DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Well, finally an update to the original story. I sent the damaged disc some 3 weeks ago and not having heard anything, I started to fear that the disc had gotten lost. And that would be quite normal considering my previous run of bad luck with this movie.

I email DVD Pacific earlier last week and was told that my damaged disc had not arrived yet, but I was assured that it should turn up sooner or later. And yesterday, I received an email from DVD Pacific that my replacement copy has just been shipped to me via USPS International Priority Air Mail.

Part 3 of this story will hopefully see me getting a copy of The Pianist that actually fully works, which would be a first for me.

The March 2008 NPD game console sales figures for the US has been released. It’s another month where all sides claim victory, and I guess it’s hard not to when the overall market has increased by a huge margin over the same time last year. I did predict last month that the Xbox 360 will out-sell the PS3, but barely, so was I right or was I wrong? You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in March are below, ranked in order of number of sales:

A couple of surprises this month. First, just look at those Wii sales figures! Amazing! You would think the “hype” surrounding the Wii would end by now, after two holiday sales periods where it was the “must-have” item, but it just continues to grow stronger where this month, it out-sells both the 360 and PS3 combined! The other surprise was that, despite expert predictions, the Xbox 360 did in fact reverse the last two month’s trend and out-sell the PS3, albeit by the width of a hair. Could Microsoft’s excuse about stock problems actually be correct?

The PS3 came fifth this month, with only the PS2 behind it, which must be somewhat disappointing for Sony. Sony will say that compared to this time last year, the PS3 is doing much better compared to the 360, and that’s true: the 360’s next-gen market share has dropped from 51% to just 43% since September last year, with the PS3 gaining from 14% to 18%. But these stats are a bit of a lie (aren’t they all), since the Xbox 360’s market share had to drop considering it was the first next-gen console on the market and with 100% of the market share at the beginning, the only way was down. What is worrying for the PS3 is that while the 360 had a period which it totally dominated the next-gen market (first when it was the only console available, and then for the PS3’s fragile first few months), the PS3 has not had a comparable period. Despite the technical superiority that the PS3 has over the 360, the sheer number of 360’s on the market plus the much more mature Xbox Live multiplayer service means that the Microsoft now has a solid footing in the gaming arena which is something they didn’t have with the original Xbox. Quantity has a quality of its own, as someone once said, and that’s what the 360 earned by having an earlier release date. On a side note, looking into popular culture, how many times have you spotted someone playing the 360 on TV or in movies? South Park, Disturbia, Transformers are just some of the recent shows/movies I’ve watched where the 360 was featured. I’m sure that helps to sell consoles as well, despite all the bad press over the RRoD problems.

And Microsoft raised a point about “ecosystems” last month, where they said console performance should not just be based on hardware sales figures, but also on software and community. In this respect, Microsoft has a very healthy “ecosystem”, but it doesn’t mean the other companies do not. Nintendo is building something very strong with the Wii/DS combination, and Sony with the PS3/PS2/PSP combination. If anything, Microsoft needs a portable game console to compete directly with Nintendo and Sony to fully take advantage of their better online gaming system.

But Microsoft are right in that while hardware sales haven’t been great compared to either the Wii or the PS3, it’s the software sales that’s really driving the Xbox brand at the moment. Here’s the top 10 sales chart for games:

1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, Nintendo) – 2,700,000
2. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (Xbox 360, Ubisoft) – 752,300
3. Army of Two (Xbox 360, EA) – 606,100
4. Wii Play (Wii, Nintendo) – 409,800
5. God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP, SCEA) – 340,500
6. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP, Square Enix) – 301,600
7. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii, Activision) – 264,100
8. Major League Baseball 2K8 (Xbox 360, 2K Sports) – 237,100
9. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, Activision) – 237,000
10. Army of Two (PS3, EA) – 224,900

Another good surprise for Nintendo, as Super Smash Bros. Brawl outsold everything by miles – one of the criticisms of the Wii is that it doesn’t have good games that sell in great number, but I think this myth has been dispelled this month. Other than that, the 360 has 4 of the top 10, and all of them are multi-platform games that are available on the PS3. The PSP did well this month too with two titles in the top 10, but the PS3 is still struggling with only one title, and at the bottom too.

Last month, I predicted the 360 would out-sell the PS3 by a small margin, based on nothing but a gut feeling. I was right (well even a broken clock is right 730 times a year). I also said last month that the 360 will do very well in April due to GTA IV, if not in hardware sales, then in software sales, and I’m sticking with this prediction. What’s really interesting is to see if the Wii will continue to have another good month, or will it suffer from not being on the GTA IV bandwagon? But then there’s Mario Kart, so you never know.

