Following the recent, popular trend, Amazon has brought back the buy one, get one free (BOGO) sale on Blu-ray films.
The promotion was launched alongside the new year and features 96 titles from Fox, Warner, New Line and MGM.
There is no set date for how long the promotion will run, but Amazon has warned of limited quantities.
The titles available are as follows:
$17.95
The Last Samurai [Blu-ray] (2003)
Unforgiven [Blu-ray] (1992)
$18.95
Million Dollar Baby [Blu-ray] (2005)
$19.95
300 [Blu-ray] (2007)
Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray] (2004)
Beerfest (Unrated) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Blazing Saddles [Blu-ray] (1974)
Blood Diamond [Blu-ray] (2006)
Bullitt [Blu-ray] (1968)
Deliverance [Blu-ray] (1972)
Enter the Dragon [Blu-ray] (1973)
Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray] (1987)
Galapagos [Blu-ray]
Good Night and Good Luck [Blu-ray] (2005)
GoodFellas [Blu-ray] (1990)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [Blu-ray] (2002)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [Blu-ray] (2005)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [Blu-ray] (2004)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone [Blu-ray] (2001)
March of the Penguins [Blu-ray] (2005)
Purple Rain [Blu-ray] (1984)
Rio Bravo [Blu-ray] (1959)
Scooby Doo - The Movie [Blu-ray] (2002)
Species [Blu-ray] (1995)
The Dirty Dozen [Blu-ray] (1967)
The Getaway (1972) [Blu-ray] (1972)
The Last Waltz [Blu-ray] (1978)
The Phantom of the Opera [Blu-ray] (2005)
The Road Warrior [Blu-ray] (1982)
The Shining [Blu-ray] (1980)
The Terminator [Blu-ray] (1984)
The Wild Bunch [Blu-ray] (1969)
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride [Blu-ray] (2005)
Wyatt Earp [Blu-ray] (1994)
The popular VoIP company Vonage has announced that it has settled ongoing patent disputes with Nortel Networks without paying out any monetary damages, sending its stock surging over 8 percent.
The settlement puts to rest the last of four major suits against Vonage. Earlier this year the company settled with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel.
"This is the last of them and we're quite happy to put it behind us," Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner said.
Vonage said the "settlement involves a limited cross license to three Nortel and three Vonage patents and will not call for any monetary payments by any party."
The disputes were centered on patents behind click-to-call technology as well as the patents on "911" and "411" call numbers.
LG.Philips LCD has announced they will be introducing th world's largest multi-touch LCD at the upcoming CES event. The screen, at 52 inches, is 5 inches largest than the next biggest in the category.
Multi-touch screens are different from conventional LCD screens in that they "allow input from more than one spot on the screen" just as the very popular Apple iPhone and iTouch do.
The new display will use an infrared image sensor to gauge input from fingers or other input instruments and can recognize the movement of fingers.
Additionally, the display supports full 1080p HD, a 1920x1080 Resolution.
The website GearLive has leaked the upcoming 1.1.3 Apple iPhoneFirmware update that is rumored to hit users in the upcoming weeks.
The update will allow all iPhone users to shuffle their home screen icons using a drag and drop method. In addition, users will be able to add shortcut web bookmarks to the home screen if they so choose.
A more functional update will be the ability to send SMS messages to more than one recipient, a feature that should have been included since the beginning.
The most intriguing update however, is to the Google Maps application which will add "Locate Me" services. Using Cell phone tower triangulation, the Locate Me service will tell you where you are when you are lost.
Anyone who has unlocked their handsets, or jailbreaked previous firmwares should be careful with this latest update as it seems 1.1.3 will do what previous updates have done, lock unlocked handsets, un-jailbreak phones, and uninstall unofficial third party software.
It appears that a Beijing appeals court has ruled in favor of the Chinese search engine Baidu.com meaning the company is "not guilty of property rights infringement for posting links to websites offering illegal music downloads."
The ruling, released by state media today brings an end to the case which was brought forth by the Big 4, EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music.
The search engine had been accused of facilitating unauthorized downloads. The labels had wanted an apology, suspension of those activities and the equivalent of $222,666 USD in monetary compensation.
The report offered no other details on the ruling, but we will keep you updated.
According to The New York Times, Apple's upcoming video rental service will debut with more than just Fox onboard. Citing "several people familiar with the negotiations", the paper has said that when Fox appears on stage at "Macworld" on January 14th, they will be joined by a few other companies whose names are not being leaked.
A plausible choice would be Disney for starters as Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on the company's board of directors. Disney is also the only company currently selling new release movie titles on iTunes. Other studios only sell older titles or just television shows.
Rentals have been one of the greatest public demands for iTunes and it seems that even after criticizing rentals in the past, Jobs had to bite the bullet. On the plus side for him though, the rental service should help the struggling Apple TV.
The Board of Directors of Fujitsu have recently passed a resolution agreeing to cease all activities in the "visual display" business, primarily in the Plasma TV division. Fujitsu's VD division has been focusing its efforts mainly on Plasma displays in Europe and North America.
The company also focused on high-end products with concentration on the custom AV market specializing in advanced AV systems and high-end custom installations. The decision to cease activities was based on the fact of dropping profitability margins in the segment to "the point which the company could realize a satisfactory return on investment", the company said.
Fujitsu did note however that will continue its virtual display business in Japan and that it will provide service for its products even after its March 2008 business closure.
In the latest RIAA lawsuit against a P2P file sharer, some new, disturbing facts have come to light. It turns out the RIAA wants to make CD ripping, the act of copying music from a legally purchased CD to your PC, illegal.
Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona man accused of keeping a 2000 song collection on his computer, is accused of keeping "unauthorized copies of copyrighted recordings", music he ripped from legal, store-bought CDs.
Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer that has represented clients sued by the RIAA, was shocked by the industry's latest move. "I couldn't believe it when I read that, the basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."
Although the law does not clearly state that ripping CDs is illegal, the RIAA has made it clear where they stand. The RIAA website even says "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."
CMC Magnetics chairman Robert Wong recently spoke out about Blu-ray manufacturing and why Taiwan disc makers are being conservative over their deployment in the next-generation optical disc standard.
According to Wong, the format has yet to reach mass penetration because high royalty fees and equipment costs have turned off disc makers.
"Although recent sales of Blu-ray optical drives in North America have been stimulated by cut-throat pricing indicating that the Blu-ray market should deliver substantial business potential," Wong cited years of experience in saying that Taiwan optical disc makers should be conservative over their deployment. He spoke of how the rapid expansion of both CD-R and DVD+R/-R disc production led to a drastic average selling price drop and sees the same happening to next gen discs.
Wong estimated that it would take several years for Blu-ray discs to gain a mainstream role.
Christmas day showed signs of being big for both Microsoft and Apple judging from the number of visitors to the websites for each company's moble media players. According to industry analysts at Hitwise, traffic to Microsoft's Zune website was up nearly 400% over Christamas Eve, while iTunes from Apple got six times as many hits as the Zune site, also up more than 300% from a day earlier.
Besides getting the lion's share of traffic among online music stores, iTunes als made it to number 9 on Hitwise's list of most visited etailers on Christmas day. They received a reported 0.068% of all online retail visits.
"Although the Nintendo Wii was the most-talked-about product during the holiday season, MP3 players were also very popular as Christmas gifts," Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise, said in a prepared statement. "This year the Zune has captured interest from music listeners with a new line of redesigned players and discounted older models, while the popularity of iPods continued to drive traffic to the Apple Store and iTunes Web site."
According to sources in the LCD TV panel industry in Taiwan, Sony will be upping shipments of its very popular "Bravia" LCDTV line in 2008.
Bravia sales are expected to have been over 10 million for 2007 and growth does not seem to be slowing. In response, the company will boost its shipment target to about 16 million units for 2008.
Although Sony is set to ship more LCD TVs next year, sources have suggested that the gap between Sony and Samsung will in fact get larger. Samsung is expected to have shipped 14 million units in 2007 and executives from the company have said the company plans to ship over 20 million LCD TVs in 2008 thanks to high demand in emerging regions.
Panasonic has announced that they will be unveiling the thinnest notebook Blu-ray drive in existence at the upcoming CES 2008 event.
Currently, the typical standard DVD drive for a notebook is on average 0.28 inches thick. The average Blu-ray drive is about 0.5 inches thick. Panasonic promises the new ultra-thin drive will measure in at only 0.37 inches thick.
The drive will read and write BD media as well as read and write to CD and DVD. There is no word on any specifications such as drive speed yet but it is safe to assume the BD writing speed will be 2x.
In other news, Toshiba has announced they will unveil an equally thin HD DVD writable drive in the near future.
In late October the struggling video rental chain Movie Gallery filed for bankruptcy protection and this past week they have filed a reorganization plan in hopes of emerging from bankruptcy in the next six months.
The plan was filed on December 27th and today the U.S. Bankruptcy Court set the hearing to consider approval of the disclosure statement for January 29th.
Movie Gallery plans to "ask the court to confirm the plan early in the second quarter and hopes to emerge from bankruptcy soon afterwards."
The plan will mainly involve converting debt owed to creditor Sopris Capital Advisors into equity in the reorganized company in which current CEO Joe Malugen will remain director while everyone else on the board is designated by Sopris.
Venturer's SHD7001 standalone HD DVD player has finally become available in the UK on the shopping channelQVC for £169.62.
The SHD7001 offers 1080i output as well as Dolby TrueHD (5.1 channel) sound and Upscaling for standard definition DVDs. The player will come bundled with an HDMI cable, "Hulk" and "Troy" on HD DVD and the opportunity to get five more free in the mail.
Thanks to all the free movies and the HDMI cable, not to mention the low price, HD DVD seems to be hoping to get a foot in the door in Europe where are they are struggling.
In a continuation of the all too familiar trend of the last few years, the CD industry saw more huge declines in sales during 2007. In addition to the expected sales drop during the rest of the year, Christmas sales were an abysmal 20% lower than last year during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Sales for the entire year were down 15.3%.
In addition to other factors, including reduced shelf space for CDs in many stores, the drop is being attributed to poor weather and a lack of hit albums during the Christmas buying season. "It just makes things worse in one of those already bad holiday selling seasons," says Rob Perkins, president of Marietta, Ga., chain Value Music.
"Unless we get some innovation put into physical music,"Value Music's Perkins says, "we will see a continuing of this bad sales trend." Music executives are already forecasting another drop in sales next year, which could be aggravated by retailers continuing reclaim valuable shelf space by reducing the amount devoted to CDs.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 50 percent of US households now have a digital television and the growth will not be stopping anytime soon.
Manufacturers are expected to take in $25 billion USD in DTV sales for the year, an 11 percent increase from 2006. The CEA also projected that in 2008 there will be a 17% increase in unit sales and 13% growth in revenues.
The latest milestone is important as it has been federally mandated that broadcasters will have to distribute all content digitally in 2009.
HDTVs have been growing in sales as well with HDTVs expected to accountfor 79% of DTV shipments in the United States next year.
Although this year's box office receipts will set a new revenue record for the movie industry in the U.S. it's not necessarily a sign that the market is improving. It turns out that the 4% increase over last year's revenue happens to be the same as the average ticket price increase. In other words the same number of people paid more money to fill the same number of seats.
According to some, this years decline in home video sales was due in part to a lack of blockbusters as new releases. Despite a large number of theatrical blockbusters this year, a large number have been sequels, which typically don't perform as well in the home video market. Add in consumer uncertainty about the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray and you have a recipe for continued decline in revenue for Hollywood.
Brandon Gray, president of online movie publication Box Office Mojo, says that there's reason for concern since only one of the many sequels released this year exceeded previous installments at thei box office. He also mentioned that this year's revenue was from fewer movies, each playing on more screens than was typical in years past.
We recently reported that a press release published by Digital Music News claimed that Limewire, the popular P2P program, was installed on over one-third of all home PCs; 36.4 percent to be exact.
TorrentFreak however, citing the raw data from which the press release was built upon, is saying that DMN actually misinterpreted their data and the real install base is just under 18 percent.
The data, collected by PC Pitstop explains that Limewire holds a 36.4 percent market share as compared to other P2P clients meaning that of all the PCs that have a P2P client installed, 36.4 percent have installed Limewire.
Those figures mean that the real install base of Limewire is almost 18 percent, still a large number, but nowhere near the 36.4 percent reported.
The popular video rental service Netflix has begun testing a new feature of its online Streaming video service which they hope will "combine the strengths of physical movie rentals and online streaming."
The company has offered a few of its users access to an unlimited version of its Watch Instantly feature. Once "unlocked", movie titles "can be seen as often as the customer likes", Netflix says.
Currently the catalog of titles that support the unlocking feature is Limited but has expanded to 6000 titles. "The service requires a Windows XP or Vista system with Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and high-speed Internet access but is likely to be available to all of Netflix' user base sometime in 2008. The company is not expected to offer a Mac version or DVD burning due to copyright restrictions from most studios."
AOL has announced that it will be effectively killing off the historic Netscape browser in February by discontinuing development and active support.
The company will continue to deliver updates and security patches up until February 1st, 2008 after which all active support will be cut off. The announcement comes via the official Netscape Blog and Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com.
"AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported Web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be," Drapeau wrote. "Given AOL's current business focus... we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox," Drapeau added.
As of December 2007, Netscape only held a 0.6 percent of the browser market, far behind Internet Explorer at 77 percent and Firefox with 16 percent.
Despite the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticizing the federal government, and especially the FCC, for lack of preparation for the digital transition coming in just over a year, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says more than 50% of American households have at least one digital TV (DTV).
The GAO report criticized the FCC for lacking any sort of benchmarks to measure their progress in preparing Americans for the day when their analog TVs will no longer be able to receive Over The Air (OTA) TV broadcasts without a converter box of some kind. Cable and satellite customers are already prepared, with cable companies being required to support analog TVs past the February 17, 2009 cutover and satellite services already using digital streams that require special receivers.
The real concern among many in Washington isn't so much the general public as a particular segment of the population who are mostly spectators in the digital video revolution. By and large older Americans haven't seen a need to buy digital TVs just for the technology, and unless they're educated about either purchasing a new DTV or getting a voucher for a converter there's likely to be repurcussions on Capitol Hill as legislators get complaints from angry constituents.
Marantz has announced the debut of a new projector, dubbed the VP-11S2 DLP projector.
The new projector features full 1080p HD Resolution, (1920 by 1080) and comes with a myriad of inputs including component, composite, s-video, RGB, and two HDMI 1.3 inputs. Another interesting feature is the projector comes with two control ports, one of which is a RS-232C port.
The company also says the projector will be the first model to "be fitted with Texas Instrument’s new DarkChip4 chipset. This chipset will help boost the 11S2’s brightness and contrast, giving it 800 ANSI lumens and a 12000:1 contrast ratio."
According to the results of a survey conducted in late October of year asking Americans where they get their entertainment, internet based and mobile content is becoming increasingly popular. The study indicates that not only are 36% of U.S. consumers using Cell phones for entertainment, an even larger number are actually creating content with them. Nearly 40% indicated that they watch TV shows online.
"I think for advertisers one of the conclusions is you don't make decisions to advertise either on television or the Internet when you want to hit all the demographics, but rather you need to have a multiplatform strategy," said Ken August, vice chairman and national sector leader for Deloitte & Touche's media and entertainment practice, which commissioned the study. "It shouldn't be an either or proposition."
That appears to be what American broadcasters are doing. The last year has seen in increase in the amount of TV programming available directly from network sites, as well as services like Joost and the NBC Universal / News Corp. owned Hulu. These services offer not just recent programming but also older series for online viewing. At the same time they continue to release more titles on DVD.
After taking a week off for the holiday season, the official HD disc sales data are in from Nielsen VideoScan, and the results are not surprising.
Despite very strong sales of the HD DVD-exclusive "Bourne Ultimatum", Blu-ray won the week ending December 16th by a 61:39 margin. "Ultimatum" outsold Blu-ray's best title, "POTC: At World's End" by an almost 2:1 ratio, but Amazon'sBlu-ray BOGO (buy one get one free) sale helped bring old favorites such as "300", "Spider-Man 3", and "Casino Royale" to sales they haven't seen in a while.
This upcoming week should be interesting to see considering Amazon and Best Buy have had BOGO sales running on HD DVD titles.
Consumers who have purchased Windows Home Server (WHS), the Microsoft OEM network storage solution released earlier this year, are having a number of problems. Although some issues are simply due to programs not supporting the use of network shares, there's apparently also an issue with files being corrupted.
"A few people in the Community Forums have reported data corruption when saving files [on WHS] from applications including Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 and SyncToy 2.0 Beta," the WHS team wrote in a blog post. "Additionally some applications, like Microsoft Money and Microsoft Outlook, do not support storing files on shared folders."
This seems to highlight the concerns that led Microsoft to make WHS exclusively and OEM product. For the general public much of what a computer does is already something of a mystery. It becomes even more complicated when you add networking, and especially network-based storage into the mix. However, with the proliferation of large multimedia files, and the need for ever-increasing storage levels it's not surprising that many people would turn to such a solution.
Nokia has once again delayed the launch of its mobile gaming service N-Gage due to delays in software testing.
The latest delay puts a damper on the progress Nokia had been making in its Internet services ambitions. The mobile phone company had hoped to join the gaming service with a music shop and a mapping service and release it under its new "Ovi" brand.
Nokia unveiled the service in August with plans for it to be available globally in November. In Novemebr it was delayed into December and recently it was delayed into January. Nokia spokesman Kari Tuutti has now said the service would be opened "in early 2008."
"We found one more issue which had to be solved before we could open the service," Tuutti said.
According to a company press release, Amazon had strong sales for next-gen disc players, helping the e-tailer to its best holiday shopping season ever.
Amazon even went as far as to say that "it had sold enough high-disc players during November and December to cover seven football fields."
Basing disc sales on those hardware sales, it has not been surprising the past few days to see HD DVD and Blu-ray discs dominating Amazon's real-time list of top-selling DVDs.
"We are very grateful to our customers," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the globe, we wish everyone happy holidays and best wishes for 2008."
