DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Last week was my birthday, but despite the auspicious occasion, I had to work, and not even on Digital Digest related stuff. I’ve always thought that people should get a week off for their birthdays, or at least a day off. I mean, it only happens once a year anyway, and we celebrate some President’s birthday, one that we didn’t even elect, and here in Australia, the Queen’s birthday, even though the day isn’t actually her birthday at all. Anyway, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of the amount of stuff to go through, this week is a solid 7, so let’s get started!

Starting with copyright news, last week, I reported on The Observer editorial regarding movie piracy being very much a problem of of the movie studios’ creation. This week comes a report that the problem is very much to do with pricing, and not legal enforcement.

Pirated movies are sometimes the only real alternative to movie consumption in developing nations, thanks to unrealistic pricing of the legal kind

The report mostly looked at piracy in developing nations, where pricing for movies, music or software is usually many times what it costs someone living in a developed nation, relatively speaking. When buying a movie means you have to fork out a day’s wage, then no wonder piracy is a hit. It becomes the only realistic alternative. The reason for this has to do with the usually lower level of competiti0n in these countries, where there aren’t a Wal-Mart or Amazon or an iTunes everywhere you look. But the main reason is artificial. Movie studios and music labels simply do not want to sell content cheaper in these regions, because they feel that once that step is taken, it will lead to the eventual decline in pricing in the developed regions, where most of their revenue comes from. Region control for DVDs and Blu-ray’s was the movie studios’ way to combat this phenomenon, to allow developing nations to access cheaper content, but to limit the damage cheaper content does to other regions. But this is all based on a theory that content owners, particularly in the digital age, still need the same pricing structures deployed for analogue and physical goods. And while the report looked at developing regions, the same also applies to developed regions, because not every can afford what is being asked of them, and so some of them resort to piracy.

I think this is one area that needs closer examination. The advantage of digital content is that it can be replicated perfectly with ease (compare copying a MP3 file, to say copying a tape recording, especially if you want perfect replication), with very little cost, if any. And for pure digital content, without physical media, there are also other cost savings. And yet, we are still expected to pay as much, if not more, for media-less digital content compared to the physical media version (compare TV episode prices on iTunes, add it up for a whole season, and then compare to the cost the superior DVD or Blu-ray versions, for example). I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it has to involve more people buying content for a lower price, as opposed to getting fewer people to pay higher prices.

At least Paramount seems to be wanting to try something new, as they’ve detailed plans to release the independently produced film, The Tunnel, free via BitTorrent. It’s certainly a “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy, although this isn’t the first time the film’s producers has tried innovative ways to promote and raise funds for the movie (having previously “sold” frames for the movie, 135,000 of them, for $1 each). Paramount isn’t just giving it all away though, they still have a DVD version of the movie being released at the same time, with hours of bonus content, an alternative ending. I think they’re hoping that the hype created by the BitTorrent release will help to raise awareness of the DVD and promote sales, and I hope they succeed. I don’t think the movie is available to buy on Amazon yet, but when it does, I urge everyone to buy a copy if not to just support a movie studio trying something different, and not associating BitTorrent with piracy. I still don’t think this is the best way to make money off movies in the Internet age, because there’s no money being made by giving it away on BitTorrent, and if the DVD is still regularly priced, then it still doesn’t solve the problem of some people not being able to afford it.

Everyone’s second favourite sue-for-profit law firm (the most popular firm being USCG), Righthaven, is in the news again. But it’s bad news for the outfit trying to make a quick buck by suing those that copy, even if it’s just a small extract, of newspaper articles. They’ve had yet another case being potentially dismissed on fair use grounds. The judge in the case found that suing non-profits for profit, is a no go, especially if the claim is that somehow the non-profit profits from the alleged copyright infringement. Righthaven had another case thrown out also for fair use last year, when they tried to make the case that even partial copying, with attribution to the original publisher, was worthy of a lawsuit (or a couple of thousand dollars in settlement fees). One issue the judge found disturbing was the lack of warning Righthaven (or the copyright owner) gave to the alleged infringer. I thought that the DMCA was created to prevent just this sort of thing, where a cease-and-desist system is created to prevent copyright lawsuits from clogging up the legal system, a scenario very likely due to the Internet and how easy it becomes to create copies of other’s works. Righthaven and others “copyright trolls” bypassing the DMCA, should surely be grounds enough for dismissal. And I never though I would actually defend the use of the DMCA, and for that, it makes me hate Righthaven even more.

The Digital Deluxe edition of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood may contain pirated songs

And everyone’s favourite copyright hypocrite, Ubisoft, has done it again, this time releasing a pirated version of their own product. As you may know, they previously used a NO-CD crack by hacking group Reloaded for the digital version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, because I guess it was easier to steal other people’s work than to create your own. And now, the Digital Deluxe version of their new game, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, contains the soundtrack from the game that was downloaded from private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid. This was apparently discovered because Ubisoft, or perhaps whoever packaged the Digital Deluxe release, did not change the ID3 tags from the pirated soundtrack, and so the username of a popular contributor to Demonoid showed up for the “official” release in the song’s tags. There’s actually no concrete confirmation of this, whether it was Ubisoft or one of the distributors that did this, or even if the songs were derived from the pirated version at all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this were true. Ubisoft have said that they’ve launched an internal investigation into the matter. The most annoying thing was that, if the included tracks were sourced via piracy, they are actually an inferior version of the pirated soundtrack, re-encoded with a lower quality.