See you next month.

You know how I said that this was going to be the 30th WNR? I was wrong. This is actually the 31st WNR. Special thanks to me not selecting the right post categories for one WNR post that made this miscalculation possible. And you know how I was going to do something special for the “30th” issue? Well I guess it will have to be for the 31st issue, and it was never going to be that special anyway (what were you expecting? Free PS3s for every reader?). I think you’ve already figured out what that something special is just by doing a quick glance at this new updated WNR …

Oh look at the pretty picture to the left. Wow! Amazing! In copyright news, despite (or is that because of) MPAA’s pursuit of torrent sites, torrent usage has increased. I don’t suppose the extra publicity given to the issue would have driven some, who have never used BitTorrent before, to test it out? But the MPAA won’t make public why they think torrent sites should be taken down, at least the legal arguments to why these sites, which don’t host any of the content, should be considered illegal. YouTube has tried to avoid major lawsuits by implementing a piracy filter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be going very well. Unless they can hire people to check every single video that is uploaded, then I don’t think the problem is going to go away. The whole point of YouTube is for people to share interesting video clips, and it just happens that many interesting video clips are copyrighted. Who’d have thunk it?

In HD news, the big news of the week has been Universal announcing their first ever Blu-ray lineup. The first title will be available July 22nd, and it includes all their blockbuster releases of the year like The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II and the new Mummy movie. Catalogue releases include American Gangster, The Mummy Trilogy and season one and two of Heroes. Gladiator, Casino and The Thing are also slated for International release later in the year. Warner is starting to provide more details on the Blu-ray titles that were previously HD DVD exclusives, like Batman Begins and The Matrix trilogy. It appears that they will use the same encodes as the HD DVD versions, with The Perfect Storm getting a new transfer due to problems with the previous one. With Universal, the studio that has backed HD DVD the most, now releasing their Blu-ray release schedule, it seems that’s that for HD DVD. But not according to Samsung, as they will release a new Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive for PCs (with Blu-ray write capability, and HD DVD read capability). On the same story, LG’s combo drive (reads both formats) is getting discounted here in Australia and it’s even cheaper than the Pioneer Blu-ray reader drive. And in a new feature I’m doing on the forum, I will be posting the Blu-ray/DVD sales stats weekly (with HD DVD stats thrown in for good measure – these stats come from Nielsen VideoScan, which is publised in Home Media Magazine). Last week’s stats (for the week ending 6th April) was interesting in that HD DVD seems to have made a comeback, but it was just a slow week for Blu-ray. This week’s stats, for the week ending 13th April shows Blu-ray bouncing back, but not against DVDs which scored a whopping 95% of the video sales market as compared to Blu-ray.

Moving onto gaming, the GTA IV Australia/New Zealand censorship issue won’t go away, mainly because Rockstar refuses to say what has been removed from the game. New Zealander are a bit unlucky in that they have a 18+ certification for video games, but Rockstar apparently will release the Australian version there as well, so they get the cut version too. The rumour was that only a cutscene was changed, but that appears to be untrue from a statement made by Rockstar. If the changes are small, as Rockstar have claimed before, then they should just come out and tell the public what they are. If not, it will only force people to import. The March US NPD figures are out and as expected, the Xbox 360 beat the PS3 for the first time in 2008 as stock problems cleared. The more detailed analysis will be arriving later in the week. Two Xbox 360 updates recently, one for the defunct HD DVD drive, and now an update that is equally meaningless for most 360 users. It’s more like an update for an upcoming update, rather than anything new and exciting. No details of the annual Spring update yet. The Wii is doing extremely well in the sales charts. There are some great games on the system, but Wii Sports, the one that comes free with the console, still doesn’t have a proper competitor in terms of mini-game compilation or just general fun-ness. The nerd in me wants a Star Wars Lightsaber game so I can swing my Wii-mote around like a deranged maniac. My wish might be fulfilled shortly with the Wii version of Star Wars: Force Unleashed.

Ok, so that’s it for this week. Check back next week for another words, link and now picture filled edition of WNR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello everybody on this beautiful Sunday. Actually it’s cloudy and cold here, but hopefully it will be nice wherever you are reading this from. Quite a bit of news to go through this week, so let’s not waste any time.

