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Weekly News Roundup (6 April 2008)

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

A somewhat quiet week, well not that quiet but there has been a spate of news items that I just did not want to reference on the website due to the tendency for them to be April Fools Day pranks. When you go through the news as frequently as I do, you start noticing that most of them turn out to be false. That’s just the nature of Internet news these days I suppose, but with AFD happening in the same week, you just can’t trust anyone. I’m pretty sure at least one of the news items I will reference in this blog will have been a AFD prank turned into “real” news, so please bear with me.

In copyright news, and my April Fools news was that the MPAA was going to introduce a $10 download tax. It was just believable enough to have been true, since the MPAA’s step sister (both of the ugly type), the RIAA, has been touting something similar for ages. The sad thing is this might just become a reality some day. And in another case of copyright/trademarks gone wrong, Engadget has been sued for using a colour, magenta to be precise, on their website. T-Mobile, who also uses the colour magenta, is the company doing the suing because the mobile section of Engadget also uses magenta. If there is genuine confusion over Engadget and T-Mobile using the same colour, then fine, but where’s the confusion? Downloading the latest episode of South Park is equivalent to providing explosives to terrorists, according to the U.S. Attorney General at least. Both leads to terrorism, and if you do have pirated music or movies on your computer, I suggest you go to your nearest police station and hand yourself in. I hear Gitmo is quite nice this time of the year. Of course, you might want to walk to the police station instead of driving, because your car might be DRM protected and it probably won’t let terrorists like yourself start the car, that or if you haven’t been paying your car payment bills. I’m pretty sure this might be an April Fools Prank, but you just can’t tell the difference between real news from The Onion news these days. And that, my friend, is a very sad state of affairs.

Onto HD news now. Not much actually. That’s the sad thing about the ending of the format war, the news stories have really dried up. There’s still all sorts of rumours about Toshiba and Sony and even the Japanese government having all agreed to drop HD DVD back late last year. And continued stories about how great and lovely Blu-ray is. At best, speculation, and at worst, trying to beat the last drop of blood out of a story that is no longer interesting. Even the news items about Blu-ray price rises seem a bit stretched, since prices fluctuate all the time and are seasonal based. If Sony had increased the RRP of their Blu-ray players from $499 to $899, then you have a story, but they haven’t, so you don’t. So about the only really interesting piece of news this week has been the release of PowerDVD 8. What is most interesting is that the Ultra version, which is the version that supports HD playback, has apparently dropped HD DVD playback. I can understand hardware manufacturers dropping HD DVD production, but why drop something you’ve already spent a lot of money developing and which worked quite well in the previous version, especially when your competitors (WinDVD and Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre) both offer Blu-ray and HD DVD playback, and most say in a more superior fashion. A very strange decision by Cyberlink, and perhaps a developing story that could well end up with a happier ending (a free patch to re-enable HD DVD playback would be nice).

Onto gaming now. A poll by IGN has shown that most users want the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV compared to the PS3 version, by a 2-to-1 margin. Of course, Xbox 360 users outnumber PS3 users by, you guessed it, a 2-to-1 margin in the US. More disturbing is that the Australian version of GTA IV (both PS3 and Xbox 360 versions) might be censored, due to our previous government’s stupidity and inaction in allowing a 18+ certificate for mature gamers. Especially stupid when the average age of gamers in Australia is 28! Unless this turns out to be another AFD prank, it now looks like importing is the only option for most people. The PS3 being region-free will hand Sony a big GTA IV win in Australia, although importing the UK un-censored version is actually still cheaper than paying the Australian RRP price for the Xbox 360 version.

Okay, that’s it for this week’s slightly shortened and AFD-disclaimer-laden edition of the Weekly News Roundup. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (6 April 2008)

The Pianist – I have no luck with this movie – Part 1

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

This is going to be very similar to my earlier “My Xbox 360 Just Died” series of blogs, as I attempt to find a solution to a problem. As I mentioned in the Xbox 360 article, having problems is like honey for a bear to blogs … if everything worked the way they should, then there would be nothing to complain about, and hence, no blogs.

