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Weekly News Roundup (26 December 2010)

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

Welcome to this lovely Boxing Day, St Stephen’s Day, or simply day after Christmas, edition of the WNR, which is also the last of this year. As expected, the eggnog and alcohol filled week meant that the news was pretty light, so hopefully we’ll get through this one and it will be relatively painless.

In copyright news, the repercussions of the Cyber Monday Homeland Security/ICE raid is still being felt, and there’s more evidence to suggest that it was the RIAA/MPAA that were calling the shots in this one, and HS/ICE basically did whatever these industry groups told them to do.

dajaz1.com closed down by Homeland Security, and just like OnSmash.com, it was a website many in the industry supported, but one which the RIAA hated

The New York Times has started to investigate the websites that were closed, and at least one other website was like OnSmash.com, which only posted so called infringing material after being provided said material, via leaks, by artists and even the labels themselves. It seems that the RIAA, for some reason, resented this type of websites, and were intent to use this opportunity to have these websites closed down, even though there are plenty of higher profile targets. Perhaps these blogs bypassed the more mainstream promotional routes that RIAA members had financial interests in, or that these kind of promotional tactics are being deployed by smaller, independent labels outside of the reach of the RIAA, and they wanted to deal a blow to their competitors, but it certainly seems that the reasons had very little to do with piracy.

But in order for Homeland Security and ICE to be used in this way by the RIAA, as a private security force, there has to be some level of incompetence or corruption going on. Ars technica has done further investigation into the agent in charge of this operation, as well as the affidavits filed for the case, and incompetence, as opposed to a vast conspiracy, seems more likely. The agent in charge, Andrew T. Reynolds, does not even have 2 years worth of experience the field of IP crime, and before that, he was only a “student trainee”. And the affidavits themselves were filled with phrases such as “according to the MPAA”, and some of the statements in relation to the cost of piracy are almost word for word reproductions of statements made in the past by the MPAA. For example, this is what Special Agent Reynolds said in the affidavit:

“Based on my participation in the investigation, I have learned that there is a ‘domino effect’ to online piracy… Domestic industries lose approximately $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the domestic economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to online piracy, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings as result of copyright infringement.”

And this is what former MPAA Dan Glickman said in 2009:

“Copyright industries in the US lose $25.6 billion a year in revenue to piracy, the U.S. economy loses nearly 375,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to the copyright industry, and American workers lose more than $16 billion in annual earnings”

It seems pretty clear the RIAA and MPAA were pulling the strings behind this investigation, and that Special Agent Reynolds’ inexperience made him extremely easy to manipulate.

MasterCard has announced itself the new Internet Police, helping the RIAA/MPAA in stopping online piracy

If it wasn’t bad enough that the RIAA and MPAA now seems to control the government, subverting due process, other companies are coming out to do the same, including MasterCard. After their recent controversial stance against Wikileaks, they’re on a roll by announcing that they will now help the RIAA and MPAA stop online piracy by stopping financial services for websites suspected of providing piracy. This is genius! Bypass the government and the courts entirely, and big corporations can now determine guilt and innocence, with zero appeals process unless you want to take MasterCard to civil court. And immediately, the RIAA has demanded that MasterCard take action against Megaupload. Megaupload, like any cyber locker websites, allows users to upload and share any files. Of course, some, and maybe quite a bit of the files being shared are of an infringing nature (Megaupload say they host over a billion legitimate files though), but like YouTube, Megaupload do have a takedown policy. Of course, if the RIAA were to take Megaupload to court, then the outcome will be very unpredictable, as similar cases against Rapidshare has yielded mixed results. And so when faced with uncertainty in the courts, why not just bypass it completely!

Megaupload has vowed to fight on, and questioned the circumvention of due process as an attack on democracy itself. “Will it be them (MasterCard), rather than elected governments, who decide what’s right and what’s wrong”, asked Bonnie Lam of Megaupload. The fact is that Megaupload does have a mechanism for removing pirated content, but because it takes too much work for the RIAA/MPAA to track every illegally uploaded file, they’re bypassing the system completely, the very system that they demanded via the DMCA legislation. And you can see where this will lead to eventually. Imagine an ISP that refuses to implement the RIAA/MPAA’s plan for three-strikes, and then MasterCard swoops in and cuts off support for the ISP, claiming that the ISP obviously supports piracy. Or if Hollywood gets annoyed at Redbox for renting things to cheaply, why not just get MasterCard to swoop in again. And so on. It’s corporate intimidation, nothing more, and all because they want to stop the phantom piracy plague, but don’t want to actually do the hard work, or any work.

And it all comes down to the “$25.6 billion a year” that MPAA’s Dan Glickman referred to, and Special Agent Reynolds copy/pasted into “his” affidavit. Except there isn’t $25.6 billion, and there never was. It’s taking the suspected number of pirated downloads, inflate this number by a few factors, and then times the full retail costs of said content, and arriving at this fantasy figure. In other words, it’s saying that if piracy is stopped completely, that the group people (in the US only) who have otherwise been spending a total of $0 per year will now suddenly start to spend $25.6 billion per year, despite near 20% underemployment in the US. According to the FBI, 794,616 cars were stolen in 2009, with the average cost of the cars being at $6,505, or a combined total of $5.2 billion. I don’t see the auto industry claiming this $5.2 billion as lost sales, and how ridiculously would it be if they did try.

This brings up to the list of the most pirated movies of 2010. By my own calculations, the top 10 movie torrents resulted in 92.5 million downloads, and at the price of $20 per movie, that’s $1.85 billion right there. Of course, looking at the actual box office of these movies, you come to some strange conclusions. Avatar was top, as expected, but there was also room in the top 10 for the likes of Green Zone, which did poorly at the box office. Now, there can be several conclusions from this. The MPAA conclusion would be that piracy helped to reduce Green Zone’s box office, and so that’s $154.6 million in lost ticket sales in the US alone, despite the fact that Green Zone only recorded $95 million in *worldwide* ticket receipts. The sensible conclusion may be that a lot of those who downloaded this movie belong to the “wouldn’t pay for it, but would probably watch it if it was free” category, and that some of those that downloaded, and actually liked it, may have gone on to purchase the DVD or Blu-ray. And despite having being downloaded 16 million times, Avatar was still the best selling movie of all time. In fact, Avatar did almost three times as much business as The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King back in 2003, the third most popular movie of all time. Given that movie piracy is now a lot worse now than back in 2003, and adjusting for inflation, is piracy really a $25.6 billion dollar problem in the US alone? So Avatar should have done, what, six times as much business as the Oscar winning RotK? Avatar wasn’t *that* good!

