HomeWeekly News Roundup (9 May 2010)
This week marks a milestone in my Blu-ray sales stats analysis, in that I finally have two year’s worth of stats analysed, graphed, poked, prodded and posted. So it was a perfect time to post my semi-regular Blu-ray – The State of Play analysis, which looks at sales trends and see if Blu-ray’s state is healthy or not. I would like you to read the analysis, and so give this poor website another much needed pageview stat, so I won’t reveal too much here other than say that if you want to see a very clear Blu-ray sales trend developing, then look at the analysis. Also, if you want to see how Avatar did in relation to other releases, it’s all in there as well.
As for the TV I talked about in the last WNR, I did the very uncharacteristic thing of pre-ordering it without having even looked at the set with my own eyes. This is the TV in question. Our 7000 series is the same as the US 8000 series. I had a very interesting experience trying to buy the TV. Went to the the Harvey Norman store in Nunawading, this is the place that I get most of my stuff from in the past, including my what looks very much overpriced Pioneer plasma TV about 5 and a half years ago. They didn’t have the plasma in stock yet (nobody has), but I wanted to pre-order anyway, so I asked the salesperson to give me a good price after telling him the best online price that I found, and basically got into an argument. The funny thing was *I* was the one trying to convince the salesperson why I would prefer to purchase from this store, as opposed to online, as the salesperson refused to even discuss prices, saying instead that if the price I found was so cheap, I should get it from that place instead. The fact that I was still there asking for their best price even after being told they couldn’t match the lowest price I found should have been a hint to the salesperson that I really did want to buy it from their store for a reason I guess the salesperson couldn’t fathom (hence why I had to try and explain why I wanted to buy from them). Also the fact that I was there to buy something that hasn’t even been released yet, should have been a sign that I was pretty serious about it. Thinking back now, I can’t fathom why I would want to buy the TV, or any other item in the future for that matter, from Harvey Norman Nunawading again. Anyway, I went to The Good Guys next door and got a great deal on the TV, and I think I just found a new store to buy all my stuff from.
Anyway, onto the news.
Let’s start with the copyright news. With some of the secrecy surrounding the controversial global anti-piracy treat, the ACTA, being lifted thanks to efforts by the EU, the true and proper public debate on the treaty has started, although the powers that be won’t be listening anyway.
A senior counsel at Google, Daphne Keller, has attacked the ACTA for being “gollum like”. Google has their own reasons for opposing the ACTA, which will try to fight online piracy by getting rid of the “unwanted”, which is not good for Google’s business model since they want more and more people online, not less. Keller, speaking at a Standard University conference, questions why a treaty that was supposed to be about counterfeiting and border security has been turned into an online piracy thing. And she’s right too. Obviously, interest groups have hijacked the treaty negotiations to further their own goals, and all you have to do is to look at who is in support of the current draft of the ACTA to know who are the people behind this. In unrelated news, the MPAA hailed the ACTA as an “important step forward”. Hmm …
The MPAA may finally get the FCC to approve their plan for Selectable Output Control, or basically adding DRM to TV broadcasts
The MPAA has been busy lobbying the FCC as well, and their efforts might be about to bear fruit. The FCC is about to give in to the MPAA’s demands and allow DRM to be added to TV broadcasts. This would allow the studios to selectively turn off the output of your TV or PVR for content that they don’t think you should be able to record. The MPAA argues that this is for innovation, since it allows them to release movies to the home much faster if they didn’t have to lose sleep over people recording and distributing their precious movies. This argument appears to have worked, despite many studios already releasing movies prior to DVD releases, with no considerable effects on piracy. But one things studios love is release windows, and this is yet another one. One window for movies at cinemas with 3D, another for cinemas without 3D, another for PPV, another for DVD sales, another for Redbox rentals and then another for Netflix streaming services. This all somehow is supposed to make them more money, and the principle of artificially creating supply issues is sound if one wants to maximize profits. Except piracy does exist, and movies are put online the moment (or several just before) they are released to the cinemas, and so all these artificial barriers the studios are putting up that stops consumers from buying, only ends up helping to push people towards piracy. But that’s okay, the ACTA will be here soon to solve that problem, and then all they have to do is to figure why banning people from the Internet, and thus denying them the opportunity to buy stuff on the Internet, may end up affecting their revenue.
The Humble Indie Bundle promotes the "pay whatever you want" model for game pricing ... and NO DRM!!
While the MPAA holds the view that more DRM, more laws, are the solution, a group of independent game developers holds the view that fairer pricing, more innovation and no DRM may be the answer to gaming’s piracy problem. Partly to also help raise funds for the EFF, who is bravely fighting our battles against the RIAA, MPAA and all those in favour of more DRM, and also the Child’s Play charity, the game developers have released The Humble Indie Bundle. The bundle includes popular games including World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Aquaria and Penumbra Overture, and instead of paying the $80 retail price for the bundle, you, the consumer gets to decide how much you want to pay for it. And not everybody is paying just the minimum either. I’m not saying that this kind of “honor system” would really work for a mainstream game, but issues of pricing, ease of use, innovation should be addressed before extremely harsh DRM is even considered. It’s a fact that high prices promote piracy, as do consumer inconvenience caused by overly harsh DRM, and yet game publishers still whine about piracy and not knowing what causes it. You can either have a high price, and high piracy rate, or you can adjust your pricing model so that people don’t have a reason to pirate the game (and get rid of DRM too) – they’re trying to have it both ways, by having high prices and then trying to defeat piracy through technical or legal means, neither method proving to have any success at all. Sell games at $5 a pop, and piracy disappears tomorrow, guaranteed. And if you take advantage of the power of the Internet in terms of cheap and wide spread distribution, then game publishers can get more people to buy their games than ever before, and still end up on top in terms of revenue. This might even work for music and movies too.
