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Weekly News Roundup (4 May 2008)

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Finally got my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV from gamehubs.com (quick delivery, at a great price … good customer service too, well recommended). It is certainly very impressive, but since this is the first GTA game I’ve not played on a PC, I’m still getting used to the controls and playing it on a big screen TV (which to be honest, is making me quite nauseous). The city feels much more real and alive compared to previous GTA games, although I’m a bit tired of being thrown through the windshield all the time while driving (don’t they have seat belts in Liberty City?). Anyway, a lot more play time is needed before I can truly say that it is my favourite game of all time. As expected, news this week has been dominated by GTA IV.

CopyrightIn copyright news, and while on the subject of GTA IV, pirated Xbox 360 copies of the game are already available on several torrent sites. I understand that some people only downloaded those so they can play prior to the release date, but it’s a shame that people are not paying for a game which has reportedly cost over 100 million dollars to make and received great reviews. If you like the game, buy it!

RIAAOn the other end of the scale, there’s the RIAA claiming that making music files available in “shared folders” constitutes piracy. Fortunately, a judge has ruled that this act alone does not mean piracy, and many other steps afterwards (such as other people actually downloading the shared music files) must happen before piracy can be declared. There was another ruling which said that the burden of proof must be on the RIAA’s side (you mean innocent until *proven* guilty? What a novel concept!), and that third party anti-piracy agents must first download the pirated file from the defendant’s hard-drive before they can accuse anyone of piracy. Some common sense at last!

Now that RIAA’s “everyone should use DRM” crusade is at an end (with DRM being defeated quite comprehensively), only now are some of the bad side effects of DRM are beginning to show. The MSN music store, which made way for the Zune Marketplace, sold many DRM’d files and with the closing of the store and the DRM validation servers, these files no longer play because it cannot connect to the store to authenticate the license. That’s the trouble with DRM, especially those that from time to time require online validation … the content owners at any time could decide not to give you rights to play the file, or even make you pay for them again if you want to “re-activate” your license. Thank goodness that DRM is dead, for music files at least.

High DefinitionIn HD news, Paramount, the last studio not to announce their Blu-ray plans, has finally done so with big titles such as Bee Movie and Cloverfield, as well as the Oscar nominated There Will Be Blood, all making their ways onto Blu-ray by the end of May. Universal has also announced that they will use the lossless DTS-HD MA format for their releases (Paramount wants to use Dolby TrueHD, also lossless). This should help Blu-ray, although reports suggest that the only company it will really help, more than any other at least, is Sony. The in-fighting amongst the other Blu-ray backers could actually hurt the format, since the BDA is far from a united front and consists of companies that have conflicting interests (as opposed to the HD DVD people, which really didn’t have that many supporters and only one major one in each field). Another problem identified is that Blu-ray is too dependent on the PS3, and not all PS3 users are movie fans that are willing to buy lots of Blu-ray movies, even though Blu-ray usage on the PS3 has increased. And the expected surge after HD DVD’s demise has not happened, and sales even dropped 40% from January to February. Of course, seasonal variations means that February (and March) are always slow months, but the victory certainly hasn’t been a catalyst for mass acceptance of Blu-ray … that will take another year or two at least. Cloverfield on Blu-ray (fake cover)And to further prove this, the latest Nielsen VideoScan data (which is now updated weekly on our forum) shows that with only 6% of the market compared to DVDs for top 20 titles by volume on both formats, Blu-ray still has a long way to go. In fact, the 6% is actually generous, because a large percentage of DVD sales occur outside the top 20 titles, whereas Blu-ray sales are much more concentrated in the top 20 – I don’t have exact figures, but Blu-ray probably only accounts for 2 to 3% of all sales at best).

