HomeWeekly News Roundup (25 November 2007)
Time again for the weekly news roundup. I’ve been fairly busy this week with a few things like looking up Blu-ray and HD DVD bargains and posting them in the blog and forum, and while I’ve been advocating HD format neutrality right here for a while now, I’ve finally made myself format neutral by buying a PS3. I will post more about my shopping experiences and my initial experiences with the PS3 in this blog later this week.
Starting with Copyright news as usual, Macrovision, the company responsible for screwing up the video signal if you did not plug it straight to the TV, has now purchased the recently hacked/bypassed BD+ copy protection system for Blu-ray in a deal worth $45 million (so that’s how much a cracked copy protection system is worth!). With DRM at an all time low in terms of popularity, it must be a big worry for companies like Macrovision which relies on the “need” for DRM for a profit. Kim Bayley, director-general of the UK based Entertainment Retailers Association says that DRM is “stifling growth and working against the consumer interest”, and I think she’s right. DRM-Free MP3s are selling very well indeed, and I don’t think music piracy has increased due to these easily copyable music files. But while the world seems to be united in fighting DRM and restrictive copyright legislation, France’s newly elected (US commercial interest friendly) right wing government wants to set up a new body which will monitor Internet usage. ISPs will monitor the activities of their users and report to the body, and if someone is found guilty of piracy, they could be banned from using the Internet. This sounds more like a fight against privacy than a fight against piracy, in my opinion. And it’s not just the French, the MPAA wants universities to help stop piracy by monitoring the Internet usages of their students through a toolkit provided by the MPAA. So governments spying on citizens, ISPs spying on its customers, school spying on their students … is it me, or does this all sound very Orwellian. Meanwhile, Hollywood is making record profits, while not paying it’s writers what they deserve forcing them to go on strike. It’s all about the money.
Onto something a bit less frightening now. In HD news, Home Media Magazine has written a story about the HD format war and the fan’s contribution to it. It’s a very interesting read, not just because I’m quoted in it, but it summarises what is going on in forums and on websites, and how the war seems to be slightly out of control at times. And the two promotion groups for the formats are not exactly helping, coming out all the time with misleading statements and fuel to add to the fire. This time, it’s Blu-ray with a series of viral ads that they’ve been trying to get websites to promote. But these ads are quite childish, petty and not all that funny (apart a scene where Betamax player is seen being thrown away into the “junk closet”, perhaps as a reminder of the fortune of Sony’s last proprietary format), and it certainly doesn’t help calm the two sides of the format war. Sometimes it’s hard to not get caught up in it (although as I mentioned above, I’m now format neutral), but in the end people love movies, not formats. But the war does bring some benefits, and there are lots of bargins to pick up during the holiday sales period. The latest one sees Wal-Mart offering the 80 GB PS3 plus 10 Blu-ray movies (worth $30 or less), plus the existing 5 free movie redemption from Sony, for only $499. It was 2 per store only, and it’s over now as it only lasted one day, but I doubt that it will be the last of the sales. Keep you eyes peeled for bargains, and just like I’ve done for the past week, I’ll be posting some of the best online offers here in this blog.
Onto gaming, in an effort to bring more developers to the Sony stable, they have now halved the price of PS3 development kits. It’s a step in the right direction, although if they truly want the PS3 to be a successful games platform, they need to do a lot more. For my new PS3, I’m going to be using it more as a upscaling DVD and Blu-ray players, rather than a games machine, which is not what Sony wants (since they lose money on each console sold). I will talk more about this later in the week, but let’s just say that my Xbox 360 and Wii, plus the good old PC, provides for all my gaming needs without the need for the PS3. But it is an excellent Blu-ray and upscaling DVD players, and even if you use it just for these functions, the price is still not too bad compared to standalones. Meanwhile, somebody has leaked the Xbox 360 Fall update list, but I’m highly suspicious of it’s legitimacy, let’s put it this way. The PS3 has also been updated again with the 2.01 firmware to fix a few issues in the 2.00 firmware. The speculation is that the PS3 will get Blu-ray 1.1 profile compatibility before the start of the new year, as that’s why Sony will release its first 1.1 movie. Another week, and another report of a multi-platform release that rocks on the 360 and sucks on the PS3 – this time for the excellently valued Orange Box collection. The developers Valve apparently decided to concentrate on the 360 version, and dumped the PS3 development on publishers EA. I know PS3 fanboys will scream at Valve for being “lazy”, but all these companies have limited resources and if the decision is between making two average versions, or concentrating on getting at least one version right, I think they have done the same thing. The alternative is to have a further 6 to 12 month delay for the PS3 version to get everything right, but I’m fanboys will be even more outraged if this had happened. It seems that the PS3 is not doing well at all in the gaming department, but if you look at the yearly sales figures for all the consoles, it’s not doing too badly. But just like with HD stuff, the console wars will bring discounts over the coming weeks. For example, this last friday, dubbed Black Friday in the US, Amazon ran some sales which saw heavy discounts for several gaming items. Again, I will post some of the better online deals when I see them.
See you in a week’s time.