DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Sorry for this slightly later than usual roundup. The server hosting most of Digital Digest’s websites started experiencing some problems, which were later traced to a bad hard-drive. To avoid any outages, I had to quickly source a new server and transfer the sites across, which was not easy at 3am in the morning. I ended up going to bed at 7am, and 6 hours of sleep later, I’m back again continuing with the transfer. Ah … the glamour of being a webmaster.

Let’s not waste any time, because I have none to spare. In copyright news, finally a content provider that has the right idea. Instead of pursuing layers of DRM, the band Nine Inch Nails will release their new album through P2P using a donation based system … you decide how much you want to pay for the music, and of course, no DRM. Doing it this way really “goes with the flow” of how content is distributed on the Internet, and bypassing the studio system has many advantages (least of which is getting 95% of your profit back, which otherwise would have belonged to the studio). Using a system normally used to distribute pirated content has many advantages, one of which is ease of use. Jumping through hoops just to buy some DRM infested crap just doesn’t work anymore. And to prove this point, a new study confirms that piracy is better than the real thing. Better content, easier delivery are all reasons why people are choosing the piracy route, rather than through official channels. Studios are obviously worried, but is it really hurting them? Movie ticket sales broke new records again in 2007, despite movie piracy at an all time high. Is piracy helping to sell movie tickets, as people watch a low quality version of a film, likes it, and then decide to watch it proper in the cinema or on legally purchased discs?

Moving quickly onto HD, BD-ROM is set to take off in 2008 following Blu-ray’s victory in the HD format war. The most interesting part of the story is a revealing quote which suggested that BD burner prices are high because of low yield issues. It seems low yield is a problem that Blu-ray suffers from a lot, with disc pressing a huge problem causing releases to be pushed back time and time again due to insufficient manufacturing capacity. To ensure capacity though, new factories will have to be built. And consumers will end up having to pay for them. Some reports suggest that both Blu-ray player and disc prices have gone up since the demise of HD DVD, and you can’t really blame the BDA, studios or CE manufacturers (and online rental stores) for doing so, because the format war has been costly on top of the cost of developing a new format. There is certainly less Blu-ray disc sales than before, and even the redemption offer for 5 free discs seems to be over now with no signs of it coming back. Competition is good for the consumer. But there is no competition to Blu-ray now, apart from competition from within (which will be somewhat limited, as everyone involved do not want a price war to drive down profit margins just yet). Further evidence comes straight from Sony, who says that they do not want to license Blu-ray technology to Chinese firms in order to lower prices (their stated reason is “piracy”). Sony has ruled out $200 Blu-ray players coming this year, and they hinted that you might have to wait until the end of 2009 to see Blu-ray players match the 2007 price of HD DVD players, and even then, it’s probably just a basic Profile 1.1 player that won’t play a lot of the special feature content on the majority of discs released at that time. One way for player prices to drop is for HD DVD firms to get involved, and Microsoft is the first to suggest they may join the Blu-ray bandwagon and release an add-on drive for the Xbox 360. Nothing more specific than that, unfortunately. Microsoft has also released the HD DVD emulator for the Xbox 360 for free (used to cost a few thousand dollars) – with this software, you can test your HD DVD projects and HDi content without having more specialised equipment than a Xbox 360.

The HD DVD fire sale continues, although I have a feeling the best is yet to come. Prices continue to drop, now to as low as $8.50 for selected titles. I’ve written a bunch of blog entries on this already, so I won’t waste too much time on it again. Suffice to say that I’m still pretty mad about JB Hi-Fi Online and their Planet Earth ordering fiasco – read more about it here. And I guess it sort of belongs in the HD section – Pioneer has responded to rumours that it will cease development of plasma screens and move onto LCD (the plasma vs LCD battle is just as fierce as the Blu-ray/HD DVD one, along with the numerous unfounded rumours being reported by allegedly reputed news sites). Pioneer will continue to release plasma TVs, except that the panel these TVs used will now be outsourced, instead of being manufactured by Pioneer. The rumour (I know, I know) is that Panasonic will take over, and Pioneer will share their design secrets with them. If true, this is good news because Panasonic’s Viera range is already pretty good, and with some infusion of Pioneer technology, both Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas will continue to be at the top of the pile in terms of picture quality. The best plasma screens will always look better than the best LCDs, and will remain so until new TV technology becomes available (I’m putting my money on OLED, but not before 2010). 