And just before moving onto gaming, the rumour that never seems to die resurfaced again, with an OEM partner of Microsoft claiming that a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 is on the way. I’m fairly certain we will see a new Xbox 360 model by the end of the year, with new GPU and possibly CPU parts to aid cooling and noise reduction. Will this model, codenamed Jasper I think, include Blu-ray playback? I’m 100% certain there won’t be Blu-ray games on the 360, so is including the drive and thus increasing the cost a sensible thing to do for Microsoft? Time will tell …

GamingIn gaming news, or more precisely, GTA IV news, the first set of sales figures from the UK have been released, and the Xbox 360 version is holding the lead. Somewhat surprising because, while the 360 has sold more overall, it is the PS3 has been selling more than the 360 for month to month figures for quite a while now. Microsoft themselves have announced that, for US sales, GTA IV on the 360 is outselling the PS3 version by 2-to-1, no doubt helped by stores like Amazon offering GTA IV/360  bundle deals of their own in absence of an official one from Microsoft. Sony countered by saying that GTA IV has helped to sell loads of PS3s, as expected. Neither of these statements conflict with each other of course, and so with Sony not arguing against Microsoft’s claims, then 2-to-1 is not bad for a series that has been synonymous with the success of the PlayStation brand. GTA IV PS3 BundleSales of the PS3 version has not been helped with reports of freezing problems (and while the 360 versions has had a few freezing reports, it is not as bad as on certain older models of the PS3). It was also revealed that the PS3 version is only 630p, while the Xbox 360 versions runs at a higher resolution. Some of the shadow effects are extremely harsh on the higher resolution 360 version, which probably explains why the slightly more blurrier PS3 version looks better according to most reviews. If you want to see a video comparison of the two versions for yourself, then Gametrailers.com has the HD version up.

Meanwhile, Mario Kart is probably selling loads on the Wii, but nobody cares (well I do, since I might buy a copy).

That’s all folks for this week. I think shall spend the next week in between doing some work and a lot of time spent playing researching GTA IV.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (4 May 2008)

Why HDMI is unsuitable for PCs, and about DisplayPort

Friday, April 18th, 2008

In my last news roundup, I casually noted that “HDMI is not suited for PC connections”. I’ve since received a few emails asking me to clarify this statement, so that’s what I’ll do here today. And also talk about the new DisplayPort connector.

There are actually a few reasons why I said HDMI was not suitable for PCs. HDMI is pretty much now accepted as *the* digital home theatre connection of choice shows that HDMI is here to stay, but that’s not really the case with PCs – HDMI is still pretty rare on PCs. Whether this proves HDMI is unsuitable for PCs or not, that’s debatable, but what it does show is that HDMI uptake on PCs is still very slow. And there are probably good reasons for it.

HDMI Cable

First the foremost, most monitors on the market do not support HDMI connectors. And because HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI-D and that HDMI can carry digital/analog audio, it means that adding a HDMI connector to a monitor that doesn’t have speakers (which is the majority of them) is a bit of an overkill. Especially when said monitor will almost always have a DVI port anyway.

And even when the monitor has speakers, the way the PC is organized into separate components means audio through HDMI is always a bit tricky. Normally, the graphics card should have the HDMI connector, but should it also handle sound processing. Or should that be the sound card? But a sound card having HDMI is even weirder – what about the video signal then? Basically PC users are used to the idea of video and audio being separate cards and connections, and with HDMI, this sort of breaks down a bit. Still, it won’t stop companies like ATi providing audio through HDMI ports on their graphics cards, even if it is a bit weird.

Moving away from the PC to the other end – if you are trying to connect your PC to a plasma or LCD screen through HDMI, you may often find that the screen does not support standard PC resolutions through the HDMI port. Usually, only 576/720/1080 i/p are supported. There might even be a separate DVI or VGA port on the screen that does support the usual PC resolutions like 1280×768. Windows will happily run at these non PC resolutions, provided you have the correct drivers. However, certain applications like games don’t like these non standard resolutions, and so if you are using your HTPC for more than just photos, music and movies, you may need to think twice about using HDMI through such a limited port. But there are screens that do support PC resolutions through HDMI, by utilising the backwards DVI compatibility. So basically not all HDMI ports are equal, and it can be quite confusing.

