Nullsoft, the subsdiary of media giant AOL TimeWarner and the author of hyper-popular media player, WinAMP, managed to anger its parent company, once again, this week.
Nullsoft released an instant messaging/trusted-party file-sharing application called WASTE on their website on Wednesday, but after a huge amount of press coverage, labeling the tool as "secure P2P software", etc, Nullsoft's parent company AOL decided to pull the plug. Now the download page simply states that "unauthorized copy of Nullsoft's copyrighted software was briefly posted on this website. ... If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the Software, you acquired no lawful rights to the Software and must destroy any and all copies of the Software, including by deleting it from your computer. Any license that you may believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated."
The request for pulling back the licenses and usage rights might be much more complicated than it sounds, since the code was released under GPL license which states that "parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance."
At least that's what the Malaysian government instructs. Deputy Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk S Subramaniam told the Malaysian consumers to stop quit spending their money on CDs and DVDs to force the industry to lower the prices.
The suggestion to lower prices was made to the music and movie industry to reduce ever growing piracy in the country.
"There are some new local movie releases that are priced at MYR10 ($2.64). The VCDs are affordable and not bootlegged by illegal manufacturers," said Subramaniam. "Those priced at MYR30 ($7.91) and above are normally the ones that get pirated. This proves that the price factor is the main reason why consumers buy pirated CDs and VCDs."
I wonder... If the prices dropped to, say, MYR15, would people rather buy the originals than pirated copies at, for example, MYR10?
Out of the many so-called DeCSS court cases going on at the moment, one of the oldest ones is now heading to California Supreme Court. The case between DVD-CCA(association that licenses CSS encryption mechanism to DVD manufacturers) and California resident Andrew Bunner relates to the fact that Bunner distributed DeCSS code on his website.
DVD-CCA sued hundreds of people in late 1999, including Mr. Bunner, for disclosing "trade secrets". Among those who were sued originally, were guys who printed DeCSS code on T-shirts, caps, etc. Earlier this year, U.S. Supreme Court upheld California Supreme Court's decision that one of the other people sued by DVD-CCA, Matthew Pavlovich, can't be sued in California because he is actually a Texas resident.
In Mr. Bunner's case, lower court granted a preliminary injunction that prevented him from distributing the code. However, appeals court held this decision and now the case is headed to California Supreme Court. The court date is set to tomorrow, 29th of May.
Sony has released information about their upcoming game console, which is build on the existing PS2 technology. The words "game console" perhaps don’t do this device justice, as it seems to be a real digital entertainment center, rather than just a gaming device.
The PSX adds a lot of technology on top of the old PS2. It comes with a nifty 120gb hard drive, USB 2.0, memory stick slot and a DVD+/-RW drive. The PSX will have DVR features built in and it can be connected to the also upcoming PSP (Playstation Portable) hand held console. According to the pictures released by Sony, the PSX also has a classy new look that should fit nicely into any living room interior.
A very interesting marketing move, which naturally applies even more pressure towards Microsoft’s Xbox. Also in the budding portable gaming console market, connectivity with the PSP can be a significant decicion making factor for the consumers. In the portable market Sony is challenged by the mobile phone giant Nokia which about to release their cell phone game console hybrid N-Gage.
RealNetwork has dropped the price of download&burn song prices at Listen.com Rhapsody service to 79 cents a piece. That's 20 cents lower than Apple's iTunes.
Unline at iTunes, RealOne Rhapsody customers must pay a monthly subscription fee of $9.95 to get access to the 79-cent downloads. To actually be cheaper than iTunes, one would have to buy 50 tracks at Rhapsody, ie. spend $49.95 a month.
RealNetworks has also increased its investment in the MusicNet to 40 percent. However Real will only provide the technology to MusicNet in the future, and will no longer be offering MusicNet services.
Graham Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University, has proposed a scheme where universities would provide their students with a legal MP3 downloads within the campus network. The costs would be covered by increasing each student's fees by a few dollars. If the student wishes to burn the tracks on CD, he or she would have to pay extra.
Spanier's concept has two main goals: to provide an alternative to digital piracy, and, what seems to be the ultimate goal, to reduce the load P2P file sharing causes on the university networks.
