High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K) DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K)’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (5 October 2008)

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

I started last week’s WNR with news that my PS3 was fixed. I think I may have spoken too soon, as I’m now having problems with the wireless controller/remote. So my PS3 may be broken again, I posted earlier this week, but I may have spoken too soon, as the same problem hasn’t reoccurred yet. A lot to cover this week, so I’ll have to put my PS3 problems off for another week, until I’ve managed to replicate the problem again.

Starting with copyright news, Wal-Mart is the latest to abandon DRM. Normally, that’s good news, but because DRM is the world’s stupidest invention, it has grave consequences for users who did not pirate music and were honorable enough to buy DRM’d music from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart will shut down its DRM authentication servers, meaning that the DRM’d music files will no longer play. As if people needed more incentive to pirate music.

Apple FairPlay Sued by Norway

And to prove how stupid DRM is again, Apple has been sued by Norway over Apple’s FairPlay DRM. DRM not only makes genuine consumers mad, it also prevents interoperability and fair competition, which is why Norway is suing. I’ve always thought DRM was more about proprietary technology and licensing fees, as opposed to piracy and all that. Sony agrees with me apparently, when the President of Sony Pictures Television said that DRM is one of the the major causes of piracy, although he has no intention of dropping it.

So not only does DRM cause consumer frustration, is anti-competitive, causes piracy, but it may also be killing Blu-ray. Apparently the prohibitive cost of implementing AACS (mainly licensing fees) means that it’s hard for independent producers may have to look elsewhere. Nearly $5,000 may be required to just publish one title on Blu-ray, and that’s for AACS licensing only. HD DVD’s specs said that AACS was optional, but the BDA insists on all Blu-ray discs to carry it, even if the content owners don’t wish to have it (so you can’t really say it’s all about copyright protection). The BDA’s insistence to push DRM onto consumers and producers equally is why I wish HD DVD had won the day, and I’m sure independent producers wished for it too.

So is piracy really that big of a deal in the movie industry? Sony, the champion of DRM and copyright control, is asking ISPs to once more become copyright cops. And yes, this is the same interview in which the Sony Pictures Television President also said DRM is a major cause of piracy and that they love DRM – therefore, they must love piracy. You know who also loves piracy? The MPAA. Despite the deteriorating economic conditions, movie ticket sales are up. Piracy is also up. So therefore, piracy helps movie ticket sales. The MPAA must be very pleased.

And following on the Spore DRM uproar, more and more gaming execs are turning away from DRM. Spore was a hit title that was always going to sell well, DRM or not, but for any other title, bad publicity caused by DRM could really just kill the title.

RealDVD: Not so legal, says MPAA

And finally in copyright, the big news of the week. The MPAA and Real Networks are now locked in a legal battle over the legality of Real’s RealDVD software. As reported earlier in the WNR, RealDVD is Real Networks’ “legal” alternative to DVD rippers, because it keeps the CSS encryption intact on DVDs and then add their own layer of DRM to prevent sharing of the copied movie. Despite this, the MPAA is not happy and wants RealDVD to be scrapped, and is suing Real Networks for breaching CSS licensing (again, despite RealDVD not touching CSS at all). This one will be worth keeping an eye on, as the legal decision could go either way. The way the MPAA is acting could be considered anti-competitive, not allowing a particular use of a product just because they’re not making money from it (I don’t think the MPAA is against this sort of “managed copy”, as long as they’re the ones to profit from it I suppose). And Real could have the capital to fight this all the way too. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, champions of user rights and fairness in copyright protection, states in this article why they think the MPAA should lose this case. I’m not a fan of Real’s products, but I support them on this one 100%.

High Definition Onto HD news now, next week will be when the Iron Man Blu-ray sales figures filter through the Nielsen VideoScan figures. Early indication suggests that Iron Man Blu-ray will be the best selling Blu-ray title of all time, but I suppose that’s not really saying much. This week’s figures include the release of The Godfather Trilogy on Blu-ray, and as expected, it gave Blu-ray sales a bump to become the second best week (I think) ever (the best week being the Transformers bump). Next week should see Blu-ray break all it’s own records, although whether it will set records in terms of sales ratio to DVDs depend on how well the DVD version sells. With DVD users like myself preferring to buy movies a few months after their initial release, and Blu-ray owners (and early adopters) generally preferring to buy all the latest releases as quickly as possible, the figures should favour Blu-ray, but we’ll have to wait and see.

