HomeWeekly News Roundup (9 March 2008)
Sorry for this slightly later than usual roundup. The server hosting most of Digital Digest’s websites started experiencing some problems, which were later traced to a bad hard-drive. To avoid any outages, I had to quickly source a new server and transfer the sites across, which was not easy at 3am in the morning. I ended up going to bed at 7am, and 6 hours of sleep later, I’m back again continuing with the transfer. Ah … the glamour of being a webmaster.
Let’s not waste any time, because I have none to spare. In copyright news, finally a content provider that has the right idea. Instead of pursuing layers of DRM, the band Nine Inch Nails will release their new album through P2P using a donation based system … you decide how much you want to pay for the music, and of course, no DRM. Doing it this way really “goes with the flow” of how content is distributed on the Internet, and bypassing the studio system has many advantages (least of which is getting 95% of your profit back, which otherwise would have belonged to the studio). Using a system normally used to distribute pirated content has many advantages, one of which is ease of use. Jumping through hoops just to buy some DRM infested crap just doesn’t work anymore. And to prove this point, a new study confirms that piracy is better than the real thing. Better content, easier delivery are all reasons why people are choosing the piracy route, rather than through official channels. Studios are obviously worried, but is it really hurting them? Movie ticket sales broke new records again in 2007, despite movie piracy at an all time high. Is piracy helping to sell movie tickets, as people watch a low quality version of a film, likes it, and then decide to watch it proper in the cinema or on legally purchased discs?
Moving quickly onto HD, BD-ROM is set to take off in 2008 following Blu-ray’s victory in the HD format war. The most interesting part of the story is a revealing quote which suggested that BD burner prices are high because of low yield issues. It seems low yield is a problem that Blu-ray suffers from a lot, with disc pressing a huge problem causing releases to be pushed back time and time again due to insufficient manufacturing capacity. To ensure capacity though, new factories will have to be built. And consumers will end up having to pay for them. Some reports suggest that both Blu-ray player and disc prices have gone up since the demise of HD DVD, and you can’t really blame the BDA, studios or CE manufacturers (and online rental stores) for doing so, because the format war has been costly on top of the cost of developing a new format. There is certainly less Blu-ray disc sales than before, and even the redemption offer for 5 free discs seems to be over now with no signs of it coming back. Competition is good for the consumer. But there is no competition to Blu-ray now, apart from competition from within (which will be somewhat limited, as everyone involved do not want a price war to drive down profit margins just yet). Further evidence comes straight from Sony, who says that they do not want to license Blu-ray technology to Chinese firms in order to lower prices (their stated reason is “piracy”). Sony has ruled out $200 Blu-ray players coming this year, and they hinted that you might have to wait until the end of 2009 to see Blu-ray players match the 2007 price of HD DVD players, and even then, it’s probably just a basic Profile 1.1 player that won’t play a lot of the special feature content on the majority of discs released at that time. One way for player prices to drop is for HD DVD firms to get involved, and Microsoft is the first to suggest they may join the Blu-ray bandwagon and release an add-on drive for the Xbox 360. Nothing more specific than that, unfortunately. Microsoft has also released the HD DVD emulator for the Xbox 360 for free (used to cost a few thousand dollars) – with this software, you can test your HD DVD projects and HDi content without having more specialised equipment than a Xbox 360.
The HD DVD fire sale continues, although I have a feeling the best is yet to come. Prices continue to drop, now to as low as $8.50 for selected titles. I’ve written a bunch of blog entries on this already, so I won’t waste too much time on it again. Suffice to say that I’m still pretty mad about JB Hi-Fi Online and their Planet Earth ordering fiasco – read more about it here. And I guess it sort of belongs in the HD section – Pioneer has responded to rumours that it will cease development of plasma screens and move onto LCD (the plasma vs LCD battle is just as fierce as the Blu-ray/HD DVD one, along with the numerous unfounded rumours being reported by allegedly reputed news sites). Pioneer will continue to release plasma TVs, except that the panel these TVs used will now be outsourced, instead of being manufactured by Pioneer. The rumour (I know, I know) is that Panasonic will take over, and Pioneer will share their design secrets with them. If true, this is good news because Panasonic’s Viera range is already pretty good, and with some infusion of Pioneer technology, both Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas will continue to be at the top of the pile in terms of picture quality. The best plasma screens will always look better than the best LCDs, and will remain so until new TV technology becomes available (I’m putting my money on OLED, but not before 2010).
And finally in gaming, PS3 firmware 2.4 will be released in the US summer, and will feature in game XMB for messaging. There is no word that it will feature Blu-ray Profile 2.0 support, or DTS-HD MA decoding – the only two features lacking from the PS3’s otherwise excellent Blu-ray capabilities (but to be fair, no Profile 2.0 player will be available anytime soon, although DTS-HD MA decoding would be nice to have since many titles now use this new audio format and it sucks to be limited to plain old DTS 1.5 Mbps). A new Xbox 360 SKU may also be on the way, perhaps featuring a 60 GB hard-disk. I think getting rid of stability issues and lowering the noise level should be Microsoft’s main priority, because a quiet, non RRoD’ing Xbox 360, with a large hard-drive, will be a must-have even for existing 360 owners, let alone new users.
Okay, so that’s it for this week. I have to get back to fixing the new server. I’ll see you next week.