Even though there's still alot to discuss with the music industry, Spanier expects pilot programs to begin as early as this fall at some universities.
During the last couple of years, most countries that have strong presence on the Net, have seen broadband connections to get more and more popular and the main reason, it has been claimed, is the enormous popularity of P2P networks.
So, P2P has managed to turn dial-up users to broadband users and ISPs should be more than happy to see such transform. But now broadband ISPs all around the world, specially in Europe, are complaining that P2P traffic is costing them too much and claim that almost 60 per cent of all bandwidth is used for file-swapping.
According to British CacheLogic, the global cost of P2P networks for ISPs will top £828M (€1148M, $1356M) this year and will triple in 2004. Various ISPs have considered of taking measures for restricting users' download habits, but a prime example from the UK, by cableco ntl, has shown that it might not be a very smart move (ntl imposed a 1GB/day limit for its cablemodem connections and thousands of users left the service immediately, taking also their digital cable TV accounts to competitors as well). Now some tech companies are trying to invent ways to prioritize the traffic -- if the file-trading is done within the ISP's network, the cost for the ISP is minimal compared to intercontinental network connection costs.
This time we are fixing, re-authoring and burning (Super)VideoCD files, using only highest quality freeware software.
The idea and motivation for this guide is to introduce an efficient, easy and file error tolerant way of burning (S)VCDs. In this guide we are using only freeware tools for the job. In this guide we presume that the MPEG video files, or BIN/CUE CD image files are not authored by yourself, so there is not guaranty about their quality. It is actually surprising how many video files that are on the Internet are corrupted or incorrectly authored.
In very unsurprising move, Microsoft is already preparing its huge counter-attack against Apple's extremely popular online music service, iTunes.
Microsoft is tweaking its DRM system, included in its Windows Media platform, to support time-limited music tracks (and most likely, video files) also on portable devices. Current WM platform supports this feature on standard PCs, making services such as Pressplay possible, where users download tracks and can listen them as long as their subscription to the originating service is alive. The problem so far has been the fact that users want to transfer these tracks to their portable audio devices, car players, etc. With iTunes' rather flexible licensing/DRM system, this is possible, but not with Windows Media -based services.
To fix this problem, Microsoft is developing a system for portable audio devices, stand-alone players and car players to handle time-limited DRM systems, check the subscription status from the Net, etc. With its marketing muscle, it is most likely that there will be several equipment manufacturers who will implement this technology in their upcoming products. But the main problem is: are consumers willing to "rent" music rather than owning it..
Sharman Networks, the owner of the P2P application Kazaa claimed today that its application is soon going to take its spot as "Net's most popular program ever".
Sharman's claims are based on Download.com's figures, where the #1 spot currently belongs to AOL's instant messaging program, ICQ. ICQ has -- as of midday today in East coast -- currently 229,363,307 downloads and Kazaa has now 229,150,955 downloads. Kazaa is currently been downloaded over 300,000 times a day from Download.com, whereas ICQ is downloaded only 50,000 times a day (ICQ is just much, MUCH older application).
The claims are all fine and nice and obviously highlight that Kazaa has been an enormous success, despite its flaws and problems (broken downloads, fake files, etc). But basing such claims only on Download.com's figures is simply ridiculous -- AFAIK, AOL's WinAMP has an existing userbase of over 250M, Macromedia claims that appx. 90 percent of world's browsers have their Flash application installed (and believe me, there are more browsers installed than P2P tools in this world), WinZIP is one of the tools that everybody downloads and installs immediately after installing Windows, etc. So, to put Sharman's hype in perspective: Kazaa is soon (if not already, haven't checked the figures on Download.com yet) the most popular software download at Download.com.
According to the BBC, the future of online digital music distribution is looking good. Commercial music download sites are getting more popular and are able to convert visitors into business. On the other hand, the KaZaa file sharing P2P network is still way ahead of any commercial competitors, and KaZaa is just one (and not even a good one) source for music downloads.
People are beginning to pay for music on the net but they are more likely to buy CDs online than individual tracks, research suggests.
But figures from internet measurement firm Neilsen/NetRatings found that free download service Kazaa was still the most popular music site in the UK, followed by sites selling CDs rather than digital downloads.