HD DVD in zombified form still selling well

The weird story of the week though is about HD DVD. Yes, that old thing. Apparently, HD DVD sales are still going strong, mainly due to the rock bottom prices that movies and hardware are being sold at. If anything proves that cheap will always outsell better, this is it (better in this case means a format which has a future versus one which definitely doesn’t). DVD will always outsell Blu-ray if this principle holds true, and DVD will never become a obsolete format as long as Blu-ray is alive (thanks to Blu-ray being backwards compatible with DVD). Toshiba is still not supporting Blu-ray, but they are adding PS3 technology to their TVs. I think the more accurate statement should be the PS3 using Toshiba technology, as the Cell processor that Toshiba will use in their LCD line-up is now a Toshiba owned product.

And as predicted a few weeks ago, prices for Blu-ray hardware will drop for the important holiday season. More reason not to buy a Blu-ray player until later this month or in November, December, when the sales really start. I’ll post any good Blu-ray deals I find in the usual place.

Although I’m quiet optimistic that Blu-ray will do quite well during this holiday season, mainly thanks to the major releases of Iron Man and especially The Dark Knight, it could always use a boost. Apple has always been a Blu-ray supporter, sitting on the board of the BDA, but it is strange why they haven’t announced support for Blu-ray in their computers yet. The theory is that Apple have their own plans in relation to movie distribution, and Blu-ray is not part of it (or you might even say that Blu-ray is against their plans).

Another way to promote Blu-ray may be to include the SD DVD version of the movie in the same package, like HD DVD combos (but clumsier in that you need 2 discs, but better in that the discs can be used at the same time). Disney is doing just this with the Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray version. The way I see it, if Blu-ray is to fully replace DVDs, then it will need a combo format of its own. If Blu-ray is happy to be the more expensive alternative to DVD, to exist side by side with it, then the current marketing strategy is working fine.

And in gaming, Xbox 360’s with the Jasper update may (or may not be) appearing in stores already. Jasper reduces the size of the GPU to 65nm, which will help reduce heat production and improve stability.

Will we ever see a slim Xbox 360?

The rumours of a “slim” Xbox 360 just won’t go away though, and there is definitely a new iteration of the 360 coming possibly early next year.

And that’s all the news for this week. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on the MPAA vs Real Networks legal battle, as I think the verdict of this case could prove quite important. If the MPAA wins, then unless they themselves come up with their own managed copy solution (which Real could then sue them for not allowing themselves to do the same thing), then the idea of a disc-less home theatre is dead. If Real wins, then we could see more and more products “circumvent” CSS legally. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (5 October 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (28 September 2008)

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

I finally got my PS3 back to fix the Blu-ray drive problem. Unfortunately, it acted up in strange ways at first, but a full system restore seems to have solved these issues (so if you get your PS3 back from repairs, do a full system restore first – takes a couple of hours, but it’s worth it). I’ve finished upgrading the search system on dvdloc8.com as well. I think it’s easier to find stuff now, but I’m no expert on search engines so I don’t really know what I’m doing anyway. If you search for “bat” and the first result returned is Last Stand of the 300 – The Legendary Battle at Thermopylae, then you’ll know why.

I’m going to do something different this week and start with the copyright news. Oh yes, very different. The RIAA has rejected a Judge issued damages amount and want to go to trial to get more money from a teenager. The Judge initially ordered damages capped at $200 per song, but the RIAA wants to get the maximum $700 per song, because I supposed with the current economic climate, they need the money or something. Actually it’s because the Judge believed the defendant’s claim that it was a case of “innocent infringement”, because Whitney Harper (16 at the time of the infringement, now 20 years old) didn’t know about copyright laws, how KaZaA worked and all of that. In the eyes of the RIAA, everyone is guilty, so obviously there is no such thing as “innocent infringement”, and so the RIAA wants to go to court and get a jury to decide on damages. When the RIAA is not going after 16 year olds, they are going after single mothers. A single mother was convicted and the RIAA was awarded $222,000 in damages, but a Judge has now ruled that the damages rewarded were “wholly disproportionate” and “oppresive”. I say the industry response to copyright theft can also be described as “wholly disproportionate” and “oppressive”.