Let me first explain what I mean when I say I have no luck with this movie. Several years ago, I purchased (from Canada, of all places) my copy of The Pianist on DVD (the Canadian version was superior to the US version). I seem to remember it played perfectly when I first got it, but much later on, I discovered that whole sections of the movie would not play, most likely due to one small scratch on the disc. I’m normally very careful with handling DVDs, and I had maintained a perfect record of not having a single DVD that wasn’ t fully playable out of a collection of about 300 movies back then. The collection is now 500, and The Pianist on DVD remains the only disc that is problematic.

So in the recent HD DVD sales, I decided to pick up a copy of The Pianist on HD DVD for the discount price of $USD 11.50, thinking this was a good buy to get a well working copy of the movie (in HD too, plus extra features that I don’t have on DVD). I purchased the disc from DVD Pacific, my first purchase from this store, but I had heard many good things about them. Anyway, a few weeks later I received my discs and as I normally do, I test the discs upon receiving them to make sure they’re all in working order. The Pianist HD DVD did not look different to any other HD DVD movies I had purchased – it was shrink wrapped, it has the sticker labels on top that wasn’t damaged, and the case itself was in perfect condition. But upon taking the disc out to look at the disc surface, I was horrified. This is what I saw:

The Pianist HD DVD - Horror Scratches!

Obviously this disc was not going to be playable.

So out of the 500 movies I own, only two discs have suffered damage and both of them happen to be The Pianist? What’s going on here?

I’ve read some forums posts that detailed similar problems that was solved easily by washing the disc, and I tried doing just that. The scratches appeared better, but it still wasn’t what you would call a disc in “good’ condition:


The Pianist HD DVD - Washed

Anyway, a quick email to DVD Pacific and they replied very promptly, with instructions on how to send the damaged disc back and get a replacement (for which I will get reimbursed for the postage costs). I went to the post office and got one of those CD/DVD mailer boxes, and the required $4 stamp.

I will send out the disc tomorrow and then I’ll update the situation as it changes. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before I get back a copy of The Pianist that actually works perfectly (now that would be a first for me!)

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

Weekly News Roundup (30 March 2008)

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Sorry for the lack of a blog entry during the week … I was a bit busy doing a few things (no, I didn’t spend all my time finding and buying HD DVD bargains … not all my time anyway). First up, I finished writing the Nero Vision 5 AVCHD Authoring Guide just before last week’s blog, and I was still recovering from the stress. I love (MPEG-4) AVC (H.264), since I believe it is the codec of the future, and AVCHD is a format that I think has some chance for success, since it takes AVC and gives it Blu-ray based navigation, and now that Blu-ray has won the HD war, AVCHD’s chance of adoption is now much higher. The guide I wrote will show you how to make a simple AVCHD disc, which is not all that different to authoring DVDs – Nero Vision isn’t the best software for authoring, but I hope the guide can at least be used as an introduction to AVCHD.

I also wrote a review for the new version of WinDVD, WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray (and yes, it plays HD DVDs too). I must say, I’m quite impressed with this new version of WinDVD, which in my opinion, is the best version of WinDVD for several years (although to achieve this wasn’t that hard, since previous versions were a bit “wobbly” to say the least). The Blu-ray and HD DVD playback function works great, better than PowerDVD Ultra in my opinion simply because it supports older (non HDCP) hardware.

I also bought some more HD DVDs (what a surprise!), but I think I’ll leave references to it to a minimum since I’m sure people are sick and tired of my HD DVD fire sale series.

