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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 (18 April 2010)

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

I managed to ramble my way through a mid-week blog post about the future of TV. The focus on fighting piracy has so far centered on stopping the flow of illegal content, and punishing those that download them. I argue that a better strategy is to provide new unique, innovative services that betters piracy in terms of providing convenience. It is true that people download pirated stuff because it’s free, but let’s admit it, they also do it because sometimes it’s just really convenient. And as I said in the future of TV blog post, if the legal outlets are not beating pirated content on convenience (and quality), then that’s something that should be addressed. My next mad rambling will be about the future of movie viewing and collection, which came to me in a dream last night.

There’s a few news stories to go through, so let’s get started with the copyright news. Let’s get the really really outrageous stuff out of the way first, and leave the normal level of outrageous stuff for later on.

The MPAA Is Watching You

The MPAA and RIAA has proposed several new anti-piracy measures, a wish list if you will, to the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. Had this list been released a couple of weeks earlier, then surely people would have guessed wrongly that this was some kind of April Fools joke, but the MPAA and RIAA are not joking around. ISP level monitoring of suspicious content, permanent blocking of websites that the MPAA/RIAA suspects may be engaging in piracy, and the “best” suggestion of all is the creation of a spyware tool that sits on users’ computers, actively scanning and deleting suspected pirated content. Note my use of “suspicious” and “suspect” – without a court of law ruling for or against, that’s what all of this is. But the copyright holders and groups like the MPAA and RIAA that represents them want allegations to become evidence, for mere suspicion to become guilt, and using the government and public resources to circumvent due process. Through money and fear based lobbying, the MPAA and RIAA can achieve its goals, and this is a real threat to everyone’s freedoms and to democracy itself. This is not an exaggeration. When they are proposing things like search and seizure of people’s laptops and MP3 players at airports due to the potential of finding pirated content on them, when they want to ban people and websites from the Internet and so cut off the most potent form of communication for their opponents, to control what people can do and can’t do in their own homes with their legally purchased items, to go as far as proposing a software that monitors people’s usage of their personal computers – these are not exaggerations. The fact that the public has been kept in the dark regarding the ACTA global anti-piracy treaty is further evidence of this threat. This nice rant by CNET blogger Molly Wood says as much, in a less mad rambolic way, in a new blog entry that’s a call to arms to stop the emerging copyright police state. “Copyright police state” describes exactly what the MPAA/RIAA is seeking to create, because it’s the only way they can ensure their future, their power, is guaranteed. Otherwise they may have to, you know, change and adapt, and that stuff is hard.

And when governments are clueless about the legislations they’re passing, then the dystopic future that we all fear becomes one step closer to reality. Case in point, the newly passed UK anti-piracy bill, passed politicians that actually think an IP address is an “Intellectual Property address”, has already been exploited by scam artists scaring people into paying “pre-trial settlements”. See, this is what happens when you pass laws that bypass due process, because without the legal checks and balances, anyone can exploit the system for their own gain, and citizens who have had their rights stripped away no longer feel able to defend themselves, and so fall prey to these sort of scams. The malware itself pretends that it is being sent on behalf of well known law firms which have been engaging in “pre-trial settlement” mailings. This isn’t the only malware out there right now pretending to be some kind of anti-piracy measure, and there’s news of one in Japan where it also asks for “pre-trial settlements”, and users face the embarrassment of having their browser history published if they do not pay up. And if they do pay up, their credit card details are stolen as a result. Well, what does that tell you about these requests for “pre-trial settlements” from legitimate organisations, in that people confuse them with genuine blackmail attempts. The good news is that yet another law firm has withdrawn from this kind of activity, due to a public backlash.

But the most frustrating thing about all of this is that it won’t stop piracy at all. There are already many techniques which exists that allows people to bypass the measures put in place so they can download pirated content to their heart’s content. And by pushing people towards these harder to monitor areas of the net, it will make piracy stronger and these short sighted measures will only end up hurting the copyright holders more in the long term.

