Digital Digest is 10 Years Old!

Digital Digest is 10 years old! The actual birthday was yesterday, and I know it was 4th of July and that’s because I deliberately chose an easy to remember date to make public the very first version of Digital Digest (then known as DVDigest – you can see a screenshot of it here). My original thinking behind Digital Digest was that, as I was very active on newsgroups and forums back then answering people’s questions in regards to DVD playback (mainly focused on the Asus v3400 graphics card), that having a website where I can post all my answers and people can read that would save me time. After 10 years and countless hours of work later, I think my plan might have backfired just a little. Still, it’s been mostly enjoyable and I don’t think I would rather be doing anything else.

Anyway, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, I thought I would set up a competition where you can win some Amazon.com Gift Cards. There are 10 prizes in total (you know, for the 10 years and all), and entry is as simple as giving me your name and email address. No super easy or super hard questions to answer, or secret codes to hunt for on the website. I’ll randomly draw the winners at the end of the month, good luck to all those who enter.

Anyway, onto the news for the week, there’s a bit to cover.

Let’s start with the copyright news. The Pirate Bay is still dominating the copyright news this week. There was a big announcement that caused a lot of stir, but it was preceded by some interesting news in regards to a new site that TPB wants to launch.

The new site in question is a YouTube style video sharing site, except there won’t be any copyright filters to contend with. It won’t make big media happy, but YouTube is only YouTube because people share copyright stuff, not in the sense of piracy, but using clips and music in their own videos. If you can really make YouTube 100% copyright compliant, then there won’t be many videos left at all.

The Pirate Bay changes owners: is this the end?

So good news in that TPB is undeterred by the lawsuits and will continue with their crusade to “free” the Internet of the shackles of excessive copyright control. Then the news broke that The Pirate Bay has been sold to a new company, and that new company wants to focus on legalizing TPB. Confusion reigned, and we still don’t know what’s going on. On one hand, the statements made by the new owners seem to indicate that TPB would go legit, which basically means it’s going to turn into a completely different site, other than the domain name. On the other hand, there were statements made later on that suggested this won’t make much of a difference at all. The backlash was immediate, and not too dissimilar to the one after the Mininova content filter blog post made a couple of months ago. It does seem a bit ungrateful that this tremendously useful resource that people have been using, for free, for so many years and then the minute something changes (and we’re not even sure what the changes mean yet), it becomes torch and pitchfork time. But I guess that’s the nature of the business, in that people expect free stuff and they won’t like it when it’s taken away. Keep a close eye on this story and let’s give the benefit of the doubt to the TPB founders for the time being.

And let’s not forget that the bad guys in all of this is the RIAA, MPAA and all these other copyright groups that refuses to embrace the Internet for what it is, and accept that piracy is part of their business model now, and without it (and without the Internet “hype” effect, they’d be making much less money than they are right now). But it’s yet another victory for the RIAA in their lawsuit against Usenet.com. Well, at least the lawyers are happy, and people who pirate stuff are still pirating stuff, possibly more easily than before. But at least they’re not going after individuals in lawsuits anymore, although the three-strikes rubbish is not that much better. And if more proof was needed that going after individuals doesn’t work, then have a look at a new study by Which? computer magazine in the UK, which managed to easily find 20 users accused of piracy that are apparently innocent. There’s been lots of these kind of falsely accused stories in the past, and because IP addresses are not the best way to track down individuals. IP addresses can be easily faked, and even if they are genuine, it only proves that someone using a particular connection at that time was possibly downloading pirated material, it does not prove that which person did it or whether it was done with permission of the owners of the connection.

But this all assumes that illegal downloads are a bad bad thing, but the reality is that many people have no other alternative than to download, such as downloading TV shows. EngadgetHD looks at the top 10 reasons people download illegal TV shows. From my experience, especially here in Australia, people are almost forced to download because the traditional outlets such as TV stations or DVD are just too slow – some shows are shown years after they were originally broadcast in the US, and some (like The Sopranos) never shown properly at all. And because DVD releases have to be months after TV broadcasts, the shows that are purchased by the TV station but never shown might never make it onto DVD. The situation is a lot better now these days than just a few years ago, and I think online piracy is the reason for this improvement. So piracy is not always a bad thing, if it gives the right people a kick up the butt, for the right reasons. The simplest way to fight against piracy is to make legal alternatives available, that are better and not a total ripoff. Do this, and piracy will slow down. Don’t do it, and people will flock to what’s the best and fastest, which right now is clearly piracy.

Let’s move on to HD news now. Oppo has released its new Blu-ray player. It features high-end features such as SACD and DVD-Audio playback, plus the superior video processing for both Blu-ray and DVD upscaling that Oppo is famous for.

Oppo BDP-83: The most fully featured Blu-ray player so far?

Plus, there is the possibility of a region-free firmware (for both Blu-ray and DVD), and it could be the must-have Blu-ray player for the year. Elsewhere, it has all the features most Blu-ray players have, including Profile 2.0 compatibility – there’s not Netflix streaming though. And it’s not that expensive either, not for the amount of features you get. Those with huge DVD collections should really consider getting this player as it will seriously improve the longevity of your DVD collection with the superior upscaling capabilities, while allowing you to sample what Blu-ray can offer. It’s available for under $500 from Amazon right now.

Speaking of Netflix streaming on Blu-ray players, the Examiner looks at whether on demand content is going to replace physical media. I don’t see why both can’t co-exist together, like on the aforementioned Blu-ray player, but certainly on demand content is going to eat into the profit streams of physical media. I think physical media still has a place, for backup, and for those like me that still prefer something solid to represent my movie collection. The situation may be analogous to the one between snail mail  and emails. There was always the talk that email will replace traditional mail, but while the good old letter has suffered, it still has an important place in our new digital world. Just like physical media will have in the world of tomorrow.

And finally in gaming, lots of rumours as usual. For the Xbox 360, the latest rumours suggest that the Pro pack is being phased out, and the Elite will become the new “pro”, with a Natal bundle being the new Elite. More rumours of PS3 price cuts, and the rumours regarding the PS3 slim still won’t go away. You can read about all of these rumours here.

Is PS2 compatibility coming to the PS3? Is this the end for the PS2?

The second rumour is about PS2 compatibility coming back to the PS3, either to all existing consoles, or to the PS3 slim. If Sony plans to phase out the PS2, and it’s about time they did, then this makes perfect sense. With software emulation more of a possibility than when the PS3 first launched (where PS2 compatibility required extra, and expensive, hardware), it won’t add to the cost of the PS3, while Sony can even sell the emulation software in the PS Store. Plus, they can then start selling PS2 games in digital form for PS3 owners, just like on the Xbox 360 or Wii. So this is one rumour that might be true, and if Sony isn’t even considering this option, then somebody should smack them in the back of the head.

And is Project Natal racist? The news broke that people with darker skin tones might have trouble playing Natal due to one person’s experience at the E3 demo. It’s an interesting headline, but I don’t think there’s an issue, because surely darker clothing would affect the accuracy of Natal much more than darker skin. A calibration tool might be what Natal needs, and users might have to calibrate the cameras (due to change in lighting) before usage to ensure accuracy is improved.

So that’s it for the week. Ten years, it’s gone by rather quickly I must say. Even this feature, the Weekly News Roundup, is nearly 2 years old (in September), even though it feels like I only started doing this last month. Or maybe it feels this way because I really don’t know what I’m doing, which is probably true. Anyway, see you next week as I incompetently try to produce another edition of the WNR. See you then.