Anyway, onto the roundup proper now. In copyright news, sort of, a dispute over LED patents could block Blu-ray and other related product imports. When I say “could”, I mean “won’t” because someone will pay up and settle the lawsuit or it will be dropped before it gets anywhere near a court. And in a week where the irony meter has been off the scale, the MPAA has been sued for piracy related activities. Actually, a Chinese site falsely accused by the MPAA of piracy (the MPAA admits the mistake) is suing them for defamation and I hope they win because the MPAA needs their activities looked at with more scrutiny. The RIAA is still not learning and they want ISPs to introduce a “piracy tax”. Basically they want ISPs to charge extra money that will go into the RIAA’s pockets for acts of piracy that you may or may not have committed. Sentenced before a crime is even committed! Still, some ISPs are standing up to MPAA’s tactics, if not in the US, then in Norway where ISPs will not act as the MPAA’s judge, jury and executioner in disconnecting people suspected of piracy. Still, some have given up the fight (and you can’t really blame them). TorrentSpy is finally dead, after months of legal battle and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs. Of course, about a dozen new torrent sites have sprung up in its place, so piracy has not been affected at all. And to show that Bittorrent isn’t this evil thing, the Canadian TV station CBC will use Bittorrent to distribute some of their shows in HD, and all DRM-free. And to round off the irony laden week, Sony BMG has been sued for, you guessed it, piracy. Not only that, their servers were seized by police and evidence of the piracy is now in the hands of PointDev, the company who produced software that Sony BMG allegedly used pirated copies of. In the words of Nelson on The Simpsons: “Ha Ha!”

In HD news, Hitman, along with several other Blu-ray and DVD titles, are now using an experimental feature called “Digital Copy”, which stores a portable (iPod, PSP) version of the movie on the disc that you can play on the PC or transfer to your portable video player. I like this, and my only concern with this type of feature is the possible price rise to account for the extra content. But as long as prices stay the same, then it’s a good feature to have. Meanwhile, both Samsung and LG have raised their concern and caution towards Blu-ray, citing growing use of Internet movie downloads as the major factor which could cause Blu-ray to fail. The chief scientist at THX also suggests something similar. I will have to write a blog on this issue, but I think disc formats are here to say, for at least another decade or so. Plextor are continuing with their release of a dual format Blu-ray/HD DVD drive, despite recent events. Good for them, as I think the million or so HD DVD users could become a niche market that will always need drives to service their huge movie collection (thanks to recent sales). Meanwhile, the Blu-ray PR machine is in full gear this week as news of Blu-ray movie sale reaching the 9 million mark, as well as above 10% ratios for some Blu-ray new releases (compared to DVDs), such as Oscar Winner No Country for Old Men. But if you look at the figures closely, and analyse the difference between DVD owners and Blu-ray owners, you’ll see that these numbers are a bit misleading, and that DVDs held a massive 16:1 sales ratio compared to Blu-ray for the week ending 23rd March, despite the NCFOM sales figures. It looks like the BDA still needs much more promotion, starting with sorting out the profiles mess and by releasing more movies at lower prices.

On the issue of profiles, it is slightly less confusing for the majority of Blu-ray owners, as they own the PS3 and it has just been updated to Profile 2.0 compatibility, just like I predicted it will last year – hooray for me (mainly because this means nobody is going to sue me for misleading them into buying the PS3 for Profile 2.0 compatibility, when at that time, nothing was certain). The update also includes some DivX playback fixes (2 GB and bigger files are not supported), although my testing showed that GMC and QPel DivX files still won’t play.

And on that note, we move onto gaming. Actually, the above was the only notable gaming news I saw in the week (if I see one more news story about “wii-habilitation”, I’ll scream!). GTA IV will be released in a month’s time, and I will pre-order my copy, not because I fear that I won’t get one, but mainly because I can’t be arsed to go to the store to get a copy. Plus, Xbox 360 owners who pre-order will get some bonus goodies (500 MS points and exclusive gamerpics), now not only for Australians but for people in the UK and US too (I may have already mentioned this news, but the US and UK thing is new). GTA IV will also feature a clever new music download system – something about phoning a special number whenever you hear music on the in-game radio while playing, and then download for them $1 from Amazon. It would be way cooler if somehow you could actually use phones in the game to make a call to get a special code to download/pay for the music, but I don’t think a career criminal like Niko is likely to pay for music, so perhaps it doesn’t quite fit into the game. No doubt there will be more stories about GTA IV in the coming weeks, and you can read the good ones here.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Don’t forget to enter into the Roxio competition to win yourself a iPod Nano – competition closes tomorrow! See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (30 March 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (23 March 2008)

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008

Hello everyone on this Easter Sunday. I’ve never really gotten the connection that easter has with bunnies. I understand that it presents birth and re-birth that comes during spring and what better represents reproduction than rabbits (although rats could also have been used, but who wants to eat rat eggs, chocolate or otherwise?). But why chocolate eggs? If I can remember correctly from biology class, rabbits don’t lay eggs, and certainly not chocolate ones. But I guess it would be more appropriate than eating a chocolate resurrected Jesus.

