DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. There’s quite a bit to cover this week, but I must of course do the customary promotion for the latest NPD analysis, which I posted yesterday for the US December video game sales results. The Wii did particularly well, despite being 38% down compared to last year (which was a kind of freak result, considering the sales pattern both before and after that particular month), so there’s still life left in the old dog yet. And even though the Xbox 360 had its best ever month for sales, it still couldn’t quite get over the Wii, although it did comfortable outperform the PS3, which might just have to settle for third place in this generation’s console wars. Anyway, back to the news roundup …

Starting with copyright news, the PS3 hack saga took a very non surprising turn this week as Sony finally got its lawyers involved, and filed lawsuits both the group that released the hack, fail0verflow, and geohot, the hacker that later released a custom firmware, based on the hack, that allows homebrew to be run on the PS3.

The legal documents linked make interesting reading, and Sony has approached the lawsuit from a lot of different angles, even suing for “trespass”. People who are more informed in regards to the law will have, surprisingly, a more informed opinion as to the merit of the case, as well as Sony’s chances of winning it. But at the heart of the issue is whether the DMCA was really violated, and the motivations of the hackers in question. Sony attempted to paint geohot as a someone trying to exploit this for financial gain (just because geohot once made some casual remarks about the need for Sony to hired someone like him if they wanted to keep their future consoles safe from hacking – Sony interpreted this as a form of financial blackmailing, or something). Both hacking groups were keen to point out that their hacks were not aimed at opening up the console for piracy, but there is no denying that the hack will do exactly this, although mostly without further assistance from either geohot or fail0verflow. But I think it’s a stretch for Sony to link any financial motives to the hacking – these were clearly hacks encouraged by the removal of Other OS, more than anything else, and it’s unlikely any of those sued is going to profit from the hacks, unless you count fame as a financial reward. Still, I think this has the makings of a epic court battle, with both sides committed to fighting for what they believe is right, and it could have seriously implications on copyright, the DMCA, DRM and hacking in general. Watch this space.

Buying individual tracks is now more popular than albums, which means less profit for record labels

The UK music industry has just released figures showing that music sales, by unit, reached an all times high or 281.7 million songs. You would think they’d happy with this result, but they’re not, and they’re blaming piracy. While unit sales was up dramatically, 27% compared to just a year before, actual revenue was down, mostly due to dropping CD sales. But if there ever was a figure showing that the music industry’s declining profits were nothing to do with piracy, then it was these sets of figures, despite what the BPI’s (the UK’s version of the RIAA) conclusions. The increase in individual unit sales shows people buying more than ever, but only in terms of single tracks. This is largely thanks to the digital revolution in music,  iTunes stores and whatnot. Even without considering the ageing CD format (first demonstrated nearly 35 years ago!) and how out of place a physical medium is for music these days, the fact that most CDs are albums is also why CD sales are declining. With digital music purchases, you can buy only the music you want, as opposed to a whole album with only a couple of good songs, and you can even create your own albums, which makes those compilation CDs seems quite lame by comparison. And add to the fact that Apple, via iTunes, now get a huge chunk of the profit because the music industry was too slow to adapt to this digital revolution and set up their own online stores, this is what accounts for falling profits, not piracy. And you know what? I think record labels should just accept the fact that things aren’t as good as before, and move on. They’ve long exploited artists, who get very little of the money from song sales by the way, and their dying business model should not be protected. Piracy has been an easy scapegoat for the music industry, that’s all.

And it’s an easy to accept scapegoat too. Because people are downloading pirated songs, a lot of them, but of course, nobody has actually attempted to find out the real cost of piracy. Not the ridiculous figures of “$200 billion” a year, by multiplying the number of downloads by the full retail cost of each download, but actually examining just what percentage of people would have otherwise paid for the content had the content not been available for piracy? Nobody in the industry is conducting such a study because they know the results will not be in their favour, because they know that people are buying music and movies more than ever (remember that before DVDs, hardly anybody purchased movies), and they will then have to find another convenience scapegoat to blame for their woes. It seems the entertainment industry has shifted their cross-hairs over to online storage websites such as RapidShare and MegaUpload, the new scapegoats in their war against online piracy, as it’s much easier to sue companies like RapidShare/MegaUpload, than the thousands of BitTorrent indexes run by individuals without even a postal address. And again, incredible claims are being made, which basically is suggesting that sites RapidShare do nothing other than host and share illegal content, when I think (from my usage of these services anyway) most of the usages are perfectly legitimate (ie. sharing large, legal, files that otherwise would be difficult via email).