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a consumer rights group, has published a list of 30 MP3 download sites that sell music but do not have licensing deals with major U.S. music labels.
The sites, which mainly charge $20 to $35 USD for unlimited subscriptions claim they offer music from artists signed to the major labels, which they do, none of which is actually licensed however.
Some of these sites simply provide P2P software that would otherwise be free. Customers using the software could possibly face a lawsuit from the RIAA even though they wouldn't know they had done anything wrong.
"People might get the false impression of what they paid for was legal," a CDT rep said. "If you pay $25, you might think that $25 goes to compensate the rights holder."
The CDT attempted to contact the operators of each site but were ignored. Many of the sites were registered outside of the US and seem to be run by the same people.
CDT uses the example of AllCoolMusic.com which claims all its dealings are legal. "Today, there are 240 million users trading MP3s on legal file-sharing networks. Sharing is not illegal as long as you obey all relevant copyright laws. Sharing copyrighted material, without permission to do so, is illegal. Purchasing a membership in AllCoolMusic.com does not give you license to download or upload copyrighted material. AllCoolMusic.com implores you to respect all copyright laws."
Wal-Mart has quietly canceled its online video download service, less than a year after the retailer began the service.
The download site was shut down last week after HP discontinued the technology that powered the site and service. A Wal-Mart spokesperson said the retailer will not be looking for another partner.
A spokesperson for HP said the company discontinued the technology "because the market for paid video downloads did not perform as expected."
Visitors to www.walmart.com/videodownloads were greeted by a meesage stating that service was stopped on December 21 and that the retailer will be giving no refunds for the downloaded videos.
Wal-Mart's online store must have failed miserably. Currently, download sales equal about 1 percent of the $24.5 billion in DVD and home video sales and rentals in 2006 but the number is expected to grow substantially over the next decade. Perhaps then, Wal-Mart will jump into the online movie download business again.
Warner has announced that it has signed a deal that will allow Amazon to sell its catalogue DRM-free through its online music store.
The new deal brings Amazon MP3's total number of DRM-free tracks to 2.9 million, more than any online music service by far. Warner joins EMI, Universal and dozens of independent labels who are offering their music DRM-free through Amazon.
Besides being DRM-free, Amazon MP3 offers all its tracks in MP3 format and at 256kbps Bitrate. Many of its tracks are also priced at 89 cents, 10 cents cheaper than its massive rival, Apple's iTunes.
"As DRM-free music, which does not come with all the annoying and ineffectual restrictions of copyright-protected tunes, becomes more popular, you can expect the labels to use their acquiescence as a bargaining chip with Apple," Erick Shonfeld wrote for TechCrunch.
Warner also added that they would be making exclusive "special bundles" available through the service but offered no pricing structure on the bundles.
Twentieth Century Fox and Apple announced a deal that will add movie rentals to the iTunes online store. Currently Walt Disney, Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate, although new releases are only available from Disney. Fox will be the first company to offer rentals through iTunes.
Although the internet has long been touted as a replacement for DVDs, or at least an additional revenue stream, so far no service, including iTunes, has emerged that makes enough money for Hollywood to consider it an unqualified success. Earlier this year NBC Universal severed their relationship with iTunes over just that issue.
Some on Wall Street are apparently seeing the deal as a threat to more conventional DVD rental operations like Blockbuster and Netflix, causing shares of both companies to decline by more than 4%. But not everyone is convinced that this puts iTunes into competition with those services.
According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter its an attempt to expand the market to include more consumers. "I don't think that will cannibalize rental for the purpose of viewing at home," Pachter said. "I think that the primary purpose of renting movies is to consume the entertainment in the home. The primary purpose of downloading anything from iTunes stores is to consume on the go."
As part of our continuing efforts to keep up with changing technology Afterdawn has a new HDTV Buyers Guide available in our Guides section. Along with our recent guide on Getting Started With HDTV it should serve as a good starting point for making your first HDTV purchase.
You can find these, and other guides on a variety of topics in our Guides Section:
Michael Nathanson, analyst for Bernstein Research, is predicting the demise of the DVD as the dominant vehicle for consumer video. His prediction comes as DVD sales are down more than 4% for the year according to data from Nielsen VideoScan. Nathanson believes retailers will soon start reducing shelf space dedicated to DVDs as a vacuum is created which will need to be filled by the winner of the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war.
In addition he's not predicting a particularly rosy future for the victor between the two HD formats. He doesn't expect a rush to replace a lot of titles consumers already own on DVD, noting that “few standard def titles will be worthy of replacement.”
Perhaps a more pressing problem for the movie industry is consumers' increasing preference for watching movies through Video on Demand (VoD) services. Besides more traditional cable VoD services, a number of companies are offering movie downloads, some in hi-def, either for purchase or rental. Services like Vudu and Amazon Unbox can be used with set-top boxes. Unbox is particularly appealling for some TiVo owners who can use it with their existing hardware. In addition, Xbox Live has had some success with video offerings. Netflix and Blockbuster have both gotten into the online video business as well, with Netflix offering Streaming video as a standard feature of their rental plans and Blockbuster buying download service Movie Link earlier this year.
Samsung has said that they will have a 31-inch active-matrix OLED display to show off at the upcoming CES 2008 in January.
The company declined any further comment on the commercial availability of the display but said that its availability would be dependent on TV makers’ plans. Currently, large OLED screens are pretty expensive to manufacture and therefore supply and demand have been low.
Samsung says the new display "is only 4.3mm thick and uses less than half the power required of a typical 32-inch TV." The panel has a lifespan of 35,000 hours, meaning it has the best lifespan of all current OLED panels.
Following the recent trends on HD DVD sales, Amazon is offering a "buy one, get one free" (BOGO) deal on HD DVD discs from Universal and Warner.
The promotion began today and lists 39 popular titles as qualifying.
You can view the whole list here but a few of the hits offered are 'Knocked Up' 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,' 'Serenity,' 'Hot Fuzz,' and 'The Big Lebowski'.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has approached EU parliament with recommendations on how to "develop cooperations with ISPs", something that it hopes will lead to P2P filtering and blocked access to torrent sites such The Pirate Bay.
Basically, the IFPI had this in mind; ISPs should use acoustic fingerprinting-based filtering to block any unauthorized music transfers. This would, in effect, filter traffic through P2P apps such as Limewire. ISPs would also be asked to block any BitTorrent traffic.
"It is (...) possible for ISPs to block their customers' access to specific P2P services that are known to be predominantly infringing and that have refused to implement steps to prevent infringement, while not affecting regular services such as web and email."
Despite all its legal hassles, The Pirate Bay had a strong year, seeing its number of torrents quadruple and peers using the tracker double.
In December 2006, TPB had 570,000 torrents and 4,300,000 peers using its tracker. As of last week, TPB now has 914,000 torrents and 8,400,000 peers.
To keep up with the demand, TPB has continually added hardware to their server park and more recently migrated from Hypercube to the open source Opentracker software which they claim is "more stable, uses less resources and supports UDP tracking."
Brokep, an admin at TPB had this to say: “Since the last performance tweaking and router-tweaking we’ve removed all bottlenecks.” He added that he expects the tracker to hit 10 million peers before the next big holiday.
Hitachi has officially confirmed reports that it will be selling stakes in its LCD business to both Canon and Matsushita, meaning each firm will have almost a 25 percent shareholder stake in the company.
The company cited "intensifying competition" in the LCD field for the move. Now, with the new capital, the company plans to refine its In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology for LCDs and improve its resulting Woo HDTV line.
According to Hitachi, Canon and Matsushita plan to use the stakes differently. Canon "intends to focus on small LCDs for its digital SLR cameras and other portable devices but will also work with Hitachi to develop ultra-thin OLED screens as well." Matsushita will continue to produce TVs under its Panasonic brand and the company "claims the deal will keep the technology of its LCD HDTVs advancing at the same pace as the plasma sets that form the backbone of its TV business."
The deal should be financially completed by the end of March.
Japan's Daily Yomiuri is claiming that Panasonic is developing a 150-inch plasma HDTV, the world's largest TV.
The paper cites anonymous sources, and claims that the TV will be the largest home TV, regardless of class. The screen itself will stand taller than the average adult.
The story also claims the TV will have a public debut at the upcoming CES show in January, and that the TV will reach 1080pResolution. Although it will debut next month supposedly, the paper suggests that consumer models wont be ready until 2009.
In September it became common knowledge that nearly 700mb of MediaDefender's, the anti-piracy group, emails had been leaked to the public by “MediaDefender-Defenders“.
The leak gave away huge amounts of sensitive details on how MediaDefender sabotaged, and planned to sabotage torrent trackers as well as other file-sharing networks. The emails also detailed how the company collected millions of dollars from the entertainment industry who hoped the company could protect their content.
Initially the leak had no effect on the company's stock price but that all changed in late November. At that time, the company announced that leak had cost them $825,000 USD and "it turned out that MediaDefender’s parent company ArtistDirect spent $600,000 to compensate their customers and the rest of the money was used to cover legal expenses."
This clearly did not sit well investors and the stock price has fallen over 60 percent from a high of $2.40 in September to $0.65 this week.
Although it has been in public beta since July, the BBC iPlayer service has finally officially launched today.
The BBC is set to start a multi-media campaign for the iPlayer, and the service already has a tagline, "BBC iPlayer. Making the unmissable, unmissable."
Kerry Moss, Head of Marketing, BBC iPlayer, explains: "With BBC iPlayer, audiences will be able to go online to watch or download around 250 different BBC programmes from the last seven days. The launch campaign aims to bring BBC iPlayer to a mass, mainstream audience."
"We recognise that, for a large part of our audience, the 'net is not currently somewhere they're used to going to watch or download TV programmes and so we have developed a campaign that highlights the ultimate benefit of BBC iPlayer – that the audience no longer has to miss out on their favourite BBC programmes."
Cinea,a division of Dolby Laboratories, has quietly phased out the Cinea S-View, the DVD player custom-made for tens of thousands of Oscar voters since 2004.
The S-View was used as a piracy-busting fixture that worked "with DVDs encrypted so that the discs only could play on a machine registered to each particular voter."
"Cinea remains committed to anti-piracy, changing focus from the S-View platform to support of its watermarking technology, Running Marks," said a Cinea spokesman. "This business decision had nothing to do with lack of studio support."
Despite what the spokesperson said however, sources have indicated that Cinea is killing off the device due to million of dollars in losses that have mounted since its inception. Major studios have gotten comfortable with the DVD watermarking standard and therefore have given little money to experimental technologies such as the S-View.
Since its introduction in 2004, Cinea and the S-View have been stumbling. The company has faced increased costs due to its pledge "to distribute machines to new members of the guilds it was servicing." Voters also complained at the impracticality of the machine, angrily pointing out the fact that they must lug around the machine while on vacation during the holiday season. Even more embarrassingly, in 2006 the drama "Munich" was omitted from that year's "Orange British Academy Film Awards", due to a technical glitch that prevented screeners of that film from being viewed by BAFTA members.
According to results of an online survey, in a little over a year, the number of internet users file sharing in Japan has surged by 180 percent. The average number of files downloaded increased by over 250 percent. The survey has basically conveyed that "the numbers of internet users in Japan sharing music, movies and software has increased dramatically to reach an all-time high."
The survey was carried out online and was financed by the RIAJ (like the RIAA), the Japanese MPAA and the ACC. It concluded that "the number of internet users sharing authorized media climbed from 3.5 per cent in June 2006, to 9.6 per cent by September 2007."
Winny was the P2P app of choice with 27 percent of users citing it. Limewire was second with 19 precent and WinMX close behind at 15 percent. Suprisingly, BitTorrent placed fourth with a measly 7.4 percent.
Digeo Inc., makers of digital media recorders (DMR), have announced a new application, Moxi TV for PC, a "software application enabling PC users who have a TV tuner card and Windows XP to use their personal computer as a DMR."
Users can then watch, record and play TV content from their PCs. Making the software even more unique is the Moxi Menu, which allows users to "explore two weeks worth of TV programming, watch live TV, schedule recordings and access other multimedia features including music, photos and DVD viewing."
For those interested, the company is offering a beta, free for download at the Moxi homepage. The Moxi TV for PC beta program will be available to a select group of participants for a limited time only, and candidates will be considered on a first come, first serve basis.
The very popular torrent site Mininova has announced the official launch of its Content Distribution service, giving indie publishers an easy and free way to share their content with a wide audience.
Mininova will basically do all the work for you. All the files published with the new Content Distribution (CD) service will be placed on the frontpage as featured content. The publishers do not even need any prior knowledge of P2P or BitTorrent as the site will create the torrent and ensure that is seeded.
The service should save publishers a ton of bandwidth as well as help them reach a massive audience. Mininova has 27 million unique visitors a month and is among the top 50 most visited sites on the entire internet.
“The reason we developed this service is that we’re used getting quite some emails from (mainly indie) content producers. Many of those are interested in publishing their content on Mininova, but that’s not an easy job. Most content producers have no technical knowledge of P2P and BitTorrent at all. We’re changing this with the introduction of CD.” writes Niek on the Mininova blog.
The Scottish government announced today that it would be paying to insert advertisements discouraging drinking and driving into video games on the Xbox 360.
The $20,000 USD trial project will see the advertisements appearing on virtual billboards in the games. The games, appearing on the 360, will be "Need for Speed: Carbon," "Project Gotham Racing 4" and "NBA Live."
Scottish transport minister Stewart Stevenson said that "road accidents" were increasing and that innovative approaches are needed to reach the youth population. The government estimates that 73 percent of Britain's 15- to 24-year-olds have access to a gaming console at home.
"The technology is non-intrusive, subtle, but the message can be seen in the background, loud and clear," Stevenson said.
Officials expressed that if the trial was successful, the program would be expanded to include other road safety messages.
The trial is not the first example of a government targeting young Britons with in-game ads. In October, GCHQ, the intelligence agency said it was seeking out new recruits placing job ads in games such as "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent."
For the week ended December 16th, sales of the Sony PSP handheld have more than doubled in Japan, with the system selling 184,610 units for the week as compared to 91,481 units the previous week.
Making the numbers even more surprising is the fact that the boost comes without any significant new PSP software releases during the period. In fact, only three PSP games had spots in the top fifty best-selling softwares.
Not surprisingly however, the Nintendo DS still lead the way with 222,144 units sold in the past week, backed by 28 games in the top fifty.
In console news, the ever popular Wii moved 170,558 units, with the PlayStation 3 (63,720) and Xbox 360 (8,561), lagging behind.
According to new data compiled by market research firm Gfk and commissioned by Sharp, we all want bigger televisions, and we are using the excuse of the digital switchover to buy a new television.
The data, captured in October, says that sales of flat screen televisions have risen by 182% year-on-year. In the last 12 months, sales of televisions large than 46 inches have grown by 272%.
“Big screens are no longer for just shop windows or shiny office receptions," said Mike Gabriel, head of marketing and communications for Sharp. "With living space at a premium, our 42 inch range of AQUOS TVs have been designed to occupy the same space as its 37-inch predecessor once stood."
Sales of 37 inch TVs also rose 308 percent, reads the study.
Tommaso Monetto, Sharp product manager AQUOS LCD TV, said: “The growth in the popularity of larger screen TVs is underlined by the fact that last year our most popular range was the 42-in. Although we have seen a growth in sales of 46% in this range since January 2006, this has now been eclipsed by the 46-in range in 2007 - sales of which have shot up a whopping 150%.”
If you've been thinking about getting your first HDTV but haven't been able to decipher the wide array of technology and marketing terms well enough to decide what to look at you should take a look at our new guide TitleGetting Started With HDTV.
From LCD to plasma, and Progressive to interlaced it gives you a tour through the technology, highlighting what you need to know.
You can find the new guide, along with others on a variety of topics in our Guides section.
If you want to evaluate different models of HDTV don't forget about our Hardware section, where you can find and add descriptions and reviews of flat panel TVs.
Best Buy has begun offering a year end "buy two get one free" deal on HD DVD discs.
The company is advertising over 200 eligible discs, meaning most, if not all, of the HD DVD movies the retailer carries qualify for the deal. Prices range from $24.99 to 34.99 USD and after the discount the effective per disc price is lowered to between $16.00-24.00 USD, making it as cheap as new release standard definition DVDs.
You can view the complete list here, but a few of the new release blockbusters available are 'The Bourne Ultimatum,' 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' and 'Transformers'.
The deal is scheduled to run through Saturday, December 29th and both offline and online. As an added bonus, there is also free shipping on all HD DVD discs.
The Danish luxury HDTV maker Zepto has announced that their latest Helios LCD sets will come with a "built-in wireless media center that picks up nearby Windows XP Media Center or Vista Home Premium computers on the local network, allowing the TV to stream video or other content without a separate Set-Top Box." All you will need is the bundled TV remote, says Zepto.
The new Helios sets will come in the 32-inch and 40-inch varieties.
A DVB-T (Freeview) tuner is standard for picking up over-the-air HD broadcasts, "as are dual analog tuners for capturing both airborne and land-based conventional TV."
Each set has a static 2000:1 contrast ratio and 8ms pixel response time. The 32 inch model has 720p output capability while the 40 inch can output full blown 1080p.
Zepto only sells in Europe, but the TVs have USD equivalent prices of $3,084 and $3,855 respectively.
Yet another HDTV manufacturer is putting additional focus on LCD flat panel displays. Following the announcement last week by Matsushita, whose Panasonic brand is one of the leaders in plasma technology, announcing plans for high end LCD production, Sony is shifting their strategy. Instead of a move from plasma to LCD, it's a rear projection to flat panel.
Until fairly recently the market for very large, but lower priced HDTVs was dominated by rear projection models. Prior to its demise at the hands of DLP, plasma, and now LCD, having a large screen meant projecting an image either from the front or back. The curvature of CRT tubes translated to Limited screen sizes in direct view models. Eventually with CRT on its way out for HDTVs it was replaced by DLP (a projection-only technology) and LCD, which at the time was very expensive in anything but projection models.
