make releases like the recent Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Triolgy Blu-ray set. (We’ve moved onto HD news, btw).

Amazon ratings for the LOTR trilogy Blu-ray shows fan feeling cheated, but studios don't care

I was really interested in seeing how this rushed Blu-ray set of some of the biggest movies ever would do at retail, and while LOTR was the most popular Blu-ray title in the week of release, it definitely didn’t do as well as they should have, even taking into account the fact that it’s more expensive than your regular single Blu-ray movie. It didn’t help that the studios thought wise to release one of the biggest releases of the format so far in a week that’s traditionally poor for sales, the post Easter week. And so it wasn’t a total surprise that the biggest movies to be released on Blu-ray so far (total box office wise, when adding it up for all 3 movies) actually produced a set of weekly results that are actually the lowest for Blu-ray sales for 2010 so far. Comparing to the same post Easter week from last year, the only notable new release back then was The Spirit (with current IMDb rating of 5.0 out of 10), and given a whole year worth of growth and the three of the biggest movies ever for the first time on Blu-ray, less than an $8m increase in weekly revenue was recorded, compared to a $14m increase in revenue in the week earlier. Of course, the post Easter effect was responsible for a large part of this, but you do have a feeling that if the first LOTR trilogy Blu-ray release was treated with a bit more respect, like a proper transfer for the first film, or creating some new extra features for the set, or at the very least, actually bothering to put the same old extra features on a Blu-ray disc instead of sticking the same discs from the DVD boxset in the set (and have the temerity to call the whole thing a “Blu-ray boxset”), and this is all on top of not releasing the Extended Edition, then maybe it would have sold more and fans wouldn’t feel cheated, which is director Peter Jackson’s take on this Blu-ray debacle, reflecting the fact that the director no longer controls these releases, only the studios.

But that’s not really the point. Warner will probably release a Extended Edition with hours of new extra features and with improved video quality, and they may even be kind enough to include the theatrical version in the same release using seamless branching, and all the fans will buy up this special, ultimate, collector’s, edition without hesitation. And that’s what they’ll rely on, and any money they can make off the current rush job will be a bonus. Of course, that bonus is perhaps looking a little less than they had hoped, which may mean they’ll have to milk it a bit longer, and that could mean further delays to the Extended Edition Blu-rays. And if you look at it that way, then you’ll have to give in to the studio and buy the current botched release, so that the EE can get here sooner. Maybe some billionaire can buy up a million copies of it, bury it in the desert next to that E.T. game, and then we can have the Extended Edition released on Blu-ray next week.

In totally unrelated news, Lucasfilms has hinted that the Blu-ray version of Star Wars will be coming sooner than you think, probably before the 3D versions hit the cinemas, and definitely before they milk fans for more money with the new updated, must-have 3D Blu-ray set of Star Wars. I just hope that they include the theatrical versions on the initial Blu-ray release, because my VHS copy of it is not looking too healthy at the moment (and I refused to buy the slightly updated DVD edition that had the theatrical versions as I had already paid for the original DVD box set).

Not much going on in gaming, other than the NPD analysis, so I’ll skip the section for this week. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup | 1 Comment »

DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (23 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (9 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (2 May 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (25 April 2010)

Pages

Links

Categories