HDMI adapter on ATi graphics cardAnd yes, there are many DVI to HDMI solutions and they work reasonably well (I’m using one, for example). However, because legacy DVI connectors may not have HDCP copy protection, just because you can use adapters or cables to plug everything in, it doesn’t mean it will all work. And then there is the issue of the RGB color space, and how certain DVI to HDMI setups require the screen to support the full RGB color space. If set incorrectly, you may get white/black crushes, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have devices that allow you to change the color space in the first place.

To sum up, HDMI is perfect for the home theatre, but it seems a bit tacked on for PCs and not something that was thought out carefully as a replacement for DVI. DVI is getting old. Dual-link DVI is at best a temporary solution to the ever growing problem of increasing resolutions and bandwidth requirements. And as mentioned in the first part of this article, HDMI seems more at home in the home theater than in the office. So something to replace DVI, has the advantages of HDMI, and is designed for PCs primarily … I think this is where DisplayPort comes into the picture.

DisplayPort

To be honest, I don’t want a new connector format, especially when it features yet another set of copy protection (this time, it’s DPCP – using 128-bit AES encryption). But it will at least be license and royalty free, and will support resolutions up to 2560×1600 with only a single cable, and that can only be a good thing. And because it is designed first and foremost for PCs, seeing a DisplayPort on a display device means it will definitely support PC resolutions, and that should sort out the confusion. And with DisplayPort being backwards compatible with DVI, HDMI and even the humble VGA connector, it all should connect without problem given a few dongles and adapters. This might free up HDMI to be come an audio-only connector for PCs (DP to TV, HDMI to receiver, for example), allowing sound card/chip manufacturers to provide the best high-bitrate audio support on PCs, without having to worry about how to handle the video part.

Or DP could have the effect of causing more confusion by adding a third (actually, fourth) connector type for PCs. Time will tell …

Posted in Computing, Electronics | 2 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (16 March 2008)

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

What a week it has been. The server problem was finally fixed, although not without a lot of fixing and tweaking as you would expect when you do a major server move. Also received a bunch of cheap HD DVDs that I had ordered in previous weeks, pretty much all the titles I’ve ordered have now been received (I just need to find some time to watch them, that’s all). And I also celebrated my birthday during the week as well. So it’s been a busy week, and if there seems to be less news stories than normal, that’s probably why.

So let’s not waste any time and start with copyright news. The MPAA is at it again (I seem to use this phrase quite a lot. But blame the MPAA, not me). This time, they are against Net Neutrality, because it might hurt their plans to spy on everybody. Net Neutrality basically means leaving the Net alone and not placing restrictions on things like content types, connection modes and placing priority on certain types of content, while reducing priority on other “less desirable” content. Obviously, a restricted and regulated network will benefit the MPAA in their attempt to control how, when, where and what we download. Having big business tell us what we can and cannot do is, in my opinion, even worse than Big Brother type governments doing so … at least government are elected (in most countries).