In recent months flat panel LCD HDTVs have dominated first discount, then high end LCD sales and every major TV manufacturer is focusing on the technology with increased production and many new or retooled factories.
According to a report released last month by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, best known as the group behind the Oscars, the movie industry is getting ready to face a crisis in movie archiving. Ironically the problems are being caused not by aging celluloid (film) but rather the move to digital filmmaking.
For consumers digital video has been a blessing. It puts at our disposal capable of creating projects comparable to some Hollywood productions, and best of all it does so in a form that's cheaper than ever. Unless the technology is constantly evolving and you need to archive hundreds of hours of video every year and keep them for decades (or even centuries) which is exactly what all the major studios typically do.
With actual film the process is relatively simple. Given good environmental conditions it can last in relatively good condition for well over 100 years. With the interest in preserving copies of films for future re-re-re-releases on the latest and greatest consumer formats this has long been standard practice. Unfortunately with digital media it's not that simple. While it costs an estimated $1,059 to store a film master for a year, the cost increases more than ten-fold to $12,514 for a digital master.
This morning, Britain's 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, launched her own special "Royal Channel" on YouTube.
The Queen has said she will use the video sharing site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message. Buckingham Palace has also added archive and recent footage of the queen and the royal family to the channel and hopes to add new clips regularly.
"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The Christmas message was podcast last year."
The palace continued, "She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries."
The channel has video clips of state visits, garden parties, footage of the queen's 1957 Christmas TV broadcast and even rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen's parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.
According to The Market Intelligence Centre, Taiwan most likely shipped 6.2 million "smart handhelds" during the 4th quarter, up 81.7 percent from last year, thanks in part because it produces the Apple iPhone.
The country will also ship a similar number of devices for the first quarter 2008, meaning a 150 percent year-on-year increase.
"This growth is being driven by several factors, one being the introduction of several new mass-produced models by High Tech Computer Corporation," the centre said in a report, referring to the island's leading smart phone maker.
"Another factor is the rise in procurements by North American and European operators to satisfy traditional peak season demand in the fourth quarter," it said.
The report also added that new Palm and HP models had been outsourced to Taiwan.
"Major growth momentum for the Taiwanese smart handheld device industry in the third quarter came from increased contract production of the Apple iPhone," the report added.
According to the NPD Group, during the first three weeks of the holiday shopping season, US sales of portable media players, with the exception of the Apple iPod, were down by a considerable margin.
For sales between November 18th and December 9th, dollar sales were down 16% compared to the same period last year while units sales dropped 9%.
NPD believes the declines are due to the fact that manufacturers faced a market with fewer first-time buyers. "The market is in a position where most of the people who want an MP3 player have one," NPD analyst Stephen Baker said.
Even the clear market leader, the iPod, was not selling the way it was in the past. "The iPod is not exactly a blistering growth segment," Baker said. "It's a good segment, and you'll still make money on it, but it's not growing 75% a year."
Revenues for media players have dropped in the recent past because more and more consumers are choosing to purchase cheaper, small capacity flash based players. "Most people don't have enough music and video files to justify paying more for a device with 80-plus gigabytes of storage," Baker added.
Last night, the official Blu-ray Disc Association website was hacked, and anyone trying to visit the site was redirected to the official HD DVD site.
Any internet user attempting to visit blu-raydisc.com were instead redirected to the HD DVD camp's lookandsoundofperfect.com web site. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for hacking the site and neither the BDA nor the HD DVD Promotions Group have made an official response.
All I can say is I hope that the hack was not started by a company in the HD DVD camp.
The IFPI has said that a Beijing appeals court has upheld a ruling against Yahoo China over its search engine's links to outside Web sites that carry unauthorized music.
The industry group had previously accused Yahoo China of helping online music pirates. The IFPI is representing Warner Music Group Corp., Sony BMG and Universal Vivendi and the suit accused Yahoo China "of violating copyrights because of links between its search engine and Web sites with 229 illegally copied songs."
In April, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled that Yahoo China had indeed facilitated the copyright infringements and awarded the record labels 210,000 yuan ($27,000) in damages.
Yahoo China appealed but apparently the decision has been upheld. The courts did not confirm or deny the report however.
Research analysts from the financial group GMP Securities have "confirmed" the ongoing rumors that Research in Motion will be releasing a touchscreen 9000-series BlackBerry device sometime in the near future.
The BlackBerry 9100, dubbed the "Touchscreen 1.0", will offer a "slide-out Qwerty keyboard under a large touchscreen display" giving users the best of both worlds.
So far, online reports vary on the other specs of the phone with some suggesting 3G connectivity and others implying it will be a 2.5G handset.
More updates as soon as the phone is officially announced or denied.
According to Universal Studios Home Entertainment, the fourth quarter HD DVD releases of the "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" are outpacing their Blu-ray counterparts.
In its first week of sales, beginning December 11th, the Bourne HD DVD sold 60,000 units, double what Blu-ray's "Spider-Man 3" sold during its first week last month.
So far, there is no sales data on the HD DVD Bourne Trilogy set which will certainly add sales just like the Spider-Man trilogy pack did for Blu-ray.
Additionally, Warner's HD DVD release of "Order of the Phoenix" is, somewhat surprisingly, beating out its Blu-ray counterpart which was released on the same day by a 55-to-45 ratio. Generally, BD sales trump HD DVD sales by a 2-to-1 ratio.
Ken Graffeo, Universal executive VP of marketing and co-president of the North American HD DVD Promotional Group added, “I think the fourth quarter is going to be interesting. If you break out the hits, I think we will be even. But the aggressive discounting, with catalog [of buy one, get one free offers], can inflate the numbers.”
Vuze, the internet startup that runs a peer-to-peer Internet video distribution service has announced that it has raised $20 million USD in capital.
The latest round of funding brings Vuze's total raised to $34 million USD. A few of the investors included Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital and CNET chairman Jarl Mohn.
Vuze, the HD reincarnation of Azureus, claims that it has signed more than 100 premium-content partners, including Showtime Networks, Starz Entertainment, BBC, A&E Television Network's Biography Channel and A&E, and Rainbow Media's IFC.
Originally planned for November, the official N-Gage blog has revealed more delays, meaning gamers wont see the service until at least next year.
"We know all of you are eager to get started with N-Gage First Access, and we are just as eager to get it into your hands and start hearing your feedback. We have teams of people around the world, literally, working overtime to deliver this experience to you.
Unfortunately, as can sometimes happen in software development, unexpected difficulties can occur. We have been doing an internal run with more than 1,000 global testers this week, and during this process we uncovered an issue we feel we need to address. Overall, the games and service are working smoothly, but because of this issue, we feel we could not release N-Gage First Access before the holidays as planned.
As we work on a solution, we will continue to polish the overall experience, ready more games for N-Gage First Access, carry on our extensive internal testing over the holidays, and prepare for the new year and the new wave of mobile play," read the blog.
The country of Antigua came out of World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitration with victory against the U.S. on the issue of gambling revenue. The country, whose economy has shifted from being largely tourism based to having a thriving online gambling industry, was looking for $3.44 billion in compensation for U.S. violations of a WTO treaty. Instead they were awarded $21 million.
Perhaps most importantly to U.S. officials, Antigua received WTO sanction to ignore other treaty provisions regarding intellectual property. Based on the decision they could decide to keep royalty payments to U.S. owned businesses for themselves in order to make up for being denied entry into the biggest online gambling market in the world.
"The United States is pleased that the figure arrived at by the arbitrator is over 100 times lower than Antigua's claim," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. He also cautioned that if Antigua were to actually take advantage of the IP related portion of the decision it "would establish a harmful precedent for a WTO Member to affirmatively authorize what would otherwise be considered acts of piracy, counterfeiting or other forms of IPR infringement."
In its "HD World" newsletter, Sony has revealed that Europe will be seeing a new model of the PlayStation 3.
The newsletter implies that the European market will see a larger hard drive capacity model. "In Western Europe by the end of 2008, "Understanding & Solutions" predicts average player prices (as opposed to entry level model pricing), for HD DVD and Blu-ray of $275 and $475 respectively, with the yet-to-be-launched European 80GB PS3 retailing at just over $500."
Currently, only the stripped down 40GB, and 60GB units are available in Europe. This brings fuel back to the ongoing rumors that the 60GB model will be phased out in favor of a larger capacity model.
A Sony Europe spokesperson did however, deny what the newsletter stated. "The HD World newsletter is written by external sources, and the report quoted is from independent analysts. There is absolutely no 80GB version of the PS3 planned for Europe in 2008".
With competition becoming fierce in the LCD TV market, Toshiba and Sharp have announced the expansion of their pre-existing accord in production in an effort to keep their market share.
For example, Toshiba "will use Sharp's LCD panels in its 32 inch and larger sets, while Sharp will use Toshiba's computer chips in its own televisions."
Both companies have agreed to share more technologies pertaining to the LCD market over the next couple years although details on specific components are still in negotiations.
With the deal, "Toshiba will officially suspend its efforts to build a next-generation display based on its own OLED technology, instead opting to use technologies from Sharp, already one of the biggest manufacturers of LCD panels."
Yet another group of industry analysts is predicting that next year will almost certainly see a single dominant HD disc format emerge next year. Unlike recent speculation from Screen Digest, however, the report from Understanding and Solutions includes predicting which side it will be. In their analysts' estimation Blu-ray will emerge as the victor in 2008.
“Blu-ray and HD DVD player prices have been falling since the summer, culminating in Toshiba’s loss-leading sub-$100 HD DVD player, available in the U.S. last month for a Limited time,” said Jeremy Wills, an Understanding and Solutions consultant. “Price reductions in the U.S. have continued into December, with Blu-ray players dropping below $300 for the first time and HD DVD players below $200.”
“Crucially,” added Wills, “Blu-ray benefits from stronger Hollywood studio support and represents a greater proportion of high-definition disc production volumes and disc sales. To date, Paramount’s move to sole support of HD DVD has failed to turn the market, despite the HD DVD exclusivity of key titles Transformers and Shrek the Third. Blu-ray still represented more than 70% of high-definition video sales in the U.S. during the week Transformers was released on HD DVD.”
As sales trends over the Christmas shopping period are being charted an interesting trend is starting to come into focus. While the overall figures have continued to favor Blu-ray over HD DVD in terms of Title sales, higher player sales due to superior prices is finally starting to pay off for HD DVD supporters. Blockbusters such as 'The Bourne Ultimatum' and 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix' on HD DVD are reversing a long running trend by outselling their Blu-ray equivalents.
As each side in this format war has spent the year positioning themselves to deliver a knockout blow and claim the title of Successor to DVD for themselves, every comparison between the two has been followed by a loud (and usually at least partly justified) declaration from the other that the numbers are biased and misleading. Among common complaints are counting game consoles as Blu-ray standalones and free (as in Buy one, Get one) titles as sales.
According to data compiled by Chart Track, sales of game software in the UK will reach 78 million units by the end of the year, setting a new record in the process.
The UK saw a record-breaking third quarter as revenues rose 36 percent year on year, up from GBP 233.5 million last year.
"2007 has been a fantastic year for our industry as all the latest generation of consoles and handheld devices have become fully established," commented Paul Jackson, director general of ELSPA.
"Interactive entertainment is now truly mass market, and this is just the beginning of a period of real sustained growth."
The data also revealed that software units sold were up 33 percent for the Q3 and console revenue was up 45 percent.
As part of new CEO Jim Keyes' bid to bring the cost of its Total Access program under control, Blockbuster has increased the price for two tiers of the service and stopped offering the highest tier entirely. Total Access is the name of the program that combines online movie rentals with in-store returns. With prices comparable to mail-only plans offered by online rental leader Netflix, Total Access was a success in terms of public response, but has so far has failed to be anywhere near profitable.
At the same time prices on two rental plans introduced in June are being cut $1. Instead of returning movies to brick and mortar locations to exchange for in-store rentals, the new plans allow subscribers to rent a movie for $1.99 for in-store returns.
Just a few months ago Blockbuster appeared to be headed either to the top of the online DVD rental busines or to bankruptcy court, or perhaps both. Their aggressive marketing of Total Access had lured away enough Netflix customers for that company to see their first quarterly loss of customers ever. However, with Netflix aggresively pushing their Streaming video and Blockbuster quickly losing money Keyes decided it was time for the company to pay more attention to their brick and mortar business, which leads the U.S.
HD DVD-exclusive adult film distributor Digital Playground has announced that it will be going dual format, with its first Blu-ray release, "Pirates", coming in early January.
Early this year Digital Playground founder "Joone" made this quote, "Sony wants me to publish my films on HD DVD." His quote was in reference to the fact that all Blu-ray Disc copying facilities in the United States refused to accept his business. Although the BDA denied his accusations, Digital went HD DVD exclusive and has released almost a dozen films so far.
In explaining his company's move to dual-format support, Joone said "A lot of people were emailing that bought a PlayStation and they were basically saying, 'When are you guys going to release Blu-ray?'"
The company says the Blu-ray release will include the full-length film and tons of extras including bloopers, casting videos and behind-the-scenes footage. Yes, Blu-ray users can enjoy porn bloopers in full 1080presolution.
A federal judge has ruled against TorrentSpy and in favor of the MPAA, accusing the torrent site of tampering with evidence.
The court found that the site deleted or renamed certain threads and categories that infringed on copyrights as well as deleted the IP addresses of its users.
A $30,000 USD fine had already been levied against the site for violations of discovery orders.
Both the MPAA and the courts believed that without the evidence in question, a fair trial could not occur. The judge went on to call TorrentSpy's conduct during the discovery as "poor" as it willfully destroyed evidence and lied under oath.
The MPAA, of course, applauded the decision. "The court's decision is a significant victory for MPAA member companies and sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system," piracy chief John Malcolm said.
"The court clearly recognized that defendants engaged in evidence destruction because they knew that such evidence would prove damaging to them."
Justin Rattner, Intel's the company's chief technology officer, has suggested in an interview that the next generation of the Nintendo Wii will not have controllers.
"We imagine some future generation of [Nintendo's] Wii won't have hand controllers", Rattner said.
Rattner also suggested that camera technology using sensors around a room to detect player movement would replace the hand controllers.
He explained: "You just set up the cameras around the room and wave your hand like you're playing tennis".
The interview went on to talk about ongoing discussions between Intel and leading games and computer manufacturers including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
A recent US survey has showed that more and more internet users are watching videos, films and TV episodes online.
Over the course of the last year, YouTube has widened it lead as the top site for online video although TV networks have seen a large increase in video seeking visitors.
The study, which surveyed 2500 US adults, said that approximately 65% of those surveyed had watched a video on YouTube over the last year, compared to only 42 percent last year.
"Viewing videos online seems to inspire a sense of adventure, particularly among younger viewers", Joan Barten Kline, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement.
"They seem to take particular pride in their finds online and share them with friends", Barten Kline added.
The German Usenet provider United Newsserver has won an appeal in a suit that was initiated by EMI.
The large record label had wanted to block access to music on the provider through an injunction but a German court has found that the company is not legally repsonsible for the misdeeds of Usenet users.
In May 2007, the court sided with EMI and the IFPI was quick to praise the decision. People "who make illegal content available on the Internet cannot bail out of their resposibilities", said local IFPI boss Peter Zombik at the time.
As could be expected Newsserver CEO Heinz-Dieter Elbracht was very content by the decision. "Usenet has become a platform for the exchange of all kinds of information. It should be in the interest of all users, providers and rights holders to find solutions to act together against inevitable cases of people breaking the law on Usenet."
The popular multimedia suite Nero Burning ROM has been updated to v8.2.8.0. Nero firms its grip as one of the most successful CDR/DVDR burning application as the new version boasts a variety of improvements and new features, including BDMVAuthoring and playback, improved file encoding speed, and support for Mini HD DVD discs.
Among other improvements the updated Nero 8 is able to play Mini HD DVD (3X DVD) discs and create them by burning HD DVD-Video onto DVD-R/RW media.
Nero Burning ROM has now been downloaded from Afterdawn nearly 4,5 million times.
The new video on demand service Vudu has announced that they will be giving away their set-top boxes for free with the purchase of select Sharp AQUOS LCD TVs.
The deal is part of a new special partnership between the service and Sharp, an electronics manufacturer.
Starting this week, and ending January 5th, 2008, any buyer who purchases a 42" or larger Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD TV will get the Vudu box for free as well as $50 in free download credits. Vudu values the package at $450 USD.
Currently, there are 7 Aquos models available larger than 42 inches with price ranges of $1,799 to $7,999 USD.
Dell has announced that it is releasing a 30-inch display which includes a plethora of input options, including DisplayPort.
The display sports a 2560 x 1600 resolution and includes two DVI ports, an HDMI port, DisplayPort, analog VGA, composite video, component video and S-video connectors.
Dell New Zealand "lists the 3008WFP’s response time at 8ms and quotes 178-degree viewing Angles. Brightness for the monitor is 370cd/m2 and the dynamic contrast ratio is 3000:1. The stand has tilt, swivel, and is height adjustable. Pricing for the 3008WFP on the New Zealand Dell site is NZ$2,699 delivered, equating to about $2,040 USD."
The display is set to be officially announced at the CES show in January.
It is important to note however that to use the DisplayPort on the monitor you will need a DisplayPort equipped video card.
Take Two has announced that it will be releasing more exclusive Grand Theft Auto IV episodes for Xbox 360 owners in 2009.
The company has already agreed to supply two extra episodes in 2008 but this marks the first time they have spoken of extra content since that initial deal.
"In fiscal 2009 we'll also be offering additional episodic content for Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360," confirmed Ben Feder, CEO of Take-Two.
Feder also took time to reiterate that the game would see no more delays and would be released in 2008.
"We're eagerly anticipating the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in our second quarter. The game looks terrific and we're confident it will be every bit as ground-breaking as previous titles," added Feder.
In a huge entertainment deal, Microsoft and Viacom will be joining up on both the web and Viacom's broadband network for at least the next five years.
Although the exact financial terms were not released, Microsoft officials have projected a base value of over $500 million USD "in financial considerations and business services over the first five years of the pact, including revenue sharing provisions, guarantees, and content licensing agreements."
