News archive (10 / 2007)

The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has begun selling Toshiba's second gen HD-A2 HD DVD player for $198 USD, setting a new low for stand-alone HD players.

The price cut has been talked about for weeks but it wasnt until the middle of the week that the new low price hit Wal-Mart locations around the US.

Wal-Mart spokesperson Melissa O'Brien confirmed the price cut and also added that "there are no limited quantities for stores or purchases."

The player was originally released earlier this year with a $500 USD price tag but it has been slowly lowering in price with Amazon selling it for $230 on a regular basis.

Its good to see the prices falling for HD players, and hope to see the trend continue at such a rapid pace.

Source:
HD Digest

Writer/director Ed Burns will be trying out a new distribution channel for his new movie Purple Violets. Instead of theaters, the movie will be available exclusively from iTunes for a month, after which distribution will be opened for other services. The movie will cost $14.99 from iTunes.

"The specialized movie business has changed so dramatically in the last five years," Burns said. "My style of filmmaking is dying on the vine. These small, talky movies have a hard time finding an audience theatrically, so you need to adapt. There are still people who want to see this nontraditional type of film, and now there are nontraditional ways to get them out there."

The availability of download services like iTunes brings new possibilities for both established and up and coming film makers to distribute video to a wide audience without going through a major studio. Combined with CSS support on recordables, this could become a viable method for film distribution.

Source: Yahoo News

The Motion Picture Association of America, along with an assortment of Japanese business organizations announced support for changes to Japan's copyright law making unauthorized downloading of copyrighted content illegal.

MPAA representative Bob Pisano said in a keynote speech, "We need to take our case both to young people and to older citizens, individuals who should appreciate even more profoundly the relationship between the unlawful reproduction of legal products and the loss of honest jobs, income and tax revenues that are critical to building a better society."

In addition to legislation, Pisano stressed the importance of youth education in combatting piracy. He called Tokyo "the ideal venue for a discussion of how young people view intellectual property rights, and how those views affect the future of the motion picture and other creative industries."

Finally he noted the need for different copyright interests to work together, saying "Our collective goal must be to devise and execute strategies for attacking intellectual property theft from all points on the compass."

Source: Variety

Anonymous representatives of two movie studios backing Blu-ray technolgy are reportedly claiming Paramount is inflating sales figures for the Transformers HD DVD release. Based on Paramount's numbers the Title sold more copies than any other hi-def release to date in both the first day and first week of sales. According to competing studio insiders that's not even possible.

One studio source said "Here's the dumb lie: they've claimed to sell 100K in one day and 190K in one week. Exact point of sale data from 3 retailers that make up 62% of the high-def market show sales of 73K units for the week. Being very generous, they could possibly reach 125K-130K, which would barely set a record for HD-DVD." He added "It’s an outrage. They think they can say whatever they want and that no one will call them on it. They need to be called on it."

Data from a Nielsen Videoscan email does seem to cast suspicion on Paramount's numbers. Although no one from Paramount has disputed the Nielsen figures, at least one person explained that the additional units were sold by outlets like Amazon.com. Most Paramount employees dismissed the furor as simply more posturing by the Blu-ray camp.

According to public statements, the flash memory leader SanDisk has filed patent infringement suits against 25 different companies in Federal Court as well as in the US International Trade Commission.

Although it is not clear which of the patents have been allegedly infringed upon, SanDisk said the protection of their patents and the suits were made "to be fair to third parties who legitimately license from them."

According to Dailytech, the suits are against the following companies, some of which are very well known in the flash memory market; ACP-EP Memory, A-Data, Apacer, Behavior Computer (Emprex,) Buffalo, Chipsbank, Corsair Memory, Dane-Elec, EDGE, Imation/Memorex, Interactive Media (Kanguru,) Kaser, Kingston, LG, Phison, PNY, PQI, Silicon Motion, Skymedi, Transcend, TSR (T.One,) USBest, Verbatim, Welldone, and Zotek/Zodata (Huke).

SanDisk is looking for monetary damages as well as a permanent injunction in the federal cases. Being as the suits are against all of the company's competitors, a successful decision in favor of SanDisk could help give the company a monopoly in the flash memory market.

As expected, recent reports about Comcast's practice of discriminating against BitTorrent uploads have breathed new life into the Net Neutrality debate. On Friday U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Olympia Snowe of Maine called for hearings to discuss the companies' "power to discriminate against content."

The pair sent Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, a letter saying "The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers 'a solution in search of a problem.'"

Comcast has recently admitted to "delaying" file uploads, supposedly in order to ensure high speeds for other customers' surfing, however tests performed by the Associated Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation found that uploads routinely failed as a result of Comcast's network management.

Just a few months ago the issue of Net Neutrality was essentially dead in terms of possible legislation. The publicity sparked by Comcast's filtering, and especially from their non-denials, in which they only said they weren't blocking applications, which is true since they're only delaying content.

The PlayStation 3's latest firmware, version 1.94, will finally add support for "rumbling force feedback controllers", a feature that many gamers have wanted since the console's introduction last year.

Although the force feedback DualShock 3 controllers wont hit North America until at least spring 2008, apparently the recently released "Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction" is the first game capable of sending a vibrating signal.

Other games set for release soon, such as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Assassin’s Creed, will ship with the rumble code built in and current hit games such as "Resistance: Fall of Man" and "MotorStorm" will eventually see downloadable patches that will enable force feedback.

If you really want to try the new features out, you may want to import a Japanese DS3 controller which will hit the market next month.

Source:
Dailytech

Home Media Magazine is reporting that for the week ending October 21st, Blu-ray squeaked out a victory in sales, a fact that would dispute Paramount's sales numbers for "Transformers."

The report says Blu-ray won the week by the thinnest of margins, 51% to 49%, but many expected HD DVD to dominate the week thanks to the large sales numbers reported by Paramount. The studio reported 190,000 units sold for the week but HMM says the number is closer to 120,000.

Paramount has stayed mum on the subject but regardless, HD DVD had its best showing against Blu-ray in over 9 months, despite the fact that Disney began offering a "buy one get one free" offer at select retailers including Best Buy.

Source:
HD Digest

Sony is celebrating the 7th anniversary of the PlayStation 2 by announcing that 120 million consoles have been sold worldwide making it by far the most popular gaming system ever released.

The company also said it had no plans to stop development for the PS2 until 2010 despite claims that the console was cannibalizing PlayStation 3 sales.

160 new games are expected for the system though March 2008 including "Guitar Hero 3", "Manhunt 2" and "Madden NFL 08" all of which should be huge hits. Additionally, Sony says it will be releasing a Ceramic White PS2 model bundled with "Singstar Pop" and two microphones for $149.99 USD.

"We look forward to the platform's continued growth and expect to sell approximately 12 million units worldwide by the end of March, leading us to anticipate that PlayStation 2's life cycle will exceed that of the original PlayStation," SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton said in the announcement.

See you in 2010 PlayStation 2.

Source:
BetaNews

Since the purchase of video download site Movielink to video rental giant Blockbuster was announced earlier this year there has been a lot of speculation as to the financial state of the service. Despite heavy Hollywood ties with ownerr that included most of the major movie studios, the service was never able to make a serious impact with consumers, or a profit for that matter.

Despite the service's less than stellar history, Blockbuster has big plans for it. Originally purchased as part of their bid to compete with online video rental leader Netflix, the company has indicated that the Movielink platform will be used for content delivery to a number of platforms from mobile phones to televisions.

However, according to independent auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers, Movielink's track record raises "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern." However, Blockbuster may be looking less toward profitabliity and more toward competition. In recent months Blockbuster has had to change the terms of their Total Access online DVD rental plans, which had made them the first company to actually make an impact on Netflix subscriber numbers. Unfortunately it came at a high price, and the company's purchase of Movielink is anticipated to eventually tie into their rental operations. No announcements have been made regarding possible tie-ins between Total Access and Movielink, but if things go well Blockbuster's marketing could substantially increase Movielink's public visibility, while Movielink might provide serious competition for the Watch Instantly feature available from rival Netflix.

More than a week before its theatrical release, the movie American Gangster has shown up on P2P networks, and has even been spotted on DVD on the streets of Los Angeles for a mere $5. The movie, which stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, follows such hits as Ratatouille, Sicko, and Hostel: Part II, which were also leaked on the internet before being officially released.

Wall Street Journal sources indicate Universal Studios, who owns the film, is confused about the source of the leaks because there weren't any advance copies distributed. Some internet sources have indicated that it's from a DVD Screener, which at one time was a common source for Oscar nominated movies, although its become less common since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began adding Watermarks to all DVDs sent to academy members. Other sites have reported that the copy is of low quality, which combined with Universal's statement of confusion would seem to indicate it's not actually a Screener.

Start with some network "management" that hinders file sharing, add in some public criticism from consumer advocates, and a non-denial that sidesteps the question, and you may end up with just enough publicity to put the Net Neutrality debate back on the map. In an interview, congressman Rick Boucher, a Democrat from Virginia and long time fair use advocate, commented on Comcast's practice of interfering with P2P traffic.

"Comcast has made a major mistake in attempting to hinder peer-to-peer file sharing as an aspect of its network management," Boucher said. "The inability of customers to (share files) significantly diminishes their ability to utilize the Internet for one of its most important applications, which is user-to-user content." He also noted that "file sharing is already being used for a wide variety of perfectly lawful and appropriate applications."

He did ndicate sympathy for Comcast's financial considerations, saying "Comcast obviously needs to engage in some aspect of network management. The company has Limited bandwidth, and there are times when there is more demand for service than the infrastructure can support." However, the congressman stressed that "(the) management needs to occur in a more evenhanded way" and that "(Comcast) should not engage in a blanket disqualification of any category of lawful applications."

According to testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday, if the royalty rates approved by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) in March aren't overturned, internet radio stations are finished. The testimony from Pandora founder Tim Westergren was part of a hearing called to assess the state of negotiations between webcasters and SoundExchange, the recording industry royalty colllection agency which originally proposed the new rates. Although webcasters have claimed negotiations between the two sides have stalled, SoundExchange representatives have indicated that there are merely delays while they assess the financial situations webcasters find themselves in.

"The [higher] rates are actually currently in effect, and we are paying them," said Michele Husak, director of communications for Pandora. "But we're only doing so because we believe that rationality will prevail and that they will be lowered. Negotiations are slowly on-going." Husak also indicated that at some point Pandora, one of the more successful webcasters, will no longer be able to afford the royalty payments and would be forced to shut down.

Meanwhile, Westergren pushed for the passage of the Internet Radio Equality Act, which many webcasters see as their best chance for a fair Resolution to the issue. Even assuming SoundExchange officials realize that the new royalties aren't realistically possible to collect, it may require legislation to convince the agency to back down without losing face.

It appears that University of Tennessee student's interesting legal strategy of thwarting RIAA attempts to discover his identity have been blocked. The student's identity will soon be released to the RIAA after a judge ruled that the information isn't protected under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The student's lawyer had argued that under FERPA the student's identity could only be revealed if he explicitly waived his rights, but the judge decided that most of the information sought by RIAA lawyers is already categorized as "directory information" which can be released without student permission. This information includes his name, address, phone number, and email address. Judge Guyton also ruled that since the information about a student's computer doesn't count as an educational record at all, MAC and IP address disclosure isn't affected by FERPA at all.

Despite winning this battle, the war against file sharers at universities continues to be contentious. Many students, and even some university officials, feel that the RIAA has repeatedly overstepped legal boundaries while pursuing students on college networks. At different times, various institutions have complied with subpoenas without comment, fought the subpoenas in court, or supplied Limited information.

According to a new market survey, sales of traditional CRT monitors in China are plummeting and LCD sales are up 93 percent total while LCD PC monitor sales rose 37.6 percent from the comparable time frame in 2006.

In total, over 8 million monitors were sold during Q3 2007.

The survey brought up more interesting facts about the sales surge however. Apparently, the surge is in part thanks to the ongoing crackdown of internet use by the Chinese government. The government has been trying to control the population's internet use as well as prevent all access to websites the government considers "undesirable."

Part of the crackdown included the government stopping the issuing of licenses for new internet cafes, where currently over 70 percent of Chinese citizens go to access the internet. After the announcement was made, thousands of new internet cafes opened with most purchasing LCD monitors. Some of the largest internet cafes have over 400 PCs so the sales surge for LCDs seems reasonable when taking that into account.

Along with the general increase, consumers seem to be buying larger and larger monitors. "Due to the shortage of smaller PC monitor LCD panels, prices of 15 inch and 17 inch LCD monitors rose slightly. Conversely, prices of wide-screen and larger size panels continued to fall. As the price difference between the 17 inch and 19 inch sizes narrows, more consumers tended to purchase the 19 inch LCD monitors," said the report.

Yesterday, Samsung confirmed that it has indeed cancelled its BD-P2400 Blu-ray player and delayed the release of its much-hyped BD-UP5000 dual-format player until late December from its original expected release date in late October.

The BD-P2400 was expected to hit retail shelves with a $649 USD price tag but the player was essentially the same as its cheaper brother the BD-P1400, which sells for $550 USD but lacks HQV video processing.

Although no reasons were specifically given, it may be that Samsung wants to ensure that their player is Profile 1.1-compliant, which becomes mandatory next week.

Source:
BetaNews

Microsoft’s Indian branch has announced that Xbox Live will finally be heading to India starting November 5th and offering exclusive local content.

Users will have the option to download already-released UTV Bollywood films as well as trailers for upcoming movies. Microsoft also said there will be Silver and Gold memberships available as there are elsewhere in the world.

The company went on to say there would be a “rent a game” service available in which XBL users can rent the latest Xbox 360 titles for a fixed number of days before the games become unplayable.

"We have just celebrated the first anniversary of Xbox 360 in the country this year and it is with a celebratory spirit that we offer our Indian consumers even more entertainment options on Xbox 360," said Robbie Bach, global president of Microsoft's E&D Division.

"This is not only a firm reiteration of our commitment to the Indian market, but also an exciting foray into connecting our Indian consumers to a world of 7 million Xbox LIVE members around the world."

Source:
GI.biz

Michael Bay, the director of the blockbuster Transformers, has once again flipped his views on the competing HD formats, commenting to USA Today that he believes Blu-ray is in fact the superior format.

Although Transformers has broken all HD DVD sales records in just over a week, Bay had this to say about Paramount’s decision to go HD DVD exclusive, , “It's short-sighted and it has delayed consumers' moving to HD (home video). As a director, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is. Consumers are smart, and they are going to wait it out.”

Bay had originally made such comments, including this quote he made immediately after Paramount’s decision. “I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me.” A few days after his rant however, he changed his mind and instead praised the pricing of HD DVD’s hardware and said that he would come back for Transformers 2.

No matter what Bay thinks, and whether he’s back for the second installment of the blockbuster film or not, the movie will live on in HD DVD and the format war will continue on with no end in sight.

The legal download video service Vongo announced today that it had updates its software to version 2.0, adding more support for Windows Media Center Extenders.

According to the company statement, the added support was the number one request voiced by its "passionate customer base." The previous software only supported two Windows Media Center 2 devices: the Toshiba Gigabeat S and V series.

The new software update adds support for the Archos 405 and 605WiFi as well the Creative ZEN Vision: M and W.

The company also said it would be adding more option in wireless connectivity including support for streaming video from a Vista or XP-based PC to the TV.

Vongo also said the "Personalized Recommendation Engine" was improved making it easier to find user-appropriate content.

Source:
BetaNews

A new NPD Group study indicates a promising future for next-gen video formats, but only if a single format is available at a lower price than players currently sell for.

More than 65% of all respondents to the survey indicated no plans to buy either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player. The single most common reason cited was high player prices. Nearly as many people said they see no need to replace their DVD player and library of movies, and 60% are happy with the hi-def movies from satellite or cable. More than half said they're waiting for a single format to invest in and will wait for Resolution of the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. Just over 10% indicated they're extremely likely to buy a player.

Russ Crupnick, VP and senior analyst with NPD Entertainment, cautioned that the rate at which early Blu-ray and HD DVD customers are replacing their DVDs is likely misleading for projecting typical consumer behavior. He said “Once you get to the mainstream consumer, we’re not sure they’re going to be all that anxious to replace their libraries.” However, he still expects hi-def disc formats to eventually catch on, although he cautions “without improving the benefit proposition and probably driving down hardware prices even more it’s going to be a longer haul than we’d probably like.”

Analyst David Barden predicts that Verizon's FiOS network, which launched two years ago and now boasts growth of more than 10,000 customers in an average week, will have two million customers by year's end.

Although cable companies didn't take Verizon seriously when they first announced the service, no one is laughing any more. "Verizon is real," Steve Burke, Comcast Corp's chief operating officer, said last month at an investor conference. "Verizon is taking video customers from us."

FiOS may represent the most serious challenge yet to the dominance of cable companies for television and high speed internet customers. While cable companies have been able to hold on to internet customers and also gain market share as phone providers, traditional phone companies have been less successful with DSL and video offerings. Based on current and projected sales figures, Verizon is likely to break into the top 10 television providers, behind 6 cable companies and 2 satellite television providers.

With their non-traditional all fiber approach Verizon has some definite advantages over traditional cable television services. Not only does their pure fiber connection offer more bandwidth for everything from TV channels to internet uploading and downloading. The company also offers unique DVRs that can send recordings to different televisions.

With the arrival of software update 9.2, owners of TiVo Series3 and HD units will finally begin to see support for their DVR's TiVoToGo and Multi-Room Viewing. Until recently, those capabilities had been disabled due to security concerns about sharing copy-protected HD content.

Multi-Room Viewing allows "TiVo boxes to share recorded content back and forth" while TiVoToGo enables "subscribers to transfer shows from the DVR to the PC using the TiVo Desktop software or Roxio on the Mac."

HD content that is not marked with a copyright flag can now be copied using TiVoToGo although many don't see the point.

To have the capabilities enabled, TiVo had to get permission from CableLabs which licenses the CableCARD technology used by the high-definition TiVos. CableLabs had not approved TiVo's DRM technology for HD content until recently.

Source:
BetaNews

In early September SanDisk announced its View media player in two models, 8GB and 16GB and aggressively priced at $149.99 USD and $199.99 USD, a nice price cut from comparable iPod products.

Although the players have not yet hit the market, it seems SanDisk has added another model to its View line. On the official Sansa Store, the product page for the view shows a reference to a 32GB model. The price for the new model? $330 USD, a full $70 less than the 16GB iPod Touch.

No word on when the latest model will be released but the product page also says the smaller models will be released on November 6th at the prices stated before.

Source:
Dailytech

Earlier this year, we reported that the Manchester Cathedral was upset at Sony because a replica of the holy building was used without permission in the hit game Resistance: Fall of Man.

Although Sony has apologized, they refuse to admit any wrong doing, and it seems that it doesn't matter anymore.

"I think some important lessons have been learnt," said the Dean of Manchester, speaking to the BBC. "So we forgive Sony for what they have done, even though they still believe they have done no wrong."

"In an industry that is breaking new frontiers, it is important that long held traditions of film and television are maintained. These traditions include having courtesy, respecting the dignity of your subject, and admitting when mistakes have been made," he added.

"In so many ways Sony have failed to live up to these standards by disrespecting people of faith and the victims of gun crime in Manchester," he finally noted.

In what should not be a surprise to anyone, the Dean also added that visits to the Cathedral had substantially increased since the controversy.

Source:
Gi.biz

Earlier this week, the Australian tech site Smarthouse claimed that Toshiba and Microsoft were working on a new Xbox 360 that has a built-in HD DVD drive.

Microsoft has denied rumors of the sort in the past stating that DVD media is still "adequate for this generation of games" as well as the cost factor involved in putting an HD DVD drive in every console. They have not offered any word on the recent report, but Toshiba has denied any such development.

“It’s got nothing to do with us,” said a Toshiba representative. “But we know Microsoft doesn’t want to include the HD DVD drive so as not to limit the user’s experience.”

With the falling prices of HD DVD hardware and the inclusion of HDMI with all new Xbox 360s, it is conceivable that a new console with an internal HD DVD player could be in the works.

Should be interesting to see where it leads.

Source:
Dailytech

Sony Online Entertainment will be working with Sony Computer Entertainment to deliver movies, television, and music to PS3 gamers.

“We are building a software infrastructure to distribute video and music, more particularly video, through the PlayStation Network,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer said in an interview with the Financial Times. He wouldn't give a projected date for launching the new distribution Channel, but did say Sony will know more in early 2008. He added “We are trying to get our devices to talk to each other efficiently. PlayStation Network should migrate from gadget to gadget. But initially it starts with PlayStation devices and then to TV and beyond. That’s the goal.”

Despite having a great deal of movie, television, and music content of their own, Sony hasn't managed to build a channel to distribute content to PS3 users, although they envision the console as more of a home entertainment center. By comparison, Microsoft's Xbox Live service already allows Xbox 360 owners to buy television episodes and rent movies.

Although Xbox Live Video Marketplace already has deals with many major studios, they don't have access to Sony's properties, which the new Playstation service will.

Despite being outsold nearly 2 to 1 by Blu-ray in the first three quarters of this year, some analysts expect HD DVD to make a strong finish in the fourth quarter. They point to sales records set by the HD DVD release of Transformers by Paramount Pictures.

Earlier this year another HD DVD release, 300, generated a lot of buzz until it was released on Blu-ray and the HD DVD numbers were quickly eclipsed. Ironically, until August Paramount also released movies in both formats, which could conceivably have dealt yet another blow to HD DVD if they hadn't decided to release on HD DVD exclusively.

Still, a single title can't determine the success of an entire format, and this holiday season may be a turning point for either one. Besides competition for standalone player sales, the success or failure of Sony's PS3 will also have some effect since it doubles as a Blu-ray player.

"It's going to be 2008 before the dust will really starts to settle. For now, its like watching a yacht race," said Gerry Kaufhold, an analyst with the In-Stat research firm.

The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing today where webcasters plan to make a case for the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would legislate more reasonable royalty rates than were approved earlier this year by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board.

According to webcasters, negotiations with SoundExchange, the music label backed royalty collection agency, have stalled. "We made a royalty rate proposal on Aug. 23, and we have not heard a reply back," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which is negotiating on behalf of a group of 27 large Internet radio providers.

Richard Ades, a spokesman for SoundExchange, said "We're moving as fast as we can considering there are so many parties involved."

The webcasters' concerns started at the beginning of March when the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) accepted a SoundExchange plan for internet radio royalties without a single change. The rates, which would force webcasters to pay significantly higher royalties than are currently mandated for either terrestrial or satellite radio, seem to have been calculated in anticipation of some kind of adjustment by the CRB, taking into account the actual financial situation of webcasters.

Lord Triesman, parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities, and Skills in the U.K. said yesterday that if ISPs don't get copyright infringement by their customers under control, legislation will be passed to resolve the issue. He told the BBC "If we can't get voluntary arrangements we will legislate."