On to HD. Now that people have finally gotten around to the idea that Blu-ray is *the* HD format for the future, questions are starting to be raised. Even staunch Blu-ray advocates such as Bill Hunt from The Digital Bits are starting to ask the BDA to make changes, the very changes that made people choose HD DVD like prices, profiles. We’ve been flooded with news of Blu-ray prices rises, both for hardware and movies, but I think it’s too soon to tell what the general direction Blu-ray will be heading to next. If the BDA is serious about replacing SD DVDs with Blu-ray, then prices will drop. If they see Blu-ray as a money maker that is needed to replaced flagging DVD sales, then prices may not drop as quickly as one would like. There is a very interesting read on Gizmondo that highlights some of the problems that Blu-ray will be facing in the short and long term. It certainly is a pretty pessimistic look at things, but you would have to agree with their key points, which are: the cost of the format war means prices drops will hurt manufacturers and studios, profile confusion, and productivity problems. On that last point, the article raises something quite interesting in that they speculate Universal studios might be having trouble releasing their titles on Blu-ray due to the entire 2008 production stock already being allocated to other studios. In other words, Universal can’t release movies on Blu-ray because they can’t get production time in the already over capacity production lines. New lines are being built, but they cannot come online quick enough. Of course, this might all be speculation, but one thing is for certain: HD DVD would not have experienced this problem as all recent DVD production lines are capable of producing HD DVDs. And speaking of former HD DVD studios releasing titles on Blu-ray, Paramount is apparently set to re-release their previous Blu-ray titles (before they went HD DVD exclusive) again next week. Seems that they kept their Blu-ray stock, as opposed to pulping them as some rumours had suggested. Unfortunately, Universal never got into Blu-ray production, so it will be some time before you see The Bourne Trilogy on Blu-ray. Another problem for Blu-ray is that upscaled DVD performance continues to improve. Oppo this week officially announced their new DVD upscaler, the DV-983H, which early testing has showed to be possibly the best performing on the market today. From my experience, a fairly average/poor HD encode is often the same or worse than a decent DVD encode upscaled (case in point, T2 Extreme Edition DVD vs T2 HD DVD Australian version). Such decent DVD encodes look very “HD” when upscaled, but the general rule is that real HD, when given a proper encoding, will always look better. But just because it is better, doesn’t mean people are prepared to pay extra for it … think DVD-Audio and SACD, although better video quality is easier to sell than better audio quality.

Meanwhile, HD DVD is selling quite well (the latest numbers showed a 10% market share jump for HD DVD in the US, even though the big sales haven’t really started, at least not at Australian “everything under $10” levels yet). For those that want to join in, keep an eye on this page and this page, as well as the blog. I wish somebody would release Australian sales numbers, because it must be at least 20:1 in HD DVD’s favour in the past few weeks. The Xbox 360 add-on drive is proving particularly popular due to its low price, but Microsoft this week denied again that they are working on a similar add-on for Blu-ray. 

Before I move on properly to gaming, DivX support is coming to a lot more Blu-ray players than just the PS3. In fact, their support will be even better than the PS3’s (which is a bit strange). Anyone who has used the PS3’s DivX/XviD playback function will know that it is somewhat limited, with no DivX Ultra support, no support for GMC/Q-Pel and has a few other problems as well. But when a file does work, it plays beautifully. And while the PS3 has had a firmware update (adds nothing of significance, other than some gaming compatibility fixes), the next big update will be interesting if they add enhanced DivX support, as well as perhaps DTS-HD MA decoding (the one essential Blu-ray feature that the PS3 sorely lacks) and even Profile 2.0, although I believe the latter two will be more likely to come only after standalones with similar features are available.

Now onto gaming proper, February’s US NPD figures are out and I will provide a full analysis in the next few days. Once again, all three gaming companies are claiming victory. Nintendo’s Wii sold the most, so they’re claiming they’re the best (with justification, IMO – but if I’m a bit sick and tired of seeing another story about how the Wii is helping the elderly, the injured and basically curing all disease and bringing world peace). Sony’s PS3 sold more than the Xbox 360, so they’re claiming victory too (mainly thanks to Blu-ray’s victory, I think). While Microsoft is still saying Xbox 360 stock shortages are affecting sales figures, and that they sold the most software and made the most profit, which they think is the most important. If Microsoft is really having stock problems, then what they say makes sense, since people are still choosing the 360 over the PS3 when it comes to multi-platform releases (Call of Duty 4, for example). It will be interesting to see which consoles gains most from the release of GTA IV, but I believe with the 360 install base much greater than the PS3 in the US, the 360 version of GTA IV, with the exclusive content, will probably sell more copies. I’ve yet to decide which version I would get (PS3 or 360), although I’m leaning towards 360 due to not having to buy another controller just to get rumble capabilities (and the fact that the 360 version was produced first, meaning it might play a little bit better). Once I assume 360 stock become plentiful again, Microsoft will fight the PS3 with further price cuts which will put pressure on Sony to follow. Expect to see a 360 GTA IV pack for less cost than the basic PS3, and it will sell like hotcakes.