The agreements also "contemplate the potential for expansion of the contracts," said Microsoft.
One of the major components of the pact is that Viacom will "work with Microsoft on opportunities to become a preferred publishing partner across Microsoft's casual gaming platforms," according to a Microsoft statement. Microsoft will license long and short form TV and movie content from Viacom's cable and movie sectors on a non-exclusive basis.
Microsoft will also purchase advertising on Viacom's broadcast and online networks. Finally, the companies will join together to promote Viacom's MTV Networks and BET Networks award show.
Neuros, a company that specializes in digital recording devices that place no limitations on use of content, is hoping to start a movement to help consumers identify technology, like theirs, that doesn't include any DRM and adheres to open standards. The company has already trademarked the Unlocked Media brand, and is hoping to find a third party to administer it, eventually allowing any product with meets the program's guidelines to include the new logo.
DRM free music has arguably been the biggest news in online sales this year, with every major label either actively engaged in selling DRM-free music, or doing market research to determine its feasibility. At the same time, though, other industries, most notably film and television, are still resisting removal of DRM for downloaded media. Almost weekly there seems to be a new initiative, PR event, industry announcement, or legislation introduced in Congress that would place additional restrictions on the public's dwindling access to their own fair use rights.
According to Neuros CEO Joe Born, "Big Media is waging a strong campaign to convince our legislators to pair down our digital rights and outlaw many technologies to create Unlocked Media. We need a shorthand to rally citizens and fight back”
Media analysts at SNL Kagan have released the results of a study called 'Video-On-Demand: A Strategic and Economic Analysis' in which they look at the growth and future of various on-demand technologies, and concludes that revenue will top $6 billion within another five years.
Technologies covered in the study include Video on Demand (VoD) and Pay-Per-View (PPV). Revenue per user for these and similar services from cable and satellite television providers, in addition to telcos and other computer/internet based sources. "We're starting to see factors align that can enable operators to translate the rise in on-demand traffic into more significant sales," said SNL Kagan senior analyst Ian Olgeirson in a statement.
Olgeirson also noted that this increase will necessarily be accompanied by new initiatives in advertising, which is what supports most on-demand video right now.
"Digital video is not only a competitive necessity for cable operators, but it also provides the foundation for future revenue growth," reads the report. It estimates that by 2011, the combined installed base of digital set-top boxes will be over 110 million.
Matsushita and Hitachi are in negotiations that may reshape the flat panel HDTV market in the near future. Although Matsushita, whose Panasonc brand may be the most recognized in the plasma HDTV market, is looking to take over a joint venture between the two companies and Toshiba that's currently a money loser for Hitachi.
Up until now Panasonic has been committed to plasma technology, especially for 50" and bigger HDTV displays. Unfortunately with the sudden rise in popularity of LCD technology starting before last Christmas, combined with major advancements in LCD technology, plasma is no longer the undisputed champion of large flat panels. While Panasonic has continued to improve plasma technology, it's becoming clear that high end LCDs aren't going anywhere. If they want to be a leader in the high end HDTV market they'll need to put a lot more effort and money into LCD R&D and production.
"This is a move that Matsushita had to make," said Tetsuro Miyachi, fund manager at Franklin Templeton Investments Japan. "It needed to decide whether it would become a niche player in 50-inch-plus TVs or pursue the mass market, and if it was going to do that it had to get bigger in LCDs," he said.
Maybe there are bigger differences betwen PC and Mac users than it would seem on the surface. Market research company The NPD Group is reporting that Mac users seem more likely to pay for music than their PC using counterparts.
“There’s still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that’s especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music,” according to Russ Crupnick, vice president and entertainment industry analyst, The NPD Group. “Mac users are not only more active in digital music, they are also more likely to buy CDs, which helps debunk the myth that digital music consumers stop buying music in CD format.”
If these numbers aren't simply a fluke, the remainder of NPD Group's analysis would appear to be good news for the music business. It indicates that Apple's share of the personal computing market is on the rise, and suggests that as more consumers buy iPods and Macs, Apple's sales model will convert them to paying customers from pirates.
“While the market for digital music is growing, it’s growing slower than many would like it to -- CD sales are still declining and digital music has not replaced those lost sales,” Crupnick said. “The more consumers become comfortable paying for digital music, the more chance they will evangelize to others. And at this point in the game, it’s the growing base of Apple consumers that are the industry’s low-hanging fruit when it comes to converting from physical to digital music.”
Although unannounced by Sony, GamesIndustry.biz has found that the recent firmware updates for the PlayStation 3 and PSP will give gamers "the ability to remotely play any PS One game on the PSP handheld."
For the remote play to work, you will need PS3 firmware 2.10 and PSP firmware 3.80. Currently, only some PS One titles are available for sale via the PlayStation Store but the update will allow all titles to be played on the PSP using the PS3's remote connection.
GI.biz also says the updates "lets PS3 owners play purchased PS One titles remotely from the hard drive, rather than requiring them to be downloaded to a PSP memory stick."
Today, Universal Music (UMG) became the first RIAA member to settle with the satellite radio company XM over receivers that have the ability to record content.
UMG signed a multi-year agreement with XM making its music available for recording on current and future hardware. Additionally, UMG withdrew itself from the RIAA's suit against XM.
The suit was filed in early 2006 when the RIAA deemed that the Pioneer Inno XM receiver was actually a form of copyright infringement. The device can record up to 50 hours of XM content in either MP3 or WMA format.
In its suit, the RIAA is seeking $150,000 in monetary damages for every song copied by XM subscribers. That number could easily be up in the hundreds of millions, but XM "alleged the RIAA was just using the lawsuit as leverage" in the deal.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has stated that his company is not happy with retailers that have decided to "bundle" the Wii console with software and accessories in an effor to make higher margins.
File-Aime feels "bundling" lessens the advantage the Wii holds overs it more expensive competition, the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox360.
"Retailers have already been given feedback that we are not big fans of that," Fils-Aime told Reuters.
"We think it masks some of the price advantage we have versus our competition and, frankly, the consumer should decide what they want," he added.
He did note however, that the company would not take any legal action against the retailers but hoped that his company had built strong enough relationships that they would be mindful of bundling.
"We don't have to remind retailers of the strength we have right now. We are simply making an observation and that reinforces our point quite nicely with retailers," he finished.
According to a report from Digital Entertainment Group Europe (DEGE), more DVDs will be sold during this year's Christmas shopping season than during last year's holiday sales period. In fact, according to DEGE the numbers aren't even close, with 68% of U.K. residents questioned buying one or more DVDs last year, compared to 78% this year.
DEGE, which represents a number of European movie studios, is expecting over 90% of this year's DVD sales going to the standard definition variety, although they're optimistic about the future of next-generation HD DVD and Blu-ray formats as well. The report suggests that most U.K. consumers who haven't already are planning to upgrade to HDTV and either HD DVD or Blu-ray within the next year.
Meanwhile other analysts are painting a less rosy picture of holiday sales this year. Just last week NPD Group released their own report, showing that both revenue and the number of people buying DVDs have dropped since last year. guess is that it’s really the moderate and light DVD consumers that are falling off on buying,” said Russ Crupnick, VP and senior entertainment analyst at NPD. “The average DVD household now has about 80 DVDs. For some people, it has got to be really exciting content for them to buy, as they already have these large collections.”
It appears that DoCoMo and Softbank, two of Japan's largest cell phone carriers, are vying for an exclusive Apple iPhone contract, but Apple's intense revenue sharing ideals seem to be holding off any progress.
These complaints are nothing new however. In France, carrier Orange and Apple had public disagreements over revenue sharing and other carriers in the US and Europe have complained as well. In China, both China Mobile and China Unicom dropped negotiations due to revenue sharing disputes.
To date, over 1.5 million phones have been sold and Apple has said it hopes to sell 10 million by the end of 2008.
Sources have explained that Apple is seeking a 10 percent cut on all data revenues, a figure neither DoCoMo or Softbank will accept. Despite these issues, Apple is "still confident that it will be able to find a partner in the country eventually."
Last week Swarmcast released a set of tools designed to make Streaming Flash video a smoother experience for the viewer. The new software, Autobahn HD for Flash, takes advantage of P2P technology to distribute a single stream from multiple sources, and at varying quality levels.
Autobahn works by starting each stream from multiple locations. A client computer running Swarmcast's own Flash player can download small pieces from each source simultaneously, which are then re-assembled into a video stream for viewing. If the same video is available in a variety of quality levels, the player is designed to automatically switch to the highest quality available at the current connection speed. The idea is to ensure that when the connection fluctuates the video isn't interrupted.
"We're focused on working to turn the Internet ... into a truly viable alternative to cable and satellite TV," says Swarmcast chief executive officer Justin Chapweske.
Although it uses P2P networks for distribution, that doesn't mean content will be stored on customers' personal computers. All streams would still originate from servers run by Swarmcast or another company licensing the technology. For a Limited time they're offering hosting on their servers free in the hope of attracting clients.
"It is increasingly clear that China may have instituted a block on the import of American films into their country. Although we have not received official confirmation of such a ban from the Chinese government or China Film, the indicators are strong that our information is correct. If such action has been taken, or is in the process of being taken, it would represent an enormous step backwards in terms of China's efforts to develop a strong and most importantly, legitimate film exhibition and distribution market. We are working with top officials in the US government, including the Treasury Secretary, as well as the Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce, both of whom are in China at the moment. If these reports are true, it is unacceptable that China has taken this action and we will bring all our resources and leverage to bear to address this situation."
More news as it becomes available including any other statements regarding the matter.
The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) filed a brief with the California Court of Appeal hoping to overturn a lower court's decision that Kaleidescape isn't violating the CSS license by selling home servers that store DVDs on a hard drive.
Kaleidescape's case is unique because it's the first instance of the DVD-CCA going after one of its licensees' products. At issue is whether the technical specifications delivered to Kaleidescape after they entered into the license agreement and paid the requisite fee are an enforcable part of the licensing contract. The DVD-CCA considers the technical document, which apparently requires the original DVD to be present for playback, is part of the license agreed to and puts Kaleidescape in violation.
Although eventual implementation of managed copy, meaning a DRM controlled system to copy content to a computer or mobile device, is in the works for both HD DVD and Blu-ray, there are no plans to allow basic disc copying for any of the major video formats. In addition to appealing the California court decision in favor of Kaleidescape, DVD-CCA members have drafted two different amendments to the license that would eliminate the question of the technical document by adopting requirements that the original DVD must be present at the time of playback.
Analysts at U.K. based Screen Digest are now predicting that either HD DVD or Blu-ray will win the hi-def format war next year, although they're not guessing which one. This is a switch from their position over the last few months which has been in agreement with others in the industry that neither format would dominate for at least another 2-4 years.
The Christmas shopping season has already seen supporters of both formats declaring imminent victory, and rumors that Warner Brothers plans to announce that they're backing one or the other (depending on who you heard the rumor from) at CES next January.
"It would only take one major player to shift allegiances to push the tipping point one way or another," said analyst Richard Cooper.
Their report was more certain when it comes to gaming consoles where they predict Sony's PS3 will see big sales growth and become serious competition for Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the Nintendo Wii.
The report, titles 'Global Media Markets: The Battlegrounds of 2008' also forecasts a good year for 3-D digital cinema. Analysts see as many as 1,300 digital 3-D theater screens internationally, as well as more releases for them.
Media and communications firm SNL Kagan has released a study claiming that total video-on-demand (VOD), pay-per-view (PPV) and near-video-on-demand (NVOD) revenue will will top $6 billion USD by 2013.
According to the study, "average revenue per user is expected to top $5 per month in 2010 and $6.56 per month (or nearly $79 annually), including cable, satellite and telco video offerings."
"We're starting to see factors align that can enable operators to translate the rise in on-demand traffic into more significant sales," said Ian Olgeirson, senior analyst for SNL Kagan.
A somewhat not surprising fact, according to the study, is that the largest expected contributions will come from pornography and event pay-per-view such as wrestling and boxing.
The Chinese government, in apparent retaliation for America's decision to file a case against China at the WTO over video piracy, has banned US movies from being shown in Chinese cinemas.
Currently, China restricts the amount of American releases allowed in the country to 20 per year but that number is now 0.
Carlos Gutierrez, the US Commerce Secretary, added: “My understanding is that there is a suspension, which has happened in the past, and there’s certain times of the year where they will suspend foreign movies.”
The blackout seems likely to remain until at least February but most likely May. The ban is the first of its type in China since the mid 90's.
American studios only recently became aware of the ban when their applications to distribute new films began being rejected. A few of the movies rejected were "Enchanted", "Stardust", "Beowulf", and "The Pursuit of Happyness".
Although they are banned, you can be sure that the movies will find their way to street corners all around the country, if they are not already available.
This morning, the Sony UK PlayStation website leaked the new features of PlayStation 3Firmware upgrade 2.10 that should hit consoles tomorrow.
The main updates will be big news for those who enjoy Blu-ray movies. The PS3 will finally support Blu-ray Disc Profile 1.1 meaning the PS3 will support picture-in-picture and audio mixing features. Also included will be the new BD Data Utility.
Additionally, support for DivX and VC-1 encoded files as been added, which should please users who have felt the console's video playback is lacking. There are however, a few issues. The PS3 still wont play copyright-protected files, files encoded by using DivX 3.11, or that are 2GB or larger.
Finally, a "voice changer" option will be added to allow users to "mask the sounds of their voice when chatting on audio or video chat over the PlayStation Network."
For those interested, many prominent retailers have begun selling the Sony's BDP-S300 Blu-ray player at record-low prices despite recent Sony quotes that their Blu-ray players would not dip below $400 USD this year.
The player can be found at Amazon, Circuit City and Best Buy for $299 USD, a hundred dollar price cut off its suggested retail price.
The new price drop follows a trend recently in which Blu-ray standalones have dropped in price, especially the Samsung's BDP-1400 which was selling for $270 USD as of last week, down from its $400 suggested retail price.
Although still more expensive than most rival HD DVD players, the new lowered prices means added competition, which is always good for the consumer.
AT&T has announced that its U-verse TV package will now include 8 additional HD channels, meaning the service will have a total of 40.
After a slow period, AT&T has reaffirmed its commitment to the package, saying it anticipates one million subscribers by the end of the year.
The new additions are: Animal Planet HD, CNN HD, Discovery HD, Science Channel HD, Starz Kids & Family HD, Superstation WGN HD, TLC HD, Versus HD, and Golf Channel HD.
The base cost for U-verse TV is $59 USD to $114 per month and the addition of the 40 HD channels will cost you $10 USD extra.
AT&T currently provides U-verse service in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Clara, Riverside, and Orange County California, Indianapolis, Detroit, Kansas City, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Intel has introduced a new solid state drive, the Z-P140, which they plan to market as part of their Menlow mobile platform. A press release describes the drive as "smaller than a penny and weighing less than a drop of water." It will initially be available in 2GB and 4GB capacities, with a maximum capacity for the line of 16GB. It uses a Parallel ATA (PATA) interface.
As mobile devices from media players to smartphones become more common there's a growing market for smaller, lighter, more durable storage that consumes less power. Solid state drives accomplish all these things by using memory technology to eliminate motors and other moving parts.
"Our mission is to provide world-class non-volatile SSD and caching solutions that are designed, optimized and validated to enhance Intel Architecture-based computing platforms," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel's NAND Products Group. "Our customers are finding the Intel Z-P140 PATA SSD to be the right size, fit and performance for their pocketable designs. This is Intel's latest offering as we continue to expand our product line of reliable, feature-rich and high-performing SSDs."
Blockbuster employees are putting in extra hours at the company's Dallas headquarters. What's unusual is that instead of overtime pay they're spending their lunch hours trying to get packages out to United Service Organization (USO) centers, where they'll be distributed to U.S. servicemen.
Although Blockbuster has a long standing policy of sending movies and games to U.S. military personnel, this year seems to be busier than most. Blockbuster employee Larcine Bland said "This is the first year we've had a packing party. We've been shipping them out all week. In an effort to ensure we get them there as close to the holidays as we can, we've asked for volunteers to help us." She added, "We had a great response from employees that wanted to come and help."
Each shipment includes an assortment of genres: comedies and dramas, new releases including 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum', as well as holiday classics like 'It's a Wonderful Life'.
Despite a characteristic slow progression of IPTV and the troubles with the industry adopting it as a viable media outlet, UK's O2 wants to enter the IPTV market full steam. Since entering into the broadband market last year, 02 launched a similar Internet Protocol Television campaign in the Czech Republic and received pretty decent results. Given that the Czech republic only accounts for 10 million people and a market research shows broadband penetration at a mere 12 percent, the 700,000 subscribers O2 received from that part of the world is substantial. In comparison, larger areas such as the UK have a broadband penetration rate of 24 percent.
The success of IPTV in the Czech Republic just might be able to be attributed to the fact that O2 holds exclusive rights in airing ice hockey games. Despite this, the firm seems confident that it should be able to offer a competent service to the UK very soon.
Test subscriptions will begin rolling out in the UK sometime next year over the Be ADSL2+ network. Several indications have pointed towards IPTV failing as a whole. With Tiscali's customer base sliding and BT Vision failing to meet its goals, O2 still claims IPTV will stand the test of time.
According to research firm Understanding & Solutions online video revenue is expected to increase to more than 500% over the next four years.
The study indicates a number of factors that are holding back the online video market, including pricing and technology. “The market is currently underperforming for a variety of reasons,” said Mai Hoang, an Understanding & Solutions analyst. “Online video services and Title availability are Limited, pricing strategies are embryonic and the technology infrastructure has yet to catch up. However, momentum is building, and by 2011, online video in the U.S. will represent 8% of total home entertainment revenue, with Western Europe close behind at 7%.”
The report goes on to talk about two successful services, iTunes and Xbox Live, and attempts to dissect why they've done as well as they have. In the case of iTunes they attribute it, as do most analysts, to the success of the iPod. Xbox Live's success, on the other hand, they point to its approach of essentially connecting a computer to the television.
Later this week Toshiba will start selling the first laptop to feature a HD DVD rewritable drive. It will only be available in Japan.
