News archive (5 / 2008)

According to TorrentFreak, British police have arrested a former user of the private torrent tracker OiNK for uploading and seeding a single album. There was word that police are currently questioning others and more arrests seem likely.

The popular tracker was shutdown in late 2007, and the British authorities made the claim that they would be investigating, not anti-piracy agencies such as the RIAA, MPAA, or BREIN. Until today though, no one has been charged with anything, that even includes OiNK founder and admin Alan Ellis.

The man arrested, who was from the Cheshire area, was questioned and later released on police bail. He has no prior convictions or arrests and is in trouble for uploading a single album early last year.

Both the DISH Network and EchoStar announced yesterday that they have filed a lawsuit against TiVo hoping the court will find their DVR software does not infringe on any TiVo patents.

Late in January, the US Court of Appeals stated that DISH had infringed on a TiVo patent in building digital video recorders and upheld the original verdict of a damages award against DISH of $74 million plus interest. In April, the appeals court denied DISH's request to have judges rehear the arguments related to the case.

DISH Network was formerly part of EchoStar Communications which has since spun off its technology assets to create EchoStar and DISH.

Although it has previously disclosed it displeasure with the fact that broadcasters have been making their shows available on the Internet for free, it seems the company is doing an about-face on the matter and is looking to gain market share.

Time Warner has announced that it will be releasing a wireless modem device that "will make streaming internet video content on one’s TV much easier." The wireless modem will supposedly link all the devices in a person's home.

There was no timeframe for the device's release but the company did say it would probably be 15 months or so until it became popular.

Time Warner would have to compete in the steadily growing market for set top boxes, which is now led by Apple and Netflix.

We will keep you updated.

Valve president Gabe Newell took the time to talk out about the "threat" of piracy in the PC Market recently, and had some interesting things to add on that matter.

"When you list the things that we worry about in our business, piracy is not one of them," he told the audience when piracy was brought up.

His statements differ from that of many large publishers, who for the most part feel piracy is killing acceptable profit margins in the PC gaming business. Newell feels that Valve's Steam platform is mostly protected from piracy.

"We've got great facilities that make it very hard for people to pirate. And more importantly, the service value of having an ongoing relationship with us is high enough that it causes people to not be very interested in piracy.

"It's a dangerous thing to pirate one of our games because later on, when we catch you, you lose all your games, or you can't play multiplayer."

Before Newell came up, Valve's Jason Holtman was asked how he felt about the rampant piracy in emerging markets such as Russia and China. He felt those fears were misplaced and the problems could be fixed rather easily.

Citing Toshiba sources, the "Yomiuri Shimbun" newspaper has reported that Toshiba is set to launch a "Blu-ray killing" technology later this year.

The technology, which will be an "extension to the DVD format" will offer comparable video quality to that of current Blu-ray titles and now defunct HD DVD discs. The sources cited even said that the company will begin offering DVD players with this technology implemented within 6 months, an exciting proposition if true.

There is very few details available right now, but it is clear that these new "enhanced" DVD players will be significantly cheaper than Blu-ray players, perhaps even with a price point under $200 USD. On average, Blu-ray standalones still cost over $350 USD, so these new DVD players could put another nail in the coffin of the slowly adapted format.

According to a report by the DigiTimes, it seems that the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has now officially granted licenses to 11 Chinese manufacturers, meaning the consumer should see a larger selection of standalone Blu-ray players soon, and hopefully with cheaper price points.

Masayuki Kozuka, general manager for Matsushita Electric Industrial’s storage device business, and a member of the BDA board, made the announcement during a recent technology trade fair in China.

The 11 "Format and Logo Licence Agreements" which were granted will allow "licensees to use specifications solely to develop, manufacture and sell BD products." It also gives rights to the actual Blu-ray logo.

It is not known whom has been granted these licenses but it is expected that at least that China Hualu Panasonic AVC Networks, "a joint venture between Panasonic and the China-based Hualu Group" has received one of the grants. The licenses should cover Blu-ray research and development as well as production of discs, players and computer drives. Because of the licenses, volume production should begin in early 2009 from these Chinese manufacturers.

According to a report in The South China Morning Post, Hutchison Telecom has reached a deal with Apple that will allow them to offer the iPhone to customers in Hong Kong and Macau starting some time this summer. Previously Apple had previously been negotiating with China Mobile but negotiations broke down in January, reportedly because the country's largest mobile service provider wasn't happy with the revenue sharing agreement being offered.

Despite the lack of an official sales channel, hundreds of thousands of iPhones are believed to be in use in China already.

The new report was short on details. A Hutchison Telecom spokesman is quoted as saying "Due to the confidential agreement with Apple, we can't say too much beyond the formal announcement."

The report also said other carriers in Hong Kong are expected to announce deals soon to launch the new 3G iPhone, which will be available later this year.

Comcast, the largest cable television provider in the US, is looking to get a little bit smaller. The company is hoping to sell 46 cable systems in Maine, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Virginia, Georgia, West Virginia and California. The reason for the move is reportedly because they're geographically distant from the majority of the cable giant's operations.

In Maine, where nearly a quarter of the systems slated to be sold are located, the most logical buyer would be Time Warner Cable, which already serves 85% of the state. So far Time Warner has had no comment on the matter. The 11 systems were purchased in 2006 when Comcast bought Maine-based Susquehanna Communications.

John Goran, chairman of the cable TV regulatory board in Freeport, Maine hopes that the new owners, whoever they may be, will expand the services being offered. "We don't have Internet phone, no video on demand or any of those advanced services," he said. "We have standard cable and high-definition and premium channels and that's it."

According to Rentrak, US Video On Demand (VOD) viewing for the first quarter of this year was up 59% from the same quarter a year before. Viewers reportedly watched 185 million hours of VOD programming. They also say the number of titles available for viewing increased 36% to more than 70,000.

“The operators and studios have been doing an excellent job of promoting the availability of movies on demand, thus increasing awareness and traffic in this category,” said Kristie Fortner, VP of syndication at Rentrak.

Not surprisingly, free VOD TV shows, offered by an increasing number of cable channels, saw the biggest increase at 50%. Close behind was subscription VOD with a 41% gain. This category includes content offered with premium channels like HBO and Showtime. The smallest gain was in transactional VOD, which is essentially the replacement for traditional Pay-Per-View. The increase for these offerings was a much lower 11%.

On August 26 Disney plans to release a new "Collectors Edition" version of Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on DVD. What makes this release noteworth is the addition of a feature other studios have already added to some titles, namely a special copy of the movie which will be playable on as-of-yet unspecified devices. Although the specifics of the feature haven't been announced, we do know they're calling it a Disneyfile and it appears likely that other releases may also be getting it in the future.

Disney's move follows other releases in recent months from Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox, which included similar digital copies. Both the Warner Brothers release "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and Fox's "Live Free or Die Hard" included both a low bitrate version for portable media players and a higher bitrate version for computer playback. In both cases the copy included the use of Microsoft DRM, making them unplayable on the iPod or, ironically, Microsoft's own Zune.

MediaDefender, a company best known for their work for the MPAA has apparently admitted to being responsible for a massive Denial of Service (DoS) attack that occured last weekend in which a server used to host BitTorrent trackers was effectively shut down. The server, which belongs to a company called Revision3, is used for legal distribution of video files.

According to Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback, the problem started when someone at the company noticed that their server was being used by an outside party to provide unauthorized BitTorrent trackers. He later found out that the outside party in question was, in fact, MediaDefender. Once they cut off access to these trackers, and also to the back door which allowed MediaDefender to illegally use their server they were hit with the DoS attack. This effectively shut them down for a good part of the weekend, and due to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday they weren't able to recover until Tuesday.

According to data from Chart-Track, sales of the Xbox 360 are over 18 percent ahead of the PlayStation 3 in UK sales since the launch of GTA IV.

After the first month of sales of the game it has also become clear that the Xbox 360 is the clear format of choice for gamers in the UK. 57 percent of total game sales for GTA IV were for the 360 compared to 43 percent for the PS3.

Chart-Track also added that sales for the game in the UK are at about 1.3 million for the first month of sales, meaning about 750,000 of those copies were sold for the 360.

It seems the game has had a a huge effect on hardware sales as well. For the four weeks after the launch, compared to the four weeks before, 360 sales have jumped 47 percent compared to a lowly 8 percent on the PS3.

According to comments made by Sony Chairman Howard Stringer during the D6 Technology and Media Conference, the PlayStation 3 was on life support for awhile but that the console is moving its way towards profitability and a long lifespan.

When asked to comment about the company's recent failures for digital music player and interactive television ventures, Stringer noted that Sony was only now running 5 percent profit margins.

"If we have any more success, we'll be bankrupt," he added.

When asked specifically about the PS3 and its rocky start he said the division was doing well with production costs dropping and game titles selling very well. He also added that upcoming games would use "the full capacity" of the console and will be "spectacular."

The Chairman then went on to talk about the how the console was more than just a gaming platform but also a PSP hub and more notably, an HD media capable system. He noted that the PS3 was a main factor in Sony's Blu-ray win over HD DVD. He also added that Blu-ray did not succeed because Sony paid off movie studios for exclusive support.

"We were not in the check-writing competition," he said.

The premier Usenet indexing site Newzbin has announced that it is now under attack from the MPAA and it seems the the service will either have to change significantly or face a shutdown.

Newzbin is the creator of the NZB format, generally considered to be Usenet's equivalent of a .torrent file. Usenet was generally considered to be complicated to use before the format emerged.

It seems the MPAA has noticed as well however. Newzbin administrator ‘Caesium’ made this announcement last week:
"Newzbin has today received a letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). In the letter, they claim that some editors may be reporting material from Usenet that is infringing the copyright of their members.

While these claims have not been substantiated, it should be noted that Newzbin does not condone the distribution or indexing of such materials. We will immediately act to remove any items that are found to be infringing copyright.

Sony Pictures will be producing and distributing content for digital theaters which will include concerts, performing arts, and sporting events. The releases will come from a new unit in the company called Hot Ticket, and each title will be available for a limited time to select theaters.

"Going to your favorite theater doesn't mean just going to the movies anymore," said Rory Bruer of Sony Pictures Releasing. "Our mandate will be to identify the one-of-a-kind and sold-out events that people around the country most want to see, and we will work to present them to audiences everywhere."

Hot Ticket's plans for the remainder of 2008 includes the final performance of Cirque du Soleil's "Delirium" in August as well as the closing night on Broadway of the musical "Rent," which ends a 12 year run in September.

Earlier this year a similar venture from Disney, the 3-D concert movie "Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds" became a hit, grossing nearly $70 million dollars worldwide during its 15 week release.

As music-based games like Guitar Hero and Rock Star continue to enjoy strong sales, they've also created an interesting niche market for music sales. In fact the two titles have reportedly sold more than 25 million downloads combined. While most of the songs which can be downloaded for each game are familiar radio staples, a handful are new or relatively new tracks that aren't nearly as well known. You might think that's a recipe for slow sales on the newer titles, but that's not necessarily the case.

In fact it turns out that in at least a few cases sales through Rock Band, which are limited to playback using the game, have outpaced downloads from other services. According to Tenth Street Entertainment who manage Motley Crue, a new track from the band has been downloaded more than 47,000 times via the game. By comparison Nielsen SoundScan indicates that only 10,000 copies have been soldy by services like iTunes and Amazon.com.

Later today DVR manufacturer TiVo is expected to announce a deal that will allow Chicago area residents to automatically record shows recommended by a local TV critic. Maureen Ryan, TV critic for The Chicago Tribune, will reportedly be selecting the programs, which will be recorded for area TiVo subscribers who sign up.

Although the service won't be available outside the Chicago area, TiVo CEO Thomas Rogers says they're working on similar deals in other markets.

From the newspaper's standpoint the deal is almost certainly a winner. Like many other publications they're facing touch competition from the on-screen guides that have become a standard part of cable and satellite television packages. This will give them a way to offer a more or less direct connection to viewers' TVs, making them more competitive.

Chicato Tribune Managing Editor for Features, James Warren, is excited about the deal. “Maybe we’ll get a few people to do the unthinkable and subscribe to the newspaper,” he said.

In addition to picking out the shows to be recorded, Ryan will also host a twice-monthly show talking about the selections.

At this year's shareholder meeting, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes showed off a new kiosk that will be introduced in 2 of the company's stores sometime in the next few weeks. The kiosk, built by NCR, is designed to transfer content directly to portable media players.

“We call it a test but it’s really a beta,” Keyes told reporters following the presentation. “The goal is to bring all the pieces together—the content, the aggregation, the device—to try to demonstrate consumer acceptance. Once we do that, we’ll be able to think about a broader test.”

The details of Blockbuster's initial plans seem to highlight the hurdles companies face for even relatively simple new delivery methods. Although they eventually plan to support a wide range of portable devices, the initial tests will only support a single unit - the Archos Generation 4. The Archos unit was chosen because of its use in an existing French service called Moovyplay. This should allow them to shorten the process of getting content for the service, since most of the major US studios are already allowing Moovyplay to distribute video using the Archos player.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes streaming video, which is already bundled with their popular DVD rental plans, represents the company's future. At an investor conference in San Francisco he said he considers online video delivery to be a long-term business model which will ensure the success of Netflix following the decline of DVD rentals, which he sees peaking within the next 10 years.

“The market that can be reached through streaming is much larger than DVD,” said Hastings, who didn’t give a specific timeframe for the anticipated growth, but did say “We should be able to get well beyond 20 million subscribers.” He added “We named our company ‘Netflix’ and not ‘DVD By Mail’ for a reason.”

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed the company's recent move toward providing internet connected set-top boxes. In January Netfilx began allowing subscribers with plans for 3 or more DVDs at a time to stream an unlimited amount of video from their Instant Watching service. Since then they've also announced deals with consumer electronics manufacturers to provide set-top boxes to work with the service. Just last week the first such device, manufactured by a company called Roku, went on sale.

During his speech at the "D6: All Things Digital conference", Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been quoted as saying that his company has been working on a pay-per-view streaming service and that the new option should be launching within the next few weeks.

The service is "meant for a subset of people willing to pay to view sans ads." It is also clear that the service will be in addition to the to the digital downloads offered by Amazon Unbox.

Bezos also added that his company is not trying take down the market leader iTunes but that "sensible owners want alternatives" and with that statement he is very correct.