In copyright news, more lawsuits, but this time in Ireland, where the record industry representatives are suing two Irish ISPs. It’s heartwarming to know that, despite the bad economy, that at least the lawyers are still finding excellent amounts of work available (at at $765 per hour as well).

Lawsuits, three-strikes, throttling – the industry’s favourite tactics, but not all government agree. The Spanish government’s strong dislike of the three-strikes rule has promoted their music industry to change tactics and abandon the three-strikes system. If only other government were as strong in their beliefs that due process is still something that needs to be protected.

And onto our favourite court case, you must have heard a lot about how The Pirate Bay case has been denied a retrial. This is true, but it is by no means the end of the road for the TPB guys. What happened, and as explained clearly a few weeks ago by Cynthia, our Swedish expert, a higher court has ruled that the judge in the original case was not biased. All this is means is that instead of having the retrial in the original court, the retrial will have to take place in a higher court. There are still a few more couts to go before it is all over. I don’t think we will find out anything definitive in 2009 in any case.

Real says RipGuard and ARccOS are not copy protection systems, and so do no fall under the DMCA

In my second favourite court case, the MPAA has filed new complaints against Real Networks, claiming they lied during the RealDVD trial. It all pertains to patent filings from a couple of years ago in which Real Networks claimed that ARccOS and RipGuard were copy protection systems, even though Real claimed in court they were not. The argument goes that Real thinks neither ArccOS or RipGuard can fully prevent the copying of a disc (only delay the process), and so they are not anti-copying features. The reason why the MPAA may be going after Real on these two additional anti DVD-copying measures, as opposed to CSS, is that Real does have a CSS license and it may be harder to argue that Real has ripped CSS, but in reality, it has left CSS intact in the copied file (and added a few other layers of its own DRM). The verdict is expected soon, but I don’t think Real will win if the argument is already on something as specific as whether ARccOS and RipGuard are copy protection methods – if the argument has been the higher issue of whether studios have the right to prevent usage that does not harm to them, which is the case when people make make digital copies of movies that they own and do not share with anyone else other than those that already have access to the original disc.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers say that your phone’s ringtone should be considered a public performance and they should receive royalty everything your phone rings. Yeah right.

Onto HD news, rumours abound that Toshiba will jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon soon. Is there some truth to this news story, or is this the new “Blu-ray add-on drive coming to the Xbox 360″ line of stories that will always pop up from time to time, only to be refuted almost immediately. There does seem to be more truth behind this story as it comes from statements from Toshiba’s President when he was speaking to shareholders. And since Toshiba owns the Cell processor, it would be interesting to see a Toshiba Blu-ray player with high quality DVD upscaling as seen in their HD DVD players, plus ultra-fast response times like the PS3.

The rest of the stories this week were about last week’s story about a poll that showed HD DVD being more popular than Blu-ray, and hardly anybody cares about Blu-ray. There is a reason why I only devoted two sentences to this poll last week, because polls are misleading by themselves, and when you are trying to poll actual ownership stats, rather than relying on hard data, then it’s even less useful. The Blu-ray people’s response is that the poll is unfair because most people think their upscaling DVD player is in fact a HD DVD player, which might be the case, although it’s still the Blu-ray people’s fault for not educating people better on what is real HD and what is upscaled. Start by calling it “Real HD” to differentiate Blu-ray from “Upscaled HD” might be a good marketing idea.

And finally in gaming, a new PS3 firmware has been released. Firmware 2.8 doesn’t add anything major, but fixes a few things and improve some others, like a faster XMB, wireless controller auto-assign. Still a lot of people having bricked PS3s after each update, so read up the horror stories on the official PS3 board and see if you are willing to take the risk if your PS3 is already out of warranty.

Okay, the doctors are telling me to take it easy, so that’s what I will do. As if I needed encouragement to be lazy. See you next week, hopefully feeling a little bit better.

Let’s start with copyright news. The MPAA admits it is losing the PR war, to what they have dubbed the enemy of copyright. There are a few people who don’t like any sort of copyright, but I think the majority of people do respect copyright, it’s just that they don’t like the way that it is being enforced.

Personally, I buy lots of DVDs. All legitimate. I don’t buy music much, mainly because I don’t listen to it much apart from Net radios (also legal). I do buy games, not a lot, but I don’t have a lot of time to play them anymore. But I am one of the people that the MPAA says is an enemy of copyright, simply because I refuse to support their methods. I respect that they want to keep piracy under control, but I don’t respect the way they have gone about things, which has made piracy an even easier choice for those that can’t stand DRM and the sometimes ridiculous prices for digital content that the MPAA members want to charge. I believe the best way to fight piracy is to make it unnecessary, and this means tackling the difficult issue of how to make money in a digital world, and how to make it harder for people to share content they don’t own, but at the same time not seriously affecting their user experience. I think this is all possible, and the music industry has been forced down this road already. It is just a shame that their business is a declining one, even without piracy, and so it makes for a bad example. But even they can turn things around if they price music aggressively, and take advantage of the digital medium’s low cost of distribution, replication. There will be losers in this revolution, as there will always be, but it’s a necessity and fighting against the tide will only make things more difficult. Embrace the change!

It’s unfortunate that the music industry’s changed tactics of pursuing legal avenues to stop piracy is just as clumsy and overreaching as their attempts with DRM. They are lobbying governments and telling them scary scenarios about the end of music and movies, in an effort to scare them into passing laws which have no place in societies based on the rule of law. The so called 3-strikes is so against the nature of the Internet, and justice and civil rights in general, that it’s hard to believe people are taking it seriously, the latest call for it are in the UK. Japan has just tightened their copyright laws as well. Apart from having no due process, the method will also mean a lot of false positives, as the most used identification method, which is based on using the IP address, is in most cases insufficient to identify people a court has ruled. And in the end, all it will do is to force people serious about pirating stuff to get more serious about hiding their activities, which is possible through encrypted VPNs and other technologies.

Jammie Thomas-Rasse: Sharing 24 songs will cost her $1.92 million

So the only people that will be caught are those that haven’t done much pirating and don’t know how to avoid capture. But these are the people that will be made examples of, much like the single mother that has been successfully sued for $1.92m, to scare people into behaving. But it won’t work, everyone knows it. And to go so overboard with the lawsuit to demand a multi-million dollar settlement will be a PR disaster for copyright groups, because it just reinforces how much out of touch they are with reality. $80,000 per song, for 24 songs, is a ridiculous number. There is no proof of the exact number of people that have been able to obtain songs from Thomas-Rasset, the sacrificial pawn in this game, so the figure is largely for punitive damages. Does sharing 24 songs seem like a $1.92m crime to you? Well it does to groups like the RIAA, and they’re not going to stop – the next on the hit list is AM/FM radio stations, which has just been labeled as “A form of piracy”. Let’s just stop people playing, sharing, listening to all songs – that will surely help save the business, not to mention the money they are paying to lawyers to fight these cases which might have been better used to find alternative strategies to operate in this new digital world.

The US had its digital transition, and for all purposes, it went off pretty smoothly. It is just as well that plans to do this were set in motion many years ago, before the crazies took control of the copyright debate, as otherwise digital TV would be saddled with DRM, most notably the Digital Flag. This would have prevented people recording any TV show that has this flag set, so no TiVo or delayed viewing, just to make sure that if you can’t catch something on TV live, or want to watch it again, you’ll have to fork out bucks to do it. If these crazies had been in control far earlier, the tape recorder, the VCR and even the PC might not have been allowed to exist, and is this really what we want, or what’s good for the industry and economy in general?

