DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

PS3 2.42 - Buggy firmware may kill your PS3

If you are reading this and you haven’t upgraded your PS3 firmware to 2.42, then please no matter what you do, do not upgrade to version 2.42. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to keep your PS3 at 2.35 if you can.

Update: There are many causes of this problem (for example, Blu-ray laser problem), and it may or may not be related to fw 2.42, but for some reason, the number of reports of this problem has increased after 2.42, so the firmware must be doing something. It’s possible that the firmware isn’t the cause of all this, and it may all just be a coincidence. Regardless, the best course of action is probably to contact Sony tech support instead of waiting for a firmware fix, especially if your warranty is running out shortly.

Just after 2.42 became available, there were reports that it started causing all sorts of problems, mostly disc reading related problems. Like most people, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Firmware updates always cause problems for the minority of users. But the reports of the problem grew in number every day, and despite the same old defence of Sony fanboys, accusing users having the problem of exaggerating the claims and not knowing how to take care of their PS3, it was soon pretty obvious that the problem was somehow related to the 2.42 firmware. Or that whatever hardware problem that was around before 2.42, has decided to show up in force just around the time 2.42 was released – perhaps just a coincidence.

Now I had already updated to the 2.42 version before these reports were widespread, and like most users, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. My PS3 was still working, although I don’t use it very often (only for DVDs and Blu-ray). It was still working perfectly 2 days ago.

Today, I decided to watch Memento on Blu-ray. About 20 minutes into the film, the movie froze. The disc drive was reading like crazy, but I was still able to eject the disc. Upon inserting the disc again, it would play for a few minutes and then freeze up again. I decide to soft reset to the PS3 – bad mistake. Upon reset, the drive will no longer read any media, not Blu-ray or DVD. Nothing happens when the disc is inserted, not an error message or any drive spinning – it’s as if the PS3 operating system doesn’t even know that a drive exists anymore. I can still insert and eject the disc, but that’s all I can do with it. A full system restore taking 3 hours did nothing to help. So it’s either hope that the next firmware update will fix the issue, or it’s time to ring Sony tech support and get my PS3 repaired/exchanged.

Reading the various threads about this problem, it seems the problem is now very widespread. Nobody knows why only some PS3s are affected, and other aren’t. My PS3 was purchased in December last year, so it’s not a launch day console. As mentioned before, I haven’t used it like crazy, since I bought it for Blu-ray playback mainly (and the odd DVD). Some launch day consoles are affected, some are only a few weeks old. So it doesn’t look like it’s limited to one particular model, country or type of use. It could even be that an existing hardware problem exists, and that fw 2.42 somehow causes the problem to show up sooner. Who knows.

Luckily, my PS3 still under warranty (until December, that is), and I still have the receipts (as I had to keep it to redeem the free Blu-ray movies), so if I do go through the Sony tech support system, I won’t have to pay for the repair. Unfortunately, those without receipts or are out of warranty have already been made to pay $150 for what is clearly a Sony caused problem (due to their faulty 2.42 firmware). And this is not to mention the up to 7 weeks of wait while your PS3 is repaired, regardless of whether you had to pay $150 or not.

So what should you do to prevent/fix this problem? These tips might be helpful:

• Don’t upgrade to 2.42! Probably best to stay with 2.35, as 2.40 is a bit buggy as well (although 2.40 and 2.41 shouldn’t cause the problems I’ve described with the disc reading).
• If 2.42 is already installed, probably best to not use the PS3 until 2.43 or 2.50 is released if you already have 2.42 installed
• If you get the freezing problem, do a hard-reset (turn off the console using the back power switch) – some have had success with this, but be warned that doing this can’t be very good for the health of your system
• Doing a full (or quick) system restore seems to do nothing
• The next firmware update may fix the problem if you are willing to keep the useless black box until then, but if you contact Sony tech support, they will ask you to send the console in, which doesn’t sound like a problem that could be fixed through software (if it could, shouldn’t Sony have released a firmware update by now?). Probably best to just call Sony tech support
• If your PS3 is out of warranty or you don’t have the receipt anymore, then insist on Sony to fix this problem for free as some other users have already had this offered to them

I will keep you updated on what happens with my PS3.