High Definition

In HD news, PS3’s 3D Blu-ray support will not be coming until later the year. 3D will be coming to the PS3 in June, but only for 3D games. This would seem to be Sony’s way to give their and others 3D standalones a chance at retail, since I don’t think technical reasons are what’s responsible for the delay in 3D Blu-ray support. So for early adopters, you’ll have to look elsewhere to get your 3D movie fix.

Blu-ray 3D won't be coming to the PS3 until later in the year

Fox and Universal have made a deal with Netflix to provide more content for online streaming, but new releases will be delayed by 28 days. It’s the kind of deal Netflix and alternative distributors like Redbox have had to accept, as studios try to maximize their DVD and Blu-ray sales revenue by giving them an exclusive release window.

Speaking of alternative distributors, Seagate and Paramount are trying something new, by pre-loading movies on portable hard-drives that Seagate sells. These movies aren’t free though, they still need to be paid for and unlocked to be viewed, and as with any DRM, interoperability limitations mean these files won’t play on too many other devices. It’s an interesting idea, but the only effort that this method saves the consumer is the actual download process, which between all the DRM unlocking and the need to find a compatible player for the DRM’d file, isn’t a very inconvenient step in comparison.

The HTML5, H.264, browsers debacle continues to confuse, with Google now adding to the format confusion by making the VP8 video codec open source. Google recently absorbed On2, the company that makes the VP series of codecs. Google says that by making VP8 open source, this provides an alternative to browser makers that don’t want to pay for the proprietary H.264, but also don’t think the free Ogg Theora format is good enough in quality. If Google can convince the likes of Nvidia, ATI and Intel to provide GPU based hardware acceleration or decoding assist for VP8, then perhaps we do have a viable alternative, but it’s hard seeing anyone take on H.264, which has firmly established itself as the industry standard codec (H.264 is used by YouTube, Blu-ray, Apple, to name a few of the format’s supporters). The MPEG-LA needs to waive royalties for H.264 support for browsers, which I think is the quickest way to resolve this issue, as opposed to introducing and promoting yet another video format in VP8.

And finally in gaming, last week I mentioned that Amazon UK refunded an user who complained the PS3 now no longer supporting the “Other OS” function, despite it being promoted as one of the features of the PS3 in Amazon’s sales description.

Sony has now officially confirmed they will not be subsidizing retailers that give out these kind of refunds, and so Amazon UK either has to continue to provide refunds out of their own pocket, or most likely, stop providing refunds. Class action lawsuit time?

And I know the March NPD figures are out, and I will post the analysis as soon as possible, probably tomorrow. The Xbox 360 lost the number one spot as expected, but still managed to beat the PS3. But Sony stole the show with a strong showing in software sales, also as expected.

That’s all for this week. Talk to you again in 604800 seconds.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (18 April 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (21 March 2010)

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Some big software news this week. First up, DivX Plus 8 was released, all the tools in the package got updated, including the DivX Player, Converter. As usual, there’s a free codec pack for those only wanting to play DivX (and now MKV/H.264) movies. Then there was a new version of ImgBurn, with a suitably impressive, and long, list of changes. And finally, PowerDVD 10 was released, with some exciting new features – a brief overview in this blog post to tide you over before the full review is up, but if you like 3D stuff, this one’s for you.

But wait, there’s more. I managed to sneak in a new PS3 related guide over the week as well. This one uses AVIAddXSubs and lets you add subtitles to AVI files that will show up on the PS3. And not only that, you can add up to 8 subtitles per AVI file, and they can be switchable (obviously), and even turned off. All without having to re-encode the AVI file, and all taking only a minute or two per subtitle stream.

And let’s not forget, we still have news to go through.

In Copyright news, in a surprising turn of events, content owners no longer wants to call people who download their content illegally “pirates”. Not because they’ve had a change of heart and realised that there’s isn’t a huge connection between a penniless college student downloading a copy of District 9, and the often violent, on the seas theft of commercial shipping.