"For the most part I think there are going to be successful voluntary schemes between the creative industries and ISPs. Our preferred position is that we shouldn't have to regulate," he said.

A spokesman for the the Internet Service Providers Association says "ISPs cannot monitor or record the type of information passed over their network. ISPs are no more able to inspect and Filter every single Packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope." He added "ISPs deal with many more packets of data each day than postal services and data protection legislation actually prevents ISPs from looking at the content of the packets sent."

He did add, however "ISPA does not support abuses of copyright and intellectual property theft."

OiNK, the extremely popular private torrent tracker has been shut down and its owner’s home raided by both UK and Dutch police.

According to investigators, OiNK was the source of pre-release music which then spread to P2P networks as well as other torrent sites and blogs.

The tracker however, was private and membership required an invitation so it is safe to say the operators of the site felt secure from any legal fallout that recently happened to other public trackers and P2P sites.

One man, a 24-year-old resident of England, was arrested and the datacenter where OiNK's servers were located was raided in Amsterdam.

"OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online," said the IFPI in a statement.

According to the IFPI and British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the raids were a result of a two-year investigation and that the operators of OiNK were making substantial money from the site.

More news on any fallout this latest hit to the torrent community has.

Although it has certainly been a poorly kept secret, Microsoft has finally officially announced the Xbox 360 Arcade bundle which will include a wireless controller, HDMI output and a 256MB memory card. The memory card is a necessity because the Arcade does not have an internal HDD.

Also included with the console are five games: Boom Boom Rocket, Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Pac-Man Championship Edition and Uno.

"As families gather together this holiday, it’s the perfect time to launch a new low-priced, high-value Xbox 360 that plays games, TV shows and music for everyone to enjoy," said Microsoft's Jeff Bell. "In addition to offering an incredible all-in-one package for families to get right into the fun, the Xbox 360 Arcade system features the industry-leading Family Settings, which allow parents to control what their kids are watching and playing -- and we know how important that control is to families around the world."

The new bundle will retail for $279.99 USD, the same price as the Core version of the system.

Source:
Dailytech

Speaking during their quarterly earnings conference call yesterday, Apple COO Timothy Cook stated that the company estimates that 250,000 iPhones were purchased by customers who intended to unlock them.

Cook also noted that most of the sales occurred after the phone dropped price recently.

Although he did not elaborate on where the numbers were taken from, they were most likely related to the amount of phones sold as compared to the amount of phones that have been activated on AT&T's network.

To date, 1.4 million iPhones have been sold in total, which would mean that 17% have been unlocked so far, which is a huge number, especially if you are AT&T's bottom line.

Apple also warned that future firmware updates would make unlocked iPhone inoperable, just as version 1.1.1 did temporarily.

Source:
BetaNews

Nintendo, in conjunction with the Hong Kong High Court, have announced that they have taken out a global piracy outfit by seizing over 10,000 illegal devices that are used to violate DS and Wii copyright and trademarks.

The game coying devices and mod chips were seized during a raid of Supreme Factory Limited. The French company Divineo SARL was also named in legal action after the raid.

"Piracy affects the entire video game industry, from large companies to independent developers," commented Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director for anti-piracy.

"It can destroy years of hard work by a team of very talented software developers, who strive to create games consumers enjoy playing. Copying the developers' work and spreading the game files globally is blatant stealing."

The Court has frozen the company's assets as well as put an injunction on distribution of such products.

Source:
GI.biz

Security experts are comparing the iPhone's security to that of Windows 95, which is to say it has none. "It really is an example of 'those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it'," says Dan Geer, vice president and chief scientist at security firm Verdasys.

The problem according to Charlie Miller, principal security analyst for Independent Security Evaluators, is that every program on the iPhone runs with root priviliges, meaning full access to everything on the phone. A vulnerability in the Safari browser discovered earlier this year by Miller and his colleagues has already been addressed by Apple, but the root permission problem, also criticized in the paper detailing the Safari vulnerability, remains.

Apple has announced plans to release a public SDK so anyone can develop iPhone applications. As part of the announcement, CEO Steve Jobs said there were security issues being addressed in conjunction with the release. Hopefully that means OS updates that resolve this vulnerability. Access to data on an iPhone or its connection to a mobile phone/SMS/data network could be much more than an annoyance for iPhone users and mobile providers alike.

Industry analysts are predicting the wildest promotional period yet for flat panel televisions during this year's Christmas shopping season. In particular 720p and 1080p displays are expected to get the highest visibility.

Some analysts believe plasma technology in particular will see a high sales volume. “Black Friday 2006 signified a passing of the torch from plasma to LCD at 42-inch,” said Sang Tang, HDTV research analyst with Current Analysis West, an NPD Group company. “This year, expect plasma to turn the tables on LCD. Plasma will be very aggressive at 50-inches and will maintain a foothold on the high-end market. In other words, there won't be a flat-panel shakeout this year. LCD maintains its mass consumer appeal, while plasma takes the high-end market.”

Tang also sees plasma to force a shift in focus for rear projection (RPTV) displays. In the recent past high end RPTV displays have been able to compete with plasma on the basis of offering 1080p. With plasma manufacturers focusing on that market segment, future RPTV development may need to be oriented toward lower end displays to remain viable. As analog television is replaced in many countries by digital, this could conceivably be a large market to conquer within the next 1-3 years.

Although there's much debate over the effect of music downloads on popular music sales, a much more interesting trend may be emerging which is specific to music that's not so popular. Although not in any danger of selling millions of copies or climbing the popular music charts, classical music has silently increased in popularity in the age of downloadable music.

According to Chris Bell, Director of Worldwide Product and Music Marketing for iTunes, the increased interest in classical music and other relatively fringe musical styles appears to be the product of the online marketplace where it's easy to listen to samples of different musical styles. He also says that classical music in particular sells better online than in traditional retail operations, although he won't go into details about the exact figures.

Besides the ease of finding and previewing music on the internet, some non-traditional classical music purchases certainly come as a result of internet anonymity. Without having to go to a brick and mortar store, inhibitions about asking meaningful questions and embarassment, either from not knowing the first thing about classical works or from being seen perusing a store's classical selection become non-factors.

An NBC representative confirmed on Monday that the network will no longer be posting video clips on YouTube to promote their television shows. While the move shouldn't surprise anyone who's followed the saga of NBC Universal's ongoing love/hate relationship with the viral video leader, the timing still seems a little odd.

According to rumours that were confirmed by NBC yesterday, the network's YouTube Channel was discontinued over the weekend to prepare for the launch of the NBC Universal and News Corp. joint video venture called Hulu. What's strange is that Hulu hasn't even launched yet, leaving what appears to be a huge marketing void that will last until either Hulu is successful or NBC decides to return to distribution through third parties like YouTube.

YouTube certainly hasn't given up on the partnership. In an email YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes said "NBC informed us on Friday that they were taking down their branded channel and clips." He added "Our relationship with NBC was a YouTube success story, so we hope NBC decides to post more original content and stay engaged with our users."

You may have heard that Writers Guild of America (WGA) members have voted to authorize a strike at month's end after months of failed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). What isn't as well publicized is that one point of contention is royalty arrangements for online TV show distribution.

The problem appears to be that content providers want to use online distribution as an excuse to pay less for the same product. They've suggested paying royalties as if internet television were the same as home video, which would result in lower royalties for distributing recently aired TV shows online than airing them on television.

The problem is that model doesn't accurately represent the public's viewing habits. While there are certainly a small number of consumers renting or purchasing older TV episodes online, by far the biggest market segment for online TV viewing consists of people watching content from within the last few weeks, which is the same model most television networks are using to determine what to provide free on their websites.

John Bowman, chair of the WGA negotiating committee says that it makes sense for payments to be at least as high for distribution on the internet, Cell phones, and other new and expanding outlets as they are for traditional TV broadcasting. "Management, however, has refused to accept this interpretation, and has even threatened to do away with residuals altogether in this new medium, or to impose the outdated and unfair home video formula," said Bowman in a statement. "Given that residual income can amount to between 20 to 50 percent of a writer's income, we clearly can't allow management unilaterally to dictate this most essential contract term."

A new service called BlinkBox is advertising commercial movie downloads using something called blinks. According to their website, "A ‘blink’ is a clip from a film or TV show with your personal message. Say whatever you want with a blink. You can scare your mate with a blink from The Exorcist or send them off laughing with a blink from National Lampoon’s Vacation."

BlinkBox offers movies for rental (limited viewing period), purchase (unlimited viewing period), or burning with a standard DVD burner. Movies are stored on customer computers, but must be viewed on a single computer associated with the purchaser's BlinkBox account. Scenes from available movies can also be either viewed on the BlinkBox website or, for a small fee, sent to a mobile phone via SMS text message. Clips sent via SMS are preceded by a short ad and followed by a link to purchase the whole movie for download.

Downloading full films or sending text messages requires setting up an account first, and according to the site's terms of service all SMS recipients need to give their permission first, although that's left to the sender to take care of. Messages do indicate they originate from a phone number supplied by the sender.

Sony has said they will be installing 54 digital projectors into AMC movie theaters that have about 4x the resolution of home theater projectors.

The system, the CineAlta SXRD 4K digital cinema, will be placed in "12 screens in Dallas, 14 screens in Indianapolis, 16 screens in Riverside, and 12 screens in San Diego."

The systems involved will include the Sony SRX-R210 10,000 lumen model as well as the SRX-R220 18,000 lumen projector. The company says the systems were created specifically for use in movie theaters and that they would be paired with Sony LMT-100 Media Block Servers.

The projectors are capable of 8.8 MP resolutions which is equal to 4096 x 2160 pixels. That is four times the resolution of common HD home theater systems.

“This inaugural effort with AMC Entertainment is the latest example of the exhibition and motion picture industries’ continued adoption of 4K digital cinema technology,” said John Scarcella, president of Sony Electronics’ Broadcast and Business Solutions Company.

Its good to see movie theaters moving more towards digital projections and I hope to see the trend continue into the future.

Source:
Dailytech

At the FPD International 2007 show in Japan this week, Samsung has introduced a new 40-inch diagonal Full HD LCD TV panel that is an extremely thin, measuring in at 10mm thick.

The new thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCD is the thinnest profile ever for a full-size HDTV. 10mm is the typical thickness of 20-inch LCD computer monitors, which are generally significantly thinner than regular HDTV sets.

According to Dailytech, "The screen is backlit using LEDs and can reproduce 92% of the NTSC standard for color saturation. Power consumption is reported to be 90 watts or less."

Source:
Dailytech

Once again rumors of an Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD hard drive have surfaced, this time courtesy of a "senior Toshiba executive" in Australia.

According to Australian tech site Smarthouse, the exec is quoted as saying "An Xbox with a built in HD DVD drive is critical. (Microsoft) and we are working on it. It also has to be more than a gaming machine. Microsoft recognise(s) this. A version of the device may also be sold under the Toshiba brand name." Smarthouse also says that this new "Entertainment Xbox" is planned for release at the 2008 CES show in Las Vegas.

Of course Microsoft is not commenting but we will be sure to update you if any more evidence surfaces for this interesting new proposition.

Source:
HD Digest

Paramount Pictures has announced that its hit film Transformers has become the fastest selling HD movie ever, including the top selling launch day in HD history.

On its release date, October 16th, the movie sold 100,000 copies on HD DVD to set the record, and over its first week, over 190,000 copies were sold. As boasted by Paramount, Transformers is “the fastest and best-selling week one release on either high definitionformat as well as the best selling HD DVD ever.”

“The performance of the Transformers DVD and HD DVD has demonstrated the phenomenal success of this global franchise,” said Kelley Avery, president, Worldwide Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures. “We’re happy to be kicking off the fourth quarter with a title that clearly shows home entertainment releases are still an event that drives consumers into stores — which is a win for both content providers and retailers.”

In other news pertaining to the movie, standard definition sales of the film hit 8.3 million, dwarfing the HD sales as well as setting a 2007 record for sales.

Source:
Dailytech

Beginning on November 1st, Microsoft will be cutting the price of its Xbox 360 Premium consoles in Japan from 39,795 yen ($348 USD) to 34,800 yen ($304 USD).

The Core versions will drop to 27,800 yen ($243 USD) which Microsoft hopes will put pressure on the PlayStation 3 and Wii which continue to sell better than the 360 in Japan.

The Wii however, is still cheaper in the country, selling for 25,000 yen ($219 USD).

Since its launch, the 360 has had trouble gaining a foothold in the Japanese market and recently Microsoft signed on big name Japanese developers to create games specifically for its Asian audience.

Source:
BetaNews

eMusic's bid to compete with iTunes in audiobook sales suffered a setback when Penguin Audio, one of five publishers initially signed to provide audiobooks, backed out and withdrew 150 titles that were to be available. According to Dick Heffernan, publisher of Penguin Audio, the problem is DRM, or more accurately eMusic's lack of it.

Heffernan said “At this moment we’re not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated.” He indicated that while he had originally approved the deal as an experiment, it was rejected by his superiors.

“We wanted to take a chance and see how it would work out, and our very senior management at this moment decided that we didn’t want to do that,” Mr. Heffernan said. “We hope to possibly come to some kind of agreement down the road.”

But according to Random House Audio publisher Madeline McIntosh piracy hasn't been a problem so far. she said a piracy monitoring firm has yet to find any eMusic copies of their audiobooks on file sharing sites.

Sony Pictures TV is trying to cash in on the minisodes they debuted both on MySpace and a dedicated minisodes site called the Minisodes Network, in June. A minisode is a television episode that's been condensed to just a few minutes. Today distribution expands to AOL, Joost, and Sony's answer to YouTube - Crackle. Verizon will also make minisodes available on their wireless network.

Like on MySpace, viewing on Joost and AOL will be sponsored by ads from Honda. On Crackle the sponsor will be Pepsi, who plan to include the site in a massive advertising campaign for new retro cans. The cans will also promote the website by giving the web address. Pepsi's interest in the partnership was sparked by the classic TV shows used to create minisodes, which are now expanding to include Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Jeffersons.

Advertisers like Pepsi are finding innovative uses for online video, which allows them to target campaigns not only toward specific content, but also toward a specific delivery method. This may be advantageous for consumers as advertisers attempt to cater to the way viewers prefer to watch TV, rather than putting the restraints of DRM ahead of nearly all other concerns.

SanDisk hopes to revolutionize the way consumers get video out of their computers to watch on a television. Unlike traditional systems which require that the user either transform video to a standalone player format like DVD or figure out how to connect their computer to the TV directly, SanDisk's new TakeTV only requires that you be able to make the same connections required by a DVD player and a USB flash drive. If you can do both of those things you have all the technical expertise required to use it.

TakeTV, originally called USBTV when it was unveiled earlier this year at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, essentially consists of two components. For your TV there's a special dock that connects much like a DVD player or cable/satellite receiver. Once connected it's intended to stay with your television. The second piece is a USB flash drive with either 4GB or 8GB of storage (depending on which model you buy). Once you plug the drive into your computer you can simply drag video files to it. Once your video is copied you can simply unplug it and plug it into the dock for viewing.

In an interview with Wired magazine, hacker Robert Anderson give details about his association with the MPAA, whom he says promised him money and power in exchange for providing confidential information about BitTorrent site TorrentSpy.

According to Anderson, he began working with the MPAA in 2005 after a failed business venture with TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell. He says he emailed the MPAA offering to work with them to help fight piracy, and that's where things start getting interesting.

When he started working with MPAA legal director Dean Garfield he mentioned that he had "an informant" who could intercept any email communication on TorrentSpy servers. As it turned out that informant was him, and he did provide the information after hacking into the company's mail server and arranging to have a copy of every email passing through the machine forwarded to him.

The information provided by Anderson was eventually instrumental in bringing a copyright infringement suit against TorrentSpy, while the methods used to collect it sparked a countersuit from Justin Bunnell, claiming the MPAA illegally obtained the information. According to the suit, "Dean Garfield expressly told the informant (Anderson), on behalf of the MPAA, regarding the information that he requested, 'We don't care how you get it.'" Bunnell's suit alleges that Garfield knew, or should have known, that the information was collected illegally.

If it's indeed true that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, then surely all the studies that have been published about the "real" financial effect of P2P file sharing on the music industry fall into the latter category. It seems there's another one to add to the pile. This one was compiled by Capgemini, a consulting company that specializes in helping businesses transition between different technologies.

Capgemini's report, which analyzes falling British music industry revenues since 2004, indicates that nearly the entire difference can be explained by the transition from CDs to downloads and heavily discounted CDs. File sharing is noted as having either a neutral or net positive effect on profits.

Although the report itself is confidential, even if it weren't would we really know anything more than we do now? An organization (Capgemini) attributes market changes to factors related to their expertise. However, this simple explanation doesn't seem to take into account other obvious factors such as competition from movies and video games. It seems that yet another study has just made yet another educated but ultimately flawed guess about what's behind consumer trends.

Last week Whitehaven, on England's northwest coast, became the first region in the U. K. to begin the transition away from analog television when BBC Two's signal was shut off, to be replaced shortly after with multiple digital channels. By mid-November all analog TV signals in the town will be replaced as well.

Unlike the U. S. or Japan where the entire country will lose all analog signals at one time, in the U. K. the transition will be gradual. It won't be complete for another 5 years. But don't take the transition's slow pace as a sign that the public won't be prepared. According to Digital U. K., the government entity created to shephard the country through this transition, more than 80% of primary television sets are already digital.

"We were the first to plan the switch to digital TV, but other countries have overtaken us," acknowledges Digital U.K.'s director of corporate affairs Simon Crine. "Most of Sweden, Finland and Germany have made the switch to digital. France is in the middle of planning, but they are likely to complete the switch before us."

Source: Variety

With no official word from NBC Universal, the NBC YouTube channel has mysteriously disappeared. It's rumored that the move is in preparation for NBC's joint venture with Fox owner News Corp (Hulu). which is supposed to enter private beta this month.

Although Hulu's launch would be a logical time for such a move, with no announced date for the service to go live for the general public, it's more likely part of a larger strategy which includes both Streaming and download options for several hit shows. Their overall plan seems to be bringing online delivery in-house for maximum control.

This stands in stark contrast to the strategy CBS seems to be pursuing. Like NBC, CBS has made television shows available on their website, howevery they've also tapped the opportunity to reach more viewers through online television provider Joost. This would appear to give them a distinct advantage since many Joost viewers probably aren't even aware that NBC (or CBS) has television shows available for free online.

Vizio's strategy to build low priced HD displays has taken them from a virtually unknown manufacturer to one of the top consumer flat panel manufacturers. In order to make such an impressive splash on store shelves they've taken an approach that could leave them at the mercy of their suppliers at any time.

Using a business model reminiscent of up and coming PC manufacturers a decade ago, Vizio depends on high volume, heavily discounted sales and an unprecedented market boom in several hundred dollar televisions in order to maintain profit margins. While this strategy has clearly been beneficial for consumers over the last few months, it remains to be seen what the long term affect will be on Vizio's bottom line.

A look at the changes that accompanied the computer boom market of the late 1990s should give anyone with a financial stake in Vizio some pause. The most obvious problem with the strategy, as borne out by companies like eMachines and Gateway, is that no boom market lasts forever. Like PCs a few years ago, more people are buying HDTVs than have at any time in the past, or are likely to at any time in the future. In order for a company like Vizio to thrive beyond the inevitable sales decline, they're business model will need to adapt.

According to data provided by Strategy Analytics, the Apple iPhone was the fourth highest selling phone in the US during the third quarter, selling over 1.1 million during the quarter.

The data also showed that the phone was accounting for almost 13 percent of provider AT&T's overall sales, making it the best selling device for the carrier.

"Although the iPhone hasn't had an expansionary impact in the market, the iPhone has quickly assumed a leading market share position and raised the ante for smart devices," SA BuyerTrax chief Barry Gilbert said in a statement.

The analysts also believe in a quarter or two the phone could become the top US seller surpassing the Moto RAZR which has been on top for years.

According to the data, iPhone buyers had a total household income of more than $100,000 and most buyers were between 20 and 30 although almost 25 percent were over 50.

"[This] demonstrates that the device attracts buyers across a broad age spectrum," wireless analysis chief David Kerr said.

Kerr then added that most buyers were satisfied with the phone and its features but less satisfied with customer support, battery life and reliability.

MSN and NBC Universal will be premiering a new online series called The Celebrity Pet Dish. This follows the success of another NBC Universal produced series available on MSN, A Big Life With Sissy Biggers, getting ready to begin a third season

“In collaboration with NBCU, we’ve developed some great content,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment, video and sports at MSN. “We’ve seen a positive response from MSN Video users to ‘A Big Life’ and are happy to be rolling out the third season in addition to launching ‘Celebrity Pet Dish.’ Our MSN Originals platform continues to grow, and we continue to be committed to bringing our more than 465 million monthly MSN users the best content out there.”

As online video viewing increases and DVR usage increases steadily, online television is quickly becoming a hot commodity. Although a lot of the most successful content is already available on television network websites, the future of those networks, and their programming, is increasingly in question.

While the eventual model may still revolve around a few companies distributing most content, the existing companies are still working out deals to make that content widely available on the internet. Creating more internet-only shows seems like a logical extension of that model that we're likely to see a lot more of if it continues to prove successful.

TV-links.co.uk, the UK's most used piracy film website has been closed down and its owner arrested after a raid by the anti-piracy group, Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact).

The closure was a first for major UK-based pirate sites and the owner, a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, was arrested for charges relating to facilitating copyright infringement over the internet.

FACT claims that the site was providing links to pirated films as well as American TV shows.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for FACT.

Kieron Sharp, director general of FACT said the site was just the first of what they hope will be a successful campaign to crackdown on piracy over the internet.

"The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.

The British Video Association (BVA) has stated that piracy caused an estimated £459 million in losses to the video, film and TV industries last year.

In an update to our article here, where it was reported that The Pirate Bay had somehow gotten the rights to the domain name IFPI.com, it seems the IFPI will now be preparing a lawsuit to get the domain back.

According to an IFPI spokesperson, "IFPI's website www.ifpi.org continues to operate as normal. The web site www.ifpi.com was acquired by a cyber-squatter who appears to have passed it on to an associate of The Pirate Bay," she said. "IFPI has already taken legal action to get the domain returned. We have filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) under the dispute resolution procedure. This procedure is designed for classic cyber-squatting cases such as this which involve the use of a URL in bad faith."

The WIPO has indeed made new legislature pertaining to "cybersquatting" with rules that include that the domain cannot be used to "cause confusion with the complainant's mark" or be used to profit off the complainant's good name.

One of the admin team at TBP feels they have a strong chance of winning however.

"We have not done anything illegal or even immoral," he said. "I can't see why we shouldn't be able to keep the domain name. We're not going to bash IFPI on it, we're going to host our own IFPI on it," he added.

