DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to a brand new week on the WNR, where we bring you all* the latest news and happenings in the world of digital video, Blu-ray, gaming and everything else. It looks like I survived my wisdom teeth surgery after all, sorry about the lack of updates the week before (too busy barfing from postoperative nausea).

I’m writing this WNR a little bit later than I usually do on Saturday because I just picked up my new Samsung Galaxy S8+ and have been playing too much with it. It’s a really nice, I can’t say little but it definitely doesn’t feel too big, phone, with a gorgeous screen that doesn’t seem to end (gaming and watching movies, particularly those in the wider aspect ratio of 2.35:1, is a fantastic experience).

But no time to play time, it’s time for work, and there’s quite a bit to go through this week too, so let’s get started)

(* “All” is defined as the news stories I found interesting and/or had time to write up)

2Dark’s updated Denuvo protection cracked already

The cat and mouse game between anti-tampering system Denuvo (ie. DRM) and game crackers continues afoot with Denuvo releasing an updated version, dubbed v4, of their system. Unfortunately for Denuvo, it only took a month for the first game to be protected by v4, 2Dark, to be completely cracked – something that others had thought would take a lot longer.

While this does not mean all games with Denuvo v4 will be easily cracked from this point onwards – each game needs to be cracked individually – it does mean that crackers possibly have found an entry point into the system and it will make it easier to crack other games that are scheduled to use v4, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, Dead Rising 4, Nier: Automata, Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Of course, being protected for a month is still better than nothing and one could argue that a month is actually all that’s needed for a game, as that’s why most of the sales happen. However, it seems with each cracked game, crackers improve their technique and reduce the time needed to crack the next one. So if Denuvo v4 only manages to protect Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 for a couple of days, then perhaps publishers won’t be so keen to use Denuvo unless they can get some kind of money back provision in their contract.

PowerDVD 17 has UHD, VR and other cool stuff … but you’ll need the hardware to match

It’s been a long time coming, but there’s finally a way to play Ultra HD Blu-ray movies on your PC. And if you have one of those fancy PC based VR system, then you can watch your favourite movies in a VR environment too (or watch immersive 360 degrees movies).

I am talking about the latest and greatest version of PowerDVD, now in version 17 (I remember talking about it here on Digital Digest way back when the software was still in 0.x version). If you get the Ultra version, which is still at the $99 that it has almost always been, then you’ll have access to all these fancy new features.

Of course, you’ll still need the hardware, and that’s when the problem starts. The latest Kaby Lake CPU, the latest integrated Intel GPU or a GTX 970, and an Ultra HD Blu-ray reader drive are your *minimum* requirements, so it’s by no means accessible for everyone. And that’s just for Ultra HD Blu-ray – you’ll need more hardware for VR.

But if you’re rich and you already have all of these, than PowerDVD 17 Ultra is a must-buy. A must-buy mainly because it is the only thing you can buy that will play UHD discs.

While Disney is still saying away from UHD, unfortunately, Rogue One’s Blu-ray release was still a big one. Just not as big as The Force Awakens, which is not surprising. The 3D edition of the movie also sold really well despite it being a Best Buy and Target only exclusive. If it had been available on UHD, I think the UHD results would have been amazing. Not as amazing as Planet Earth II from the previous week, but still amazing. Come on Disney, pull it out!

The Nintendo Switch outsold the PS4 and Xbox One in March

If you’re also rich, you’re probably one of the million or so people that already have Nintendo Switch. Not to say that the Switch is expensive, it’s quite good value for what you’re getting, but you’ve either already spent a load on a Wii U and games or you’re coming from the PS4/Xbox One camp, which means the Switch is another thing you have to buy, and given what has happened with the Wii U, you might be a little bit cautious.

But there doesn’t seem to be a need, since all reviews point to the Switch as an excellent, fun system that gives you something the others can’t. And it seems a lot of you agree, as it was the best selling console in March, at least in North America, easily beating the PS4 and the Xbox One.