And finally in gaming, PS3 firmware 2.4 will be released in the US summer, and will feature in game XMB for messaging. There is no word that it will feature Blu-ray Profile 2.0 support, or DTS-HD MA decoding – the only two features lacking from the PS3’s otherwise excellent Blu-ray capabilities (but to be fair, no Profile 2.0 player will be available anytime soon, although DTS-HD MA decoding would be nice to have since many titles now use this new audio format and it sucks to be limited to plain old DTS 1.5 Mbps). A new Xbox 360 SKU may also be on the way, perhaps featuring a 60 GB hard-disk. I think getting rid of stability issues and lowering the noise level should be Microsoft’s main priority, because a quiet, non RRoD’ing Xbox 360, with a large hard-drive, will be a must-have even for existing 360 owners, let alone new users.

Okay, so that’s it for this week. I have to get back to fixing the new server. I’ll see you next week.

A person asked me the other day when will the “HD DVD Fire Sale” series end on the blog, because he said he was bored to tears with it. I told that person that the question he should have asked is not when this blog series ends, but rather, when the HD DVD fire sales end – because as long as the sales still go on, my buying continues, and if my buying continues, then I have to justify spending so much money by pretending that I’m doing it for “research” purposes on this blog.

So my “research” continues, and I’ve now picked up some more titles. But first, an update on my existing orders. Everything bar the EzyDVD orders have now shipped (EzyDVD’s original planned shipping date was the 28th, but they were nice enough to send me an email telling me that they’ve received stock early so they may ship on the 12th instead). I have cancelled “The Ant Bully” from my EzyDVD order, since I’ve heard one of my Toshiba redemption titles may be this one, and I don’t want duplicates (and to be honest, this was not one of the titles that I would consider a “must-have”). I have yet to receive the Playbox and DVDCrave orders, but I expect them to turn up on Monday much to the chagrin of my postman, who has been coming up to my house with deliveries for about 6 days in a row now. Amazon’s Universal title prices are still higher than what they once were ($11.95 for HD DVD only titles and $16.95 for combos – now $13.95 and $17.95 respectively), but I found a store called DVD Pacific that could do these titles for $11.50 and $17.09. Not only that, their shipping is a lot cheaper than Amazon to Australia.

But I still did consider ordering from Amazon, simply because they have this thing called a “Post-Order Price Guarantee”. What is means is that if the titles you ordered drop in price within 30 days of shipment (not the order date, but the shipment date), then they will refund you the difference. I’ve taken advantage of it just recently (got $4 back – every little bit counts!), and it works like a charm. You can read more about their policy here, and contact them here to get your claim. A couple of recently discounted Universal titles, some down to $9.95, would mean you get get a few dollars back if you ordered recently. Here’s a small list of the recently discounted titles:

The Amateurs – $9.95
Backdraft – $9.95
The Big Lebowski – $9.95
The Bourne Identity – $9.95
The Fast and The Furious – $9.95
The Mummy Returns – $9.95
The Pianist – $9.95
Pitch Black – $9.95
Planet Earth – The Complete BBC Series – $55.95
Pride & Prejudice – $9.95
Shaun of the Dead – $9.95
Tremors – $9.95

Anyway, the price at DVD Pacific was too good, so I ordered it from them. And for “research” purposes as well, it makes sense to buy from a new store, as opposed to doing the same “research” with Amazon all the time. So far, I’m impressed (I will have a nice little roundup of all the online stores I’ve dealt with recently in a future blog) – ordering was easy, communication was prompt (email updates), and very little delay between ordering and shipping. This is what I ordered:

DVD Pacific Order #1:

• American Gangster (Combo) – $USD 17.09
• Eastern Promises (Combo) – $USD 17.09
• Scent of a Woman – $USD 11.50
• The Pianist – $USD 11.50
• Shipping: $USD 7.95
• Order Total: $USD 65.13

You may have noticed by now that the title of this blog contains the phrase “JB Hi-Fi Stuff-up?”. Let me explain. JB Hi-Fi is an Australia chain store selling cheap music, movies and basically anything home entertainment. They also have a somewhat separate online store. I have shopped with them in the past, and didn’t have too many problems. That is until Thursday night.