RealNetworks Inc. has announced that a fix will be made available for a critical unpatched vulnerability in the RealPlayer software. Symantec Corp. researchers discovered yesterday that the vulnerability was already being exploited by malware authors. "Real has created a patch for RealPlayer 10.5 and RealPlayer 11 that addresses the vulnerability identified by Symantec," wrote RealNetworks General Manager of Product Development Russ Ryan, in a Friday blog posting.

He added: "Real will make this patch available to users via this blog and our security update page later today." He said that users of RealOne Player, RealOne Player v2, and RealPlayer 10 should upgrade to the 10.5 version or the RealPlayer 11 beta code and install the patch. The attack exploits a flaw in an ActiveX browser helper object, affecting only Internet Explorer users running Windows.

"The exploit itself is embedded in advertisements that were being served by 247realmedia.com," Symantec said in a note on its DeepSight threat management system. "The redirection to the exploit page... was accomplished through an iFrame embedded in each advertisement."

CyberLink Corp. has announced that the powerful PowerDVD media player has been verified by the Sony Verification Center to support playback of rewritable Blu-ray Discs BD-RE 3.0 (BDMV format on BD-RE). Continuing its tradition of delivering superb quality for movie playback on the PC, CyberLink PowerDVD's support for BD-RE 3.0 allows users to play the BDMV content they have authored on rewritable Blu-ray Discs, and navigate the advanced interactive menus of the Blu-ray Disc format.

"As a world leader in developing digital multimedia for PCs and CE devices, CyberLink continues to provide leading quality for the latest disc authoring and playback formats," said Alice H. Chang. "The Blu-ray Disc logo is a symbol of exceptional movie quality, while PowerDVD's ability to carry this logo is an endorsement of CyberLink's technological expertise in ensuring the very best high-definition movie experience on the PC."

PowerDVD has already been certified for BD-ROM Profile 1.0, BD+, AVCHD, and HD DVD. It supports Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD technologies for audio and offers optimized performance for playing high-definition video content using graphics cards featuring NVIDIA PureVideo, ATI Avivo, and Intel Clear Video technology. It supports the interactivity features of HD DVD and Blu-ray by supporting the underlying BD-J and HDi technology.

Sonic Solutions' Roxio division has launched BackOnTrack 3, a comprehensive suite of applications that provide consumers a straightforward way to safeguard their irreplaceable personal media and critical documents. BackOnTrack 3 offers three layers of protection including instant system restoration in the event of a major system crash, disaster recovery in case of a lost or damaged hard drive, and automated data backup to secure important files such as treasured family photos, videos and financial records.

"Computers have become the keepers of our digital identities; storing everything from our treasured photos and music to critical personal and financial information," said Michael Demeyer, vice president product marketing, Roxio division of Sonic Solutions. "Until now, protecting this vital data has been time consuming and complicated. Roxio changes this with the launch of BackOnTrack, an innovative suite that provides consumers everything they need to quickly and easily secure their digital lives."

BackOnTrack features a unique component called Instant Restore that enables consumers to go from a complete system failure or blue-screen crash to a fully functioning system in minutes. Instant Restore provides real-time protection from system corruption caused by viruses, rogue web sites or accidental user actions. Complementing Instant Restore is the Disaster Recovery component that provides added security in case the hard drive is physically damaged or stolen. Disaster Recovery allows users to save a complete copy of their hard drive to a disc or an external drive that can be stored separately and used in case of an emergency.

On October 2nd, 2007, several search warrants were executed in the infamous "La Salada" market area in the province of Buenos Aires. The searches were carried out by a Special Tactical Operations Unit consisting of 300 police officers from the Gendarmería, Argentina's equivalent of a Homeland Security Agency. The raids led to the seizure of about 136,067 recorded CD-Rs.

Police officers also seized 273 burners, 8.6 million in-lays, 45,000 jewel boxes and 120,000 blank CD-Rs and made four arrests. La Salada is well known for its diverse pirating activities that include retail sales, wholesale distribution and replication labs. The authorities had already identified some organized crime syndicates that were in control of the market.

"We offer congratulations to the Argentine authorities and our national group Apdif Argentina for a job well done. More than one in three CDs sold worldwide is a pirate disc and we need to continue to crack down on the problem of music piracy," Raul Vazquez, IFPI Regional Director for Latin America.

Source:
Press Release

Panasonic, the brand name used for marketing by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., has started sample shipments of a new-generation UniPhier system LSI in October. It applies next-generation AV data compression/decompression (codec) technology to Panasonic's original digital consumer electronics integration platform, UniPhier.

Using the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video format, the compression option of choice for the next-generation of HD video products, the LSI can compress full-HD large image data down to one third to half that of the conventional methods while keeping high level definition. It also extends the recordable time significantly for the same media, and can realize smooth image data communication.




Using 45-nm semiconductor micro processing technology, Panasonic has crammed an alarming 250 million transistors into the low-power-consumption LSI. It features an advanced user interface and easy connectivity to digital electronics, realized by high-performance 3D graphics processing technology and symmetry-type multiprocessor technology.

Thanks to the impact of the blockbuster Halo 3, the Xbox 360 was the top seller for September, barely beating out the Nintendo Wii.

NPD said that Microsoft sold almost 530,000 consoles for the month, up an astonishing 91 percent from August. Halo, for its part, sold 3.3 million copies for the month.

"True to its name, the game rubbed off on hardware sales too--the Xbox 360 realized its best month ever in unit hardware sales outside last holiday season," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in a statement.

The Wii however, also showed surprising results. Sales rose 24 percent from August for a total of 500,000 sold. The number is also the new all-time high for US Wii sales in a month.

The PlayStation 3 continued to lag behind, falling 10 percent from August to hit only 119,000 units sold. Sony reps cited new price cuts and said the sales would rebound for the holiday season.

Source:
BetaNews

Seeing the massive success of iTunes, which recently sold its 3 billionth song, Universal Music has decided to offer their digital singles on USB flash drives in an effort to replace CD singles and gain more sales volume. Analysts have also said that retail margins are much higher on digital downloads than on physical copies of music.

The first tracks will be released at the end of this month and retail in the UK for about $10 USD. In comparison, a CD single of the same track will cost $6 USD.

Universal UK’s commercial director Brian Rose said “This is aimed at the younger, 12 to 24 year olds, who no longer believe that the CD is as cool as it used to be.”

Although the idea may work for the record label, there is no way music fans in that age group will purchase a single for 10x the price of the same track on iTunes.

Source:
Dailytech

The Associated Press has confirmed what some Comcast customers have been claiming; that the company interferes with the flow of P2P uploads on their network. Comcast officials have denied that this practice occurs as recently as August.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas indicated at that time that customers "downloading and sharing video, photos and other rich media" were using their internet service "as intended." His only comment to the AP's new test results was that "Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent." Of course blocking uploads hardly blocks access to the program.

Based on Douglas' past comments, this doesn't appear to be a case of ISP censorship, because they don't really seem to care what's being uploaded from their network. They're just trying to sustain high connection speeds for all their customers without adding a lot of additional bandwidth.

Instead of treating file uploads as a nuisance to be stamped out, broadband ISPs might do well to take the opportunity to explore how P2P traffic affects their network, and find optimizations that can help alleviate speed issues with the least amount of financial overhead. With streaming video already gaining a hold and true IPTV applications being marketed to the general public in some areas, it seems like a sure bet that a glut of traffic is coming soon.

Sigma Designs has announced that Samsung's third-generation Blu-ray Disc player, the BD-P1400, will be powered by Sigma's SMP8634 media processor. The BD-P1400 offers full compatibility with 24 movie frames per second playback, matching the native filming format for most movies and reducing artifacts. The new BD player also supports 60 frame/second output for enhanced compatibility with many of today's HDTVs.

Focusing also on sound quality, Samsung's new BD player completes consumers' HD total home theater experience with advanced HD audio decoding featuring the industry's first HD audio bit-stream pass-through on HDMI 1.3 for formats DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS-HD High resolution Audio, Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby Digital Plus, enabling a variety of clear, full-bodied sound options.Samsung's BD-P1400 also features support for the optional HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) system.

In Spain, a Madrid magistrate has declared the case against Sharemula, a website publishing download links through which users can acquire TV series, music, software, etc., dismissed.

In October 2006 15 individuals were arrested, among which were people responsible for Sharemula. Now a year later court came to a decision that the site or its administration have not committed any violations against the copyright law by publishing links to peer-to-peer downloads.

The ruling was a considered a success by the Sharemula attorneys, who based the defense on three existing court rulings on similar cases. By not directly profiting from the downloads or storing illegal content, Sharemula did not break the law and was released from the accusations.

It is likely that the prosecution, including multinational companies such as Walt Disney, Paramount, Sony and Time Warner, will file an appeal shortly.

Source:
ELPAIS.com (Spanish)

SlySoft has announced the release of GameJackal Enterprise, a network version of GameJackal Pro, after months of development. The Enterprise Edition of Game Jackal has all the features of the basic product plus some fantastic additions to enhance the manageability of a no CD gaming environment for cybercafe owners and other network environments.

Enterprise Edition seamlessly integrates with other third-party launchers and cybercafé applications such as SmartLaunch and CyberCafe Enterprise. Pricing is from $15 to $29 per client license. Owners of old Jacal Enterprise licenses can upgrade their license packs for a $50 flat fee.

Along with the release of GameJackal Enterprise, SlySoft is offering a discount on all of its products over Halloween. Entering the coupon code "halloween" (without quotes) at the checkout will provide a 20% discount on all products (excluding upgrades). The offer is valid until November, 5th 2007.

On Thursday a senior Chinese intellectual property enforcement official made a statement essentially indicating that China's intellectual property (IP) enforcement problems aren't really anyone else's business, and that other countries shouldn't politicize it.

"Is IPR protection a problem? Yes, it is. But is it as serious as some say? Not necessarily. To a greater degree, it's hyped-up, politicized. We cannot accept that," said Tian Lipu, head of the Chinese government's intellectual property rights enforcement, responsible for cracking down on piracy.

He also compares China's current situation with that of countries like the Britain or the U. S. in the past, saying "How long did it take developed countries? 300 years in the case of countries like Britain, or 200 years in the United States," he said. "One generation is not enough here. If you ask me, I estimate it will take three to five generations." He added "In fact, if China does not do well, the biggest victim will be China itself." That's a statement that IP holders will certainly agree with.

In the end though, Tian says the Chinese government isn't worried about a U. S. WTO complaint against them for lax IP enforcement. He said "I think China is not scared about this. The facts will prove our point of view."

Media giant Viacom is starting to take better advantage of their vast range of television content by putting clips from Comedy Central hit The Daily Show online. CEO Philippe Dauman said "We believe in following the consumer. We've always done that in our history."

Also according to Dauman, the Daily Show clips are just the beginning. Certainly Viacom has a lot of content that should be attractive to advertisers. YouTube's explosive growth, which was fueled in part by Viacom owned material, has generated a lot of excitement among advertisers who are growing uncomfortable with the number of consumers skipping commercials with their DVRs.

With channels like Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, and TV Land, Viacom has plenty of content at their disposal. They've already started working with outlets like Joost to distribute video online. If the trend towards increased online video viewing increases, established media companies like Viacom have an opportunity to develop new distribution models for their catalogs. At the same time, advertisers have a chance to meet a more precisely selected, although probably smaller audience.

Source: Cnet

Although they've survived years of legal battles with copyright holders, credit card companies, and international pressure, Russian websites selling copyrighted music without the copyright holder's permission may finally shut down in a bid for the country to gain entrance into the World Trade Organization.

Sites like the now infamous Allofmp3.com do pay royalties to a Russian licensing body. Unfortunately, that body isn't sanctioned by music labels to collect royalties for them, which explains why music can be sold at a fraction of what mainstream stores like iTunes would pay in royalties. In the past, Allofmp3 has successfully defended their licensing practices in Russian courts, which do recognize the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) as a legitimate royalty collection agency.

That hasn't stopped the music industry from applying pressure on world governments, especially the United States, to put pressure of their own on Russia to crack down on the problem. By joining the WTO Russia would make it easier to do business from within the country with other 150 WTO members. This gives them ample incentive to take piracy seriously. The question now is whether they'll be able to back up a tough stance with effective enforcement. Until now they haven't been successful.

Despite their humiliating retreat in the P2P copyright infringement case against Tanya Anderson, the RIAA is acting as though they won the case and arguing in court that they shouldn't have to pay her legal bills because she's probably guilty.

As crazy as it sounds, RIAA lawyer William Patton wrote in his brief to the judge deciding the matter "It would be an extraordinary coincidence indeed if this defendant had nothing to do with infringement at issue in this matter." That's right. The RIAA is saying she shouldn't be treated as though she was exonerated when they dropped the case for a lack of evidence. And the legal argument appears to be that they're reasonably sure they're right. What the legal precedent for such an argument would be is unclear at this time.

Meanwhile, Anderson's lawyers have said her legal tab "may exceed the amount the RIAA is publicly crowing about in the absurd verdict against Jammie Thomas." Of course, the exact amount in fees they can collect would be up to the judge.

Anderson plans to use the money to pay for a countersuit she plans to file against the RIAA. That countersuit, also in the Oregon federal court, seeks class-action status to represent "those who were sued or were threatened with suit by defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement." The lawsuit alleges "the class is comprised of many thousands of individuals."

The RIAA has continued its ongoing efforts to curb piracy on college campuses by sending 411 new "pre-litigation" letters with the threat of a lawsuit to 19 seperate schools.

The letters were sent to each of the following schools; Drexel, Indiana, Northern Illinois, Occidental College, SUNY Morrisville, Texas Christian University, Tufts, the University of Alabama, UC Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Georgia, University of Iowa, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of New Hampshire, University of New Mexico, University of South Florida, USC, and Vanderbilt.

Anyone who receives the letters have the option to either settle out of court with a record industry representative or face a lawsuit in federal court.

"While it's undoubtedly our last preference to bring legal action against students, music theft remains particularly acute on college campuses," general counsel Steven Marks said.

The RIAA also cites an NPD study conducted last year that claims that over 1.3 billion unauthorized songs were downloaded on college campuses and that over 50 percent of all students continue to illegally download music.

Thomson has announced that they will be selling their AV operations outside of Europe to the Audiovox corporation and that sale is expected to be completed by the New Year.

The company also said that it will be closing its European AV and accessory activities.

Thomson sold a variety of products from MP3 to DVD players, most notably under the brand name RCA. The sale will also transfer the rights to the RCA brand "within the AV products field." Audiovox already owns the rights to use the RCA name for consumer electronics accessories.

Source:
Dailytech

Film executives are blaming one of the poorest recent Hollywood Box Office weekend performances on the impact of the hit Xbox 360 game Halo 3.

The movie industry had expected the latest Ben Stiller comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" to rake in $25 million USD over its opening weekend but the movie fell far short and made only $14 million USD.

The execs, citing that the target audience for Ben Stiller comedies is young adults, predominantly male, the same as the target audience for Halo, proves that the game had some impact on the poor ticket sales.

Although it is possible that $10 million dollars worth of sales stayed at home to play Halo 3 all weekend, it is more likely that the less than warm critical reviews were to blame. Not to mention the movie had an "R" rating, while Halo had a "M" rating, meaning younger viewers could not see the movie but could play the game.

The October 5th weekend was the movie industry's worst October week since 1999, with only $80 million in ticket sales but its unbelievable that industry execs would blame Halo for the poor ticket sales.


Source:
Dailytech

On October 10th, the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) arm of the ARIA worked with the New South Wales Police to carry out a raid on the home of an illegal trader of country music in Kelso near Bathurst. The raid led to the seizure of about 2,000 pirate CDs, extensive burning equipment, a computer and printing equipment. The male trader was allegedly selling burnt country music CDs to unsuspecting market goers at the Bathurst and Orange markets.

MIPI received tips from members of the public that had bought the counterfeit products unknowingly and attempted to contact the market operator. However, the market operator refused to take any steps to identify the trader of the pirate CDs and so MIPI traced the man to an address at Kelso near Bathurst. The matter was referred to the Chifley Target Action Group of the NSW Police who acted promptly to apply and execute the search warrant.

"Market operators need to take responsibility for the sale of pirate music at their markets, particularly in circumstances such as this where it has been brought to their immediate attention. It's not okay to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct that denies artists and songwriters the income they deserve and allows pirates to profit from other people's hard work," Sabiene Heindl, General Manager of MIPI said.

Pinnacle Systems, Inc., the consumer division of Avid Technology, Inc., has expanded its Pinnacle PCTV line of TV tuners. The new Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick is the industry's only USB 2.0 TV tuner stick that provides plug-and-watch TV viewing on a PC without any installation. The Pinnacle PCTV HD Card is a HDTV tuner card which includes support for FM radio. The company is also offering a Pinnacle PCTV Remote Kit for Windows Media Center.

According to estimates by research analysts at In-Stat/MDR, worldwide sales of PC-TV tuners will increase from approximately 15.8 million in 2006 to 50.8 million in 2011. With the increased amount of HD content available, the market for robust TV tuners that will let consumers watch HDTV on a PC is growing rapidly.

The Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick requires no installation as the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) software runs from the stick. Pinnacle TVCenter Pro, a complete PVR application, and FlashPVR, a technology that allows TVCenter Pro software to run from the stick's on-board flash memory, come with the stick. Video can be captured in MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (optimized for iPod or PSP), DivX, or even direct-to-DVD.

It seems like Apple may be showing its belly in submission to the cat and mouse type games its been playing with hackers over the third-party application development for the iPhone. Since its release, Apple has attempted to Block any Homebrew applications on its device by regularly sending updates set to cut off access to its core. They had even gone as far as to release an update that stated if the phone was found with any homebrew applications on it, the user would permanently "brick" their iPhone by grabbing the latest update. This of course infuriated iPhone users and led to several lawsuits.

Now, Apple has seen the light and is welcoming third-party application developers to produce working applications that will make the iPhone a better device to own. They stated that in February, they will release the Software Developers Kit (SDK) to the masses and allow them to code applications for the device. The company has stressed however that although they will unlock the device to allow other applications, they are not changing their policies against unlocking the iPhone for use with other carriers besides AT&T.

Several of the top media groups have joined forces in an agreement to combat copyright infringement on the Internet. Companies such as Fox, Microsoft, Viacom, MySpace and others have all signed an agreement to better Filter copyrighted material and how its distributed on the web.

Absent from the ballot appears to be Google who seems to always be wrapped up in some type of infringement lawsuit. In fact, there currently is a $1 billion suit filed by Viacom for just that. As a public show of saving face, it's quite possible that Google may join this coalition very soon.

Details of the venture as set to be released later today, however the ultimate goal is to collectively assist in Blocking the upload and distribution of copyrighted material to websites and blocking said material before it is able to be consumed by the masses.

One of the biggest offenders, Google and YouTube released new filters on their servers to help combat copyrighted material, however it does not possess the technology to Block it from being uploaded in the first place.

Normally on opposite sides of the fence, especially in the next-generation format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, Sony and Toshiba are negotiating an agreement to work together in producing the Cell processor. In this agreement, Sony hopes that their joint venture will assist in bringing costs of production down as well as push towards integration of the powerful Cell processor into other electronic devices.

Negotiations are still underway however they are expected to fully share responsibility by April of next year. According the preliminary deal, Toshiba will own 60 percent of the shares while the remainder will be split between two remaining Sony companies. Additionally, Sony stated that it will sell its production line plant in Nagasaki to Toshiba which is responsible for producing the Cell processor. Currently under Sony's leadership, the Cell processor is produced using 65-nanometer process technology, but under the direction of Toshiba, the chip will see 45-nanometer processing. This means smaller, cheaper and more energy efficient Cell chips in the future.

Images, rumors and articles have been thrown around the Internet of the new 40Gb Playstation 3 but no one had been able to confirm what Sony's plan with the new console was, until today. Sony Computer Entertainment America president Jack Tretton has announced today that Sony officially backs the $400 40Gb Playstation 3 for sale in the US.

The new system will hit the shelves November 2nd, just in time for the holiday season, but that's not all. The 80Gb version of the PS3 will now see a $100 price drop from $600 to $500. This begs to question what happens to the middle-class 60Gb version?

There are a few changes in the 40Gb PS3 that may not sit well with gamers. The omission of two USB ports, down from four and the exclusion of any memory slots for different media types are two lesser cuts to the console. The biggest cost cutting technique just may make gamers cry foul however. The 40Gb PS3 will be the first in the lineup to not be backwards compatible with older Playstation and Playstation 2 titles. "Backward compatibility is a nice secondary consideration, but it's far from the number-one priority, said Tretton. This seems like a strange departure since one of their earlier campaigns when they were about to launch was the fact that they were fully backwards compatible.

While studios like Sony would like you to believe that their movies will only be available on Blu-ray, it turns out that many Blu-ray only titles in the U. S. are already available on HD DVD in other countries.

Don't take this as a sign that Sony, or any other studio, has given up on the Blu-ray format. In fact the the dual format releases are due to distribution agreements for movies financed by multiple studios. For example, the movie Basic Instinct was produced jointly by Sony owned Tri-Star and France's Canal Plus. Since Canal Plus, an HD DVD backer, has distribution rights in France, that's the format used in that country. If you're in the U. S. you simply need to find someone willing to sell you a copy. With the proliferation of online shopping, and American companies already importing foreign movies for sale in the U. S., finding a supplier for these releases isn't a problem.

Although there are also movies from HD DVD studios appearing on Blu-ray, owners of those players aren't quite as excited about the prospect. That's because unlike HD DVD, Blu-ray uses region coding. Region coding was already one of DVD's most contreversial features, as it's designed to control access to content by designating a particular area of the world where a disc can be played. Even though a North American Blu-ray player and HDTV are perfectly capable of reading and displaying the content, all players respect the region coding, effectively making coasters of foreign Blu-ray releases.

On Tuesday, Movie Gallery, the second leading brick and mortar video rental chain in the U. S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization) protection, hoping to turn around an operation having problems competing with online movie rentals from both Netflix and Blockbuster. Late in the day the company received court approval to access $140 million dollars of financing in order continue paying employees and vendors.

"The company intends to work with its constituencies to exit bankruptcy as expeditiously as possible, while executing on its reorganization plans," said Movie Gallery.

Besides online DVD rental, Movie Gallery must also compete with Blockbuster in the world of traditional brick and mortar rental operations. Two years ago both companies were competing to buy the Hollywood Video chain, a competition which Movie Gallery eventually won. Blockbuster's biggest problem at that time was a poor showing before the FCC when they attempted to prove there were no monopoly concerns in play. Two years later, as Blockbuster loses money competing with Netflix and Movie Gallery is closing stores and filing for bankruptcy, that issue seems a little less salient.

Cable operators and consumer electronics manufacturers can't seem to agree on what kind of communication should be standard for communications between cable boxes and other equipment. The two sides are preparing for a showdown as the FCC gets ready to consider a Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) proposal that would extend the current CableCard specs to allow external devices to actually control cable television devices.