Download Heroes episodes instead of recording them: illegal?

The outgoing Bush administration wants a new International agreement concerning copyright protection that companies like Google are trying to fight. Shortly after, the US senate passed a MPAA/RIAA/BSA approved bill to crackdown further on copyright abuse, to create a new office of the Copyright Czar, funded by taxpayer money to help big business maintain the profit margins. Well at least they’re consistent on this last point, and it’s good to see with all that’s going on at the moment, preventing you from downloading the latest episode of Heroes is what’s most important. Speaking of downloading Heroes, here in Australia, illegal downloads have been described as an “epidemic”. Piracy is popular here because we get shafted by free-to-air TV stations, which pay big money to secure TV shows (thus preventing the cable networks from having first-run on these shows), and then stuff the program full of ads and show them at the most inappropriate times (if they show them at all). And if you missed a show on TV, didn’t record it, then is downloading it really a crime? It is though, legally speaking, I think.

PlayStation Store Downloads: Beware of DRM restrictions

Moving onto gaming related copyright issues. Activision will now go after individual pirates, targeting people who have pirated the Xbox 360 game Call of Duty 3, and is seeking damages of between $30,000 and $150,000. And if you purchase content from the PlayStation store, be aware that you cannot re-download content, which means if you had to wipe the HDD to do a full system restore due to a shoddy Blu-ray drive, then you’ll have to re-purchase everything. If you had pirated the stuff instead of paying for it, you’ll get better treatment, so what kind of message is this sending to consumers anyway. The Spore DRM thing refuses to go away, and talks of class action lawsuits as well as censorship on EA’s part means this one will drag on for a while now.

In other words, DRM sucks.

High Definition Let’s skip to HD news, because the copyright stuff is depressing. Transformers on Blu-ray: it’s apparently great news for Blu-ray and also the worst to ever happen to it. Depending on who you read. As I mentioned in the last WNR’s, Transformers on Blu-ray caused a sales surge to give Blu-ray the best week ever in terms of sales ratio to DVD. Then the following week, sales dropped back to normal and so there was a huge drop in Blu-ray sales for the week-to-week numbers. And these numbers have caused some in the media to write more “Blu-ray is doomed” stories, because a 13.39% drop in sales means that just, despite Blu-ray sales being up 29% and 16% for the two weeks prior.

Transformers on Blu-ray: causing debates about Blu-ray's popularity

This forced EngadgetHD to write a story debunking these rubbish stories, and rightly so. There is truth to the story that Blu-ray isn’t doing as well as it should be, but to take facts and stretch them to present an extreme point of view (to gain hits, no doubt), is not on. Unfortunately, this happens all too much these days, and not just in less than important news items like Blu-ray sales. But unfortunately, EngadgetHD’s article did their own bit truthstretching and number fudging, as they came up with the wrong conclusion that Blu-ray’s market share (compared to DVD) has actually doubled. They came up with this statement based on only two sets of data – one in March for the week when I Am Legend was released, and another for the Transformers bump. While bothmovies are similarly “hit” titles that will be similarly (but not equally) popular amongst movie lovers, they were both released under different circumstances. I Am Legend was available simultaneously on DVD and Blu-ray, whereas this latest Transformers Blu-ray release was Blu-ray only, and occurred in a week where there were no other Blu-ray and DVD releases of note. So basically you have one that released in a busy week and thus having a 6% market share for the Blu-ray version, while you have another title that is released in a week where it is the only major release and only available in Blu-ray with a 12% market share. So what do these numbers tell you? Nothing at all, other than when a popular movie is released only on Blu-ray in a week when no other releases were as good, then the Blu-ray market share goes up (and then goes immediately down the next week).

