HomeWeekly News Roundup (2 March 2008)
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 …