It should be interesting to see how well this service works and we will keep you updated.

Amazon has announced that it has begun its largest Blu-ray sale yet, a Summer Blu-ray Blowout promotion that will run through June 9th.

The latest sale has 116 titles on sales from all studio libraries and features a few of the best selling titles including 'Blade Runner,' 'Hellboy,' 'Independence Day,' '300' and 'I, Robot' among others.

All of the titles in the sale have at least a 38 percent savings off MSRP and many have 50 percent off. The gigantic e-tailer also added that for the week of June 2-9 their special "Gold Box" promotion would be having a high-definition week meaning there is the possibility of huge discounts on Blu-ray titles and standalone players.

For those interested, the full list of movies available for the Summer Blowout is here: Amazon Blu-ray Summer Blowout.

TiVo has announced that it will be making Disney movies available for download on-demand later this year through a new deal with online content distributor CinemaNow.

The deal, which was struck with both Disney-ABC and CinemaNow, will allow Series2 and Series3 subscribers to download the Disney movies as 24 hour rentals. There was no word on price, or a launch date for the on-demand downloads but we will keep you updated.

The new deal will add to TiVo's already extensive 30,000 title catalog from Amazon Unbox, Music Choice, and Jaman.

TiVo currently has to compete against set top boxes from powerhouses such as Netflix, Apple, and Vudu and there has been word that Blockbuster and DirecTV are both looking into set-top boxes for consumers to stream movies directly to their TVs.

All the attention garnered this year by Apple's revamped AppleTV set-top box is both a blessing and a curse for competing devices and services. On one hand Apple's brand certainly gives the idea of downloaded video more respectability with some consumers. At the same time it's hard for other companies that don't have the same level of name recognition to get the public's attention. One such competitor, Vudu, is addressing that issue by selling their hardware in a small number of Best Buy stores.

Previously the Vudu set-top box was available only from online retailers, including their own website and Amazon.com. Besides increasing their visibility, the move to sell the units at Best Buy also gives consumers the opportunity to do some hands-on evaluation before taking one home. For unfamiliar technology with a price tag of nearly $300 this seems like an important step in the right direction.

Vudu currently has 5,500 titles available either for rent or purchase. As with Apple's iTunes offerings, many movies are available for purchase the same day they're released on DVD, while rentals are typically available 30 days later. The two devices also have similar storage capabilities for around 50 hours of video.

If you have a computer running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate you may already be using the included Media Center software to make it an HTPC. If so you'll be getting access to a new Online Media channel from CinemaNow that will offer the same selection of movies, TV shows, and music videos already available through the company's website.

CinemaNow's content is available on a download-to-own basis for prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 for movies, or as little as $1.99 for TV shows and music videos. If you prefer rentals to purchasing they can be gotten for significantly less (usually $2.99 to $3.99) for a 24 hour viewing period. Some videos can even be burned to DVD. CinemaNow has more than 3,400 titles to choose from, with some even available on the same day they're released on DVD.

With the growing amount of video available on the internet for either streaming or download, perhaps the biggest question for many people has been how to get it from the computer monitor to a TV. One approach, used by companies as diverse as Apple and Netflix, is to provide a separate set-top box that works similarly to a cable or satellite receiver, or even a DVR. With a growing number of consumers getting access to the necessary hardware and software to have a media center PC it seems logical to give them options to use their existing configurations for a similar purpose.

Almost since the introduction of CableCARD technology there have been complaints about its lack of support for interactive services like Video On Demand (VOD). Last year the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), representing electronics manufacturers, and National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), representing cable television operators in the US, both submitted proposals to the FCC for a new communications standard to be used in the next generation of CableCARD. Unfortunately the two proposals were different and incompatible with each other. On Tuesday Sony became the third major electronics vendor with plans to support the NCTA proposal, called Tru2Way.

At the CES expo in Las Vegas this January Panasonic and Comcast announced the development of consumer electronics products which will use Tru2Way technology to give them the full range of features available from a digital cable receiver. Earlier this month Samsung announced a deal of their own to develop devices using the technology. With the addition of Sony to their ranks, any concerns about competing standards should all but disappear.

New York City residents may soon have a new alternative to their current cable television provider. That's because the city's Franchise and Concession Review Committee has approved a cable franchising agreement with Verizon to provide their FiOS television service as a competitor to the incumbent Time Warner Cable. Assuming the deal is approved by the mayor's office and New York State Public Service Commission, Verizon plans to have complete coverage for the 5 boroughs that make up the city.

"When our proposal is fully approved, New York will be the first major city in the nation to break the cable TV monopoly and bring the network of the future to its residents today," Monica Azare, Verizon senior vice president for New York and Connecticut, said in a statement.

Currently only about 20% of the city's residents have access to Verizon's fiber optic network, which has so far only been used for high speed internet connections. These people should have the company's television service available nearly immediately after the franchise agreement is approved by the various parties. From that point on the company will have 8 years, until June 30, 2004, to make the service available to the entire populations of Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last several months about whether consumers even care about the availability of Blu-ray or any other high definition disc format. A significant drop in sales volume following the death of HD DVD would seem to suggest that price is currently a bigger factor than resolution or other quality factors. Apparently that's not true for everyone though. Specialty electronics retailers like Ultimate Electronics and Crutchfield are expecting to be moving more Blu-ray players than standard DVD units before the end of 2008.

On one hand these retailers are seeing the benefits of the upcoming transition to all-digital TV signals next year. “I think HD of any kind is experiencing a lift, as people become more cognizant of the DTV transition,” said Matt Duda, Ultimate Electronics merchandising director of video. “People wonder if they need a new TV, and it’s a great time for retail to capitalize on that. Just getting that footstep in the door is a great way to educate consumers about all high-def products.”

After Nokia N-Gage gamers reported outrage after not being able to transfer purchased games from one Nokia phone to another, Nokia has confirmed that you can indeed transfer the games and it was all just a "miscommunication".

Talking to PCWorld, Nokia added, "A miscommunication is blamed for users not being told. Internally there have been some mixed messages in this matter as well. We have been working on a way for this to work since the relaunch, but it is taking some time for everything to fall into place".

Nokia did want however,"want to elaborate on the details for when a mechanism for transferring games will be in place, or why it hasn't been released".

The unrest began last week when gamers who purchased N-Gage titles were led to believe that they could not transfer the game if they got a new phone. There are about 30 N-Gage titles finally available after over 6 months of delay in the relaunch of the service.

Verizon has begun offering subscribers a new video download service from Starz Entertainment. Called Starz Play, it offers unlimited movie downloads, as well as access to live streams from the various Starz and Encore cable channels. The service costs $5.99 per month.

In addition to the new service, Starz Entertainment also owns Vongo, a movie download service that offers unlimited downloads for $9.99 a month. Unlike Starz Play, however, Vongo doesn't include content from the company's cable channels.

While the deal with Verizon is the first time Starz has sold movie downloads as a wholesaler, it likely won't be the last. The company reportedly sees this sort of arrangement as the future of internet movie distribution.

Given the challenges that companies trying to turn a profit in the marketplace face it's anyone's guess whether this is true, but unlike other companies they appear to be establishing some kind of regular revenue stream. That's something their competition would do well to pay attention to.

In 2003 Disney began a trial program to sell disposable DVDs that became unplayable 48 hours after the packaging was opened. The discs, dubbed EZ-D by their developer, Flexplay, were an unqualified failure and the trial was cancelled after less than a year. Despite claims to the contrary from Convex Group, who bought Flexplay around the time the Disney trial ended, most people considered it a dead product. However Flexplay's critics were apparently a little premature in writing off the technology. Flexplay DVDs, notably lacking any Disney movies, will be available from office supply retailer Staples.

Although lacking the high visibility they enjoyed while the Disney trial program was in place, the EZ-D format has already made a quiet comeback of sorts. In 2005 Flexplay licensed the technology to a Japanese company, and they're currently available from kiosks in some US airports. This time around the discs feature movies from Warner Home Video, New Line Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment, and DreamWorks.

The large Swedish-Finnish-based telecom operator TeliaSonera has announced that it has struck a deal with Apple to bring the popular iPhone to Northern European markets.

In its press release the company says "later this year" the carrier will begin selling the phone in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

When asked for more details, the carrier refused any more comment, and so there are no pricing models available as of yet.

Over the past month (see related news below), Apple has been striking deals with various carriers to bring the iPhone worldwide, hitting every continent minus Antarctica.

Orange has signed up to sell the phone in at least 12 markets in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Vodafone is set to sell the phone in 10 countries including markets in South Africa and Australia. other providers have also inked deals to sell the phone in Singapore, India, the Philippines. Notably however, deals have fallen apart in the giant markets of Japan and China, but many still feel there is a chance they can be signed by the end of 2008.

The RIAA has declared complete victory over the infamous Russian music download store AllofMP3 which was accused of selling tracks but not giving any of the proceeds to the artists or record labels.

At its peak, the site had 6 million users who legally downloaded songs and full albums for cheaper than 1/3 the price of iTunes or Amazon. The RIAA said however that the record labels and the artists were not seeing any of this money and filed complaints to get the WTO to shut the site down. In 2007, the site was shut down and the RIAA praised the decision. However, in October of that year, the site was acquitted of any charges and a district court in Moscow confirmed the innocent verdict after an appeal by the record industry group. Despite being innocent, the site shut down and no longer offers music.

It now appears that this week the RIAA dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3 and claimed victory.

Officials from the United States, European Commission, Japan, and Switzerland are among those secretly working out details for a new anti-piracy treaty to be discussed at this year's G-8 Summit being held in July. A leaked discussion paper for the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) suggests the adoption of several new legal measures in participating countries that would radically increase the role of government in copyright, patent, and trademark enforcement. Other countries participating in the on-going discussion of the treaty include Canada, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.

Discussion on the ACTA proposal started with an initiative begun last October by US Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab along with 5 members of the Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property and Piracy Prevention in the US House of Representatives. Although consumer rights groups have been denied access to the text of the proposal, according to IP Justice "select lobbyists in the intellectual property industry" have been given access to the document.

The Helsinki Court of Appeals has overturned a controversial ruling made last year, which found that CSS copy protection in use on almost all retail movie DVDs was "ineffective". Finnish copyright law (amended in 2006 by adoption of EUCD) prohibits circumventing "effective technological measures", but the court original found that CSS cannot be described as an "efficient copy protection mechanism" anymore.

Within days of the ruling, the prosecutor announced plans to appeal the decision and on Monday, the Appeals Court overturned the original ruling. It rejected the District Court's judgment based on the objectives of DRM regulation.

However, there have been two major errors claimed in the appeals court decision. Firstly, the court claimed that circumventing an access control would have been legal but that the defendants had circumvented a full copy protection system (CSS). In reality, the defendants actually had only circumvented an access control.

Secondly, the court found that the circumvention was only legally ok if no additional software was installed to perform the process, and claimed that you always need to install some form of "hack" software to watch DVDs on Linux. Again, this is not true as you can get legal players that can play DVDs (VLC for example) and with some distros DVD-capable software comes standard.

According to an anonymous official at Telstra, the upcoming 3G iPhone will support a 42-megabit advanced 3G data connection in Australia, making it by far the fastest data connection available for iPhones.

The official added that he has even seen the device in use and says that by the holiday season 2008 the phone will be upgraded "to to the advanced HSPA+ wireless standard on Telstra's 3G network." The carrier hopes the move will drive sales, and he cites that the connection will actually be faster than most fixed-line broadband services.

Other sources have already claimed the Telstra is testing 3G iPhones and that the launch should be "within 2 weeks" of Apple's unveiling of the phone at this year's WWDC.

On the record, Telstra is set to launch a 21Mbps version of HSPA+ later this year, with its speeds doubling by the end of 2009. In the US, AT&T has reported that they will be offering a 20Mbps upgrade in 2009 for American users.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Barry Gitarts, a "key member" of the online music piracy group release group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC) has been convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 USD fine and three years probation at sentencing.

The DOJ added Gitarts was a member in 2003 and 2004 and paid for and administered the computer server used to upload "hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated music, movies, software and video games."

"Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don't do it," Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

The RIAA praised the government for brining the case to trial and praised the conviction as well.

"The crimes committed here -- as well as the harm to the music community -- are severe, and so are the consequences," Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for antipiracy, said in a statement. "Groups like APC that specialize in leaking pre-release music are at the top of the piracy pyramid, and the efforts of federal law enforcement have dealt a real blow to these kinds of operations."

According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, PC game piracy will be a thing of the past thanks to new stealth encryption chips embedded in your computers.

"There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now," he added.

"What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world - which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords - which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem."

Bushnell did note however that movie and music piracy can not be stopped. "If you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it."

"Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay.

"As soon as the installed base of the TPM hardware chip gets large enough, we will start to see revenues coming from Asia and India at a time when before it didn't make sense."

According to general manager of Xbox Live Marc Whitten, there will be no spring dashboard update for the Xbox 360 and that poor selling or poorly reviewed XBLA titles will be removed from the service.

Whitten adds that the titles must have been "out for more than six months, have a Metacritic score of less than 65%, and have a conversion rate of less than 6% will be eligible for delisting." The software giant will then give three months of warning before the titles are finally removed.

When speaking about the so far missing dashboard update, Whitten says "we have taken a different approach this spring and spent a lot of our time and resources of building the proper infrastructure and scale for the service not just today but also into the future. So while most users will not notice any significant changes to the dashboard this spring, I can tell you that the team will be releasing a new digital rights management (DRM) tool next month that will allow you to better consolidate your licenses for downloaded content to a single Xbox and allow you the freedom to be able to play your content both online and offline."

Apple has announced that it will be expanding on its new variable pricing policy for TV shows on iTunes in the UK.

The UK iTunes platform has added a new set of Sony Pictures label TV shows including episodes of "Damages", "NewsRadio", "The Larry Sanders Show", "Spiderman" and "Jackie Chan Adventures." The pricing model for the episodes are staggered however, with NewsRadio, Spiderman and Jackie Chan being priced at £1.19, Larry Sanders at £1.49, and Damages at £1.89.

The trend of variable pricing began in the US when HBO stuck a deal with Apple to allow episodes of "Rome", "Deadwood" and "The Sopranos" to sell at different prices than other current shows. Those HBO shows for example, even sell for more than other HBO shows like "Flight of the Conchords."