Onto HD news now. Another report which seem to indicate that while Blu-ray sales are up, DVD sales are down by much more. It’s going to be a while before Blu-ray can gain enough of a market share to really make a difference, but the decline in DVD sales probably has as much to do with the increase in gaming purchases as with anything seriously wrong with the industry it self.

The other piece of news is a poll which showed that Blu-ray standalone uptake is not quite increasing fast enough, and was even outpaced by the dead HD DVD format in the last year. Polls are interesting, but figures for uptake shouldn’t need to rely on polls, as there are real figures to be found.

And finally in gaming, Activision’s CEO has joined the chorus of people to call for a PS3 price cut. There is a veiled threat in there about pulling support for the PS3 (and PSP) if action isn’t taken, but I wouldn’t take it all that seriously. Do game publishers want cheap consoles? Yes. Will they pull support for the PlayStation family? No. But hopefully, this will give Sony extra incentive to even just consider a price cut.

That’s it for this week. Short and sweet. Long and boring coming up next week.

HTPC in a tiny tiny box, made possible by Nvidia Ion and the 9400M GPU

You will soon be hearing a lot about Nvidia’s new Ion platform. There will be a whole bunch of hype, superlatives and marketing jargon to go along with it, but if you boil it all down, Nvidia Ion’s main purpose will be to give HD where HD wasn’t possible before.

Intel’s Atom processor has been a huge success in the netbook market. Netbooks are a needed stepping stone between the ever more powerful smartphone, and the laptop. Netbooks are perfect for basic office work, Internet and will give you some multimedia potentials. They usually employ an Intel GMA 950 GPU, which will allow you to do all the basic stuff, but try to do anything more taxing like playing back a 720p H.264 video, and you’ll find it struggling, along with the Atom processor, in trying to deal with it. So while netbooks and other similar mini computers are great for most tasks, today’s multimedia demands mean that they won’t have a place in your home theater as a media player.

Nvidia’s Ion platform seeks to change this notion.

By including a Nvidia GeForce 9400M into the package, as opposed to using the Intel GMA GPU. Apart from being an tiny GPU that fits well into devices normally powered bt the Atom, the 9400M also features Nvidia’s 3rd generation PureVideo HD (or VP3) acceleration engine designed specifically for enhanced HD playback, including full hardware decoding for all the Blu-ray video codecs. The 3rd gen VP3 is only seen on some of the more recent GeForce GPUs, and not even the GTX 2xx range have them (they are still using the 2nd gen., which cannot do full VC-1 hardware decoding, only full H.264 decoding). What this means is that the GPU will handle most of the load for playing back HD movies and this now allows Atom based systems to play back 1080p HD movies.

Good things come in small packages - Ion can make netbooks play Blu-ray

This then allows Atom based systems to have a genuine place inside your home theater. The small form factor and lack of heat (and therefore, noise) will be perfect in the home theater, and with 1080p HD H.264 or VC-1 playback, it will handle all of your multimedia needs without having a dedicated PC hooked up to your system. Increase the form factor a bit and add in a Blu-ray drive, and you’ve got yourself a full HTPC system for maybe only half the cost, half the space, and half the noise. And unplug all the cables, and it’s portable too. The 9400M will support Nvidia’s CUDA platform, which means GPU will be able to assist the CPU in many other tasks.

What Ion, and the 9400M, won’t offer you is gaming potential, because in order to reduce the heat output and power requirements to fit into Atom systems, a few corners had to be cut – the 9400M only features 16 stream processors, compared to the 480 you get with Nvidia’s top of the range GPU. 2D graphics won’t be much better than Intel GMA based systems either. But video, and HD video at that, has always been the main draw here.

Intel will fight the Ion platform by introducing new CPUs that can handle 720p video using less power and at less cost than Ion, but 1080p video is where things are heading at the moment and there appears to be a bright future for Ion as long as system builders, like Asus, take full advantage.

In copyright news, a couple of developments this week, mostly in Europe. That’s understandable, due to the attention the Pirate Bay trial has attracted, and what appears to be several European government’s obsession in pleasing their American overlords to pass strong anti-piracy legislation.

The Swedish Pirate Party now has a seat in the EU parliament

First up is good news, which is rare for this section of the WNR. The Pirate Bay may have lost a trial, but it has gained status as a political party by winning a seat in the European parliament. They won 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, which may not sound quite as impressive to people living in countries with two major parties, but considering that the largest  party in Sweden got 24.6%, and that their Prime Minister’s own party only got 18.8%, the Pirate Party’s 7.1% suddenly looks a lot more significant. The traditional third party in many countries is the Green party, and they only got 3.6% more. The Pirate Party is a single issue protest party, and it’s really unheard of for such a party to receive so many votes. But that’s not to say that the one issue they represent is not an important one, or one worth fighting. Far from it. One can only hope The Pirate Party extends their reach to around the world and they can become a political force that will force some positive change for the lobbyist controlled copyright issue.

Meanwhile, the New York Times posted what appeared to be very bad news for The Pirate Bay in terms of their trial, which the headline that states that their appeal has been denied. This was sourced from an article by the Hollywood Reporter. However, both are wrong in this case, according to our forum’s resident Swedish expert, Cynthia (and a couple of other news sources). The Pirate Bay defence had claimed that the judge ruling the case was biased. The court which will see to the appeal has asked for opinions from the original court that ruled the case in regards to this claim, and the original court has denied any evidence of bias and has submitted this. This is where the confusion comes from, perhaps, because no judgement on the appeal has been made yet, and I doubt this is the only avenue of appeal anyway. Thanks again Cynthia for the update, and no thanks to the NY Times for their lack of research on the issue (even if they don’t consider it “important”).

A couple of weeks ago I posted a news item about France passing a new controversial law, dubbed the “three-strikes” law, which aims to cut off Internet usage for people found to be “guilty” of downloading pirated material three times. Of course, there is no court, no appeal of decisions, and the copyright groups can basically silence anyone it wants to without any hint of a fair process. It is no surprise then the country’s constitutional council has declared this law to be, well, un-constitutional because a system where one is assumed to be guilty and the charged needs to prove their innocence is not one that should belong in a Democratic society. The council basically says that the court has to be involved somehow, so people can prove their innocence. The French government are undeterred and plan to go ahead with the now modified law, which will now require “special judges” to rule on each and every case. But the whole point of the three strikes system is so that it doesn’t go through the criminal justice system to save time and money, but the newly modified law won’t achieve this point and one can see the court system being overwhelmed instantly. Maybe then, it will convince the French government to drop it completely.

