HomeWeekly News Roundup (28 September 2008)
I finally got my PS3 back to fix the Blu-ray drive problem. Unfortunately, it acted up in strange ways at first, but a full system restore seems to have solved these issues (so if you get your PS3 back from repairs, do a full system restore first – takes a couple of hours, but it’s worth it). I’ve finished upgrading the search system on dvdloc8.com as well. I think it’s easier to find stuff now, but I’m no expert on search engines so I don’t really know what I’m doing anyway. If you search for “bat” and the first result returned is Last Stand of the 300 – The Legendary Battle at Thermopylae, then you’ll know why.
I’m going to do something different this week and start with the copyright news. Oh yes, very different. The RIAA has rejected a Judge issued damages amount and want to go to trial to get more money from a teenager. The Judge initially ordered damages capped at $200 per song, but the RIAA wants to get the maximum $700 per song, because I supposed with the current economic climate, they need the money or something. Actually it’s because the Judge believed the defendant’s claim that it was a case of “innocent infringement”, because Whitney Harper (16 at the time of the infringement, now 20 years old) didn’t know about copyright laws, how KaZaA worked and all of that. In the eyes of the RIAA, everyone is guilty, so obviously there is no such thing as “innocent infringement”, and so the RIAA wants to go to court and get a jury to decide on damages. When the RIAA is not going after 16 year olds, they are going after single mothers. A single mother was convicted and the RIAA was awarded $222,000 in damages, but a Judge has now ruled that the damages rewarded were “wholly disproportionate” and “oppresive”. I say the industry response to copyright theft can also be described as “wholly disproportionate” and “oppressive”.
Download Heroes episodes instead of recording them: illegal?
The outgoing Bush administration wants a new International agreement concerning copyright protection that companies like Google are trying to fight. Shortly after, the US senate passed a MPAA/RIAA/BSA approved bill to crackdown further on copyright abuse, to create a new office of the Copyright Czar, funded by taxpayer money to help big business maintain the profit margins. Well at least they’re consistent on this last point, and it’s good to see with all that’s going on at the moment, preventing you from downloading the latest episode of Heroes is what’s most important. Speaking of downloading Heroes, here in Australia, illegal downloads have been described as an “epidemic”. Piracy is popular here because we get shafted by free-to-air TV stations, which pay big money to secure TV shows (thus preventing the cable networks from having first-run on these shows), and then stuff the program full of ads and show them at the most inappropriate times (if they show them at all). And if you missed a show on TV, didn’t record it, then is downloading it really a crime? It is though, legally speaking, I think.
PlayStation Store Downloads: Beware of DRM restrictions
Moving onto gaming related copyright issues. Activision will now go after individual pirates, targeting people who have pirated the Xbox 360 game Call of Duty 3, and is seeking damages of between $30,000 and $150,000. And if you purchase content from the PlayStation store, be aware that you cannot re-download content, which means if you had to wipe the HDD to do a full system restore due to a shoddy Blu-ray drive, then you’ll have to re-purchase everything. If you had pirated the stuff instead of paying for it, you’ll get better treatment, so what kind of message is this sending to consumers anyway. The Spore DRM thing refuses to go away, and talks of class action lawsuits as well as censorship on EA’s part means this one will drag on for a while now.
In other words, DRM sucks.
Let’s skip to HD news, because the copyright stuff is depressing. Transformers on Blu-ray: it’s apparently great news for Blu-ray and also the worst to ever happen to it. Depending on who you read. As I mentioned in the last WNR’s, Transformers on Blu-ray caused a sales surge to give Blu-ray the best week ever in terms of sales ratio to DVD. Then the following week, sales dropped back to normal and so there was a huge drop in Blu-ray sales for the week-to-week numbers. And these numbers have caused some in the media to write more “Blu-ray is doomed” stories, because a 13.39% drop in sales means that just, despite Blu-ray sales being up 29% and 16% for the two weeks prior.
Transformers on Blu-ray: causing debates about Blu-ray's popularity
This forced EngadgetHD to write a story debunking these rubbish stories, and rightly so. There is truth to the story that Blu-ray isn’t doing as well as it should be, but to take facts and stretch them to present an extreme point of view (to gain hits, no doubt), is not on. Unfortunately, this happens all too much these days, and not just in less than important news items like Blu-ray sales. But unfortunately, EngadgetHD’s article did their own bit truthstretching and number fudging, as they came up with the wrong conclusion that Blu-ray’s market share (compared to DVD) has actually doubled. They came up with this statement based on only two sets of data – one in March for the week when I Am Legend was released, and another for the Transformers bump. While bothmovies are similarly “hit” titles that will be similarly (but not equally) popular amongst movie lovers, they were both released under different circumstances. I Am Legend was available simultaneously on DVD and Blu-ray, whereas this latest Transformers Blu-ray release was Blu-ray only, and occurred in a week where there were no other Blu-ray and DVD releases of note. So basically you have one that released in a busy week and thus having a 6% market share for the Blu-ray version, while you have another title that is released in a week where it is the only major release and only available in Blu-ray with a 12% market share. So what do these numbers tell you? Nothing at all, other than when a popular movie is released only on Blu-ray in a week when no other releases were as good, then the Blu-ray market share goes up (and then goes immediately down the next week).