The Internet video-on-demand (VOD) startup Akimbo has confirmed that it is closing its doors citing that the company has not been able to raise enough capital to remain profitable.

The company has been laying off staff and is currently looking for an acquiring company to buy up the company's remaining assets and staff. Currently all video services run through Akimbo are running, including Homezone and MavTV.

Chief finance officer Peter Chantel is the only executive now left at the company and noted that 24 employees have been laid off in the last month.

Akimbo is one of the pioneers of networked set top boxes and as long ago as 2006, was supplying features in its service that rivaled the Apple TV or the new Roku Netflix player.

The huge video game retailer Gamestop has announced that it will discontinue selling the Microsoft Zune citing its "poor performance in terms of sales."

In its initial six months, Microsoft sold 1 million units but since then, and despite a complete line revamp, sales have slowed to a crawl. It has taken another year for Microsoft to reach 2 million units sold for its Zune line, a considerably slower pace for sales.

Despite at one point being the top seller on Amazon for MP3 players, the Zune has failed in comparison to iPod sales. For the Q2 2008, Apple had sold roughly 11 million of the popular media devices.

Ignoring Gamestop's decision, Adam Sohn, Microsoft's Zune marketing manager, said Zune sales "have seen good momentum" for the last few months.

In a not so shocking decision, a jury has awarded the MPAA around $4 million USD in fines from the companies ShowStash.net and Cinematube.net. The sites were sued last year by the MPAA and have been defending their actions ever since. What gives this case more importance over the thousands of others the MPAA has filed is that neither company hosted any of the unauthorized content and instead acted as search engines.

Regardless of that fact, the courts fined ShowStash $2.7 million USD and Cinematube $1.3 million for their actions, fueling more fire for the MPAA which has been on a role with "victories" as of late. It seems that new business model of the MPAA and RIAA is to "vigorously pursue litigation” and make a profit in the courts. Of course it is clear that these organizations will never see any of this money, essentially because the companies and people they are suing don't have it.

Zhongsou, the popular Chinese internet search engine, has been found guilty of copyright infringement and the authorities have ordered the internet company to "stop infringing immediately and pay the maximum penalty of RMB 100,000." There was also word that three servers belonging to the search engine were taken indefinitely.

According to data compiled by research firm DisplaySearch,, global LCD TV sales outsold plasma TV sales by a huge 8-to-1 margin for the Q1 2008 and that gap doesn't seem to be getting any smaller anytime soon.

Over 21 million LCD TVs were sold during the timeframe compared to a measly 2.8 million plasma sets, says the report.

The total number of TVs sold during the period was 46.1 million, about equal to year-over-year sales for 2007. Overall revenue jumped 8 percent however, to $24.8 billion USD thanks to increasing sales of larger, more expensive LCD and plasma displays.

Aging CRT TVs were still the best selling, with 22.1 million sold, with LCD closely behind at 21.1. Plasma and rear projection televisions brought up the rear with 2.8 million and 134,000 sold respectively. Year over year CRT sales were down 21%, LCD up 45%, plasma up 20% and RPTV down 79%.

In terms of brands, Samsung led in revenue for the 9th straight quarter, with huge 39 percent year over year growth.

CinemaNow has announced that its extensive library of 3500 feature length films is now available through Windows Media Center meaning you can download and watch the films without a cable TV subscription.

Windows Media Center is all that is necessary for the service to work, and most Windows XP and Vista users have it already installed. The movies are currently available through an "Online Media channel" in Windows Media Center that offers CinemaNow's movie and TV download service.

CinemaNow's library includes 3,500 major Hollywood studio and independent movies, and even some HD-quality movies. There are also over 3,000 TV episodes and over 2,900 music videos available. Now you can use Windows Media Center to easily browse the offering and even watch on your TV using a media hub if you have one.

For more information, make sure to check www.CinemaNow.com.

Nintendo of America's VP of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway has announced that the Wii has already sold over 50 million units of software since its launch (18 months ago) and that the figure is a new record.

The previous record, 42 million units sold in 18 months, was from the launch of the PlayStation 2 in late 2000.

As a comparison, in the first 18 months of their lifecycles ,the Xbox 360 had 30 million units sold, 20 million were sold for the PlayStation 3 and 28 million were sold for the original Xbox.

Making the figure even more impressive is that the figure does not include WiiSports which is bundled in every Wii console sold. The figure does however include "WiiPlay" (which comes bundled with a Wii remote) and "Link's Crossbow Training" (which comes bundled with the Wii zapper.)

Panasonic has announced they have developed the world's first single-chip processor that can handle all of Blu-ray's latest Profile 2.0 standards.

By using this latest chip, dubbed the UniPhier3, Panasonic promises smaller sizes, lower power consumption, and cheaper prices for BD players using the chip.

According to the press release, the chip has full "support for the latest BD standards, and functions including dual-screen simultaneous video playback, high-quality audio playback, and network compatibility achieved on a single chip."

It will also allows for "50% reduction in mounting surface area and 25% reduction in power consumption, compared to current Panasonic products." That is a huge plus in my opinion as most current BD players are large and obtrusive, compared to many slimline DVD players.

BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy agency that has started a crusade against public torrent trackers, has another site in its sights, the world's most popular torrent site, Mininova.

The organization has announced that it will be taking Mininova to court hoping that the court will force the site to filter its search results and effectively remove all unauthorized content.

Mininova, which boasts 30 million unique visitors every month, allows for user submitted torrents as well as authorized content from publishers such as the CBC. More importantly, the site does not have its own tracker, which has gotten the Pirate Bay in trouble recently.

Erik Dubbelboer, one of the co-founders of Mininova added the following: “We will proceed to court with full confidence. We operate within the law, as we maintain our ‘notice and take down’ policy. That is, we remove search results if a copyright holder asks us to.”

Fans of ABC.com will be treated to a new broadband player to view full episodes on their site as the company sets to revamp the current player with new features this coming fall.

It seems the company is taking some queues from the successful YouTube model by adding some features such as; full-screen viewing, closed captioning and the ability to embed video links for blogs and social networking sites like MySpace.

"Having come out of the gate with the first player in the space, we're continually looking at how we expand and provide a better experience from our users," said Alexis Rapo, vp digital media at ABC Entertainment.

Launched in 2006, ABC.com became the first full-episode player online. As of April, it is the dominant one with 8.9 million unique users, surpassing any other broadcasters, according to Nielsen Online. ABC.com also leads in minutes spent per user.

The user interface has been redesigned with new navigation and search features that allow users to comb series offerings graphically, alphabetically, by genre or popularity. ABC has also added a feature which allows for content recommendations that suggests programs based on a viewer's choices.

Companies are always trying to find ways to condense media centers into smaller more compact spaces without losing the quality that consumers demand. Sony has made another attempt at honing the smaller is better stigma with the announcement of their new 5.1-channel HT-IS100 HTIB surround sound speaker setup. What makes this setup special is that it touts golf ball sized satellite speakers receiving 45 watts each and support Dolby Digital / Dolby Pro Logic II / DTS and comes with a remote.

The roughly cube-shaped speakers, to go on sale in Japan next month, measure just 1.7 inches on each side, Sony Corp. spokeswoman Eiko Sato said Thursday. The 90,000 yen ($870) system includes five golf ball-sized speakers as well as a bigger, 17 inches tall box for the amplifier and subwoofer, a feature for producing bass sounds.

Microsoft has announced that it is hoping to build an advertising network into its Zune media players, giving advertisers a direct connection to consumers.

As explained by Yahoo, "the company demonstrated the concept using a phony Doritos mockup. In the example, a user could befriend a musician through the Zune social page on a Doritos’ sponsored concert to view news and updates on the artist’s profile."

Once you are added to that list, users can email said profile to other friends and download select tracks from the website to play on the Zune. "When the recipient receives the email through Microsoft’s Hotmail service through their mobile phone, a brief ad will trigger, followed by a short game similar to Asteroids."

If the user does well playing the game, then they earn a free bag of Doritos chips, and downloadable maps to nearby stores that sell them.

Although it is still in "planning" stages, Microsoft says the program is not “something that is far in the future” and just needs some solid back-end infrastructure.

CBS Entertainment has announced that it will be adding more classic shows to its CBS.com online video network and its partnering CBS Audience Network sites.

Beginning this morning, full episodes from "The Love Boat", "Beverly Hills 90210", "Twin Peaks", "Family Ties", and "Perry Mason" were made available on all of CBS's online video networks and its partners, including CNET, AOL, Microsoft, Comcast, Joost, Sling Media, Veoh, and Bebo.

The broadcaster noted that more content was coming from "one of the largest television programming libraries in the entertainment business" and it seems in the upcoming months the company hopes to add more and more content.

While other broadcasters have made their content available only through certain outlets, CBS is going the other way, allowing its content to be viewed anywhere where there are fans and advertising revenue.

Denon has announced the availability of a new Blu-ray player in North America, dubbed the DVD-1800BD which for Denon products, is at an "affordable" price point.

The company, known for outstanding quality in their DVD and Bu-ray players added that despite the price, audio and visual quality will not be compromised.

Set with a retail price of $749 USD, the player is Profile 1.1 compliant but will not have support for the BD-Live features that are coming in upcoming BD titles.

The DVD-1800BD "features HDMI 1.3a with Deep Color and Bonus View support, full bitstream output of Dolby and DTS-HD audio formats, as well as 1080p scaling from DVDs and 2-channel analogue audio output."

Well known tech site Ars Technica has been purchased by magazine publisher Condè Nast, whose other properties include Wired magazine. Ars Technica will become part of Wired Digital, which is also responsible for Wired.com. The price wasn't disclosed, but is rumored to be $25 million.

In a statement to the Ars Technica community on May 19, Editor-in-Chief and co-founder Ken Fisher wrote "Ars Technica will remain an independent publication, with the same editorial leadership in place. I will remain the Editor-in-Chief, and Jon, Eric, and the rest of the editorial team is staying on board, too" referring to Senior Editor (now Deputy Editor) and co-founder Jon Stokes and Managing Editor Eric Bangeman.

According to Fisher the sale will mean an immediate expansion of the site's operation, including hiring more staff in more locations. They plan to have offices open in both Chicago and San Francisco in just weeks. He says they're already going through "notebooks full of ideas for Ars Technica from over the years" to take immediate advantage of having Wired Digital's resources behind them.

When Hulu, the online video service jointly owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, opened to the public earlier this year many people were pleasantly surprised to find that they actually liked it quite a bit. In addition to providing TV shows and movies from their own portal they also have a number of partners offering the content to their own visitors. On Tuesday Hulu announced deals to add content to another 7 websites, including TV.com (formerly TVTome), TVGuide.com, and Zap2it.com.

According to figures from Nielsen's VideoCensus Hulu streamed more video in April (its first full month of operation) than any US television network website. Hulu viewers reportedly streamed 63.2 million videos compared to 60.8 million from former the former frontrunner, Disney's ABC.com.

But as successful as they've been, not everything appears to be going as well as some analysts expected. James McQuivey, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research, feels websites like AOL, MySpace, and Yahoo could do a better job of promoting Hulu videos. At the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit he said "the partners have a little more work to do to capture their fair share of the audience."

Originally announced at the CES event in January, Panasonic has finally unveiled its new PZ850-series Viera plasmas including specs, release dates and prices.

The lineup will have 46, 50, 58 and 65-inch models and will most notably have built-in Internet access, allowing TV viewers to watch YouTube clips or Picasa photos without needing a separate media hub. There will be support for other websites coming as well, says Panasonic.

Each HDTV will have four HDMI ports, PC inputs, and a high native contrast ratio of 30,000:1. The maximum dynamic contrast ratio is an also high 1,000,000:1. Each set will also have a built-in SD slot and internal H.264 decoding meaning owners of HD camcorders or those with HD video can watch immediately without having to convert the video.

According to a source very close to Apple and the 3G iPhone launch, the phone will be arriving worldwide on June 9th and that will "no longer be available at a fixed price point", that is at least in a few countries. Of course, the WDC Keynote is on that date and it seems Apple will be wasting no time after the official announcement.

Although the release dates are not yet official the source says the phone will be available in Spain starting June 18th, and in other European nations within a few day radius. European carriers will also have new sales policies, based on their own discretions.

That move makes sense. Over the past 12 months, at least in the United States and the UK, the iPhone has become the cellular device to beat and other European nations only had mediocre sales thanks to high price points and carrier exclusivity bombs.

More information as it becomes available.

This week it was reported that NBC was sending out broadcast flags with its Monday night programming thus blocking Vista Media Center users from recording the programming. At the time both Microsoft and the broadcaster argued they did not know what had cause the interference but were investigating.

The incidents caused uproar on the internet especially considering that broadcast flag laws were thrown out and therefore no software needs to abide by them, even if they are sent out by the broadcaster. NBC has made a new statement today, saying the interference were purely a mistake.

"We made an inadvertent mistake," an NBC spokeswoman explained, "We're not aware of any other complaints, and we believe we have addressed the problem."

Because DRM flagging is no longer mandatory, it seems that Microsoft is voluntarily having its Vista Media Center restrict recording. It could also be a monetary deal with the TV broadcasters. Microsoft has said however that it is "working with media outlets to cut down on the number of false DRM flags."

Now that Nintendo's WiiWare program has launched in Japan, the US and Europe and Sony's PSN is increasing in popularity, Microsoft has said that Xbox Live Arcade will "leapfrog" its competitors by using user created games.

First announced in February the "Community Games" initiative will allow professional and amateur developers to to create games for XBL.

"I certainly think from an innovation perspective it's going to help us leapfrog the competition, effectively until they find a way to duplicate it, assuming they ever do," stated David Edery, Xbox Live Arcade's worldwide portfolio planner.

"To some extent it will certainly help us have more innovative content than either of them, just by definition. With all this random stuff coming from the community, every once in a while there's going to be a real gem in there that you just couldn't have found otherwise, it wouldn't have found its way on to a console," he added.

Edery says the initiative should go live by the end of 2008.

"The example I always like to give is will someone finally make that scuba diving game, where there's really only 15,000 people interested in a hardcore scuba diving simulation, but they really, really want one? And maybe through XNA someone can profitably get one out there," he said.