With blasphemy out of the way, let get to the copyright news. An anti-piracy company in Italy has been found guilty of illegally spying on P2P users. Is it me or is piracy and privacy becoming more and more related, and not just because they share 85.7% of their letters. On the other end of the spectrum, Verizon in the US is helping P2P users who share legitimate files by making downloads faster. As someone who has some experience in file serving, P2P is extremely useful in the way that it can deal with increased capacity – in fact, the more users that download, the faster it becomes is ideal for sharing popular files (and it saves a bunch in bandwidth hosting costs as well). And even for illegal files, the reality isn’t as bad as the content holders want to portray. An Oxford economist has claimed that piracy actually helps to promote products, and may benefit the very companies that want it stopped. I often read posts where people say they pirated something, found it to be great, and then bought the product, usually something they would never have bought otherwise. Unfortunately, Australian ISPs might not think so and one ISP is already starting to crackdown on illegal downloads, threatening to cut off Internet connections for people who download pirated content excessively. This means the ISP will have to monitor people’s usages, which goes back to the 85.7% similar word “privacy”. But as usual, the media tend to take a sensationalist view of things, and the ISP in question has been doing this for over two years now without people noticing, but it’s still something people don’t want an ISP to be in charge of (and I think most ISPs don’t want to be in charge of monitoring usage either). Before moving onto HD, the news this week is that Slysoft has broken BD+ copy protection for Blu-ray. At least for the time being. In their press release, they are still (somewhat optimistically) hoping that this will help to bring HD DVD back from the dead, as they’ve always preferred HD DVD’s easier to break AACS copy protection to Blu-ray’s harder to break AACS & BD+ combination. And of course, they also stated that BD+ is still in its infancy, and that over time, it will be harder and harder to break.

Onto HD, finally some more movement in the area of PC Blu-ray/HD DVD playback. Corel (who purchased Intervideo) has just released the first version of WinDVD that supports Blu-ray and HD DVD playback. Dubbed WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray (despite the fact it plays HD DVDs too, but I guess that’s just the result of the format war ending), it also has build in video/DVD upscaling and all the usual features you would expect. I will be reviewing WinDVD 9 over the next week (thanks again to Corel for providing a reviewer copy), but from first impressions, I’m quite impressed. WinDVD 8, to put it mildly, was somewhat crap. It didn’t even install on my main work machine, and it was sluggish. The new WinDVD is definitely much more responsive. The best thing about it so far is that it supports older video cards for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback, something that PowerDVD Ultra failed to do on my ATi Radeon 9800 XT. Obviously, performance wasn’t great on my old computer, but it at least started playback as opposed to just giving me an error message about insufficient hardware. So even on a P4 3.2 GHz (not even Pentium D) with the mentioned 9800 XT, HD DVD playback (via the Xbox 360 add-on drive) worked without any tweaking (but choppy playback, of course), including all the interactive features. HDCP requirements for both Blu-ray and HD DVD states that VGA output is supported, if only at a lower resolution, so PowerDVD Ultra not starting playback is the software’s problem, not to do with copy protection. Hopefully PowerDVD 8, to be launched sometime next month I think, will fix these issues. WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray supports Profile 1.1 Blu-ray playback, but there’s a good chance a patch will be released soon to support Profile 2.0 (that’s the great thing about software based playback solutions – upgrading is easy). I’m predicting this because the PS3 is about to get its own software update to make it into (the first?) Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player. That’s good news to those who purchased the PS3 wanting it to be future proof (and to those, like me, that has been recommending it for the same reason). Of course, the one feature Blu-ray owners really want is DTS-HD MA decoding for the PS3, but I hear that it’s only a matter of time before it is available. I’ve also just published the Nero Vision 5 AVCHD authoring guide. AVCHD is basically like a mini Blu-ray, allowing you to encode 1080p content (with up to 7.1 Linear PCM audio) onto a DVD recordable (although you won’t be able to store too much content on a standard single layer DVD).