It seems that Apple was really to turn peoples heads, especially heads of the media people, to online music distribution. On the other hand KaZaa seems to be the "Napster" of today as all other online networks/communities are ignored by mainstream media.
RealNetworks has extended its streaming video reach by adding bunch of new contect providers in its roster. The biggest name definately is Playboy, which has signed up as OpenPass content provider.
OpenPass providers offer individual video "channels", utilizing Real's billing and delivery technology, but aren't part of Real's streaming content package, RealOne SuperPass, that costs $9.99 a month and provides access to various sport events and major TV networks' news broadcasts. Playboy's offering, Playboy TV Club, will cost $24.95 a month and joining to Real's SuperPass is not required.
Microsoft and Real are locked in never-ending fight to claim the #1 spot in digital multimedia technology. Both companies have added more and more content providers to their "teams" that use solely either RealVideo or Windows Media as a delivery platform.
Hitachi has developed a technology which allows up to 400 hours of DVD-quality video on a single DVD disc. The capacity is achieved by using more than two layers to store the data. Current DVD specifications allow a maximum of two layers per side, and two sides per disc. That adds up to around eight hours of video at a decent bitrate.
Hitachi hopes to make the technology commercially available by 2007. I'm sure there will still be demand for a 900 GB optical disc then, even with the release of the blue-laser formats.
Information on upcoming higher speed DVD recordables has been published, by a lesser known brands.
BenQ announced their new DW400A 4x burner and promises a 8x driver on Q3 of 2003
BenQ announces that in the second half of May, it will launch the world's fastest DVD+RW drive-the BenQ DW400A. The DW400A offers 4x write and 4x re-write speeds, handily surpassing the DVD burner products of its global competitors. Utilizing key components from Philips BenQ Digital Storage (PBDS) and through the efforts of BenQ's elite R&D team, the company makes the optimal use of the most advanced DVD burning technology in the DW400A.
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A BenQ spokesperson reveals that the company will launch an even higher-performance 8x-speed model in the third quarter, which promises to sustain vigorous sales through the second half of the year.
And Sanyo is working on a 8x DVD recordable chip and according to the source the first brand to utilize the chip might be Optorite
Sanyo Japan is currently developing the first chipset allowing DVD recording at 8x.
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AccessTEK, the upcoming force in the Taiwanese market, is possibly the first manufacturer to use the new chipset in its new DVD recorder. The company will ship the drive under the Optorite brand name, as it currently does for its products, and it is expected to hit the market by September this year.
The Spanish Weblisten.com has been one of the pioneering companies in commercial online MP3 services. Now they are launching a new service called Puretones, which offers paid MP3 downloads from an unlimited selection of music - previously commercial online music shops have been carving deals with record companies, which limits their inventory. Puretones says that they are utilizing a hole that they have discovered in Spanish copyright laws. If they really are able to pull this, it gives them a clear edge against competitors such as Apple iTunes.
The new Madrid-based company, called Puretunes, is the second Spanish web service to try offering access to a vast and otherwise unavailable catalogue of music online without directly securing the record labels' permission.
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Javier Siguenza, Puretunes general counsel, said in a statement: "It is evident by the enormous popularity of P2P and supporting MP3 players that the consumers are demanding their music digitally. Puretunes has pioneered a product that allows consumers to get the music they want digitally, without restriction, while compensating the rights holders for their works."
According to the press release, Plextor is enterig the booming video market with a hardware video compression solution. The legendary recordable drive manufacturer is extending it’s operations to a totally new field.
Plextor® Corp. has entered the digital video market with the announcement of ConvertX(TM), a hardware real-time digital video converter and editing device for Windows-based personal computers.
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As the first product of its kind to support MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 encoding, ConvertX provides users with several options for long-term storage of video. For example, MPEG-1 could be used to record one hour of video on a VCD, while MPEG-2 could be used to record up to two hours of high-quality video on a single DVD. MPEG-4 could be utilized to create highly compressed video archives to save space on a hard disk drive. Users can now store 2 hours of high-quality video on a standard CD or 10 hours on a DVD.
According to "sources familiar with the situation", i.e. rumours, CD/DVD burning software manufacturer Roxio is near a deal to buy the online music subscription service, Pressplay, from Sony and Vivendi.