One convenient scapegoat was the so called “analog hole”, in which movie studios warned of the dire consequences of not closing the loophole which allowed people to record digital content, like Blu-ray’s, via analog output which have very little in terms of content protection (since it’s a lot harder to deploy content protection without using some kind of digital system). This is how they scared the FCC into adding selectable output control to analog outputs, and this is why we have the stupid rule in which it’s impossible for upscaled DVDs to be played over component legally. And this is also why, for the Blu-ray specifications, something called ICT was added. ICT stands for Image Constraint Token, which is simply something that the studios invented so they can block HD analog output. Due to public pressure, they put off the introduction of ICT until a later date, except that later date has just passed (January 1st, 2011), and ICT is now in effect. What this means is that for all Blu-ray players made after January 1st, they will no longer be allowed to output HD via component output – the resolution is now limited to only 540p, which is basically SD resolution. For those with older Blu-ray players, they too will be affected when new Blu-ray movies carrying ICT will also only be played at limited resolutions. So it’s HDMI, or no HD. And in 2013, it will be illegal for Blu-ray players to have analog outputs at all. This is fine for the vast majority, who is happily using the HDMI connection on their Blu-ray players. But there are still those with older TVs, or even those with home cinemas that employ expensive, but older, projectors that can display a perfectly great picture, but just doesn’t have the required HDMI input (projectors were much slower to adopt HDMI than TVs). The Blu-ray people will say that this is all to help the transition to digital, since analog can’t be supported forever. And that’s a valid argument. But is it really necessary to ban analog outputs to achieve this, when as I already mentioned, the vast majority have switched over to digital already without the need for any coercion. And if the argument is that analog makes piracy more a problem – I don’t know a single instance of piracy over component output, simply because it’s very very easy to pirated a Blu-ray movie via digital means, which also has the added bonus of 0% quality degradation. For me, this is the industry’s paranoia about piracy at its worst – imagining a problem that doesn’t exist, and implementing a “solution” that hurts legitimate consumers more than it actually helps to prevent the problem.

UltraViolet aims to provide consumers cross-format ownership of content, but at a price

For me, the industry is at its best when it is coming up with solutions to real, not imaginary, problems. DVDs were invented so people could buy movies without worrying that the quality would degrade after too many viewings, as it was the case with VHS tapes. Blu-ray was invented so people could have something to watch on their new HDTVs, and that they would get a cinematic experience at home as close as possible (in terms of visual/aural quality) to the original cinema presentation. Digital downloads and streaming, despite the industry’s reluctance, also helped to solve real problems. And the industry’s latest effort, which has somehow managed to earn the support of pretty much all the big names both in the movie industry and the computing industry, is something called UltraViolet. On the surface, it looks (and is) another layer of DRM, the last thing we need. But this DRM’s aim is different than what has come before. Instead of trying to prevent piracy, UV attempts to solve a problem that has bothered people since the introduction of DVDs – the fact that people are buying the movie that’s locked to a particular format, as opposed to simply buying the movie. Well, locked legally anyway, thanks to DRM, and if people wanted to transfer their DVD movie to another non DVD device, then they could only do it illegally. The introduction of Digital Copy helped to alleviate some of the concerns, but it’s a very flawed implementation. UV attempts to solve this problem by making you buy the movie, not the format, and once that movie is added to your ‘digital locker’, you can then have access to multiple formats of the same movie, and even access to new formats as they’re being introduced to the market). And you can even share your ‘digital locker’ with up to 6 people, and across up to 12 different devices. You can read up on just how UV might work here.

But while the idea behind it is good, the problem is that we, as consumers, are still handing a lot of power over to the studios. Instead of having a physical DVD in my hands, and (albeit illegally) convert that to work on my iPhone, UV means it’s the studios that now have the ultimate control. The current implementation might allow you to share with 6 friends and 12 devices, but what’s to say that it will always be this generous. Or that you won’t have to pay extra whenever a new format is released (say for your iPhone 6)? Or, if the studios get desperate enough one day, that they force everyone to re-pay or they will cancel access to your digital locker – that may be unlikely, since they’ll get sued seconds after sending out the emails demanding this “ransom”, but the user agreement that you entered with them might just allow this to happen. But these worries aside, the goal behind UV seems to be a good one, and I think if it’s implemented correctly, it will greatly help reduce casual piracy, and the need to purchase multiple formats of the same movie, although it’s hard to see what the studios get out of letting people buy less stuff. I mean these are the same studios that make you purchase 5 different “special, limited, platinum, ultimate, definitive” editions of the *same* movie on the *same* format, every couple of month!