Rather than being outfitted as a video workstation, the newest addition to Toshiba's Qosimo line is designed for people who want to watch hi-def video on a computer. In addition to the recordable HD DVD drive it features two HDTV receivers and a 17" screen with a Resolution of 1,920x1,200, as well as 4 Harmon-Kardon speakers.
The computer also supports a new recordable format for recording to HD DVD called HD Rec. HD Rec is currently only supported by Toshiba's RD-A301 DVR, also only available in Japan. The DVR can also burn recorded content to standard DVD+/-R media, which could then be played on the new laptop.
No plans have been announced to sell the laptop outside Japan, although previous Qosimo laptops have become available overseas after a Japanese launch.
Console sales in Japan continue to surge as we get into the holiday season, with the DS, Wii and PSP all seeing week on week double digit growth.
The DS continues to be king, with 168,267 units sold for the week ending December 9th, a hefty 35 percent increase from the previous week. Wii sales were up 54 percent to 115,057 and PSP numbers were up 24 per cent to 91,481. All data was compiled by Media Create.
Sales for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 remained flat, with the PS3 selling over 38,000 units and the Xbox 360 moving just over 9000 units.
In Japan, the DS has sold over 20 million units to date with the PSP second best at 7 million.
Toshiba has announced that it is shelving plans to construct large OLED televisions because the current, and short-term costs are too high.
The company will however, continue its plans to commercialize small OLED displays in cellphones. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori said the company would continue to monitor the market and technological developments to see whether the displays would be commercially viable.
Sony has been selling 11-inch OLED TVs since November, but the high cost of manufacturing has limited shipments to under 2000 per month.
OLED displays may be the wave of the future, as they "produce brighter images, use less power, and are thinner because they do not need the backlights used in liquid crystal displays."
In what could possibly be the best HD disc offer to date, the giant retailer Best Buy has begun offering a buy one get one free (BOGO) offer on both HD DVD and Blu-ray top hits.
Although BOGO offers on HD discs are not a new strategy, the new offer is unique in that newly-released and top hits are included in the offer.
There are a total of 30 qualifying discs at prices ranging from $19.99 to 34.99. The promotion is set to run through Saturday December 22th and is available in-store and online.
As an added bonus, all online buyers will receive free shipping on any orders of HD DVD or Blu-ray discs.
The full list of movies available in both formats is as follows:
Blu-ray:
28 Weeks Later ($29.99)
300 ($29.99)
Are We Done Yet? ($29.99)
The Condemned ($29.99)
Crank ($29.99)
The Departed ($29.99)
Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer ($34.99)
Harry Potter & Order Of The Phoenix Blu-Ray ($32.99)
Hostel: Part II ($29.99)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith ($34.99)
Mr. Brooks ($34.99)
Ocean’s Thirteen ($29.99)
SAW III ($29.99)
Spider-Man 3 ($29.99)
Underworld: Evolution ($29.99)
Sony has announced it has made five partnerships with music download services across Europe including HMV in the UK, FNAC Music in France, Musicload in Germany, Terra Pixbox in Spain and Planet Music in the Netherlands.
The partnerships will mean Walkman MP3 player users will be offered 3 months' free trials for "unlimited" music subscriptions from those services.
“These exclusive partnerships confirm Sony’s commitment to supporting an open standard with Windows Media Technology”, said Jeffry van Ede, Vice President Sony Audio Marketing Europe.
The announcement continues the strategy Sony has been following for months now in which the company is moving towards support of an open platform and include Windows Media Technology on its MP3 players.
According to Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime, the Wii may eventually get some type of voice chat.
Speaking during a conference call, Fils-Aime confided that there id nothing technically stopping voice chat in online play on the Wii and it is only a matter of Nintendo putting the money aside to support it. "...what it comes down to is finalizing the peripheral," he added. "I would not be surprised to see that capability come to this system."
Currently the Microsoft's Xbox 360 employs voice chat and even comes bundled with a headset that even allows "sending delayed messages" in addition to regular in-game chat.
Film-Aime did however, shut down any speculation that the Wii's Virtual Console could be adding online multiplayer. "We do not anticipate making online gameplay for Virtual Console games," he concluded.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the U.S. Federal government has issued another report critical of the lack of planning so far among various agencies in preparation for the transition from analog to digital TV broadcasting in February of 2009.
According to the report "Despite public-private sector interaction designed to help facilitate the transition, we found that no comprehensive plan exists for the DTV transition. Among other things, a comprehensive plan can detail milestones and key goals, which provide meaningful guidance for assigning and coordinating responsibilities and deadlines and measuring progress."
The report goes on to state that when presented with the report's conclusions the Chairman stated "FCC does not have a formal plan in place that is publicly available, but that the various orders contained in FCC dockets amount to a plan." He also indicated that he didn't feel the GAO report gave his agency enough credit for the things they've already done. Of course, as the document points out, a plan is important not just for accomplishing goals, but also evaluating their completion, something that can't be done if there are no goals set to begin with.
A new precedent has been set in France that may have a chilling effect on viral video sites like YouTube. The High Court of the First Instance of Paris found Google liable for copyright infringement after Zadig Productions, a Parisian film company, took them to court over content posted on Google Video.
The decision is notable not because Google was found responsible, but rather for the court's reasoning. According to the high court, when a service like Google's receives a notice from a copyright holder they're obligated not just to remove it, but to ensure it doesn't get uploaded again. "The crux of the decision is that once hosting providers have been notified of illegal content, they are obliged to make sure that it does not reappear on their site," says French lawyer Brad Spitz, in a blog post on the decision.
According to court documents, Zadig notified Google about the illegally posted video last April, and although it was quickly removed it re-appeared just as quickly, forcing Zadig to repeatedly complain to Google in order to have it repeatedly removed. "The court said that Google had not proven that it implemented all measures necessary to prevent people from re-posting," Spitz told The Register. "It's a bit harsh on hosting providers."
At the UBS Securities Media & Entertainment conference Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal (NBCU), announced that his company's joint online video venture in partnership with News Corp. should be going live sometime after the beginning of next year. Currently the service, called Hulu, is in private beta testing with an estimated 60,000 users.
In August NBCU announced they were removing their videos from iTunes, which finally occured earlier this month when their agreement with the online store ran out. In October they launched the invitation-only private Hulu beta. In the interim they also shut down their official YouTube Channel.
Zucker says the reason for the split with iTunes was a simple economic decision. He called iTunes a fantastic service, but said he felt it unreasonable on Apple's part to refuse requests to have input on pricing. “There is no place that I can think of where the retailer also gets to set the wholesale price,” Zucker said. "All we asked for is the opportunity to set a variable price structure, even with just one program. Apple was not willing to do that.”
“One of the biggest things I struggle with is to make sure we’re not replacing dollars with pennies,” Zucker said.
Depending on who you ask in Hollywood the future of home video is either bright and clear or murky and uncertain. As 2007 comes to a close studio executives and industry analysts don't even seem to agree on the outlook for the remainder of the year. Questions have haunted the entertainment industry for much of the year, including lower DVD revenues, striking writers, and the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, with no obvious answers on the horizon heading into 2008.
To say this year has been dissapointing for the major studios would be an understatement. Consumer spending on DVDs is down from last year, and so far hi-def formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray haven't gererated enough business to close the gap. In part this is blamed on a larger than usual number of sequels among top DVD releases, but studio executives know they can no longer take market growth for granted. Add in the growing potential for drastically lower TV box set revenue from missed episodes do the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, and a still-contentious battle for dominance between the two next-gen DVD formats and you can understand why there's concern.
Vivid Entertainment Group has filed a lawsuit in a Los Angeles Federal court against an adult-oriented YouTube-knockoff site called PornoTube. The adult entertainment giant targeted the video site for copyright infringement, representing the first move by a Porn Industry company against a YouTube-like site. While the Porn industry has certainly been somewhat more successful at marketing content for online-consumption compared to the movie industry for example, it has always had to compete with free clips.
Unlike the movie industry, Internet users surfing for free adult videos are more likely to be happy with 5 - 10 minute clips than a user surfing for TV shows or movie downloads. While the porn industry has always had to compete with free clips, it doesn't accept that it should have to compete with freely available clips from is very own catalog of premium content.
"We've decided to take a stand and say 'no more,' " Vivid co-Chairman Steven Hirsch said. "We will go after all the free sites." To a degree, Vivid's complaint about PornoTube echoes Viacom's complaint about YouTube. Both companies seek to discover just how much responsibility services like YouTube have over the content uploaded to the service by third party users. Neither company wants to act as police officers that specialize in online copyright infringement, an activity that would require a lot of time and money just to ensure that your content isn't freely available to view.
According to a statement issued by Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, the proposed purchase of XM by Sirius has received support from three U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers. Connie Mack of Florida (Rep), Joe Baca of California (Dem) and Bob Filner of California (Dem) have come out to support the merger according to the statement. The deal is currently being evaluated by the Justice Department which is trying to predict what such a merger would mean for competition.
Since XM and Sirius are the two only Satellite Radio providers in the United States, licensed 10 years ago by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the proposed merger sparked alarm and criticism from all sides because it would kill competition between the two. However, XM and Sirius claim that competition has changed dramatically in a decade, and Satellite Radio itself has to compete with other technologies such as HD Radio and even MP3 players.
General Motors Corp has also thrown support behind the merger. The company installs XM Radio equipment into some of the its cars. It has urged the FCC to avoid putting conditions on the deal.
In a recent survey conducted by trade paper MCV which questioned 100 independent videogames shops, the Xbox 360 consoles emerged as the favorite to win the console war. Microsoft's Xbox 360 was launched in 2005, a year ahead of Nintendo's Wii console and Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. On a global scale, the Xbox 360 has been seen competing with the Wii for sales (taking second place in monthly sales frequently), until recently when Sony dropped prices of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) and witnessed an impressive sales boost.
Despite the Wii console topping monthly sales figures over and over again, sometimes by a large margin, only 16% of the voters in this survey believed it could win the war. About 49% believed that the Xbox 360 had the best chances of winning, followed by a 35% vote of confidence in the PS3. Despite the confidence in the Wii being so low, 57% also said that the low stock of the Wii was the biggest disappointment for the industry in 2007.
About 22% of the respondents were unhappy with the launch performance of the PlayStation 3. As for Halo 3, 31% of the games retailers thought that the its launch was the high point of the entire year, just ahead of 30% who thought the continued success of the Wii was the best thing of 2007 for the industry. When voters were asked who's job in the industry they would like to have, they voted unsurprisingly strongly in favor of Bill Gates.
A senior executive of Sony Corp. has claimed that the company's flagship PlayStation 3 (PS3) games console/home entertainment hub will pass 11 million global unit sales by the end of this fiscal year. Speaking to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief executive Kazuo Hirai said he is confident the company will pass the 11 million mark this fiscal year despite increasingly tough competition from Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii consoles.
The holiday season is as vital to the games industry as it is to any, and Sony came prepared to tackle Nintendo and Microsoft this quarter after a disappointing year since the PS3's initial launch. A recent 10% price cut in Japan along with the unveiling of a slimmed-down model turned up the heat on the competition in the territory, and a $100 price cut did wonders for unit sales in North America.
"The PlayStation 3 is starting afresh as a console to play games with. Although pricing strategy is important, now we would like to put our strength in the number of software games," Hirai said. His comments reflect concerns from gamers over the past year about the PS3's game line-up when compared to that of the Xbox 360. The console's touted extras, like the Blu-ray player, were not good enough to take the attention away from games, but informed consumers perceived this as Sony's mistake.
CinemaNow is embarking on a campaign to dethrone Apple as the king of media downloads, starting with a promotion from Samsung to provide $10 in download credit with the purchase of their new P2 Portable Media Player.
CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis indicated that more such promotions would be coming in the next year with their partners, such as Windows Media Center vendor Hewlett-Packard and moblile media player manufacturer Archos. The company's strategy is unique, and at the same time proven in the relatively young download business. Like the relationship between Apple's iPod and their iTunes online store, CinemaNow has made sure that each device is manufactured with support specifically built in for their service. The big difference is that instead of concentrating on a single player, they're working to get support in as wide an array of devices as they can.
“The content is uniquely customized through each device. That same way iTunes works with iPod, we’re working to make CinemaNow to work with their hardware,” Marvis said.
CinemaNow has already worked with Hewlett-Packard to provide a download service tailored to their Windows Media Center PCs.
According to local reports, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute has assembled an ultra thin, flexible 10.4 inch display.
"Closely resembling e-paper, the ITRI's prototype is actually a new form of cholesteric LCD, with thickness reduced to half at less than 0.4 inches."
The "flexibilty" of the display comes from using two plastic substrates instead of glass, allowing the display to curve.
The monitor does have its drawbacks, however. Blank spaces may appear and it uses a 57 percent NTSC gamut, a gamut much less than that of conventional desktop monitors.
After taking a great deal of heat from Mac and Linux users over the Windows-only iPlayer, the BBC has introduced a Flash based player. Unlike the iPlayer software, this new client is intended to stream video for playback rather than download it to the viewer's hard drive.
When the public iPlayer beta was opened earlier this year there was an outcry from a relatively small but vocal group of dissatisfied BBC viewers who complained about the Windows-centric approach the entire program appeared to be taking, while being funded partly by their license fees. After BBC management appeared to confirm their fears in October with a statement that support for other platforms would be contingent on the cost, but were quickly overruled by the BBC Trust, who said they approved the entire program with the understanding that all platforms would be supported.
The new Streaming player isn't restricted to non-Windows PCs either. If media reports of dissatisfaction with the iPlayer are accurate there will likely be many people already using it who are tempted to try this new alternative.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is apparently not very happy with proposed legislation in the House of Representatives intended to stiffen penalties for copyright violations and put an increased emphasis on enforcement of both criminal and civil intellectual property (IP) laws. While they're not complaining about the new punishments for copyright violation, according to Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general, there's no need to add a separate IP enforcement office, as the bill currently before the House Judiciary Committee would do.
"We have a current structure … that works quite effectively," said Mandelker, adding that removing IP enforcement operations from the DOJ's criminal division "will disrupt important relationships within the criminal division and will make intradepartmental IP coordination more difficult." She also pointed out that the DOJ has already implemented more than 30 recommendations from a report they submitted, but "there was never any recommendation to create an entirely new division for IP."
Ironically, the DOJ's biggest concern about the legislation may be the biggest selling point for the entertainment industry. Mandelker expressed concern about the creation of a new IP related position that would be located in the White House. "We are always going to be concerned when you have somebody at the White House who may be in the position of directing our enforcement or what cases we do or don't do," she said. "That would be contrary to the long-standing tradition of the department making independent decisions regarding law enforcement."
The movie studio Lionsgate has announced two new films it plans to release on Blu-ray in which it promises to "push the limits of next-gen interactivity." The movies, "War" and "Saw IV" will include new features never before seen on Blu-ray titles.
For "War" the studio announced the disc will include a network-connected game in which fans will be able to play each other online. For "Saw IV", "MoLog" (short for Movie Blog) "will enable consumers to create and share their own added value content via blog entries."
There could however, be a road block It is still not clear which Blu-ray players are even compatible with the new features and Sony has yet to release a firmware update for its PlayStation 3 console that would unlock web-enabled features.
According to Pocketlint, the low cost Venturer SHD7001 HD DVD player will hit the UK on December 29th with added incentives courtesy of the European branch of the HD DVD Promotional Group.
The player will come packaged with a free HDMI cable as well as the HD DVD movie hits "Hulk" and "Troy". The player will also now come with a voucher allowing consumers to redeem five more free HD DVDs by mail.
Although the list is not available yet, customers will have until January 31st 2008 to select the five movies from a "large" list of HD DVDs. Postage and handling will be completely free as well.
"We're committed to ensuring that the HD DVD is the best value format for consumers and as such, we're delighted to be able to offer an amazing five disc free campaign to the Venturer HD DVD player promotion on QVC," said a spokesperson of the European HD DVD Promotional Group.
More updates when the SHD7001 price is revealed and the HD DVD redemption list is available.
To date, Sony is overwhelmingly dominating Blu-ray standalone sales, but new LG and Panasonic players are hoping to steal part of the market.
As of December 1st, Sony owned 60 percent of all BD unit sales (not even including the PlayStation 3) and Samsung is second at 32 percent. Panasonic and LG each command a small 5 percent share.
According to DisplaySearch, BD standalones "represent 37% of all high-def units sold. HD DVD-only was at 62%, and dual-format, less than 1%."
Panasonic and LG however, have new players coming that should boost their brands. The Panasonic DMP-BD30 was the first BD player capable of supporting picture-in-picture, the "bonus feature in which a separate video stream runs concurrently with the main film."
“We just introduced the Panasonic DMP-BD30 into the market in November, which from a timing perspective put us at a bit of a disadvantage versus products [such as Sony and Samsung players] that had already been in the market for more than a few months,” said Gene Kelsey, VP of entertainment group at Panasonic. “But we feel there is a strong opportunity to grow based on being the only Final Standard Profile player [encompassing picture-in-picture] already on the market. With the good notices that we have been receiving and the future introduction of [accompanying picture-in-picture] software, we will be able to have more impact on the market.”
Microsoft has decided to drop it's 'PlaysForSure' logo program, replacing it with 'Certified For Windows Vista'. PlaysForSure was used to denote music services supporting Microsoft's DRM to simplify matching mobile players with that used on music from online stores.
Despite the goal of simplifying DRM implementation, in reality the PlaysForSure logo didn't even guarantee compatibility between player and music since not all vendors supported both the subscription and per song applications. It wasn't helped any by the Zune team's decision not to support it with either version of Microsoft's own music platform.
Making things even more confusing, even though neither the DRM or the Zune has changed, both will now carry the same logo for Vista certification. Michael Gartenberg, analyst for JupiterResearch, said "The licensing arm is only interested in spreading adoption of Microsoft technology; hence the decision to link music downloads to Windows Vista, which will eventually replace XP in the market. The Zune unit, on the other hand, wants to keep its technology closed. It goes to show how Microsoft is not always in lockstep with itself."