The CableCard standard was developed to create a standard interface for third party equipment to receive a signal from a cable television connection. Instead of putting the functionality all into a set-top box, it can be used to interface directly to devices like DVRs. The problem right now is that control of more advanced features, like VOD (Video On Demand) requires more user input than the CableCard standard allows.

In order to remedy this the CEA proposal, called DCR+, would simply add a standard interface to send instructions from CableCard connected devices to the cable television system. An alternate plan from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), also submitted to the FCC earlier this year, would involve the use of middleware, which would still create a standard interface for communicating with the cable system through a CableCard, but allow cable providers to connect to the middleware in whatever way they want. The NCTA calls their implemention OpenCable.

TiVo Series3 owners will finally by able to use the eSATA ports on their DVRs with the release of the newest version of the unit's software. Although some TiVo owners have been able to use these ports for some time now, until this update it required some OS hacking.

eSATA is a connection used for external SATA drives. It's supported by a variety of external hard drives and enclosures, and potentially makes adding storage to a TiVo, or even copying files to some other location (like a PC) much easier. However, the feature isn't going to be without limitations. Using the port with the official TiVo software will apparently require a "verified" hard drive. It's not clear yet exactly what that means, but additional details are expected soon.

The new update is also expected to include improvements to compatibility with Amazon.com's Unbox video download service. Support for Unbox was added to the units earlier this year.

More upgrades are expected in November, including TiVo to TiVo transfers, also known as multi-room viewing, and the addition of Tivo2Go support, which was previously only available on Series2 units. Tivo2Go allows the transfer of TiVo content to a PC across a network connection.

As of the beginning of this month Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the United States no longer sells analog televisions. The move comes as retailers, and hopefully consumers, prepare for the end to analog broadcasts in February of 2009. The chain does plan to carry DTV converter boxes that some consumers will be receiving government vouchers for.

“We are committed to helping people understand the digital television transition, and exiting the analog video business is one way we can help avoid confusion,” said Mike Vitelli, Best Buy’s electronics senior VP. “Customers can now be sure that any television they purchase at Best Buy will be fully compliant with the digital television transition. And for customers who aren’t in the market for a new television, we can help you find the best solution to meet your needs.”

This may be the smoothest part of the U.S. analog to digital cutover. Over the last few months there have been Congressional hearings and General Accounting Office reports criticizing the FCC's inaction in educating consumers regarding the upcoming switch. There's even been a mandate from the FCC requiring cable television providers to continue providing analog signals until 2012.

Members of the U.s. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulators asking for a list of risks associated with the use of P2P software and networks.

The letter stems from hearings the committee conducted earlier this year, where it was suggested by chairman Henry Waxman that P2P software poses a "national security threat" because of files containing sensitive government information which were shared inadvertantly by government employees and discovered during an audit of P2P services.

The interesting aspect of this story is the apparent lack of interest in cracking down on user installed software on government computers. Like almost all corporate IT operations, the government has strict regulations regarding the unauthorized installation of software by users. In fact, a Department of Transportation official testified at that hearing that before installing file sharing software on a government computer the user is required to get written permission first.

So if the point of this isn't to resolve national security issues uncovered during that investigation, what is it? According to the seven page letter the committee submitted to the head of the FTC they're worried that P2P software includes features that share files without the user realizing it. If, in fact, this is a problem - and it's a legitimate question to pose - the next obvious question is what it has to do with government oversight.

On Monday, the HD DVD camp finally extended its "five free" titles promotion to Canada, after months of it being available only in the US.

The deal, which gives any purchaser of an HD DVD player the option to mail in for five free movies has been ongoing in the States for months on and off. The Blu-ray camp has had a similar promotion going in the US and Canada for some time now giving them an edge in the Canadian market.

Any buyer of a Toshiba HD DVD player, Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on (which is also made by Toshiba), or a Toshiba laptop with an HD DVD drive is entitled to the Canadian deal however, making it different than the US promotion.

The movies included are Aeon Flux, Babel, Freedom Writers, The Hulk, Pitch Black, The Thing, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, TMNT, Full Metal Jacket, Firewall, The Frighteners, U2: Rattle and Hum, Black Rain, Darkman and Syriana.

The only catch for the deal is the consumer is forced to pay a $10 shipping and handling fee for the free movies that can be paid via check or money order.

Source:
Dailytech

The RIAA is suing North Dakota based Usenet.com, Inc., claiming the company "enables and encourages its customers to reproduce and distribute millions of infringing copies of Plaintiff's valuable copyrighted sound recordings."

The key to the RIAA argument seems to be the encouraging aspect more than anything else. In order to show liability on the part of the operator of the Usenet message board network, lawyers must establish not just that copyrighted content can and has been shared on Usenet, but also that Usenet.com encouraged this behavior.

Usenet.com's website clearly states that they don't monitor any identifying information about who uploads, downloads, or posts anything on the network of message boards, which the RIAA apparently plans to argue is an invitation to do illegal things.

"They started by going after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, and after that they said, 'We're gonna go after individuals to see if we (can) get into the psyche of people that peer-to-peer file sharing is wrong,'" says Washington, D.C.-based copyright attorney Ross Dannenberg. "Now it has come full circle. Throughout this cycle, (Usenet) newsgroups have been ignored."

20th Century Fox has become the second studio to offer an additional digital version of a film to consumers who buy it on DVD. The copy, which can be played on computers and some portable media players. The video will be included on a second DVD, and will require that the user enter a 16 digit code found inside the DVD case. It uses Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM, meaning that besides PC's, players from a number of vendors including Archos, Toshiba, Samsung, and RCA (but not Microsoft) is possible.

Earlier this month Warner Brothers announced that the DVD release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will allow users to download a copy of the movie for playback on a media player, following the sale of Superman Returns with a similar feature.

The studios aren't providing the additional copies of the movies for no extra charge just to be nice. They're looking for ways to give consumers an incentive not to Rip their DVDs. That, in turn, would theoretically strengthen studio arguments against DMCA or EUCD exceptions for otherwise legal fair use purposes and give consumers with little knowledge of digital video an alternative to making DRM free copies themselves.

LCD TV manufacturers are building new plants in an effort to streamline delivery to both European and North American customers. Most recently, Sony Corporation has begun building TVs in Slovakia, while Sharp has opened its first North American LCD manufacturing operation in Mexico. Other manufacturers, including Toshiba, are building facilities in Europe for LCD TV production.

Europeans seem to be adopting flat panel televisions more readily than any country besides Japan, where 99% TVs shipped during the second quarter of this year. During the same period 97% of all units shipped in Europe were flat panels. The U. S. lagged behind at only 88%.

With profit margins falling on LCD displays, and increased competition from manufacturers like Vizio targetting budget minded consumers, established companies are having to position themselves for stiff competition. Additionally, the conversion from analog to digital television in much of the world should ensure customers for years to come.

Source: PC World

Although they have not made an official announcement yet, Apple has quietly dropped the price of their DRM-free iTunes Plus tracks from $1.29 USD to 99 cents.

The new price is equal to that of standard iTunes DRM crippled tracks.

It seems this latest move is in response to Amazon's DRM-free music store launch in which the tracks are sold for 89 to 99 cents a piece.

The official announcement is expected tomorrow in which Apple is expected to add to their DRM-free offering with music from independent labels while announcing the price drop.

Source:
BetaNews

After comments suggesting that there might not be support for any operating system besides Windows for the BBC's iPlayer service, BBC Director of Future Media and Tehnology Ashley Highfield was overruled by the BBC Trust.

A spokesman for the regulatory body noted "We required platform neutrality across downloads, Streaming and cable," referring to the conditions under which the iPlayer program was initially approved. He added "We would expect BBC management to come back to us if they are planning any changes to iPlayer."

On Monday, Highfield said "We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux," adding "It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."

The iPlayer, which is designed to eventually allow everyone who pays television license fees to download BBC programs and keep them for as long as a month, has been criticized since it's public beta began earlier this year because it only runs on computers running Windows. Open source advocates, and even Macintosh users, have complained that former Microsoft executives now working on the iPlayer have specifically catered to Windows users at the expense of everyone else.

The latest round of lawsuits to hit the Cupertino California based Apple include an interesting angle from studies performed by Greenpeace, the environmental group. Their studies show that the plastics used in Apple's iPhone contain a reproductive toxin and carcinogenic known as phthalates.

According to California's Proposition 65, products containing reproductive toxins must either be taken off the market or issued with a warning label stating they can potentially cause cancer. This lawsuit and report stems from studies on the plastics used in the vinyl plastic earphone wiring.

"This isn't a toy. But the overall exposure of the public in general is a problem, especially for children," said Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace's toxics campaign. "It's a reproductive hazard. It could be a kidney hazard."

Apple has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit and has yet to comment on the issues at hand. This lawsuit comes at a time when Apple was just jumping on the environmental bandwagon. Earlier they had faced issues with Trillium Asset Management in which they were persuaded to produce a company wide environmental policy.

Source:
San Jose Mercury

U.S. lawmakers may be in for a taste of their own copyright medicine stemming from the use of characters from iconic animated series The Simpsons by the Republican Party. The images appeared in a press release posted on an official House of Representatives website as part of a campaign in opposition to a bill funding a children's health insurance initiative.

"Twentieth Century Fox was unaware of the illegal use of characters from The Simpsons in this press release. Let me assure you, Fox did not authorize this use. Characters from The Simpsons may not be used in this manner" said Fox Broadcasting licensing spokesman Andy Brandt.

It's unclear whether Fox actually intends to bring legal action over what appears to be a fairly obvious case of copyright infringement, but if history is any indication they're legal department is probably seriously considering it. In 2003 Fox News reportedly considered suing Simpsons creator Matt Groening over a parody of the news channel on sister service Fox Broadcasting. The suit was never filed due to Groening's long and profitable relationship with Fox.

Although parodies are generally covered by fair use provisions, since this press release parodies the Democratic supporters of the bill being discussed, rather than being a parody of the copyrighted characters.

Once the most impressive force in digital file sharing, Napster had taken a hiatus after being sued into oblivion for offering a platform that allowed illegal file sharing to run rampant. Some could proclaim that it was Napster's involvement in the file sharing world that gave birth to the practices that groups like the RIAA employ today. Nevertheless, Napster had decided to come back into the world of digital music with its new legit platform, only to be faced with the brute force market share of Apple's iTunes. These days, Napster hopes to turn all of that around with its new web-based music service.

This move is intended to attract new paying subscribers to the Napster service by offering a platform that can be accessed on virtually any Internet capable device.

"With this new platform Napster can easily be integrated into consumer electronics devices or integrated into other Web sites such as social networking sites," said Christopher Allen, chief operating officer at Napster.

Napster hopes this will get them in line for more market shares during what's being seen as a turning point as more record labels are making their catalogs available without the hindering Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoding.

Starting yesterday, Blu-ray, Best Buy, and Circuit City began a new "buy one, get one free" promotion on Disney Blu-ray titles.

The same deal is available online through Amazon. There is no set list for the retailers, but all include user favorites 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest,' 'Apolocalypto' and 'The Prestige.'

The promotion is set to last until the end of the week or until supplies run out, whichever happens first.

Seems like a good deal for those looking for early holiday gifts.

Source:
HD Digest

The most popular social networking site MySpace recently signed a deal with record label Sony BMG that would allow MySpace users access to the label's recording content free of charge for use on their profile pages. The deal is part of an ad-sharing venture which will allow Sony to receive a part of the proceeds from ads generated on user pages that sport music videos and music from the label's library.

This move will enable MySpace's claimed 70 million users to have full access to Sony BMG's content. Users who were once reprimanded are now granted access to music and music videos to customize their profile pages as they once were. Only this time, legally.

Sony BMG is the second largest record label and can offer a wide variety of tracks to the MySpace community. Its said that once launched, these videos and music files will be made available on the coinciding artist's MySpace profile page.

Source:
Reuters

AT&T's quest to provide an alternative to cable television in Connecticut has hit a snag after that state's Department of Public Utillity Control (DPUC) rejected an application to provide IPTV services across the entire state.

AT&T has come under fire from some municipalities in recent months because they claim their U-Verse IPTV service isn't covered by the same regulations that govern cable television services. After a ruling in a Federal court earlier this year, which indicated that they are in fact considered a cable television provider under federal law, AT&T decided to apply for a statewide monopoly. This would have allowed them to operate within any part of the state, regardless of how local officials felt about it. With this ruling, they'll be required to get a contract with each municipality before offering service.

"In making this ruling, the DPUC ignored both the spirit and the letter of a brand-new consumer-friendly law and is protecting the cable monopoly," Ramona Carlow, an AT&T official overseeing regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

"Consumers should be outraged that just as more than 150,000 local households in more than 40 Connecticut cities and towns gained the ability to choose a video provider other than their local cable monopoly, the DPUC and attorney general have acted to protect cable monopolies by eliminating competition," Carlow said, referring to the 40 cities where U-verse is already available.

The former Kinks singer Ray Davies has agreed to a deal that would give his latest album, the "Working Man's Cafe", free with the Sunday Times newspapers.

The deal is very similar to the one Prince did last month when he gave his CD away free with The Mail on Sunday.

Davies said he was "truly excited that 1.5 million copies will be distributed to people who'll hear it organically... the way it was intended".

The deal calls for the album to come free with the paper on October 21st and a track from the album, "Vietnam Cowboys", will be available as a free MP3 download from the newspaper's website.

"It's an exciting opportunity I couldn't resist," Davies said. "Personally, it's about reaching as many people as possible."

This peice of news follows the decisions by Radiohead, Oasis, Jamiroqui, the Charlatans and Madonna to release music in new ways, usually cutting the record industry out.

Source:
BBCNews

YouTube has finally rolled out its long awaited video fingerprinting technology, which the company believes will allow them to automatically find and remove illegally posted copyrighted content. The tools' launch comes as the viral video leader is embroiled in an assortment of lawsuits from individuals and organizations accusing the company of not being proactive enough in finding and removing infringing material.

Despite the lawsuits, however, YouTube's official position has always been that by removing offending content when informed by content owners they're already living up to their legal responsibility. Until this defense is tested in court, there's some question whether it will hold up to a legal challenge. The applicable portion of the DMCA was intended to protect hosting providers to ensure they're not liable for their customers' infringement.

Mike Fricklas, Viacom's general counsel, said "We are delighted that Google appears to be stepping up to its responsibility and end the practice of infringement." However, he didn't comment on what, if any, effect the move would have on the infringement suit Viacom has been pursuing against YouTube for several months.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has finally unveiled plans for a campaign to educate U.S. consumers about the transition to digital television from analog in less than a year and a half.

Much has been made of the issue lately, as the Federal Government's General Accounting Office has taken the FCC to task for practically ignoring the problem. Meanwhile over the air broadcasters, who stand to lose a lot if viewers aren't able to receive their signals, have been almost completely silent, leading many to wonder who's going to take responsibility for making sure the public is prepared.

The NAB's ad campaign, which are expected to air on national networks, as well as individual stations across the country, are intended to inform consumers about the impending switch, and what to do to ensure they have a television capable of receiving and displaying digital signals. While all new televisions manufactured for sale in the U.S. over the last couple of years are all digital ready, most viewers who receive over the air signals have older analog sets that will require either replacement or the addition of a digital to analog converter box.

Although the government is planning to provide vouchers that should cover the cost of the converters, unless they're aware of the problem, consumers will have a hard time taking advantage of this program.

Captured in a few Target stores across the United States are images showing their marketing push towards the Blu-ray format. Reported earlier, Sony had worked a deal where the retail chain would only sell their format, which was later discovered to be false in that Target would be a preferred Blu-Ray store, yet still cater to HD-DVD.

Target has begun installing Blu-Ray only end caps in their retail isles showcasing both the Blu-Ray players and a rather large selection of movie titles. HD-DVD is still represented at the store, however the end caps for that are almost half the size with only a few titles.

Source:
Engadget

DirecTV announced on Monday that it would be expanding its channel lineup to include 72 HD channels for those customers that have paid for the premium lineup.

The added channels are part of an effort to offer 100 HD channels by the end of 2007. At 72, DirecTV's lineup of HD channels far exceeds any other provider, cable or satellite.

The company's standard HD package costs an extra $9.99 USD a month and includes all HD channels associated with your particular DirecTV package. For an extra $5 USD however you can get access to all the HD channels as well as all local channels that are available in HD.

Source:
BetaNews

Beginning November 13 people subscribing to any number of online digital music retailers will be able to purchase the entire collection of veteran rockers Led Zeppelin.

Guitarist Jimmy Page announced that, "We are pleased that the complete Led Zeppelin catalogue will now be available digitally. The addition of the digital option will better enable fans to obtain their music in whichever manner they prefer."

To coincide with their great online release party, the group is also releasing a two CD compilation of their musical career as well as a remix of the 1973 The Song Remains the Same. As if that wasn't enough, they've apparently also reached a deal with Verizon Wireless to provide ringtones and full song downloads to the masses.

Source:
The Register

With DRM apparently on its way out for music downloads, developers are working hard to come up with new ways to make use of their customers' new found freedom.

According to MP3tunes CEO and MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, the switch to a DRM free model will free up developers to try new and innovative ideas, instead of spending all their time finding ways to implement DRM solutions and develop frameworks that work with them.

"Over the last decade, the many different DRM schemes (Windows Media, ATRAC, iTunes, Madison Project, Liquid Audio, SDMI, Real, a2b, etc.) promoted by so many large corporations have created confusion in the marketplace and soaked up hundreds of millions of dollars in development," he said. "The resurgent focus on MP3 will mean future dollars can be focused on building compelling new ways for the consumer to first get and then enjoy their music."

Not all online retailers are likely to be as happy about going DRM free however. Subscription services like Napster rely on DRM considerations to sell the ability to access music from various locations on various devices. With no DRM to hold them back, other services are likely to target subscription customers with services like MP3Tunes' music lockers, which allow DRM free music to be stored online for access from any internet connection.

This month marked the switch from beta to release status for Joost, marketed as the world's first broadcast quality internet television network. According to the company, over 2 million people have already downloaded the required player application during the beta period, and over 100,000 shows have been downloaded per day since the October 1 launch.

"The Internet will start off showing traditional entertainment but eventually users and content creators will use the capabilities of the Internet to create some amazing entertainment," said Mike Volpi, who heads up Joost. The service is being showcased at this week's MIPCOM convention, an annual global convention for A/V producers and distributors.

Joost's launch comes ahead of competitors that are eventually expected to include television networks. That could make it difficult for Joost to get some of the high profile television shows Volpi is counting on to remain 100% advertiser supported.

Source: Yahoo News

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., today announced that the Fujitsu IP-9500 MPEG-4 AVC HD Encoder, pitching it at the broadcasting industry in a time when demand for high definition (HD) content is soaring. The IP-9500, which is being showcased at HD World this week, offers broadcast quality video transmission at low bit-rates and low latency, enabling HD news content to be transmitted in the same satellite bandwidth as standard definition (SD), at a fraction of the cost of competing products.

"The IP-9500 is ideal for today's HD satellite news gathering. As a result of using innovative MPEG-4 AVC compression algorithms developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, the IP-9500 delivers HD quality at a very low latency, encoding and decoding video content at less than 300 milliseconds," said Vic Herring, senior director, new products group, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.

Herring added: "Fujitsu anticipates that MPEG-4 AVC will become the industry standard to replace MPEG-2 for demanding HD applications such as SNG, pushing us to innovate products for a rapidly growing HD market. We're inviting major broadcast, satellite and cable networks to review and qualify our product." The IP-9500 encoder is already available in Japan.

Verbatim Corporation has brought recordable and rewritable Mini Blu-ray media (BD-R/BD-RE) to the European market. The 8cm discs store 7.5GB of data, which is advertised as being capable of storing one hour of high definition (1920x1080) video on a single side, or approximately two hours with a lower resolution of 1440x1080. The new Mini BD media have been launched in Japan simultaneously with the new Hitachi BD-compatible camcorder in August.

In Europe, the Verbatim Mini Blu-ray media will be available at the beginning of November. "Verbatim Mini BD media combined with a BD-compatible camcorder provides consumers with convenience features that hard disk camcorders cannot offer", says Torsten Leye, Marketing Manager Optical Verbatim EUMEA. "Therefore, the Verbatim high quality media are perfect for the reliable shooting and long-term storing of holiday and family videos."

Like Verbatim's standard (12 cm) BD media, the new 8 cm Mini BD media delivers the highest read/write performance and unsurpassed longevity. Advanced technologies developed by Verbatim´s parent company, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), guard against deterioration in picture and sound quality ? even with repeated recording and playback. The proprietary hard-coat finish on Verbatim BD media has superior anti-static and anti-scratch properties for added protection against scratches, fingerprints and dust particles that can occur during normal camcorder and home use.

Tech companies and television networks are feuding over the use of so called "white spaces" in the television spectrum for wireless devices. White spaces are frequency ranges that are in the same range designated for television but not currently used by broadcasters. Companies ranging from Google to Microsoft to Phillips Electronics would like to use for future wireless devices.

Broadcast white space is coveted for the same reason the soon to be available spectrum currently used for analog television signals is. The short wavelengths are very resistant to signal loss when traveling through obstacles like buildings and trees, giving them a much greater effective range, especially close to the ground where most consumer electronics are used. Current wireless technoloy must generally be transmitted and received further away from the ground and with nothing obstructing line of sight to achieve comparable signal strength.

On Thursday an Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) accused executives from CBS, NBC, News Corp (which owns Fox), and Disney (owner of ABC) of intentionally misrepresenting the proposed use of frequencies in the broadcast televison range. Brian Peters, ITI's Director of Government Relations said the executives are making "unfounded claims of interference designed to confuse consumers and policymakers."

Last week, a copyright lobbying group called the Copyright Alliance held an expo in Washington DC that looked a little more like a three ring circus, to show elected officials how serious they are about copyright. The event was filled with the paraphernalia of entertainment industry propoganda, from RIAA t-shirts reading "Feed a musicion, download legally" to Entertainment Software Association (ESA) posters proclaiming "Game Over Pirates Game Over."

And what Washington event would be complete without a few government officials. With organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, ESA, and Association of American Publishers joined by company representatives from Microsoft, Viacom, NBC Universal, and Walt Disney, it was ineveitable that visitors from Congress and the White House would be interested. Unfortunately for expo organizers, the Senate was in recess all week, and the House of Representatives wasn't in Session that day because of a funeral.

Music licensing firm Snocap cut it's staff by 60% according to a company spokeswoman. Snocap is best known for being co-owned by Napster founder Shawn Fanning.

Although Fanning's Napster connection netted the company a lot of free publicity initially, other companies, particularly Apple's iTunes, have performed much more impressively, and file sharing technology has progressed far beyond Napster's failed model. Now Snocap is laying off employees and up for sale. "Snocap has received interest from several companies and is pursuing that," said Susan Celia Swan, a company representative.

Last year Snocap inked what appeared to be a lucrative licensing deal with MySpace. Under the agreement, Snocap allows any band to license music for MySpace sites using a service called MyStores. Snocap deducts a small fee from royalty payments and splits it with MySpace. Despite the mind bogglingly large MySpace subscriber base, they company has attracted fewer than 200,000 potential customers for music from over 80,000 artists.