All this emphasis on downloads seem to suggest that downloading pirated material has led to a collapse in revenue for industries such as the music industry. While the music industry has suffered from lost of revenue, there is no doubt of this (well, maybe a little), perhaps the reason is not piracy at all. The Guardian, spending a little more time doing research than the NY Times, has came up with a very interesting graph in regards to people’s spending habits. And yes, it does show music spending way down compared to just a few years ago. But the overall spending seems to have increased, to almost double of what it was in 1999. And looking at the graph in more details, it’s easy to see why this is the case. DVD sales went up quickly, but has stayed pretty flat since 2003. Music down as mentioned previously, and so is DVD rental. But people’s spendings on gaming quadrupled in the same period. So instead of piracy getting people’s money, it’s actually gaming, taking money away from music and rentals, and to be lesser degree, gaming. In the intro of this week’s WNR I talked about the NPD analysis, and one of the reasons that I have been doing the analysis posts for over a year now is because gaming is huge business and it needs to be made known that, yes, it is taking money away from the other home entertainment industries. But the point is overall spending increased, and this is despite piracy on the rise, so perhaps piracy isn’t a problem at all – it’s how the music and DVD industry, the passive entertainment industry if you will, can compete with the high level of interactivity that’s offered by video games. And while games are more expensive, say 3 times the cost of a DVD movie, but they also offer at least 3 times the entertainment, sometimes hundreds of hours of interactive entertainment, compared to only 2 or 3 hours for a typical movie (and 72 minutes for a CD). Research shows that piracy actually help to promote content, and thus promote purchases, while people who pirate are not the types to have spent money on it even if there was no pirated alternative. But let’s blame it on the pirates anyway, because that’s easy than confronting the harsher reality that music and movies aren’t as fun for the whole family as video games anymore, especially now with family oriented game consoles like the Wii.

While this is probably still Copyright news, but I’ll talk about it in the HD section since the Copyright section above was getting a bit long. The big news this week is that the AACS licensing authority, the people behind copy protection on Blu-ray, has revealed the final specifications for the AACS system. There are a couple of controversial items in the announcement, which is not surprising given the whole attitude of the DRM industry.

Say goodbye to the analog video outputs on your Blu-ray player

The big first controversial item is that analog video output is set to be banned from Blu-ray players. That’s right,  after 2014, no Blu-ray player will be allowed to have component, S-Video, SCART or composite video output or they face not getting the AACS license and therefore, will be unable to play all commercial Blu-ray movies. Starting in 2011, analog output will be limited to SD resolutions only, to set the analog sunset in motion. The argument that analog is useless in the world of HDMI and DisplayPort is a perfectly valid one, and that’s reason enough for manufacturers to stop including them in their players. But to place a ban on it due to copyright reasons is just stupid. If people aren’t smart enough to just download pirated movies online, then I don’t think they’re smart enough to hook up their Blu-ray players to their DVD recorders through analog output, and then somehow find a way to by-pass the Macrovision copy protection present on all analog outputs (for DVD and Blu-ray). It’s certainly not easier than downloading. And if this measure is to stop pirates from making copies, then since existing players support analog output, don’t you think that the pirates, if they needed to pirate through analog (which they don’t), would just keep a few old players lying around to bypass this measure completely. And real pirates work at the Blu-ray disc pressing plants, and have access to the masters, which is why they can bring out a pirated version even before the official release, and this doesn’t stop them. The only thing it stops is Macrovision from getting royalties from Blu-ray (which is not a bad thing, really), and it stops people using Blu-ray on older equipment. I don’t think this will really affect that many people, since I don’t think most people will even remember what analog is in 2014, but it’s the principle of the thing, and it just shows how paranoid the content owners are (possibly thanks to scary propaganda from the DRM industry).

The other big news is that Blu-ray Mandatory Copy will begin to rollout next year. What it is, and it’s already present but not in a standardised form, is that it will allow you to make limited copies of your Blu-ray movies through the Blu-ray player itself. The copies can be on Blu-ray, DVD or even for your portable players (although no Apple based players have signed up for this yet). Blu-ray movies with MC will have an extra menu option to make copies. Each Blu-ray disc with this feature will also have an unique serial number, which is used in an online authentication system to record and place limits on your copying activities (as well as to track if the copied content eventually ends up online or not). That’s pretty much what you would expect from such a system. The problem is that current Blu-ray players do not support MC, and so if you want it, you’ll have to buy yet another Blu-ray player (Blu-ray Profile 4.0?). The PS3 may be able to accommodate this through software updates, and your PC may be updated through software as well to conform to MC standards. And despite the phrase “mandatory” in Mandatory Copy, it isn’t mandatory and is purely optional for both movie studios and hardware manufacturers. And Blu-ray movies with MC enabled will cost more. So MC may be dead before it even starts, but it does add value to be able to make portable versions of movies straight from your Blu-ray player, and it might still end up cheaper than the studio’s preferred method of you purchasing the same content many times over in each different format. I’m going to call this positive progress, because at the very least, it acknowledges the need for people to make legal copies of their movies.

Wal-Mart will be offering cheap Blu-ray players for Father’s Day, at $128 each. But take the advice from our forum members and avoid the ultra cheapo players, because they lack many of the features that the slightly more expensive players have, such as Internet connectivity.

Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard Mac OS X revision will feature GPU assisted acceleration, including H.264 acceleration, but you will need a Mac with at least the Nvidia 9400M GPU, or you’ll miss out. The $99 iPhone should also entice more people to buy it, and it’s a nice little media player even if you don’t need all the other fancier features. And for $99, you can’t really go wrong, especially if you limit Internet usage to your home WiFi network, as opposed to spending too much on data (more of an issue here in Australia and other countries with rip-off data charges). And no, still no Blu-ray on Apple systems. And speaking of data charges, Microsoft’s HD streaming services will require a 8 to 10 Mbps connection for full quality streaming (quality will drop if connection is slower). That’s out of reach of most Australians at the very least, but maybe you lucky folks in the UK, Asia or US may get to enjoy full quality HD streaming. From a technical point of view, 8 Mbps should give you excellent 720p quality video, while 10 Mbps is probably still too low to offer Blu-ray quality 1080p video (you need at least 15 Mbps to even come close). HD video streaming is still very much bottlenecked at the bandwidth level, I’m afraid.

And in gaming, Microsoft’s Natal motion gaming system continues the media promotional blitz by appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (video in link), in a live demo that was played by Fallon. It’s certainly easier to see the potential of Natal, but until I buy it and test it out in my own home, I’m going to remain skeptical.

Can Natal really work, or will it be too inaccurate to be of any use?

But Engadget and IGN has both had plays with Natal, and they’ve said some pretty impressive things about it, including the fact that it’s surprisingly accurate. The accuracy thing is the one I’m most worried about. And the live demos showed a modified version of Burnout Paradise that works with Natal, which might mean that lots of existing games can be updated to work with it. I’m really looking forward to playing Crackdown by jumping up and down in my living room like a crazy person.

For those that want to make the comparisons between the Wii, PS3 motion controller (PMC) and Natal, I think Natal is something a bit different to what the Wii and PMC offers. The PMC is a basically a super accurate Wii-mote, and add in the PS3’s HD graphics, it could offer the Wii some real competition. Natal, on the other hand, doesn’t even require a controller, which won’t please the hardcore gamers, but might entice even more of those who don’t consider themselves gamers, much like what the Wii has done. Some people just don’t like having to learn how to use a controller, or are unable to, but being able to use your body to do something is natural to all humans and much easier to learn. Plus Natal offers voice and facial recognition as well. But don’t forget that the PS3 has the PS3 has the EyeToy camera thing, which can be adapted to function in a similar way to Natal, so don’t be surprised if Sony offers body motion controls as well.

My Wordpress word counter meter tells me I’ve type 2327 words already, so I’m ready to take a break now. More words coming at you next week.