In Copyright news, apparently DVD piracy is so common amongst the South Australian Police force that it makes it impossible to prosecute. So basically if everybody does it then they can’t do anything about it? Or does having guns help? Or perhaps it’s more of a “one rule for them, and another for the rest of us”? It’s certainly seems that way since the President of the United States has now been caught with pirated music on his iPod. Only last week did the US Attorney General say that piracy leads to terrorism … so where does this act of piracy lead to then? New Zealand meanwhile has passed their new digital copyright laws. While new laws will always mean more, not less, restrictions – at least the New Zealand laws seem to have taken a more sensible approach in terms of fair use. The Europeans are taking a more sensible approach as well, rejecting the latest attempt by the RIAA/MPAA to have provisions to chuck users off the Net who are suspected of piracy. And if chucking you off the Net isn’t enough, you chucking a CD out might be construed as ‘unauthorised distribution’, and hence, piracy. And in a “well it was bound to happen eventually” type of story, hackers have broken the encryption on PlayStation Network games for the PSP, which will now allow piracy of these games to go ahead.

UK subscription television network Sky is phasing out component output on their HD set top boxes in an ‘anti-piracy’ drive. HDMI will be the sole video output supported since it includes HDCP copy protection. Speaking of copy protection, expect to see DisplayPort becoming the next big thing in PC-monitor connection. DisplayPort (DP) is not compatible directly with DVI or HDMI, although it can be made interchangeable through adapters – and yes, it includes HDCP. So that’s VGA/DVI/HDMI/DP – does the PC really need this many connection types? But to be fair, HDMI is not suited for PC connections, and DVI is starting to get a bit old.

Onto HD news. In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft released an update for the HD DVD add-on drive this week. The update is only needed for those that connect their add-on drive to the Xbox 360 for HD DVD playback. And for those that did purchase HD DVD players, including the add-on drive, from Amazon before Toshiba’s decision to pull out, Amazon will be giving them $50 credit that can be used on anything. A very nice move by Amazon, although how many HD DVD users will end up using the $50 credit on more HD DVD movies is hard to say (I know I will if I was eligible – with HD DVD movies so cheap, that’s maybe 3 to 6 movies that you can buy, compared to just two for Blu-ray, so why not?)

I’ve always been facinated with 3D movies, and Disney is about to release a 3D movie on Blu-ray. It’s only a Hanna Montana movie, but I wonder perhaps proper 3D support through electronic glasses could help Blu-ray achieve better sales through the “gimmick factor”? Meanwhile, those with iPhones might be able to interact it with their PS3 – I wonder if the iPod Touch might have been a better choice for the integration. The flurry of news in regards to Blu-ray price rises hasn’t dampened enthusiasm, with statistics (yeah, those damned things) showing people are actually willing to pay for higher prices. Not me though, even though I consider myself an early adopter and us early adopters are well known for wasting money on stuff that we know will be much cheaper in a few months time. The question remains about the general public, who are used to low low DVD prices, and whether they are willing to pay 10 times more for a Blu-ray player and twice as much for the Blu-ray movie? Sony seems to think so, and they are predicting that Blu-ray will hold 50% of the movie market compared to DVDs by the year’s end. Blu-ray actually only holds about 8% of the market at the moment, and there’s no sign that it will surge to much higher than that in the short term, so I don’t know what Sony are talking about. 50% of the movie market will need 50% of the hardware market as well, and I just don’t think Sony and co. can get a few hundred million machines into people’s home by the end of the year when they’ve barely sold over 1 million machines so far. But PR won them the war against HD DVD, so perhaps they’re hoping to do the same against DVDs. But you can’t really fight against low low prices (ie. “reality”) unless you fight fire with fire (or fire sales).

Before we move onto gaming proper, half-way in between is news that Sony will release the 2.30 firmware update for the PS3 that will finally include DTS-HD MA decoding (to LPCM). It is the one last major feature that the PS3 lacks in terms of Blu-ray playback, and I’m glad it has finally arrived since I’ve been telling people it will be here for ages now and have recommended the PS3 based on this assumption.

Onto gaming now. The Wii has scored a coup by signing up a deal with the BBC to add a iPlayer channel. Of course, it’s only for UK users only, but I’m sure Microsoft and Sony would have liked to have been part of the deal. Microsoft are rumoured to be developing a Wii like controller codenamed “Newton”. Not sure if trying to be more Wii-like than the Wii will help Microsoft’s cause, since I think they should concentrate on making a new version of the console that’s a bit more sexier and quieter to compete with the PS3.

And following last week’s news story about the censored Australian version of the GTA IV, the confirmation has come from Rockstar that the game is censored, although no details has been given as to what has been removed/changed. Well that’s it then, I will have to source the game from elsewhere. Expect Australian versions of GTA IV to sell extremely poorly then, which is a shame for Australian retailers.

Ok, that’s it for this week. Can’t believe this is the 29th issue of the Weekly News Roundup already. Will I do something special for the 30th issue? Wait and see (and don’t be too surprised if nothing happens …)