Although the company's MyTunes site had nearly 20 million unique visitors in September, theu haven't made any public statement regarding sales figures.

According to a Verdict Research report entitled "UK Music and Video Retailers 2007", legal digital downloads of both video and music rose 81 percent in the UK to 112 million pounds.

The report also predicted the market would grow to 163 million pounds by the end of the year and 600 million pounds by 2012. 600 million pounds would equate to 13.5 percent of the total music and video market.

"The percentage figures may fall some years, but the cash growth through the tills is big," said Mick Gladding, lead analyst at Verdict.

"It is a very exciting market, probably the most important influence in video and market retailing because it provides a very attractive method for customers.

"It is highly convenient to shop from home and is a low-cost way of delivering music to the customer from the retailers' point of view."

With new players like Amazon and Nokia joining the market, and the ever increasing DRM-free content, Verdict Research sees an added boost to the market coming, especially as the UK and the world move to be completely digital.

Source:
Yahoo

It seems that LG's upcoming dual format HD player, the BH200, will be the first player to hit the market with secondary BD-Java support.

The BDA has mandated that all Blu-ray players that launch on or after October 31st will need to include many features, including full BD-Java support, to be considered Profile 1.1 compliant which no current players are.

LG however, will be the first. Speaking of the BH200, the company says the player will include "full profile specifications" to be 1.1 compliant.

The company has been criticized in the past for its lack of support of HDi, the technology that powers HD DVD's interactive features, but it seems to be turning it around for its second gen player.

Source:
HD Digest

Despite the fact that both Microsoft and Sony have lowered the price of their next-gen consoles in preparation for the holidays, Nintendo has said that demand is so high that it will not drop the price of its Wii console.

"We'll stay at $249 for the foreseeable future," says Nintendo senior vice president of marketing George Harrison.

In recent months, Microsoft has dropped the price of the Xbox 360 by $50 USD while Sony has introduced a new cheaper, 40GB model in Europe and Japan. There have also been rumors floating around that Sony will drop the price of its 80GB model once the 60GB model completely sells out.

Source:
BetaNews

IFPI.com, the domain previously owned by the infamous anti-piracy outfit, The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has now somehow found its way into the hands of The Pirate Bay, the infamous torrent tracker.

Making the situation even more ironic, The Pirate Bay admin team says it will now use the domain to host the newly founded International Federation of Pirate Interests.

The main domain of the IFPI, ifpi.org, is still working but anyone trying to access ifpi.com are redirected to a Pirate Bay server with a splash screen showing "International Federation of Pirate Interests."

Brokep, one of the admins of the Pirate Bay had this to say, "International Federation of Pirate Interests (IFPI) is the new international federation we're starting in order to get the word of piracy spread."

When asked how they got the domain, Brokep responded, "It's not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it's ours and we're keeping it."

Im sure everyone agrees the Pirate Bay will be a better host than the IFPI.

Source:
TF

According to a report in the online edition of BusinessWeek, unnamed music industry insiders claim Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris is working on a new music licensing model that would allow them to offer a music subscription model subsidized by media player manufacturers.

UMG's intention to knock down Apple from the top of the music download hill has played out very publicly this year. Contentious negotiations with Apple that led to a month-to-month contract replacing the extension of a longer agreement sought by Apple. Morris is unhappy with Apple's control over online pricing, and the mobile media player market.

His plan for the service, dubbed Total Music, would be to charge portable media player manufacturers a $5 monthly subscription fee for each unit sold that supports the service, giving consumers "free" access to music from different labels. So far they've enlisted Sony BMG as a potential partner and are in talks with Warner Music Group.

Although player manufacturers who have yet to successfully compete with Apple's iPod for market share would certainly be interested in a model that puts them on equal footing, a bigger question at this point is whether enough sales can be sustained to pay for the ongoing license fees.

At the DisplaySearch HDTV conference in Los Angeles Randy Waynick of Sony's home products told an audience that manufacturers have failed in their responsibility to educate consumers about new technology. He said "In the past year, if we were to grade ourselves, we were barely passing as an industry."

This certainly isn't a revelation to consumers who have attempted to navigate the maze of confusing and often conflicting information available from discount, or even specialty electronics retailers.

Waynick's call for education isn't necessarily as consumer oriented as it may seem. He also pointed to the emergence of upstart display manufacturer Vizio as a sign of consumer ignorance, saying "We play differently, and we take a lot of hits for it sometimes because we want to provide a better value."

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it assumes consumers are buying with advanced features in mind instead of a low price on a reasonably high quality, reasonably large HD display. Although low profit margins for discount displays have put retailers are clearly in Sony's corner on this one, consumers don't appear to be nearly as impressed. In fact, it begs the question whether it's consumers or manufacturers that are really in the dark.

The day that we all (well at least many of us.. or some) have been waiting for ages has arrived -- the AfterDawn.com servers have been upgraded. Our old servers had been running at peak capacity for over six months now, and there was very little left to optimize. The new server setup that we switched over to today should dramatically improve response times across the site.

The switch may cause some oddities until DNS updates propagate to everyone. You might want to clear your browser cache and restart the browser to help speed up the change.

Along with the new servers we introduced individual timezone settings for the users. You can access the new user settings page at http://login.afterdawn.com/settings/. The timezone is set under Edit settings. Under the settings page you can also define whether or not you want to 1) subscribe to discussion threads by default and 2) use your signature in forum posts or news comments.

The server switch and timezone implementation may cause some weirdness during the transit period (e.g. forum posts showing up in wrong places).

After two years of anticipation, U.S. cable television giant Comcast has finally begun installing TiVo based DVRs for test customers. The company intends to continue offering their basic DVR service, which uses non-TiVo hardware, and add the TiVo boxes as a premium DVR service.

Since the 2005 announcement, this deal has been seen as key to TiVo's future. TiVo has previously worked with DirecTV to provide special satellite based DVRs called DirecTiVo, but DirecTV has since decided to go in another direction and provide less expensive DVR boxes.

With DVRs being at the forefront of the battle for customers betwen different television providers, and increases seeming inevitable in the very near future, TiVo is in a position to either form strategic partnerships to grow their business, or falter and become an example of the innovator that couldn't find a workable business model.

Sources:
Associated Press
Reuters

On Friday Samsung is expected to have an important Firmware update available for their Blu-ray players. Both the BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 had problems playing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer because of it's new BD+ DRM.

According to a statement from the company, “This firmware update will resolve freezing issues experienced when viewing Fox titles and their BD+ features.”

So far, the BD+ compatibility problems with a few players has been the first serious hiccup in player development for Blu-ray or HD DVD. Of course there might well have been earlier issues if enough consumers had bought into next-gen formats that additional standalone models had been designed.

The update can be downloaded directly to the BD-P1200 player through its built in Ethernet port, or it can be loaded the way BD-P1000 owners will have to and burn it to optical media to be loaded from the unit's drive.

Source: Video Business

Madonna has become the latest and biggest artist to leave the record industry when she signed a $120 million USD record deal with the concert promoter Live Nation.

With the deal, Live Nation gains the exclusive rights to three new studio albums, as well as all merchandise, tours and licensing of the Madonna name.

The news follows the announcements of Nine Inch Nails, Oasis and Jamiroqui to sell its music directly to the public, leaving the record labels completely out of the picture. Radiohead recently did something similar by deciding to sell its albums digitally while allowing the fan to decide how much they want to pay for it.

The contract is for 10 years, by which point Madonna will be almost 60.

Warner, who was outbid by Live Nation, wont lose Madonna completely however. She still owes the label one more album and Warner still has the rights for a greatest hits CD. Additionally, Warner gets to keep the rights to songs produced by Madonna while she was with Warner.

Although Madonna's best days as an artist are arguably behind her, many see the recent announcements as the beginning of the end for the record labels. Perhaps they will understand that the artists deserve more of the revenue then is currently given but seeing how long it took the labels to respond to digital music, that is doubtful.

The new version of the iPhone unlocking software SimFree will free all iPhones using the 1.1.1 firmware as well as unbrick any unlocked units damaged by the upgrade.

This should be welcome news to anyone who had their expensive device bricked by Apple's updated 1.1.1 firmware. Many consumers were left furious by the results of the firmware upgrade and especially that Apple's official response was "buy a new one."

According to the SimFree team, its latest version 1.6 will "FIX all phones that anySim and iUnlock bricked with the 1.1.1 update."

However, there is a catch to unbricking your phone. It requires the user to downgrade their firmware to 1.0.2 but you must pay $99 USD for the software to do that. It is still a hefty price, but cheaper than purchasing a new iPhone.

Users around the web have confirmed that the software does work.

Source:
Dailytech

In a recent Australian-government commissioned report, it was stated that plasma and LCD TVs consume more power than traditional CRT displays and it seems that "strict" regulations may be placed upon them by the government.

The report was the government's Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee's response to the country's "skyrocketing" energy consumption. The Committee also speculated that the TVs could overtake air conditioning and refrigerators as the major contributors of household greenhouse gases.

According to the report, TVs will need to have energy rating levels applied to them just as other household appliances do. The new system, set to begin next year, will restrict most current Plasma and LCD TVs from being used in the country.

More information when it becomes available.

Source:
BetaNews

Throwdown, a metal band famous for “destroying” a stage at Ozzfest has called upon file-sharing fans to help support the band by "stealing their album...[and]help bury the label."

Dave Peters, the front man of the band had this to say, “I play in a metal band. We have sold around 200k records across 3 releases. We’re not ‘huge’ by any stretch but do alright and live off (and ON subsequently) the road. Fans and friends ask me all the time how I feel about “stealing music. I just told someone yesterday I have a hard time seeing it as stealing…when I don’t see any money from cd sales to begin with.”

Continuing on about his anger at the state of the record industry, “If you want to squeeze an opinion on theft out of me, ask me about the dude that grabbed our tshirt off the table tonight in Detroit or better yet.. ask me about record contracts.”

He followed up with a message to file sharers and fans of the band,

“I encourage our fans to acquire our album however they please. The philosophy I’ve adopted is that if you’re supporting disc sales, you’re keeping the old model around longer…the one that forces dudes like me to tour 9 mos/year if they want to make ends meet with a career in music.”

The Warner Home Video DVD release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will include a feature that allows viewers to download the movie in a format suitable for PC or portable device playback. This is the second such offer from the studio. Superman Returns discs were sold at Wal-Mart with a similar feature for downloading that movie.

The move is interesting because it seems to represent at least the beginnings of a dialog with consumers regarding fair use. Besides including a second copy of the movie suitable for playback on a different device than the original DVD, it also theoretically removes technical barriers for making decent quality copies for format shifting for computers, mobile players, and other devices.

Of course the flip side of that arrangement is the continuation of DVD's DRM farce known as CSS. Instead of addressing what rights consumers should have in their own homes, this approach seems to simply switch from one false dilemna of copy protection vs. fair use for a less draconian situation where the studio graciously gives consumers what they could already get on their own in exchange for an unspoken agreement not to complain about DRM.

According to sales figures cited by Jodi Sally, Toshiba VP of Marketing of Digital A/V Products, HD DVD standalone players are once again out-selling Blu-ray units. She said that so far HD DVD players have outsold Blu-ray standalones by 50%.

The numbers, which only count standalone players have come under fire in the past for not counting PS3 game consoles as Blu-ray players. While there's some validity to the argument that the primary motivation for buying a PS3 is more likely about gaming, that doesn't mean owning one wouldn't influence a consumer to buy Blu-ray movies. However, it's estimated that only 20% of PS3 owners have played even a single Blu-ray disc on the console.

Toshiba claims that the number of people buying HD DVD PC drives are largely interested in hi-def content, and the lack of anything else that makes use of the media would tend to support that. They say this more than equals the number of PS3 Blu-ray customers. Sally said Toshiba expects 5 million HD DVD PC and laptop drives will be sold in 2008.

Sony has introduced its latest internal PC Blu-ray BD-R burner which doubles the write speed from previous Sony internal burners and can write at 4x.

The new writer, the BWU-200S can write a full 50GB BD-R disc in 45 minutes as compared to previous writers which would take 90 minutes to fill the disc.

Besides the ability to write to BD-R, the drive can also burn DVD+-R at 16x and burn to DVD-DL. Software is also included allowing for the capture of HD content captured in HDV 1080i format from HDV camcorders.

The drive is compatible with both XP and Vista, says Sony.

“Advanced optical storage technologies, such as Blu-ray Disc technology with its vast capacity compared to DVD technology, will be key enablers for next generation PC applications like HD personal video content and high-definition TV recording,” said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at IDC. “Sony's many innovations in optical storage have prepared the company to be a leader in the Blu-ray Disc writable market.”

Sony says the drive will be available only directly from the company starting in November and sell for about $600 USD.

After the recent announcement that the 40GB PlayStation 3 would be coming to Europe and amid speculation that it is heading to North America next month, Sony has confirmed that Japan will be getting the new model on November 11th, with an exclusive white color.

The unit will be available in both “Clear Black” and “Ceramic White” colors and sell for 39,980 yen ($341 USD) when it hits. The white color will be the first official color variation since the system was launched last year.

Also coming with the new unit will be a DualShock3 controller instead of the standard SIXAXIS. European 40GB models will have the SIXAXIS as the DS3 is not expected to hit North America or Europe until spring 2008.

Finally, Sony also said they would be giving a free copy of Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray to the next 20,000 purchasers of any PS3 in Japan including the 20GB and 60GB models currently in stock.

Source:
Dailytech

As many of you already know, February 17, 2009 is the analog blackout day in the United States. On that day, broadcast television will no longer be dished out in analog form, forcing every couch potato to conform to the new digital age. If you don't have a digital television, you're either out of luck or have to purchase a converter box capable of bringing that pesky digital signal back down to the comfortable old analog you know and love. Being the understanding government system that is the United States, they have set aside several billion dollars to issue up to two $40 coupons good towards the purchase of said converters. Well, leave it up to the folks at LG Electronics to remind you that "Life's Good".

Korean based LG has become the first company to be certified by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to offer set-top digital to analog converter boxes that are redeemable with the government issued coupons.

"It is an honor for LG Electronics to be the first major company to receive official NTIA certification for digital-to-analog converters," said Michael Ahn, president and CEO, LG Electronics North American Headquarters. "This product is a very important component of the DTV transition assuring that millions of Americans will continue to receive free-over-the-air TV programming after the digital switch in just 18 months. LG Electronics is proud of its leadership role in the development of digital television technologies generally and the converter box specifically."

General Manager and Vice President of Yahoo! Music, Ian Rodgers has stated in an open forum that he believes the RIAA and other governing bodies who enforce DRM protection schemes on digital media are inhibiting his consumers from the freedom they deserve. In a presentation that he delivered, he stated that he believed DRM to be dead.

Rodgers has been at the forefront of the music industry back in the days when Napster was king, he was the person in charge of Winamp. He's been with the digital music age longer than most and has seen what kind of an abomination it has become with protection standards hindering consumers from enjoying their rightfully purchased products.

In his presentation, Rodgers states "I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out."

In an effort to distinguish their DVRs from the competition, TiVo Inc. had already entered into a deal with Amazon.com to offer their Unbox video download service through TiVo Series2 or Series3 DVRs. Now they've announced a deal with the RealNetworks and MTV Networks owned Rhapsody America to allow music from the Rhapsody service to be streamed through them.

Rhapsody is a subscription service that allows listeners to stream an unlimited number of songs from the internet for a monthly fee. Rhapsody also sells standard MP3 downloads for sale, but this won't be available on TiVos.

Current TiVo subscribers will be be able to try the service free for 30 days. After that it will cost them $12.99 per month in addition to TiVo's standard monthly fee.

"This puts us on the map as distinguishing ourselves from other generic DVRs," TiVo's CEO Tom Rogers said. "We not only facilitate getting Rhapsody on the TV set, but most importantly, the quick easy way to find it, which is how TiVo made its name."


"The big thrust for us is to try to expand the pie, bring digital music to more consumers," Michael Bloom, Rhapsody general manager told Reuters. "CD sales have been in rapid decline. This is one of the ways that we are going to help in that regard."

BitTorent Inc. announced a deal to license their new BitTorrent DNA Streaming video service to Brightcove, a company that distributes video over the internet from sources like MTV, Fox Entertainment, and CBS. Earlier this year, BitTorent opened their own online store powered by the technology.

Although the BitTorent file sharing protocol has become synonymous in many people's minds with piracy, it's also used to legally distribute things like Linux disc images and free MP3s. Brian Cohen, creator of the BitTorrent technology, says he's been trying to find a way to use it for commercial purposes for years. He believes BitTorrent DNA is such a product.

As streaming video and audio become more common, content providers are constantly looking for new ways to deliver it at a reasonable price, and the cost of bandwidth is no small part of the picture. By using P2P technology, companies can provide licensing for content, while their customers help provide bandwidth by sharing the downloaded content among themselves.

A Japanese telecommunications company is planning to implement a nationwide data network that will offer connection speeds between 30Mbps to 1Gbps.

What's raising some eyebrows about the ambitious plan, is NTT Group's stated intention to charge extra for priority access to network bandwidth. That would mean customers who don't pay extra might experience quality issues with Streaming media like television programs if network resources are stretched thin.

The issue of paying for bandwidth is at the heart of the Net Neutrality debate. While broadband service providers often point fingers at consumers and online media providers, consumers tend to disagree with that assessment. Since internet service providers often market their services as being suitable for things like streaming, a lot of consumers feel ISP attempts to charge extra for bandwidth required for streaming are unreasonable.

Ironically, the company unveiled a video conferencing application at the same time.

Source: CNet News

Windows Home Server is now available from U.S. retailers like Newegg.com and Buy.com. Prices are coming in at just under $200.

Intended to compete with networked home storage solutions that are becoming particularly popular as media servers, Windows Home Server is designed to be run on a headless server, meaning it's controlled from a network connection instead of having a keyboard, monitor, and mouse directly connected.

Although the price may seem like a bargain compared to Vista, since it's only available in an OEM version that limits the support Microsoft will provide.

If you'd prefer to buy a home server with the software already loaded, Hewlett Packard will be releasing one with Windows Home Server for $750 according to information accidentally leaked earlier in the year.

Source: Ars Technica

Japan-based KDDI Corporation has struck a license agreement with Corel Corporation to use Corel's DVD burning technology in a new movie download service. KDDI will use its high speed broadband network to provide a new service that enables consumers to download a full two-hour movie from the Internet and burn it directly to a DVD disc in as few as 11 minutes. Launched on September 27, the KDDI DVD Burning service will only be available in Japan.

KDDI's service is the first of its kind to be launched, and uses CPRM security for network downloading. By incorporating Corel's DVD burning technology with KDDI's unique movie download service, consumers can enjoy the movies they want, whenever they want without having to visit a video rental outlet or purchase online and wait for delivery.

There are no subscription or monthly fees, no buy/wait/return problems; only a single, low-cost transaction for each movie selected from KDDI's robust library of titles. KDDI's new movie distribution service will appeal to consumers, content providers and ISPs. Consumers can quickly purchase and burn movies from the comfort of their own home. Content providers can increase their exposure and sell directly to consumers. ISPs on the KDDI IP network can become more competitive by offering the latest broadband offerings. Any other ISP user can enjoy the server as well.

Phillips has introduced a new line of mid-sized flash-based media players, starting with the SA9345 which will come in the 2 and 4 GB variety.

Each of the varieties has a 1.8 inch color screen, but more intriguing is the touch-sensitive controls and the player's size, a slim 0.3 inches.

The device plays MP3 and WMA audio files as well as WMV video. The video files however, are limited to 24fps and software is provided to convert from AVI, MOV, MPEG-1/2/4 and VOB (DVD) files to something compatible for the player.

Phillips claims 20 hours of audio or two hours of video, but independent results have reported only 10 hours of audio playback.

The 4GB model will be available in North America soon, but no word on price. In the UK the players will sell for £99 and £129 respectively.

Source:
Electronista

Jammie Thomas, the first person to be found guilty of copyright infringement by a jury for allegedly sharing music using P2P software, is to appeal the decision. The woman was left with a bill of $220,000 following the guilty verdict, which was considered appropriate damages for "making" 24 songs "available" for download, and not actually proving that copyright infringement took place.

Not only did the jury not find her guilty of uploading any songs, it also didn't find her guilty of downloading the 24 songs (of the 1702 in total she was accused of sharing) beforehand; the verdict was delivered because the files were "made available". Thomas announced that she has decided to appeal the decision on CNN.

Her attorney, Brian Toder, will appeal based on the jury's finding that making files available online violates copyright. "This would stop the RIAA dead in their tracks," Thomas wrote on her blog. "Every single suit they have brought has been based on this making-available theory, and if we can win this appeal, they would actually have to prove a file was shared."

Apple Inc. has once again become the target of a lawsuit over its iPhone. Specifically, the company is being sued for the exclusive tie between the iPhone and AT&T, and how Apple has chosen to enforce that lock. The iPhone v1.1.1 update literally disabled (iBricked) hacked or unlocked iPhone models, sparking outcry and bringing up the question of unlocking and the DMCA.

Timothy P. Smith and the legal team of M. Van Smith and Damian R. Fernandez filed for a class action lawsuit against Apple over the issues. The suit alleges that Apple violated antitrust laws by tying the iPhone to the AT&T provider network in the U.S., and disabling the unlocked phones of users who installed the update.

Smith's complaint acknowledges that Apple warned that the iPhone update could result in unlocked iPhones becoming "permanently inoperable," but it alleges that the company acted "in defiance and without sufficient consideration of consumers' rights" because the company "took no steps to issue an update with unlocked firmware or otherwise issue its update to prevent damage to unlocked iPhones."

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the 40GB PlayStation 3 model is on its way to the US, following its debut in the UK later this week.

Citing an "industry source" as well as a major game retailer, the Reporter says the 40GB model will retail for $400 USD and have the same features as its brother model in the UK meaning less USB ports and no backwards compatibility for PS2 games.

Last week we reported that leaked Best Buy internal documents showed the 40GB model was coming to the US but without a price or release date. The Reporter says it will hit the US by early November.

Source:
GI.biz

On Friday, HP updated its Pavilion media center PCs with the option to add mixed-format HD drives that can read both Blu-ray or HD DVD titles giving users the option to upgrade without fear of a format becoming obsolete.

The d4995t, m9000z and m9000t Pavilion Elite models, will all have the option to add the mixed format drives but there will be two options for the drive as well. A basic version will allow only Blu-ray writing and both format reading and the more expensive drive will allow writing and reading for both formats. Both drives will also include HP's LightScribe feature.

The cost of the upgrade will vary from $250 to $400 USD depending on the system and the drive you are upgrading to.

Source:
Electronista

Apple has accidentally become a source of piracy after the fourth episode of the latest season of “Stargate Atlantis” was leaked before the series season premiere on Apple's iTunes platform. Quickly after the leak, the episode made its way to BitTorrent and other P2P networks.