The figures for US sales in May 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (May 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• DS: 633,500 (Total: 31.4 million; April 2008: 452,600 – up 40%)
• Wii: 289,500 (Total: 20.2 million; April 2008: 675,100 – down 57%)
• Xbox 360: 175,000 (Total: 15.2 million; April 2008: 186,600 – down 6%)
• PS3: 131,000 (Total: 7.7 million; April 2008: 208,700 - down 37%)
• PS2: 117,000 (Total: 44.1 million; April 2008: 132,700 – down 12%)
• PSP: 100,400 (Total: 15.2 million; April 2008: 182,300 – down 45%)

NPD May 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of May 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

Can a recovery take place in May? Looking at the Amazon top 10 charts now, it doesn’t look like a great month for games. PS3’s exclusive Infamous might make a dent, but it may come too late in May to make a huge difference to May’s figures. I’m going to predict a slight recovery for the PS3, as PS2 sales will start to drop again following the price cut, and PS3 has nowhere to go but up, especially if Infamous can help to lift sales up. Everything else the same as it was this month, I suppose.

I’m not often right. In fact, it almost never happens. But I think I was pretty spot on with my prediction. The PS3 did lift in sales, whether that’s down to inFAMOUS or not is hard to say but inFAMOUS did make the top 10. The PS2 did drop in sales as the expected boost given by the price drop deteriorated rather quickly. Everything else remains in a similar situation, with the DS down but still top, as the fever over the new DSi fades.

Having a look at the year on year comparison figures above (mostly in red), it was again a “bad” month if you do a straight comparison with the same time last year. But this is extremely misleading because May 2008 was a very good month for video games, despite May being a traditionally poor month for sales – GTA IV was still a hot item back then for one. So forgetting about the year to year figures, May 2009 was still a relatively poor month. DS sales remain strong thanks to the DSi, but having dropped by almost half compared to last month, sales will be back to “normal” in no time. Wii sales have started to behave much more like the other consoles, dropping with them and rising with them – the Wii had up until now performed miracles in sales that seemed to have made it immune to economic pressures and the fact that it’s not a new console anymore. But Nintendo will be happy with the software figures, as you’ll see later on.

Another very ‘meh’ month for Sony. PS3 sales improved, but it was still behind the Xbox 360 despite the PS3 getting the highly rated exclusive inFAMOUS. The software figures for inFAMOUS may have been affected by the limited release time it had in May, but hardware sale increases usually precede a popular title as people anticipate the release, and this could explain partly why the PS3 did increase in sales from the previous month – the only console to do so this month. But the amount of increase was not big enough, neither were the sales numbers for inFAMOUS. The PS2 got a reprieve last month thanks to price drops, but it continues on its road to oblivion this month. Sony should really just give up on this console already. Sony announced a new PSP console at E3, and this will drive up sales when it is released later in the year, but for now, the PSP has nowhere to go really as people wait for the new version (although price drops for the older model may help to spur sales in the coming months).

And finally onto Microsoft, who had a good E3 thanks to Project Natal (and the subsequent press coverage, including the live demo on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon).  But there were no exclusives, or price drops, and so nothing much changed for this month. In fact, sales were exactly the same as last month. But out of all the consoles that experienced year to year drops (that is, all except for the DS, but it doesn’t count because of the DSi), it experienced the least amount of decrease.

Let’s get to software. As mentioned earlier, Nintendo had reason to not be so worried about Wii hardware sales, because Wii software sales are still strong. Half of the top 10 were Wii games, with another DS game thrown in for good measure. And the better news is that two of the top selling Wii games were new to the list, EA Sports Active and Punch Out! – this is one area Nintendo wanted improvement on, as opposed to relying on the trifecta of Wii Play, Mario Kart and Wii Fit all the time. Microsoft should be fairly pleased as well, taking the number one spot for the second time this year, with the multi-platform UFC 2009. Sony would have wanted inFAMOUS to be higher up than 5th and selling only a third of the number one game of the month (which wasn’t even an exclusive). I will again point out that it was released too late in the months to make huge dent (why does Sony always do this?), but most sales happen in the first week and 175,900 is disappointing considering Killzone 2 got almost double this and the fact that it was an exclusive. I find it hard to believe that out of the nearly 8 million PS3 owners in the US, only such a small percentage decided to buy this highly rated and hyped game at release. And it’s not just the price though, because so many more wanted to by UFC 2009 on the PS3. Overall, the Wii had 43.2% of the top 10, the Xbox 360 had 30.8% and the PS3 had 19.6%. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. UFC 2009 Undisputed (Xbox 360, THQ) – 679,600
2. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 352,800
3. EA Sports Active (Wii, EA) – 345,800
4. UFC 2009 Undisputed (PS3, THQ) – 334,400
5. inFAMOUS (PS3, Sony) – 175,900
6. Pokemon Platinum (DS, Nintendo) – 168,900
7. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 158,300
8. Punch Out! (Wii, Nintendo) – 156,900
9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged (Xbox 360, Activision) – 120,700
10. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 109,800

June is hard to predict. There should be an increase in sales from a seasonal point of view. Plus, there is also the release of Prototyped (think inFAMOUS but multi-platform, and much more exaggerated) and the Ghostbusters video game, and with inFAMOUS continue to be the top PS3 seller, it should all point to a better month. I don’t know if the E3 announcements will have any effect on sales, but most of the announcements aren’t for immediate product releases (apart from Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus, but the Wii Sports Resort game which takes advantage of it doesn’t come out until July), so I don’t think there will be a huge effect, if any. So the prediction is the same as this month, with the PS3 numbers slightly higher still but maybe not high enough to beat the Xbox 360. I can see Prototype (the Xbox 360 version) being the top seller for the month, and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against inFAMOUS which has received better review ratings (although the “100″ ratings given out by a few places are a bit over the top).

See you next month.

Starting with the copyright news, there isn’t much going on actually. I don’t know if this is good news or not.  The MPAA is pretty busy these days with their (and their affiliates’) lawsuits all around the world, so I guess it’s understandable that they don’t have as much time to come out with the usual propaganda.

In the RealDVD case, the MPAA has made a claim that will not surprise anyone, but does give insight into what they perceive to be fair use. They have made the case to the judge that even making one backup copy of a legally purchase DVD for personal use is illegal, as it circumvents the DMCA. There are fair use provisions in the DMCA in relation to archiving, but the MPAA lawyers claim that’s for actual archives (like the National Archive) and does not apply to mere mortals. They even got the Copyright Alliance to claim that if they wanted to give people their rights back, they would have charged more per DVD, and not the current amount, which is too low to allow them to be able to make backups and stuff. Basically they’ve admitted that DRM is used to provide price control on digital content that’s normally (in its DRM-free form) hard to control. So it’s not about piracy at all, and never has been.

Windows 7's codec support may bring more anti-trust lawsuits

While it’s not a copyright issue, but it is still a legal one and that’s the slightly controversial approach that Microsoft has taken with audio/video codec support in the new Windows 7 operating system, which will be released in October. What they have done is locked Windows Media Player so that it won’t work with third party codecs. And the Microsoft codecs will override your third party ones unless unlocked or using a player that will ignore the way Microsoft has done things like Media Player Classic. It’s good news for end users I suppose, in that Microsoft is providing a bunch of codecs with the default OS installation so that you don’t need to go codec hunting just to play a XviD file. What’s not so good is for codec publishers that will lose customers, despite offering a superior product to the one that comes with Windows. Sound familiar? Didn’t Microsoft try to do this when they integrated Internet Explorer into Windows, and had to pay out huge amounts in anti-trust cases brought against them. Microsoft argued then that it was good for their customers, but offering something that come as standard is one thing, but preventing competitors from offering alternatives is another. We’ll have to wait until the release version to see if installing and using third party codecs has been made intentionally hard, or it’s just something that can be bypassed easily.