Everyone’s favourite anti-piracy law firms, US Copyright Group, and the bunch that’s suing people for downloading Batman XXX and other pornos, are joining forces. It’s becoming harder for these law firms because of a little thing called jurisdiction, and so they have to form alliances with firms in other geographical areas and help sue for each other, to lower costs and ensure profit steams.

And everyone’s favourite anti-piracy agency, Aiplex, is in the news again, this time over their hilariously worded threat that was emailed to TorLock, a BitTorrent indexer that is actually paying users that spot fake torrents in their index. Creating fake torrents is one of the tools in their anti-piracy toolkit, although one that doesn’t really work. But Aiplex’s apparent anger is hard to understand, and also their claim that it’s not cool to pay people and remove torrent files for content that you don’t own. So this means I can’t pay people $1 every time they *don’t* watch a Michael Bay film, even though I’m sure I could save billions of brain cells by doing so, and it also means that TorLock can’t remove torrent files (that they don’t own) when requested to do so by firms like Aiplex, right? [insert confused smiley]

In HD/3D news, the CES has been pretty much a non event for the Blu-ray format. This could be interpreted as bad news because it’s no longer the cool new thing that it once was, or it could just be because it’s mainstream status means, it no longer needs to be the cool new thing.

But there was one interesting new tech for Blu-ray, and one that makes the outlandish claim to improve upon the clarity of Blu-ray movies just by using a new, fancy type of HDMI cable (and Monster were not even involved!).

This before and after image shows DarbeeVision's HD enhancement at work

DarbeeVision claims to just do that, by using a special technique that creates a “drop shadow” for each frame of the Blu-ray image, which creates a kind of effect that our brains interpret as more detail. The HDMI cable part comes from the ability to embed the image processor directly into the cable, and so by connecting your Blu-ray player to your TV using the $150 cable, you can enjoy DarbeeVision’s added sharpness (the current system, which uses a set top box that sits between your player and TV, costs $1,500). I’ve even posted some before and after images here, for those that want to see if it really works or not. Interesting concept, but I’m not sure cinephiles will appreciate fake, digitally added, details (but the Average Joe would probably love it).

And as mentioned in this section a couple of months back, Apple has finally removed VLC for iOS from iTunes. The incompatibility between open source licensing, and Apple’s draconian licensing scheme (even for free software), claims another victim.

While not specifically HD news (more H.264 news), Google’s decision to no longer support H.264 for HTML5 in their Chrome browser is one that will have huge implications for online HD video streaming. This definitely shifts the momentum towards Google’s own WebM format or to a lesser extent, Ogg Theora, but WebM may suffer a similar fate to H.264, as disputes over patent claims could endanger the rollout of HTML5. Most video compression technologies are based on very similar principles that will almost certainly have been patented by someone at some stage, and experts feel WebM is not the open, patent/royalty worry free format that Google is promoting it as. While Microsoft has responded harshly to this decision, this move is really aimed right at Apple, which is going forward with HTML5 support for all their iDevices, but with H.264 support, since they’re huge fans of the format that they own lots of patents for (Microsoft owns a lot of patents on it too). Imagine if Google made the next version of YouTube HTML5/WebM only – then none of the iDevices will be able to browse the new version of YouTube, with Google’s Android phones being the main beneficiary of this scenario!

And finally in gaming, Kinect will be coming to the PC officially – just not any time soon. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer hinted at Windows support for Kinect, but did not want to release and specific timelines.

Some say that Kinect won’t work with PCs, because of the distance issue – people sit much closer to computers than TVs, and Kinect requires a lot of space. But that’s mainly because the current range of Kinect games all require leg tracking, while Microsoft has already hinted that there will be Kinect games where you can play just by sitting down, so these games might just work on Windows. And waving your hands to flick through pages and pages of a boring financial report using Kinect might just make the experience bearable!

And that’s enough words for this week (fastly approaching 3000!). Have a good one.