HomeWeekly News Roundup (30 March 2008)
Sorry for the lack of a blog entry during the week … I was a bit busy doing a few things (no, I didn’t spend all my time finding and buying HD DVD bargains … not all my time anyway). First up, I finished writing the Nero Vision 5 AVCHD Authoring Guide just before last week’s blog, and I was still recovering from the stress. I love (MPEG-4) AVC (H.264), since I believe it is the codec of the future, and AVCHD is a format that I think has some chance for success, since it takes AVC and gives it Blu-ray based navigation, and now that Blu-ray has won the HD war, AVCHD’s chance of adoption is now much higher. The guide I wrote will show you how to make a simple AVCHD disc, which is not all that different to authoring DVDs – Nero Vision isn’t the best software for authoring, but I hope the guide can at least be used as an introduction to AVCHD.
I also wrote a review for the new version of WinDVD, WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray (and yes, it plays HD DVDs too). I must say, I’m quite impressed with this new version of WinDVD, which in my opinion, is the best version of WinDVD for several years (although to achieve this wasn’t that hard, since previous versions were a bit “wobbly” to say the least). The Blu-ray and HD DVD playback function works great, better than PowerDVD Ultra in my opinion simply because it supports older (non HDCP) hardware.
I also bought some more HD DVDs (what a surprise!), but I think I’ll leave references to it to a minimum since I’m sure people are sick and tired of my HD DVD fire sale series.
Anyway, onto the roundup proper now. In copyright news, sort of, a dispute over LED patents could block Blu-ray and other related product imports. When I say “could”, I mean “won’t” because someone will pay up and settle the lawsuit or it will be dropped before it gets anywhere near a court. And in a week where the irony meter has been off the scale, the MPAA has been sued for piracy related activities. Actually, a Chinese site falsely accused by the MPAA of piracy (the MPAA admits the mistake) is suing them for defamation and I hope they win because the MPAA needs their activities looked at with more scrutiny. The RIAA is still not learning and they want ISPs to introduce a “piracy tax”. Basically they want ISPs to charge extra money that will go into the RIAA’s pockets for acts of piracy that you may or may not have committed. Sentenced before a crime is even committed! Still, some ISPs are standing up to MPAA’s tactics, if not in the US, then in Norway where ISPs will not act as the MPAA’s judge, jury and executioner in disconnecting people suspected of piracy. Still, some have given up the fight (and you can’t really blame them). TorrentSpy is finally dead, after months of legal battle and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs. Of course, about a dozen new torrent sites have sprung up in its place, so piracy has not been affected at all. And to show that Bittorrent isn’t this evil thing, the Canadian TV station CBC will use Bittorrent to distribute some of their shows in HD, and all DRM-free. And to round off the irony laden week, Sony BMG has been sued for, you guessed it, piracy. Not only that, their servers were seized by police and evidence of the piracy is now in the hands of PointDev, the company who produced software that Sony BMG allegedly used pirated copies of. In the words of Nelson on The Simpsons: “Ha Ha!”
In HD news, Hitman, along with several other Blu-ray and DVD titles, are now using an experimental feature called “Digital Copy”, which stores a portable (iPod, PSP) version of the movie on the disc that you can play on the PC or transfer to your portable video player. I like this, and my only concern with this type of feature is the possible price rise to account for the extra content. But as long as prices stay the same, then it’s a good feature to have. Meanwhile, both Samsung and LG have raised their concern and caution towards Blu-ray, citing growing use of Internet movie downloads as the major factor which could cause Blu-ray to fail. The chief scientist at THX also suggests something similar. I will have to write a blog on this issue, but I think disc formats are here to say, for at least another decade or so. Plextor are continuing with their release of a dual format Blu-ray/HD DVD drive, despite recent events. Good for them, as I think the million or so HD DVD users could become a niche market that will always need drives to service their huge movie collection (thanks to recent sales). Meanwhile, the Blu-ray PR machine is in full gear this week as news of Blu-ray movie sale reaching the 9 million mark, as well as above 10% ratios for some Blu-ray new releases (compared to DVDs), such as Oscar Winner No Country for Old Men. But if you look at the figures closely, and analyse the difference between DVD owners and Blu-ray owners, you’ll see that these numbers are a bit misleading, and that DVDs held a massive 16:1 sales ratio compared to Blu-ray for the week ending 23rd March, despite the NCFOM sales figures. It looks like the BDA still needs much more promotion, starting with sorting out the profiles mess and by releasing more movies at lower prices.
On the issue of profiles, it is slightly less confusing for the majority of Blu-ray owners, as they own the PS3 and it has just been updated to Profile 2.0 compatibility, just like I predicted it will last year – hooray for me (mainly because this means nobody is going to sue me for misleading them into buying the PS3 for Profile 2.0 compatibility, when at that time, nothing was certain). The update also includes some DivX playback fixes (2 GB and bigger files are not supported), although my testing showed that GMC and QPel DivX files still won’t play.
And on that note, we move onto gaming. Actually, the above was the only notable gaming news I saw in the week (if I see one more news story about “wii-habilitation”, I’ll scream!). GTA IV will be released in a month’s time, and I will pre-order my copy, not because I fear that I won’t get one, but mainly because I can’t be arsed to go to the store to get a copy. Plus, Xbox 360 owners who pre-order will get some bonus goodies (500 MS points and exclusive gamerpics), now not only for Australians but for people in the UK and US too (I may have already mentioned this news, but the US and UK thing is new). GTA IV will also feature a clever new music download system – something about phoning a special number whenever you hear music on the in-game radio while playing, and then download for them $1 from Amazon. It would be way cooler if somehow you could actually use phones in the game to make a call to get a special code to download/pay for the music, but I don’t think a career criminal like Niko is likely to pay for music, so perhaps it doesn’t quite fit into the game. No doubt there will be more stories about GTA IV in the coming weeks, and you can read the good ones here.
Okay, that’s it for this week. Don’t forget to enter into the Roxio competition to win yourself a iPod Nano – competition closes tomorrow! See you next week.