In HD news, it’s all pretty quiet on the Blu-ray front. Most HD news these days is about yet another HD streaming service, or another hardware platform that now streams an existing service.

One of Microsoft’s big E3 announcements (you’ll read more about them in the gaming section), is that 1080p HD video streaming is coming to the Xbox 360. Bandwidth issues mean that none of the 1080p streaming services will come close to matching Blu-ray’s quality, and you can’t argue with the convenience of not having to step outside you home to watch a movie from a catalogue of thousands, more than what your typical store will hold. The best news is that, unlike previous offerings, this one is worldwide. And not only that, the services that Xboxers in the lucky countries have been enjoying will now come to 10 more countries, including Australia. Last week it was the news about UK and Irish Xboxers getting Sky TV channels through the Xbox 360. So one of Microsoft’s major themes for this E3 has been trying to turn the Xbox 360 into a fully fledged media streamer. And unlike Sony, they don’t have to worry about streaming taking customers away from their disc format, because they don’t have a disc format to support (anymore).  

And so onto gaming, and most of the news this week has been the various announcements from the gaming companies. Nintendo was relatively quiet this E3, and it’s all been about Sony and Microsoft catching up.

And the best way to do that of course would be to copy Nintendo’s lead and offer motion controlled gaming. But both have decided to go in a slightly different direction to what Nintendo is offering.

Full body motion controls comes to the Xbox 360 through Project Natal

Microsoft was up first, and they demonstrated their Project Natal, a full body motion gaming system without the need for a controller (click on link to see video of Project Natal, as well as Milo). Well, you can’t accuse them for coming out with a Wii clone, that’s for sure. If the thing works, then it will open up a whole new level of gaming, because gamers don’t want an abstract representation of real world activities, as the gamepad provides. Even the Wii-mote is limited in providing a representation of real world activities, as it only works for one arm (and even with the Wii Fit board, it’s still limited – to go that one step further, then we’ll have to end up looking like the Borg just play Mario).  So a motion and depth sensing camera seems to be the way to go, and Microsoft has also added facial and voice recognition. The criticism of Natal is that without an actual controller with buttons, then the whole system may not work with proper games that require the gamer to do super-human things that only controllers and buttons can simulate. But what’s to say that Natal won’t have controller add-ons in the future? Another problem is accuracy, and I don’t know if the camera can pick up and interpret all the nuances that would be required to have a full gaming experience. But certainly this seems to be the next logical development in gaming, and it was what I thought the Wii-2 would be like. Microsoft also showed a demo featuring a virtual boy called Milo (see video from link above), which combined showed the future potential of Natal by allowing you to interact with your game console/virtual friend in unbelievable ways. 

PlayStation Motion Controller - like the Wii-mote, but in 3D and more accurate

Sony went with the more traditional approach, but added some innovation as well (click on link to see video). A controller wand very much like the Wii is present, but there is a big glowing light that, when combined with the PlayStation Eye, will allow depth to be tracked (based on how “big” the glowing balls are, as seen from the PS Eye) and will also improve accuracy. It’s basically motion capture technology used in 3D effects. And compared to the Wii, it basically means 3D motion controller that’s ultra accurate – and as many have said, basically what the Wii would look like if it was perfect. So it’s not as revolutionary as Natal, but it will be available for public consumption earlier by all estimates, and it is more “gaming”, compared to Microsoft’s more “virtual” approach. And there’s no reason why Sony can’t add some of Natal’s features through the use of the PlayStation Eye (some of which are already present). And yes, it looks like a dildo, but so what? And of course,  no price cut for the PS3.

So two companies and two different approaches. Which one will come out on top? Hard to say at the moment. If Natal works, then that’s the type of gaming I see myself playing in 5 years time. If the PlayStation Motion Controller works, then that’s the one I see myself playing next year instead of the Wii. And in the end, it’s all about the games that will support either system, and that will determine who wins. And don’t forget Nintendo, the masters of this type of thing, has yet to come out with the full response to these two interesting challenges.

On that positive note, here ends this week’s WNR. See you next week.

Good old magnetic HDDs may be on the way out ...

The good old hard disk drive has been around forever now. And you can tell they’ve been around a long time because in essence, they’re still largely mechanical devices. They run hot, they are noisy and they can break through prolonged usage. And they’re fragile too. Recent improvements in hard disk technology has meant quieter, more shock resistant drives, but you still can’t go past having platters, read heads, long seek times and the many limitations of a mechanical device.

So that’s the alternative? The good news is that the alternative is already here and available: SSDs. SSDs stand for Solid State Drives, and in modern usage, they basically refer to hard-drives that use flash memory chips as opposed to magnetic surfaces to store data. There are lots of technical stuff related to SSDs, such as the two main type of SSds (SLC and MLC – SLC stores bits in the familiar one bit per cell fashion, whereas MLC stores two bits per cell to double storage as the expense of write speed), but we won’t go into these technical details. Instead, this blog will examine whether SSDs can compete with the current range of cheap and TB sized HDDs (for the purpose of this blog, HDDs will refer to standard magnetic mechanical drives), listing the advantages and disadvantages of either format.

Form Factor:
SSDs now come in 2.5″ and 3.5″ varieties just like hard-drives, and they employ the familiar SATA interface. So fitting one into your PC won’t be a problem.

Read Speed:
SSDs employ parallel architecture to improve read speeds. Typical read speed (such as for the Intel X25-M drive) is around 200 MB/s, often going up to 250 MB/s. A typical hard-drive would be around 100 MB/s for sequential reads. HDDs will actually transfer files at slower speeds depending on where the files are located (for example, inner and outer edges of platters) and how they are fragmented. SSDs do not suffer from this problem, when it claims to have xxx MB/s, then that’s not dependent on file location and fragmentation.
Update: Having read a few more reviews, including some more recent ones with real world tests as opposed to numbers published in specifications, I have revised the read speed ratings below to better reflect real world stats. HDDs tend to have more stable read speeds between models as it is a more mature technology, whereas with SSDs, the range tend to differ more. But read speed is still heavily in favour of SSDs, even if you take the lower end MLC SSD read results. Note that the high end HDD results are for high performance drives such as the WD VelociRaptor range.
HDDs: 60 – 100 MB/s
SSDs: 90 – 180 MB/s (up to 250 MB/s for SLC drives)

Seek Times:
The lack of mechanical servos and reading arms means that seek times are much improved. A typical SSD has a random seek time of around 80 microseconds. A typical HDD will has a seek time of around 14 milliseconds. 1 millisecond equals 1000 microseconds, so seek times for SSDs are actually around 175 times faster. And again, because there are no physical and mechanical limitations, the seek time is not dependent on file location and fragmentation.
HDDs: 14 ms (14,000 microseconds)
SSDs: 80 microseconds

Write Speed:
As mentioned before, there are two types of SSDs: SLC and MLC. MLC has slower write speed, but by “slower” it is still about the same as your typical hard-drive. SLCs will write faster, at more than 160 MB/s, around double that of your typical hard-drive. Again with seek time and read speed, location and fragmentation aren’t issues.
Update: Similar to the read speed update above, write speeds for SSDs differ much more between models, and there are some very low results when compared to even the cheapest HDDs, as there are really high results compared to even the most expensive HDDs. Typically, SLC drives still easily destroys the performance of any HDDs, but they will also destroy your savings as well.
HDDs: 50 – 90 MB/s
SSDs: 45 – 120 MB/s (up to 160 MB/s for SLC drives)

Power Requirements:
Another advantage of non mechanical drives is the reduction in power requirements and heat. A typical hard-drive draws around 8W of power even when idle, whereas your typical SSD only uses less than a single watt even under heavy use. This makes SSDs perfect for portable computing needs, where both power and heat can be problems. Noise is all but eliminated as well.
HDDs: 8W when idle
SSDs: 1W under heavy use

Durability:
By taking the possibility of mechanical failure and losing magnetic cohesion from the equation, SSDs can be even more durable than standard HDDs. A typical HDD has a MTBF (mean time between failure) of about 136 years (plenty for mere mortals). A MLC type SSD has about the same MTBF, and the SLC type is even better at almost double this (around 228 years, for the Intel X25-M). SSDs are also better able to handle being physically abused as there are no delicate mechanical parts that are a drop away from being damaged permanently. And when SSDs do fail, it will be the write that fails first (read will still work)), so you can still retrieve your data while you seek a new drive, unlike HDDs that can fail and take away all your data almost instantly.