Blu-ray Sales Stats

What is probably better is to compare actual sale figures. It isn’t a good way either, because sales fluctuate seasonally, but because Blu-ray is playing the catch up game, its number should be ever on the increase as it gains more market share and tries to beat the slowly “dying” DVD format. Unfortunately, data on the week I am Legend was sold is not available. The earliest data I have is from the week ending April 20th. For that week, Blu-ray sold $9.93m. I had a search on the ever useful Blu-ray Disc Stats website and it seems that was the week that Aliens vs Predator: Requiem were released on Blu-ray, as well as the classics Commando and Predator, as well as the new release Juno. The other titles were “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”, “Mariah Carey: The Adventures of Mimi” and “A Passage to India”. To do a comparison, let’s look at the week ending September 14th. Now this week had some good releases, Kill Bill vol 1 and 2, the new comedy Baby Mama, classics such as Cool Hand Luke and Jerry Maguire. Jackie Chan’s The Forbidden Kingdom was also release in the week, and so were the latest seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and Smallville (other titles: “The Alps”, “Day Watch”, “Don Giovanni”, “The Fall”, “How the West Was Won”, “Manilow Live!”, “Night Watch” and “Rudy”). And it was also the week following the Transformers release, so I’m sure it sold some as well. So how did this week compared to that week in April? Total sales for the week ending 14thSeptember was $9.18m. That’s a drop of 7.6%, despite the most recent week having tons more releases than the other one back in April. So what does this tell you? Not much really, because again we’re comparing different titles that appeal to different segments of the market and one was a week with a new to disc release, and the most recent one was full of (admittedly box office heavy) catalogue releases.

Catalogue releases bring up the question: which DVDs will you re-buy on Blu-ray? I think the fact that this is being debated suggests that Blu-ray will have trouble with titles already available on DVD, as I don’t think there are many that will upgrade every single DVD they have to Blu-ray. I do plan on upgrading selected titles, such as Band of Brothers, The Godfather Trilogy, LOTR Trilogy, Star Wars – only because I’ve watched these about a million times (each), and so the investment is worthit. Otherwise, I’ll stick with my existing DVD collection, which is still growing faster than my Blu-ray collection as I’m not buying shit movies that I watch maybe once on anything other than in a “Under $10” sale. So without catalogue releases, how can Blu-ray increase market share? Cheaper Blu-ray hardware is a start. Remember when the BDA said that cheap HD DVD players were a sign of desperation? A Sony Blu-ray player available for under $200 on Amazon just last week must mean something then. What was also a bit desperate was Amazon’s attempt to run a run-of-the-mill 3 for 2 promotion, but a misplaced link in a newsletter and they ended up having to honor all Blu-ray titles at Amazon as part of the 3 for 2. Ouch (especially in this financial climate).

Toshiba threw in the towel on HD DVD rather quickly, but they’ve not forgotten their customers and are still releasing firmware updates. These machines are still top of the range DVD upscalers at the very least, and the crazily cheap money these players went for after HD DVD’s demise still makes them excellent value (and more so if Toshiba continues with the firmware updates). Toshiba is still saying no to Blu-ray though.

And finally in gaming, not much going on this week. I think the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 in Japan again, but the Wii reclaimed top spot. PS3 sales have slumped rather quickly in Japan, but more surprising is the surge in Xbox 360 sales. Microsoft’s new strategy of wooing Japanese game publishers to publish exclusive titles on the 360 seems to be working.

PlayStation Home: Finally coming to a PS3 near you

And we’re very much near to Sony unveiling its PlayStation Home system. “Finally”, I hear you say, will it revolutionize how gamers interact with each other, and will it be a Xbox Live killer? We’ll just have to wait and find out, I suppose. The firmware update to allow this puppy to run on the PS3 will be huge, I suspect, and given my recent experience with firmware, I think I shall skip it until other more fearless users have volunteered to be guinea pigs for it.

So that’s it for this week. It was long one, thanks to my Blu-ray rant in the middle, plus all the other rants around it. Until next week, WNR readers!

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (28 September 2008)

New Huge Blu-ray sale at Amazon?

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

There have been reports (and here too) that Amazon is doing a 3 for 2 deal on *all* Blu-ray movies. That’s right, all Blu-ray movies (or at least a very large list of them). Some people who have ordered but not given the discount have contacted Amazon customer support and received them (see the forum threads I linked to).

If you’ve ordered 3 or more titles in the last day or so, it might be worthwhile to contact Amazon to see if you can get the discount applied (can’t hurt). If you want to join in the fun now, use this link to get to the Amazon Blu-ray portal and start shopping (be warned though, the promotion is said to last until October 1st, but you are taking a risk if the discount doesn’t show up at checkout – contacting CS may bring you the discount or it may not).