Jack Sparrow: ruining a perfectly good word for music and movie studios

It’s all because, apparently, “piracy” is just too sexy a word to describe the horrific act of downloading bits of data from the Internet. It’s all Johnny Depp’s fault, I suppose, for making piracy look like good fun. Maybe the studios should sue Disney and Mr. Depp. Others have already speculated on what other words can be used to describe the inhumane act of downloading a copy of a file that can be copied an infinite number of times. Something that truly describes the full horror and the the immoral act of what we used to call piracy. File murdering? Song raping? Movie genocide?

These kind of hard decisions have to made somewhere, and soon, the rights holder may have a new global body to standardise these sort of things, if they get their way with the ACTA. Recent leaks suggested that a new body will be set up to oversee the global anti-piracy ACTA treaty, and that this body will be free to make changes to the treaty without governmental interference. In fact, the government won’t even be involved, unless by special invitations. US trade reps, allegedly, calls this body a necessary step to keep out consumer interest groups from ongoing copyright discussions. It’s becoming increasingly clear that these so called anti-piracy laws are nothing other than a desperate attempt to preserve the outdated business model of certain copyright holders, and through a scare campaign and big money lobbying, the various governments are nothing but props in this stage play. And now they want their own “OPEC”, so they can force their demands on the rest of the world and keep profits flowing.

The people, consumers, music lovers, movie fans, are increasingly being marginalized, even though they’re the ones paying the salaries of the government agencies so keen to hand over people’s rights to corporations, and they’re also the ones paying for the big bonuses that the music and movie studio bosses are no doubt getting. Speaking of disenfranchised, 10,000 UK voters have protested to their Members of Parliament about the controversial Digital Economy Bill, which is being rushed through parliament without debate at the insistence of the music and movie industry. So an unpopular bill may get passed without public consultation or even a debate (which would mostly have been an one way one anyway), while the corporations cheer the outcome that they’ve engineered. Is this still a democracy?

I couldn't find a higher resolution version of the back of the box, so one of the sections of the extremely small text says "Persistent internet connection required"

Gaming DRM is back in the spotlights this week, when EA announced that their new game, Command & Conquer 4, will use a similar DRM system to Ubisoft’s, which means an “always on” Internet connection requirement. Lose your Internet, or if the EA servers go down, then the game will kick you out. To be honest, none of this is really new, as many companies have tried “always on” DRM, and all have failed. Internet connectivity may have improved, but there are still many, me included, that don’t have access to a 100% stable Internet connections, certainly not stable enough to guarantee that a 2 hour gaming session won’t be interrupted. Futuremark’s Jaakko Haapasalo said it well last week – there are just so many games these days, and even on the PC, it’s still a relatively competitive industry. So if people don’t think they can play C&C 4 properly, then they’ll skip it for something else, or wait until it’s been “bargain binned” before buying. Why the game companies, who are already competing with *free* pirated games, want to add another thing that makes their product less attractive, I just don’t know.

High Definition

In HD/Blu-ray news, I previously mentioned LG’s Blu-ray player, which is one of the few that doesn’t have 3D in it, and instead, adds an HDD. The new player is now available to buy, and what was interesting was to see that it includes CD ripping.

Not that CD ripping on a standalone device is new, many can do it, but having it on a Blu-ray/DVD player just reminds you how useful it would be if the player could also rip DVDs and Blu-rays. I know there are piracy movie genocide issues to consider, but the convenience would be much appreciated. But the movie studios don’t trust their paying customers, so we’ll just have to be happy that they even let us watch the movie at all, after paying for it.

I recently talked about how you may not want to buy the soon to be released Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray (the comments/ratings protest on Amazon is still going strong, I see – I don’t know if sales will be affected, but it’s only 65th on the best seller list right now), now there’s also reason why you may want to wait on Avatar as well. Despite the director’s wishes, Avatar on Blu-ray released in April won’t be the 3D version, and you’ll have to wait for the (first of many, no doubt) “Ultimate” version coming in November, in time for the holiday season. That one will have 3D and more extra features, and maybe even a longer cut, no doubt. This is actually a bit more understandable than the decision to not release the extended version of the LOTR movies, since I doubt many people would have the equipment to play the movie in 3D right now, or even in November. And it’s not as if the extended cut of the film has been released for years beforehand already, so a double dip here is understandable. But I recommend you do an “one and a half dip”, rent the Blu-ray if you really want to watch the movie right now, and then buy the Ultimate Extended Special Collector’s 3D Extreme edition to be released later in the year.