Capacity and Cost:
So far, SSDs are taking HDDs for a ride in every aspect. So why aren’t we using SSDs? The reason is the two C’s: capacity and cost. Do an online search for SSDs, and the sizes you are likely to see are still in the GBs, as opposed to TBs. 256 GB is considered large for commercial SSD drives, while HDDs are now considered small even at 4 times this. As for cost, you will be paying through the nose for SSDs, even at small sizes. A quick search over at Newegg.com reveals that a 256 GB SSD costs $619. That works out to be around $2.40 per GB. A Seagate 1.5 TB HDD, in comparison, costs only $129, or $0.09 per GB. This means that SSDs are currently28 times more expensive than HDDs, while offering much less space per drive. Even if you take even lower capacity SSDs (which are cheaper per GB), that cost is still around $2.00 per GB, or 20 times more expensive.
HDDs: 1 TB at under 10 cents per GB
SSDs: 128 GB at around $2.00 per GB

... while SSDs will almost certainly take over

So there you have it. SSDs pretty much beat HDDs at everything, except capacity and cost. But the good news is that these two C’s are the areas that SSDs will improve at an exponential rate. Competition in this sector will be fierce due to a large number of companies being able to produce SSDs – RAM and flash drive producers will join existing HDD manufacturers in producing SSD drives. This should help ensure prices drop at an even faster rate. Note that you have to look carefully to buy the right SSD as not all SSDs are equal (see updated notes for read/write speed entries). This is another weak point of SSDs, in that the technology is still maturing. The Intel X-25E, being a SLC drive, is the top performer at the moment. But for better value, something like the OCZ 120 GB MLC SSD drive will offer superior read and write speeds to all HDDs, and costs much less than SLC drives. But it is still way too expensive compared to even the most expensive HDDs, even if you don’t take into account the capacity shortage.

So while it is a bit unrealistic to think people are able to replace HDDs with SSDs at this moment, there is no reason to think that SSDs won’t replace HDDs in the short the mid term. My prediction is that by this time next year, many mid and top end PCs will come with SSD storage, perhaps complimented by larger HDDs for media storage. Portable computers will quickly employ SSDs over the rest of this year, with perhaps cheaper netbooks coming with them as standard due to the benefits of battery times outweighing the extra cost. And in two year’s time, the humble magnetic HDD that has served us so well may very well be a memory of the past as SSDs take over the market completely. I, for one, can’t wait.

I didn’t write a mid-week blog either, so to make up for it, I’m going to post something here in the intro. I’ve been playing Fallout 3 with the new Broken Steel DLC (and before you ask, no, this wasn’t the reason why I didn’t manage to find any worthwhile news items or write a mid-week blog), and I’ve come up with a “Top 10 Things You’ve Played Too Much Fallout 3″, for your enjoyment (in no particular order):

These babies will be worth their weight in gold in the Fallout 3 future

1. You switch from canned drinks to bottled because you need to buy a new metal helmet, and you need the caps 
2. You get strange looks at the gun store when you ask the clerk for a flamer, missiles and mini-nukes
3. You dig out your high school science text book because you think reading it you can increase your sciences skills by 2
4. You’ve started hording bobby pins
5. The city you most want to visit on the east coast is no longer Liberty City, but Capital Wasteland.
6. You approach the subway with trepidation, wishing that you had a ghoul mask with you
7. When you were watching the Obama inauguration on TV, with all those nice crowd shots, you keep on expecting a Super Mutant Behemoth to show up and you were slightly disappointed that it didn’t happen
8. You now look forward to the nuclear holocaust
9. When you have that dream you always have about murdering people, it is now all done through VATS
10. You voted for the Enclave in the 2008 Presidential Elections

Let’s get started with this very short news roundup, starting with copyright news. Let’s start with two separate news reports which seem to indicate the same phenomenon – that DRM actually causes more piracy.

Piracy: The safer, easier, faster alternative!

First up is a landmark UK study that showed that people often had to resort to piracy to counter the ill effects of DRM, despite being willing to pay for the products. This included one sight-impaired woman who had to pirate a copy of the Bible in electronic form because the version she bought from Amazon did not work with her text-to-speech software. The other article deals with video games, and how strong video game DRM also helps to make the pirated version much more attractive to potential buyers, and thus, promote piracy. Many of us has been in or knows someone who has had to break DRM just so they can use a product, which they paid for, in the way that they want. Be it making a backup of  a DVD, or wanting to play a PC game without the original disc. The one thing I like most about purchasing legal products is the higher quality and ease of use. Buying a DVD online or at a store is easy, as it sticking the disc into the drive and pressing play. Downloading a movie takes a long time, you may get a corrupt download, and you will have to burn to your own DVD-R (sometimes converting to DVD first), which may or may not work in your DVD player. Of course, if watching a legal DVD meant that you had to enter a serial-key, do online authentication, and then it limits which players you can play the disc on (this is what happens with many PC games these days), then pirating becomes the easier alternative, and price hasn’t even come into it yet. The legal version should always be more user friendly, higher quality and more fully featured than the pirated version.

Zeropaid theorizes that copyright groups are actually just making up stats about the amount of money lost to piracy. Even if they’re not making them up, and coming up with them using scientific methods and sampling, the numbers are still useless. There is no way to tell if pirates were at any point willing to pay for the content, and so any “money lost” model is going to be very questionable. There was a recent Australian news article which said that illegal downloads are up due to the poor economy. This suggest that people are pirating stuff because they can’t afford to pay for the legal content, and so no money is actually lost from piracy, the money is lost due to the economy. So if the content owners manage to find the perfect DRM to stop all piracy, they would not see increased profits because people still can’t afford their products (and because “perfect DRM” costs more, then even less people would be buying their products, or they would be making less money). I think if people have money, they will pay for things, even if it just part of their retail therapy routines. That is of course what I described one paragraph ago happens, that pirated products become easier to use and more fully featured than their legal counterparts, then people will seek the path of least resistance.

In HD news, Vista SP2 adds native Blu-ray data writing support. Not that anybody will use it of course, because would you trust your $15 Blu-ray disc to something Microsoft has made as an afterthought to a dying OS?