The mistake has not been made public by Apple but the company has offered a $2 USD iTunes credit to all fans of the show who downloaded the show mistakenly thinking it was the first episode.

The error, it seems, was caused by a mix up in the production numbers and broadcast numbers of the episodes. The show is not shot in chronological order and therefore the fourth episode, entitled “Doppelganger”, was shot first making its production number 401 although it had a broadcast number of 404. No doubt the iTunes store mistakingly offered the the episode as the season premiere based on the production number and not the broadcast number.

The episode was available for 24 hours on iTunes before it was replaced by the real season premiere.

More updates on whether Apple will have to compensate MGM for the leak.

Source:
TF

Swarmcast announced that it has been awarded US Patent 7,277,950, which Swarmcast is referring to as the "File Swarming Patent." The pioneering patent, authored by Swarmcast founder and CEO Justin Chapweske in 2000 and entitled "Packet Transfer Mechanism Over a Peer-to-Peer Network," describes file swarming, which is a class of data transfer technology whereby data is broken up, distributed to other sources and then reassembled at an endpoint.

These core algorithms form the foundation of many common modes of next-generation network data transfer, including peer-to-peer, grid content delivery and multi-source streaming. File swarming provides the ability to harness unused network capacity by distributing and exchanging small pieces of data between servers, network routers or personal computers.

"The File Swarming Patent contributes a powerful concept to computer science knowledge. It is the first system to approach the mathematical bounds of efficient utilization of the capacity of a complex network. It reflects Swarmcast's expertise and thought-leadership in the field of Internet content delivery and is a major milestone in the company's history," said Justin Chapweske, founder and CEO of Swarmcast.

According to rumors doing the rounds, Facebook is currently working on a project that would rival Apple Inc.'s successful iTunes multimedia download store. According to AllFacebook blogger Nick O'Neill, the company is in the process of looking for an executive to head the division and is already in talks with record companies.

It's unclear whether such a service would be for just music downloads or also for movie and video downloads. Recent developments with DRM, combined with disputes between Apple and content providers, has hit iTunes pretty hard, with some companies like NBC Universal walking away from the service completely.

The fact that many record company executives are displeased with Apple's business model for iTunes is not much of a secret either. Facebook could serve as a good rival for iTunes, and could certainly use the new business venture to ensure future profitability. Industry experts have agreed that Facebook needs to come up with innovative ways to make money for its future financial health.

Source:
News.com

According to the Bush administration, the recent jury decision that left a woman with a $220,000 bill for allegedly illegally sharing 24 files shows that the legal process is working against P2P-based piracy. Chris Israel, a former Time Warner employee, was appointed by President George W. Bush as the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement in July 2005.

"Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property," Israel stated. He made the comments a day after the controversial decision.

The Bush administration has written trade deals that include anti-circumvention restrictions and in 2005, President Bush signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which strengthened punishment for file sharers. "Piracy impacts many of our most innovative industries, costs American jobs and is a huge threat to our economic competitiveness," Israel said.

Source:
News.com

A City Councilman in Union City, Indiana wants to force the owner of a McDonald's franchise to either remove the Redbox DVD rental kiosk that sits outside, or stock it with nothing but G rated movies.

After reportedly asking franchise owner Rick Reichenbach to either remove the machine or change the selection of available movies, Bryan Conklin intends to file for an injunction from the state forcing the removal of the movies. He said “Our intention is that, if this is going to be for the general public, then we are asking them to have G-rated films only.”

Redbox VP of marketing Gary Lancina said, “Redbox is intended for use by customers age 18 years and older. We feel the appropriate measures are in place to allow parents and families to make educated choices regarding age-appropriate entertainment options when using Redbox kiosks.” He added “Any time a customer selects an R-rated Title, a screen appears informing the customer that they will be renting a DVD with an R-rating. Customers then have a chance to select a different movie or proceed with their rental. To date, we have not experienced problems regarding age restrictions."

Redbox, whose video rental kiosks have become common sights at McDonald's restaraunts around the United States, is attracting interest as a replacement for existing in-store rental operations from at least one company. Giant Eagle is about half way done installing the kiosks in 90% of their stores.

“In general, customer interests have moved away from renting videos in bricks-and-mortar rental stores and toward both video purchasing and newer, more convenience-oriented rental services,” namely via online and kiosks, he said. “As Giant Eagle changes its video business with these trends, we have made the decision to transfer our video rental offerings away from our Iggle Video departments and focus on both our video sell-through offering as well as our Redbox rental kiosks.”

The kiosks typically have the week's top 100 new releases, which is certainly fewer than the number typically available from each store's in-store rental operation, but without the overhead associated with stocking and operating such a service.

Movies cost $1 per night to rent, and can be returned to any Redbox kiosk, including those at McDonald's.

Source: Video Business

RD&IP, L.L.C. is aiming to provide technology that will cut manufacturing costs of FED and the troubled SED display technology significantly. The technology is described in U.S. Patent Application No. 20070146241 and in an international patent application under Patent Cooperation Treaty.

RD&IP's technology enables FED and SED televisions to be manufactured with a variety of less expensive cathode materials and types. The technology adjusts the output of the cathodes by monitoring the emission current from each cathode in real time.

With this technology, almost any kinds of cathodes can be used in making display panels that have image quality as good as display panels made from carbon nano-tube (CNT) cathodes. In addition, if very cheap manufacturing processes for any kind of cathode are developed in the future, this technology can be combined with the cheaper processes to make high-quality FED/SED televisions.

Due to legal disputes over SED television technology, the promising bright powerful displays promised at the 2006 consumer electronics show has been evasive to the market.

Source:
Press Release

According to research carried out by the Nielsen Company, consumers with HDTV's and high definition television services in their homes are very enthusiastic about the picture quality benefits, but a lot less enthusiastic about the number of HD channels and type of content being provided. A huge 85% of respondents gave the picture quality a 4 or 5 rating (5 being excellent, 1 being very poor).

However, only about 39% gave the same rating for the type of content that is available to them in HD. Interestingly, there was no difference in responses between users of cable services and users of satellite services. Women were more optimistic than men about both quality and content, while owners of HD DVR's were the least satisfied customers.

"Nielsen's High Definition Survey shows that HD technology is outpacing content, although a few networks do score high in consumer satisfaction," said Steve McGowan, Nielsen Senior Vice President Client Research Initiatives. "Television owners clearly feel that HD viewing is a more intense experience than standard television and there are early indications that the acquisition of an HD television can, initially at least, stimulate the type of television that is viewed."

Pinnacle Systems, Inc, announced late last month the latest editions of Pinnacle Studio MovieBox with HDV and AVCHD support. The new Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Plus and MovieBox Ultimate include a high-speed USB 2.0 video capture device and a full version of Pinnacle Studio Plus version 11 and Studio Ultimate version 11 respectively—the software that has been reaping awards for delivering robust HDV/AVCHD video editing and authoring capabilities.

With the new AVCHD support, users can capture video from the new Sony and Panasonic AVCHD camcorders and can edit their content directly, in its native format. Completed videos can then be burned to an HD DVD or AVCHD format disc using standard DVD media that can be played back by the latest HD DVD and Blu-ray players. The AVCHD standard stores the same amount of video in half the space required by the MPEG-2 format.

Apple Inc. is rumored (from a fairly credible source) to be planning an "iTunes HD" store to offer high-definition videos in an effort to boost uptake of its Apple TV device. The service would include a selection of the movies and TV shows currently available on the iTunes multimedia store with a higher resolution than the current offering of 640x480.

The resolution of 640x480 is supported by the iPod video models, the iPhone, and of course, the Apple TV, which uses a home network to bridge the gap between multimedia content stored on a PC and a proper television set. Apple is reportedly stockpiling its Apple TV in anticipation of a sales boost when the iTunes HD content becomes available.

The refreshed line-up of the iPod models last month also added a component cable which is technically able to output HD video if support was added through updates for the devices. Apple TV can output with resolutions up to 720p (higher need to be downgraded). If the iTunes HD rumors are true, the company is expected to announce it sometime before the end of the month.

Lite-ON IT has reportedly gotten more orders from Microsoft Corp. for DVD-ROM drives used in the Xbox 360 games console. In response, the company has given top priority to Microsoft, allocating its total production capacity for the optical disc reader drives, according to sources from the ODD components industry in Taiwan. Lite-ON's policy is to not comment on any reports about its orders.

Following tremendous sales performances for the mega-popular Halo 3 title, which pushed the Xbox 360 console sales significantly in its launch week, Microsoft is now focusing on promoting its games console for the peak holiday season, leading to a surge in OEM orders.

Lite-ON has allocated production capacity to output one million Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drives a month. The company is the third OEM maker of DVD-ROM drives for the Xbox 360, having started shipments in June-July, initially with a volume of 300k - 500k per month. Shipments in September were close to 1 million drives.

Source:
DigiTimes

Danny Williams, an employee of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, recently was reminded that even the smallest of consumer electronics gear can be dangerous in its own way when his two year old iPod Nano caught fire in his pants pocket. According to his mother, speaking in a telephone interview, the fire lasted about 15 seconds and the flames reached up to his chest.

Apple Inc. has not commented on the incident, but has reportedly sent a package to Danny to return the damaged iPod Nano. Local news reported that Danny may have been saved from serious burns by glossy paper he had in his pocket. However, considering the fears of the times, and his place of employment, he doesn't seem to really think the threat to him was the flames themselves, but rather what they looked like at the time.

"If TSA had come by and seen me smoking, they could have honestly thought I was a terrorist," local news quoted the man as saying. The device contains a lithium-ion battery, which has a history of nasty events in consumer and PC products. Last year, several manufacturers, including Apple, Dell and Lenovo were forced to recall millions of the batteries. They have been blamed for meltdowns and fires in several computers.

In a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft has made their Internet Explorer 7 browser available to anyone running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, in an update that removes Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation software from the browser.

Before the update, only users running genuine Microsoft products could update from the terrible IE6 browser, but now even those with pirated Windows can update.

"Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we’re updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users," remarked IE7 program manager Steve Reynolds on the IE Blog. "With today’s 'Installation and Availability Update,' Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users."

The move is likely to give some of the browser market back to Microsoft which it has been losing to strong competitors such as Firefox and Opera.

Source:
Dailytech

According to Alexa stats, the MPAA seems to have a victory in regards to halting piracy caused by the once popular torrent site TorrentSpy. The figures show that since a federal judge ordered the site to log all user data and consequently ban access to US users, their traffic has fallen dramatically.

TorrentSpy founder Justin had this to say when they decided to censor US users, "Whatever future awaits, the innovations of peer-to-peer technology and the jobs and opportunities it creates will take place outside of the USA."

Other torrent sites have seen increased growth however since TorrentSpy's decision, with sites such as Mininova and ThePirateBay seeing substantial growth.

You can view a chart of the decline in traffic here courtesy of TF.

It remains to be seen whether Demonoid and Isohunt will see the same results after placing bans or having bans placed on them by anti-piracy groups like the MPAA or CRIA.

Source:
TF

Fastmac has announced that they will begin selling the first and only 2X Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade for Apple laptops including iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBook Pros.

The drive is slimline and the Fastmac site gives these specs for the new drive, "supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at up to 2x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and up to 2.4x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at 8x speeds."

The upgrade will be available within 30 days and will have a $1000 USD price tag.

Source:
Press Release

Universal will finally be launching its HD DVD site that it announced over a month ago at www.universalhidef.com.

Besides offering tons of downloadable content, the site will also give you support for error codes as well as share clips with other users. The shop will also allow viewers to shop for items they saw in the movie, pushing product placement to new heights.

"HD DVD provides a consistent platform that allows us to go beyond DVD to deliver the best possible next generation HD experiences and begins to introduce consumers to the infinite potential of web-enabled content," said Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Digital Platforms. "With our web-enabled features, we wanted to deliver capabilities that compliment the HD movie watching experience while also offering a destination online that gives users the opportunity to dive deeper into their favorite movies and TV shows. We've just begun to explore HD DVD's potential and this infrastructure lays the foundation for us to easily evolve with consumer preferences."

Source:
EngadgetHD

Following yesterday's official announcement by Sony that a 40GB PlayStation 3 would be offered for £299 in the UK, Nick Sharples, director of corporate communications for Sony Europe, said that the 60 GB model would be going the way of its American counterpart, into oblivion.

Just like in North America, the 60GB has stopped being produced and when the current stock is depleted, that is the end of that model in the UK. The 40GB model will then be the only unit available for purchase in the UK. The new model however, lacks a multi-memory card slot and PS2 backwards compatibility which could presumably be an issue for some potential buyers.

"We are looking forwards, not back," Nick Sharples said "It was clear when Sony first launched the PS3 in the UK that backwards compatibility as a feature was an issue, it's now becoming less and less important."

When asked how much stock was left, Sharples would not give an exact number but figured there was 2 to 3 months of stock left.

"Anyone who wants to buy a 60GB PS3 for Christmas is not going to have a problem", he stated.

What is still unclear is whether a new model will replace the 60GB SKU or if the 40GB model will remain as the sole SKU available in the UK.

Toshiba Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have announced their plans to form the Advanced Interactivity Consortium (AIC), an open forum aimed at the promotion of superior interactivity for a wide range of next-generation consumer devices, digital content and distribution scenarios. The newly formed organization's mission is to maximize consumer satisfaction worldwide by accelerating industry-wide adoption of advanced interactivity and interoperability across a broad array of HD DVD products.

HD DVD is the first platform to include advanced interactivity as a basic feature in high-definition movies and players, substantially expanding the possibilities of high-definition home entertainment. AIC will also focus attention on ways to bring these advanced scenarios to other services and platforms, including digital downloads to DVD players, PCs, TVs, Cell phones, portable media players and game consoles.

"Creating attractive consumer experiences with advanced interactivity is critical to bringing digital home entertainment to the next level," said Hisatsugu Nonaka, corporate executive vice president at Toshiba. "In order to create these ecosystems, we wanted to bring together a group of companies committed to extending these scenarios across a wide variety of platforms. The Advanced Interactivity Consortium will advocate for these platforms as well as help ensure interoperability of HD DVD players and services."

MPEG LA has announced that the first meeting of essential HD DVD patent owners took place in Los Angeles on September 11th. The group consisted of 16 companies seeking to a joint license providing fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to essential patents, as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.

"MPEG LA applauds the extraordinary cooperation of so many diverse companies working together to come up with an efficient way for users of the multitude of patents employed in HD DVD devices, discs and related implementations to address their licensing needs," said MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn.

Horn added: "And the substantial progress made in this initial meeting bodes well for achieving it." The objective is for the license to reflect both relevant conditions in the marketplace and the value of the licensed technology in order to strike a balance between patent users' interest in reasonable access to this advanced optical disc technology and patent holders' interest in a reasonable return on their research and development investment that enables a joint license to be offered for the convenience of the marketplace as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. is demonstrating its latest professional audio tools and technologies at the 123rd Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention, through October 8th (booth 400). Highlights include the Dolby DP600 Program Optimizer which is used with Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Digidesign ProTools, the new Mac Universal applications of all four Dolby Media Producer software products and a major new software release for the Dolby Lake Processor.

The Dolby DP600 Program Optimizer is a powerful, intelligent, and automated system designed for file-based environments for postproduction and broadcast applications. With the new Neyrinck SoundCode for Broadcast plug-in for Digidesign Pro Tools and other DAWs, the company will demonstrate how the DP600 is used for audio postproduction.

Integrated Dolby E encoding, decoding, loudness analysis, and correction within the Pro Tools environment will be shown. In addition, the DP600-C version also supports faster-than-real-time encoding, decoding, and transcoding of Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby E, and MPEG-1 LII bitstreams that can be contained within several broadcast media file formats.

Jammie Thomas, the first person to be found guilty of willful copyright infringement by a jury as a result of an RIAA P2P lawsuit, said that she will not seek any financial help to pay the $220,000 judgment. "I'm not going to ask for financial help," she told The Associated Press on Friday. "If it comes, I'm not going to turn it down, either." Over 26,000 people have been sued by the RIAA for sharing music online.

Thomas' case was the first to make it to trial. She was accused of sharing 1,702 songs using the Kazaa P2P client, but only 24 of those songs were subject at the trial. The jury found that Thomas willfully violated the copyright of all the tracks, and awarded damages of $9,250 per song to the record companies.

This verdict has given the RIAA stronger legal precedence to use in future cases. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis had wanted to instruct the jury that the record companies would have to prove that actual copying took place in order to show copyright infringement. However, record company attorney Richard Gabriel argued that in other cases, simply making files available was found to be infringement, forcing the Judge to change his mind.

Citing the web metrics site Compete.com, it seems that although the number of high-def early adopters using Netflix is still small, the users are very favorable of HD DVD over Blu-ray.

According to the data, 48,000 visitors to Netflix viewed the HD sections of the site from June-August 2007 which was about 0.3 percent of total traffic. The numbers then get a bit more interesting. About 65 percent of the traffic checked out Blu-ray titles but when asked to set a preferred format, HD DVD was chosen by about 70 percent making it by far the more favorable format.

The numbers contradict recent reports and even a statement by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings that said in an interview that "customer demand for both formats at Netflix was pretty evenly split."

Source:
HD Digest

According to Digital Journal, Rogers Wireless will be bringing the Apple iPhone to Canada in a few weeks.

Although not confirmed by Apple or Rogers, Canadian retailers are the sources behind the rumor. However, the price the retailers are citing is extremely high, $799 CAD.

If that price is true, it would be unbelievable to see the device sell well, considering the price is a $400 premium from American retailers.

More information when it becomes available.

Source:
BetaNews

This week at the CEATEC JAPAN 2007 event, Hitachi announced that they had successfully created a quad layer Blu-ray disc that can store up to 100 GB of data.

To sweeten the pot even more, Hitachi says the discs are compatible with existing Blu-ray players and drives after an easy firmware update.

Hitachi says they are now working on "improving the signal quality of its quad-layer technology" so that it can be ready to hit the market soon. The company also boasted that they were working on a eight-layer Blu-ray disc capable of storing 200GB of data.

What is left to be pondered is how expensive these discs will cost to manufacture. Movie studios may just opt to release their titles over two standard Blu-ray discs than invest in new expensive equipment necessary for these larger capacity discs.

This is not the first time recently that we have heard of improved capacity on optical media. In March, New Medium Enterprises developed a four-layer DVD it called the Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD) that is capable of storing 20GB of data, double the current DVD-9.

Sony has announced that they have dropped the price of the 60GB model PlayStation 3 in the UK, as well as introduced a base level 40GB model.

The new pricing and the new console will become available on October 10th with the larger capacity model dropping to GBP 349 and the smaller model retailing at GBP 299. The 60GB model will also come in a "value pack" that will include two first party games. The pack will replace the current bundle sold for GBP 425 but will not include an extra Sixaxis controller.

In making the 40GB model so cheap, Sony cut a few features. There is no multi-memory card slot, two less USB ports, and no backwards compatibility with PS2 games.

"As we approach our first PlayStation Christmas, it is satisfying to be able to offer UK consumers the choice of two PlayStation 3 packages both now representing remarkable value," commented Ray Maguire, MD of SCEUK.

"We have a brand new 40 GB machine that represents an excellent entry point into the world of high definition games and movies, and we have the fully featured 60GB machine being offered with two next-generation gaming experiences at a highly competitive price."

David Reeves, the president of Sony Europe noted as well, "The introduction of the new PS3 has been the result of extensive research into the entertainment needs and preferences of the next-generation PS3 owners."

People taking home copies of the new Blu-ray release from Fox, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, may be disappointed, depending on what model of player they have. That's because of reports that are coming in, particularly on AVSForum, that neither Samsung's BD-P1200 and LG's BH100 (dual format) player can play the disc.

It's not surprising that this would happen as the BD+ protection used on the disc is very new. Players that have problems give the viewer a message suggesting a Firmware update. This isn't exactly a surprising development with adoption of the additional DRM measures. However, it may highlight an inherent weakness in the strategy of protection that can be upgraded, therefore requiring mass player updates.

Right now few households have either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, even if they do have an HDTV. That isolates the problem to a small number of mostly tech savvy A/V enthusiasts. These are the kind of people who typically don't have a problem with a firmware update. The same can't be said for much of the general public. What will their reactions be if they buy into Blu-ray and have similar problems in the future?

Hoping to resolve consumer education issues, the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) created what they're calliing the Digital Council.

With all the new technology that's been introduced in the last few years has come an equal amount of consumer confusion. Different digital television resolutions, some hi-def and some not, combined with the issue of DVD vs HD DVD vs Blu-ray vs other competing technologies have all left the majority of consumers scratching their heads, and as a result has helped hold back next-gen disc formats.

The Digital Council will focus on Internet based video distribution and on demand home video manufacturing, such as the DVD burning kiosks being promoted by such companies as Sonic Solutions and Polar Frog. council co-chairman Mark Vrieling also indicated that a major focus of their internet related efforts will be designing contracts that protect content owners, while still allowing distributors to make a profit.

“First off, we want to standardize definitions so that everyone understands what we are talking about,” said co-chairman Mitch Mallon, VP of digital sales at Egami Media. Clearly this is an issue, as most people, even those whose primary responsibility it is to sell consumer electronics, don't seem to even know many of the terms required to have an intelligent discussion about new technology, let alone understand the technology required for internet based video distribution.

The University of California at Berkeley - which in the past has striven to offer its students the ability to consume lectures and other educational material by digital means - has joined the ranks of YouTube's content partners. The university has loaded its brand new YouTube channel with full course lectures and other footage of special events. Among the videos are lectures on bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies and also a lecture by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Berkeley is now the first University to make its lectures available to the public through YouTube, a natural progression for a facility that has been offering webcasts of courses and events online since 2001, and delved into podcasts in 2006. It also offers video content through iTunes U on topics such as art, history, computer science and mechanical engineering.

Such efforts can only be met with approval and applause as they are progressive means to utilize video-sharing services and the video revolution itself for educational purposes. Even though YouTube is a huge resource of most likely infringing popular entertainment content, a look at which videos are most popular on social networking / index sites such as Digg.com shows that a large number of Internet users want to use their extra bandwidth for something with a better educational value than a Diet Coke + Mentos experiment.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has issued a press statement with regard to yesterday's jury decision which left Duluth resident Jammie Thomas with a $220,000 bill for illegally sharing music files using the Kazaa P2P client. Thomas was found guilty of illegally sharing 24 music files owned by members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) trade organization.

IFPI President and CEO, John Kennedy, had these remarks on behalf of the global recording industry.

"We have always made it clear we are reluctant litigators. We do everything possible to persuade people not to leave themselves exposed to litigation. We educate, we warn, we even try and settle before a case gets to court. We derive no great satisfaction from this but hope it will prove a deterrent to others. Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation."