Comcast is investing in a company developing a streaming video service that uses P2P technology. GridNetworks, based out of Seattle, is receiving an unspecified investment from Comcast and will be collaborating with the cable provider to make the service "friendly" to internet service providers.

In the wake of the recent controversy over their "network management," which effectively blocks a significant amount of P2P traffic, Comcast has apparently had a change of heart about how to handle subscribers who transfer a lot of data. No doubt the threat of FCC action and Net Neutrality legislation from Congress has played a part in their decision to support the creation of a so-called P2P "Bill Of Rights" and consider a new billing model with explicit monthly download limits.

Today Netflix began promoting the first set-top box for streaming movies directly to a TV using their Instant Watching service. Instant Watching is part of every subscription to Netflix DVD rental plan, but until now a computer with Windows Media Player has been required for taking advantage of it.

The Netflix Player, which is manufactured by Roku, can be connected to a home network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. TV outputs include HDMI, component video, composite video, and S-video. It's being offered from the Roku website for $99.99.

Napster has opened their own music store to compete with Amazon and Apple. Their music store is said to boast more than 6 million songs, more than Amazon or Apple's iTunes. All files are downloadable in MP3 format and are DRM-free, which makes them compatible with most of the music players, including Apple iPod and iPhone.

Changing directions from the previous all-you-can-eat subscription, the company hopes that it will grow interest amongst the customers who want to transfer their favorite songs to portable media players. Napster's service has an edge against iTunes with DRM-free files and larger catalog, but analysts don't see it topping iTunes mainly because of Apple's strong integration of iTunes into their PMPs.

The electronics giant Samsung has introduced a new LCD TV this week at the 2008 SID symposium in Los Angeles that sports "ultra definition" resolution of 3840x2160, or 2160p.

Current LCD panels have at maximum, 1080p (1920x1080) HD resolution so this new TV blows that out of the water. It is however, lower quality then the upcoming 4k standard which has a 4096x1716 working resolution.

The TV that was demoed measured 82 inches diagonally and had a 120Hz refresh rate, a feature not typical of such a large display. The set also includes the nice LED backlight which save energy and raises color saturation to 150 percent.

The blockbuster hit game Wii Fit was finally made available in the US this morning, after selling over 2 million units in Japan over only a matter of weeks. The game is available in New York right now only and then the rest of the US beginning May 21st.

Nintendo's latest hit allows users to check their body mass index and do various routines such as strength training, aerobics, yoga, skiing, and snowboarding, all in the comfort of their homes.

"Wii Fit will get you moving whether you've been playing video games for years or this is your first time," Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive VP of sales and marketing, said in an announcement. "Wii Fit is easy for anyone to try and is yet another example of how Nintendo continues to expand the world of video games to new audiences."

The $90 USD game comes with "a hefty balance board that wirelessly communicates with the required Nintendo Wii Console. Measuring 20.5 inches by 13 inches by 3 inches, the board which is basically a complex floor-based game controller, senses the user's weight as he steps on it and uses the information to control and synchronize the onscreen games and exercises designed to improve your balance, posture and fitness."

Sony has confirmed that it is planning to "integrate YouTube functionality in upcoming or existing PlayStation 3 games" and that developers are currently working on such integration.

The new integration will enable gamers to stream capture and upload footage they have recorded while playing games.

"This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates," explained a YouTube statement.

"Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We're excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube," the statement added.

Yesterday we reported that NBC had sent off broadcast flags thus causing Vista Media Center users to not be able to record TV episodes of "American Gladiators" and "Medium" on Monday night.

After these reports surfaced around the internet, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that the same exact thing was happening to over-the-air (OTA) programming, something it had not seen before.

One individual report shows a man attempting to record TV shows from NBC's Raleigh affiliate, WNCN HD, and having an alert tell him "the broadcaster has disabled recording of the programming." The man was recording from an antenna signal and EFF confided that it was the first it had ever heard of OTA programming being restricted.

Broadcast flags, which come part of the upcoming 2009 DTV standard, were challenged in court two years ago by the EFF and the court ruled in favor saying "that using the flags to restrict copying was not appropriate". The law was subsequently thrown out. The panel of judges said the FCC did not have the authority to enforce a law of that nature, which is a clear violation of fair use laws.

DivXNetworks, developers of the popular DivX MPEG-4 ASP codec, have announced a closed beta test for a new MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) decoder. The DivX H.264 decoder, given the codename of "Project Rémoulade," is intended to compete with CoreAVC, a popular and low cost AVC encoder from CoreCodec, as well as the free ffdshow decoder.

Based on tests documented by DivXNetwork internal testers, the new decoder can decode AVC video significantly faster (more frames per second) than ffdshow, and usually slightly faster than CoreAVC. Although most testers seem to confirm the comparison with ffdshow, some find CoreAVC to be consistently faster.

CableCard technology, which allows devices from televisions to DVRs to decrypt QAM broadcasts from US cable operators, has proven to be a mixed blessing for consumers. One of the chief criticisms of the technology is its inability to work with the Video On Demand (VOD) services that have become a standard feature of the cable landscape. This has lead to the development of a more advanced standard called Tru2way, which will allow a new generation of CableCard equipped devices access to VOD and other interactive services. Now Samsung has signed a licensing deal that will them to manufacture devices compliant with the standard.

The lack of VOD capabilities in first generation CableCard devices is due to not allowing bi-directional communication. While standard digital cable receivers, like those provided by cable companies, have the capability to both receive signals and send instructions back to the head end (the equipment used to distribute television signals to subscribers), first generation CableCard technology doesn't include any way to transmit the information required to take advantage of interactive services. As a result, the instructions necessary for VOD simply aren't available through the CableCard interface.

The Web Sheriff has announced today that Michael Jackson, Prince, the Village People, UB40 and the estate of Bob Marley have joined together to sue the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay for alleged losses they have suffered.

Pirate Bay’s admin Brokep wrote in the Pirate Bay blog that “The common thing for all of these artists of course is that no one listens to them anymore.” Brokep added as a parting shot, "And hey Michael - do you want us to pay you in small kids maybe?"

WebSheriff, whose real name is John Giacobbi, announced last November that he was planning to sue the site in the US, France and Sweden for infringing the rights of the artist Prince. Brokep replied to that comment as well. "Websheriff says he wants to sue us in Sweden and in the US. Most of us civilized people understand that people cannot be sued outside their own domicile - aka we can not be sued outside of Sweden. So good luck with that. It proves that the sheriff is just after making some headlines!"

LG Display has introduced a pair of new round LCD panels that will be on display for the first time at next week's Society For Information Display's (SID) conference.

The first panel is circular and measure 35.5mm in diameter, making it the perfect size to fit in a standard wristwatch.

The second, larger panel, is elliptical in shape and measures 78.8mm by 131.4mm and seems about the right size to fit in digital photo frames and in-car electronics devices. Both displays have 262,000 colors and a 160 degree viewing angle, added the company.

Rectangular LCD panels have become the new standard for HDTVs and are also standard in mobile phones, car entertainment systems and music players. Many in the industry have noted that development of LCDs of different shapes is the next logical step and LG is also not the first to introduce such LCDs. Late last year Toshiba unveiled a 75mm diameter circular LCD and said it was in the works for more.

LG Display is one of the world's largest LCD panel makers, behind Sony.

According to a new report, the content industry is ramping up its efforts to control piracy on college campuses and the RIAA is at the head of the effort.

Judging by the report however, it seems the new tactics are not all that sophisticated. The RIAA will give a list of files to keep on the look for, then hired mercenary Media Sentry searches for infringing materials on common P2P apps such as Limewire. Media Sentry usually uses the same clients as the users it is looking to bust, using the client's built-in facilities to note IP addresses and browse their shared folders.

Earlier this month, a few notable universities reported that they had received a 10-fold increase in DMCA copyright notices. RIAA president Cary Sherman noted that this was true, citing a “phenomenal jump” in Media Sentry’s "computing efficiency".

“It’s the same procedures, the same standards, the same list of copyrighted works that we’re using,” said Sherman. “The Internet is a huge place, and there are millions of people connected to it … The amount of resources you put into sending out requests for specific files makes a difference; the more requests you make, the more you’re going to find.”

On Monday night it appears that users trying to record NBC TV shows using Microsoft Vista's Media Center were unable to, the reason being that NBC sent off a broadcast flag that in turn activated Media Center's built in DRM copy protection measures, and stopped recordings of over-the-air and cable broadcasts.

Both NBC and Microsoft stated that they have no explanation for the issue and noted that DirecTV and TiVo DVR users did not report any issues.

The two TV shows in question were the new "American Gladiator" and "Medium" episodes. Users received the following message when trying to record the shows. "Recording cancelled. [TV show] cannot be recorded. Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator of the content prohibit recording of this program."

All that seems to come out of this situation is the proof that Vista's Media Center does indeed have built in DRM that can be triggered by broadcasters at any point, restricting the recording of content at will.

Rene Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom has announced that its T-Mobile branch has sold over 100,000 Apple iPhones in Germany since its launch in November of 2007.

Speaking at the comapny's annual general meeting, the CEO added that the iPhone was the "most popular multimedia device" sold by its T-Mobile division and that 100,000 sales milestone was "meeting expectations" for the device.

Other iPhone facts revealed showed that German customers used the "internet 30 times more on average than other mobile users and that one-third of T-Mobile iPhoners opted for the most expensive plan."

Earlier this year T-Mobile cut the price of the iPhone to 99 euros with a contract and the scheme seems to have boosted sales.

Now that GTA IV has launched, undoubtedly the most anticipated new game for the PlayStation 3 is Metal Gear Solid 4 . As a way to tie in the hype to sales, Sony had previously announced that they would be bringing a limited edition Gunmetal PlayStation 3 bundle that will include the game as well as the new colorway.

As the games June release date approaches both Sony and Konami have released some specifications about the limited edition bundle and its standard 80GB model bundle.

The gunmetal grey 40GB model will feature the exclusive colorway, and will come with "a soundtrack and a Blu-ray disc with a behind-the-scenes documentary."

The standard black-finish 80GB model will only include a free download of the Pain minigame from the online store as an added feature. Of course the 80GB model has backwards compatibility for PS2 titles, which is not available on the 40GB model.

Shinoda Plasma has announced that it will be introducing the world's thinnest Plasma display, 1mm (.04 inches) at its thickest depth.

The example demoed for reporters was 125 inches diagonally which was impressive in itself, but the depth was more impressive considering it is only a fraction of what current plasma displays are. Also notable is that Shinoda's display is so thin you can curve the screen to maintain a direct viewing angle, even for the far edges.

According to the company, the display that was demoed is fully functional and is "near production-grade". There was one hitch however. The company claims the display has "the functional brightness of a plasma display from 1999." CEO Tsutae Shinoda noted that the company will need to improve that fact if it hopes to compete against modern screens.

He added that the company is searching for Japanese companies that will help turn the screen from demo product to consumer product in the next year.

Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman ordered to pay the record industry $220,000 USD for unauthorized sharing of music file is finally getting her chance to appeal the case, and may get to see the jury once more.

The issue at hand is whether the record industry needs to know prove that anyone even downloaded the songs Thomas made available or if her making them available is enough to warrant throwing the appeal out. Over the past few years the record industry has sued thousands upon thousands of would be file sharers and has argued that all they must prove is that the defendant put the music on file sharing networks.

File sharing fans, and the EFF, have argued that so far the only proven downloaders of the music were private investigators working for the record labels and trade groups such as the RIAA.

In October 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis said that making copyrighted music available was illegal "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown." Yesterday however, Davis admitted that may be a mistake. Citing a 1993 ruling from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, he noted that infringement "requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords."

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has passed a law that will force phone and internet companies to keep full logs of their customer's internet usage. The data will also need to be made readily available to the police if they need it.

The law, dubbed the "Communications Data Bill", is an offshoot of the EU's "Data Retention Directive". Last October the first part of the bill was passed and forced telcos to "keep records of phone calls to and from land lines and mobile telephones." That will now be extended to internet usage, emails, and VoIP records.

“The aim of the [Directive] is to ensure that certain data is retained to enable public authorities to undertake their lawful activities to investigate, detect and prosecute crime and to protect the public," added a Home Office spokeswoman.

“The first part of the [Directive] was transposed into UK law in October 2007 but the Government made a declaration … to postpone its application to the retention of communications data relating to internet access, internet telephony and internet email until 2009. So the measures referred to in the Communications Data Bill will complete the transposition of the Directive for IP [internet protocol] communications data," said the Home Office spokeswoman.

Apple has once again announced that it is expanding its iPhone network to new markets, this time to new markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Recently the company announced deals for distribution in Italy, Latin America and Australia and India and there still seem to be deals in the works for the popular device.

Orange the cell phone carrier said it did not want to divulge too much but did say the countries part of the new distribution deal are Belgium, Egypt, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Slovakia, Senegal, Cameroon, Botswana, Madagascar, Mali, Reunion, Kenya and Mauritius.

Orange, a subsidiary of France Telecom has 172 million registered customers over five continents and says that over 120 million are Orange customers.

Analysts have expressed doubt that the iPhone will sell well in Africa and many feel it is a risky move to distribute there. The average income of individuals in many African nations is significantly lower then say, people in European nations and the phone is sometimes even too expensive for those individuals.

According to the NPD Group's latest figures, despite the blockbuster hit Grand Theft Auto IV, the Nintendo Wii still dominated US console sales for the month of April.

Overall total industry sales were up 40 percent year-over-year, and Hardware sales totaled 426 million USD, a 26 percent surge from April 2007. Software was the big winner however, seeing a 68 percent growth year over year, to hit $654.7 million USD in sales for the month. Most of that can be attributed to the hit games GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii which sold a combined 3.95 million copies.

The figures said that 714,000 Wii consoles were sold during the month, and that brought total lifetime sales in the US to 9.5 million. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that its Xbox 360 console had become the first next gen console to hit 10 million US sales. It seems the Wii will get their next month, not to mention that the 360 was out for a full year before the Wii even hit stores.

Since the blockbuster games release on April 29th, Grand Theft Auto IV has broken all types of sales records on its way to over $500 million USD in sales in just a couple of weeks. There have however, been reports that PS3 gamers have repeatedly had inexplicable freezes occur during their gaming experience. There were similar issues on the 360 version, but for the most part both companies have stayed mum on the technical problems.