Someone posted a link on a forum that JB were doing the Planet Earth HD DVD for only $18! That’s an amazing price, because it normally retails for $100 here – even the DVD version is $60. So in my excitement, I make my order (for just one copy, since I don’t want others to miss out) and everything seems to be going through perfectly. The news broke, and thousands of orders were made, many from the US. Some of the eBay scum came and ordered 50 copies, as they are known to do. But I was confident since my order was fairly early, and not a bulk order which JB might reject. Also, it’s a local order and JB said they will honor these first and it will be on a first come first served basis. But on Friday afternoon, I receive an email from them that my order has been cancelled because they did not have enough stock, and this is where the fun began. Apparently, I was not the only one affected, and even people who ordered much earlier than me missed out. So did JB even have any stock, many wondered. But some people then began to say their order shipped, and many of these people had ordered much later than me, or ordered multiple copies. There was apparently no pattern in which order was processed, and which were rejected. Suffice to say, there are now a lot of angry people trying to get an answer from JB, but they’ve been silent about it. I saw this post on a forum with a open letter type thing to JB, and I will publish it here for further promotion (my order number was #72773x):

Dear JB Hi-fi,

I am writing in regards to the Planet Earth HDDVD special that was recently advertised on your website.

While I am sympathetic to the fact that there was an overwhelming demand for this product and your supplier could not provide adequate stock, I and many others feel that you as a company have handled the situation extremely poorly. Several questions have been raised within the community and we would like them addressed.

How many copies of Planet Earth were available and how many orders were actually filled? The data that I currently have indicates that approximately 14 orders (#727642 – #727656) were filled, and yet within only hours of the special being made available, several hundred orders were placed. Could you not have anticipated the demand that this special would result in? Why were people still able to place orders many, many hours after the allocated stocks would have been gone?

However, the sore point within the community is seeming unfairness in the way in which orders were filled. From the data I’ve collected, orders #727642, #727647, #727655, and #727656 were all filled, and yet orders #727616, #727622, and #727639 (all containing Planet Earth HDDVD) were not. How was it decided which orders would be allocated stock and which ones would not? Why were the orders not processed in a sequential order? It only seems fair in a case like this that those who ordered first should be given preference.

This email and any response given will be posted to several websites and online communities. Should these questions not be answered adequately, or at all, then I will be doing the only thing that I can as a consumer — I will stop shopping at JB Hi-fi (online and brick and mortar stores), and will be encouraging as many people as possible to follow suit. I have no doubt that other people who feel that this situation has been handled poorly will take similar action.

Yours sincerely,
The Internet

I will post any response from JB on this blog, but until that time, it’s probably wise to avoid JB Online if you would like to ensure you get what you ordered.

In this third part of my articles on the HD DVD fire sales, I turn my attention back to Australia. Since my first post, Warner has started discounting their titles, and Paramount has started doing so today as well. I have received all of my ordered items from dstore.com.au, but my Playbox Zone and EzyDVD orders are still outstanding. Most of the B&M stores have sold out their stock, so online stores are the best choice. The only B&M store that still has stock is EzyDVD, although one wonders perhaps if they have waited too long to have their sale, since many people have already finished their buying. EzyDVD is said to have secured a lot of stock, perhaps all of the remaining stock, and will have one huge sale either this week or on the 28th. Prices are fair, but higher for certain titles.

Here are the additional orders I’ve made since my first post:

EzyDVD Order #3:

• The Ant Bully – $7.92 
• Dog Day Afternoon – $9.92
• The Fugitive – $9.92
• Unforgiven – $12.92
• Shipping: Free
• Order Total: $40.68 ($USD 37.68)

DVDCrave Order #1:

• Disturbia – $12.95
• Shooter – $12.95
• Stardust – $12.95
• Top Gun – $12.95
• Shipping: $2.50
• Order Total: $54.30 ($USD 50.31)

That brings the total to $341.67 ($USD 316.64). The average is up, to $10.35 ($USD 9.59) per title including the box sets, which is still terrific value. 

There are still 6 Paramount/Dreamworks titles that I want from EzyDVD, and possibly another 6 from Amazon.com, and after that, I think my HD DVD buying will be over (having already spent far more than I had planned). You might think that I’m only picking up these titles because they’re cheap, but there are tons of other titles that I haven’t bothered with as I’ve been pretty selective when it comes to my shopping (no buying movies I already have on DVD, unless it’s a favourite, and then only buying the titles that I want to watch). If I wasn’t selective, the total chould be easily over $600 now. With so many unwatched movies (most of the movies I’ve bought, I’ve not seen before, on DVD or elsewhere), I think that’s my movie shopping for the year done (unless there are further sales).

The somewhat short lived Amazon.com Universal sale from yesterday is a bit strange. Prices dropped to $11.95 (and $16.95 for combos), but has now risen back to $14.95 (and $19.95 for combos). Some suggest it might have something to do with Amazon’s 30 day price guarantee, where they will refund you the difference if prices drop within 30 days. Too many people must have applied for this when prices dropped, so perhaps they are now going to wait until the 30 day is over for most people (which will most likely be the 20th of March, 31 days after Toshiba’s announcement to drop HD DVD).