Update: Amazon has corrected their “error”, and you can no longer join in on this free for all (well “1 free per 2 buys” for all). Apparently, they sent out the wrong link for their current 3 for 2 promotion, and instead of linking to the proper page, they linked to the main Amazon/Blu-ray page or something, so hence they had to take a loss and honor all Blu-ray titles for the 3-for-2 deal, not just the 30+ titles that it was originally supposed to cover. Hope you managed to bag a bargain or two while the fun still lasted.

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

Weekly News Roundup (14 September 2008)

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I haven’t had the best of luck in the last few months with technology. The main server’s hard-disk broke in March, then the entire data-center exploded in June. Both of my computers started acting up in August (managed to fix them both though), and now my PS3 is broken. And as covered on the blog, my Xbox 360 broke in January (well, that one was expected). Out of all the electronic equipment I’ve bought, including computers, only 2 devices have ever broken and required warranty service. Both were now-gen game consoles. Coincidence? Or perhaps just a side effect of the game console wars.

Copyright news first. There’s a lot about the hit game Spore this week. Unfortunately, most of the coverage was not about how great the game is (and it is pretty good), but about the draconian DRM that EA felt the game needed. Not only is the game limited to 3 installs, it also limits each copy of the game to only one account, meaning you cannot install multiple copies of the game and play them at the same time on different computers. If you have two computers, you need to buy two copies.

EA spokesman speaks about Spore DRM

And about only being able to re-install the game 3 times – imagine if the game stuffs up and you need to re-install it, or if you’re running out of disk space and you uninstall the game only later you find that you want to play it again, or that you need to do an OS re-install and then re-install the game – is 3 times really enough? As expected, there was a backlash, most prominently on Amazon where Spore’s product rating had been reduced to a single star, the worst possible rating. Almost makes you want to get the pirated version just to avoid these stupid restrictions? That’s exactly what a lot of people are doing, including people who have purchased already, making Spore the most pirated game in history. Nice one EA.

Not content with ruining one hit game, EA wants to do it to Red Alert 3 as well. Red Alert 3’s DRM is limited to only 5 re-installs, needs online authentication, but at least it doesn’t require the CD to be present. If you need more re-installs, you’ll have to call EA tech support. Or you can just apply the no DRM hack, which I’m sure will pop up around the Net in no time. I like the public backlash in response to what EA is trying to do to PC gaming. It’s one thing to prevent piracy, but to inconvenience legitimate users in such a way is just stupid. Hopefully the no DRM movement, led by Stardock’s Sins of a Solar Empire, will gather pace and gaming DRM will be as unpopular as music DRM is right now. Speaking of Sins of a Solar Empire, it’s doing rather well, having sold over half a million copies despite having no DRM. The game also has low system requirements, which has also helped sales. Not bad for a game that doesn’t even have a storyline mode.

RealDVD: Legal DVD copying? But at what cost?

Back to digital video DRM. Real Networks is set to release a new software called RealDVD, which is the first commercial and legal DVD ripper on the market. What it does is rip DVDs to your hard-drive (well, duh), but it also adds a further layer of DRM on top to ensure the ripped DVD cannot be copied to another computer or distributed online. Obviously, it’s only playable on RealDVD’s software as well. Not sure how useful it will be, having these constraints. The limitation goes so far that even in a RAID mirror array where you swap one drive for another, the ripped files stop being playable as the hardware has changed. This makes backup impossible, so if your drive fails, you need to re-rip everything. External storage drives is the solution to allowing the same ripped DVDs to play on multiple computers, but each computer requires it’s own paid copy of RealDVD as well. RealDVD has noble intentions, but the way it has gone about things is totally wrong. And it may not even be that legal anyway.

What I would like to see is the DVD Forum get in on the act and produce a set of standards from which disc-less DVD playback can occur, even if it has to have some DRM to prevent copying. I would love to have a disc-less DVD library, where the first time you play it, you insert the disc into the player and you will get an option to make a copy of it to that certified central storage device for later disc-less playback on your standalone or HTPC running some licensed decryption software. Perhaps the central storage device can be encrypted to prevent copying and sharing *but not backup, and you would expect the storage device to employ some kind of RAID array anyway), and perhaps a requirement to have the original disc to be inserted after every 5 plays or something, to re-authenticate the copy. I think that’s a fair compromise.