In HD and 3D news, Blu-ray has just had its best ever week in terms of market share, breaking the 23% barrier for the first time. It was all thanks to the release of Disney’s classic, Bambi.

The results are slightly misleading because the release was actually a Blu-ray+DVD combo (the DVD only release will be available in April), and that combos like this are only counted as Blu-ray sales, even though with timed exclusives, it means DVD 0wners may have to buy the Blu-ray version as well. Some will say that there aren’t many that are buying the Blu-ray+DVD version just so they can watch the movie on DVD, but I beg to differ. Disney actually produces the same combo set in both Blu-ray and DVD packaging, and they produce the DVD packaging because they want DVD buyers to buy this version (so to these buyers, they are buying the DVD version with the Blu-ray thrown in as an extra, as opposed to the other way around). In fact, in Australia, I’ve bought combos that are packaged in a DVD sized slipcase, but the actual plastic case being the standard Blu-ray size – I can only guess that publishers are doing this because they don’t want DVD owners to be afraid to buy the smaller, different package.

The extended LotR movies are finally on Blu-ray, but is this really the most definitive edition?

The other big news of the week was that the announcement of the Blu-ray version of The Lord of the Rings extended trilogy. Still no firm release date, but despite the pack possibly not being available until 2012, it’s already shot to the top of the sales charts on Amazon. The early details, unfortunately, don’t look great. The movies are still split on two discs each, which if the encodings takes full advantage of the space available, then it’s not such a bad news (although with a 50GB disc, even the longest of the movies can still have an average bitrate of around 25 Mbps – although if they can increase the average audio+video bitrate closer to the Blu-ray maximum, for that extra bit of quality, then I’m all for splitting up the movies on two discs). And despite using two discs, the theatrical versions of the movies does not seem to be included, which is a shame given seamless branching will make this quite an easy thing to do. But the most annoying news is that the extra features still come on DVDs, just like in the theatrical box set. This suggests very little, if any, new Blu-ray exclusive features. It all seems like a fairly lazy release, especially frustrating that it has taken so long to produce the set (which probably has more to do with Warner Bros. trying to milk money out of the theatrical releases, as opposed to the time and effort needed to produce the new extended set). Hopefully I’m wrong and that new details will emerge listing the new Blu-ray exclusive content.

Before I move on to the gaming news, and this news is sort of related, the terrible earthquake crisis in Japan seems likely to affect Blu-ray disc production, not that this is really that important in the grand scheme of things really. I’m sure the Japanese would rather people spend the money they would have otherwise spent on Blu-ray discs towards to relief effort anyway.

And in gaming news, and continuing from the story above, 3DS production seems to be okay, and the US launch should not need to be delayed. 3Ds consoles are produced in China anyway, so production should not have been affected, although Nintendo being a Japanese company, there will still be other types of disruptions.

And a clarification on last week’s story in regards to the PS3 HDD issue – the issue seems only present when one attempts to upgrade the HDD after installing the very first buggy version of the 3.56 firmware. Subsequent versions of the firmware, including 3.56v2 and 3.60, fixed the bug so that people who upgraded their HDDs after installing 3.56v2 and 3.60 did not encounter the same problem. People who had installed the first buggy 3.56 firmware, then upgraded their HDDs, are stuck unless they have the original unmodified PS3 HDD, which they need to put back into the console, install 3.56v2 or 3.60, and then attempt to upgrade their HDD again (which will now work). In any case, it’s obviously Sony’s fault for all of this because the way they silently released 3.56v2 (a “ninja” release, as some have called it), seems to me like an admission of “oops, we f**ked up” if there ever was one. And I’m sure it would be possible for Sony to do something in software to allow people still suffering to fix their PS3s, such as being allowed to roll back to an earlier firmware, or to force the install of 3.60 through. But I suspect they don’t want to do it because it will interfere with their anti-piracy efforts, which was the whole point behind the recent series of firmware updates. Hackers have already said that 3.60 appears to be secure once more, and I doubt Sony wants to reverse the improvement. At the very least, Sony should offer to repair this problem free of charge, even if just for the PR value.

And good PR they need, because according to analyst Michael Pachter, Kinect is outselling Sony’s PlayStation Move by a five to one margin. It’s largely based on the number of Kinect/Move console bundles that have been sold, so it’s not the best way to gauge actual uptake, but this is always difficult because a single PS3 owner can buy 4 Move controllers and this counts as 4 sales, whereas an Xbox 360 owner only ever needs to buy on Kinect accessory (so in fact, it should be natural for Move to outsell Kinect, even if they have the same uptake rate), and so counting bundles may not be such a bad way to do it.

Alright, that’s it for this week. Have a good one.