Archive for August, 2013

Weekly News Roundup (25 August 2013)

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

A busy week for me, but not a busy week for news apparently. Just your usual mix of overreaching censorship, continued DRM infestation, and another shot fired in the ongoing game console wars. Same old, same old, really.

Before you start your way through this week’s WNR, have your say in our new poll about Netflix and your changing DVD/Blu-ray buying habits. I think it has changed mine, in that I buy less (well, I’ve already stopped buying DVDs, but I find I’m now skipping Blu-rays of movies that are already on Netflix as well). It’s not a dramatic change, since the net effect is that I end up watching more while spending about the same amount of money. Anyway, on to the WNR.

CopyrightIt appears that blocking people from visiting The Pirate Bay has no effect on the overall piracy rate, according to a new study in the Netherlands on the country’s own censorship efforts. In fact, in the 6 month after TPB was blocked, piracy rates actually increased.

The Pirate Bay

Blocking the Pirate Bay has had no real effect on piracy rates in the Netherlands, a new study finds

While the study found that 20-25% of those who had been downloading prior to the blockade did stop or reduce their downloading, the number of people who admitted to downloading actually went up from 15% to 18% in the 6 month since the blockade. The researchers say that this means that the ban failed to prevent new downloaders from picking up the habit, even if it did stop some old downloaders.

The study also monitored BitTorrent swarms to see if the blockade had any effect. At first, it appeared that the number of downloaders had dropped from ISPs that had implemented the block, but the number soon reverted back to normal. So it seems that people are also easily able to find ways around the blockade, the report concludes.

Overall, it seems that censorship really isn’t the best way to deal with the piracy issue, since there are too many alternatives and workarounds. It won’t stop the copyright lobby from trying their darnedest to get every country in the world to participate in their censorship experiments though.

Speaking of censorship, popular copyright issues website TorrentFreak was at the wrong end of a mistaken censorship effort this week, as Comcast tried to get the news website to remove a link to publicly available court document. The cease and desist notice was also sent to TorrentFreak’s web host, and they would have been forced to take down the entire website had the notice issuer not reversed their decision in time, which they eventually did (citing unspecified errors). A close call, but with web hosts and domain registrars (you’ll remember the trouble we had earlier in the year) so freaked out over potential copyright and other legal issues, more such close calls will happen with increased regularity unless ISPs and web hosts get more, not less, legal protection.

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Hollywood: Stop DRM in HTML5

DRM comes to HTML5 via the Chrome for Android browser

It was always only a matter of time. Ever since the HTML standards people, the W3C, gave the green light for DRM to worm its way into the heart of HTML, it was just a matter of waiting for the browser makers to start their implementations. So when Google engineers this week announced that the Widevine DRM will be coming to the Chrome for Android browser, we can hardly say it was a surprise.

As much as I don’t like DRM being baked into HTML, the truth that the W3C had to face was that the alternative wouldn’t have been much better. DRM would still be there, but it would be in closed off, proprietary apps that, while still using the Internet infrastructure, would largely live in their own little walled gardens. The trend, if allowed to be continued, would then see more and more of these walled gardens being created, and eventually killing off the open web as we know it. DRM for HTML is the W3C’s attempt to keep the web (the web, as in browsers and HTTP and all that) still relevant in the age of smartphones and tablets.

The actual content delivery people, Netflix and co, will welcome the announcement as well. Apps are hard to maintain, especially now with so many “smart” devices that one needs to support. It’s much easier to just have their videos work via a standard compliant browser, a piece of software they don’t need to maintain, and then they can concentrate on making their UI improvements and adding new features through relatively bog standard web based coding.

Gaming

With the PS4 just around the corner, Sony hasn’t completely given up on the PS3, with a new model released just this week. It is of course not really a new model, as the 12GB flash-storage based version of the PS3 has been available in other regions for quite a while now, but this would be the first time the $199 priced console is available to buy in North America.

The big question of course is whether it’s worth the price savings compared to its hard-drive included siblings. I’m afraid though the answer, at this time, seems to be a ‘no’.