Redbox about to become Blu, when Blu-ray movies are added to the collection

And you may just be able to rent Avatar on Blu-ray on a Redbox vending machine, since Blu-ray is now being added to fill the empty spaces in these machines. Unfortunately, the studios are still keen on trying to kill, or at least curb, Redbox, which they accuse of committing Content Manslaughter (act where studios profits are affected – at least it’s not murder). Studios insist on a 28 day window between releases making their way to Redbox vending machines, which the studios think will help their profits, but DVDGuy thinks will actually just encourage movie genocide. Feels to me like another self inflicted wound on behalf of the studios, since they can easily work together with Redbox and profit together.

There’s some musing from Microsoft about Blu-ray and the Xbox 360, but I’ll save that for the often neglected gaming section. But Microsoft did make another headline during the week when they revealed that IE9 will feature HTML5 support, which isn’t a surprise, but will also support the H.264 codec. Which isn’t that surprising either, since Microsoft owns several patents on H.264 and so they would like to see it succeed. Plus, they can easily afford to pay for the H.264 licensing costs just by digging for spare change in Steve Ballmer’s sofa. Mozilla’s Firefox won’t support H.264 though, since it’s against their open source principles, plus it also costs money. So that’s Chrome, IE and Safari in the H.264 camp, Firefox, Opera and Chrome (again) in the Ogg Theora camp.

And finally in gaming, with the PlayStation Move still making headlines, Sony are keen to keep the hype going and have released a TV ad that, well is either very funny, or very arrogant. Or both.

Spot the Difference

It portrays one of their VPs communicating all the way from the future, in November of this year (when the Move is released), and mocks the Wii’s for its limited playing style, and the button-less design of Natal. Of course, the “inferior” Wii is kicking the PS3’s butt on so many levels, why Sony wanted to make the comparison, I don’t know. Also, if Sony’s idea of “the future” is November, then maybe they’re even more shortsighted than I thought. This from the same company that dismissed the Wii before they wanted to be just like one. At least Microsoft is trying to be different with Natal, although sometimes different is just another word for “not very good”.

But Sega doesn’t seem to think so. They think the Natal really has potential and that we’ll see “brilliant innovations” in the next year or two. Sega plans to make games for both the Move and Natal, but it’s quite clear that they are a bit more excited at taking advantage of Natal, but only if they can solve the lag issue.

And Microsoft says that Blu-ray has ruined the PS3, at least until now that is. While I would like to say that this was Microsoft’s attempt at hitting back at Sony for the Natal mockery, but the truth is that Microsoft made this statement earlier than the ad itself. A lot of people will disagree with this statement, because many see Blu-ray as the one saving grace of the PS3 while its prices were sky high, and now that prices have come down, Blu-ray could be decisive. While I agree with this wholeheartedly, the fact is that the PS3 would be doing a lot better right now if it was cheaper, but it couldn’t be cheaper because of Blu-ray support, and so, Microsoft is partially correct as well. The PlayStation brand has gone from 80% market domination in the last round, to only 20% of the home console market in the current generation (in the US), and while it still has time to catch up, you can’t say that the PS3 has been as successful as the PS2, and that’s given the Wii and the Xbox 360 some room to breathe. I’m sure Sony doesn’t regret the decision, because it won them the HD format war, and that will bring its own rewards – they just had to sacrifice the PlayStation brand to do it, and they will hope it’s only a temporary setback.

And on that note, I shall end this week’s WNR. Expect much much less stuff next week, in relation to new software releases, guides or even news, although I shall faithfully attempt to get the PowerDVD review online as soon as possible. And by faithfully attempt, I mean whenever I feel like it. See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, 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 (21 March 2010)

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Weekly News Roundup (16 May 2010)

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