Speaking of disc-less, there is talk that the good old CD is on the way out, to be replaced with downloads. CDs have been around for so long now, so it was always a matter of time before it gets replaced. And notice how CDs don’t have DRM, how quick ripping CDs became possible, and how long it has lasted as a format.

The MPAA is at it again

The RIAA/MPAA has been busy this week too. They seek to expand copyright laws to allow the Department of Justice to file civil suits against people who violate copyright, getting the government to use tax payer money to sue, well, the tax payers. There was another act that they tried to introduce which wants the US government to pressure country which they perceive to be weak on copyright protection. The MPAA also don’t want you to have cheap and flexible cable TV because they want to prevent a la carte pricing. Don’t know how this even relates to copyright, but it’s all part of the pursuit of greed the MPAA is really all about. A couple of week ago, I talked about Sony’s multi-DRM initiative, which the RIAA and MPAA are eager to be part of. All parties involved want to avoid the fate that befell music DRM, and they think they can do it by providing user-friendly DRM (an oxymoron if there ever was one), DRM that is “better than free”, as Sony Pictures CTO Mitch Singer described it. Excuse me while I throw up.

High Definition In HD news, not much happening at all. The latest Nielsen VideoScan numbers for last week gave Blu-ray it’s best week since inception I think, with DVD sales down, but Blu-ray’s going up. Total sales, the figure which studios are interested in, is down though (as DVD’s sales drop was much larger than Blu-ray sales increase). The rise in Blu-ray sales was almost directly related to the Transformers Blu-ray edition. And as there was no equivalent DVD re-release, it explains the figures somewhat.

Microsoft’s Silverlight platform is set to ditch Microsoft’s own VC-1 codec and support H.264 (and AAC) audio. Not so much ditch, but to start supporting the major rival to VC-1 is significant I think. H.264 + AAC is really becoming the standard much like how MPEG-4 (A)SP/MP3 has been up until now.

And in gaming, the NPD figures for August came out, but I haven’t had time to do a write up yet. The surprise was that Wii sales dropped by 20%, while the Xbox 360 beat the PS3, albeit narrowly. And Madden ’09 sales was through the roof, with a million copies being sold on the 360, easily making it the best seller of the month. I will have the full analysis up on Monday or Tuesday.

I know you’re expecting more, but that’s it for this week. Overall, a quiet week that was dominated by DRM news. It’s a shame though because DRM is evil and boring, and I would much rather be posting about a new piece of Blu-ray technology or a new killer Wii device that’s a must have. Perhaps next week then …

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (7 September 2008)

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

In the digital entertainment news world, the news items are represented by three separate, yet related, groups. Copyright news that deals with the legal ramifications of digital copyright, HD news that deals with the emergence of HD video, and gaming news that talks about the next generation game consoles. These are this week’s stories.

Dun. Dun.

Let’s start with copyright news. In Italy, the MPAA’s president have been giving the Italians some advice on how to deal with piracy: get the ISPs to do your dirty and unconstitutional work. Not very original at all. The Italian courts have been quite reasonable in their dealings so far in relation to digital copyright, and they even said that downloading films, music or software is not a crime if it isn’t done for profit.

If the ISPs don’t get on board, than colleges will be the next target. It’s not the first time that the MPAA has blamed college students for their revenue losses. “What revenue losses?”, I hear you say, and you’re right, the movie industry has been making record profits of late. The “revenue” they refer to, of course, is the imaginary one that has been lost due to people pirating and not buying movies. This of course assumes that the college student that downloaded 500 movies would have paid for those if piracy had been prevented. Yes, I’m sure it’s is entirely plausible for a college student to have a $10,000 DVD collection on campus. And not only that, each student would have to have their own collection, as sharing a movie is also illegal according to the MPAA.