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.

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.

I finally finished writing that guide I was talking about last week. The DVD-lab Pro Basic DVD Authoring Guide is one of the more complicated guides I’ve written recently, and also not aimed at beginners that most of my guides are about. DVD-lab Pro, while expensive compared to most other home based DVD authoring solutions, gives you a lot of power and flexibility that you only find in packages worth ten times as much. And it’s relatively easy to use too, once you get the hang of it, and surprisingly error free (no bugs, crashes or any of those things that you usually find with DVD authoring tools). If you need to make DVDs on a semi-professional level, then this is a great tool.

Okay, enough link/content promotion, let’s get on with the news. 

In copyright news, P4P, an upgrade to existing P2P technology whereby local peers are preferred over non-local connections, is a technology that is welcomed by ISPs in their fight against ever increasing bandwidth demands. Local bandwidth is cheaper, you see. But because of the local nature of things, it makes for greater control, and there are those who think that P4P might allow for better anti-piracy measures. Meanwhile, ISPs continue to fight against P2P, on bandwidth related reasons as well as pressure from content owners. Comcast’s anti-P2P stance has come under fire from the FCC, who says it “does not constitute reasonable network management” and that “the company’s discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet”. Nice comments from the FCC, I have to say.

Veoh - Victory in the Courts

Some more positive news in the copyright fight, online video site Veoh has had a copyright case against it (by an Adult entertainment company, no less) dismissed by a Californian Judge. The happiest people will be Google/YouTube, because this precedent could mean that the cases against them are dismissed too. While the courts (and the FCC) seems to be sending out the right messages, the politicians, once again, might be behind the times. With the US elections coming up in just over two months time, both the RIAA and the MPAA are converging on the two political parties’ conventions and lobbying like crazy, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars if needed. I talked about McCain’s views on copyright a couple of weeks ago, and now that the Democrats have chosen Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate, it’s only fair to point out Biden’s pro-RIAA and pro-FBI voting record as well. I know it’s as cynical as hell, but my experience with democratic elections is that you vote for the candidate you hate the least, or you think you will hate the least. Do a bit of research on the Republican and the Democrat’s records on copyright issues, decide which matches your own philosophies the closest (or at least which you find least repulsive), then make that one of the issues that will decide on who you vote for. And you should vote. Here in Australia, voting is compulsory, and you get fined if you don’t vote (of course, we have elections on a Saturday, so everyone has time to vote). Voting should be compulsory in all democracies, in my opinion.

WirelessHD - WirelessDRM Included!

But while the politicians are doing their politicking, the content owners are still hoping DRM is the answer to all their prayers, despite the setback the music industry have had in trying to introduce DRM. Sony, the king of DRM, is once again at the center of it all by introducing a new multi-DRM content format for online movie downloads. Sure, on paper, the new DRM scheme sounds more reasonable, allowing any registered device to work with the DRM’d content, as opposed to forcing you to buy a copy for each device. But the real problem is that if one day they decide to change this policy, then they could do it with a push of a button, and re-write the terms of use of your previously “purchased” content. Just look at what happened with the various collapse of the music DRM stores, and how purchased content became useless once the authentication servers have been turned off. DRM is dangerous, and it should be banned. But not before WirelessHD, a new wireless HD video/audio transmission format, introduces yet another form of DRM. Sigh.

Onto HD news now. I wrote a mid-week blog that looked at the weekly Nielsen VideoScan Blu-ray/DVD sales figures. Hopefully this will become a regular feature in the future. Looking at the stats and graphs I’ve made, it doesn’t seem Blu-ray has made much of a dent at all in terms of either volume or percentage of the market compared to DVDs. DVDs will be here for a long time to come, unless studios decide to pull the plug on the format, which they won’t because it’s still too lucrative (still something like 14:1 sales ratio, in terms of revenue and probably higher in terms of units, at the moment). With upscaling DVD players becoming standard and better in quality, Blu-ray really needs to up the promotional work again.