Addonics Technologies has announced its new Zebra Blu-ray / HD DVD player (eSATA) that that allows your PC to play Blu-ray and HD DVD movies from the same tray. The drive also supports Burning DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW and CD-R/RW media. Users can turn their laptop or desktop computer into a high definition movie player and enjoy high definition video quality of 1080p format at 1920x1080 resolution and the dynamic 7.1-channel audio output that comes with the Blu-ray or HD DVD format.
The he Zebra Blu-ray / HD DVD player & DVD±R/RW burner comes with a choice of high speed eSATA connection or a combination eSATA and USB 2.0 interface. It is bundled with the Cyberlink High-Def Suite for use with Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista. The product also supports Linux (Kernel 2.6 and above) with free playback software downloadable from various Linux websites.
Sharp has introduced a new second generation Widescreen 32-inch (LC-32GP3U) Full HD 1080pAQUOS LCD TV, created especially with gamers interests in mind, according to the company. The new GP3U model handles the highest frame rates of even the most challenging video games and is equipped with special features that enhance the gaming experience.
"Through innovation and design, Sharp has again created a one-of-a-kind product that enhances the game-playing experience," said Bob Scaglione, senior vice president and group manager, Product and Marketing Group, Sharp Electronics Corporation.
He added: "The GP3U series offers consumers the technological prowess of Sharp's gaming-specific features, as well as a new design that opens up placement options for gamers." The GP3U model is equipped with a full array of connection options, including two sets of component inputs and three HDMI version 1.3 (x.v.Color), inputs, all compatible with 1080p signals from Blu-ray and advanced gaming devices. The LC-32GP3U also supports 1920 x 1080 24 frames per second high-definition video for displaying cinematic content in its native format when played from a compatible video source.
The Royal Malaysian Police has teamed up with anti-piracy organizations to raid three illegal optical disc manufacturing plants, recover six replication lines, several hundred infringing stampers and thousands of infringing discs in the last few months. It followed information from a source which led to the first illegal facility in Kluang, Johor province on 20th November. The raid netted three replication lines and more than 6,000 infringing discs.
A review of evidence recovered from the first facility led to the location of a second illegal factory in the same town. The police subsequently raided this optical disc plant and located a further two replication machines with several hundred infringing discs.
The Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs (MDTCA) then worked with Industry investigators to identify a third related illegal replication plant. When the authorities approached this optical disc plant they discovered the owners attempting to remove a sixth replication line in a heavy goods vehicle.
A Dutch court has handed out fines up to €15,000 to several Rotterdam shopkeepers for selling counterfeit Bollywood material. Three of the defendants were also given community service sentences of up to 200 hours and a three month conditional prison sentence. The action stemmed from a March 2005 raid which led to the seizure of more than 140,000 CDs and DVDs containing Indian music and movies from 13 shops across Rotterdam.
The raids had involved around 100 officers from the Dutch fiscal police, supported by investigators from record industry bodies IFPI and BPI as well as Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, who assisted the authorities in identifying illegal product. Most of the illegal product originated in Pakistan, a major source of illegal copies of popular Indian films and music.
"Despite the high profile of online piracy, the sale of counterfeit Bollywood CDs and DVDs is still a major problem in the Netherlands. We are pleased with this verdict that sends a strong message to shopkeepers tempted to make a quick profit by selling illegal product," said Tim Kuik, Managing Director of BREIN.
Thanks to the previously reported record breaking sales of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End,' Blu-ray sales topped HD DVD by a hefty 3:1 margin for the week ended December 9th.
According to Nielson, but not confirmed by Disney, the latest "Pirates" film sold 160,000 units in its first week setting a new Blu-ray record. The movie even sold 3 times as many units as Sony's Blu-ray title "Superbad" did and almost 8 times as many as the top selling HD DVD title, the ever popular "Planet Earth" box set, for the week.
The strong showing helped Blu-ray take a 76% share of disc sales for the week, a decisive number that has not been seen in some time. The week ending December 16th should be more interesting however. "Bourne Ultimatum" sales are said to be very high for HD DVD and the long awaited dual-format release of all the Harry Potter films should heat up the competition some.
For those who are interested, large retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Kmart, Sears, Target, Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart each say they will have dozens of Nintendo Wii consoles available in the upcoming weeks.
If you cannot get one of those consoles, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said gaming retailer Gamestop will be offering a "Wii rain check", where on December 21st buyers can pre-order the console and expect it by the end of January. You will have to leave the full price for the deposit however.
Nintendo currently produces 1.8 million units per month, with over half of those units being sold to American consumers.
According to NPD Group sales data, sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 rose 285 percent from October to November, the largest sales increase of any console for the time period.
More the month of November, Sony sold "466,000 PS3 consoles, 496,000 PS2 consoles, and 567,000 PSP handhelds" in the US.
Despite the stellar increase in sales and the fact that two new PS3 titles, Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, ranked in the top ten software list for all consoles, the sales were still barely half of the rival Nintendo Wii.
Sony also went on to provide up-to-date information on PlayStation Network usage.
According to Sony, "there are now more than 1.8 million registered PlayStation Network users in North America. Together, they have downloaded more than 34.5 million pieces of content. Worldwide, more than 3 million users are registered and have downloaded more than 60 million pieces of content."
Amazon.com and soft-drink company Pepsi Inc. are teaming up for a DRM-free MP3 promotion. At CES last week, a panel-discussion of numerous heads of the music industry favored the ad-supported, subscription based model of music services as the industry moves away from Digital Rights Management (DRM). Not represented in the discussion despite being a major music retailer, Amazon has taken some interest in the direction.
The retailer never supported DRM restrictions being placed on music, and now claims to offer over 3.25 million DRM-free downloads. Beginning on Super Bowl Sunday, Amazon and Pepsi will run a promotion in which Pepsi products will be marked with points that can be exchanged for MP3s on Amazon's music service.
The amount of points needed to exchange for a single music file is unknown, but Pepsi has stated that over four billion bottles will be circulated during the promotion with Amazon. "Why can't Amazon have a download store where songs are 25 cents with ads?,"Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group asked last week at CES.
Remote PC access software company Orb has announced that they have added support for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, allowing users to "stream their music, movies, and TV without being locked into iTunes."
To use the software, users must install it on all "always on" Windows machine (sorry Mac or Linux users) and allow Orb access through any anti-virus program or firewall. "It then displays the media in the Windows default folders: My Documents, My Music, My Videos and My Photos. Other folders can be added at will by the user."
You can then access these directories through the Safari browser on either of the devices and "with an appropriate media player, any music and video files can be played." In theory, any connected device, may it be a laptop, PDA or even game console can access the content.
Perhaps the most interesting development this year in online music has been the emergence of SpiralFrog. If you live in Canada or the U.S. SpiralFrog offers ad-supported music downloads from a large (and growing) number of major label artists. I recently spoke with the company's Vice President of Marketing and PR about where they are now and where they're going. If you've been thinking about trying SpiralFrog out and would like some help making up your mind, or even if you're just curious to see how well it works, read our detailed review just added to the Guides section. In addition to a typical product review I've added my impressions of the company and where they're going.
According to NPD Group sales figures, the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on hit its 270,000th unit sold in November, representing a small 3.4% attach rate to the console itself which has sold over 9 million consoles.
Last month the HD DVD Promotions Group reported that all "dedicated HD DVD players" including the add on, had sold about 750,000 players through November 25 and these latest figures seem reasonable.
According to research from Goldman Sachs, Apple will be releasing 2 revisions to the iPhone in 2008, one minor and one major, as well as a complete revision to the Apple TV.
The 2nd gen iPhone will have "a similar form factor as the current version although it could have a different look and will probably include 3G capability".
According to GS analyst David Bailey, the 3G iPhone will be launching in the third quarter of 2008, but that in the first quarter, consumers will see "a smaller upgrade with more flash memory earlier in the year".
Bailey also write that "Apple will be making changes to Apple TV" in the second half of 2008 "which could include an LCD display".
In an effort to further promote development for HD DVD, Microsoft is making an emulator software available for $2,999 USD.
The company believes that by offering a way to test HD DVD movies for playability before they are burned to disc should in turn, reduce many playback issues. All that is needed is an active connection to Xbox Live and a 360 to use the emulator with.
The emulator should successfully "emulate results for any certified player in testing the content" says the company.
Developers will also "have three options to test content: the content can be played directly from a network storage share or USB drive, or from an optical disc within the Xbox 360's hard drive."
Microsoft found that during tests, the emulator helped reduce development time and costs by bringing down the number of needed test discs by over 75 percent.
"We are committed to supporting and advancing the HD DVD ecosystem," Microsoft HD DVD Jordi Ribas said in a statement.
According to Video Business, the final installment in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series is set to break Blu-ray sales records after selling an estimated 160,000 copies in its first week.
Disney has so far declined comment, but if the numbers are correct it will smash the previous sales champ, Sony's "Spider-Man 3", which moved 130,000 copies in its first week.
As always however, the sales were tiny compared to standard definition sales, where "At World's End" sold 8 million copies in its first week.
According to research published by Digital Music News and BigChampagne, the popular P2P application Limewire can now be found on one-third of all PCs worldwide. For the report, the companies collected the data though voluntary systems scans and surveyed more than 1.6 million systems.
Although the number is impressive, and unrivaled, growth has slowed since news that they were involved in a legal battle with the RIAA hit the press.
"LimeWire continues to be the iTunes of P2P by a wide margin ... but growth has remained flat over the last several months," said Richard Menta, research analyst at Digital Music News.
If you would like to purchase the whole report, which reports on the market penetration of most ecommerce, jukebox and torrent applications, you should visit the Digitalmusicnews website.
ReplayTV, the struggling DVR company has sold off all its assets to DirecTV, the US' largest satellite provider.
"Although we valued this asset and the business was profitable, the sale of ReplayTV to DirecTV makes the most sense for this business, its employees and us," D&M Holdings CEO Eric Evans said in a statement.
The sale marks the third time in the last four years that the company has changed hands. The company originally started in 1997 and was acquired in 2001 by SONICblue before having its assets sold to D&M in 2003 after having to file for bankruptcy.
The company's future is now uncertain and David Zatz of Zatz Not Funny said in a blog post that he feels DirecTV is "more interested in the technology than the actual service."
"I suppose it's possible they could think about using the ReplayTV interface on their satellite DVRs, re-enter the stand-alone hardware business, or just hang onto Replay's patent portfolio for a rainy day, or to prevent that rainy day," he added.
Mark Wattles, founder and former CEO of Hollywood Entertainment (parent company of Hollywood Video), is hoping to force Movie Gallery to at least give him a chance to buy his former company back. Movie Gallery, which is working on an reorganizing after filing for bankruptcy, purchased Hollywood Entertainment more than two years ago for more than $1 billion.
Despite selling the chain, Wattles retained 20 Hollywood Video locations, paying Movie Gallery $900,000 in royalties annually to keep using the name. Until recently Wattles was trying to force Movie Gallery to buy the stores from him as stipulated in the contract he signed with the company. While Wattles has completely dropped the issue of selling the stores, Movie Gallery is now trying to cut all ties to him without buying the stores.
Based on court papers filed December 11 Wattles, and a group of potential investors, has another idea. The papers indicate Wattles “is a potential investor in connection with a possible competing reorganization plan.” It's possible, if not likely, that such a plan would involve putting Wattles in the driver seat as CEO of the company. That might explain why Movie Gallery would want to get as far clear of him as possible.
Paramount is going to be experimenting with Internet-based film distribution when they debut the new hour long movie 'Jackass 2.5' free with advertising on Blockbuster's recently purchased Movielink service.
Thomas Lesinski, prexy of Paramount Digital Media, said the third "Jackass" movie was never considered as anything but a straight-to-Web project. "We've developed a distribution model that's never been done before," he explained. "Our goal is to prove that there is an audience to watch content online."
Besides being a landmark for Paramount (or any major Hollywood studio), it's a chance for Blockbuster to show off what they can do with Movielink. Immediately after it was announced that Blockbuster was buying the service there was a lot of speculation that they wanted to use it to keep their Total Access subscription service competitive with rival Netflix's Watch Instantly Streaming service. Since that time Blockbuster has very publicly changed their strategy to focus more on the brick and mortar market they already dominate. This has lead to some question about their plans for Movielink.
Last week Western Digital came under fire from a number of technology news sites for their Anywhere Access software, which is designed to allow users of the company's backup and Web sharing storage device, the My Book World Edition, to share files over the internet. The problem for many users is that it won't share most common multimedia formats.
The issue was first brought to light last week when a post on BoingBoing called the company's decision to control sharing of such files "the most extreme example I've seen yet of tech companies crippling data devices in order to please Hollywood." Despite the rhetoric, the author makes an excellent point when he asks "who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files?"
According to reports the answer to this question from Western Digital boils down to claims of ignorance about what users might want to do with the device, and concerns about protecting copyright holders' rights. As the bad PR from this move mounted last week, Western Digital went on the offiensive - sort of, with Director of Marketing Brian Miller talking to some tech writers hoping to put a positive face on the situation.
NBC Universal continues to move away from iTunes, this time signing a deal with SanDisk to provide content for its new "Fanfare" service.
Fanfare will complement SanDisk's TakeTV video player which "allows consumers to play downloaded content on their television sets", almost exactly like how the AppleTV works.
SanDisk has said the content will be protected, so the consumer should expect some type of DRM but both companies said that there will be flexible pricing.
NBC Universal's shows, including hit shows from NBC, USA, Sci-Fi, and Bravo will all hit the service next month.
"SanDisk is taking a leadership position within the consumer electronics industry with its commitment to protecting content, which marks an important advance for television entertainment in the digital landscape," NBC Univerisal digital distribution chief JB Perrette said.
Blinkx, the popular video search engine that features almost 20 million hours of searchable video and has over 200 partnerships already, has announced they have made a new one, with the Raindance Film Festival.
Raindance, the UK's largest independent film festival, was created in the early 90s and is responsible for creating the British Independent Film Awards.
The agreement means Blinkx will "host, transcribe, and index top independent shorts, features and documentaries from the independent Raindance Film Festival."
Blinkx is unique in that it does not use tags to define its material but instead uses speech recognition and video analysis "to find and qualify online videos." Blinkx even has 111 patents for the technologies used in their service.
The engine uses an AdHoc advertising platform which means that "any time the video is embedded on MySpace, GoogleVideo, YouTube, Revver, Metacafe, Veoh, DailyMotion, Break, FunnyOrDie, Vimeo, JibJab, iFilm, and CollegeHumor, the video will have contextually relevant ads placed near or on it." Whenever that ad is clicked, Blinkz and Raindance will split the revenue 50/50.
Nielsen, a company famous for their TV and Web ratings, and Digimarc Corporation announced a new entry into the online video recognition market, touted by supporters as the solution to the rampant uploading of video without the copyright holder's permission.
A press release said the service, called Nielsen Digital Media Manager, will be released next spring. It notes "Nielsen already uses digital watermarking to Encode 95% of national television programming for its television ratings service, and the new service will focus initially on the online distribution of television content in the U.S. The companies expect these new solutions to be available in MID 2008."
It goes on to say the company intends to expand the service to add Watermarks to consumer content, which can then be used later to make identification easier if someone attempts to upload a copy of the video to viral video sites like YouTube, social networking portals like MySpace, or even P2P networks.
Although the year is not over yet, Nintendo senior VP George Harrison has predicted, and with good reason, that its DS handheld will be the top-selling video game system of 2007.
Through November 30th, 6 million handhelds have been sold, converting to a rate of one sold every seconds.
"There's no letup in sight," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Nintendo DS appeals strongly to both core and casual gamers, and its momentum is set to propel us into 2008."
For the Thanksgiving week, 650,000 DSs were sold, breaking the all-time record for the week, previously held by the Game Boy Advance, which moved 600,000 units two years ago.
After a year of existence in the US, the Xbox Live Video Marketplace has finally, officially, expanded to five new countries, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, and Germany.
However, users in Canada and Europe will not have the same selection that we do in the US. Currently, hundreds of TV series and movies are available in the US but the new territories will only have barely 30 movies available.
Microsoft must secure individual rights for the content available on their marketplace and so far there have language and licensing issues, meaning a smaller selection of content for the new territories.
“Any time we bring something new to Xbox Live Marketplace we want to make sure that it’s an amazing consumer experience,” said Scott Nocas, Global Marketing Manager for Xbox Live. “We make sure we have a ton of content and we make sure we have local content. We also want to bring it to multiple countries and, right now, we really wanted to focus on the movies because we felt that was really one of the better offerings that Xbox in the U.S. had.”
Speaking about the Canadian market, Nocas added, “We’ll be updating movies on a monthly basis. As new releases come in from our partners, we’ll put them up on the same day that everyone else has it, and we’ll be adding to the Library titles. At launch, the U.S. Video Store had 37 titles, but we now have over 300 movies. So, for Canada, we plan to aggressively add movies as fast as we can.”
Universal has finally signed a deal with the popular social playlist site imeem, becoming the last of the big four record labels to do so.
imeem, by its own description, is "an online community where artists, fans & friends can promote their content, share their tastes, and discover new blogs, photos, music and video."
User can upload their own content or "browse and add catalog content." imeem also makes it easy to embed original content hosted by imeem on other sites such as Myspace and blogs.
The new deal opens up Universal's full music and video catalog to imeem users. The deal however, may not have been cheap. imeem is "said to have paid cash up front as well as given Universal stock in the website."
Around since 2004, imeem now boasts 19 million unique visitors daily with 50000 becoming members daily.
For a Limited time DivX Inc. Is giving away their DivX Pro bundle which includes the official DivX converter and DivX Pro Codec. These products add multi-processor (SMP) support for faster encoding and decoding with dual CPU or dual core CPU machines. The bundle normally costs $19.99.
When you install the software you'll be prompted for an email address to send your serial number to. Until your serial arrives you can use the 15 day trial versions of each product. Mine arrived nearly immediately.
Nobody seems to know how long this promotion will last so get yours now from the DivX download page. Instructions for downloading, installing, and requesting/entering your serial number can also be found there.