Same rumours indicate that the deal would be worth appx. $30M. Roxio has tried to break into new market segments during the last year or so, by buying the legendary Napster brand and offering online music subscription service Pressplay to its customers. If deal really happens, it would very likely mean that Pressplay would be rebranded as Napster in near future.
Disney, the friend of the environment, will start producing self-destructing DVD-discs. The idea is that consumers can "rent" a DVD, or EZ-D, as it's called by the developer Flexplay, by purchasing the disc and then viewing it freely for two days. Once opened the disc's coating will start reacting with oxygen and eventually turns black. The DVD won't be readable after that.
Although the price for the discs has not been announced yet, there will surely be demand for low-cost rental DVDs that are available in numerous retail stores, and that you don't have to worry about returning. But the discs should obviously still be properly recycled. If the buyer is too lazy to return a rental disc, it's quite naive to think that he'd go further than his trashcan to dispose of the EZ-D. Pay-per-view HDTV would make much more sense to me. In any case, the EZ-Ds hit the stores this August.
Of course it is possible to extract the DVD to, say, hard-disk during the 48-hour period, as it is with any rental DVD.
Paramount Pictures and Twenieth Century Fox have filed for an injunction in New York to bar Internet Enterprises Inc., RDestiny LLC, HowtocopyDVDs.com, DVDBackupbuddy.com and DVDSqueeze.com from selling DVD copying software. Meanwhile the lawsuit against 321 Studio is in court in San Francisco.
The movie studios argue that they could be losing billions of dollars in the future, if DVD copying software, such as DVD X Copy XPRESS are ruled legal. The manufacturers of the software feel that consumers should have the right to take backup copies of the movies they own under the "fair use" provisions of the copyright law, and even circumvent copy protections when doing so.
Today the much anticipated court room drama between major movie studios, represented by the MPAA, and 321 Studios, the developers of the DVD-Video backup tools such as DVD X Copy and XPRESS, began in San Fransisco.
Movie studios are seeking a summary judgement against the 321Studios, claiming that its products violate the controversial DMCA law by circumventing the copy protection found on most DVD-Video discs. 321Studios claims that their software allows users only copy the originals, but doesn't allow making new copies from copies (which is true, in some sense, since their tools wont allow copying copies that have been made with their tools -- but allows copying copies made with other tools) and therefor only serves as a legitimate backup tool for owners of DVD movies. Studios counter-argue this claiming that it doesn't matter whether the user owns the original or not or what happens to the copy -- according to studios, the DMCA law explicitly says that all copy-protection circumvention tools are illegal.
PeerGuradian is a special firewall software designed to block the IP ranges of RIAA, MPAA and similar organizations and authorities. The list of IP ranges to be blocked is freely configurable and you can add new IP ranges from a WWW service.
And the catch here is that copyright organizations and authorities ARE active on P2P networks like Direct Connect, Kazaa and quite likely others too. We have tested the PeerGuardian and yes - we have received reports of blocked connection attempts from RIAA IPs.
PeerGuardian is freeware and available at the following URLs.
Who ever said you can't sell music on-line and make a profit obviously forgot to mention that to Steve Jobs. Apple's iTunes on-line music store has sold over 2 million songs after its launch only 16 days ago.
Internet.com writes:
"At 99-cents a song or between $4 and $18 for an album, Apple is beginning to see a hefty profit. The company has yet to disclose how much its profit is being offset by the hosting costs or the reported 60 percent cut that goes to the labels. Still using rough estimates, Apple just made an estimated $2.3 million in a week and upwards of $5 million in the last two weeks based solely on its iTunes service."
Well done, Apple! Maybe RIAA, and music labels should learn from them and focus their efforts on bringing similar music services to PC-users as well, instead of wasting their money on trying to force people out of the habit of sharing their music. Is there an alternative for us, the PC-users, if we want to listen to MP3s? I'd say: no, we don't. If I can't rip my CD to MP3 format due to a copy protection scheme, I turn to one of the numerous peer-to-peer networks that are at my disposal. Given the choice, I'd rather purchase and download albums in MP3 format, and burn an audio CD should I need one.
Macrovision extends their line of copy protection systems to DVD-ROMs
SafeDisc-DVD protects DVD-ROMs from unauthorized copying.