Toshiba XDE - improved DVD upscaling

Speaking of upscaling DVD, Toshiba is back into the A/V market with its XDE range of upscaling players, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. The players are getting some good promotion from Amazon and other retailers, certainly in the press too thanks for Toshiba’s headline making news earlier in the year. This week, some Taiwanese optical manufacturers have enquired about buying HD DVD patents from Toshiba. The analysis I’ve read suggest they want to do this because they want a stronger negotiation position with Sony in regards to Blu-ray licensing. But Toshiba is holding on to these patents, which either suggest that Sony paid Toshiba to not let HD DVD be promoted again, or that Toshiba has it’s own plans in terms of the China only HD DVD format. Toshiba are not one to give up so easily, it seems, and they’re already talking up beyond 1080p resolution video as well as wireless HDMI, which will be added to their devices next year. There’s also talk about 32 GB memory cards, which rivals Blu-ray for storage, is re-writable and probably cheaper given the prices of USB memory and memory cards these days. Looks like Blu-ray will have some competition in the marketplace when it comes to HD video.

And speaking of competition, the BDA is not happy that satellite and cable companies are using terms like “as good as Blu-ray” when it comes to describing the HD subscription services. Seems the BDA is ever edgier these days, when it comes to “as good as Blu-ray” type services that could render Blu-ray a sideshow in the HD video arena. LG is launching a DVD player that supports HD DivX video, so even Blu-ray supporters are looking at alternatives. The next version of DivX will use H.264, and an early alpha version of the encoder (in command line format), is already available. Blu-ray manufacturers will probably embrace this new format, since all their players can decode H.264, and thereby (with a little modification), DivX 7 as well. The disc-less home theatre dream that I have seems to be getting closer to reality, and if that becomes a reality, then it will be a nightmare for the BDA (unless they do the sensible thing and add managed copy, which make the actual Blu-ray disc just a carrier, like Toshiba’s 32 GB memory cards or portable hard-drive).

And in gaming, the Wii has hurt the arcade industry a lot by bringing arcade style games to the home.The Xbox 360 is trying to reverse the trend by bringing Xbox 360 games to the arcade, with coin-ops build around a Xbox 360 console. It’s an interesting idea, and with a common controller interface, a wide variety of games available, it could be a winner. Unless it RRODs, of course.

The "other" Xbox 360 Arcade

As usual, details of the next PS3 firmware update has been leaked. Screenshot-grabbing, the rumours say, will be the main new feature of this update.

Okay, that’s it for another week. Don’t forget to read my DVD-lab Pro guide. There’s a 30-day trial version available from the official site, so it’s worth a go if you want to see if you can make better menus that what the commercial developers are making these days. Hannah Montana!

(I think he meant to say hasta mañana – ed)

This is going to be a new feature that will be published from time to time. A couple of months ago, I started collecting and posting weekly Blu-ray and DVD sales figures published in Home Media Magazine, and provided by Nielsen VideoScan, which looks at many retail outlets and provides sales the figures.

There’s a lot of misinformation when it comes to Blu-ray sales figures, mostly due to PR and marketing people doing their job. But these sales stats should provide a clearer picture of what is actually going on in the world of HD (vs SD), and how Blu-ray is doing when compared to DVD sales.

Let me first show you two graphs:

The first graph shows Blu-ray sales as a percentage of total sales (of both Blu-ray and DVD sales combined). The dates on the bottom corresponds to the weeks ending on these days. For example, for the week ending August 17th, Blu-ray sales accounted for 5.27% of total DVD and Blu-ray sales.

The second graph show the actual sales volume for the same time period (for example, for the week ending August 17th, $6.19m in sales was recorded for Blu-ray).