In gaming, the expected hoopla surrounding the release of GTA IV next month will no doubt intensify. I’ve just read some previews on IGN, and I can’t be anything but excited at the new version of my favourite gaming franchise. Microsoft Australia (and New Zealand) is giving people who pre-order GTA IV a special exclusive deal in which we get 500 Microsoft points to use on Xbox Live plus four exclusive GTA Gamerpics. I still haven’t decided whether I will get the 360 version or the PS3 version, but I’m leaning towards the 360 version due to the better controller and because Rockstar seems to suggest that the 360 version had been finished earlier (and hence, should be a bit better). I’ve seen Microsoft’s new Arcade bundle that includes both GTA IV and Halo 3 that will retail for $200 less than the cheapest PS3, and I think this bundle will sell extremely well (let’s just hope that MS finally has the 360 stock issue sorted out, because it was a pain trying to source a 360 during the holiday period). I put up the February US NDP game sales figure analysis a few days ago, so have a look if you’re interested in these kind of things.

And last but not least, the Roxio competition to win yourself an iPod Nano plus other cool Roxio prizes is still up and running, until the end of this month. I will have some reviews and guides up for some of the Roxio software on the site shortly as well.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (23 March 2008)

The HD DVD Fire Sale – Part VI

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

HD DVD Fire Sale - Part IOne more “HD DVD Fire Sale” post to update on what’s happened.

In the US, situation remains normal, with no new sales and prices going up and down on Amazon. While prices have definitely dropped since Toshiba withdrew support for HD DVD, they are nowhere near “fire sale” levels and I’m starting to wonder if it will ever happen. Of course, my definition of “fire sale” might be clouded by my local experience with the HD DVD fire sale (ie. “almost everything under $10”), and that what we are seeing now in the US is already a fire sale. I doubt it though.

In Australia, the sales are drying up, as are the HD DVD stock. EzyDVD.com.au, who secured most of the remaining HD DVD stock in Australia, started their third and last HD DVD sale on the 20th, this time 27 Paramount titles including Transformers, Shrek the Third, Into the Wild and The Heartbreak Kid (the last two being new releases, the latter also released on DVD on the same day, and the former not even available on DVD yet!). And a few days before, due to a stock mix up that caused some orders to be cancelled, EzyDVD did the right thing and gave a limited special offer to those who were affected – all five Harry Potter HD DVDs for only $5.92 each. Fortunately, those who weren’t affected were also able to get in on the act as somebody posted the offer in a public forum. I already own the first four Harry Potter movies on DVD (and owning the fifth movie on HD DVD already), but upgrading my HP collection from SD to HD for less than $24 was an offer I could not resist. So here’s my updated HD DVD shopping list:

EzyDVD Order #4:

  • Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone – $5.92 
  • Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets – $5.92
  • Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban – $5.92
  • Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire – $5.92
  • Shipping: Free
  • Order Total: $23.68($USD 21.38)

EzyDVD Order #5:

  • Black Snake Moan – $7.92
  • Black Rain – $9.92
  • Dreamgirls – $9.92
  • The Heartbreak Kid – $9.92
  • Into the Wild – $7.92
  • A Mighty Heart – $7.92
  • Sahara – $12.92
  • World Trade Center – $9.92
  • Shipping: Free
  • Order Total: $76.36($USD 68.87)

I think it’s safe to say that the bulk of my HD DVD fire sale buying has been done, at least here in Australia. So it’s probably a good time to tally up and count the damage:

Number of titles bought: 39 (3 box sets)
Cost (excluding shipping): $404.53 ($USD 364.87)
Shipping: $13.75 ($USD 12.40)
Average cost per title (not including box sets): $9.13 ($USD 8.23)
Average cost per title (including box sets): $10.73 ($USD 9.68)

Just over $10 per title for 36 movies and 3 box sets (season one of both Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, Planet Earth) that’s not bad. Considering the cheapest Blu-ray player here in Australia costs just about the same as my spending above, I think it’s money well spent!

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

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