HomeWeekly News Roundup (2 December 2007)
I can’t believe we’re in December already for 2007. Where has it all gone? I mean it seemed like it was only yesterday when I was going around from shop to shop after the Christmas rush to buy myself a Wii console, and now it’s nearly a year on (and people are still going from shop to shop trying to buy a Wii console). It’s quieter week, mainly because my mind has been elsewhere (writing the PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide), so I might have missed or not cared about a few news stories here and there. Sorry about that.
In copyright news, Canada’s movie studio friendly government is seeking to implement even tougher copyright laws that will make the US DMCA look weak by comparison. Well that’s what happens when you elect right leaning governments – just look at what’s happening in France too with their newly elected US-loving President.
Moving quickly onto HD news, it’s been a week of where both HD format groups are throwing stats at each other. First, the HD DVD people say that HD DVD player sales have topped 750,000 – impressive. But maybe not as impressive as Blu-ray‘s claim that they rule in Europe and during the Black Friday sales in the US. I really need to write a summary of what’s going on in the HD wars, but from the current data, it seems:
- HD DVD sells more standalones
- Blu-ray sells more players overall if you include the PS3
- More HD DVD movies are sold per player
- But Blu-ray has more movie sales overall because it has more players, even though it sells much less movies per player
- Movie sales are generally influenced by big releases, title such as 300, Transformers, Spider-Man 3 and Ratatouille, and the more releases a side has for that week, the more sales it generates (well, duh). It does seem that Blu-ray has more “hit” releases than HD DVD at the moment
There is finally a non-Toshiba cheap HD DVD player out on the market, not that there’s anything wrong with Toshiba players. Venturer has put out a HD DVD player based on the Toshiba A-3 for $199 – not very competitive when you look at the prices the Toshibas are selling at. I’m sure the actual store pricing will be a lot lower. While prices might not be quite competitive in the US, I’m hoping that the Venturer might come to Australia and bring prices here lower – Toshiba player prices are high here due to various reasons such as our prices being matched to European prices due to Toshiba’s corporate structure, but many of these reasons don’t apply to Venturer and Asian made players. And while not HD news strictly, many reviewers are hailing the new Pioneer “Kuro” plasma as the best TV out on the market. As an owner of a 4th generation model (the Kuro is the 8th generation model), I only have good things to say about the Pioneer plasma range. While I’m not sure about the “best in the world” rating, it’s certainly up there, although other brands such as Panasonic are not far behind. The Kuro is available in 50″ 720p, 1080p and 60″ 1080p models – if I had the money now, I would upgrade my panel to the 50″ 1080p model, 60″ if I win the lottery.
Gaming next, and as mentioned in the intro to this piece, the Wii is the thing everybody wants this Christmas, which is funny, because it’s in the same position as last Christmas. Not wanting to sound smug or anything, but if you really wanted a Wii, why wait until the Holiday gift season to get one? I’m sure there were a few available back in June if you really wanted to get one. Wii stocks are so low that even the PS3 has managed to outsell it in Japan. It is very impressive figures for the PS3, don’t get me wrong, but if the Wii’s stock in Japan wasn’t limited to 160,000 or so, it would have killed the PS3’s 180,000 sales and probably beat every other console combined. The PS3 is doing very well due to the 40 GB lower priced model (how can I argue against that when I’m one of the people who joined in with the buying) and could top the Xbox 360, but not according to Microsoft, which Sony has come out and criticized. I will have to wait and see for the final figures before choosing to believe either side. The PS3 is also a hacker’s dream because its processor is optimized for hacking like activities. I just hope the console is locked down tight security wise, because I don’t want my PS3 to help some hacker’s attempt to hack into the Pentagon or something. And the official list of updates for the Xbox 360 “Fall” update has been released by Microsoft, and it’s a huge list. I won’t go through everything, except to say that it looks like Microsoft have beaten Sony to the punch by getting DivX and XviD support into the console first, unless Sony releases a surprise firmware update in the next two days that is. The DivX support is quite extensive, covering all the advanced encoding features like GMC, Q-Pel and B-Frames (read our DivX Setup Guide to find out what these mean), and up to 720p resolution at 5 Mbps. And AC3 5.1 audio support, as well as MP3 support, is included too. So it looks like pretty much every DivX/XviD file out there will be supported. Will this make the 360 the most popular hardware device for viewing pirated TV show episodes? That is if we still end up having any episodes to download due to the writer strike.
Until next week …