This may not hold up for the coming months, since the Switch’s game library is still quite small (although I found the fact that more Zelda games have been sold than the total number of consoles to be quite interesting – are people buying games before they buy the Switch?).

But poor Xbox One, relegated to third place. Scorpio can’t come soon enough for Microsoft, and even then, success is not guaranteed. It might be the most powerful console in history when it’s released, but if it’s also twice as expensive as the PS4 Slim, then you can forget about it.

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You can also forget about me getting a lot of work done in the next few days, as I’ll be playing with my S8+ and the Gear VR. Actually, I will most likely be doing the vacuuming and house work, but that doesn’t sound very cool does it?

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. I’m writing most of this on the day before I usually publish the WNR, it’s pouring down, and despite it being the afternoon, it’s already quite dark. And I just happen to be catching up on ‘Stranger Things’, home alone, while the bad weather is making all kind of noises, and somehow it all feels quite appropriate.

Oh yes, there’s also news to go through.

There are lots of “pre-installed” Kodi boxes offering easy access to pirated content

The war on piracy has a new target – Kodi boxes. Or more precisely, Android based media players that have Kodi and piracy related third party plug-ins pre-installed. The MPAA have already started making noises about taking “action” on these boxes, and several European countries have already started targeting the sellers of these boxes.

Perhaps sensing the winds are changing, Amazon, a place where sellers of these boxes are doing great business, has decided to do something about it all. Amazon has updated their seller policies to ban the sale of such boxes, and they are willing to destroy stock of any such boxes that are passing through their fulfillment centres.

For their part, the developers of Kodi has tried to distance themselves from the makers of these piracy plug-ins. And of course, users can also buy their own generic Android boxes and install these plug-ins and apps themselves, so there will be still be market out there for the sellers – they just can’t sell these boxes pre-installed.

The war on piracy continues.

The Xbox One Scorpio will be the most powerful console on the market

We now know a little bit more the Xbox One Scorpio, as Microsoft, in association with Digital Foundry, chose to officially reveal a few things about the upcoming console, including its tech specs.

One thing’s for sure, the Scorpio will be one helluva console. With 12GB of RAM (up from the 8GB in the current Xbox One/S, and now GDDR5 to boot), an 8 “custom” X86 core 2.3GHz CPU (up from 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.75GHz), and memory bandwidth upped from 219GB/s to 326GB/s, it’s safe to say that this is a much bigger upgrade than the PS4 Pro.

How big? Well, Microsoft demo’d a Xbox One port of Forza running at 4K/60FPS, and GPU utilization never went above 70%. Yep, the Scorpio will be a proper 4K console. And of course, Ultra HD Blu-ray playback will be included (would be a surprise if it wasn’t, considering the budget ‘S’ console already has it)

So while we now know a bit more about the Scorpio (although we don’t actually know what it’s actual name will be yet), in the end, it will be about the game lineups that determine whether it can take on the PS4 – get a couple of good, 4K exclusives, then the Scorpio will make the PS4 Pro look decidedly outdated.

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Wait, what’s that noise. It’s coming from the shed out the back, maybe I should go and have a look. Hmm, why are the lights flickering …

(just in case you get worried I’m really caught up in some kind of Strangers Things situation, there’s a chance there won’t be a WNR next week as I’m having wisdom teeth surgery and I’ll probably be in so much pain that I CBF to write one)

So April Fools went by and I didn’t take part at all. Partly because what with the war on fake news at the moment, it just didn’t seem very tasteful. But mostly it was because I forgot until it was too late (damn you time zones)!

So rest assured all news stories covered in this issue of the WNR are real ones. Or at least I think they are, it’s so hard to tell these days.

Are pirates really resorting to using porn video sites to upload popular mainstream movies?