Over 26,000 file sharers in the United States have been targeted for sharing music illegally on P2P networks. The vast majority have settled for a few thousand dollars each, but this was the first of all the thousands of cases to see a jury. A shared folder was discovered on Thomas' hard drive, which was enough for the Jury to confirm the collected data that initiated the litigation in the first place. Thomas maintains that she does not know who put it there and did not partake in illegal file sharing herself.

Gateway has now debuted their top-of-the-line Quad HD 30-inch display which it says is capable of a 1600p resolution.

The display can upconvert standard definition video to HD and even upconvert 1080p HD to 1600p. There are a variety of inputs for the display including HDMI, DVI-D, VGA, component, S-Video, and composite interfaces.

A USB 2.0 hub with six ports is also built in as well as the display having anti-theft software which when set up will allow the display to work with only one PC. The system carries a 2560x1600 resolution and has built in speakers. The price? $1700 USD if purchased through Gateway.

Source:
BetaNews

According to Sony, over 580,000 units of the new PSP Slim have been sold in Japan since its release two weeks ago.

The company also said the figures include the 77,777 special edition models that were made to celebrate the launch "Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII" which was released a week before the main console.

The sales figures eclipse the total sales for the original PSP which was launched in December of 2004.

Sony has not released figures for the PSP Slim in North America or Europe, but expects to soon.

Source:
GI.biz

Toshiba has showed off a prototype of a new HD DVD recorder that is capable of burning up to two hours of 4 Mbps MPEG-4 high-definition video to regular DVD-+R, +-RW or -RAM discs.

Dubbed the RD-X7, the recorder would be the first HD DVD recorder to support DVD although it would not be the first HD recorder to do so. Sony has a few Blu-ray recorders capable of doing so. Toshiba did say the recorder would be the first to support a "new file format adopted just three weeks ago by the DVD Forum, called "HD Rec."

The two hours of video is most likely when recording to dual-layer DVDs (DVD 9) and not single-layer DVD-5, although it is not clear yet.

It doesn't appear the recorder will be ready for the holiday season, but Toshiba said two other similar models without the HD-Rec support will be available in Japan for the holidays.

Shareholders of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, the only two satellite radio providers in the United States, are to vote on Sirius' proposed multi-billion dollar acquisition of XM. The deal has not yet been given approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), nor the Justice Department, whom are looking into the proposed merger for potential antitrust implications that could raise prices for consumers.

On November 13th, XM shareholders will vote whether or not to be bought out by Sirius, while Sirius investors must approve the issuance of shares and related matters. Under the deal, XM shareholders would get 4.6 Sirius shares for each XM share. In 1997, both companies were granted licenses by the FCC, but had to agree that there would never be a merger between the two in case a satellite radio monopoly was created.

Nowadays however, the companies claim that new technology that has been introduced in the last 10 years, including HD Radio and even MP3 and iPods, serve as competition for Satellite Radio. It's up to the FCC to decide whether transferring both licenses to one company is in the public interest.

Broadcom has announced sampling of a world's first for HD; a low power multimedia processor that enables a high definition (HD) video camcorder and playback in cell phones and portable media players. The Broadcom VideoCore III multimedia processor also supports an up to 12 megapixel digital camera and delivers high performance yet ultra-low power 3D graphics for a world-class gaming experience.

HD video, 3D games and high resolution 12 megapixel pictures can be displayed at top quality on full-sized HD televisions and monitors using an on-chip industry standard HDMI interface. "Mobile handsets with compelling multimedia features are capturing the imagination of consumers and phone developers alike, driving the industry to push the limits of what a handset can do," said Will Strauss, Principal Analyst from Forward Concepts.

Strauss added: "Enabling HD quality video without draining the battery will provide another leap forward for mobile devices, taking high definition multimedia from novelty to must-have feature." The BCM2727 mobile multimedia processor is the first in the industry to support mobile phone HD camcorder functionality by providing 720p HD video encode and decode with H.264 main profile compression at low power levels. Consumers will now be able to capture video on their cell phones with the same quality used in high definition broadcast television.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd's Kazuhiro Tsuga, has promised at CEATAC that Blu-ray backers will go on a binge of price cuts and promotions during the holiday season to push the format. Matsushita is known worldwide for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics products, and is an avid backer of the Blu-ray Disc format. Tsuga doubts that the "format war" will be seen for any more than another year, with this holiday season being a big decider.

"The BD (Blu-ray disc) companies will try to do our best to promote Blu-ray," he said. "The studios want us to put money in to promote it." He added: "By the end of the year, you will see good products with very good promotion." The Blu-ray backers are also working to make the drives slimmer to make them more suitable for notebooks and PC use.

Matsushita has brand new Blu-ray recorders coming soon, which will record up to 18 hours of Full HD content to a dual-layer Blu-ray disc. Tsuga does not approve of dual format players however, which have been produced by LG and Samsung, and referred to the idea last year as "stupid, stupid." This year he said that Matsushita still has no plans for such a device.

CyberLink Corp. announced late last month, the availability of CyberLink MakeDisc 3. The latest version of MakeDisc enables authoring of video and photos, and the burning of data and music files on Blu-ray Discs and DVDs. MakeDisc 3 with support for Blu-ray Discs is available to OEM customers that are developing solutions for the digital home, while a version supporting DVD authoring and burning is now available on the CyberLink website.

"CyberLink MakeDisc 3 enriches the digital home experience by enabling point-and-click burning of data, videos, music, and photos," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "With auto-detection of recorded TV display ratios, a library of DVD menus, and easy steps for authoring, MakeDisc is the perfect enhancer of Windows Vista Media Center and CyberLink PowerCinema."

MakeDisc is the ideal solution for burning recorded TV. It automatically detects whether a recorded TV program contains most of its content broadcast in widescreen (16:9) or standard (4:3) display ratio, then selects the appropriate size for authoring and burning to DVD.

According to the newspaper Les Echos, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) will announce lower prices for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) home entertainment console ahead of the holiday season, in an effort to boost sales. The report claimed that the company will offer price drops between €100 and €200, although the latter rate more-so refers to the availability of the 40GB PS3 model, which would sell for €399.

The 60GB version of the PS3 console, the most expensive in the territory, would see a price cut of up to €100, according to the report. A Sony spokesman declined to confirm the price cut details from the report, but did say that an important announcement for Europe was "imminent."

In the United States, Sony replaced the 60GB PS3 model with an 80GB model (with some extra upgrades) for the same price. The company is hoping to offer a more attractive price tag for consumers over the holiday season to ramp up competition with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's market-leading Wii console.

Source:
Google (AFP)

Apple Inc. has issued updates that address security concerns with the Quicktime multimedia software for the Windows operating systems. The patch is for users of QuickTime v7.2 software, running Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2. It addresses the vulnerability in CVE-2007-4673 which could allow an attacker to take control of a victim's PC.

The vulnerability is exploited with maliciously crafted files which are opened with QuickTime by unsuspecting users, leading to arbitrary code execution. "A command injection issue exists in QuickTime's handling of URLs in the qtnext field> in files with QTL content. By enticing a user to open a specially crafted file, an attacker may cause an application to be launched with controlled command line arguments, which may lead to arbitrary code execution," Apple describes.

The update is available at: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

Source:
News.com

Microsoft announced on Thursday that its blockbuster game Halo 3 had reached $300 million USD in sales in its first week of release. Those numbers make it by far the fastest selling video game in history as well as one of the largest entertainment launches in history.

Even better news for Microsoft is that the game has fueled a console sales spike, which have doubled from the weeks before the game was released. Reuters even reported that sales of the 360 beat out sales of the Wii for the week.

"'Halo' is truly a cultural phenomenon, and the launch of 'Halo 3' is an important milestone for Xbox 360 and for video games as entertainment and as an art form," added Bill Gates.

The company also said that over 2.7 million users had played the game through Xbox Live accounting for over 40 million hours online.

Source:
BetaNews

Duluth resident Jammie Thomas has been found guilty by a jury in US District Court of having downloaded and shared 24 specific unauthorized music files and was ordered to pay the recording industry $220,000 USD.

The number, although ridiculously high, could have been much worse. The evidence presented shows that Thomas' system could have been responsible for pirating over 1700 tracks meaning she would have been liable for up to $16 million USD.

The case, which only lasted a day, had tons of testimony from corporate representatives including unbelievable testimony by a Sony BMG rep that said that all ripping of music from retail CDs, even for personal use, is theft. Imagine that, getting the music from your own paid for CDs, and you are a thief.

However, the evidence was too obvious for Thomas to have a chance. A shared Kazaa folder was found on her system although Thomas still maintains she has no idea who put it there.

Unfortunately, the shared folder linked to a Kazaa account which directly linked to an IP address which linked directly to a MAC address used by a broadband modem connected to Thomas' computer. Clearly too much evidence for innocence.

$220,000 USD for 24 songs, what has happened to the world?

Blockbuster is expected to announce a loss of subscribers during the third quarter of this year. The drop comes as their chief rival among brick and mortar video rental chains, Movie Gallery, has been faltering and may file for bankruptcy soon.

Over the last few years, online DVD rental pioneer Netflix has been steadily growing at the expense of traditional rental outlets. Last year Blockbuster unveiled a new online rental program of their own, dubbed Total Access, intended to be the first to actually give Netflix some real competition. One of the selling points for Total Access is an option to return movies to brick and mortar stores, allowing faster receipt and shipment of additional movies.

This strategy seemed to be paying off as the program gained momentum last year, and earlier this year even resulted in a net loss of customers for Netflix, the first time that's happened since that company's inception in the late 1990s. However, despite subscriber gains, corporate losses led Blockbuster's recently hired CEO to cut back on in-store returns from the program, only permitting a Limited number, depending on the plan you select. At the same time, Netflix has added Streaming movies and lowered prices.

In a report that shouldn't surprise long time Afterdawn visitors, the U.S. General Accounting Office accuses FCC members of a bias toward helping Washington lobbyists. The report states that some at the agency leak details regarding what votes are coming up to industry lobbyists, who then have a chance to stage some sort of campaign to get whatever result they're looking for.

The report says "this imbalance of information is not the intended result of the Communications Act and it runs contrary to the principles of transparency and equal opportunity for participation established by law and to FCC's own rules that govern rulemaking."

David Fiske, director of media relations at the agency, said in an interview that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin "has always been very open and transparent" about what issues are coming to a vote and that the commission is "exploring ways in which we can make our processes even more open and transparent."

Despite FCC claims of neutrality, events over the last few years tell a different story. It was, after all, the the FCC that first attempted to mandate compatibility with the so-called broadcast flag. The broadcast flag, which the television industry has been fighting to get for years, would allow digital broadcasts to tell a potential recording device that it's not authorized to record them. Before being shot down by a Federal Court as outside the agency's authority, FCC regulations would have required all consumer electronics devices to not only support, but be dictated to by the flag.

According to NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, copyright holders are "losing the battle" against piracy and that the battle will be completely lost unless governments and industries get proactive in fighting it.

The chief spoke out about the piracy issue at an anti-piracy summit hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce.

Zucker hopes intellectual property violations will take center stage and also hopes that Congress will create "dedicated IP enforcement departments and to offer federal grants for state and local governments to escalate their own policing efforts." Zucker also wants any and all advertisers and credit card companies to stop supporting web sites that are "overwhelmingly devoted" to making unauthorized content available such as Warez forums or torrent trackers.

To an even higher extreme, Zucker wants all ISPs, university networks, search engines and user-generated content sites to install filtering technology to would block all pirated content. Critics have argued an approach like that would be ineffective but Zucker doesn't seem to care.

"Technology has been and continues to be an incredibly powerful tool to combat theft, whether we are talking about hard goods or digital goods," Zucker said. He admits the tools will never be perfect "but committed development of technology has the potential to reduce dramatically the traffic in counterfeit and pirated products."

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that in the first six months of 2007 it prevented over 36,000 unauthorized software products from being sold on numerous online auction sites.

The Alliance also said that the retail value of the pirated software that could have been sold on the auction sites came out to over $8 million USD.

"And this is the tip of the iceberg", said John Wolfe, director of internet enforcement at the BSA.

"This represents auctions we have identified as infringing our members' copyrights and taken action to have them closed by the auction site owners. Some auction offers may lead to dozens or even hundreds of purchases of illegal software."

"When buying software on auction sites, people need to be concerned if prices appear too good to be true. Counterfeit copies may not give you the functionality and full benefits of a legal version.

There is also a significant data protection risk in that counterfeit software may be linked to hackers looking to access your network," Wolfe added.

In a separate but related study performed by IDC, the group revealed that over 50% percent of software purchased on auction sites have had malware embedded into the code.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced that it has renewed its popular "Five Free Discs" promotion through at least the holidays, and they have also refreshed the list of titles.

The offer is still the same and any buyer of a qualifying Blu-ray player or the PlayStation 3 will be eligible to receive the movies via mail.

According to HDDigest, the new 18 titles offered will be'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,' 'Wild Hogs,' 'American Psycho,' 'Chain Reaction,' 'The Devil's Rejects,' 'Flight of the Phoenix,' 'Full Metal Jacket,' 'Hart's War,' 'The Last Waltz,' 'The Omen,' 'The Patriot,' 'The Prestige,' 'Species,' 'Stir of Echoes,' 'Superman: The Movie,' 'S.W.A.T.,' 'Swordfish' and 'Ultraviolet.'

To find a list of eligible players, the BDA says to visit this site here.

Source:
HD Digest

Although Microsoft has yet to officially announce it, retailers in the US have begun taking pre-orders for a new Xbox 360 "Arcade" bundle, set to hit retail shelves later this month.

The new bundle will include a Core system, a memory card, a wireless controller and five Xbox Live arcade titles including classics like "Pac-Man Championship Edition" and "Uno."

Both Toys R Us and Amazon have the bundle listed at $279.99 USD and Gamestop has removed all listings for the regular core system, suggesting that this new bundle will replace the current regular Core system.

Source:
GI.biz

Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer Mike Lanman has said that the company will be adding four new devices to its lineup of phones set for release in the holiday season 2007. One of these phones, the LG VX10000 Voyager he claims will be an "iPhone killer."

"We think it'll be the best phone ... this year. It will kill the iPhone," Lanman added.

The device has a 400x240 touch screen but Verizon says it is shaped more like the LG enV than the iPhone.

The Voyager's touch screen affords "large icons, and the now-familiar "swiping" motion navigates through an eye-catching UI." It also has a handy QWERTY keyboard which allows the user to handle tasks using either the keyboard or the touch screen.

Verizon also says the phone has "Full HTML browsing, VCAST support, a new mobile e-mail service managed by Verizon, and mobile IM client."

The device also includes an almost standard 2MP camera, a music player, and stereo speakers. The internal memory is expandable to 8GB via microSD and the music player can support MP3, Windows Media Audio, and AAC files.

Verizon has one of the largest and strongest networks in the US and it will be good to see this new "iPhone killer" at work.

Microsoft announced new Zune models, and upgrades to the second generation functionality for first generation players, but analysts are saying the company needs to change strategies if they want the Zune to compete with Apple's industry leading iPod. The new models include two flash based players - 4GB and 8GB, and another with an upgraded 80GB hard drive.

"This device with the all-too-familiar dial wheel compares reasonably favourably with last generation iPod players," said Mark Mulligan, analyst with Jupiter Research. "Microsoft needs to come at Apple from an unexpected angle but at the moment it is Apple with its new iPod touch and nanos that is shaking up the market," he said.

At the launch event for the new Zunes, Bill Gates compared Microsoft's current digital media strategy to the company's past work in gaining acceptance for Office, saying "Twenty years ago we bet the company on an integrated productivity suite of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, and we changed the way people work."

The problem is that Apple has already changed the way many people purchase and listen to music. If Microsoft, or any other company, truly wants to compete with iPods or iTunes they'll need to come up with something new to get consumer attention. Until then, the Zune will come off to most as simply an iPod copy.

Universal hopes their release of Evan Almighty on HD DVD will impress consumers with its interactive web features. So far, it's the most ambitious use of HD DVD's interactive web features. While the first, 300, offered the viewer ringtones and computer wallpaper, Evan Almighty takes you to a much larger selection of merchandise, much of it intended to tie into the movie's environmental theme.

“With the release of Evan Almighty on HD DVD, we’re introducing U-Shop, a new level of Web-enabled experiences only HD DVD can provide,” said Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Digital Platforms. “The guaranteed features on every HD DVD players allow us to explore the world beyond what’s possible on a physical disc and redefine the home movie experience.”

Once at U-shop, viewers have the chance to buy products like a composter or solar powered radio in addition to movie memorabilia like t-shirts. While web functionality was originally envisioned to be something a viewer could take advantage of while watching the movie, such as buying an item featured in a scene, studios have been wary of implementing that for fear actors would feel they were being used to advertise - something that's not included in their contracts.

Cyberlink Corp. has announced the new release of CyberLink Power2Go 6, the all-media disc burning software, adding drag-and-drop burning support for Windows Vista. The latest version of Cyberlink's software also improved support for blue-laser disc burning, supporting CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD data burning.

The update adds drag-and-drop burning using Power2Go's Windows Sidebar gadget, enabling easy burning via Windows Vista, instant location of files by searching using file name or tag information, drag-and-drop thumbnail layout for creating discs of photo slideshows and videos, password protection and encryption for data burning and unlimited MP3 ripping, file conversion, and other music CD utilities.

"CyberLink Power2Go 6 offers easy-to-use, yet extremely powerful, burning features," said Alice H. Chang, CyberLink CEO. "With the new instant search capability plus password protection for data burning, users can locate and then securely store files faster than ever before." Power2Go 6 is available new for $39.95 or €39.99 or as an upgrade for $29.95 or €29.99.

Hackers of Apple Inc.'s iPhone are making progress in reversing the effects the iPhone v1.1.1 firmware update had on unlocked or hacked models. Apple fought back against hacking by disabling phones that were unlocked from the tie with AT&T with a firmware update. Now hackers are posting instructions on how to reverse back some of the effects, but getting a model to make phone calls again has not yet happened.

The iPhone Dev Wiki has posted instructions on how to regain the use of the iPhone's iPod functionalities and WiFi capabilities, but the race is still on to find a solution to use the device as an actual mobile phone again. Hackers need to find a way to roll back firmware of the iPhone's baseband chip, which is used to make calls.

"So far all attempts to downgrade the baseband have been unsuccessful," the Wiki said. "There have been several reports of successful baseband downgrades online, but these haven't been confirmed." Of course, rolling back is not the only option, and the race is also on to find a method to unlock iPhones with v1.1.1 firmware installed.

Toshiba Corp. appears to have brought its expectations for bigger OLED screens a few years closer, saying it will have a 30-inch OLED screen on the market in 2009. OLED screens offer benefits that will in some ways, be on par with the switch many consumers made from CRT TV sets to LCD or Plasma models. Sony announced this month that it will offer its first OLED screen, a small 11-inch screen, in Japan with a price tag of about $1,744 USD.

Not to be outdone, Toshiba President and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida, announced that the company would have its own 30-inch OLED screen on the market in 2009, while it previously had slated such availability of Toshiba OLED screens for 2015 or 2016. OLED offers incredible benefits, but the panels are hard to manufacture and right now they degrade too quickly with a lifespan of approximately 30,000 hours, compared to an average 50,000 hours for LCD.

OLED offers benefits in power consumption as it does not require backlighting like LCD technology. It also offers much higher contrast ratio for noticeably better picture quality and the screens are extremely thin. Toshiba's previous big plans to make waves in the multi-billion market for flat-panel television was SED. Unfortunately SED has been left almost dead due to legal issues with Canon and Nano-Proprietary. Hopefully Toshiba will have more luck with OLED goals.

While Hollywood insists on only tapping its feet in the waters of the digital download market while it continues to milk physical movie sales to feel safer, major retailers are starting to upset the movie studios by offering ultra-low-price DVDs, even outside of the fourth quarter. With physical movie sales declining, retailers are trying to keep the DVD buyers coming to the stores by offering DVDs as cheap as $3.99.

Target and Circuit City are two retailers that are offering DVDs at this "rental" price. Target customers can buy such movies as The Nutty Professor and Along Came Polly for $3.99, while customers at Circuit City can pick up The Bourne Identity and S.W.A.T for the same price. VideoBusiness points out that 0.8 percent of catalog sales were in the $3 to $4 range as of 2007, compared to 0.4% as of 2005 and 4.6 percent of catalog sales in 2007 were in the $4 to $5 range, compared to 0.7 in 2005.

However, movie studio executives don't agree with what the major retailers are doing for DVD prices. "It's a negative precedent in the business to do that type of lower budget pricing outside of the fourth quarter," Warner senior VP Jeff Baker said. "You would need to see some uplift in unit volume velocity to compensate for that lower pricing to maintain profit margins, and I have not uniformly seen at retailers the necessary uplift in volume."

Microsoft Corp. has updated its line of Zune MP3 players, showing off three new models it hopes will cut somewhat into Apple's dominant share of the market for MP3 players. A new black Zune model is thinner than the original, and comes with a new 80GB hard disk drive (HDD), replacing the 30GB unit released less than one year ago.

The black Zune has a 3.2-inch screen and like the original Zune, it sports WiFi capabilities for sharing music with other Zunes and an FM receivers. The new Zunes sport shiny glass screens and a new touch-pad for navigation. As well as the HDD model, Microsoft is also offering flash memory-based models. Similar in shape and size to the original iPod Nano, the new pink, green, black and red flash-based Zune models offer 4GB or 8GB of storage.

The new models will go on sale in mid-November, with the 80GB model selling for $249, 4GB model selling for $149 and 8GB model selling for $199. The prices match the iPod line-up. "There's nothing earth-shattering there," said Van Baker, an analyst at the research group Gartner. "Maybe next year they can make an aggressive push against Apple."

After more than 26,000 Internet users have been targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for alleged copyright infringement, a case has finally ended in a proper trial. Capital vs. Thomas will challenge the recording industry's evidence against file sharers as well as fines levied by music companies for sharing copyrighted music online. Jammie Thomas refused to settle with the RIAA, saying she was wrongfully targeted by SafeNet.

SafeNet is contracted by the record companies to monitor file sharing activity and find sharers of copyrighted material. "I did not download or upload any music, period," Thomas, 30, said outside the federal courthouse in Duluth. A 12-member jury was empaneled on Tuesday. Her lawyer said that she will end up paying over $60,000 in attorney's fees because she refused to be bullied by the trade group.

"No one can prove which computer actually did this," defense attorney Brian Toder said in his opening statement. He argued that in this day and age, malicious individuals can easily hijack computers and use the Internet connections to distribute copyrighted material. However, the record companies claim that there is clear evidence that Thomas shared over 1,700 songs with potentially millions of file sharers.

The admins over at The Pirate Bay have decided that their extremely popular torrent tracker has reached its performance limit and have announced that they are currently working on a more efficient open source tracker that will even protect better against anti-piracy groups.

TPB also said they had moved their servers to a new datacenter and added an extra four brand new servers making their total an impressive 16. The new datacenter also allows for better protection against DDoS attacks and "nullrouting the spam-nets from anti-piracy organizations."