Since I only started collecting stats from May 4 for both Blu-ray and DVD sales, there’s nothing that I can publish from before this time. Just as well as May marked the last month that a HD DVD movie was scheduled to be released, so from this point on wards, the war is now between Blu-ray and DVD well and truly.

So what does these graphs tell us? Not a lot, apart from that it’s still early days and that Blu-ray sales are still struggling at this stage. Looking at both volume and percentage, August ended much like how May started. Blu-ray sales were between 5% and 8% of total sales. That’s respectable, but it’s hardly the kind of results that many expected after the death of HD DVD, at a time when Blu-ray has no like-for-like (HD on a disc) competitor in the marketplace.

There was a peak in June, most likely due to releases of certain blockbuster titles at those times. The peak in sales also corresponded with a peak in the Blu-ray vs DVD sales percentage, which suggest that Blu-ray sales is still largely dependent on what is available for sale. Because I think Blu-ray is still largely being supported by early adopters and the more serious movie collectors (those that buy movies on the release date, rather than wait for a few months for the eventual price drop – DVDs have a monopoly on these sort of sales, mainly because Blu-ray prices don’t drop with any conceivable pattern), this translates to bigger slice of the sales pie whenever a good release (that benefits from HD) is available. Look for Blu-ray sales to peak again when movies like Iron Man, The Dark Knight are released later in the year.

Just to expand on the point about budget movies, this is still an area that is dominated by DVDs. I recently purchased some movies including Revenge of the Nerds and Hot Shots! And I suspect the bulk of DVD sales are made up of titles such as these. These movies are not available on Blu-ray for one, and even if they were, they would be too expensive. And further more, even if they were just slightly higher in price, there’s very little benefit in watching these types of movies on Blu-ray (a lot of these films weren’t even recorded with multi-channel sound, and aren’t “important” enough to get the full proper HD transfer). This is why, I think, DVDs will be around for some time yet. I don’t know if Blu-ray sales can ever overtake DVDs, not until studios stop producing DVDs anyway. Most experts predict that Blu-ray vs DVD sales will reach 50-50 by 2012, so there’s still plenty of time for Blu-ray to reach this target. But many also predict other video delivery platforms, such as online streaming and downloading, might be of more interest to people by then.

Anyway, I’ll be back in a few months time with an update to this post. It will be interesting to see what effect The Dark Knight has on Blu-ray sales (I think this one will break all records). See you then.

Hello there! No mid week blog as I’m working on something special. And by special, I mean sometimes that takes me a long time to write because I really don’t know what I am doing. I guess I’ll just luck my way through it, although in my experience, there’s no such thing as luck. 

Let’s start with copyright news. The RIAA had to pay damages in a court case, a reverse of what usually happens. They falsely accused someone of downloading pirated music, and had to pay $107,951.03 the disabled single mother as a result. I wonder how many other of RIAA’s victims are falsely accused. The MPAA has been busy with Operation Takedown, going after pirates in the Asia-Pacific region. Can’t blame them this time for doing so, as they weren’t going after home users, but rather, large scale piracy rings.

Dream Pinball 3D - sold 800 copies, illegally downloaded 12,000 times

In the PC gaming arena, where piracy is rampant, Atari and Codemasters are trying something new to tackle the problem. They have sent 25,000 people £300 fines for illegally sharing their games. Now this is going into a slightly confusing area. How did Atari/Codemasters get the details of these 25,000, let alone figure out whether these people downloaded the entire game or only part of it, whether they shared the entire game or only part of it, and whether they actually used the game that they allegedly downloaded. If, for example, I accidentally download the wrong torrent file and started downloading/sharing a pirated game, but only for 30 seconds, am I culpable for piracy? Or if I managed to download the entire game without sharing any part of it, but I did not play the game and merely deleted it straight away, then should I be fined for £300 as well? And with malware being so prevalent, how can they prove that it was the user’s intention to download the game, rather than the user’s computer being controlled by someone else. I for one hope one of the 25,000 people fined is a lawyer and will take this up further. The CEO of ID Software, Todd Hollenshead, says that PC manufacturers love piracy, as it helps sales. I think that’s true and has always been true for PCs. EA Sports boss Peter Moore thinks that’s not good and wants a piracy crackdown.