Okay, this one does sound like an April Fools joke, but it was posted days before, so it should be safe. Apparently, pirates are turning to porn sites to share popular mainstream movies, like ‘Rogue One’. With the usual streaming sites, like YouTube, under constant surveillance for pirated content, pirates have resorted to using tricks like changing the audio pitch, or creative cropping and mirroring, to escape the ever more vigilant anti-piracy scanners. And even if they achieve this, once the upload becomes popular, it will usually become noticed by the powers that be and get taken down faster than you can say “oh that’s a good quality upload”.

But by turning to porn video sites like PornHub, where automated anti-piracy filters don’t exists and the watchful eyes of rights-holders and their agents are not focused on finding pirated content (that’s not to say they don’t visit these kind of websites, hint hint), uploads stay uploaded for longer if not indefinitely.

It’s a bit easier to find real pirated films on less popular video sharing sites like Dailymotion

But of course, since this story went public, sites like PornHub have gone on a cleaning spree and most of the mainstream pirated content has been removed. Even after extensive searching on the site by your truly, um definitely for research purposes only of course, I could not find any mainstream pirated content on PornHub even after hours of extensive searching. Did I mention it was for research purposes only?

After clearing my browsing history, I went to a few other video sharing sites (non adult ones), and also noted that other less popular video sharing sites like Dailymotion also seem to escape relative scrutiny.

The conclusion? There are plenty of options for people who want to watch pirated content. Some of which you may have to put up with some rather distracting ads and the occasional moaning sound, while you may only have to worry about buffering issues and the lack of a really usable mobile app with some of the other more sensible choices.

Anti-piracy filters are a form of censorship, says tech startups

Which is why introducing a law that forces the use of piracy filters for Internet sites and services simply won’t work, because it’s easy for sites to escape the attention of rights-holders, especially if they happen to be in jurisdictions that don’t have to abide by the new law. The lobby group for Internet startups, Engine, are basically saying the same thing, and have commissioned a report that says filter schemes will place an unfair burden on startups, as the cost of implementing a filter can be tens of thousands of dollars just for licensing costs.

Engine are also concerned about the false positive rate of such a filter system. While the false positive rate is only 1 to 2 percent, this adds up to be quite a large number when potentially dealing with millions of files that wouldn’t be out of place for a file or video hosting site. It could literally means tens of thousands of legitimate files being blocked or removed for no good reason at all.

So an expensive, innovation crushing system that won’t work and may block thousands of legitimate files, is the one system that rights-holders are now pushing for all Internet sites in the U.S. to adopt. Yep, sounds about right.

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It also sounds like the end of another WNR. I know, another short one. There will be more next week, hopefully.

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Sorry for the little break last week, but things are back to normal now, and we actually have a bit of news to go through too.

They say that no news is good news, but sometimes having news is good news too.

And sometimes piracy is a good things too, at least according to music superstar Ed Sheeran. In an interview with CBS, Sheeran opened up about his rise to success, and he wasn’t embarrassed to admit that piracy played a big role in his early successes.

Legal streaming options means file sharing no longer exists, says Ed Sheeran

Sheeran says that is was university students in England, sharing his music on file sharing networks, that helped him get noticed. “I know that’s a bad thing to say, because I’m part of a music industry that doesn’t like illegal file sharing,” said Sheeran.

However, Sheeran says that musicians today may no longer need file sharing to get noticed and that fans no longer need to download illegally, all thanks to the availability of legal streaming platforms.

In other words, piracy has always been used as a discovery platform, and that’s its main redeeming feature. With legal streaming via YouTube and Spotify is taking on piracy in a big way, these platforms also now act as discovery platforms, both for musicians to get noticed and for music fans to find new artists to listen to.

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A little update on a story from a month ago when Google’s Chrome removed the ability to disable the controversial Widevine DRM. Thanks to “user feedback” (also known as angry and vocal complaints), Google has re-added the ability to disable Widevine, as well as other plug-ins that were made mandatory with the version 57 update. Who says complaining doesn’t work?

With the PS4 back on top after a couple of months of Xbox One victory (thanks to the Xbox One S) in the hugely important U.S. market, the global picture still sees Sony on top, rather comfortably.