Moving on to DRM, and again, Sony is making DRM headlines for the wrong reason. A new Sony DVD DRM appears to lock up DVD players to the point where it comes difficult to even eject the damn disc (so you can throw it at something in frustration). The new DRM appears on the Salt DVD. Incidentally, Salt was the 10th most downloaded movie of 2010, with 6.7 million downloads. Looks like this new DRM worked really well in stopping piracy. Now only if they can make a disc that won’t play at all, on any player, then maybe the piracy problem will be solved once and for all.

High Definition

In HD/3D news, the big news this week was the announced Blu-ray sales figures for the week ending 12th December, which is now officially the best week ever for Blu-ray, thanks largely to Inception. Of course, these stats are more estimates than actual sell-through numbers, but still, this all sounds very reasonable as the previous record was also set around this time, last year.

Of course, we then see a bunch of news articles about the rise of Blu-ray, and the fall of DVD. Which is true. Blu-ray sales, for the week ending 12th December, rose by 35.37%, with Blu-ray market share up nearly 54%. DVD sales, on the other hand, dropped by more than $85 millon for the same week. You see what I did there? I compared a very impressive percentage increase number for Blu-ray with an even more impressive (in a bad way) dollar figure for DVD. But when you add up the gain, and the loss, what do you get? That’s right, a $60.82 million dollar *loss* in combined DVD/Blu-ray revenue. Blu-ray may be surging, but it’s not surging fast enough at all, because 35% increase on $70 million is not enough to counter the 19% decrease on $442 million. Supposedly, downloads and streaming accounted for some of the DVD losses too.

And with reports that Wal-Mart was selling the Blu-ray+DVD combo version of Inception at only a single dollar over the 2-disc DVD-only version of the same movie, it’s not surprising why people are choosing the Blu-ray+DVD version over the DVD-only version. As a Blu-ray early adopter, I’m pretty much only buying movies on Blu-ray these days. One reason for this is that Blu-ray offers the chance to buy the best version of the movie available, whereas DVD represent buying into an obsolete format in terms of quality. But the main reason is that price wise, there’s almost nothing between DVD and Blu-ray these days, and in fact, the Blu-ray version is often cheaper. It’s almost as if Blu-ray has become the “budget” choice, or at least the better value choice, and so it’s not surprising to see Blu-ray sales increasing. It may come as a surprise to some in the entertainment industry, but lower price equals better sales (and less piracy as a result, I suspect).

Which brings us to gaming, and the annual Steam Holiday Sales. If publishers ever wanted prove that lower prices equals more sales equals greater revenue, then the stats provided by Valve (operators of Steam) should have publishers changing their sales tactics (except we know they won’t).

Steam's sales produce remarkable results, evidence that cheaper games will earn more for publishers, and also help to reduce piracy

Valve has figures that show when games are discounted by 75%, this lead to an amazing 1470% sales increase on average. That’s 15.7 times the sales, by charging a quarter of the previous price, which equates to almost 4 times as much in raw revenue. The extra buyers are coming no doubt from people who may have otherwise pirated the game, and so this is a very successful example of how the entertainment industry can convert piracy into dollars. Pirates are still gamers, movie or music lovers, and they do have money to spend. Just not as much as the industry wants to extract from them, but something is still better than nothing, and a lot of something adds up. With A-List games such as CoD: Black Ops or StarCraft II, they benefit less from price reductions (as people are buying them regardless), but the Steam figures show that even a 10% price reduction resulted in 35% increase in sales (or 1.2 times the revenue, compared to the unreduced price), so there exists a balance between pricing and piracy. But with average or even poor games, where people don’t feel justified in paying $60+, then a more aggressive price reduction could actually do wonders for revenue. People pay money for crap all the time (Slanket!), so it’s about finding the right price that people are willing to pay, even knowing the game is a bit crap.

And speaking of cheap games, The Humble Indie Bundle #2 event ended, with $1.8 million dollar worth of sales (or is that donations), beating the last event quite easily. On average, people paid $7.83 for the pack, even though they could have paid a lot less if they wanted to.

And the same thing applies to movies, and music. Price all movies at $5 on Blu-ray and $3 for permanent downloads, then see online piracy eliminated without the need to manipulate any Homeland Security and ICE agents, or heavens forbid, get MasterCard to swoop in.

And on that note, thus end WNR for 2010. Hope you’ve had a good year, and that the next one will be much better. An early Happy New Year to everyone.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (26 December 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (19 December 2010)

Sunday, December 19th, 2010

Welcome to the penultimate (I told you I would find a way to use this word) WNR for 2010. It’s nearly the end of the year, and as expected, news is a bit light at the moment. But news there is, and cover it we shall. I’m sure you’re as busy as me around this time of the year, so let’s not waste any time on silly introductions that attempts to be witty even though the author doesn’t actually know what witty means. Is it the same as being ironical?

Let’s start with copyright news, Warner Bros commissioned a report into online piracy a couple of months ago, and the results are in, and are somewhat surprising.

Foreign dubs and subtitled version of latest movies and TV shows are top downloads on torrent networks

Apparently, pirates do occasionally buy stuff too. And this means that when studios are fighting pirates, they are essentially fighting their own potential customers. None of this should be too surprising to readers of this feature, but I’m sure it was a surprise to Warner Bros. And they have vowed to find out just why pirates sometimes pirate stuff, and sometimes decide to buy stuff, and if they can ever work out the formula for this, then it could really help to reduce piracy. I’m sure Warner has just commissioned another report to get to the bottom of this, but here’s a (free) hint for Warner: cheap and good = sales; expensive and bad = piracy. The other interesting findings include that while pirate downloaders are usually men, it is woman that download TVs shows more often than men. And another interesting finding was that foreign subtitled/dubbed version of TV and movie downloads often become the most popular downloads only a few days after the original English release, suggesting that there may be some kind of market that is being under-served at the moment. For many foreign viewers, this is perhaps the only way, legal or otherwise, to watch the latest movies or TV shows in particular, since the alternative could be waiting months for the official version to be released. So to add to the earlier hints: worldwide simultaneous release = good; staggered release in attempt to squeeze as much money out of each market = piracy (might also add exclusivity deals to this – more on this in the 3D/HD section). So basically, the conclusion seems to be that, no, studios aren’t doing everything they can to stop piracy because they are not really matching the market’s needs, in terms of release schedules, or pricing, or a lot of other things under their control. So instead of blaming torrent sites, and trying to sue users, maybe they should go fix their own mistakes first.