According to the tracker design page, the "new tracker will be capable of blocking and/or logging known p2p vandals such as MediaDefender, BayTSP, MediaSentry and EZ2net." The new tracker should also help ensure the privacy of its users as well as using less bandwidth while connecting to more peers.

Source:
TF

Citing Enterbrain data figures, Reuters is reporting that the Nintendo Wii outsold the PlayStation 3 in Japan by over 4 to 1 in the six month period ending September 2007.

From April to September, Nintendo sold 1.6 million consoles in Japan while Sony sold 385,492 of their next gen consoles. Also noted in the report was the fact that the Microsoft Xbox 360 continues to struggle and sold only 122,565 consoles during the same period.

The demand for the Wii is so high still that yesterday, spokesperson Reggie Fils-Aime admitted that the company would not be able to meet holiday season demand this year.

Source:
GI.biz

According to an official post on the company's website, Joost 1.0 is now available to the public, allowing all interested parties to download and run the service that had been in a private beta for the last couple months. For those not familiar, Joost 1.0 allows users to watch TV on their PCs for free as the service is paid for through ads.

“For us at Joost, we are exhausted, but excited. Many of us have put as much as two years of our lives into this little 'project,' and owe a great deal to our families for supporting us, to our friends for not ignoring us, and to all the beta testers who cheered us on and helped with ideas, feedback and lots of bug reporting," Joost said.

The service is still in beta, but now an open beta will allow Joost developers to quickly fix all bugs that are identified.

The service will be available for Windows XP and Vista as well as OS X 10.4.


Source:
Dailytech

Building on previous promotions that offered five to seven free HD DVD movies with the purchase of a qualifying HD DVD player, Best Buy is now offering a total of 9 discs with a purchase of the new $399 USD Toshiba HD-A30.

The deal was first revealed in this weeks circular and ups the ante for HD bundles.

The first five movies are available via mail through the "Five free discs" promotion while two others, '300' and 'The Bourne Identity' come included with the HD-A3. The final two free movies are available at Best Buy at the point of purchase.

"It’s a good start to a [HD DVD] collection," Best Buy spokesperson Brian Lucas said.

A good deal indeed, especially with a good player.

Source:
HD Digest

One of the problems facing consumers in the knock down grudge match between HD DVD and Blu-ray comes in the form of compatibility. Most consumers would just soon the industry settle for a format and let them revel in the majestic glow of next-generation media. A few companies have attempted to bring out media players capable of playing both formats, but none have really taken off due to the expense and difficulty of doing so. That soon could change.

The folks over at Horizon Semiconductors have unveiled a new chip that decodes full 1080p/60p video streams on the fly for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. This means easy hardware compatibility out of a single processor. They also claim that along with decoding next-gen optical disc formats, it is also capable of reading from the tried and true red laser of the DVD era.

Horizon's Hz7220 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray "System-on-a-Chip" supports wide range of features and capabilities including conformance to leading video compression standards such as high-definition 1080/60p profiles of AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2 and DV/HDV, leading audio compression standards such as DTS-HD, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, as well as supporting HD-DVD and Blu-Ray HDi and BD-J (BD-Java) interactive technologies.

Although Sony America has yet to confirm or deny it, leaked Best Buy documents seem to prove that a new 40 GB PlayStation 3 bundle is coming to the US.

The documents show the new console having a retail price of $399 USD and coming bundled with Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray disc. The console will have an early November launch date.

Previous models of the PS3 have FCC product numbers of CECHA01 and CECH01, respectively and last week Sony filed documents with the FCC for a product with the number CECHG01, sparking a flood of rumors that a new model was coming soon.

More information when the new model is confirmed.

Source:
GI.biz

Finnish cellular phone manufacturer Nokia has inked deals with seven major media producers to bring Streaming video content to their cellular phones. The most recent deals were signed with big names such as CNN and Sony Pictures to provide high-end content to their high-end phones.

"Consumer desire to watch Internet videos on mobile devices is growing all the time and we want to help users discover and access the best content in the simplest way possible," Harri Mannisto, director at Nokia's multimedia unit.

Other video providers on the list include India's IBN news Channel, Jamba, RoofTopComedy, ROK, and Versaly Entertainment. These newly signed deals will begin streaming data to Nokia's N95 model phones in the very near future.

This deal is of course in addition to the existing deals Nokia had signed to stream Internet video content from the likes of Google YouTube and Reuters.

Source:
Reuters

TV Guide is taking the leap into the world of online television offerings with a new service called the Online Video Guide, debuting on their website today. The idea is to help site to the publication's website go straight to the best sources for television shows and related content. For example, a search for a show that's available on a television network website should show that offering first. Additional features will include an option to narrow the search to free video, eliminating online stores like Amazon Unbox or Apple's iTunes.

"We're filling a niche that Google and YouTube are not because they're not strictly TV-focused," said Paul Greenberg, General Manager of TV Guide Online. He also says that 70% of YouTube users are more interested in professionaly produced video, rather than the user produced content that site is famous for.

While the number of visitors to TV Guide Online has increased an estimated 70% in the last year, subscriptions to their traditional weekly publications of regular TV programming has fallen dramatically over several years.

Although they currently don't receive any monetary compensation outside their own advertising for directing visitors to videos, TV Guide hopes to negotiate deals with content providers for some sort of revenue sharing.

According to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the company has no intention of delivering DRM free digital media, and in fact expects both DRM and watermarking technology to be widely accepted among both content providers and consumers. During an address at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference on antipiracy measures he said that these measures "will usher in an unprecedented period of creative output across the globe." Hoping to prove his point, he mentioned that Viacom is already the leader in delivering digital content to mobile devices.

His comments seem to indicate that the parent company of Paramount hasn't learned anything from the music industry experience with media distribution, which is clearly shifting to a DRM free model. While DRM on video destined for mobile devices may make sense, it's not as though there's a huge demand for watching low resolution, low quality video on an HDTV anyway.

Although he also claimed that Viacom supports fair use, his diatribe about the importance of DRM and watermarking didn't include an explanation of how those technologies can be used in a way that allows consumers to take advantage of that right.

If content owners really want to be friends of fair use, it's time to do more than simply give lip service to it. Regardless of the entertainment industry's liberal application of Orwellian doublethink, peace is not war, love is not hate, and DRM (as it's currently implemented) is not conducive to fair use.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, which produces the Panasonic brand of consumer electronics equipment, has shown off its advanced Blu-ray disc recorders that will store more Full HD programming per disc than any other. Matsushita is an exclusive Blu-ray disc backer, which competes with the rival HD DVD format for dominance in the market for HD home entertainment content.

Matsushita has also revealed that it will sell the first DVD recorders that store Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 resolution) content on conventional DVD discs next month. The new Blu-ray recorders will go on sale on November 1st, advertised as being capable of recording 18 hours of Full HD to a single dual-layer BD disc.

A model we previously reported on that will sport a huge 1TB hard disk drive (HDD) will sell for 300,000 yen ($2,600). The 1TB HDD is advertised as being capable of storing 381 hours of full high definition content. Three new DVD recorder models that will record Full HD to conventional DVD discs will also go on sale on November 1, with the high-end model sporting a 500GB HDD selling for about 130,000 yen.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the availability of Adobe Flash Lite 3 software. It supports Adobe Flash Player compatible video and enables the delivery of dynamic Web content on mobile devices. Flash Lite 3 allows mobile device manufacturers, operators and content providers to differentiate their offerings by giving users the ability to watch Flash Player compatible video, the world's most popular video format, and browse Flash enabled Web sites when integrated with a mobile Web browser.

NTT DoCoMo and Nokia have committed to deliver Flash Lite 3 enabled devices in upcoming releases of handsets. Over 300 million Flash-enabled phones have shipped so far and Adobe expects the number to balloon to 1 billion by 2010. "With Flash Lite 3 and its support for video, we’ve passed a major milestone in bringing a desktop experience to mobile and transforming the wireless industry," said Al Ramadan, senior vice president for Mobile and Devices at Adobe.

Ramadan added: "Today, mobile users experience amazing Flash based user interfaces and applications with handsets like the LG Prada, the LG Chocolate or the Samsung D900. With Flash Lite 3, tomorrow's devices will offer even richer, more engaging experiences." Forum Nokia launched a new community for creative professionals today, providing Flash developers and designers with the tools to bring their products to billions of mobile customers. Forum Nokia is the largest mobile development community in the world with 3.4 million members.

In keeping its word earlier this year that it would push the HD DVD format through sales of its computer equipment, Toshiba Corp. has announced the new Satellite brand A205 laptop that comes equipped with a HD DVD drive. Along with the HD DVD drive, the model will include an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5250, running at 1.50 GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a 200 GB 4200RPM hard disk drive.

The screen offers a WXGA resolution (1280x800) 15.4-inch diagonal widescreen display featuring Toshiba's TruBrite technology. The first Toshiba laptop to feature the HD DVD format was the Qosmio AV notebook PC, which was notably heavy at over 10 pounds (4.5kg) weight in certain configurations. A Satellite laptop that doesn't feature HD DVD weighs in at around 6 pounds (2.72 kg).

The new A205 laptop will sell for a retail price of $1,149.99 USD, about 30 percent higher than a model without HD DVD. Until February 28th, 2008, customers who purchase an A205 laptop also receive a mail-in offer for five free HD DVD titles.

Adobe has offered up its new Adobe Media Player, and has already announced that leading content publishers including CBS, PBS, Yahoo! Video, Meredith Corporation, Blip.tv, Fora.tv, Motionbox, MyToons and StimTV have pledged support for the player. Adobe Media Player enables viewers to enjoy content from these broadcast television and Web video providers, giving them control to watch their favorite shows both online and offline in an engaging, customized video experience.

"As a pioneer in rich interactive Web video experiences, Adobe is committed to driving the next generation of video delivery and accelerating the fusion of TV and the Internet," said Jim Guerard, vice president for Dynamic Media at Adobe. "Adobe Media Player enables us to work with content publishers and offer them innovative ways to create, deliver, and monetize high-quality video experiences that are supported both by streaming and download. By collaborating with these media and entertainment industry giants, we will be able to provide viewers an extensive catalog of their favorite shows for viewing at their convenience."

Now that computer users are more wise to email-delivered spam and other conventional methods in use to deliver Malware to unsuspecting or naive users, malicious software authors are looking for newer ways to fool us all. One of its prime goals now is to deliver Malware by exploiting the huge demand for video content online. You might have already noticed some spam emails use HTML links to fool users into thinking they are clicking on YouTube links (usually claiming they are recordings of the user that another individual uploaded).

The Georgia Tech Information Security Center has released a report on Internet threats as it is holding its its annual summit. The summit has gathered over 300 scholars and security experts to discuss emerging threats for 2008 and how they may be fought off. "Just as we see an evolution in messaging, we also see an evolution in threats," said Chris Rouland, the chief technology officer for IBM Corp.'s Internet Security Systems

Rouland added: "As companies have gotten better blocking e-mails, we see people move to more creative techniques." Rouland said in the report that the, "next logical step seems to be media players". There have been a few cases so far that have involved video content, like a worm found in 2006 that launches a corrupt Web site without prompting after a user opens a media file in a player.

According to a Tech.co.uk report, Nintendo has managed to sell over 50 million units of the DS handheld console in less than three years since its initial launch, almost matching the speed of Apple's quest to 100 million iPods. Of the 50 million DS units sold, 40 percent of them have been sold in Japan, meaning approximately one in six people own a DS in the country.

Only a handful of CE tech products ever reach the huge 100 million unit milestone. Apple Inc. announced that it had sold 100 million iPods earlier this year since its first iPods were launched in 2001. Sony took 13.5 years to sell 100 million Walkman players and 10 years to sell 100 million original PlayStations. The still-strong PlayStation 2 (PS2) reached the 100 million milestone in five and a half years.

Nintendo's personal best continues to be the Gameboy, which reached 100 million unit sales in 11 years. The DS seems set to reach the milestone in much less time. The original DS went on sale in 2004 and in 2006, Nintendo offered up the DS Lite to consumers. Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) has sold 25 million worldwide since its 2004 launch.

This morning, Microsoft launched the beta for its long awaited Windows Media Center Internet TV platform. The company's Internet TV platform was supposed to be an Xbox 360 initiative but it appears it will be seen on Windows Vista machines first.

If you are an owner of Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate then you can simply access the free TV content without the need for a hardware TV tuner. According to Microsoft, over 100 hours of programming will be available during the beta including concerts and news clips as well as sports highlights.

Microsoft also said that the Xbox 360, Linksys, D-Link and HP Windows Media Center Extenders would be able to stream the content to HDTVs.

"We are excited to reveal the first series of totally quiet, cool, and sleek-looking Media Center Extender devices, designed to deliver the ultimate entertainment experience to every TV set in your home," said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Entertainment and Devices eHome Division.

"These products are the initial third-party devices that can wirelessly connect a TV with a PC, with features including live high-definition TV, PVR, movies, pictures, music and online services. In addition, the Internet TV beta allows Windows Media Center as well as Extender users to enjoy free high- quality television from some of their favorite studios and networks in Media Center, directly over the Internet."

Dolby Laboratories, Inc., infamous for its role in high quality surround sound audio systems, has shown off some of its new video imagining technologies at CEATEC today. The company is previewing Dolby Contrast and Dolby Vision at the event in room 201B. "Dolby is committed to providing innovative entertainment technology solutions. At CEATEC, we are demonstrating new video technologies that could transform LCD picture quality," said Francois Modarresse, Vice President, Marketing, Dolby Laboratories.

He added: "Dolby's surround sound technologies are world renowned, and our imaging capabilities are already modernizing how we see entertainment. For example, Dolby Digital Cinema systems deliver movies with opening-night quality every night." Dolby Contrast, leveraging light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with local dimming, provides outstanding contrast ratio and improvements to the overall image quality.

Dolby Vision adds to LED backlight units with local dimming advanced high-dynamic range algorithms, which deliver stunning images, by providing simultaneously high brightness and high contrast ratio. In demonstrations, LCD displays with Dolby Vision deliver picture quality that virtually matches real-world visual perception of depth, detail, and color.

Recently, the Turkish arm of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), known as Mu Yap, purchased a pirate CD with music from a popular Turkish singer, Serder Ortac, whom has had several best-selling albums there. A check by IFPI London tracked the pirate disc back to a Turkish replication plant in Istanbul, which lead to Mu Yap making a criminal complaint to the authorities.

As a result, on September 20th, shortly after midnight, the plant was raided by 20 Turkish police officers, accompanied by Mu Yap. They recovered 13,000 suspected infringing units, by the popular Turkish artist Ibrahim Tatlise, together with 2,000 inlays and jewel boxes marked with Turkish Government banderols.

The Police are liaising with the Ministry of Culture to establish the issuing chain of the banderols and Mu Yap is assisting with preparation of prosecution documents.

Source:
Press Release

Google Inc.'s video sharing giant YouTube has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard (HP) to bring a competition to amateur video makers. User shave to submit films between two and seven minutes in length. A total of 20 finalists will be chosen by Jason Reitman, director of Thank You For Smoking, and the overall winner will be decided by YouTube users.

There are a couple of interesting requirements being asked for however. Firstly, a character in the video must face a situation "above his or her maturity level," and a line must be included in the dialogue: "I demand an explanation for these shenanigans. What do you have to say?". A scene must also include one character passing a photograph to another.

The contest runs from October 7th to November 9th, and is available for users in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. "While we wish we could include residents of all countries in Project Direct, many countries have different laws about running contests and we weren't able to devise a contest with rules that are fair and work the same for everyone around the world," a YouTube spokesperson said of the seven country limitation.

A New York woman was so upset about Apple Inc.'s decision to cut a large $200 from the 8GB iPhone price, and drop the 4GB model completely, that she has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging violation of price discrimination laws. Dongmei LiL of Queens is seeking $1 million in damages over the company's decision to make such drastic price reduction within a few short months of the items launch.

Hundreds of early adopters complained about such a sudden price reduction. Those who bought an 8GB iPhone at $599 in the two weeks before the price cut were offered the $200 back as a refund, and for all of those that purchased the iPhone earlier, the company offered up $100 credit for Apple stores.

According to Li's complaint, the price cut injured customers like her because they cannot resell the product for the same profit as those who bought the iPhone following the price cut. As an owner of a 4GB iPhone model, Li claims that owners of the $499 model were given less favorable terms than those who bought the 8GB model at the premium price.

The lawsuit also alleges that Apple and AT&T are taking part in unfair business practices with the required 2-year service contract for the iPhone

Italian police have struck out at administrators and users of the Discotequezone DirectConnect (DC) file sharing hub. Police have confirmed that the network administrators, plus seven people who uploaded large volumes of copyrighted music, are now being prosecuted. The raids, carried out during the past weeks by the Fiscal Police for Bergamo, were coordinated by the Public Prosecutor from Brescia, with assistance from the music industry anti-piracy organization FPM.

This is the second stage of the operation which started in March with several servers seized by the police. A total of 11 computers and more than 110,000 illegal MP3 music files were seized in the operation which was carried out between Rome, Milan and Brescia. The sharers may now face fines up to €8.5 million according to Italian copyright laws.

Some 170 Italian file-sharers and illegal network administrators have been criminally prosecuted for music piracy in Italy in the last two years.

Source:
Press Release

The popular burning/multimedia suite Nero Burning ROM has been updated today to version v8.1.1.0. Nero Burning ROM is one of the most popular all-in-one CDR/DVDR application on the market. Nero combines huge amounts of features in a compact and easy to use package. It handles disc duplicating and pre-mastering with ease, supported by a cover designer and even an audio file editor.

Enhancements to Nero 8 include Windows Vista support, a brand new project launcher that lets you easily access features and perform one-click functions, new security tools to protect and preserve your digital content and increased support for the latest blue laser technology.

Nero has been downloaded from AfterDawn over 4,252,798 times.

Download Burning ROM v8.1.1.0 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_applications/nero.cfm

Visit Nero's Homepage at:
http://www.nero.com/enu/index.html

Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo America has made comments indicating that the company will not be able to meet the demand for its ever popular Wii console during the upcoming holiday season.

“We have been sold out worldwide since we launched,” said Fils-Aime. “Every time we put more into the marketplace, we sell more, which says that we are not even close to understanding where the threshold is between supply and demand.”

Fils-Aime also added that Nintendo was pushing production hard to meet the demand but that the issue "is not a lack of production.”

“The issue is we went in with a curve that was aggressive, but the demand has been substantially more than that. And the ability to ramp up production and to sustain it is not a switch that you flick on. We're working very hard to make sure that consumers are satisfied this holiday, but I can't guarantee that we're going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record we won't,” he added.

Since its launch, the Wii has led every weekly sales chart and recently surpassed the Xbox 360 as the best selling next-gen console.

Source:
Dailytech

Although they have yet to confirm or deny the reports, it appears Samsung is canceling production of its high end Blu-ray player, the BDP-2400 and delaying their dual HD player, the much awaited BD-UP5000.

The reports, corroborated by retailers, speculate that the company canceled the player because it was "unable to meet the October 31 deadline for BD 1.0 specifications."

The BD-UP5000, originally scheduled for an October release however will not be cancelled but is delayed until at least December.

Samsung will be the second manufacturer to release a dual HD player, following the somewhat popular but expensive LG BH100.

Source:
Dailytech

According to sources within Microsoft, the company will be holding an event tomorrow to debut the new second generation line of Zune media players.

Both Bill Gates and J. Allard will be on hand for the event and the announcement should include the introduction of flash memory-based Zunes.

Although the Zune has a 10 percent share of the HDD based player segment, Microsoft hopes to take a bigger share of the more popular flash memory based segment.

Although it is not entirely known what the devices will look like, we do know the HDD-based Zune second gens will look the same as its first gen brother but be noticeably slimmer. The flash based players are said to look like the iPod Nano but with included Wi-Fi and higher storage capacity.

Microsoft hopes to manufacture 2.5 million second-gen Zunes with about 2/3 being of the flash based variety.

The players are expected to go on sale in mid-November.

Source:
BetaNews

British rock band Radiohead has joined the ranks of such bands as The Beatles in denying Apple's iTunes the sell of their new album entitled "In Rainbows". Instead, the band has decided to let the fans decide how much they'd like to pay for their own music.

With a message reading "Its up to you", Radiohead will put their new album, which is set to release 10 October on direct digital download for a price that you are able to name yourself. They have, however, begun accepting pre-orders on their website. As the site will show, you are able to place a bid as low as one pence (2 cents) with a 45 pence charge for using a credit or debit card.

The band does not fear that it will hurt their individual fortunes, but rather poses this as a way to possibly abide illegal downloading by letting the fan pay what they feel is acceptable with the album based on what they feel it deserves.

On the flipside, the band is also accepting orders for a physical copy of the disk at a set price of £40 which includes many extras and fanfare to keep the people happy who would like to truly support the band.

Source:
PC World

Trying to always improve upon existing designs, Sony has decided to officially launch its first Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) television screen in Japan on 1 December. Retailing for approximately 200,000 yen (£850 or $725), the new OLED screen will measure a scant 11-inches in size but only 3-mm thick. Sony touts its new OLED screens as being more energy efficient, brighter than current LCD standards and do not require a backlight as current technology does, thereby saving space.

Although OLED is said to have a better contrast ratio, thereby giving sharper images than traditional LCD, they are more expensive and more difficult to produce in the sizes that are currently accepted as "the norm" with LCD standards.

Sony's president Ryoji Chubachi stated "I want this world's first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony's technological prowess. I want this to be the flag under which we charge forward to turn the fortunes around."

Other companies such as Samsung are working on a 40-inch OLED television, but Sony is the first to bring one to market.

"I don't think OLED TVs will replace LCD TVs overnight. But I do believe this is a type of technology with very high potential, something that will come after LCD TVs," said Sony executive deputy president Katsumi Ihara.

EMI has allegedly sent intimidating letters to MP3tunes, a San Diego based website that allegedly "aggregates 'free' music tracks posted by its users."

The letters threaten lawsuits if MP3tunes fails to take down links to EMI's copyrighted material. Of course, EMI also wants monetary compensation.

"Beyond that, we invite MP3tunes to make a substantive proposal both to redress past infringement of EMI works and to a ensure that there will be no future infringement of EMI works," attorney Steven Fabrizio wrote to MP3tunes' counsel.

As a response to the letters, MP3tunes filed a lawsuit of its own, declaring that its business model is legal. Ira Sacks, the company's counsel, also sent a letter to EMI informing them that they had removed 350 tracks from the site but that the take down notices do not comport with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

"Your attempt to place the burden on MP3tunes to determine which of the songs on its web site are infringing by providing (i) a link to the EMI website which provides a 'non-exhaustive further listing of EMI's recording artists' and (ii) a representative list of songs which you demand be disabled, fails to comply with EMI's obligations under the DMCA," Sacks wrote.