Many hoped though, with the upcoming release of PS3 firmware 2.35 that GTA IV would be patched and they could go on their merry way in Liberty City. According to Al De Leon from Sony Computer Entertainment America however, this is not to be. The official PlayStation blog adds "this update isn’t related to GTA IV”. He did however add that customer services has a solution for the GTA issues. If you are interested, please check here: Sony Customer Services.

According to the Associated Press it seems that Comcast is not the only company guilty of throttling P2P traffic, Singapore's StarHub, and Cox Communications were equal offenders as well.

Comcast has been seen as the main offender for the last few months and saw backlash from net neutrality advocates, customers and the even the FCC. The AP however, says that a worldwide study of 8,175 Internet users, showed that 3 companies were indeed blocking the traffic, and that Cox was likely the worst offender.

Of the 151 Cox subscribers, 82 had their transfers blocked, read the survey. The Cox interference however, was different than that of Comcast. Cox only blocked seeding of a file downloaded through BitTorrent, thus reducing the amount of people the downloader can share the file with.

Cox's subscriber agreement does state that subscribers are signing up for "protocol filtering," meaning that the company "prioritizes some forms of Internet traffic over others," but spokespeople have said that BitTorrent is not particularly discriminated against.

AT&T, the iPhone's US exclusive carrier has announced that it will be limiting sales of the iPhone to customers, meaning only one phone can be purchased at a time.

The move is fueling more rumors that the upcoming 3G iPhone is coming soon and that Apple is low on inventory of the current generation which usually does not happen.

Apple's online store is completely sold out of the device as is UK's exclusive carrier O2.

"Effective immediately, customers can only purchase one iPhone device," the online advisory to AT&T store managers read.

If you still want the iPhone however, Apple has begun offering refurbished iPhones at huge discounts. The 8GB and 16GB models will sell for $249 USD and $349 USD respectively, over 30 percent off retail price.

Many are expecting the 3G model to launch in June at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference which recently sold out in anticipation of the launch.

A federal jury has ruled in favor of a small Texas gaming company Anascape, announcing that Nintendo will have to pay the company $21 million USD for infringing patents while designing controllers for the Wii and Gamecube consoles.

The lawsuit was originally filed in late 2006 and was filed against Microsoft as well. The software giant however decided to settle the case out of court before the trial began.

Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta added that the company is looking to appeal and "expects the court to reduce the award significantly."

The patents infringed had to do with the designs of the Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers. Scibettra added the company was pleased that no infringement was found having to do with any motion-sensing technology, such as the Wii and Nunchuck controllers.

Tanya Anderson, the P2P defendant that was accused by the record industry of stealing music but fought the charges and eventually won has just had another victory, having a significant amount of her substantial fees paid for by the bully record industry.

The music industry reps that originally sued her; Atlantic Recording, Priority Records, Capitol Records, UMG Recordings, and BMG Music wanted the usual settlement fund of about $3000 USD but Anderson denied their claims and took it to court. She would eventually have the complaints against her dropped, but not before she was over $300,000 USD in the hole with legal fees.

Because of the fact that the charges against her were dropped, she was entitled to make a claim for attorney fees and did see a victory, although not a full one. According to the judge presiding over the case, "Andersen now requests an award of attorney fees in the amount of$298,995.00 and costs in the amount of $5,387.05." The music industry however, fought back against that claim and got the award lowered. The judge ordered that "Andersen should be awarded attorney fees in the amount of$103,175. Andersen's Bill of Costs in the amount of $4,659 should be APPROVED."

The pay-television companies have been actively searching and investigating websites that spread the word of set-top box modding. One of the sites, modshack.co.uk, was detected to illegally instruct how to bypass the set-top boxes' security settings. The two Brits responsible for the site were taken to court in 2006 for breaking the Copyright and Designs Act. Modshack.co.uk gathered nearly 27 000 pounds worth of donations from its users.

Carl Morgan Davison and Mark Taylor helped people via their website to bypass the security settings and therefore get a free access to digital pay-TV broadcasts from Virgin Media and BSkyB. The companies complained to North Wales Police about the service in the summer of 2005. Soon after the investigation began and resulted to a raid and eventually to legal action.

The court sentenced the two men to what Malcolm Davies, Virgin Media’s head of fraud security calls a "serious warning to others" -- a total of 15 months in prison. Carl Morgan Davison alias "Hairy Monster" was sentenced to 10 months and Mark Taylor alias "Novice Angle" to 5 months imprisonment.

Limewire CEO George Searle has announced that the company hopes to share its ad revenue with record companies, with the record labels getting as much as 40 percent of the ad money.

Last year the P2P company said it was working on "integrating contextual text ads into its P2P client" and Searle tried to explain better. According to the CEO, "Limewire's 80 million users generate an estimated five billion search requests each month, putting the P2P client in the same league as search engine giants like Google and Yahoo. In fact, Limewire would be the third biggest search destination in terms of unique users, ahead of Live.com and Ask.com, if it was a website."

Limewire is definitely not a website though, and so far has not made one cent from its 5 billion searches. Searle hopes to change that now. "Limewire wants to incorporate contextual ads into its client within the next month. The ads will be at the top of the search results, but clearly marked as advertising. Ads will initially be used to promote Limwire's new music download store, but advertisers should be able to buy these spots soon as well."

Besides the new ad model, Limewire is also working on an interface redesign which will include a web browser.

Samsung and LG have announced that they plan to develop a new device that will allow for DTV on cellular devices.

"LG and Samsung are already world-class in digital TV and mobile communications. Through this collaboration, we also have an opportunity to lead the North American mobile DTV market," said Woo Paik, LG president and chief technology officer.

There were no details or specifications on the product presented and there was no word on which standard was chosen to either. LG said there would be more details revealed later this year.

The proposed mobile DTV system will use current digital TV broadcast bandwidth and will not require the broadcasters to invest in much equipment.

"We will step up our effort to provide a technology that will benefit both consumers and broadcasters," added Park Jong-woo, head of Samsung Electronics' digital media division.

Sony has reported that the PlayStation 3 is seeing gradually declining production costs and growing popularity of the console has led to a strong improvement on the company's balance sheet. Sony also noted that the company shipped about 37 million game consoles and more than 267 million games during the year.

Sony's "PlayStation" unit posted a $1.2 billion USD loss for the year, an improvement from the $2.3 billion USD loss the division posted last fiscal year. According to Sony, the decrease was primarily thanks to PS3 hardware reductions and the increasing sales of PS3 software and accessories.

For the fiscal year, there were 7.24 million PS3 units sold, up from 5.63 million in fiscal 2006. The PSP was even more popular, selling 13.89 million devices for a total of 41 million PSPs to date.

PSP software sales declined but PS3 software sales made up the difference. Total game units were 267.4 million, compared to 261.5 million in fiscal 2006.

Microsoft has announced that it has moved over 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States, being the first next gen console to hit that sales milestone in the States. Overall Microsoft has sold 19 million units worldwide to date.

The software giant also added that the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV has pushed Xbox Live memberships to over 12 million players worldwide.

IDC research manager Billy Pidgeon added that the service was "the largest community in the connected console games sector," and said it represented "the greatest growth opportunity in the console market."

Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices VP Don Mattrick noted, "history has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry.”

At last week's MEDIA-TECH Expo in Frankfurt, Germany, media analyst Richard Cooper of Screen Digest predicted that the struggling US economy will have a major impact on the growth of Blu-ray in 2008. During his presentation on the future of Blu-ray Cooper backed up his assertion with some interesting figures, largely from DVD sales, showing that US households have historically purchase more titles annually than those in Europe. Based in part on those figures he sees Blu-ray sales continuing to remain low during 2008.

As we reported last month, sales of Blu-ray players dropped significantly after the end of the so-called format war with HD DVD, and have yet to return to their January levels.

His presentation also included detailed analysis of the affect PS3 sales may have on the market. He pointed to a recent study showing use of the game console as a BD (Blu-ray Disc) player in the US increasing from the end of 2007 through the beginning of 2008 as good news for movie sales. Also of note, however, was the competition for consumer dollars between games and movies. Such competition could prove problematic for the Blu-ray industry as long as the game console dominates the player market.

Last month the FCC issued nearly $4 billion dollars in fines to various retailers across the US for failing to label TVs without digital tuners. The labels are required by a rule adopted last May requiring retailers to label TVs with only analog (NTSC) tuners as incompatible with digital television (DTV) broadcasts. Starting in February of next year such TVs will require a converter box to receive over the air broadcasts.

Yesterday Circuit City filed papers with the agency claiming their fines, which total $712,000, should be thrown out because the FCC doesn't have any jurisdiction to enforce the rule. The company also alleges the agency acted improperly by not asking for public comment prior to setting the policy.

According to the filing, "Circuit City made extensive and good faith efforts to comply with this unprecedented regulation despite lack of notice or baseline for compliance." It also goes on to complain that errors were made by regulators in assessing the fines.

Following the example of western neighbor Sweden, Finland is about to get their own Pirate Party. During 24th and 25th of May Finnish Pirate Party will hold their two day constitutive meeting. Rick Falkvinge, the founder and chairman of Swedish Piratpartiet, will deliver a speech as one of the guests.

After the meeting they will start gathering the 5 000 supporter cards necessary to officially register the party. The organizers said that there has been a lot of interest towards the party and they except plenty of attendees. Everyone attending has been asked to enroll to avoid organization problems.

Finnish Pirate Alliance has interviewed Matti Hiltunen, the founder of Finnish Pirate Party. Here are some quick snippets:

Hiltunen was satisfied how the building of the party has gone so far and claimed that Pirate Party and its ideas will definitely stand out. Hiltunen continued that he is not interested to follow his colleague Falkvinge for the chairman position. He calls himself more of a philosopher than a politician and would like to continue to contribute as a party secretary. The party is looking for active supporters all around Finland from all social classes and age groups.

WiiWare, which was launched in the US yesterday with six games, in Japan last month with nine games, is set to hit Europe on May 20th, with eight games, says Nintendo.

The games will be downloadable from the "WiiWare" section of the Wii Shop Channel and to purchase the games users will need to redeem Wii Points which can be bought online or at retail outlets.

There was no pricing details given but so far games have ranged from 500-1500 Wii Points ($5-15 USD).

According to the source, the European lineup will consist of the following eight games:

• Dr. Mario & Germ Buster (Nintendo, Puzzle, 1–4 players, 3+ PEGI)
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Square Enix, Simulation, 1 player, 7+)
• LostWinds (Frontier, Platform Adventure, 1–2 players, 7+)
• Pirates: The Key of Dreams (Oxygen Interactive, Action, 1-4 players, 3+)
• Pop (Nnooo, Puzzle/Shooter, 1-4 players, 3+)
• Star Soldier R (Hudson Soft, Shooter, 1 player, 7+)
• Toki Tori (Two Tribes, Puzzle / Platform, 1–2 players, 3+)
• TV Show King (Gameloft, Trivia, TV Quiz, 1–4 players, 3+)

Take this with a grain of salt, but according to Blu-ray.com Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 USD Blu-ray player in select stores, a price over $100 USD lower than current entry-level players.

The site says that the cheaper players are showing up on Wal-Mart store shelves under brand names such as Magnavox and Sylvania but that they are in reality coming from Japanese manufacturer Funai which has been rumored for months to be working on a low-cost Blu-ray player.

Funai is known mainly for manufacturing low cost electronics, which in turn pressures the industry to lower prices for their name brand electronics.

Not much is known about the new players but the site says it supports the Profile 1.1 BD standard.

More information as it becomes available.

The announcement earlier this year by Blockbuster that they were interested in buying the faltering Circuit City consumer electronics chain were largely greeted by skepticism over the video rental giant's ability to finance the $1 billion bid. But at least one major player, Hollywood Video founder Mark Wattles, is more optimistic about the deal's potential.

Wattles, whose Wattles Capital Management (WCM) holds more than 6% of Circuit City's stock, has a high opinion of Blockbuster's management. He told This Week In Consumer Electronics “I’ve competed against them and they have an exceptional employee hiring and training program.” He also described Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes as an outstanding chief executive.

Last week Wattles reached an agreement with Circuit City executives that will give WCM a voice on the company's board of directors in exchange for supporting the board's other nominees, avoiding a very public fight that would almost certainly be damaging to the company, at least in the short term.

Over the past few years public libraries in the US have steadily increased the number of titles offered in that format. Some of the nation's larger libraries have in excess of ten thousand titles available. Also on the rise is the availability of downloadable titles, which comprise a much smaller, but growing area of interest among library patrons. Despite all this interest in digital video, it appears that Blu-ray has yet to make an appearance on the shelves of most libraries, and in fact doesn't seem to figure into most institutions' short term plans.

The results of a survey conducted by Reed Business Information indicate that only 3% of public libraries currently stock high definition titles, compared to 33% already offering movie downloads.

If the responses from many libraries are an indication the key issue that still needs to be resolved is consumer confusion about Blu-ray, rather than an actual rejection of the technology. Several reportedly weren't even aware of Blu-ray's recent "victory" over HD DVD in the so-called format war. Most said there was simply no demand for high definition discs at this time.

Nintendo has announced the launch of the highly anticipated WiiWare and with it, the availability of six WiiWare titles.

The cheapest title available is the popular Internet flash game "Defend Your Castle" from XGen Studios which sells for 500 Wii Points ($5 USD). The most expensive game is "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As King" from Square Enix which will sell for $15 USD. The other games available are Frontier Development's "LostWinds", Nnooo's "Pop", High Voltage Software's "V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack," and Gameloft's "TV Show King" which range from $7 to $10.

In its press release the company said that the release process for the new games would be the same as Wii Virtual Console games, which are released every Monday.

Back in February, Nintendo said in an interview that over 100 WiiWare games were currently in development.

Although it has said for years that all digital downloads should have standard pricing, it seems Apple will finally acknowledge that not all TV shows are equal or will sell for the same price.

According to the NYTimes, the company will be selling some HBO shows on its iTunes platform for over its standard $1.99 price. The new deal may lead other premium media companies to ask for price changes for their digital content.

The deal is not official yet but could be announced as early as tomorrow, says a person close to the negotiations. The same person added that over time the complete series' “Sex and the City” and the “The Sopranos” will be added to the iTunes platform.

Representatives from both Apple and HBO declined to comment on the matter.