OnSmash.com - Shut down by the government on orders from the RIAA, but was it the right decision?

A follow-up to the story on the US Homeland Security, ICE operation that closed down 80+ websites in late November. We know now, via a story in the New York Times, that at least one of the websites closed, OnSmash.com, should not have been closed, or at the very least, should have left the decision up to that of a judge and jury. OnSmash.com provided hip-hop music and videos, publishing stuff that is often leaked to them directly from labels and artists such as Kayne West. These leaks might constitute copyright infringement in the strictest sense, but there’s a good reason why the leaks came from official sources such as the copyright owners themselves and artists. All for promotional reasons, a great way to reach the fan-base in this day and age. And now this way has been closed, without explanation and without any sort of paperwork that can be obtained by the defendant for probably weeks and months. To say that those in the industry were surprised would not be a lie, but it probably also wasn’t a surprise that major studios represented by the RIAA did not like the way things were working. And straight from the RIAA’s lips to Homeland Security’s ears, bypassing due process as much as possible in the, um, process. A little copyright infringement is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes a great thing. Remember Susan Boyle’s audition video? You know, the one that now has 55 million views. Was that video from an official source, or was it pirated? Would it have served the copyright owners of Britain’s Got Talent to have had this video removed, or did it serve them better to keep it up? The RIAA would have probably sued for unauthorised use of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, or got their ICE buddies to knock down a few doors.

Dutch anti-piracy agency BREIN wants to get in on the website closure business too, and they’ve had 29 websites shut down, with visitors redirected to the BREIN website. And they can keep doing this because the minute those 29 websites were shut down, hundreds probably sprang up in their place. Hurray for perpetual war.

Meanwhile, more bad news for law firms seeking to profit from mass lawsuits, as another judge has declared that little things like jurisdiction does matter, even in embarrassing porn lawsuits. So it means that copyright trolls will now have to work a little bit harder, to determine just where the people they’re suing are actually located, before threatening people with massive amounts of damages and public humiliation if they don’t pay up by the close of biz tomorrow, capiche? But these little things to add up, in terms of cost, and if the EFF can keep up their small victories, eventually, it will all add up to a major victory when it no longer becomes profitable to pursue these kinds of lawsuits (and more on how you can support the EFF financially, and also get some great games for peanuts, later on).

High Definition

In HD/3D news, bad news for Avatar fans that don’t have Panasonic 3D TVs – no Avatar for you until 2012, maybe.

Be prepared to pay higher and higher prices for Avatar 3D Blu-ray, as the exclusivity deal with Panasonic may last until 2012

A Panasonic UK spokesperson has confirmed that Panasonic’s exclusive Avatar 3D Blu-ray deal actually lasts until 2012. So until then, it’s paying $200 (if you’re lucky on eBay) for a copy, or those willing to risk it can get it from less then legal sources. I don’t condone piracy, but really, if these are the choices, then what would most people do? I just hope Fox is getting enough money from Panasonic for this deal, because by the time 2012 comes, how many people would have found another less than legal way of obtaining the 3D version of this film already, and how much would that cost the studio in terms of lost sales (assuming the 3D hype is still around by that time). My opinion, which is absolutely opposite of the actual legal position, is that if I can’t buy it, then I’m free to try and obtain it in any way I wish.

And these kind of exclusivity deals destroys almost all the progress made by unifying the 3D Blu-ray standard, because it’s back to the bad old days of buying hardware based on the movies that are available for the platform.

But I think something will give before 2012, because I just can’t see companies like Samsung standing idly by, or Fox having the patience to wait it out until 2012 when the demand for it is there, and not when they see the 3D BDRip torrent of the movie doing great “business” on the net.

The H.264 vs WebM vs Ogg Theora vs HTML5 vs Flash war just got even more confusing, with Microsoft helping competitor Firefox by producing a H.264 add-on for the open source browser, allowing Windows 7 Firefox users to experience HTML5 H.264 videos. Of course, Microsoft never helps anyone without gaining something themselves, and as staunch supporters of H.264, this is not a surprising move. So to summarise, Firefox and Opera don’t want HTML5 to adopt H.264 because it’s incompatible with their open source licenses, while Apple, Microsoft love H.264 because they hold patents to it (and it is an industry standard that’s widely supported already). Google remains on the fence and has been playing everyone off everyone else – even though they’re the ones that came up with WebM/VP8, Chrome also natively supports H.264, so the only one that stands to gain regardless of the result is, once again, Google. Meanwhile, Adobe sits in a dark corner cursing everyone, while stabbing pins into a Steve Jobs voodoo doll. And that’s what you missed last time on Glee.

And in gaming, The Humble Indie Bundle is back. The deal is simple – five highly rated indie games that normally retail for $85 can be had for the princely sum of … anything you want.

That’s right, you decide what you want to pay for the bundle of five DRM-free games, and you can even direct part of the payment to one of Child’s Play charity, the EFF or the people who are running this campaign. So if you’ve been porn or Far Cry mass-sued, and want to give something back to the EFF, or if you hate DRM and want your voice heard, or you want to support a very worthy charity, or just because you actually want to buy the five excellent games included, this is your chance! The top amount paid so far stands at $3141.59 at the time of writing, but the average is $7.66. The million dollar barrier has already been broken as well.

A Kinect update. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says that he has access to NPD figures that show the Kinect Xbox 360 console bundle outsold the Move PS3 console bundle by more than a 5 to 1 ratio in November. That’s not surprising considering the half a billion dollars that Microsoft threw in to promote Kinect, and the subsequent hype the motion sensor device has since generated. And I’m not just talking about Oprah or Ellen Kinect appearances/give-aways, but also with independent developers “hacking” and the various impressive demo videos. The same kind of hype is just not being generated for Move. And with free DLC downloads already appearing for two of Kinect’s most popular games, thanks to commercial sponsorship, and software updates that promises to make Kinect even more accurate (like finger tracking), the momentum is definitely with Kinect at the moment, even if Microsoft says no to Kinect sex games. The only thing holding it back is supply issues (just checking now, it’s out of stock on both Amazon.com and Wal-mart.com, while the PS Move is in stock on both, albeit in very short supply on Amazon).