"Super Slim" PS3

The PS3 Super Slim 12GB is now available in the US for $199, but it’s not as good value as it sounds

For example, you can get a PS3 500GB console with the eagerly awaited GTA V game in a bundle for just under $70 more. To me, 488GB of more storage plus GTA V is worth the extra $70. Second, PlayStation Plus has become increasingly better value due to all the free games that Sony are giving away. The “Instant Game Collection” feature means you get a monthly collection of free games as part of your PS Plus subscription as digital downloads, and 12GB is just not going to cut it. And with the OS taking up space, 12GB end up being something like 8GB, which is just barely enough for one disc based game install, and not enough for most digital downloads.

And yes, you can install your hard-drive, but work in the price of a cheap laptop drive plus your time and effort, and it’s probably not worth doing, especially not compared to the GTA V bundle currently available (assuming you want the game. And you should).

Now, if the 12GB console gets its own game bundle, and drops in price by another $50, then we may be onto a winner. I wouldn’t rule something like this out for the 2013 holiday sales period.

And that’s it for the week. Hope it wasn’t too short, or too long, or too boring, or too many ‘toos’. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (25 August 2013)

Weekly News Roundup (18 August 2013)

Sunday, August 18th, 2013

I’m finding it a bit difficult to come up with an intro to this WNR. Probably because I only slept about 5 hours last night. And that I have nothing of real interest, and on topic, to share this week (although I have to say I’m quite enjoying the Netflix original Orange is the New Black). But most likely the sleep thing.

Onto the WNR.

CopyrightThe anti-DMCA, anti-censorship, and pro gay rights movements combined this week to form the perfect storm. It all started when controversial heterosexual rights group (yep, you read it right) ‘Straight Pride UK’ used the DMCA takedown process to censor their own response to a Q&A.

Not happy at how their own answers looked on student and freelance journalist Oliver Hotham’s WordPress blog, Straights Pride UK threatened Hotham with a DMCA takedown notice if he did not remove the content voluntarily; a threat that was eventually carried out.

The Streisand Effect did its thing and the removed article got more attention than it might have ever had, had Straights Pride UK simply let Hotham publish it without interference. Even Automattic, the owners of WordPress, eventually had to make a statement calling the DMCA takedown a clear case of abuse and censorship.

Not going into details about Straight Pride UK’s assertions, this latest incident shows again why the DMCA is deeply flawed, and how copyright laws now hamper creativity and speech, when the whole idea behind copyright is to promote these things (by giving copyright owners incentive to continue to create and speak). Copyright is one of many things that have been co-opted by moneyed interests to work directly against its original intended purpose.

To put it in another way, piracy isn’t always an anathema to the creative industry. While all the others are hitching a ride on the Internet-piracy-is-to-blame-for-everything bandwagon, it’s much easier to see piracy more as a nuisance than a curse if you happen to have *the* hit show of the moment. And if take this a couple of more steps in the same direction, piracy is not only not harmful, it’s actually quite good. Or more precisely, it is the reflection, the response, to something quite good.

Game of Thrones: Giants

Piracy has not been a Giant problem for Game of Thrones (sorry)

At least that’s what the CEO of HBO’s parent company, Time Warner, thinks. Jeff Bewkes told investors during an earnings call that Game of Thrones’s piracy record is actually better than winning an Emmy thanks to piracy’s “tremendous word of mouth thing”. And word of mouth, or buzz, is what drives new subscribers, according to Bewkes.

Premium cable isn’t a stranger to piracy. Whether it’s the old fashioned illegal hook-up, or shared subscriptions, or the Internet, piracy is piracy. And in Bewkes’s experience, piracy eventually leads to paying subscribers.

It’s definitely an enlightened view from an industry that hasn’t always been very enlightened when it comes to the “nothing good has come out of it” Internet. It also makes sense. The reasons for people wanting to pirate something is also the same reasons that makes people want to pay for whatever it is. With desire taken care of, it’s just then a problem of finding out why people aren’t paying; whether it’s an issue of price; user friendliness; or availability.