The PS4 is still comfortably beating the Xbox One

The PS4 is still enjoying almost a 2-to-1 sales margin over the Xbox One according to the latest IHS Markit report, with 53 million PS4s already sold compared to only 27.6 million Xbox Ones.

March’s NPD report will be extremely interesting, due to the introduction of the Switch. Nintendo seems to be onto a real hit with the hugely popular (and instantly out of stock) Switch, and it will give the Sony, Microsoft duopoly a real run for its money.

Will you switch to the Switch? Or keep on playing with the PS4, or keep on spending one on one time with your Xbox One?

Sorry for the lame play on words, it’s been a long week.

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What hasn’t been that long is the length of this WNR. But why waste words when you don’t need to. Especially when you’re not being paid by the word. See you next week!

So autumn is finally here in Melbourne, and the weather seems to be getting hotter, after our relatively mild summer. It’s getting harder and harder to make sense of the weather, I don’t know if it’s climate change or something else, but the weather here is almost a complete reverse of what it was like here fifteen years ago.

There’s finally some more news to go through this week, which means that the next week will probably be very quiet. Which is just as well, as weddings and other events means next week’s WNR might be delayed or cancelled entirely depending on how much news there is and how much time I have left. But I have time this week, and there are news this week, so let’s get at it.

Google and Bing now committed to jump through many hoops for rights-holders … Bing probably just happy to be included, to be honest

So this week, we know a bit more about the somewhat secret agreement between Google, Bing and rights-holders, thanks to freedom of information requests by digital rights groups EFF and Digital Rights Ireland. And the more we know, the more we don’t like about the so called “voluntarily” agreement.

So from sharing user data, to manipulating search results even for “neutral” search phrases, to domain registrant data spying, it’s got a bit of everything. Except everything is all about Google and Bing appeasing rights-holders so they won’t demand them implement some kind of “take down and stay down” regime. Good luck with that!

Meanwhile in crazy old Germany, it seems the job of educating today’s youngsters about the dangers of piracy still lies with parents, who if they don’t give their kids the old “piracy is bad, mmmkay” speech, they may find themselves liable for their kid’s downloads.

I mean, I just don’t see how this is enforceable in any way. How are parents supposed to prove that they’ve had “the talk” (well, the other talk) with their kids, in order to prevent liability? Should they record it, along with a time stamp, maybe with a live broadcast being shown in the background, but all of this is easy to fake anyway. And what’s to prevent parents from making the speech (and they having proof of it), and then when the camera is turned off, to tell their kids to download at their heart’s content now that liability has been removed as a threat.

Maybe the safest thing to do, from a copyright law perspective (and from the perspective of a rights-holder), is not have kids at all, or to give them up for adoption at your earliest convenience. It’s the (copy)right thing to do!

I never thought I would be writing about the CIA and VLC in the same news story

I don’t get the chance to write about the CIA a lot in this roundup, but when I get the chance, I plan to make the best of it. So a real opportunity came this week when it was revealed that VLC, the video player that everyone should have a copy of on their computer, has been used by the spy agency for other uses other than to play pirated Homeland episodes.

To be fair, the VideoLan Team was quick to explain that, while the software did contain a vulnerability that allowed malware to piggypack on to its code, to allow the execution of a CIA made computer scanning program, the vulnerability no longer exists in the latest version and future versions will be more “CIA proof”.

I guess it’s also a testament to the popularity of the free, open source media player (that can play almost all video formats without the need for any installed codecs) that it’s a tool of choice for not only the CIA, but also for the targets of the CIA, which may include enemies like IS/ISIS/Daesh/Whateveritscalledthesedays, frenemies like Pakistan, and friends like Germany and Australia (or are we frenemies now? Can’t keep track with Trump’s foreign policy tweets).

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So the CIA, child rearing advice, rights-holder appeasement, a bit of everything really for this WNR. See you next week.