And that’s pretty much it for news this week. Short and sweet. Or at least just short. See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (5 December 2010)

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Damn it. November went by and I didn’t even get to mention that it was the ‘penultimate’ month of 2010. I love to use the word ‘penultimate’, and so you can imagine how disappointed I am. There’s a surprising amount of news this week. Surprising because I still managed to play something like 25 hours of Fallout New Vegas, so I don’t know how I managed to find the will to quit the game and search for news. So let’s get started …

… with Copyright news. The cracks are starting to appear in the US Copyright Group’s attempt to monetize anti-piracy, and they’re bringing out the kitchen sink to stop anyone getting into their way.

Document lawyer Graham Syfert is just the latest to try and stop the USCG mass lawsuits, and he did it by producing and selling self-help documents and selling them to those that have been sued. These documents can be used to keep the USCG busy, in the hope that they will eventually drop the case because it’s just not worth the trouble. The documents can be purchased for as little as $9.95, but according to the USCG, it’s costing them thousands. Which is why the USCG has just sued Syfert. Apparently, it’s only okay for the USCG to make money off anti-piracy, and anyone getting in their way is a bad person. Syfert, being a lawyer himself, has fired back claiming that the USCG’s actions are “completely insane”. And if that wasn’t bad enough for the USCG, they are now facing a class action lawsuit filed by one of the defendants of their ‘Far Cry’ case. The class action alleges “fraud, extortion and abuse” on the part of the USCG. I’ve always been told that the US is a particularly litigious country, and so I guess the USCG should have expected something like this to happen. And it’s interesting to note, that apart from some porn lawsuits, there aren’t too many other law firms taking up the anti-piracy settlement business, at least not many that are high profile. Perhaps they’re all waiting around to see what becomes of USCG’s business model, whether it is workable at all. Which is more reason to hope that USCG fails completely to monetize, so it puts an end to this sort of thing. And hopefully with the porn lawsuits, someone will step up and also claim “fraud, extortion and abuse”, particularly the extortion bit, because threatening to make public one’s sexual habits does seem a bit extortionate.

Demonoid.com - No longer .com, now .me

The fallout from the recent Homeland Security domain seizures, and the threat looming from the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), it seems that BitTorrent websites are taking pre-emptive action to protect themselves. Which is why this week, private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid has decided to move away from its .com roots, and instead move to .me, to counter the threat of having their domain seized by US authorities (who have jurisdiction over .com domain names, I suppose). Several private DNS systems have also been set up recently, in case COICA becomes law and thus giving the US government the ability to tamper with the Internet’s domain name system. This fracture into a public (both censored and uncensored) and private Internet is exactly what academics and engineers have warned about when they first heard about COICA. And it also again shows that even with the risk of catastrophic damage to the Internet as we know it, the actual effect of COICA in stopping piracy is negligible, because people can simply switch their DNS to an offshore one, and continue to access all the websites the US government doesn’t want you to look at.

Google Torrent Auto-complete Recommendation

Google will soon remove piracy related terms, like torrent, from auto-complete recommendations

Viacom is eager to get back to court so they can lose again to Google/YouTube, as they filed their appeal against the June decision which say their copyright lawsuit thrown out of court. More money wasted instead of pursuing innovation, but I guess the lawyers will be happy. In totally unrelated news, Google is beefing up its anti-piracy credentials by buying DRM firm Widevine, as well as implementing several features on their websites that will make it about 2.3% harder to find pirated stuff on the Internet. The first major change is to remove piracy related keywords, such as “torrent”, from auto-complete suggestions (so that when you search for “Megamind”, the phrase “Megamind torrent” isn’t a recommended search term, and only maybe shows up if you type the first few letters of “torrent”). This adds keywords such as “torrent”, or maybe even “free download”, to the list of naughty words such as “lesbian” that Google keeps out of the recommendation list. I’m sure this will make the entertainment industry slightly happier, although it makes absolutely no difference to those actually searching for torrents (because, what, if Google doesn’t suggest it, people are going to stop searching for it?). I’m sure the entertainment industry will be a lot happier if Google actually blocked displaying results for bad keywords, but that would be censorship of the worst kind and would go against everything democracy stands for, which just makes the entertainment industry want it even more. And the idea that “torrent” automatically means piracy should be challenged as well, and unless Google’s system is clever enough to distinguish between legal and illegal torrents, then searches like “Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Torrent” will be blocked too from auto-complete recommendations.

And I guess people searching for what about keywords such as “rapidshare”? There are still lots of people searching for “Windows 7 activated rapidshare” (it’s the third post popular recommendation), should that be blocked too? I mention Rapidshare because I wanted to segue into the news about Rapidshare being ordered by a German court to pay eBook publishers a hefty 150,000 Euros fine for not successfully blocking out pirated eBooks from being uploaded and downloaded, as ordered by the court back in February. I guess it’s only fair that Rapidshare do make an effort to block these downloads after a court order and everything, and if every publisher wanted to get their content blocked, then they should also go an get a court order. Of course, filtering is never really foolproof, and so the court should take this into account too. After all, it’s the users of Rapidshare that’s committing the real crime here, and if Rapidshare did their best to prevent it (even if their best does not match up to the content owner’s expectations), then they should not be found guilty. This is basically why Viacom lost its lawsuit against YouTube.

And in this week’s “Oh no, what has Sony done now” section, Sony’s latest SNAFU is to demand music that it doesn’t own to be removed, despite the fact that it was uploaded by an artist belong to a competing studio. This “innocent mistake”, or so Sony claims, even went as far as Sony lawyers writing to Mediafire and getting them to remove the uploaded home demos, although they did eventually write back to say “never mind”. Now this is but one, fairly high profile, mistake. How many other lower profile mistakes have been made by Sony, and other labels and studios in their anti-piracy hunt? And should they not double check that they actually have the legal right to sent off legal threats? But I guess if banks can foreclose houses they don’t even own, anything could happen I suppose.

And Ubisoft is back with another form of annoying DRM, but this time I can see the funny side of it. Those that pirated Ubisoft’s new Michael Jackson game on the DS will find that all of the music have been replaced with annoying vuvuzelas sounds.

High Definition

In HD/3D news, regular readers of my Blu-ray sales analysis (which also includes DVD sales figures) will have noted the year on year decline of DVD sales, which is pretty much the norm for most weeks.

