DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

PowerDVD 8 was released a week or two ago (and yes, I know, I need to finish the review for it), and one of the strangest things to have happened was the removal of HD DVD playback from the Ultra version of the popular movie playback software.

Actually, the reason for removing it is not all that strange. I’m sure including HD DVD playback costs Cyberlink more than not including it (from licensing to support), and with the demise of HD DVD and no new potential customers that could be attracted by including HD DVD playback, the sensible decision would be to remove it altogether. And since the previous Ultra version (7.3) included HD DVD playback, Cyberlink have done the smart thing by not requiring this old version to be uninstalled before installing the new one (something that has always been a pre-requisite). It means owners of PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 can buy PowerDVD 8 and switch between the two depending on Blu-ray or HD DVD playback.

And so this should probably be the end of the story. But no.

A few days ago, some users around various forums started to post that their PowerDVD 8 Ultra version could indeed playback HD DVD. Upon further examination, it turned out that these people were using a pre-release non public beta version of PowerDVD 8 – PowerDVD 8.0.1513 or 8.0.3913.50 Beta to be exact. And further experimentation showed that you could indeed combine the latest version of PowerDVD (the release version) with certain files from the beta version, and even some files from the 7.3 version, and you could “re-enable” HD DVD playback to the retail version of PowerDVD Ultra. Now I’m still investigating this and I might have a guide ready to show you how it is done (assuming I can find the required files). Update: As promised, I’ve written a guide on how to re-enable HD DVD playback under PowerDVD 8 Ultra now that I managed to find the required files online. But what is interesting is that up until the leaked Beta (dated around March 15th), it seemed that PowerDVD 8 was going to include HD DVD playback. Something between then and April must have happened for HD DVD playback to be dropped.

Some speculate that the rush to release PowerDVD 8, due to WinDVD 9’s release a week earlier, might have meant that scheduled updates and testing for the HD DVD component could not be completed in time. So this suggests that HD DVD playback could come back, if there is enough demand for it (and certainly, the negative press being generated by the drop of HD DVD support has hurt Cyberlink, especially when both major competitors, WinDVD and Arcsoft Totalmedia Theater, do included HD DVD playback). I don’t know the truth behind it (I’ve asked Cyberlink and they cite HD DVD’s demise as the reason for dropping support …. nothing too surprising there), but it does seem quite strange.

In any case, there are still plenty of choices when it comes to HD DVD playback on the PC: PowerDVD 7 Ultra, WinDVD and Arcsoft Totalmedia Theatre. I’m just not sure that by trying to save a few bucks (and not passing it onto consumers anyway), whether this decision could end up hurting Cyberlink more than it helps.

Been meaning to write something about a few deals going on at the moment, from all around the world.

Let’s start with the Blu-ray stuff. As you may already know, Amazon.com is having a Buy Two Get One free sale (or 3 for the price of 2). Some good titles in the line up, including the 5-disc edition (3 of the discs are BDs, the other two are DVDs) of Blade Runner.

Deep Discount are having a 59% off Anchor Bay Blu-ray titles sale. Dawn/Day of the Dead, Halloween are all included as part of the same.

The UK based Sendit.com is having a 3 titles for £27 sale. Update: They are now also having a 2 for £10 sale for HD DVDs. However, some users report that they’ve had problems with sendit.com in the past with delayed shipment and cancellation refund problems, so use them at your own risk.

Here in Australia, EzyDVD.com.au is having a huge 3 for the price of 2 sale, probably the largest in Australia so far.

Now onto HD DVD …

All the previously mentioned sales are still going on at Amazon (up to 57% off and Paramount’s up to 60% off sales). There are also selected titles discounted even further, so it’s work going there and searching the site for the titles you want. Many are so heavily discounted, that buying the combo version (which had the DVD version on one side that works in any DVD player) works out cheaper than buying the DVD only version, so people looking for cheap DVDs can also have a look. Going through the HD DVD top sellers list is a good way to spot these cheap titles that are not part of any sales.

Over at Amazon UK, some selected titles are also being discounted this way. Examples include Atonement, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and American Gangster. Again, going through their HD DVD top sellers list is usually a good way to spot the bargains. The Buy One Get One Free sale is still going on as well (although the selected cheaper titles are actually cheaper than the BOGOF titles after discounting). Those in the UK can also enjoy dvd.co.uk’s 2 for £12 sale. Their 2 for £15 sale also features a couple of HD DVD titles too.

Back in Australia, a bunch of sales are still going on, but mostly the same titles are before (one site had Beowulf HD DVD, previously thought to be discontinued, and sold all 900+ stock in one day). EzyDVD, DVD Crave (fast becoming a favourite of mine) and Hi-Def Oz all still have some selected titles for sale at very low prices (mostly the same ones though).

So there you have it. Lots of HD goodness for not much money (well not as much as paying full price for them anyway).

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.

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:

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:

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!)

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.