The HBO deal will also differ from Apple's current model with other content owners. Instead of having the episode hit iTunes the day after it airs, HBO episodes will be added to iTunes at the same time the retail DVDs of the seasons are released.

SingTel has announced that is has inked a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines meaning that at least in two of those countries, the carrier will have to compete for iPhone sales.

Last week Vodafone made a similar announcement stating that it had signed an agreement to distribute the phone in 10 countries, including Australia, India and Italy. Later that day, Telecom Italia announced it was also selling the phone in Italy meaning Apple was moving away from its history of signing only exclusive deals with carriers.

It seems low sales in Europe and Asia have gotten Apple to rethink its model somewhat.

Although there was no word on when the carrier will begin selling the phone, they did say "SingTel Mobile will distribute the iPhone in Singapore, while the handset will be sold by Optus in Australia. Bharti Airtel and Globe Telecom will handle sales in India and the Philippines, respectively."

Last week, PC game Mass Effect's producer Derek French confirmed that the game would have rolling DRM, meaning every 10 days you would need to activate the game again over the internet. If you couldn't, you would not be able to play the game.

According to a new Q&A on the company's official forums however, BioWare will be scrapping that type of DRM and giving gamers back their freedom to not phone home if they do not want to.

"BioWare has always listened very closely to its fans and we made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience to them," says BioWare community manager Jay Watamaniuk in the post.

"To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us."

That "feedback" was of course, hostile reactions from every community that posted the news, including here at AfterDawn.

Although there have been rumors swirling for months that it was going to happen, TiVo has officially confirmed that Amazon Unbox will be going HD.

"Unbox, the content-downloading service TiVo started with Internet retail leader Amazon.com last year, can’t process HD content, though the companies will announce HD capabilities “in the not too distant future,” Mr. Denney of TiVo said.

Amazon explains the process of using Unbox on TiVo on its official site. "After a simple registration process, you will be able to shop for Unbox videos to your TiVo DVR from two places - the Amazon Unbox website and directly from your TiVo DVR.

If you're shopping on the Amazon Unbox Website, just look for the TiVo logo to find TiVo-enabled videos. You'll be able to select your TiVo DVR as a RemoteLoad download destination each time you purchase or rent a video at amazon.com/unbox.

To shop for Unbox videos from your TiVo DVR, select "Find Programs" > "Download TV & Movies" > "Amazon Unbox". You'll find a great selection of movies and TV shows to watch right on your TiVo."

Orb Networks is claiming that they have developed "the world's first way to stream live TV to the iPhone and iPod Touch."

OrbLive, as the application is called, will work with "jailbroken" iPhones and iPod Touches. Despite being the "first" to make an application of the sort, it is really not all that special. Users install the Orb streaming application on their TV-tuner enabled PCs and OrbLive on their handheld devices. You then set the PC to live TV and stream it directly using the Wi-Fi.

Adds Orb's CEO, Joe Costello, "Although the iPhone provides users with a great way to experience the Web, it offers a ridiculously sub-par streaming video experience. When all the carriers' free phones can stream lots of things that my iPhone can't, something's seriously wrong. OrbLive finally brings the iPhone's streaming video experience up to par with other mobile phones."

The Criterion Collection, the leading distributor of classic cinema, has announced that it will begin its Blu-ray support this year with at least 13 confirmed titles.

The announcement, through the company's official email newsletter, says that the first releases will hit retail shelves in the Q3 of this year.

The thirteen confirmed titles are 'The Third Man,' 'Bottle Rocket,' 'Chungking Express,' 'The Man Who Fell to Earth,' 'El Norte,' 'The 400 Blows,' 'Gimme Shelter,' 'The Complete Monterey Pop,' 'Contempt,' 'Walkabout,' 'For All Mankind,' 'The Wages of Fear,' and the 'The Last Emperor.'

Criterion adds that the new editions will feature "glorious high-definition picture and sound," and all the special and supplement content of their DVD cousins.

Another welcome situation is that of price. Criterion says the movies will cost the same as their standard DVD counterparts, a welcome relief from the expensive pricing of current Blu-ray films.

For those interested Amazon has begun offering a new "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sale on hit Blu-ray titles effectively dropping the price of each title (when buying 3) from about $28 USD to $18 USD, a very good price for Blu-ray titles.

There are 34 titles available including "X-men: The Last Stand", "I, Robot", "28 Weeks Later", and all the "Die Hard" movies.

Amazon has been sending out emails to customers informing them of the sale and all you have to do is add 3 titles to your cart and Amazon will automatically deduct the price of the lowest priced title.

The whole list of movies available can be found here, and there are a few good movies available for those looking.

Samsung has introduced a new high-definition video camera that can also take high resolution digital photos as well as take smooth slow-motion video.

The new HMX20, which was originally shown off at the CES event, can manage full blown 1080p full high definition (1,920 pixel by 1,080 pixel resolution) and 8-megapixel images. Also of note is the feature of being able to take pictures while video is being recorded.

The camcorder also has a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD monitor.

The most interesting feature is a 300 frames per second slow-motion video shooting mode that will allow video to be slowed down by as many as 10 times and still appear smooth during playback. The camcorder is much smaller than most current video cameras as it has no optical drive or HDD and instead saves all images and video to flash memory, 8GB of internal to be exact. You can add extra memory through SD cards.

Iceland's most popular torrent tracker, torrent.is has announced that it has won another court decision and the site will reopen next week, May 16th.

In late March the original case against torrent.is was dismissed but the Icelandic movie and music industry appealed to the Icelandic Supreme Court. In the original case, the courts ruled in favor of torrent.is and awarded it 400,000 ISK ($5025 USD). Last night the Supreme Court ruled in favor of torrent.is again, and awarded it an extra 500,000 ISK.

The case was dismissed once again because of legal formalities.

Torrent.is owner, Svavar Kjarrval, confided that he was “very happy with the decision,” and added that he wants to reopen the site next week. “However, the executive of one of the plaintiffs [SMÁÍS] claims he will use any means available to stop the site from reopening. I don’t know if that will succeed or not.”

A spokesman of SMAIS added “this verdict is sad, and it is incredible to deny copyright holders seeking their rights. This is an unnecessary adherence on legal formalities in this case, rather than taking on the subject as it should. There still has not been a formal verdict in this case and it seems to be hard to get a judge to review the facts of the case itself, that is, the copyright laws themselves.”

Citing “minor input” from the MPAA and RIAA, the Los Angeles County government has now added piracy to its definition of “public nuisance", meaning all properties used in the dissemination of counterfeit goods can now be seized.

Physically pirated goods, such as bootleg DVDs or CDs, are now considered to be the same as counterfeit watches or handbags.

This new so called "Counterfeit Goods Nuisance Abatement ordinance" says that the counterfeit goods “substantially interfere with … lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses, and its visitors.”

Any property owner that knowingly allows piracy on their premises can be held responsible to pay $1000 USD for every, yes every, pirated work produced. The district attorney can also “temporarily restrain, preliminarily enjoin, and/or permanently enjoin the person or persons intentionally conducting, or knowingly maintaining or permitting the public nuisance from further conducting, maintaining, or permitting such public nuisance.”

Just two weeks after the device sold out in the UK, it seems the 1st generation Apple iPhone is now sold out in the US as well.

A quick search of the Apple website will show that the popular device is "Currently Unavailable" in both the 8GB and 16GB variations.

The news has generally sparked rumors that the upcoming 3G iPhone will be released in the next 30 days, giving it the June launch date that many have been predicting.

The speculation puts the launch of the 3G model at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June, a one year anniversary of the launch of the 1st generation of the device.

More updates as they become available.

Apple has announced that they will be settling a pair of class-action lawsuits in Canada stemming from claims that the company misled customers "about the staying power" of the popular iPod MP3 players, especially the gradually dwindling battery life of first and second generation devices.

According to court documents, Apple is offering an online store credit of about $44.75 CAD for those living in Canada that purchased an iPod before June 24, 2004.

To be eligible for the credit, the battery life of your iPod "while continuously playing music — needs to have dropped to five hours or less for the first and second generation of the device and four hours or less for the third generation."

The lead plaintiffs in the case, two iPod owners, claim that the company misrepresented its product by saying it was capable of 10 hours of continual music playback. It is a well known fact that after even the first recharge, iPod battery lives began declining.

Just days after being hit with one of the largest fines in copyright infringement history, a lawyer for the now dead torrent search engine TorrentSpy has said the business is bankrupt and they will not be able to pay the fine.

The fine, $110 million USD, was ordered two days ago by a judge, following a high profile case brought forth by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Because the site refused to turn over any internal documents the judge also ruled that the site can never go online again.

According to attorney Ira Rothken the owners of TorrentSpy have filed for bankruptcy protection in England "and have no appreciable assets."

"This was a Hollywood publicity stunt," Rothken added.

While the site is set to appeal the ruling, the MPAA says it is still going to go after the cash and hopes the ruling will serve as a reminder that they are still on the prowl.

Toshiba has announced that is planning to launch two new commercial products that will be based on PlayStation 3 technology.

The Japanese news site Tech-On! reports that an upcoming Toshiba HDTV will use the PS3's core Cell processor to enable some high-end features not normally seen on consumer television sets. One of these features is "real-time upscaling of SD signals into HD resolution". Another interesting feature will be "the ability to play and record multiple TV shows at the same time." Another feature is described as the ability to "display video as if it is being viewed through opera glasses." Although unclear, it seems that may be a description of a zoom function.

The popular music community site Last.fm has launched its own online channel for video interviews, starting a trend of original content production it hopes to continue into the future.

Dubbed Last.fm/presents, the channel will show off videos of interviews with established and upcoming artists including Moby, Santogold, Joshua Radin and Neon Neon.

The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, added that the interviews will "complement Last.fm's "music discovery experience". He also makes the somewhat bold claim that the site is the only place where "favourite artists talk so candidly about what makes them the musicians they are today".

The videos will be distributed by CBS and its syndicate partners Joost, Bebo, AOL and NetVibes.

Since its acquisition by CBS last year, Last.fm has been aggressively expanding its services and has signed deals with all four major labels - Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI allowing the service to stream tracks for free on the site. Because of the deals, the site claims its amount of users have risen 59 percent as a result.

Retailers in the United States have begun stocking up on the new PSP Headset Kit for Skype which should be available from retail outlets within the next month. The set is currently available in the US from a few e-tailers and in Japan.

The set includes "street-style earphones, an adjustable boom mic, and a remote control for managing volume without reaching for the PSP itself."

The only requirements for the headset is that you have at least version 3.9 PSP firmware. The set "doubles as a communicator for games that support voice chat as well as a command system for games with voice recognition."

The MSRP is $30 USD but price is mixed depending on the e-tailer.

Microsoft has revealed that its popular Zune media player has hit 2 million units sold since its launch in November 2006. What the figure also reveals however is low or flat growth for the device, especially compared to sales of the Apple iPod.

The company originally promised it would hit one million sales before June 2007 and it did so but since then has kept quiet on sales for its player or any predictions on it.

Despite the flat growth the sales still helped Microsoft move up a percentage point in overall US marketshare, from 3 to 4 percent. Those figures are courtesy of the NPD Group.

It seems, for now at least, that there is fragmentation in sales after the launch of the second generation of Zune players. The original million sales were from the original 30GB model but since November 2007, Microsoft has been selling two cheaper flash-based Zunes as well as two HDD-based players.

The slowdown in sales could possibly have nothing to do with Microsoft at all. The current US economic recession has staggered spending all across the board and non-necessities such as MP3 players are sure to see a hit. MP3 players are also approaching saturation in the market and there are fewer first time purchases being made, regardless of brand.

Last December legislation was introduced in the US House of Representives that would increase penalties for both commercial and personal copyright violations and create a new IP enforcement office in the Department of Justice. This new division, headed by a new so-called "Copyright Czar," would assist copyright holders in civil actions related to intellectual property infringement. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act has been widely praised for taking an important stand against commercial piracy operations, but equally criticized by consumer rights organizations for applying the same measures to non-commercial infringement. This week the bill passed in the House by an overwhelming margin (410-11), sending it to the US Senate for consideration.

The original bill, as introduced in the House Judiciary Committee last year, would have increased penalties for many works by counting each part of a compilation (each song on an album for example) as a separate violation. While this language has been removed, other questionable provisions remain. In addition to an increased role for law enforcement in the handling of civil cases, it would also allow the government to seize property from those successfully sued in copyright infringement suits but not convicted, or even accused, of any crime.

With the scheduled date for nearly all analog TV broadcasts in the US to be shut off just over the horizon, the FCC is finally getting around to some real world testing. Wilmington, North Carolina has been chosen for the tests, in part because all the local broadcasters already have digital signals available. On September 8 WWAY, WSFX, WECT, WILM-LP, and W51CW will turn off their analog signals, leaving only the digital signal available to viewers.

"The commission identified Wilmington as one of only a limited number of potential test markets because all the commercial stations in the market have already completed construction of their DTV channels and are operating at full post-transition power," said FCC chairman Kevin Martin. "The commission will use the test market as an opportunity to work very closely in advance with broadcasters, viewers, cable companies and others who will be affected to anticipate and address any problems."

Fellow FCC commissioner Michael Copps, who first suggested the idea last March said "This is very good news for the DTV transition. Real-world experience is an extremely important step -- although only one of many -- that will help minimize consumer disruption next February. Broadway shows open on the road to work out the kinks before opening night. The DTV transition deserves no less."

According to Taiwanese industry news source CENS, improved 65nm Xbox 360s should be arriving later this year, even as soon as August.

The report adds that Microsoft has "already begun contracting out the production of 65nm chips," which in turn should form part of the consoles long anticipated "Jasper" revision.

There was also word that there was a depletion of the current chipset, dubbed "Falcon" and that Jasper could be pushed up if the other chips are depleted. The Falcon's main processor uses 65nm technology just like the Jasper chip but all the other components including the GPU use 90nm manufacturing.

The Jasper revision has been long anticipated as Microsoft claims it will help to eliminate the "red ring of death" failures that plague over 15 percent of all current consoles. The new revision should be cooler, quieter and less power-consuming.

Let us hope this new report proves to be true, as it must be getting expensive for Microsoft to replace all RROD Xbox 360s at its own cost.