HDMI: There are now 10 different versions available

Then there’s the news that HDMD 1.4 will be released soon. Before you all moan about yet another HDMI version, this update will add quite a few new things and make HDMI very much the cable that does everything (think the home theatre’s equivalent of USB). Built-in Ethernet, support for Higher Than Full HD resolutions, increased bandwidth for 3D transmissions, micro HDMI connectors and an audio-return channel for two way audio communication. There’s even a version of the cable for the car. With so many features, there will now be 5 different versions of HDMI: standard, high speed, standard with Ethernet, high speed with Ethernet and the car one. While the extra features are good and needed for even the short term, it’s a shame they couldn’t have worked all this out before HDMI became the industry standard, because this kind of consumer confusion will cause a lot of problems, and even experts may be stumped at trying to connect their equipment together if they all have different HDMI version ports and using different HDMI version cables (not just the 1.3, 1.4 stuff, but also the 5 different types of 1.4). By my calculations, this means 10 different HDMI cables being used by people (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.3a, and the five 1.4 versions) – and that’s not really acceptable. At the very least, they could ease worries by stating that 1.5 won’t be out for another 10 years or something.

And while this news is gaming related, it probably belongs to the HD section as well, but since I don’t have any other gaming news, I’m going to put it here. UK Xbox 360’s (and in Ireland as well) will now be able to stream Sky TV channels through the game console. Now, I’m a huge Arsenal fan, and somehow playing a bit of FIFA 09 on my 360 and then tuning into an Arsenal match without even turning off the console appeals to me. But of course, I don’t live in the UK (or Ireland), and so I’ve stuck with the Australian Live Marketplace that doesn’t even have any videos to buy. One can only hope that some kind of deal is made between Microsoft and the Australian version of Sky, Foxtel, to have something similar (and then for my ISP to make a deal with Foxtel to give away free bandwidth for such a service). One can dream.

This ends this week’s rather brisk WNR. More news (or not) next week.

I hate to go from one depressing area to another, but it is traditional to have the copyright news first so here we go. The RealDVD case continues in court. The MPAA has won a small victory in getting the public kicked out of the courtroom. They say it’s because sensitive trade secrets might come out, as if nobody knows how to rip a DVD or to break the less than weak CSS copy protection system. I think they’re just afraid of the public backing that Real Networks will receive in the courtroom, which might influence the Judge in his decision making (so they pre-empted this by influencing the Judge right away).

In the other major trial at the moment, here in Australia, the AFACT (Australia’s own MPAA) has asked ISP iiNet to stop wasting the court’s time and basically admit all their customers are pirates. That doesn’t sound arrogant at all. The AFACT should stop wasting the court’s time and stop trying to insinuate that all web users are pirates, and that somehow their ISP is responsible for everything. Are phone companies responsible for people making prank phone calls? Exactly.

From the same people that brought you the Scouts Respect Copyright Badge (no joke), classroom propaganda is next

Two school related copyright news as well. First up is the good news. A Harvard professor had told the RIAA that P2P is fair use, because unless it can be proven that the user has caused actual losses for the studios, they should not be liable. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Stealing music is not like stealing a car, regardless of what those copyright ads tell you. If you steal a car, then the owner of the car has lost money because a car is a physical entity and it has a value. A digital file has not value, regardless of what’s contained in it, simply because it can be duplicated an infinite number of times. Anything that can be duplicated an infinite number of times is not worth anything. So when you steal a copy of a file, which has no value, then the only loss would be the result if you had originally intended to purchase the file, and then was tempted by the free illegal version instead. If the  ”illegal” music downloaders never originally intended to pay for the content, then nothing has been lost by anyone. The content owners are still trying to treat digital content as if it were the same content or products that come in physical form, and they just do not get it. They also don’t get how great digital can be, because (bandwidth costs excepted), digital means infinite duplication which means you can afford to sell each copy at a much lower premium and still end up making more money. That’s the magic of digital, and they just don’t get it. And they are trying to make sure the next generation don’t get it either, and they’re now trying to get their pro-copyright propaganda into US classrooms. Just like all their anti-copying attempts, this one won’t work either because the next generation are even more savvy than than current one, and they will understand the exact nature of digital more so than anybody else.

NDS flash carts are the new enemy of Nintendo, eBay and Amazon

I mentioned earlier that Nintendo had a relatively good April thanks to the new Nintendo DSi. I also mentioned last week that the DSi had some new features that prevent the use of flash carts and downloaded games, although it was cracked as soon as it was implemented. The next step for Nintendo is to team up with Amazon and eBay to stop the sale of flash carts. Fair enough, but it wont’ stop the sale of flash carts though because they will still be available for sale from a wide variety of online stores. And flash carts are quite useful even if you buy games, because you can put all your favourite games on one card and make the DS/DSi truly portable, and there’s also the more advanced media player functions which has been a weak point of the DS (compared to the PSP, at least). If Nintendo made a similar cart that allowed only the legally purchased games to be copied onto a single cart, as well as having an advanced media player, then they would have more grounds to argue that the current flash carts are nothing but piracy tools. If you do not service a segment of your user base, then they’ll find ways to service themselves. 

Onto HD news now. A new Nielsen survey has produced an interesting set of results in regards to HD usage. It seems that nearly one third of US homes now have HDTVs, which is good to hear.

14% of people with HDTVs don't watch HD content

However, it seems that out of the HDTV owners, only some of them are using it for HD content. So some people are not watching HD content on HDTVs, although not a huge percentage (14%). Still, you wonder why they bought the HDTV in the first place, or is it a case of HD content not being available widely/cheaply enough and there’s some future-proofing going on. I think more education might be needed in order to convince people HD, whether true or upscaled, is the future, because the 14% of HDTV owners who don’t watch HD suggests there is a huge percentage of non HDTV owners who don’t know or don’t care about HD. The responsible parties, and that’s the content owners, need to step up to the plate and start advertising the benefits of HD (they can start by buying some ads on this website, for one).

Blu-ray’s 50 GB not big enough? How about being able to store all your movies onto a single disc? A disc with 5 dimensions, able to store 80 TBs of data, was unveiled by Australian scientists. Not that it would help much because studios would never let you be able to copy any of your movies onto a single disc, let alone all your movies (think about the pirating potential!).

Netflix is yet again expanding it’s reach by teaming up with Microsoft to deliver Netflix content to Windows Media Center enabled PCs. Netflix now has a huge reach for its digital distribution network, and it’s amazing to see how quickly something like this can be set up thanks to existing hardware, some of them many years old, all being capable of being adapted into the network through software. Pretty soon (if not already), every A/V device will have audio outputs, video outputs, storage and networking built right in, and that’s all you need really to make it capable of receiving digital distribution. Think of all the devices you already have that fit this description, and if they don’t have Netflix or something similar on it already, then you won’t have to wait too long. This is another aspect of the magic of digital.

And finally in gaming. The PS2 did outsell the PS3 in April sales, all thanks to a price drop. But is Sony going to drop the price of the PS3? Well, maybe instead of dropping prices on *existing* PS3s, they can produce a new cheaper one that will do the same job. That’s the rumour going around at the moment anyway, a new PS3 slim that will be cheaper to produce and will sell for cheaper. Maybe it will have less connectors, maybe it won’t have built-in Wi-Fi and maybe the HDD will be smaller, but the lower price is what people want and Sony should try and deliver. But I always thought that slimmer meant more expensive, certainly from the Apple school of thinking at least.

Alrighty then (Copyright, Warner Bros. studio 1994), that’s the week that was (Copyright, somebody). More bad news in the world of copyright, more denials from Sony regarding a price drop, and more unsubstantiated rumours coming right here next week. See you then.