Blu-ray Sales Stats
What is probably better is to compare actual sale figures. It isn’t a good way either, because sales fluctuate seasonally, but because Blu-ray is playing the catch up game, its number should be ever on the increase as it gains more market share and tries to beat the slowly “dying” DVD format. Unfortunately, data on the week I am Legend was sold is not available. The earliest data I have is from the week ending April 20th. For that week, Blu-ray sold $9.93m. I had a search on the ever useful Blu-ray Disc Stats website and it seems that was the week that Aliens vs Predator: Requiem were released on Blu-ray, as well as the classics Commando and Predator, as well as the new release Juno. The other titles were “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”, “Mariah Carey: The Adventures of Mimi” and “A Passage to India”. To do a comparison, let’s look at the week ending September 14th. Now this week had some good releases, Kill Bill vol 1 and 2, the new comedy Baby Mama, classics such as Cool Hand Luke and Jerry Maguire. Jackie Chan’s The Forbidden Kingdom was also release in the week, and so were the latest seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and Smallville (other titles: “The Alps”, “Day Watch”, “Don Giovanni”, “The Fall”, “How the West Was Won”, “Manilow Live!”, “Night Watch” and “Rudy”). And it was also the week following the Transformers release, so I’m sure it sold some as well. So how did this week compared to that week in April? Total sales for the week ending 14thSeptember was $9.18m. That’s a drop of 7.6%, despite the most recent week having tons more releases than the other one back in April. So what does this tell you? Not much really, because again we’re comparing different titles that appeal to different segments of the market and one was a week with a new to disc release, and the most recent one was full of (admittedly box office heavy) catalogue releases.
Catalogue releases bring up the question: which DVDs will you re-buy on Blu-ray? I think the fact that this is being debated suggests that Blu-ray will have trouble with titles already available on DVD, as I don’t think there are many that will upgrade every single DVD they have to Blu-ray. I do plan on upgrading selected titles, such as Band of Brothers, The Godfather Trilogy, LOTR Trilogy, Star Wars – only because I’ve watched these about a million times (each), and so the investment is worthit. Otherwise, I’ll stick with my existing DVD collection, which is still growing faster than my Blu-ray collection as I’m not buying shit movies that I watch maybe once on anything other than in a “Under $10” sale. So without catalogue releases, how can Blu-ray increase market share? Cheaper Blu-ray hardware is a start. Remember when the BDA said that cheap HD DVD players were a sign of desperation? A Sony Blu-ray player available for under $200 on Amazon just last week must mean something then. What was also a bit desperate was Amazon’s attempt to run a run-of-the-mill 3 for 2 promotion, but a misplaced link in a newsletter and they ended up having to honor all Blu-ray titles at Amazon as part of the 3 for 2. Ouch (especially in this financial climate).
Toshiba threw in the towel on HD DVD rather quickly, but they’ve not forgotten their customers and are still releasing firmware updates. These machines are still top of the range DVD upscalers at the very least, and the crazily cheap money these players went for after HD DVD’s demise still makes them excellent value (and more so if Toshiba continues with the firmware updates). Toshiba is still saying no to Blu-ray though.
And finally in gaming, not much going on this week. I think the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 in Japan again, but the Wii reclaimed top spot. PS3 sales have slumped rather quickly in Japan, but more surprising is the surge in Xbox 360 sales. Microsoft’s new strategy of wooing Japanese game publishers to publish exclusive titles on the 360 seems to be working.
PlayStation Home: Finally coming to a PS3 near you
And we’re very much near to Sony unveiling its PlayStation Home system. “Finally”, I hear you say, will it revolutionize how gamers interact with each other, and will it be a Xbox Live killer? We’ll just have to wait and find out, I suppose. The firmware update to allow this puppy to run on the PS3 will be huge, I suspect, and given my recent experience with firmware, I think I shall skip it until other more fearless users have volunteered to be guinea pigs for it.
So that’s it for this week. It was long one, thanks to my Blu-ray rant in the middle, plus all the other rants around it. Until next week, WNR readers!