Stay tuned.

The US fire sale has not started, and there are questions now whether it will start at all. Apparently, HD DVD stocks are drying up fast, and despite no huge price cuts like here in Australia, the titles that have received a discount are still flying off the shelves.

In this blog post, I will mainly concentrate on the US titles. I might write another blog post tomorrow to update you on the Australian situation, although I have posted a small update in this forum thread.

As I mentioned before, there hasn’t been a “Under $10” sale in the US like here in Australia, but several already discounted items (as part of Amazon’s 50% off sale) has received further discounts. The Paramount titles I’ve listed before in this blog post are still discounted, even though Amazon has removed the feature page for the discount. Some titles are now at a lower price than what I’ve listed before, for example, Top Gun is only $11.95. The following titles, especially, are worth a look:

Anchorman – The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Unrated) – $11.95
Lara Croft – Tomb Raider – $11.95
Mission Impossible (Special Collector’s Edition) – $11.95
Mission Impossible II (Special Collectors Edition) – $11.95
Old School (Unrated) – $11.95
Sahara – $11.95
Sleepy Hollow – $11.95
Top Gun – $11.95
Trading Places (Special Collector’s Edition) – $11.95
Transformers (Two-Disc Special Edition) – $18.95
The Italian Job – $11.95
The Untouchables (Special Collector’s Edition) – $11.95
We Were Soldiers – $11.95
Zodiac (Two-Disc Director’s Cut) – $18.95

You may find this list of Paramount HD DVDs useful.

The Warner sale is still going on, with certain titles discounted above the normal 55% off. In particular, these box sets might be worth a buy:

Harry Potter Years 1-5 Gift Set – $71.49 
The Ultimate Matrix Collection – $49.99
Ocean’s Trilogy – $36.49

You may find this list of Warner Bros. HD DVDs useful.

For Universal titles, today was the day that discounting begins. All combo titles are now priced at $16.95, while non combo titles are at $11.95. Not cheap enough for us Australians, but a much greater range of titles that will certainly tempt a few of us. These are the titles that I thought might be interesting:

Update: Amazon seems to have upped the price by about $3 for all the Universal titles. Don’t know what’s going on, and don’t know whether prices will come down again or not…

American Gangster (Combo) – $16.95
The Bourne Trilogy – $29.99
Easter Promises (Combo) – $16.95
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Combo) – $16.95
Serenity – $11.95
Shaun of the Dead – $11.95

You may find this list of Universal HD DVDs useful.

There are many more bargains to be picked up, just go to Amazon and do a search. If I find any more good ones, I’ll update this post with the links.

The month that can never make up its mind as to how many days it should have is finally over. Down with February. Long live March. I love March, not just because it’s the month that contains my birthday, but this is usually the time that I start to feel like the new year is officially here, and now in transition mode as per January, or the confused-as-to-how-many-days-it-has mode that is February.

The fallout from HD DVD’s death continues. Analysts have finally caught onto what I’ve been saying for months now, that Blu-ray’s victory owes much to the BDA’s love for copy protection, as it does to any other factors like the PS3. With DRM being public enemy number one these days, it’s funny to see DRM winning a major format war. I think Toshiba should have promoted the more consumer friendly nature of HD DVD more to the public, in terms of both region coding and less DRM, but I do understand why they didn’t. To do so would have opened another battlefront with DRM and region coding loving studios like Fox. It seems Toshiba really did not like the studio’s way of doing things, and they have now officially released DVD region-free firmware for several of their HD DVD players (or the XE1 at least, install 2.5 first and test to make sure, since once you go to 2.8, getting back to 2.5 is hard and only 2.5 has the region free patch) on their website (at least their Australian website). Unfortunately, it was this pro-consumer, anti-studio attitude that eventually lost the war for them. While as a HD DVD supporter, Warner was not our best friend in the format war, but at least you have to commend them for not supporting region control. Universal and Paramount too. F*ck Fox and their region coded and BD+ discs. Speaking of region control, there is now a new software for the Nintendo Wii that breaks region control (PAL and NTSC) games to work on your Wii. Simply insert the disc, it does its work, eject the disc and insert your game disc. Not sure if Nintendo intend to close this loophole with a firmware patch, or whether they even care about enforcing region control or not.