SafeDisc is the most effective and widely used copy protection available for CD-ROMs, protecting over 70% of the top 20 PC games titles sold to retail in the United States, according to the NPD Techworld data for 2002. Once again demonstrating its industry leadership, Macrovision has extended the patented SafeDisc technologies for the growing DVD-ROM market to provide developers and publishers with a high level of copy protection for this higher capacity format.
The number of DVD-ROM games available is growing rapidly due to the popularity of DVD-enabled consoles such as the Xbox and PlayStation2, and due to the increasing use of DVD media for PC games. While the current version of SafeDisc-DVD is optimized for PC DVD-ROM drives, the same technologies can be used as a second-level copy protection enhancement to the proprietary copy protection and security features that are used by console games manufacturers.
The Recording Industry Association of America has admitted to sending at least two dozen DMCA case-and-desist letters last week to people who were sharing nothing illegal. RIAA claims the responsibility on a temporary worker, who was behind all the erroneous notices.
Probably the weirdest notice was sent to Speakeasy, the ISP providing services to Amigascene.org - a site ran by Amiga enthusiasts, consisting of nothing but legal, community created software and media. RIAA informed Speakeasy, that Amigascene.org's FTP site "offers approximately 0 sound files for download. Many of these files contain recordings owned by our member companies, including songs by such artists as Creed."
These kinds of mistakes are possible because RIAA doesn't require its "copyright enforcers", such as MediaForce, to actually listen to the infringing material before sending a cease-and-desist order.
World's largest record company, Universal Music Group(part of French media giant Vivendi) has sued other media giant, German Bertelsmann, claiming that Bertelsmann aided Napster in copyright infringements by funding the start-up.
Universal joins in the case with group of music publishers who originally sued Bertelsmann for the same reason in February, this year. Universal Music Group is seeking for $150,000 per illegally distributed song -- the maximum amount the controversial DMCA law allows.
Well, for consumer point of view, it is finally nice to see equal-sized opponents in the ring, instead of the usual scenario during the last couple of year: in one corner, a poor student in his worn jeans and in one corner, a multi-billion dollar media giant. But as usual, the only ones winning in this case, however it ends up, are American lawyers..
Playstation (a.k.a. PSOne, PSX) have been a popular sport on PC’s for years and now first one of the seems to have found it’s way to the PC-based console Xbox.
Emulates Playstation
Memory Card manager (select from 10 memory cards)
Save states (LTRIGGER+BLACK and LTRIGGER+WHITE)
Cheat code searching
Gameshark code-compatible
Gameshark cheat code database with codes for over 1700 games
Remappable PSX buttons
Throttle/speed-up
Supports BIN files or GZIP'd BIN files. (GZIP is not the same as ZIP)
Background Thanks to CandyISO for the background image
True Type Font Thanks to CandyISO for this PSX font
MP3 support
XPort's Configurable PlayThing
Playstation emulator might be something that would make it easier for a PSX owner to choose Xbox instead of Sony’s PS2. This sure should make Bill Gates happy and this way they won’t be facing the legal issues that Sony launched on BleemCast (PSX emulator for Sega DreamCast)
On2 Technologies have released a latest version of their video codec, called VP6. VP6 is, according to On2, 40% better in terms of video quality than its predecessor VP5.
On2 became famous (well at least in digital video scene) in last year, when they donated their older video codec, VP3, to Xiph.org(the organization that controls various audio/video projects, most notably Ogg Vorbis). Xiph.org is implementing the VP3 in its multimedia solution, dubbed as Ogg Theora.
It remains to be seen, when the first independent video quality tests appear, how well VP6 can compete with the latest breed of MPEG-4 encoders, such as XviD.
We now have a DVD X Copy XPRESS tutorial guide DVD X Copy XPRESS is a fast, easy-to-use high-quality DVD-to-DVD-R transcoding tool from 321 Studios. Please read the guide to see how easy it is.
According to the source Philips has released specs for a High Capacity Recordable Disc. The disc is based on Compact Disc techonology and can hold up to 98 minutes and 29 seconds of data for a 12 cm disc. For 8 cm disc the maximum playback capacity is approx. 30 minutes.