NEC has developed a new tool that can detect copyrighted video clips using only 60 frames of content, which should aid the monitoring of “three-strikes” and YouTube type copyright filters. Another technical measure that has cost millions of dollars to develop, which will no doubt be eventually circumvented.
Let’s go on to HD news. Avatar has been making all the right and wrong headlines recently. The wrong headlines are the ones where the new Blu-ray DRM used on Avatar caused playback problems, which had to be quickly fixed by manufacturers via firmware updates (but some were quicker than others, unfortunately).
The right headline comes this week with the sales stats becoming available and analysed here. Avatar broke all records, but only marginally above the ones held previously by the week in which District 9 was released, in terms of both market share and sales revenue. Still, the results were very impressive, especially since we’re not in the holiday sales period at the moment. It was also interesting to see Lord of the Rings trilogy Blu-ray completely disappear from the top 10 – three movies whose combined box office is greater than that of Avatar by a significant margin, being released on Blu-ray for the first time, and now being outsold by 2 year old Blu-ray releases.
In Australia, Samsung is giving away for free all you need for 3D Blu-ray
The Avatar Blu-ray release is 2D only unfortunately, much to the chagrin of Avatar director James Cameron. The 3D version won’t be here until later in the year, or possible Spring 2011. The lack of 3D content right now is a huge argument against buying 3D TVs, which is a strange statement to make by someone who has just pre-ordered one. For people who are not actively looking for a new TV, then I suggest you wait until more 3D content is available, and until 3D technology matures and drops in price, which should all happen next year. The yet unreleased Panasonic 3D plasmas will probably have better 3D quality than the current Samsungs, which is now better than when they were first released thanks for improvements made in firmware updates. So the technology is still maturing, and since there’s hardly any real 3D content anyway, you’re not missing anything by waiting. However, for those that need to buy a new TV, and I’m one of them, then at the very least, you should demo the 3D TVs, most stores should have it set up, and decide for yourself how much it is worth. For me, 2D quality, price are still far more important than 3D and other features. For the Samsung I’ve chosen, 2D quality is pretty good (not the best, I know), and the price is fantastic, and so the 3D and all the free 3D stuff Samsung are giving away just makes the deal sweeter, but I wouldn’t buy this TV if neither 2D quality nor price were attractive. Of course, even if 3D isn’t a hit right now, will you want it in the future? Calculate how long you plan to use your current TV or your next purchase, and then ask yourself whether 3D will be important to you at the end of this period, and then you can decide whether 3D is something you want to buy right now.
The Flash vs HTML5 and H.264 vs open source codec war intensified this week after Microsoft formally declared their allegiance to HTML5 and H.264. For Microsoft, it’s a no brainer because while H.264 has royalty fees, its quality and industry support cannot be questioned, nor the fact that Microsoft is one of the patent holders behind H.264. Speaking of royalty fees, there’re not excessive, and you can find it explained here. Microsoft can easily afford it. Mozilla probably could too, but they will feel it’s an unnecessary expense, and one that doesn’t fit into their open source model. Even if royalties were waived for H.264, Mozilla might still have a hard time accepting the non open-source code for decoding H.264. Meanwhile, Apple may face an anti-trust investigation into the fact that it forces developers to use Apple’s development tools, as opposed to third party tools, when developing for the iPhone/iPad. This of course means Apple can prevent developers, like Adobe, from implementing certain tools for the iPhone/iPad, such as Adobe’s Flash. Apple’s boss Steve Jobs went on a rant last week attacking Flash for being a proprietary piece of software, which it is, but Apple’s no saint on this issue either. The iPhone/iPad are very much tethered devices (and I’m not talking about the 3G Internet type of tethering), meaning you can’t really use it without tying it to Apple’s services, and Apple is cracking down on jail-breaking.
And finally in gaming, we have a couple of Sony news. First up is great news for Sony PS3 and PSP owners worried about protecting their consoles beyond the standard one year warranty period. Sony now offers a factory extended warranty plan that you can purchase directly from them.
For $45, you can extend the warranty of your PS3 by a further year. $60 buys you a two year extension. Similarly for the PSP, you can extended the factory warranty by one year or two for $30 or $40. And I would recommend people buy the 2 year extension for the PS3 due to the firmware update drive reading problem, which although not widespread, could be potentially costly if it happens outside the warranty period ($150 per repair). So $60 is well worth the price for the extra peace of mind.
The PS3 “Other OS” story continues to ramble on, with the story that Sony may have made legal threats against Geohots, the hacker who claimed he was able to hack the latest Sony firmware to allow “Other OS” to be kept. The PS3, like the iPhone/iPad, heavily relies on services that Sony provides, such as the ability to play online, and improvements via firmware updates. This is a relatively new concept, the constant firmware updates, and having features disabled if you don’t have the latest firmware. I mean how many firmware updates did you make to the PS2? And five year ago, would have ever consider updating the firmware of your TV? But it’s common place now. And all of this means the manufacturer has more control over how you use your Internet connected devices, and they can take away features just as they can add them. Remember when Amazon removed copies of 1984 from people’s Kindle devices remotely? It’s the same thing. It’s all as if we’re just renting devices from manufacturers like Sony, and that ultimately, they have full control of what you can and can’t do with the device you’ve paid for. I think consumers need to be made aware of what could potentially happen, whether features that were present when they purchased the device will always be present.
Okay, enough ranting for this week. See you next week with more rants, ramblings and a sprinkling of news.