A bill introduced in the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support would expand the scope of Intellectual Property (IP) enforcement by Federal officials through the creation of a new division of the Department of Justice for the job.
According to the announcement from House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers the bill would create an office called 'The Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative in the Executive Office of the President' (the law enforcement center of the Federal Government) responsible for enforcing IP law both domestically and internationally. On the domestic front, it even mandates that the new IP Enforcement division be responsible for prosecuting civil cases on behalf of intellectual property owners, many of which are multi-billion dollar corporations.
The bill also increases both criminal and civil penalties for IP infringement, as well as adding forfeiture of computer equipment used for such infringement by the IP Enforcement office.
Bloggers across the internet have attacked the bill as draconian, many seeing a direct relationship to comments made earlier this year by NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker that the creation of such an agency is critical to the well being of the country's economy.
An audit performed by the Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has concluded that there are problems with the envelopes used by online rental giant Netflix to deliver and return discs. The problem apparently occurs on the envelopes' return trip, after the consumer has ripped it open to remove the disc and then resealed it to return their movie. This leads to problems processing these envelopes by machine, and the need to hand sort 70% of these returns.
A Netflix spokesman said “The mailer is in compliance with the U.S.P.S. currently,” The report from the Inspector General's office confirms that following current Postal Service guidelines, Netflix had been told their envelopes could be processed by the machines, and recommends that those guidelines should be changed to reflect the problems the additional expenses incurred handling the envelopes.
The report recommends a $0.17 surcharge for each envelope unless the design is changed to make it more compatible with their sorting machines. This would reduce the company's operating income by 67%. Citibank analysts Tony Wible and Mark Mahaney downgraded Netflix’s stock Tuesday.
The IPTV service Vudu has just announced that they will be releasing the Universal movie The Bourne Ultimatum as a 1080i HD download, on the same day as its retail DVD release.
The announcement is the first time that a studio has simultaneously released a DVD and an HD download. Vudu has content from many major studios through its broadband-connected set top boxes. The studios are as follows; Lionsgate, New Line Cinema, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, and Universal Studios.
Vudu has about 5000 movies currently but the majority are in standard definition. Many studios are beginning to offer HD version however because the release of a movie in HD, while not having to place it on "format war media" Blu-ray and HD DVD can be very advantageous and reach more consumers.
The service works using P2P technology somewhat similar to torrents. "When a user purchases or rents a film from the service, the beginning of the movie is streamed directly from Vudu's servers while the rest is downloaded in the background. Streams are MPEG-4 and converted to HD, so only a 1.2 Mbps connection is required for viewing. Faster connections result in no delay."
Microsoft has announced they have filed 52 more lawsuits against alleged sellers of pirated copies of its software. The company has also referred 22 separate cases to law enforcement.
Back in July, Microsoft successfully broke up a Chinese piracy syndicate and Microsoft noted that fifteen of the lawsuits were based on activity surrounding that syndicate.
Actions were filed worldwide including in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the US.
Microsoft has also set up a "Microsoft Buying Guide" on eBay to help users purchase genuine software and how to look out for counterfeit software.
"Microsoft is committed to taking the legal action necessary to protect consumers around the world from the dangers of counterfeit software, and we encourage consumers to look to the legitimate channel -- both online and offline -- when seeking genuine Microsoft software," associate piracy counsel David Finn said.
SpiralFrog, a web service that offers free (ad supported) music from major labels has announced that they now have 1 million songs available for download. The service launched in September with nearly 800,000 songs and has been adding music steadily ever since.
“We are constantly adding new content and features to the site,” said Joe Mohen, founder and chairman of SpiralFrog. “Music fans want to be able to update and expand their music library on a continual basis and with our ever-expanding library and popular site features such as ‘Buzz of the Day’ and ‘New Releases,’ we’re making it easier than ever to discover and catalog new music.”
SpiralFrog, which is available to internet users in both the U.S. and Canada, provides downloadable songs from many major label artists, allowing you to either play them on a PC with Windows Media Player 10 or 11 and copy them to up to 2 devices supporting Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM technology.
In addition to music, SpiralFrog also features 3,500 videos, some of which must be streamed live from their site, while others may be downloaded like the songs.
Nintendo has pulled its holiday advertising in the UK for its popular Wii console in hopes consumer attention will move to the DS and demand will drop somewhat for the Wii.
“We have been running the campaign all year round, but we want to take a responsible stance this Christmas and not fuel demand,” said a Nintendo UK spokesperson.
Nintendo will be using that ad space to promote the DS instead, a console of which it has higher supply of.
The move is contrary to what the North American branch is doing which is putting extra advertisement for the holiday season.
“We're still expecting some shortages in December. But we're not going to be pilling back on our marketing,” explained George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s marketing chief. “So even though we'll be selling everything we can get, we'll continue full-blast with our outreach through PR, and through paid advertising and other things.”
For those that are interested, the large internet retailer Amazon as well as electronic giants Circuit City and Best Buy have dropped the price on the Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray Player to under $300 USD, making the player the lowest priced Blu-ray standalone ever. The break is a $200 USD cut from the original list price of $499.
Besides being the cheapest standalone available, the BD-P1400 is also the first player to support DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. DTS-HD Master Audio is a "lossless Compression scheme that is able to provide audio quality on par with PCM tracks but at the expense of less storage."
Despite the price drop, Blu-ray standalones still cost a fair amount more than HD DVD standalones which normally retail for under $300.
According to Pocketlint, Apple is set to release a "significant" firmware update to the iPhone on December 11th, firmware version 1.1.3.
One of the new notable feature updates include a "disk mode of storing general data and a voice recording mode for capturing voice memos."
The feature will behave similarly to the iPod and block users from "simply dragging and dropping content to load on the phone with playable music."
If the new update is true, then it will most likely break the current "jailbreak" firmwares that allow users to install third party software and unbrick bricked devices.
According to an article published in Business Week, the magazine believes Warner Bros will be dropping support for HD DVD and going with Blu-ray, possibly as soon as CES 2008 next month.
The article brought together rumors from the internet as well as internal sources and suggested that both Toshiba and Sony are trying hard to woo Warner from its current dual format stance.
"The rumour is that Warner is coming aboard soon," Michael Burns, vice-chairman of studio Lionsgate (LGF) told the magazine. "That will make it awfully tough for HD DVD to stay in this game."
If Warner were to back Blu-ray solely, then the Blu-ray camp would control about 70% of the market.
The article goes on to warn, "On the other hand, if Toshiba were to win Warner's hand, the two forces would divide the market between them. That could create mass consumer confusion and potentially strangle a new technology that the studios hope will give a lift to flagging DVD sales."
The infamous torrenttrackerThe Pirate Bay is no longer running on Hypercube and has moved to Opentracker, which TiAMO from TPB says uses less resources as well as supports UDP tracking.
TPB has been testing Opentracker for over a month and have now switched their trackers, all 16, over to the new software.
TiAMO explains a bit further, “Well it’s faster than hypercube and uses less resources. Also it supports UDP tracking which hypercube did not.”
Opentracker is a "lightweight BitTorrent tracker which uses minimal resources (it runs fine on your WLAN router). The software does not store any data or log any IP-addresses and is more stable and efficient than most other tracker software."
TPB, alongside with denis.stalker.h3q.com now track more than 9,000,000 peers and 1,000,000 torrents on Opentracker.
In an interview before he got up on stage in Oslo, Curtis Jackson, better known as the rapper 50 Cent, made a few notable comments about file-sharing, even going as far as to say “What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn't hurt the artists!”
It is important to mention that 50 Cent is not some small, up and coming artist. He has sold over 20 million albums as a solo artist and owns his own record label, G-Unit Records.
During the interview, 50 was asked “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?
“Not so good.” he responded. “The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”
“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”
For years now, anti-piracy groups such as the RIAA have gone on about how file-sharing hurts not only the industry, but the artists as well. 50 Cent clearly does not agree.
“The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”
Despite widespread rumors that it had been delayed, Samsung says it is shipping its BD-UP5000 dual-format HD player and that it will be retailing for cheaper than previously announced.
A Samsung spokesperson said that due to "recent activities in the marketplace," the player's suggested retail price has been dropped to $799 USD, a $200 price cut from the original price announced in September.
The BD-UP5000 will be the second dual format player to hit the market, following the LG's BH100 which was released in January.
Samsung says the player will be 1.1 profile compliant and support BD-Java and HDi as well as any web-enabled supplements from both formats.
The final build of Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, also dubbed "Moviestar", has finally been released, adding streaming high-definition video support.
Flash, the dominant delivery method for Web video for years now, is actually adding support for the H.264 video Codec, one of the standard encoding choices for Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. For audio, Flash will now support High Efficiency AAC.
Another new feature is that "Adobe has enabled the hardware acceleration mode of many graphics cards, when going to full-screen mode." Previous versions relied on software acceleration and therefore the player's ability to scale a video in the best quality possible was hindered.
Online video startup Hulu will be the first partner to offer Flash video in high-definition although its HD library is small at the moment.
For anyone familiar with the piracy scene, for years the name maVen has usually meant very high quality telesyncs. However, after investigations by the FBI and Canadian authorities, Geremi Adam (aka maVen) is facing up to 6 months in jail.
From 2004 to 2006, maVen released telesyncs of the blockbusters ‘Bourne Supremacy’, ‘Collateral’, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, ‘Chronicles of Narnia’,‘Underworld Evolution’, ‘Mission Impossible 3′, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, ‘Cars’ and ‘Superman Returns’, all usually within a couple of days of the theatrical release.
In July 2006 however, maVen releases disappeared and we may now why know. According to reports, an FBI investigation in the US was handed over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2006.
“He was referred to us by the FBI,” said RCMP Staff Sgt. Noel St-Hilaire. “They had an investigation in the States.”
In September 2006, thanks to information from the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, the RCMP arrested the 25 year old Adam outside a Montreal theater after allegedly camming the movies “How to Eat Fried Worms” and “Invincible.” His laptop was seized along with his camcorder and other equipment but Adam released. He was arrested again just a month later at another theater.
One of the original online movie download services, MovieBeam, will be shutting down next week after failing miserably despite over $100 million USD in funding.
Since being created by Disney, the service has failed on a mass consumer market, mainly due to its very expensive cost and unique delivery method that limits the service to only 31 metropolitan areas.
Movie Gallery bought the service last year for $10 million USD, a tiny fraction of the $70 million USD Disney reportedly spent on the project.
MovieBeam "receives the content over the air with an antenna connected to a Set-Top Box. A phone line is also required for billing and ordering purposes." In addition to buying a $250 USD set-top box, all customers also have to pay a $30 activation fee. All this is before you can even view one movie. Prices range from $3.99 to $11.99 USD, with a $1 added fee for high-definition content.
It seems those crazy prices, along with strong competition from CinemaNow, iTunes, Amazon Unbox, NetFlix and Vudu finally sank MovieBeam.
Transformers director Michael Bay has made some bold statements on his website, claiming that Microsoft is purposely promoting confusion in the HD format war in an effort to destroy both formats and usher in digital downloads.
"Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads," said his forum post.
Late in August, Bay posted angry, aggressive responses to the news that Paramount had went HD DVD exclusive and even threatened to not deliver a Transformers sequel. He retracted his threat a week later however.
"That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out 100 million dollar checks to studios just [to] embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, superior Blu-ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital download.
Dropping the price for the second time in recent months, Microsoft has slashed the price of its HD DVD add-on player for the Xbox 360 by 30 percent to $130 USD.
As of today, the price drop was seen at giant retailers Amazon and Toys-R-Us. Each unit sold comes with five free HD DVD movies, a media remote, and "King Kong" as well.
The add-on had its price dropped from $199 USD to $179 USD in the fall and the new cut most likely reflects continued drops in manufacturing costs.
The results of a survey by Broadbandchoices.co.uk are in not surprisingly a majority of respondents, some 61%, rated "downloading DVD quality films in five minutes" as the feature they're most interested in having available through their broadband internet connection.
Despite an interest in lightning fast movie downloads, consumers surveyed aren't necessarily prepared to pay a premium for the capability. Nearly the same number indicated that either they wouldn't pay more for it or they weren't sure if they would. Interestingly, watching videos was actually rated as the least popular current online activiy.
"From our results it does appear a little contradictory that respondents rated 'watching TV' or downloading films as being the least amount of time spent on the internet in a week and yet when asked which future service would be of most interest rated them as the most popular," said Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices.co.uk.
"It could be that current services are not at a high enough standard to warrant utilising video services. If speeds were improved, consumers are more likely to use broadband to watch TV and/or download films," said Phillips.
Yesterday, at the Nokia World 2007 Conference in Amsterdam, the large mobile phone company announced its new "Comes With Music Program," a program which offers free music which you can keep forever, as long as you purchase a Nokia device.
Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia elaborated: "We set out to create the music experience that people are telling us they are looking for - all the music they want in the form of unlimited downloads to their mobile device and PC. Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we're making available. Comes with Music fulfills our dream to give consumers all the music they want, wherever they want it, while rewarding the artists who create it."
So far only Universal Music Group is signed up but Nokia assures that they are in talks with all the other major record labels as well as indie labels.
Universal CEO Lucian Grainge added, "It's fantastic to work with Nokia on Comes With Music. We feel it's an innovative way for people to discover and enjoy new artists, while at the same time having access to the amazing depth of the Universal catalog. Comes With Music allows our artists to reach new audiences in a very easy and affordable way."
Entertainment industry analysts at Screen Media Digest and Adams Media Research aren't buying into claims by Blu-ray supporters that they're on the verge of victory in the format war with HD DVD. In fact they say nothing has changed, and both formats will almost certainly continue to compete for at least a few more years.
“Both formats will be established and co-exist for the foreseeable future,” said Helen Davis Jayalath, senior analyst at Screen Digest. “By 2012, U.S. high-def software will be evenly split between the two formats, where Blu-ray represents 55% of the market and HD DVD represents 45%. But high-def formats won’t boost volume sales [for home entertainment] to the degree that DVD did [over VHS]. Backwards compatibility and Upscaling reduces consumers’ desire to replace existing DVDs.”
Interestingly, it isn't competition between the two formats that appears to be doing the most damage to either. At the High Def 2.0 conference sponsored by Home Media magazine, analysts from the two companies argued that the biggest factor opposing the success of either format at this time is the continued popularity of DVDs. Although Title sales have been dropping in recent months it's not necessarily a sign that consumers aren't still happy with the technology. Despite major improvements to video and audio quality that are readily visible on most HDTVs, the urgency of the switch from VHS to DVD simply isn't there.
As Blu-ray sales seem to be dominating the still struggling next-gen format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, Paramount and Universal are thrilled with the reaction to HD DVD's web enabled content.
According to DreamWorks/Paramount numbers, 80,000 unique visitors have used their HD DVD players to connect to the disc's website, and 30% of those have returned to take advantage of additional content release after their initial visit. Meanwhile Universal saisy viewers of their HD DVD titles 'Heroes', 'Knocked Up', and 'Evan Almighty' have visited the respective sites for each disc.
“We’ve only scratched the surface in offering Web-connected experiences to fans of hit movies and TV shows, so it was great to see so many connecting online for these titles,” said Ken Graffeo, executive VP of HD DVD strategic marketing for Universal Studios Home Entertainment and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group. “As more titles from the HD DVD studios include access to downloads, trailers and community pages, the owner of any HD DVD player can take advantage of these Web-connected experiences,” he said.
Microsoft has finally announced that the European launch of Video Marketplace on Xbox Live will take place on December 11th.
The service, for those not familiar, allows users to rent movies in Standard Definition and High Definition for about 250 Microsoft points each. That is the equivalent of GBP 2.13 / EUR 2.91 for standard definition films and 380 MS Points, GBP 3.23 / EUR 4.42 for high definition versions.
After December 11th, the service will be available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France and Germany. There is however, a catch. The films are only usable for 14 days after download or for 24 hours after the first viewing.
According to GI.biz, the full list of launch films are as follows: 300
Analyse This
Clash of the Titans
Dead Calm
Demolition Man
Eraser
Executive Decision
Eyes Wide Shut
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Lethal Weapon 3
Lethal Weapon 4
Looney Tunes: Back In Action
Mars Attacks!
Ocean's Eleven
Risky Business
Space Cowboys
Superman III
Swordfish
The Fugitive
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
The Perfect Storm
Three Kings
Training Day
Zodiac
On Monday a federal judge in the U.S. threw out an antitrust suit against a group of major music labels by Lime Group LLC, owners of the Limewire P2P service.
After the case was filed the record labels filed a motion to have it dismissed, which the judge granted, saying that the file sharing company had failed to "allege an adverse effect on competition market-wide." In other words they hadn't shown any damages that could be legally attributed to the labels.
Other claims for damages under state laws were also dismissed, but without prejudice. Dismissal without prejudice essentially amounts to a no-decision that would allow these claims to be filed again.
Lime Group claimed that recording industry officials had conspired with each other to shut Limewire out of the legal download business. Their lawyers claimed that label representatives refusal to make a deal that would have established a legally licensed download service, and also that they engaged in hacking of the Limewire network.
The judge rejected the claim of conspiracy, noting that executives' decisions appeared to be independent of each other, and amounted to legitimate business dealings. While he didn't actually rule on whether the alleged (attempted) hacking actually occured, or whether the labels were responsible, he did rule that those things wouldn't be anti-competitive.
In a move that comes as a surprise to virtually no one, NBC Universal (NBC U) won't be selling TV shows on iTunes since their contract with Apple expired last weekend.
Problems between Apple and NBC U flared up over iTunes' pricing policies. NBC U executives felt their revenue of $15 million from iTunes sales last year would have been higher if they were given the ability to set different prices for more popular content. Apple's policy is to sell all TV episodes for $1.99, while NBC wanted to sell episodes of some shows for as much as $2.99.
"We had 40% of the market share on the video side of iTunes, we were most popular,"NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said at a keynote address Monday at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York. "It wasn't the game changer for us that it was for Apple. We would like to be part of it. But nowhere does the reseller set the wholesale price. We wanted price flexibility and greater protection against piracy. Over time, we hope to work all that out."