After Take-Two announced that the blockbuster hit GTA IV had hit $500 million USD in sales for its first week, Microsoft was quick to release data alleging that over 60 percent of those sales were for the Xbox 360 console and not the rival PlayStation 3.

The software maker claimed that 3.75 million copies of the 6 million sold worldwide in the first week were for the Xbox 360 console and even added that the games helped push 360 sales 54 percent week-on-week, a gigantic surge.

Microsoft also noted that in the UK retailers were reporting "a strong attach rate between the game and console sales", claiming that at least 40 percent of new console sales were selling with a copy of the hit game.

"Grand Theft Auto IV has done phenomenally well this week with Xbox 360 version outselling PS3 in our stores," said Gerry Berkley, trading manager at Woolworths.

"Xbox 360 console sales have seen a big uplift off the back of Grand Theft Auto IV launching. It's clear our customers see Xbox 360 as a great console for this incredible game."

America Movil SAB has announced that it has inked a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to 12 countries in Latin America.

The media company said it would be bringing the phone to all of its Latin American operations but would not go into more detail about the arrangement, not even explaining if it was the exclusive carrier in the nations.

Apple says it plans to bring further expansion during the Q4 2008 by partnering with America Movil which has 160 million subscribers in 16 countries including Mexico and Brazil.

Over the last few weeks Apple has helped expand its iPhone worldwide signing deals with Rogers in Canada, Telecom Italia SpA in Italy; and Vodafone for 10 countries, including Australia, India, Italy and Turkey.

Apple says it has sold 5.5 million of the devices worldwide and has a year end goal of 10 million.

"We're excited to be working with America Movil to bring the iPhone to Latin America later this year, and we can't wait to get this revolutionary phone in the hands of even more people around the world," said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.

The MPAA has announced that is suing the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay for $15.4 million USD citing "damages suffered" from 4 movies and 13 TV episodes uploaded to the tracker.

The movies in question are "Harry Potter 5", "Syriana", "The Pink Panther" and "Walk the Line" and all 13 episodes are from the hit show "Prison Break". The MPAA is demanding $37 USD for each download of "Syriana", "The Pink Panther" and "Walk the Line", $43 USD for Harry Potter and $68 for Prison Break.

The Pink Panther was downloaded 49,593 times by Pirate Bay users, making it the most popular, while Syriana was the least popular with 3,679 downloads, according to MAQS, the law firm which is representing the MPAA in the case.

Brokep, a TPB admin, had this to say about the matter; “They know they are losing, and try to make us look like big criminals by adding some zeros to a claim for a made-up crime.”

At the Digital Hollywood conference, where entertainment industry representatives are meeting to discuss technology and trends in digital content delivery, David Hughes of the RIAA made bold statements about the future of DRM. Despite a clear move toward selling DRM-free music by every major label Hughes, the RIAA's Senior Vice President of Technology, says DRM is far from dead, and even intimated that it's nearly impossible to make money on digital music without it.

"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," said Hughes. He added "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."

Fritz Attaway, of the MPAA had a slightly different perspective. He characterized DRM as a tool to make sure consumers understand the licensing content is released under, saying "We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us."

In response to Microsoft's latest dealings with NBC, it appears that the Redmond based company may be implementing a piece of software on their Zune devices that actively searches on whether or not television shows are legally purchased. If said software discovers that the show was downloaded illegally from a torrent or other P2P type network, it will not play in the Zune.

The copyright package is hasn't been developed yet, but talks between NBC and Microsoft show that they definitely want some type of policing software to guard against illegally obtained episodes of their shows. Regardless of the fact that those shows, obtained from cable and satellite companies, have already been purchased by the consumer through their contract with the respective provider. NBC would like its consumers to pay twice for the same show.

J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal stated that their plan is to create "filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content."

Sources from the security firm McAfee have stated that over 500,000 machines have reported being infected by a new trojan going around that's disguised as media files shared on popular P2P networks. These files can either look like a popular and heavily seeded music or movie file and often contain the name of whatever popular file is going around the P2P networks now is actually a trojan loaded with tons of malware packages to make a file sharer's day a lot less enjoyable.

McAfee states that this fake file outbreak is the worst that its seen in three years. Users who get attacked by the fake file are treated to an array of pop-ups and open back doors to the world for their computers to be compromised. These files are mostly predominant on the eDonkey and Limewire networks and are often labeled with a different language to confuse users. The titles make the file appear to be music tracks, pornography and full versions of popular movies. Once downloaded, the user is asked to install a specific codec to view the media, and its then that the trojan is launched.

Just a few weeks ago BitTorrent site TorrentSpy was shut down by parent company Valance Media LLC, replaced with a message explaining that the owners "feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown." TorrentSpy's demise is the result of a MPAA victory in U.S. federal court where they accused the site's operators of inducing copyright infringement. In a final ruling this week (pending an appeal) the court awarded the MPAA $110 million dollars.

"This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. "The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios."

In an interview with CNET News, Valence Media attorney Ira Rothken refuted the MPAA's claim, saying "What is really going on here is a Hollywood public-relations stunt." He added "The reason for the size of the judgment was so a bunch of news organizations would write that 'a $100 million judgment was issued against a bunch of pirates' when, in fact, it was declared against a company with no appreciable assets that has already declared bankruptcy."

The majority of the news about digital television (DTV) here at Afterdawn seems to revolve around the upcoming transition in the US. While that's understandable given our large American audience, we could learn a thing or two from how the UK is handling a similar, if infinitely more organized, shift from analog to digital signals. Just this week regulators at Ofcom confirmed that high definition channels will become available over Freeview in some areas starting next year. By the time the transition is complete (in 2012) the HD channels should be available across the entire UK.

In order to take advantage of the new content viewers will need a HD capable set-top box, and of course they'll need a HDTV as well. If you're in the UK and considering the purchase of a new HDTV you may even be able to find one with an integrated HD tuner to avoid the additional cost of a separate receiver.

Interestingly, we couldn't find a single news source to back up this finding, but this morning Google's localized versions suddenly began to show "Translate this page" links next to links written in another language. This has been a norm for several years for English, German, etc Google versions, but now apparently Google has expanded its language options significantly.

After few tests, it seems that Google is able to translate between all the old and new languages, so translating from Chinese to Norwegian, from Greek to Finnish, from Swedish to English, etc is possible and produces understandable results (sure, automated translation hasn't and most likely wont, in near future, replace human translation) that could make Net much, much more "global" place to be :-)

Anyway, here's the new, full list of languages supported by Google Translate:

• English
• Arabic
• Bulgarian
• Chinese
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hindi
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish

Like a number of broadband ISPs, Comcast has a policy of contacting subscribers who use an excessive amount of bandwidth, and giving them the choice of either reducing downloads or having their internet service canceled. However, as we reported last year even when the company terminates service the customer isn't told exactly where the line they supposedly crossed was.

As part of what looks like a campaign to repair their tarnished image with both customers and the FCC, Comcast is now considering a change to their terms of service that would limit subscribers to 250GB of downloads per month. Under this plan users who download more than 250GB could be charged as much as $15 for each additional 10GB transferred.

So far the company hasn't made any decision whether to go ahead with such a plan. They've already received a lot of criticism over the proposal already, perhaps enough to give up on the idea completely, but perhaps the most vocal critics are missing the point just a little. The issue doesn't seem to be whether Comcast will be able to cut off customers for using "too much" bandwidth. The real question is whether subscribers are told what the limits are up front, and that seems to be at least a slight improvement.

Today, Sony has launched an all new home media server on the people of Japan that touts some interesting specs. Being called a multimedia server and NAS drive, the VGF-HS1 and VGF-HS1S come in 1TB and 1.5TB flavors respectively. Coupled with its unique small circular design, it could fit nicely on just about any HTPC.

The device boasts gigabit Ethernet, DLNA compatibility, integrated display, USB connectivity, hide-away multicard reader behind the front panel and plays many different codecs including AVCHD, MPEG2, HDV, JPEG, BMP, PNG, WAV, MP3, ATRAC, AAC and WMA.

According to Asahi Shimbun report, the Japanese government is set to propose a plan that will charge "copyright royalties on sales of iPods and other portable digital music players, as well as on digital hard disk recorders".

The agency in charge, the Agency of Cultural Affairs has not made a decision on the amount of the fee but it expected to be low, about 100 yen (95 cents USD) per sale, for an annual total about 1 billion yen (about $9.5 million USD). All fees collected would then go to songwriters, artists, and the record labels. Older devices such as DVD burners and minidisk players are already subject to a similar copyright fee.

This is not the first time the Japanese recording industry has tried to get this "iPod Tax" passed. In 2005 the proposal was almost imposed but a government committee failed to reach consensus on the issue and it fell apart.

According to a post in the Bioware's forums, upcoming PC game Mass Effect's producer Derek French has confirmed that the game will have rolling DRM, meaning every 10 days you will need to activate the game again over the internet.

"Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it," French says. "After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run."

In case that didn't sink in, to play Mass Effect you will need to re-activate your copy every 10 days, until the end of time. This of course, will lead to problems, there is no doubt about that. Firstly, if you don't have internet you cannot play this game, plain and simple. That is probably not so big of a problem now that broadband prices are so cheap, but imagine moving into a new house and not having time to set up Internet for the first ten days. Say goodbye to your brand new $50 copy of Mass Effect.

Summer Redstone, the executive chairman of both Viacom and CBS has made remarks in the keynote speech to the Seoul Digital Forum 2008, in which he notes that "attitudes toward protecting entertainment copyrights internationally" are thankfully improving and he sees the glowing benefits of copyright protection.

"I am increasingly preaching to the converted in piracy-prone markets around the world," Redstone said. "Governments in China and India are starting to take an active interest in enforcing copyright, if only to protect their own homegrown content," he added.

Redstone then cited that China was looking to safeguard content it will be producing for the upcoming Olympic Games and that India was increasingly looking to protect its Bollywood film industry.

Redstone also added that film piracy costs the US economy at least $20 billion USD every year. Viacom, the giant corporation, owns Paramount Pictures, MTV and Comedy Central among others and is controlled by Redstone.

During a Q&A after his speech, Redstone even called YouTube a haven for piracy.

Take-Two Interactive Software has said in a press release today that the blockbuster multi-platform game Grand Theft Auto IV had surpassed all-time records for one day and weekly sales, even surpassing analyst estimates.

Released last Tuesday, April 29th, the game was a critical hit, receiving close to perfect reviews from most notable gaming outlets. It also seems that Take-Two has a monetary hit on their hands. The company says worldwide sales for the first week was about 6 million units with a retail value of $530 million USD. It shattered launch day records as well, selling 3.6 million units with a retail value of $310 million USD globally.

"We knew Grand Theft Auto IV would break new ground in terms of the player's experience, with its compelling story line, extraordinary gameplay and action that ranges over a broad urban canvas. Now, it has broken sales and rating records as well. Grand Theft Auto IV's first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date. We congratulate the entire Rockstar team on creating a must-have experience that takes the legendary Grand Theft Auto franchise to a new level," said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two.

"Rockstar's goal is to make each new title in the Grand Theft Auto franchise even better than those that preceded it, and Grand Theft Auto IV is a smashing success on that score. Grand Theft Auto IV makes full use of the power of next generation technology, and offers players an experience unique in the interactive entertainment medium. This game sets a new standard in the industry, with critics hailing it as both an artistic and technological masterpiece," added Ben Feder, Take-Two's Chief Executive Officer.

Trying everything in its power to catch up to the market leading Apple iPod, Microsoft has released a new update for their Zune player that attempts to bring more social aspects into music file sharing. The portable media player received yesterday an update that allows users to download the last nine songs played by their friends as well as up to nine songs flagged by their friends as favorites.

This update to the Zune software that synchronizes the player with a person's music library on the PC and Microsoft's own Zune Marketplace is a clear indication that Microsoft hopes to snag a bit of that market share away from Apple. They feel that building a social network with these media players will attract more customers to their side of the fence. Last November, Microsoft launched the website Zune Social where users could browse each other's playlists and share opinions on the songs and bands contained. This update is the next step in that evolution.

In order for users to trade songs with one another, they need to subscribe to Microsoft's mobile music service called Zune Pass. This service costs $14.99 per month and allows the user to download any of the 3.5 million songs in Microsoft's library to their Zune. A contrasting payment policy when viewed against Apple's $.99 per track option.

Sony's PlayStation 3 has hit a milestone in Europe by finally passing the Xbox 360 in total console sales despite the lowest priced PS3 costing nearly twice as much as the entry level version of the Microsoft console (£299 compared to £159) and a 16 month head start for the Xbox 360.

Games consultant Nick Parker credits the console's eventual success to Sony's strategy of giving it more of a mass-market appeal, saying "The PS3 is far more mass market than 360, which has gone for traditional adult males - and that does not go down well in continental Europe."

At a European PlayStation event in London Kaz Hirai of Sony spoke about the PS3's early struggles, noting "There were teething problems... and customers were a little underwhelmed by early games." He also expressed optimism that the PS3 is poised for similar success within the next 2-3 years in North America.

Speaking about Sony's future plans for the console, he said the company intends to focus on promoting it as a "multi-faceted interactive entertainment system," a strategy they've had since the PS3's launch, but have often been criticized for in light of Blu-ray's failure to capture a significant share of the home video market. However, as the success of Microsoft's Xbox Live online store has shown, there are other markets available to be exploited.

At Sun Microsystem's 2008 JavaONE conference, being held this week in San Francisco, one of the topics being discussed is the use of Java in Blu-ray movie (BD-MV) authoring. The keynote speaker on Tuesday was legendary recording artist Neil Young who talked about plans to release his long awaited "Archives" project on Blu-ray.

The project, which will be released as a series of multi-disc box sets, will eventually include Young's entire catalog. The first installment is slated for release in the fall will include 10 discs spanning the years from 1963 to 1972, including a number of previously unreleased songs and rarities.

In addition to the ability to encode the audio in losslessly compressed 24/192 (24 bit / 192kHz) audio, he cited Blu-ray's BD-Live feature, which he plans to take advantage of by offering additional material, including any additional songs that might be turn up in the future.

"Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises," he said in a statement. "I am glad we waited and got it right."