See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (16 March 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (9 March 2008)

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Sorry for this slightly later than usual roundup. The server hosting most of Digital Digest’s websites started experiencing some problems, which were later traced to a bad hard-drive. To avoid any outages, I had to quickly source a new server and transfer the sites across, which was not easy at 3am in the morning. I ended up going to bed at 7am, and 6 hours of sleep later, I’m back again continuing with the transfer. Ah … the glamour of being a webmaster.

Let’s not waste any time, because I have none to spare. In copyright news, finally a content provider that has the right idea. Instead of pursuing layers of DRM, the band Nine Inch Nails will release their new album through P2P using a donation based system … you decide how much you want to pay for the music, and of course, no DRM. Doing it this way really “goes with the flow” of how content is distributed on the Internet, and bypassing the studio system has many advantages (least of which is getting 95% of your profit back, which otherwise would have belonged to the studio). Using a system normally used to distribute pirated content has many advantages, one of which is ease of use. Jumping through hoops just to buy some DRM infested crap just doesn’t work anymore. And to prove this point, a new study confirms that piracy is better than the real thing. Better content, easier delivery are all reasons why people are choosing the piracy route, rather than through official channels. Studios are obviously worried, but is it really hurting them? Movie ticket sales broke new records again in 2007, despite movie piracy at an all time high. Is piracy helping to sell movie tickets, as people watch a low quality version of a film, likes it, and then decide to watch it proper in the cinema or on legally purchased discs?

Moving quickly onto HD, BD-ROM is set to take off in 2008 following Blu-ray’s victory in the HD format war. The most interesting part of the story is a revealing quote which suggested that BD burner prices are high because of low yield issues. It seems low yield is a problem that Blu-ray suffers from a lot, with disc pressing a huge problem causing releases to be pushed back time and time again due to insufficient manufacturing capacity. To ensure capacity though, new factories will have to be built. And consumers will end up having to pay for them. Some reports suggest that both Blu-ray player and disc prices have gone up since the demise of HD DVD, and you can’t really blame the BDA, studios or CE manufacturers (and online rental stores) for doing so, because the format war has been costly on top of the cost of developing a new format. There is certainly less Blu-ray disc sales than before, and even the redemption offer for 5 free discs seems to be over now with no signs of it coming back. Competition is good for the consumer. But there is no competition to Blu-ray now, apart from competition from within (which will be somewhat limited, as everyone involved do not want a price war to drive down profit margins just yet). Further evidence comes straight from Sony, who says that they do not want to license Blu-ray technology to Chinese firms in order to lower prices (their stated reason is “piracy”). Sony has ruled out $200 Blu-ray players coming this year, and they hinted that you might have to wait until the end of 2009 to see Blu-ray players match the 2007 price of HD DVD players, and even then, it’s probably just a basic Profile 1.1 player that won’t play a lot of the special feature content on the majority of discs released at that time. One way for player prices to drop is for HD DVD firms to get involved, and Microsoft is the first to suggest they may join the Blu-ray bandwagon and release an add-on drive for the Xbox 360. Nothing more specific than that, unfortunately. Microsoft has also released the HD DVD emulator for the Xbox 360 for free (used to cost a few thousand dollars) – with this software, you can test your HD DVD projects and HDi content without having more specialised equipment than a Xbox 360.

The HD DVD fire sale continues, although I have a feeling the best is yet to come. Prices continue to drop, now to as low as $8.50 for selected titles. I’ve written a bunch of blog entries on this already, so I won’t waste too much time on it again. Suffice to say that I’m still pretty mad about JB Hi-Fi Online and their Planet Earth ordering fiasco – read more about it here. And I guess it sort of belongs in the HD section – Pioneer has responded to rumours that it will cease development of plasma screens and move onto LCD (the plasma vs LCD battle is just as fierce as the Blu-ray/HD DVD one, along with the numerous unfounded rumours being reported by allegedly reputed news sites). Pioneer will continue to release plasma TVs, except that the panel these TVs used will now be outsourced, instead of being manufactured by Pioneer. The rumour (I know, I know) is that Panasonic will take over, and Pioneer will share their design secrets with them. If true, this is good news because Panasonic’s Viera range is already pretty good, and with some infusion of Pioneer technology, both Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas will continue to be at the top of the pile in terms of picture quality. The best plasma screens will always look better than the best LCDs, and will remain so until new TV technology becomes available (I’m putting my money on OLED, but not before 2010). 