It’s only when you have a poor product, or a business model based on poor value, that piracy then starts to play a bigger role in determining profitability.

As for Game of Thrones, it’s good to be the King (of television drama).

Gaming

Has the anti Xbox One DRM backlash been unfair to Microsoft? Veteran game designer Peter Molyneux thinks it has, as he says gamers have misunderstood the long term vision behind Microsoft’s ill-fated and now reversed changes. Molyneux not only thinks that gamers too harshly judged Microsoft for its bold vision, but that they continue to harshly treat the company even after it folded and gave gamers everything they wanted.

Xbox One Controller

Have we judged Microsoft too harshly for their DRM snafu?

Molyneux believes in Microsoft’s vision because he says that the future of gaming is indeed online, and being online almost all of the time. But he also adds that it is up to game companies like Microsoft to create the applications that take advantage of being online all the time, and to explain the benefits; something I think everyone can agree that Microsoft did a poor job of.

To me, everything Microsoft did seemed to be too reactive. They failed to anticipate the backlash and once it materialized, they continued playing a losing game of catch-up. For example, the whole used game trading scheme seemed like an afterthought, instead of being baked right into the design – either Microsoft didn’t explain it better, or it really was a reaction to the backlash. And the reversal was the ultimate reaction, some might say over-reaction.

Personally, I liked the idea of not having to use game discs. I thought that by allowing the re-sale and trading of digital purchases was a revolutionary idea (one that could have changed copyright law, for the good, forever). And I too agree that the future of game distribution lies online. But I also think that discs still have a place, and that gamers should have been given a choice of whether they wanted to do it the old way or the new. And at the very least, Microsoft should have lined up all of its re-sale/trading/sharing ducks before they unleashed their creation onto the world (and then failed to answer some very simple and expected questions).

It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it. Sometimes.

As for the latest NPD results, showing US video games sales in July, the only thing I can say about the Xbox 360 being the most popular (home based) console is that its sales were poor, but others were poorer. With only 107,000 Xbox 360 units sold in the whole month, this was 47% down compared to just a year ago. And the Wii, the Wii U and the PS3 all did worse as well.

Wii U sales are pegged at closer to (and probably under) 30,000, according to unofficial sources, and it is steadily dropping as well. The PS3 will have come closest to the 360 numbers, but not close enough.

But it is close enough to the end of this WNR. So close, that it could end at any moment. Like, right in the middle of this sente

Posted in Copyright, News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (18 August 2013)

Weekly News Roundup (11 August 2013)

Sunday, August 11th, 2013

Welcome to the latest edition of the WNR, filled with the copyright, high def and gaming goodness that you know and love. Nothing much new to update from my end. I ordered a Chromecast a few weeks back from Amazon (to ship it to Australia via one of those relay shippers), but alas, the lack of stock is becoming a bit frustrating. I’ve received numerous notices from Amazon about the shipping date, giving me all sorts of different information, so who know when I’ll get one. Not that it’s of that much use to me in Australia, since the built-in Netflix support appears to used hard-wired DNS settings, which rules out geo-unblocker services until the device can be hacked or an easy workaround found (which I’ll definitely write about on streambly if/when it is found). Anyway, the news.

CopyrightNot this again. I guess the Obama administration has run out of things to do, now that it’s commerce department is again trying to revive one of the most controversial parts of the very controversial SOPA bill – to make unauthorized streaming a felony.

Megaupload's Mega Song was blocked on YouTube by UMG

Getting your video removed by YouTube could be the least of your worries, under new plans that could make the offense a felony

If all of this sounds familiar, then it’s because it is. Check out this WNR from November 2011, in which the same issue was discussed due to an independent piece of legislation urging for the same (which was then rolled up into the mega monstrosity that was SOPA and PIPA). The obsession that the creative industries, via their political lackeys, have with the whole streaming/felony thing comes down to the fact that unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works is counted as a felony, whereas public performances (such as streaming) is only counted as a misdemeanor. This is the discrepancy that all these various proposals attempt to address, to uniformize (I’ve been assured that this is an actual word) and to unify the differences . I guess it must be an OCD thing.