And this drop in DVD sales has many in the industry worried, and many are blaming downloads and streaming content, the legal kind, for it. I guess the term “blame” is perhaps the wrong word to use, because this shift was always coming. Music is mostly sold via digital means these days, and with faster Internet connections and more generous bandwidth quotas, the same will be true of movies. For really high quality stuff, stuff that can’t be downloaded easily, there’s Blu-ray (which has recorded year on year growth). For everything else, downloads and streaming should suffice. And it will really take off once pricing because a bit more reasonable. In the article, there’s a guy from the BBC that says that “long tail” is where the future is. And I think I touched on this in my TV Networks for the 21st Century blog post, basically the future may be one where people pay very little per download, but they download a lot more and from a vast library of titles where every TV show, programme, episode, is available to download 24/7 instantly. This is very much a “long tail” approach, as opposed to the more traditional approach where content owners rely on people downloading the latest and greatest in great numbers, while limiting access to their entire catalogue (mainly due to technical reasons, not exactly intentional). And the reason why DVD/Blu-ray has been a huge success (despite what Hollywood wants you to believe … the home video sell-through market basically didn’t exist before DVDs), that’s to allow people to access their old favourites. And many of Blu-ray’s biggest hits have been classics, not new releases – like all the Disney animated classics, Sound of Music recently, classic TV shows – these all have done just as well, if not better combined, than a single new release. And with digital downloads and streaming, the access could be even greater, especially if delivered in an on-demand fashion. There aren’t any technical hurdles any more to achieving this (at least for SD content), so the only reason why we’re not able to select and watch any episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Bewitched is more to do with other reasons (irrational fear of unauthorised copying, and also of fear of losing a grip on their existing, outdated, business model).

Also, I’ve been thinking about the 3D Blu-ray of Avatar and how it’s selling for $400 or more. With no signs of a general release (director James Cameron’s comments about “2 more years” is worrying), I wonder if this exclusive deal may actually do more damage than good. I’m sure Panasonic paid a lot of money for the exclusivity, but I think this move is actually driving people to consider piracy as an alternative to paying $400 for a single movie, and how will this hurt sales when it becomes available via general release? People have purchased 3D TVs in anticipation of Avatar really, and if the general release is not just around the corner, then expect 3D Blu-ray Avatar to be the most pirated Blu-ray movie of all time (even if it takes about a week to download).

And finally in gaming, I have bit the bullet and ordered Kinect. I’ve always wanted one to see what it can do, especially when the hardcore games arrive next year (and they will arrive), but in the end, it was all the crazy PC hacks that have been posted in the last couple of weeks. It makes me, as a software developer, want to get my hands on one as quickly as possible just to see what kind of things I can make Kinect do.

Kinect vs Move - the battle of sales figures begins already

But it might be a while before my order arrives, because according to my local (as in Australia) wholesale sources, stock is a huge issue for Kinect at the moment. And a quick search online reveals pretty much the same thing, with most online stores (again, locally) out of stock of the sensor + Kinect adventures pack. This leaves buying Kinect as part of a new Xbox 360 bundle the only option for many. It is also sold out on Amazon.com as I type, with 4.5 stars average rating after 320+ reviews. Microsoft has revealed that 2.5 million Kinect units have been sold to customers in the first 25 days of release, which could have been even better had stock been more plentiful. Sony later countered with their own “sales” figures of 4.1 million since release (a bit more than a full month longer than Kinect), but it was later revealed that this figure is the number of units shipped to retailers, not the actual number sold to customers (cue thousands of web editors updating articles at the same time). Although the demand for the Move means the shipped to retailer and sold to customers number may not be that far apart, some of the 4.1 million units may be reserved (ie. stock held) for yet to commence December sales at the time of Sony’s sales data, and so in any case, the two numbers cannot be compared without more information.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities has revealed, based on access to NPD data, that his predicted “to customers” number for Move is about 2.5 million, the same as Kinect, although over more than double the time frame (since late September for Move, 25 days for Kinect). And of course, every Move controller sold is counted as a single unit, even if purchased by the same household for multiplayer (whereas Kinect has built in 2 player support). Without knowing the pairing rate of Move controllers to PS3s, there’s no real way to compare to Kinect sales numbers. If the pairing rate is 1.5 Move controllers per PS3, for example, and taking into account that the Move has been released for twice as long as Kinect, then even taking the 4.1 million as total sold, Kinect is already twice 1.8 times more popular than Move. If the pairing rate was 2, then Kinect is 2.4 times more popular. If taking Pachter’s estimates of 2.5 million sold through, then Kinect is 3 or 4 times more popular if the pairing rate is 1.5 or 2. If my maths is right. Which it usually isn’t.

And some news outlets are incorrectly stating that the Sony numbers do not include PS Move sales not part of the standalone bundle (with PS Eye) or console bundles. The numbers, from what I can gather, do include it, it just doesn’t include separate PS Eye and Navigation controller sales (the Navigation add-on is useless without the Move wand, and you can almost say the same thing about the PS Eye these days, given how poorly it was selling before Move arrived).

It’s all quite confusing really, and I think Sony should have just kept their mouth shut unless they really did outsell the Kinect, which looks unlikely at this stage. The same wholesale source I mentioned earlier showed that the Move bundle still had plenty of stock, and more online stores had stock of them on my last search.

Okay, enough fanboi baiting for this week. Have a good one.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (5 December 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (28 November 2010)

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Another week, another WNR. I know it’s easy to get cynical about the Black Friday sales in the US (particularly if, you’re like me, not actually located in the US), just like it may be easy to get caught up in the hype, but if you’re do your research, there are potentially a lot of bargains to pick up without leaving the comfort of your home. Since Blu-ray is a major topic of this website, I’ve posted some of the best Amazon Black Friday Blu-ray deals on this page. Most of the discounts are still available, and there will be more on Monday as well, so it’s a good time to stock up on some Blu-ray movies. The prices are so good that they’re almost HD DVD level! I’ve purchase a dozen of so movies myself as part of this sale, as there are some really good bargains around for the movies that I had planned to buy anyway (and that’s the the trap, is that you end up buying things you didn’t really want or need just because they were cheap). More on this in the HD/Blu-ray section of this WNR, including one confession about how I compromised my principles a bit!

I continue to play through Fallout New Vegas, encountering another quite annoying glitch during the week. This one involved the companion Veronica, and how she become frozen in one spot after a certain mission. And this leads me to recommend one most excellent resource for Fallout games, The Value. It is a Wikia for all the Fallout games, and it gives precious advice on how to overcome glitches. And this is also why I prefer playing Fallout on the PC, because you get access to the console, and this allows you to fix the most stubborn glitches. In any case, I solve the Veronica glitch after reading a tip on The Vault. The glitches in this game almost ruin the game, but it’s actually quite satisfying when you do find a solution or workaround, and it has become part of the Fallout/Bethesda experience really.