But while anti-piracy measures may be important, they must also not impede the user’s fair use rights, at least according to a California judge. Some common sense from the courts, finally. Copyright holders should also stop being so greedy, forcing music streaming sites such as Pandora to shut down due to excessive cost. This will only drive more people to piracy, so the copyright holders can’t have it both ways.

In HD news, the big news of the week is Microsoft’s support for Blu-ray in Windows. XP, Vista, Server 2003/2008 will now have built-in Blu-ray burning supports via a feature pack currently in beta testing that will add native Blu-ray burning support. Good news for Blu-ray supporters, that’s for sure.

Hannah Montana Blu-ray - Comes with 3D Viewing Option

To add more features to Blu-ray, the Blu-ray Group is currently investigating stereoscopic 3D movies, which they think may the “next big thing” in Blu-ray. 3D movies does hold fascination for me personally, but even the best systems today are very clunky or poor in visual quality (not to mention, prone to inducing motion sickness). Can’t help but feel this is all a bit gimmicky, just like BD-Live and most of the “new” features found on Blu-ray. The increased audio/video resolution is the only thing that makes Blu-ray a must-have for me. Convenience of use is something that Blu-ray has to be wary of too, because HD VOD streaming services (either cable based or IP based), especially those on a fixed subscription fee, is a lot more convenient and cheaper than buying Blu-ray movies.

But the problem with at least online HD streaming is the bandwidth, and following our news last week about the BBC upgrading the iPlayer to use H.264/AAC, a new problem with bandwidth has emerged. Small ISPs are complaining that the BBC has switched network carriers, making it unaffordable to them to provide for the increasing demand. There is not nearly enough bandwidth for even today’s video applications if they are to become a success and almost everyone uses them. The fight for bandwidth will certainly heat up, unless new technology can be implemented or if governments and large private enterprises (ie. Google) step up and spend to improve infrastructure (which Google is doing already).

And finally in gaming, a follow on from last week’s surprising “Xbox 360 outsells PS3 in Japan of all place” story, the Xbox 360 is officially sold out in all of Japan this week. This sounds like big news, but I suspect the total stock of Xbox 360’s in Japan is probably only a little bit more than what the Wii sells there in weekly numbers. Typical of Microsoft to not take advantage of a good situation, with buyers unable to buy the Xbox 360 even if they wanted to now.

Good news for Xbox 360 GTA IV fans, the downloadable content that was to be delayed until 2009 will arrrive this year, according to Microsoft at least. Nobody seems to have a clue as to what the DLCs will bring. Whole new cities? More buildings that can be entered? More single player storylines? Better weapons? Won’t have to wait too long to find out, if Microsoft is correct.

Rumor: Xbox 360 Arcade for $200 with motion controller

There is also the rumour that the Xbox 360 Arcade will ship with motion controllers to find the Wii not only on pricing (only $200 for the console), but on features. Aggressive move by Microsoft, if true.

On the PS3 front, Sony will bring out a 160 GB PS3 in October (not in Australia though). It costs $100 more, so you would expect perhaps it would have some other additional hardware features to justify the increase. Replacing the PS3 HDD is extremely easy and cheap, so if the new model only has a bigger hard-drive, then it’s not really worth it in my opinion.

The Wii, meanwhile, is making more money for Nintendo than all the other consoles. Because the Wii uses cheaper hardware (not as advanced in the CPU/GPU department, and no Blu-ray), a profit is made on every console sold. Sony loses a lot of money for every PS3, and Microsoft has only started to profit from their games division. It just goes to show that it’s the games and how people can play them that matters, not how many gigaflops the CPU can handle per second, that’s important.

That’s it for this week. Hopefully, I will finish that guide I’m currently writing that has me all confused this week. Didn’t spot the Obi-Wan Kenobi reference from my intro? Oh well, better luck next time. Until then, may the force be with you.