While I do agree that many of the people posting soul destroying covers of what was once a great song should indeed be locked up, I’m not sure that copyright infringement should be the main reason for doing so. I will also note that this is the same administration that is defending the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and streaming of every conversation that everyone has ever had (where’s my damn copyright protection?), and that these changes may see YouTubers get harsher sentences than the people who destroyed the global financial system.

Technological solutions to piracy don’t usually work well, but when they are capable of causing collateral damage, they become dangerous. That’s what copyright news website TorrentFreak found out this week when their website was blocked by Sky UK’s court mandated piracy filter using a flaw that can allow virtually any website to be blocked.

Apparently, when an already blocked website, such as TV torrent indexer EZTV, changes their DNS settings to point to another IP address (regardless of whether the IP address actually belongs to the website or not), Sky’s system automatically adds the new IP address to the list of blocked addresses. This means that EZTV could in fact add Google’s IP addresses to their DNS, and Sky’s system will block access to Google for its four million customers.

This is what happens when you replace due process with an automated system, a badly programmed one at that. Even the full legal system with its due process is by no means infallible to unjust outcomes, but one where there is zero accountability and legal recourse was always bound to fail, with or without a serious flaw like this one. Technology can improve efficiency if used correctly, but taking legal short cuts is not making the process more efficient, just more flawed.

High Definition

Blu-ray and digital revenue is helping to offset the decline in DVD sales and rental revenue, according to new data released by the DEG. While packaged media sales declined by an alarming 13% in the second quarter of 2013, compared to the same quarter a year ago, overall revenue remained relatively steady.

Netflix Blu-ray Rentals

Netflix’s streaming business is booming, while its disc rental business is in a steady decline

This is largely due to Blu-ray sales again showing double digit growth, 15% in the first six months of 2013 compared to the first half of 2012; and also digital revenue rising by an impressive 24% in the same period (with electronic sellthroughs up an amazing 50%). Subscription based Internet streaming was a particular highlight within the digital umbrella, with spending up 32.13%.

For Blu-ray, sales of new releases was up 19%, compared to only 8% for catalog/classic releases.

Rental revenue continues to decline, by 5.5% for the first half of 2013. So while Netflix streaming was growing by 30%+, its disc rental business was most likely in a relatively steep decline, as subscription rental revenue for the whole industry declined by 21%.

The same data also showed that 5 million new Blu-ray players were sold in the first half of 2013, bringing the total number households with at least one Blu-ray players in the U.S. to 61 million.

In short, Blu-ray, digital good; DVD, rental bad.

Gaming

The Xbox One received a much needed boost, literally, this week as Microsoft officially revealed that the Xbox One’s GPU speed has been upped from 800MHz to 853MHz. This 6.6% performance boost gets the Xbox One’s performance a little bit closer to the PS4, but the PS4 still looks set to easily be the more powerful machine.

Pure GPU shader throughput on the PS4 is still expected to be nearly 40% greater than that of the Xbox One, even after this latest GPU speed bump. And this is despite the Xbox One being $100 dearer than the PS4 at launch, but most of that is due to the inclusion of Kinect 2.0 with every console.

Xbox One Forza 5

Xbox One’s GPU speed increased to close the gap on the PS4

On paper, this seems to give the PS4 a huge advantage when it comes to the game’s visual quality; but in reality, developers of multi-platform games tend to go with the lowest common denominator, as opposed to doing extra work (which costs extra $$$) on one particular platform to leverage its hardware advantage. But as developers become more accustomed to working on both consoles, they might begin to find less resource consuming ways to get the best out of the PS4, and so expect later stage PS4 games to look better than their Xbox One counterparts. And of course, PS4 exclusives will be able to take advantage much earlier on.

I’m 80% certain at this point that I probably won’t buy an Xbox One, not until it’s a bit cheaper at the very least. At the same time, I’m maybe 80% certain that I will own a PS4 before I own an Xbox One. Microsoft’s DRM snafu; the price difference; and the hardware superiority, the latter two being in favor of the PS4, is what is largely responsible for my stance.