Not a huge amount of news by any standard, but still enough to do some ranting, possibly between the 1800 and 2400 word mark, by my best guestimate. So let’s get started.

In copyright news, news broke not too long ago that The Pirate Bay founders have lost their appeal in the Swedish courts. This means that, following the original verdict, the founders now face a hefty fine and prison time of up to 10 month.

Prison time for Pirate Bay founders confirmed, at least until further action in the courts

Only three of the original four defendants were part of this trial, the other missed out due to illness, but will be certain to face the exact same result. Despite jail time being handed out, the likes of the MPAA are still not satisfied at the result, claiming that the $6.5 million dollars of damages isn’t anywhere near the $17 million they had wanted. Talk about being greedy! The case will now most likely go to the highest court in Sweden, even if the prosecutors seem to think this case won’t go that far. I can’t be bothered to dig up the previous edition of the WNR where I said that this case won’t be decided until it is examined by the highest court in the country, and I think I also mentioned that I don’t hold much hope that any appeal would yield satisfactory results for the TPB. The cards were stacked against them from the start.

The copyright news this week doesn’t really get much better unfortunately, but there was at least one bright spot when there was at least a sign of common sense on Capitol Hill this week, when US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) torpedoed efforts to enact the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) into law. He has placed a hold on it and it won’t be heard before the senate until next year. Unfortunately, I can only see this as a temporary delay, because with so much support for this ridiculous act, it will be made into law and we’ll all have to suffer the consequences. Most support it because they don’t know any better, or have received enough incentive to support it without asking serious questions. And most know there’s no political points being earned by going against the entertainment industry in the US. And that’s partly our fault too, for not pressuring out representatives in government in doing the right thing. But the thing is, unless you’re someone who reads this or similar blogs and websites regularly, you won’t really be aware of the issues, or understand (or care) about them, and it then boils down to an issue of whether people should or shouldn’t “steal” (a dumbed down talking point that the entertainment industry has been pushing), and most people wouldn’t support stealing. Except we know that copying and stealing are two different things entirely, and that even if it is possible to stop piracy (it isn’t), there are certain things that are far more sacred than protecting the dying business model of the entertainment industry. Things like our right to privacy. And freedom of speech. And due process, which systems like ‘Three Strikes’ attempt to short-circuit by assuming guilt and denying people their right of appeal (or to even address the matter in a court of law, like they’re entitled to). And this goes back to what I said a couple of WNRs ago, that we must do more to protect our rights and treat this more than just a matter of being able to “downloading movies and games and stuff”, something that the copyright lobby and their supporters has tried to reduce the arguments to. This is about protecting our democratic rights, which politicians these days are too eager to sacrifice in the name of “protecting” us (whether it’s terrorism, or the perceived and possibly imaginary threat to the economy, due to piracy).

Seized domains now display only this seizure notice from the DoJ, IPRC, and Homeland Security

And so we move on to the news this week that Homeland Security closed down another 80 websites suspected of providing pirated content. The only positive is that due process was followed, that warrants were obtained via the court, but it doesn’t really matter if the process itself is flawed. My biggest problem with this is that I have no idea if any of the websites/domains seized were really illegal, and who determined their status. I don’t trust most judges’ level of technical understanding to pass judgement on technical issues such as this, and perhaps when faced with such overwhelming force (Justice Department, Homeland Security, ICE), and some scaremongering about the consequences of piracy (billions of jobs will be lost!), most will just go along with whatever is in the warrant request. And if one of the 80 websites was truly innocent, what’s the process of appeal, and what kind of compensation would be due if the website was deemed by a court of law as not guilty, compensation for the financial and emotional damages caused by the temporary closure of the website. I mean, this is not like going after drug dealers or counterfeit drugs, there are a lot of complicated issues involved in determining whether a website is guilty or not of copyright infringement, issues that must be addressed in court before any punitive actions can be handed out. And what if the domain really did host illegal stuff, but it was uploaded unknowingly by third parties, or as part of a user-generated section on the website – is if fair that the entire domain is taken offline? It would be like shutting down blogger.com because somebody created an account on there to share pirated MP3s. This scenario could be avoided via a DMCA takedown notice, but these seizures bypass the very laws that were created to avoid situations like this. And this is why COICA is so controversial, in that it gives the US government even greater power to do all of this and more, and on a much larger scale as well, potentially killing off tens of thousands of websites in one fell swoop, and many by “collateral damage”. And this is why anyone who knows and cares about the Internet ought to be against COICA, and many prominent companies and individuals have already spoken out, but all will be silenced by the constant chattering of lobbyists into the ears of those that can decide the fate of COICA. Senator Wyden excepted.

And so the next step would be to even make talking about piracy illegal, which is what the RIAA attempted to do this week, and caused some collateral damage of their own in the process. PCMag.com posted an article after LimeWire was shut down, examining the possible alternatives that are still left. This is a valid discussion, because it points to the fact that even though it took years and millions of dollars to bring down LimeWire, the next LimeWire could pop up in a matter of weeks or could already exist, and thus making the whole process an expensive, and pointless, exercise. And for this, the RIAA and its cohorts sent a letter to PCMag.com’s CEO, attacking the website for daring to suggest alternatives and supporting and encouraging piracy in the process. It then attacked PCMag for simply referring to another article, published by TorrentFreak, regarding LimeWire being resurrected. The problem is that PCMag didn’t write that article, it was PC World, by facts and accuracy does not matter when one is acting the bully like the RIAA and Co. are. PCMag are standing firm by their journalistic principles, and refuse to be silenced and used as a scapegoat in the RIAA’s attempt to blame someone, anyone, for the piracy problem. Anyone except for themselves for sticking with a dying business model, even when alternatives and opportunities were presented, opportunities that were eventually taken by the likes of Apple with iTunes. The only bit of innovation the RIAA and its members have come up with recently has been new ways to sue and intimidate those perceived to be their enemies (the Internet and anyone who uses the Internet), and of course the whole failed DRM experiment.