In HD news, the fallout from HD DVD’s death … wait, I’ve already used this line. Anyway, the big news for HD DVD supporters mourners this week has been Paramount’s (and Dreamwork’s) rather harsh decision to pull all their upcoming HD DVD releases. Just like what they did when they pulled Blu-ray support, with total disregard for consumers. If it wasn’t for their region-free stance, they have done nothing to help either HD format with both low quantity and quality releases. In my last blog entry, I talked about fire sales, and with Paramount stopping HD DVD releases, I think their fire sale will be coming shortly. I’ve started a thread in the forum to talk about HD DVD fire sales, and I will be posting news of any new fire sales there, and in the usual places. The fire sales here in Australia have attracted a lot of buyers (some genuine, while the people who bought 350 discs and 5 copies of each movie trying to take advantage of genuine buyers are scum of the Earth), me included. It’s surprising, but I feel lucky that I’ve bought into HD DVD, as the cheap $8 discs is something so rare, it hasn’t even happened regularly to DVDs yet (at least no in Australia). For the HD DVD movies I’ve bought to be released on to Blu-ray would take months, if not years, and it would still probably be the exact same content, but at 5 times the price. The only risk now is having discs, but not being able to source a player if people’s current players die. But that may not be a problem for long, as HD DVD might live on partly in another format. The DVD Forum (the official body that controls the DVD format) is continuing its support for the China-only CH DVD format, which is basically HD DVD with a different set of software. If CH DVD is a success, then chances are, one will be able to source a HD DVD player without too much problem in the future, which bodes well for those that have dipped their feet into the HD DVD fire sales.

Moving onto Blu-ray now, those worried about price rises now that Blu-ray has no competition will be startled to see a new Blu-ray player being priced at nearly $17,000! Obviously this is not a sign of things to come, but it’s still funny the price some people are willing to pay. I bet it’s not even Profile 1.1. Better news for those of us who don’t earn 7 figure incomes, Sony has announced two new Blu-ray players to be released in the latter part of the year. Both might eventually be BD-Live (Profile 2.0) compatible, although the cheaper of the two players, the BDP-S35,  might not have enough persistent storage to quality as a BD-Live compatible player, without you adding external storage through a USB thumb key. Not the most elegant solution, so I think the more expensive BDP-S550 is the way to go. It even has 7.1 analogue audio output, plus on-board decoding of all the major HD audio formats, so it looks like a good one. The more cynical side of me thinks Sony held back the news of these players until the format war looks to have ended, as it did not want to upset fellow CE manufacturers in the BDA. Now that Sony owns the one and only HD format, it looks like they won’t just sit back and let the other companies take advantage. Monopoly time …

Netflix is also set to take advantage of the conclusion of the format war. They will quadruple the number of Blu-ray titles available to rent, but may raise monthly subscription prices as a result. They’ve been harping on about raising prices for ages now, so don’t be too surprised when it happens. And while not strictly HD news, the people over at Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fi have released an updated review for the PS3’s video playback performance. The previous review was criticized for only testing the then most updated firmware, which did not even include DVD upscaling. But unfortunately, the new result based on the latest firmware did not improve the scores by much. I’ve tried to explain the situation in the link above, and I think most people feel the same way: The PS3 is an excellent Blu-ray player, a more than adequate DVD upscaling player, but don’t expect it to compete with top of the line dedicated upscaling players as that’s not what it is designed to do.

To segue effortlessly from HD/video to gaming, this middle of the road story about the PS3’s new PlayTV (turns the PS3 into a DVR) feature will be DRM free. Good for Sony for taking a sensible approach to DRM for once. Let’s just hope people don’t take advantage of Sony’s lapse and turn the PS3 into the mother of all video piracy machines.

Segueing now to gaming completely, LucasArts will now produce games on the PS3 and then port it over to the 360, as opposed to doing it the other way. I don’t think this is because they luuurve the PS3 more than the 360, it just make more sense from the developer’s point of view to do this as it will mean better games for both platforms. Developers have often complained about porting 360 games to the PS3, since the PS3 has several design bottlenecks that is not easily solve when doing ports. It’s much better to design the game for a system that is more restrictive, and then port it over to the less restrictive/easier environment. And finally, Dead Rising, the game I’m still playing at the moment and the game that I played so much that caused my 360 to RRoD, has been sued for infringing the copyrights of the Dawn of the Dead franchise. So let’s see, Dead Rising is a game about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead (both movies) is about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Sorry, but I just don’t see the connection.

Over the next week, I will be bringing you details of a new competition that I will run on Digital Digest, prizes courtesy of Roxio, the makers of the famous Popcorn and MyDVD series. The prize includes copies of their latest DVD production, copying and conversion software, as well as a grand prize of an iPod. More details when they are available.

Okay, that’s it from me for this week – I’m going back to look for more HD DVD fire sale details, credit card in hand …