NBC content has also been pulled from YouTube in order to promote NBC's new venture with News Corp., Hulu. Hulu provides both full TV episodes and clips from various shows, and even offers a few movies. Hulu's content is free, but it's currently in closed beta testing.
News Corp. is close to finishing negotiations with Apple to make their movies available on iTunes next year according to an analyst who watches Apple closely.
This would make News Corp., owner of 20th Century Fox and various broadcasting operations including the Fox broadcast network, only the second major content owner to sell new release theatrical movies through Apple's online store. Currently Disney is the only major studio making new relases available on iTunes, which almost doesn't count since Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on the studio's board of directors, in addition to being a major shareholder.
While studios aren't exactly lining up to make their movies available through iTunes, that doesn't mean they're not looking at how consumers already prefer their video. Earlier this year 20th Century Fox included a special version of the new release 'Live Free or Die Hard' along with the standard DVD version so that consumers can copy it to a portable player. Warner Bros. made a similar move with the DVD release of the latest installment of the Harry Potter franchise, offering a portable media player friendly version which can be downloaded for free.
According to a report from Quixel Research, sales of 720p front projectors increased by 43% in the third quarter of this year compared to the second quarter.
The report, titled 'Quixel Research's Home Theater and Entertainment Front Projector Market Review,' indicates that the increase is a result of "great value" 720p models currently available.
"The residential front-projection market is very segmented," stated Tamaryn Pratt, Quixel's principal. "For all the buzz about 1080p in the projection industry, as well as the entire display industry, 720p at the right price is perfect for many consumers' needs. We saw the 720p category blossom in the third quarter — all the top sellers were 720p and they were all priced below $1,300. Many even included a screen."
While total shipments for the total (home entertainment) projector category wree up 3% from the second quarter of this year, revuenue dropped a massive 19% from the third quarter of last year due to competition in all consumer hi-def display categories.
Starz Entertainment, parent company of the Starz and Encore cable channels is partnering with gadget retailer Brookstone to promote the Starz owned Vongo online movie service with purchases of at least $100.
The promotion, which will be going on through March 24 of next year, offers Brookstone customers a free 30 day trial of Vongo, including access to more than 1,000 video titles. Brookstone will also be promoting a new theatrical release from another venture owned by Starz, Overture Films. The promotion for Mad Money will give advanced screening passes to a Limited number of visitors to the mall-based chain's stores.
“Vongo is a terrific match for Brookstone’s tech savvy customers, and we are pleased to leverage the upcoming Overture Films release Mad Money as part of the overall campaign,” said Joe Cantwell, VP of advanced services at Starz. “As the only subscription-based download service for mainstream new release Hollywood films, Vongo is in a unique position to work with innovative companies such as Brookstone.”
Brookstone CEO Lou Mancini added, “The co-marketing agreement with Starz for the Vongo movie download service will give customers yet another compelling reason to visit Brookstone.com during the holidays and into the New Year. Also the Mad Money tie-in and giveaway is another fun way to reward our retail store customers.”
After having its own video download service for the last year, AOL has cited sluggish sales and will be ending the service while outsourcing its videos to Amazon's Unbox.
The companies said there would be a revenue splitting model for videos sold through AOL. No financial details were released however.
According to Compete.com, AOL video only had a tiny 6% market share, clearly not enough to compete with iTunes or Unbox.
Nokia is publicizing a a report combining their own consumer research with a study conducted for them by market analysts at The Future Laboratory, and released a report with their conclusions about the future of multimedia content. Not surprisingly Nokia's conclusions indicate that consumers are heading in a direction that would dovetail nicely with the company's current direction.
The Future Laboratory's portion of the study included interviews with what Nokia calls "trend-setting consumers" from 17 countries about their views of the next few years and how they expect media to be created and consumed. For their part, Nokia got feedback from 9,000 customers around the world who own mobile devices, including some manufactured by other companies.
According to Mark Selby, Vice President of Multimedia for Nokia, the study indicates that in a few years most content will be created by users for circulation on a variety of mobile devices. He said "From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'Circular'. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups - a form of collaborative social media."
According to the Blu-ray Association, as of the end of Black Friday (November 24th) the total number of Blu-ray playrs sold reach 2.7 million.
As with most announcements of this kind from either camp in the next-gen video format war, there's an aspect to the Blu-ray numbers that will be loudly and vehemently disputed by their opponents in the HD DVD camp. Like the figures released in the past these include each PS3 as a standalone Blu-ray player. While there are certainly some people buying PS3 consoles for their Blu-ray playback and others who have taken advantage of it despite buying the unit only for gaming, but what percentage of the PS3 owners fall into either category is anyone's guess.
Despite that, it does appear that if there was a winner between Blu-ray and HD DVD on Black Friday it was probably Blu-ray. Despite significantly lower prices for players, HD DVD movies were outsold nearly 3:1 by Blu-ray on the day after Thanksgiving.
According to Nintendo, the Japanese market will soon be getting a full licensed DS cartridge that will accept microSD memory cards, allowing for the legal viewing of video, images, music and texts on the handheld.
The cartridge, dubbed the DSvision will be the same size as a normal DS game and fit into Slot-1 of the DS or DS Lite. Users will also have the ability to use a download service to download TV shows and e-books.
The DSvision will come packaged with the cartridge, a 512 MB microSD card, and a microSD-to-USB adapter for the relatively cheap price of 3,980 yen ($36 USD). There are already tons of devices like the DSvision, but none are licensed by Nintendo because they make pirating of DS games very easy.
“We are keeping a close eye on the products and studying them. But we cannot smash all of them,” a Nintendo spokesman said, referring to the R4 and M3 cards currently sold.
To be honest however, I feel like this will just give people a legal alternative to begin pirating with but at least Nintendo will get the money for the DSvision itself. If you cant beat 'em, join 'em.
According to Japanese press reports, Sony Computer Entertainment will be launching an on-demand high-definition video service for Japanese PlayStation 3s beginning early next year.
PS3 owners will with internet connections will be able to download the content to their hard drives. Each download will cost an average of $1.85 and will include offerings from the BBC and motor-racing videos.
In an effort to promote the service as well as GT:5, the company will be "offering free downloads of "The GT-R Legend Inside Story I," the first of a three-part docu about Nissan's GT-R racing car" for free.
The parent company of Blizzard, the company behind the massive hit "World of Warcraft", will be acquiring a 68% stake in Activision, the world's "first independent game console software" company.
Under the new acquisition it is being presumed that current Activision CEO Robert Kotick will be put in charge of the venture. In his words, the deal will make the new venture the "largest pure-play interactive entertainment publisher in the world." The new company will be even take the name Activision Blizzard, as a tribute to the equal importance both companies will have.
The merger in itself is more complicated then usual mergers are. Before the end of the year Vivendi, Blizzard's parent company will be handing over its complete Vivendi Games division "in a deal which converts those shares to Activision shares. Vivendi thus becomes a 52% owner in that new, temporary venture."
By using its then stake as majority owner, Vivendi will acquire more stock in Activision until it becomes a 68% owner. That however, may require approval from both US and European federal regulators.
Smarting from his failure to push through tighter controls on cable television providers, on Wednesday FCC Chairman Kevin Martin proposed a new rule that would cap the percentage of viewers a single cable company in the U.S. would be allowed to serve.
Martin has been the subject of much public criticism from cable companies, who argue that his tougher regulatory stance is out of step with the overall message coming from the President's office. Specifically, his latest proposal, which would limit any cable company to only serving 30% of TV viewers in any given area, appears to be aimed squarely at Comcast. If the proposal were to be passed Comcast would effectively be prevented from expanding further in many areas.
Earlier in the week Martin attempted to get commissioners to ratify another proposal that would have given the agency stricter regulatory control of U.S. cable television operators. That proposal was intended to enact provisions in a 1984 law that gives the FCC the responsibility to enact such controls when cable television is available to at least 70% of all U.S. households have the service available to them and at least 70% of those are actual cable subscribers. It was eventually withdrawn after objections by both cable industry representatives and FCC commissioners over the accuracy of a study Martin used to show market penetration.
Best Buy has made some changes to in-store operations in an attempt to address customer suggestions gathered in a company sponsored survey. Over 90% of respondents indicated that the company's return policy and having phone calls answered by a real person. Another 89% rated in-store customer service as important, and 70% indicated that the quality of the company's website is a high priority.
In order to address those concerns Best Buy has made numerous changes for this holiday shopping season, including extending their return policy for purchases made before Christmas, cross-training store employees to provide general customer assistance on the sales floor, operators for each store who are trained in customer service and able to pull up inventory information. In November the company launched BestBuy.com/espanol, a Spanish language version of their Website. In addition to providing a bilingual experience on their site, it's also intended to connect Spanish speaking visitors with customer service representatives who can assist with everything from using the website to finding items in stores.
Other additions include what the company describes as “complete gift solutions,” which include in-store tools to help consumers identify accessories that go with purchased items (such as a memory card for a digital camera).
According to a nre report from comScore the number of streaming video viewers continues to grow, but in the last 6 months that growth has been slowing down.
This isn't exactly a surprising development given that the number reach nearly a full 75% in September. While that's less than a 1% increase from the month before, at nearly 3/4 of the potential audience for streaming video, and possibly starting to converge with the number of internet users with broadband internet available to them to stream across. The percentage increase is also somewhat misleading, as it indicates that 136 million streaming video viewers.
As usual Google, led by YouTube, led all other video providers, serving up video clips to nearly 71.6 million unique viewers, or more than 28% of the total.
Perhaps more importantly at this point, the average amount of time viewers spend watching online videos was up three hours. This is up from 2.5 hours in May. In total over 9 billion clips were streamed in September.
On Thursday the European Parliament passed the Audiovisual Directive, which addresses issues of regulating video transmissions in a way that's consistent throughout the European Union.
Besides standardizing laws across national borders, the "Audiovisual Media Services Without Frontiers Directive" is intended to establish a unified set of rules that will apply whether video is being transmitted as a traditional over the air (OTA) signal, an IPTV stream across the internet, or anything in between the two extremes.
Several advertising issues are covered by the directive, which mandates that it must be clear when product placement is taking place, but as with the previous rules product placement in children's programming is completely off limits. Hourly advertising limits remain unchanged at 12 minutes, but daily limts are now gone.
One item that wasn't changed is the method to determine what copyright laws in the case of broadcasts from one country to another. In this case the laws in the country the broadcast originates in would apply. This provision may be particularly important as webcasting becomes more popular.
TiVo scored a victory last week when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling that the company's "time warp" patent is valid. This is the basic issue being argued in a case that's been in court since 2004, when TiVo sued satellite television provider and satellite receiver manufacturer EchoStar. TiVo won the initial courtroom battle, a decision EchoStar has been appealing ever since.
The patent is a crucial piece of TiVo's business model. While TiVo has been losing market share to cable and satellite providers' DVRs, they've continued to be profitable, partly because of the "time warp" patent, which covers devices that can pause, rewind, and fast forward live TV. With the rapid increase in DVR usage over the last couple of years this has been instrumental in TiVo surviving their slip from DVR dominance.
The patent office's judgement isn't the last word on the subject though. And even TiVo fans might not be well served if it's upheld. In fact many people feel this patent is a good example of what's wrong with the U.S. patent system today. Many products developed in the past may have been greatly hindered by patents this broad. For example, how would a patent for a carriage that can propel itself with horses have affected the development of the automobile? Likewise, a patent for a mechanical clock (box that displays the time) would be equivalent to a digital watch (also a box that displays the time) under modern patent law application.
AT&T has confirmed that a 3G version of the Apple iPhone will be hitting stores in 2008, but with no set month for release as of yet.
"You'll have it next year," said CEO Randall Stephenson. Stephenson could not elaborate on how fast the new device would be but it will be faster than the current HSPA network, which can theoretically run at speeds up to 3.6Mbps. When asked about the price, Stephenson said that Apple CEO Steve Jobs "will dictate what the price of the phone is."
In the past, Jobs has announced that 3G was "highly sought-after" but that the iPhone would not have it included until the battery life was not as severely affected. "So as you know, the handset battery life used to be 5-6 hours for GSM," Jobs explained. "but when we got to 3G they got cut in half. Most 3G phones have battery lives of 2-3 hours [of talk time]." Jobs has said he would like to have a minimum of five hours of 3G before releasing an iPhone with the technology.
Perhaps the biggest divide between what customers want and what music labels provide in the way of downloaded music is in the area of file format. While most labels have eschewed the MP3 format for DRM reasons, if you ask the average consumer what format they'd like to buy that would probably be it. Thanks to a promotion between Pepsi and Amazon.com it looks like consumers may finally get what they want.
The promotion will allow Pepsi drinkers to redeem 5 bottle caps for a free MP3 from Amazon's music store. Pepsi is planning to distribute 5 billion bottles with the caps, meaning up to 1 billion songs could potentially be purchased this way. That could mean big money for any label in the MP3 business, which currently doesn't include either Warner Music Group (WMG) or Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
Both EMI and Universal Music Group (UMG) have been selling MP3s for some months now. EMI was the first major label to embrace them when they made the decision to drop DRM from downloadable music. UMG has been experimenting with removing DRM from their catalog as well, leading to their music being featured both at Amazon.com, and rival Wal-mart.com, both of whom sell only MP3 formatted music. Even Disney owned Hollywood Records is testing DRM free downloads from the two sites.
Last month the Oregon Attorney General announced that he would help the University of Oregon fight a standard RIAA subpoena that would require them to find and release the identities of 17 students to the RIAA. Now he's going on the offensive, calling RIAA investegatory practices in question and issuing some subpeonas of his own for the trade group's investegators.
According to a motion filed by the Attorney General's office, there are many questions surrounding RIAA tactics, some of which the AG feels may be illegal in Oregon. In fact SafeNet, the company the RIAA pays to find infringers, isn't even licensed to operate in Oregon. The AG argues
The motion also states that RIAA lawyers have refused to answer questions by the AG's office regarding whether they had engaged in data mining to find "personal and confidential information." Now the Attorney General would like to know "precisely how invasive Plaintiffs' investigation was." Specifically, it says "Plaintiffs may be spying on students who use the University's computer system and may be accessing much more than IP addresses."
The motion also requests the court to require the RIAA to "Describe with particularity the economic damage, if any, that the RIAA suffered as a result of the unlawful conduct of each Doe Defendant." This is certainly something that many people would like explained. Of course since the RIAA is normally facing individuals without the deep pockets required to pay for a sustained legal battle they're normally not taken to task for their damage claims.
Just as Blockbuster has been making headway competing in the online rental business, rival Netflix has apparently decided to retun the favor and compete in Blockbuster's brick and mortar world.
No they're not opening up a chaing of brick and mortal rental establishments. What they are doing is selling gift cards in stores like Office Depot, Winn-Dixie, and Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. In addition, more stores could be added next year.
Netflix is looking to take advantage of the massive popularity of gift cards as Christmas gifts. This is one place where internet based businesses like Netflix have a decided disadvantage. While a customer can walk into a brick and mortar establishment (including Blockbuster) and walk out with a gift card to give as a present, the internet isn't a particularly good medium for selling them.
According to the National Retail Federation, gift card sales are expected to total over $25 billion this holiday season.
“Introducing gift cards this holiday season is part of our larger strategy to expand retail distribution over time,” said Jessie Teitz, VP of marketing at Netflix. “The end goal is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to give the gift of Netflix or purchase it for themselves.”
If Black Friday and the weekend that followed was any indication, it's going to be a long Christmas season for HD DVD backers. On the first weekend of the Christmas shopping season Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by nearly 3:1 according to Nielsen Videoscan
To some this was a surprising development since the prices for Blu-ray players didn't come close to matching HD DVD's sub-$200 sale prices. In fact the cheapest Blu-ray player was $400 at Best Buy, which included a $100 gift card. Meanwhile Sears had the Toshiba HD-A3 (HD DVD player) for just $170.
This would seem like somethig of a validation of Blu-ray backers who have said all along that the key to the format's success will be the quantity of titles released in the format. However, there's nearly a month to go, and lots of consumers have yet to weigh in on the matter, at least with their wallets. And really that's the only opinion that counts.
Months after it was announced, the Canadian-based company Venturer Electronics has released their Chinese-manufactured entry levelHD DVD player, the SHD7000, which it promises will "be one of the lowest priced among entry-level HD DVD players.”
Appearing at Wal-Mart and online, the player costs $197.88 USD, making it the most affordable HD DVD player on the market. However, thanks to recent Toshiba sales, such as the HD A2 selling for $100 USD a few weeks ago, the price point does not look as attractive as it once did.
The Venturer SHD7000 however, costs less than the Toshiba HA-A3 and according to HD Digest “is functionally identical to Toshiba's HA-A3 HD DVD player, offering 1080i video output via HDMI and Dolby TrueHD support.”
This year's Black Friday sales on the day after Thanksgiving saw consumers passing on recent DVD releases in favor of bargain priced fare, in some cases below $5 per movie.
The discounts on catalog titles were even more numerous than in past years. At Borders book stores they sold such titles as 300, The Departed and Night At The Museum for half their normal price. In addition box sets of titles like Family Guy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and House for only $19.99. Other retailers, including Sears, Target, and Kmart had titles like Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins for only $4.
“We’ve done sales like this in the past, but this selection was the deepest that we’ve done for Black Friday,” said Borders spokeswoman Ann Binkley. “The merchandising team worked with the vendors to be able to offer this deeper selection.”
According to Ian Leshin, a buyer for Newbury Comics, “We created a lot of deep discount opportunities with the help of the studios through rebates and other programs, and we were definitely very aggressive with the sales.” He added that, “it did seem more catalog-driven this year than new release.”
Following the recent, popular trend, Amazon has brought back the buy one, get one free (BOGO) sale on Blu-ray films.
The popular VoIP company Vonage has announced that it has settled ongoing patent disputes with Nortel Networks without paying out any monetary damages, sending its stock surging over 8 percent.
LG.Philips LCD has announced they will be introducing th world's largest multi-touch LCD at the upcoming 