IsoHunt - taking the fight to Canada

IsoHunt’s fight against the RIAA is now turning into a fight against the CRIA (Canadian version of the RIAA), but the first strike has been from IsoHunt. Taking an offensive step in the litigation process, IsoHunt has tried to explain how torrents work and why it shouldn’t be considered copyright infringement if a website only hosts the torrent files. The law lacks sufficient clarity when it comes to these types of issues, such as whether linking to a third-party site that hosts pirated material is the same as hosting the pirated content yourself. Second degree piracy, or something. Torrents are the same … you can link to a torrent file which is basically just a text file, but without the trackers, seeders and leechers, you can’t do anything with the torrent file.

PlayTV - no DRM?

Sony’s new PlayTV add-on for the PS3, which adds TV recording facilities to the PS3, might be DRM free after all. How long before PlayTV recorded shows make their way onto the Internet and will Sony defend against charges that it is making devices that facilitates piracy? Or will Sony, one of the largest makers of blank media (and one of the largest uses of blank media is related to piracy, of course), turn a blind eye when they stand to make a profit from all this. DRM-free is the right thing to do, but the “holier-than-thou” attitude towards DRM from Sony is hypocritical from a company that has profited from piracy, like most other media/electronics/gaming companies.

High Definition Let’s have a look at HD news. Sony has came out with a bold prediction that Blu-ray will be the last optical format. Either they’re extremely confident that no technology will ever better Blu-ray in terms of storage, production costs, speed, or that they don’t think the good old optical disc has much life left, now that there are alternative methods of distribution. I’m more inclined to believe the latter, and it seems another Blu-ray backer, Samsung, agrees with this as well.

Samsung: Blu-ray only has 5 years left

Samsung says that Blu-ray only has 5 years left (which, ironically, is just about the time that Blu-ray will overtake DVDs, by many other’s predictions), and after that, downloads and whatnot will take over. I have no idea what will happen, as downloads/streaming will depend a lot on how sound the Net infrastructure is and whether it can cope with the added demand (and the news that Comcast is starting to cap broadband usage suggests that the infrastructure is getting stretched). There’s also the slightly tricky issue of getting consumers on board, as without a simple plug and play device to download/stream movies, people will be turned off by it. But video on demand is the future, and by “on demand”, I don’t mean having a 10,000 Blu-ray disc movie library which you have to store, catalogue and search through whenever you want to watch a movie. Either way, it sounds like Sony may be onto only a temporary winner when it comes to Blu-ray.

Which is why it was so strange to see that the first movie on a possible Blu-ray killing distribution method, USB memory sticks, is actually a Sony movie. What with the PS3 ready to do video streaming as well, it looks like Sony is hedging its bets on both Blu-ray and purely digital distribution. And who can blame them?

Samsung's 240 Hz LCD

Back to Samsung. They are saying that they will concentrate on new display technologies such as OLED TVs (thinner, brighter, better than LCD technology). 3D TVs without the need for goggles is another one to watch out for. Both Samsung and Sony are working on 240 Hz TVs, which will give motion that is so smooth, that it is very close to what our eyes can see in everyday motion. If you’ve ever watched a Blu-ray movie on a 120 Hz screen (especially compared to a 60 Hz one), you’ll know why this is a good thing. It’s just a shame that not all HDTVs are 120 Hz by standard, which is what I would have expected by now (if Blu-ray was more popular, I think 120 Hz would be too, as Blu-ray’s 24 FPS output is perfect for 120 Hz due to it being a multiple of 24).

And finally in gaming, more Xbox 360 price cuts are coming, with the Arcade bundle now $199 and cheaper than the Wii as Microsoft tries to catch onto the casual gaming wave. I can’t complain about any price drops of course, but I wish they would upgrade the hardware to at least make it less noisy and more reliable (surely technological advances should allow for this to happen now without dramatic product cost increases).

GTA may be coming to the Wii as well, which kind of goes against the family friendly image of the Wii, but there are quite a few violent games on the Wii already.

And that’s it for this week. I’ve been busy with some mundane stuff recently, upgrading the forum software for one which is a pain in the proverbial due to all the modifications I’ve made to it. Hopefully, I can get it done by next week, or somehow wipe out the entire forum in the process, whichever comes first. To be continued …

Created by Dick Wolf.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, 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 (7 September 2008)

DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Archive for the ‘High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K)’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (5 October 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (28 September 2008)

New Huge Blu-ray sale at Amazon?

Weekly News Roundup (14 September 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (7 September 2008)

Pages

Links

Categories