The Witcher 2, to be released next year, will be DRM free

And DRM has been in the news this week too, but in regards to the use of it in the gaming industry. Gamasutra, one of the most respected gaming industry website on the Internet, has had one of its bloggers write an interesting article examining the failure of DRM, and how illegal copying can be prevented. The conclusion seems to be one that I’ve come to as well, in that the solution is to add value to the gaming experience, not to take it away via horrible DRM. Value adding explains the success of Steam, and even though it does use DRM, it is pretty weak stuff, and in fact probably better than buying off the shelve due to the lack of need of a DVD check. The best DRM should prevent casual copying, but should otherwise be invisible to the end user, and if it forces gamers to connect to an online service for authentication, free value added services should be given as compensation (achievements, community, social features …). But even the best, or worst (as in draconian), DRM will not prevent copying by those that really want to copy it, and groups with the skill to hack away, as Ubisoft’s DRM experiment showed recently, and so really, there’s no point to DRM at all. And this is a point shared by at least some game developers, including the developer of The Witcher series, and operators of the classic, DRM-free, gaming website GOG.com. In fact, their CEO and co-founder, Marcin Iwiński, goes on to say that DRM treats customers like criminals. Iwiński believes there’s no need to debate whether their upcoming game, The Witcher 2, should use DRM or not, simply because he believes DRM doesn’t work. And this is why The Witcher 2 will be released DRM-free. Iwiński also criticized the way DRM adds restrictions that the pirated versions are free from, calling it “totally stupid”. He also attacks online based protection, saying that it isn’t fair to people who want to play games when they’re away from a reliable Internet connection. And it’s hard to argue against any of these points really. The industry, when it relies on DRM, is basically trying to sell something that’s not as good as the pirated version even when you don’t consider the price, and then getting mad when it’s not selling well. I mean this is an industry that isn’t even bothering to print manuals any more, and yet it expects us to jump through hoops just to play a badly bugged game that it rushed through testing. But luckily, there are still the smarter companies that are doing more innovative things to stop piracy, things like bundling physical collector’s items that can’t be pirated, building immersive online experiences and communities, being innovative with pricing, and either not using DRM or at least not overdoing it. And then you have companies like Ubisoft.

High Definition

Moving on from the ranting to happier grounds, as mentioned before, I did take part in the Black Friday sales on Amazon, trying to take advantage of the historically favourable AUD/USD exchange rates (not as favourable to be honest this week).

Yes I know I said I won't buy it out of protest, but they were really really cheap!

And yes, I did completely compromise my principles on an issue I’ve ranted about a lot right here. That’s right, I purchased the theatrical Blu-ray version of The Lord of the Rings movies, despite bitching about it for weeks back when it was first released. My rant then was about how the trilogy boxset should have included the extended edition, as opposed to the theatrical edition, and should have at least featured some new extra features and put them on Blu-ray at least even if they weren’t HD (the extra features are actually on DVDs, and probably could have fitted onto a single dual layer Blu-ray, but that would have made the boxset look famished). Also, the first movie had a sub-standard transfer, although some of it was unavoidable it seems (a fact that wasn’t available at the time of my original rant). In my defence, I didn’t buy the box set, but only the individual movies separately for $7.99 each. And at that price, some of these shortcomings, can be forgiven (certainly better than paying $65 for the boxset anyway). So “I won’t be buying it” really meant “I won’t be buying it unless it’s heavily discounted and I must join in the hype of Black Friday or I will feel left out”.

Well, at least I didn’t pay $400 for a copy of Avatar on 3D Blu-ray.

Kinect is in the news again this week, and funnily, it had almost nothing to do with gaming. The news broke last week that only a week after the release of Kinect, it had been hacked, and Microsoft couldn’t have been pleased at the development.

It's always nice to see technology used in a way to benefit humanity as a whole

Then it turn out that they didn’t really care either way, because the “hack” wasn’t really a hack at all, at least according to Microsoft’s definition of what a hack is. What happened was that somebody wrote open source drivers for Kinect so that it can be used on the PC, and because Microsoft intentionally (or they claim now) left the USB thingy open, Microsoft claims they were always hoping something like this would happen. I’m not sure about that, but Microsoft do have a history of mixing Xbox 360 and PC compatibility (the wired Xbox 360 gamepad works perfectly on the PC, and even the wireless one can be made to work via a dongle). And “unofficial” drivers aren’t new, the Sony Sixaxis controller has a PC driver, and even the Wii-mote has one too.

Anyway, what was more interesting was how people decided to use the open source drivers and write their own PC based Kinect applications. And if you follow the link above, you’ll see videos of object recognition, a Minority Report style web browsing experience using a simple Javascript add-on. And even a man boob tracker (not a typo). It just goes to show that Kinect has serious potential, but only if the right software is there for it. But that’s always the hard part, and the reason why the Wii is struggling now is because, apart from Nintendo, nobody really knows how to makes good games for it.

And I was way off. I’m already over the 2700 word mark, and so my guestimate wasn’t really close at all. But if you remove the Black Friday and Fallout related waffle, then it just about gets in there. So I probably should stop typing now, wish you all a great week, and type something along the lines of “see you next week”.

See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (28 November 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas recently, which isn’t very surprising for those who remember how fond I was of Fallout 3. And as a result, the quality of this issue of WNR may not be up to the usual high standards (haha), as I’m a bit distracted thinking about the best way to earn the caps needed to get the implants that I want (long story). FNV seems a much bigger game than Fallout 3, but this isn’t always a good thing, since it feels a bit less cohesive, as a game, to me. And it also means a lot more bugs, and I’m not talking about the radioactive kind.

And with so many distractions, I’ve only managed to find a few pieces of news before I got bored and started yet another 4 hour FNV session. So let’s get through this week’s news quickly so I can get back to figuring out the best way to get to the peak of Black Mountain.

In copyright news this week, it always surprised me that it didn’t happen sooner, but the FBI has finally gotten involved with the global anti-copyright protest launched by 4chan/Anonymous, otherwise known as Operation Payback (is a bitch).

The FBI is investigating the devastation caused by 4chan's Low Orbit Ion Cannon

The FBI has started investigating the denial of service attacks aimed at anyone associated with the pro-copyright lobby, from the RIAA/MPAA to copyright law firms. Despite making headline news several weeks ago, the FBI has only just gotten involved (or rather, they’ve only made their involvement known this week). But who do you arrest though? The whole point of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon is that anyone can join in the attack, anonymously. Will they go after 4chan? Or some of the individuals that joined in on the action using their own private, and more deadly, DDoS resources? Anyway, as I said earlier, this doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, the first thing I thought of after reading about Operation Payback was what the FBI response was going to be, because as we all know, the FBI has practically become the private security force of the entertainment/pro-copyright lobby, having many times prioritized copyright operations over other more serious crimes.