And finally in gaming, PS3 firmware 2.4 will be released in the US summer, and will feature in game XMB for messaging. There is no word that it will feature Blu-ray Profile 2.0 support, or DTS-HD MA decoding – the only two features lacking from the PS3’s otherwise excellent Blu-ray capabilities (but to be fair, no Profile 2.0 player will be available anytime soon, although DTS-HD MA decoding would be nice to have since many titles now use this new audio format and it sucks to be limited to plain old DTS 1.5 Mbps). A new Xbox 360 SKU may also be on the way, perhaps featuring a 60 GB hard-disk. I think getting rid of stability issues and lowering the noise level should be Microsoft’s main priority, because a quiet, non RRoD’ing Xbox 360, with a large hard-drive, will be a must-have even for existing 360 owners, let alone new users.

Okay, so that’s it for this week. I have to get back to fixing the new server. I’ll see you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4 | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (9 March 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (2 March 2008)

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

The month that can never make up its mind as to how many days it should have is finally over. Down with February. Long live March. I love March, not just because it’s the month that contains my birthday, but this is usually the time that I start to feel like the new year is officially here, and now in transition mode as per January, or the confused-as-to-how-many-days-it-has mode that is February.

The fallout from HD DVD’s death continues. Analysts have finally caught onto what I’ve been saying for months now, that Blu-ray’s victory owes much to the BDA’s love for copy protection, as it does to any other factors like the PS3. With DRM being public enemy number one these days, it’s funny to see DRM winning a major format war. I think Toshiba should have promoted the more consumer friendly nature of HD DVD more to the public, in terms of both region coding and less DRM, but I do understand why they didn’t. To do so would have opened another battlefront with DRM and region coding loving studios like Fox. It seems Toshiba really did not like the studio’s way of doing things, and they have now officially released DVD region-free firmware for several of their HD DVD players (or the XE1 at least, install 2.5 first and test to make sure, since once you go to 2.8, getting back to 2.5 is hard and only 2.5 has the region free patch) on their website (at least their Australian website). Unfortunately, it was this pro-consumer, anti-studio attitude that eventually lost the war for them. While as a HD DVD supporter, Warner was not our best friend in the format war, but at least you have to commend them for not supporting region control. Universal and Paramount too. F*ck Fox and their region coded and BD+ discs. Speaking of region control, there is now a new software for the Nintendo Wii that breaks region control (PAL and NTSC) games to work on your Wii. Simply insert the disc, it does its work, eject the disc and insert your game disc. Not sure if Nintendo intend to close this loophole with a firmware patch, or whether they even care about enforcing region control or not.

In HD news, the fallout from HD DVD’s death … wait, I’ve already used this line. Anyway, the big news for HD DVD supporters mourners this week has been Paramount’s (and Dreamwork’s) rather harsh decision to pull all their upcoming HD DVD releases. Just like what they did when they pulled Blu-ray support, with total disregard for consumers. If it wasn’t for their region-free stance, they have done nothing to help either HD format with both low quantity and quality releases. In my last blog entry, I talked about fire sales, and with Paramount stopping HD DVD releases, I think their fire sale will be coming shortly. I’ve started a thread in the forum to talk about HD DVD fire sales, and I will be posting news of any new fire sales there, and in the usual places. The fire sales here in Australia have attracted a lot of buyers (some genuine, while the people who bought 350 discs and 5 copies of each movie trying to take advantage of genuine buyers are scum of the Earth), me included. It’s surprising, but I feel lucky that I’ve bought into HD DVD, as the cheap $8 discs is something so rare, it hasn’t even happened regularly to DVDs yet (at least no in Australia). For the HD DVD movies I’ve bought to be released on to Blu-ray would take months, if not years, and it would still probably be the exact same content, but at 5 times the price. The only risk now is having discs, but not being able to source a player if people’s current players die. But that may not be a problem for long, as HD DVD might live on partly in another format. The DVD Forum (the official body that controls the DVD format) is continuing its support for the China-only CH DVD format, which is basically HD DVD with a different set of software. If CH DVD is a success, then chances are, one will be able to source a HD DVD player without too much problem in the future, which bodes well for those that have dipped their feet into the HD DVD fire sales.