The new higher density format is not 100% compatible with the Red Book standard, but according to Philips a majority of current CD players are able to play it.
How far will the Compact Disc technology strech? And what actually is the point as DVD recordable technology seems to penetrate the market very rapidly.
A federal appeals court has extended the 14-day deadline for Verizon to give up its subscriber's personal details to RIAA. The 14-day limit was set by a district court at the end of April.
Appeals court is expected to make its own decision by end of this month whether Verizon should comply with the district court order and hand out the data immediately to RIAA or whether it can wait for the full hearing of appeals court that is scheduled to begin at 16th of September, this year.
The case is about a subscriber of Verizon (Verizon is one of the biggest American ISPs) that RIAA claims has distributed illegal music over the P2P networks. RIAA sued Verizon because it didn't provide RIAA the subscribers details. Verizon claims that RIAA has to first sue the "John Doe" anonymously and if the court decides that "John Doe"'s personal details should be told to RIAA, Verizon would then comply. District court ruled in April that Verizon must provide the details to RIAA, whether the RIAA can prove that the subscriber has violated law or not, without a court order.
Toshiba will be preseting its developments in the research of a dual-layer, 36GB Advanced Optical Disk (AOD) rewritable medium at Optical Data Storage meeting in Vancouver, Canada this weekend. Dual-layer AOD tightens the competition between AOD and rival blue-laser technology -- Blu-Ray. Dual-sided Blu-Ray discs offer a maximum capacity of 50GB. Last month Sony announced the first Blu-Ray recorder for consumer markets with a 23GB storage capacity.
The AOD technology developed by NEC and Toshiba was chosen by DVD Forum as the next-generation DVD-format. It is physically compatible with current DVD format, which makes the development of AOD hardware easy, and lowers the costs.
Digital video recording service provider Tivo on Thursday announced it will start licensing a light version of its service to DVD player manufacturers.
The Tivo Basic service, which will be first included in DVD players by Toshiba, allows users to pause live TV and record TV programs by time and date. The service can be upgraded to full Tivo service for $13 a month, or a one time fee of $299. The full service allows automatic recording of TV shows based on users' viewing habits, recording of movies and shows based on search criteria (eg. record all movies starring Kevin Bacon), and other advanced features.
Tivo currently has about 600,000 subscribers. By licensing the technology to DVD manufacturers Tivo is looking to increase the number of paying subscribers. There are some DVD+DVR combinations available already, such as the Panasonic DMR-HS2. Tivo, however, lots alot of added value compared to "dumb" digital video recorders.
Toshiba will start shipping Tivo-enabled DVD-players later this year.
Microsoft announced today that its next operating system versions will support all major recordable DVD formats. Previously company has only supported DVD+RW which is supported by DVD+RW Alliance and partially the DVD-RAM format. The announcement means that upcoming Windows versions will have built-in DVD burning support for DVD-R and DVD-RW.
The move can be seen as a victory for the DVD Forum which has supported the DVD-R/RW/RAM formats and fought strongly against the DVD+R/RW camp. The DVD+RW Alliance is looking very much like a loser in the DVD format war, as its major supporters, Sony and most notably Philips, have introduced (and in Sony's case, are already selling) multiformat drives that support also the "minus" formats.
Microsoft announced today that there's a critical security hole in its Windows Media Player products. The bug would allow attackers to "hijack" user's computer. Bug is available in WMP 7.1 and WMP 8.0, also known as Windows Media Player for XP.
The problem doesn't exist in WMP9 or in the older WMP versions, such as the good olde WMP 6.4 that is almost legendary among the videophiles. The malicious code can be masquerated to look like a WMP7/8 skin and when downloaded and installed, it executes itself and can do virtually anything the code's programmer wants it to do on user's computer.
Microsoft has released a patch for the problem. The bug was found by a Finnish security firm, Online Solutions, in March and it submitted its findings to Microsoft on 14th of March.
Microsoft and Panasonic announced on Wednesday that they will be extending their HighMAT media access technology to cover DVD-recordable formats as well. DVD-RAM and other recordable formats will be included in the High-performance Media Access Technology (HighMAT) by the end of the year.