That’s it for the week. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, DVD, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (11 August 2013)

Weekly News Roundup (4 August 2013)

Sunday, August 4th, 2013

A pretty quiet week this one. Not sure why, not that I mind too much. We can get through this one pretty quick, I think.

High Definition

Well it’s about time! Netflix has finally come through with one of the most demanded features – the ability to have individual user accounts. From now on, subscribers will be able to create up to 5 profiles, one for each person that shares the same Netflix account. Each profile will have its own suggestions based on that user’s viewing habits, as well as a separate instant queue and recently watched list. So no more Fireman Sam cartoons in your most excellent instant queue featuring only ultra violent martial arts films.

Netflix Profiles

Netflix profiles is exactly what users have been demanding

You can also connect each profile to your Facebook account, and then the Facebook profile picture will be used to identify the account, but then your friends will all think you’re some kind of weirdo because you’ve managed to watch  72 episodes of Dexter in the span of about 5 days.

As for which apps will support profiles, pretty much all of them will except for the Android and Wii apps (updates for both are coming soon). Although it might take a week or two for the feature to finish rolling out to all the currently supported devices. You can only create profiles on the PS3 app or via the Netflix website at the moment, but the other apps will be able to access any created profiles.

While streaming definitely seems like the way things are headed, the good old optical discs might still have a place if bandwidth hogging applications like 4K become mainstream. And then there’s always the world of archival storage, which might very well be where old storage formats go to die (and where magnetic tape is still king, at least for high capacity storage). So this is why Sony and Panasonic announced this week that they’re joining forces again to develop the next generation optical disc for the long-term storage market, a disc that will hold 300GB of data.

Both companies made it very clear that the format is only intended for the archival storage market, possibly a deliberate effort to not make Blu-ray seem obsolete. But if 4K does take off, and the Internet as a delivery platform can’t do the job even with more advanced codecs, then I wouldn’t bet against this so far unnamed format stepping in and carrying the load, all 300GB of it.

Gaming

I’m feeling a bit sorry for Nintendo at the moment. The Wii U is a pretty nice console with a good dose of innovation, but a poor games line-up (always a killer when it comes to a new console), and now intense competition from the yet unreleased PS4 and Xbox One means it’s going to be a major uphill struggle for Nintendo’s flagship console. I knew Wii U sales weren’t that good, but without readily available NPD data, all I could do was to guess how bad they really were. But while it’s easy to hide sales data from journalists and bloggers, the financial reporting world is a bit harder to fool, and Nintendo has had to come clean with its Wii U sales figures. Only 160,000 units sold in three month, worldwide, is more than just bad though. As a comparison, the nearly 8 year-old Xbox 360 managed to sell 140,000 units in June alone, and that was only just US sales.

Wii U

Only Zelda (and Mario) can save the Wii U now

Nintendo blames the poor results on the lack of first-party titles, the likes of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and Pikmin, all of which have new Wii U version arriving during the next quarter or two. The problem is that both the PS4 and Xbox One will be launching right in the middle of this release schedule, and I’m not sure even a Mario and Zelda game can save the Wii U at this point. Even if it does, it doesn’t really solve any problems for Nintendo, whose Wii console suffered because it relied too much on first-party releases. The whole point of Nintendo going “hardcore” with the updated Wii U hardware was to get new kinds of gamers on board, along with third-party developers that are good at reaching this particular demographic. But without hardware sales, developers won’t dare to invest in Wii U development. And the longer this goes on, the more outdated and limited the Wii U hardware will be, and you can bet developers will be even less keen to focus on what is essentially last-gen tech.

A huge price cut seems to be the only way to save the Wii U at the moment, to position itself as the budget console against, not the PS4 and Xbox One, but the PS3 and Xbox 360 (which is still very hard, as both of these platforms have a huge library of games that the Wii U does not).

Is the Wii U this generation’s Dreamcast? No idea, but let’s hope Nintendo can ride out the storm better than Sega couldn’t.

And believe it or not, that’s it for the week. Hoping for more next week. Until then, have a great one!

Posted in Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (4 August 2013)