The FBI aren’t the only law enforcement organisation to be overworked with copyright cases these days. The police departments of University towns may be completely overwhelmed if Universities start to follow the example set by Georgia’s Valdosta State University, by reporting any and all P2P usage to the police as suspected piracy activity (or at least threatening to do so). Note that I said “any and all” P2P usage, including legal usage, which the University appears unable to distinguish from the illegitimate kind. So Comp Science students downloading that latest Linux ISO (every “legal P2P” discussion has to feature the much talked about “Linux ISO”, doesn’t it?), might be disciplined by the University and have the incident reported to the police. This comes after the US government decided to link education funding to the ability of colleges and Universities to stop piracy (and to be fair to the current government, this was some left over legislation from the previous one). Putting education at risk to help out a multi-billion dollar industry in stopping acts that typically don’t cause them any harm anyway, is exactly the type of screwed-up pro-copyright legislation you would expect these days. And with funding at risk, how far will these colleges and Universities have to go in order to fulfil their federal obligations? Random computer searches? iPod inventory inspections? Full body cavity search for illegal MP3s?

The MPAA is fulfilling its duties to the US government this week by handing over a letter containing a list of “bad places”, websites that could offer illegal content, and regions in which these websites operate out of. For those interested, the list of “bad countries” include Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and of course, the most evil-doing country in the world, Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay. The websites listed also included cyber-locker website, RapidShare. Not to be outdone, the RIAA came up with their own, even more broad, list of bad places, which included China’s most popular search engine, Baidu. The Baidu listing is interesting, because it fulfils the requirement to single out China as a bad bad country, which is always a popular political move, and also it gives notice to the likes of Google that they need to continue to cooperate or face being added to the naughty list too. VKontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook, with Myspace/YouTube rolled into one service, was also placed on the RIAA’s list, perhaps as a warning to Facebok and YouTube as well. Both the MPAA and RIAA made it clear that their list was by no means an exhaustive list of all the Internet’s bad spots (a list like that would be like twenty thousand pages), but I have a suggestion for them that could save them a lot of time and reduce the list to just one entry. All they need to do is to simply write down “The Internet” as their list of “bad places”, and be done with it – we all know they want to. And then the US government can do their bureaucratic duties, and get “The Internet” banned, and receive their just reward of +15 Karma, 500 Caps and 800 XP and receive the “Idolized” reputation with the MPAA/RIAA. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Play. Fallout. New. Vegas…

One website that didn’t make the list this year was LimeWire, having been recently closed down. But despite the ban on the software, enterprising pirates have continued on and released a pirated version of LimeWire Pro, called LimeWire Pirate Edition, so that LimeWire can live on forever in infamy. The LimeWire people are not too pleased at this development, which could cause them more legal trouble, especially if it is found that they are connected to this “leak” IN some way, something they are strongly denying. But all this just proves that for all the effort gone into making the legal case, all the hours of billing by lawyers on both sides, and the years of investigative work done on the case, the result is that piracy continues unhindered once more. While I’m still not convinced who actually came up with the phrase “innovate or die”, but whomever did was a hundred percent correct, and instead of trying to stop piracy by fighting it head on, perhaps innovation is the key. Litigation certainly doesn’t seem to be working.

Steam Achievements, such as for games like Fallout New Vegas, adds to the gameplay experience

And I know this probably goes into the gaming section, but the point I wanted to make falls right here in the copyright section. A lot of retailers have begun to complain about how publishers are “encouraged” by Steam to add Steam related features to their games, even if the games themselves are being sold through other channels, including services that are competitors to Steam. You can sort of see their point, since every game like this they sell, they are actually promoting their competitor and accelerating their own demise, which is why some retailers have indicated their desire to boycott games that feature Steam. You can see why Steam is doing it as well, to grow their business, to get people hooked on their free add-on service so that they will buy games directly from Steam the next time.

So what does this have to do with copyright? Well, the way Steam has revolutionized digital delivery for PC/Mac games, despite using a healthy dose of DRM, perhaps shows the way, the only way, in which DRM can be used. With lower pricing (especially during sales), and add-on features like achievements and multi-player modes, and not having to insert the original DVD, people seem accept that the price for all this is a little bit of fairly non intrusive DRM. Now, if this kind of innovation can be extended to the movie and music, perhaps creating exclusive online content (much better than your typical BD-live crap), creating a healthy online community for music/movie lovers to share the passion, and at the same time, lower prices for digital download or streaming version of movies (and perhaps even free streaming of music, with options to purchase), all of this could help combat piracy by providing innovative features that people can’t get with the pirated versions.

High Definition

Moving on to HD news. Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple’s reluctance to support Blu-ray and produced a promotional video to highlight this point.

Yet another gratuitous Fallout New Vegas reference ...

The video basically shows how Windows 7 supports Blu-ray and Macs do not (I shall skip a more detailed description of the video, since you can watch it for yourself, and also I didn’t think it was particularly witty or clever to be honest). As for the claim, yes, it is correct that you can watch Blu-ray movies in Windows 7 whereas you cannot easily do so on a Mac, but Windows 7 doesn’t offer native Blu-ray playback support at all, not out of the box anyway. But hardly anyone watches Blu-ray on their computer, mainly because it doesn’t look that much better on a small screen (especially the laptop screen demonstrated in the video) than your typical DVD, and the less said about the laptop speaker produced sound, the better. If they want a better selling point, why not produce a video showing Fallout New Vegas working in Windows and highlight the fact that the game isn’t even available on a Mac? And that the game needs a fairly powerful GPU, and options are very much limited on a Mac even if you use Bootcamp? Just make sure you don’t mention the way the game crashes every 20 minutes, although that’s not really Microsoft’s fault (Bethesda Softworks, for all their brilliance, really need to invest a bit more into beta testing).

You see what I did there, how I’m basically turning every issue into one about Fallout? Is it a deliberate attempt at humour, or am I subconsciously still thinking about playing FNV?

No need to ponder the reasons, since this fairly short WNR is at an end, and that means Fallout time! So until next week, have a great one, hope you get lucky at the Ultra-Luxe, may your locker/mailbox/metal box scavenging bring you a vast amount of valuable goods and/or caps, and watch out for the Deathclaws (which are a real PITA in FNV).

I need help.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)

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Weekly News Roundup (26 December 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (19 December 2010)

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