HighMAT is a technology designed to offer a common way for PCs to store digital photos, music, videos and other digital files, and provide a standard for consumer electronics devices to access the data. Currently there is no accepted standard that accomplishes this, so there are no stand-alone players that would allow you to, for example, view digital photos stored on a CD or DVD. HighMAT attempts to address this problem.
So far HighMAT has only supported CDs. With the growing popularity of DVD-recordable formats, the extension to cover DVDs as well was a natural move.
HighMAT is currently supported by 14 companies, who have announced one or more HighMAT-capable products. The most recent members of the "HighMAT family" are CD-burning software manufacturer Roxio and audio hardware company Creative Labs
Shortly after the first public release of DVD X Copy XPRESS, the fast transcoding tool for backing up DVDs to DVD-/+Rs, 321 Studios have released a minor bug fix update to the tool.
The new version, DVD X Copy XPRESS v2.0.1 has these changes:
Reading has been improved and should fix the titleset reading error
The Widescreen/Fullscreen selection works as intended
Minor graphical updates have been made
Better handling of reading and writing errors
The latest version can be downloaded from the DVD X Copy homepage. For more information, visit the officialDVD X Copy forums here at AfterDawn.com.
The sales figures for Apple's recently launched online music store are almost unbelievable for many in the industry and according to Apple, this is just the beginning.
Apple launched its online music store, iTunes, a week ago and already claims whopping one million sold audio tracks. Each track costs $0.99 (except when user buys a full album) and tracks can be burned on CD, transferred to Apple's own portable audio player, iPod(which itself is already a culture icon), and the store has a selection of over 200,000 tracks. And to put the sales figures into perspective -- the service is only available for Mac users. No Windows, no Linux -- only Macs allowed.
Only complaints seem to relate to the fact that the service is almost too easy to use -- you wont even notice when you've already shopped audio tracks worth of tens of dollars. Apple also reported that it has sold over 20,000 iPod portable audio players over the last weekend in the U.S. and has received over 110,000 orders for the player.
It seriously looks like Apple has finally figured out something that record labels just couldn't understand -- offer a legal, relatively cheap way to purchase (virtually) unrestricted digital audio tracks from a massive audio catalog and you have a winner.
According to New York Times the record companies are developing new weapons in the fight against online piracy. Decoy files and warning messages are nothing compared to these new countermeasures.
How would you feel if you faced a personal Denial of Service (DoS) attack, if you were sharing copyrighted material? Or if you downloaded a file that looks like an ordinary song, but is infact a trojan software that scans your hard disk drive and wipes every file it considers illegal? Those are the kinds of actions that are being explored by the record companies.
Of course all of these measures are glaringly illegal, but apparently the copyright laws can be enforced by breaking other laws. Should any of these measures be realized, I'm quite certain the companies would soon be facing the barrel of their own shotgun -- just like Madonna recently did.
The payments will be split over three years. The lawsuits would have amounted (in theory) to total of $100M. Despite settling their cases, none of the students admitted of being guilty.
Time to announce one of those "magic numbers" again. Jsut checked our software download counters and they indicate that we served our 10,000,000th software download yesterday. The counter includes all software downloads ever made from our site, during the four years that we've existed.
To put this into perspective, it was 7 months and 3 weeks ago (in September, 2002), when we announced that we had served 5M software downloads. So, we're soon getting to a point where we serve over million software downloads every single month :-)
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you, our users, for making this possible.
Artisan Home Entertainment will be releasing two special edition movies -- "Shadows of Motown" and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day". What makes these releases worth mentioning is the fact that both movies include an extra DVD-ROM disc -- a disc that can only be played on PC using Microsoft' Media Player 9.
This would all be just fine unless Microsoft had named the disc HD-DVD. The Microsoft Media Player 9 -based "HD-DVD" is not an HD-DVD format approved by the DVD Forum. Microsoft just think it's an appealing name. The video resolution is nowhere near HDTV-level.
Maybe this will speed up the real HD-DVD development somewhat.
Out of the many so-called DeCSS court cases going on at the moment, one of the oldest ones is now heading to California Supreme Court. The case between DVD-CCA (association that licenses CSS encryption mechanism to DVD manufacturers) and California resident Andrew Bunner relates to the fact that Bunner distributed DeCSS code on his website.