Moving onto Blu-ray now, those worried about price rises now that Blu-ray has no competition will be startled to see a new Blu-ray player being priced at nearly $17,000! Obviously this is not a sign of things to come, but it’s still funny the price some people are willing to pay. I bet it’s not even Profile 1.1. Better news for those of us who don’t earn 7 figure incomes, Sony has announced two new Blu-ray players to be released in the latter part of the year. Both might eventually be BD-Live (Profile 2.0) compatible, although the cheaper of the two players, the BDP-S35,  might not have enough persistent storage to quality as a BD-Live compatible player, without you adding external storage through a USB thumb key. Not the most elegant solution, so I think the more expensive BDP-S550 is the way to go. It even has 7.1 analogue audio output, plus on-board decoding of all the major HD audio formats, so it looks like a good one. The more cynical side of me thinks Sony held back the news of these players until the format war looks to have ended, as it did not want to upset fellow CE manufacturers in the BDA. Now that Sony owns the one and only HD format, it looks like they won’t just sit back and let the other companies take advantage. Monopoly time …

Netflix is also set to take advantage of the conclusion of the format war. They will quadruple the number of Blu-ray titles available to rent, but may raise monthly subscription prices as a result. They’ve been harping on about raising prices for ages now, so don’t be too surprised when it happens. And while not strictly HD news, the people over at Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fi have released an updated review for the PS3’s video playback performance. The previous review was criticized for only testing the then most updated firmware, which did not even include DVD upscaling. But unfortunately, the new result based on the latest firmware did not improve the scores by much. I’ve tried to explain the situation in the link above, and I think most people feel the same way: The PS3 is an excellent Blu-ray player, a more than adequate DVD upscaling player, but don’t expect it to compete with top of the line dedicated upscaling players as that’s not what it is designed to do.

To segue effortlessly from HD/video to gaming, this middle of the road story about the PS3’s new PlayTV (turns the PS3 into a DVR) feature will be DRM free. Good for Sony for taking a sensible approach to DRM for once. Let’s just hope people don’t take advantage of Sony’s lapse and turn the PS3 into the mother of all video piracy machines.

Segueing now to gaming completely, LucasArts will now produce games on the PS3 and then port it over to the 360, as opposed to doing it the other way. I don’t think this is because they luuurve the PS3 more than the 360, it just make more sense from the developer’s point of view to do this as it will mean better games for both platforms. Developers have often complained about porting 360 games to the PS3, since the PS3 has several design bottlenecks that is not easily solve when doing ports. It’s much better to design the game for a system that is more restrictive, and then port it over to the less restrictive/easier environment. And finally, Dead Rising, the game I’m still playing at the moment and the game that I played so much that caused my 360 to RRoD, has been sued for infringing the copyrights of the Dawn of the Dead franchise. So let’s see, Dead Rising is a game about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead (both movies) is about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Sorry, but I just don’t see the connection.

Over the next week, I will be bringing you details of a new competition that I will run on Digital Digest, prizes courtesy of Roxio, the makers of the famous Popcorn and MyDVD series. The prize includes copies of their latest DVD production, copying and conversion software, as well as a grand prize of an iPod. More details when they are available.

Okay, that’s it from me for this week – I’m going back to look for more HD DVD fire sale details, credit card in hand …

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (2 March 2008)

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