At the end of January a service called Qtrax had what may have been the most controversial launch to date for an online music service. Qtrax promised 25 million free and legal downloads, leading to so much interest their website had to be taken off line for a few hours, but that wasn't what people were talking about. Instead nearly all the discussion revolved around the selection of music available, or more accurately the lack of any music. It looks like that's going to be changing as their talks with Universal Music Group (UMG) seem to have come to an agreement to allow Qtrax to offer songs from their catalog.

At the time of the ill-fated January launch, apparently timed to create industry buzz during the annual MIDEM music industry conference, Qtrax executives were claiming to already have agreements in place with each of the four major labels; a claim which was quickly debunked by representatives of the labels themselves. This time around the label in question issued a joint statement with Qtrax, verifying that the deal is in fact real, although small details like whether an actual contract is in place are a little fuzzy right now.

Qtrax spokeswoman Shamin Abas told The Associated Press "All of UMG's music available digitally will be available for free, legal downloads on Qtrax."

Panasonic has showed off its latest BD-Live capable Blu-ray player, the DMP-BD50, finally letting some specifications out of the bag. The player was first introduced at the CES event in January.

After demoing the latest player it is easy to see that the main distinction between the player and its predecessor the DMP-BD30 is the addition of BD-Live. BD-Live simply means the player can handle BD movies that have Internet-enabled content, such as "interactive multiplayer games, and trailers and extra features you can download from the Internet to local storage, either in the player or on an external memory card."

The latest model however, will cost $700 USD, a $200 premium over its older cousin. In addition to BD-Live, the BD-50 adds in-unit decoding for advanced lossless audio codecs like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. The primary advantage to this is that you can choose and control the secondary audio mixing within the player. Another new feature is support for 24p playback of upconverted standard-definition DVDs.

Two Italian carriers have announced today that they will be distributing the 3G Apple iPhone later this year, meaning that Apple is apparently abandoning its model of carrier exclusivity for the phone.

Both Vodafone and Telecom Italia made announcements claiming they will be offering the phone to its customers later this year.

"Telecom Italia announces today that it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Italy within the year," the carrier said in a small statement.

The announcement should be welcoming to European citizens who have so far steered clear of the iPhone due to lack of 3G compatibility, steep pricing, and limited carrier options. In the US however, the exclusivity contract the company struck with AT&T seems to working fine as sales are high.

Recent reports have cited the high volume of European customers unlocking the phones themselves to use on GSM based carriers of their choosing as one of the other reasons for Apple's latest decision.

This morning, a 31 year old man from Sweden was found guilty in Sweden's largest ever P2P case but escaped any jail time for his actions.

The man was initially accused of uploading 23,000 music tracks to the popular filesharing application Direct Connect but Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s (APB) "use of questionable investigative techniques forced the prosecutor to withdraw some of the charges", down to about 4500 tracks. The man was also accused of uploading 30 movies.

Instead of jail time, the man received a suspended sentence and a "heavy fine." The prosecutors were asking for jail time for the man, but the judge had this to say, “this is a task for the government, that by legislative means or in other ways take the necessary actions” to come to a solution to the problem.

More interestingly, the court even implied that the music industry needs to take some responsibility for the current situation they are in, where piracy is rampant, and many have little respect for copyright laws.

The New York Attorney General has proposed a new legislation this week, one that would inflict heaver penalties and punishments on "cammers", people who record movies in theaters illegally and then distribute them or sell them directly.

The new legislation will make camming a felony offense for repeat offenders. The Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, says the legislation is designed partially to fight "the economic harm" that is caused by movie pirates. He added that those who sell counterfeit items costs the city's taxpayers 140,000 jobs annually.

Of course the MPAA applauded the move, and added that "U.S. film studios lost $6.1 billion in 2005 to piracy globally."

"This is modern-day organized crime," Cuomo said, adding in a statement: "The wide distribution of pirated films originating from New York costs our state vital economic resources, including thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue."

The newly dubbed "Piracy Protection Act" would make illegal recording a misdemeanor (like a parking ticket) for a first time offender and a felony for repeat offenders. For a misdemeanor, the fine is $1000 USD and up to one year in jail. Cuomo did not say exactly how much worse the penalties were for a felony offense.

It appears Microsoft has chosen to compete directly with rival Apple's iTunes store by selling television shows at its own store for use with the Zune. Microsoft announced yesterday that it will initially begin offering more than 800 TV episodes for sale at Zune Marketplace and will include many popular shows currently not available on iTunes such as "The Office" and "Heroes". NBC shows cannot be purchased over iTunes because the two companies have failed to come to grips with each other over pricing.

The iTunes store which sells music, movies and TV shows digitally is the dominant force in this retail venue and even surpassed Wal-Mart stores as the top music retailer in the U.S. Last week, Apple increased its number of movie offerings for sale on iTunes. iTunes also allows users to rent movies as well.

Zune Marketplace joins a few other online stores in selling television shows such as Amazon's Unbox and SanDisk's Fanfare services. TV shows purchased at the Zune Marketplace can either be viewed on the Zune device itself, a computer or through the Xbox 360 console.

High Tech Computer announced today that they have developed what they feel is a rival to the Apple iPhone. Dubbed the HTC Touch Diamond, its a smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional affixed with a touchscreen for one-handed operation. This new smartphone is being touted as HTC's next-generation of the last model which sold upwards of 3 million units in just 10 months after its launch. The new Touch Diamond beats Apple in new technology by upgrading the phone to 3G prior to Apple being able to do so for the iPhone.

Last year, the HTC Touch, the first touchscreen smartphone, launched one month ahead of Apple's iPhone. This phone is expected to hit Europe, Asia and the Middle East in June and North and South America by the second half of the year. Apple has only just announced its plans for 3G within the iPhone.

According to the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, T-Mobile Austria has officially confirmed the existence of a 3G iPhone and says that the country will be one of the first to receive the new phone when it eventually launches.

The article also hints that pricing schemes will change and that the company will offer "more flexible" subscriptions than they currently do.

A German language Apple blog also has a quote from CEO Hendrik Kasteel saying, "Yes, we plan to bring the iPhone with UMTS-support to market, but can't and are not allowed to say when yet."

Although the 3G iPhone has been confirmed by Apple, the company refuses to tell when it will be released, or any new features. Many believe the official launch will begin in June, a year after the release of the current generation iPhone.

Despite reports that a Blu-ray Xbox 360 is in the works from an ASUS subsidiary, Microsoft has once again moved to deny the rumors.

Microsoft had no comment when the reports hit last week, but now an official has sent an email to the popular gaming website GamePro denying the reports.

"As we have stated, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360. Games are what drive consumers to purchase game consoles, and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available."

It seems that more and more reports will hit the Internet that a Blu-ray Xbox 360 is coming and Microsoft will continue to deny them. Will a Blu-ray Xbox 360 be coming anytime soon, or will Microsoft stick by its guns and stay with HD digital downloads?

If the indie music collective group Merlin has its way, then smaller music labels could be getting better deals for their content on iTunes and other legal online music stores in the near future.

The group has recently opened up signups and now has 12,000 labels supporting its cause for better conditions for their artists.

The labels under Merlin hope to "both speed up negotiations for licensing and posting music at online stores as well as to secure better deals." The group feels that a larger representative will most "likely secure better royalty terms and use rights than by themselves."

According to the report, deals are in the making with "existing music services" including the not-yet opened MySpace Music and the market leader iTunes.

Sony's videogame unit, sometimes known as the "PlayStation" unit, has announced that it is expecting to see its losses shrink by about $956 million USD for the 12 months ended March 31, 2008. Because of PlayStation 3 start-up costs , the previous 12 month period had seen the division lose about $1.43 billion USD.

The figures are according to the Japanese Nikkei daily and the whole corporation is expected to see its operating profit increase five fold. Even with that growth however, the corporation is expected to miss its profit targets.

The January forecast was $3.91 billion USD but the Nikkei predicts that the company will only see a $3.63 billion profit, far below its estimate.

Sales of TVs and digital cameras were very strong for the year and official full year earnings will be released next week. Sony spokespeople said they would not comment on the Nikkei's report.

Former RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen has filed an amended complaint in her malicious protection lawsuit against the record labels and RIAA themselves. This marks the fourth complaint submitted by Andersen's lawyer, Lory Lybeck. All prior submissions have been rejected by the judge. If Lybeck can get the judge to accept this one, it will begin what Andersen hopes to be a long-range investigation into the tactics the RIAA uses to thwart their P2P nemesis.

The first of three dismissed complaints accused the RIAA of racketeering, fraud, invasion of privacy, deceptive business practices, and a number of other wrong doings. The judge presiding over the case, Judge Anna J. Brown, dismissed it sighting they had not properly stated claims for relief, but allowed for the complaint to be resubmitted.

The second of the three dismissed complaints weighed in at 108 pages and outlined scandalous practices and criminal enterprise practices, but the judge threw it out because both the court and the RIAA believed they ignored the judge's instructions to submit a short and concise complaint.

Finnish phone maker, Nokia has stated that it will begin shipping many more of its phone models to the United States to grab a bigger percentage of the global mobile phone sales.

Nokia has a 40 percent global share of all cell phones sold, but has been staggering on a 10 percent share in the U.S. due to the Finnish company dropping production of phones using CMDA technology. A technology popular in the U.S.

Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat quoted the chief designer of Nokia in that design cooperation with the U.S. will bear fruit soon. "In the next few months (U.S.) operators will carry a lot of new products from us," Alastair Curtis told the paper.

A Nokia representative stated that the company will begin rolling out many new models to the U.S. this year including CMDA models and phones normally sold globally.

Last week Google received a DMCA Takedown Notice in regard to a relatively obscure project called coreavc-for-linux. The notice, which can be read in its entirety on the Chilling Effects website, claims that the the project's Google Code page included a download containing code owned by CoreCodec, Inc., developers of the CoreAVC MPEG-4 decoder.

A DMCA Takedown Notice is the official mechanism put in place by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) for copyright owners to deal with infringement issues without making hosting companies liable for everything published on their servers. They've most famously been used to have copyrighted video removed from sites like YouTube, although they're routinely issued for everything from printed works to audio files.

What makes this particular case noteworthy is the that the notice specifically states "The Site hosts and/or contains one or more links to CoreAVC, which contains CoreCodec's copyrighted Software." However, comments posted over the weekend by CoreCodec founder Dan Marlin appear to cast some doubt, or at least confusion, over the infringement claim.

Nine Inch Nails has released a new album called The Slip under creative commons license and it is completely free to download. The group encourages everyone to "remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc."

The Slip, consisting ten tracks, can be downloaded in several formats through a link that is sent to your email address. In addition to "high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE" formats the album will be released on CD and vinyl in July. The downloadable files are all 100% DRM-free and the larger FLAC lossless, M4A apple lossless and high definition WAVE 24/96 packages are distributed via BitTorrent.

It's no great surprise that video game retailers are very happy with the release of GTA IV, the latest installment of Rockstar Games' wildly successful Grand Theft Auto series. What is a little surprising is the buzz being created in the music industry by the addition of a new feature that connects players to Amazon.com's online music store, where songs featured in the game can be purchased.

"It's a very big deal for us," says Cynthia Sexton, senior vice president of marketing and licensing for EMI Music North America. "We're continually looking for new ways to sell our music. There are millions of people buying 'Grand Theft Auto,' and we hope they will enjoy the music and in turn buy those tracks."

Unlike most game developers, who typically leave the selection and licensing of tracks for inclusion in games to the publisher, Rockstar makes a point of developing and licensing game soundtracks themselves. This can result in high visibility for songs that might not receive any attention from the mainstream market otherwise. In fact, according to Rockstar music supervisor Ivan Pavlovich Amazon had less than 40% of the songs from GTA IV available for sale before when they originally inked the deal to sell it.

On May 1 Sezmi Corporation announced a service intended to compete with both cable and satellite television services in the U.S. The service, also called Sezmi, uses a combination of broadband internet and terrestrial DTV broadcasts to deliver both live and on-demand television offerings.

The company describes the Sezmi service as "The first complete TV 2.0 offering that seamlessly integrates traditional television with movies and Internet video, optimized for on-demand viewing and is personalized for the viewer," referring to a combination of features that make the service unique.

The internet component appears to be the linchpin of the whole operation. In addition to using it for on-demand programming, Sezmi is looking to the internet, or more accurately telecommunications companies themselves, to promote their product.

“Sezmi focused on the television consumer and built an entirely new television offering from the ground up to meet the needs of viewers that want a premium experience at an affordable price,” said Buno Pati, Sezmi co-founder and chief executive officer. “We have rallied support across multiple industries and are excited to work with our partners to offer a new and differentiated TV choice to consumers.”

Yesterday, Popcorn Hour announced that its only product, the highly anticipated Popcorn Hour A-100 digital media streaming device is now available for pre-order directly from the company's site.

For those unaware, the A-100 "allows for streaming digital media from users' PCs via a wide range of connectivity options, digital cameras or USB mass storage devices or directly from the Internet via its integrated Media Service Portal. The A-100 supports high-bitrate video formats, including DivX and Matroska, as well as subtitle files, with firmware upgradeable to future codecs."

More interestingly, the media hub can also act as a NAS device and BitTorrent P2P downloader in place of a computer. For those features however, you will need to add an internal HDD. Using the device's Media Service Portalallows for IPTV compatibility with YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe.

The parent company of cell phone carrier T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, is in talks to either merge with or acquire the large mobile phone carrier Sprint.

Citing a gradual weakening of the US dollar and worsening profits at Sprint, Deutsche Telekom is now looking for any transaction that will help T-Mobile's US branch gain ground in the large US market.

The deal, if it goes through, would make Deutsche Telekom the largest American carrier, and with the currency rate as it is, the deal would be cheaper than Telekom's acquisition of VoiceStream in 2001.

Sprint has declined to comment on "market rumors."

There is however a hitch to this report. T-Mobile uses the GSM standard while Sprint uses the mainly North American-focused CDMA network. T-Mobile phones are not compatible on the Sprint network and vice versa meaning Sprint customers would have to trade in their handsets or purchase new ones that are GSM (SIM card) compatible.

Microsoft has ended its hostile bid for Yahoo today, withdrawing its $46 billion USD offer and announcing it will no longer bid for the company.

A couple of days ago the software maker upped its bid $5 billion USD, a 70 percent premium compared to its inital offer in January.

"After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

In an open letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Ballmer said that Yahoo wanted at least a $48 billion USD offer, and that the company should take the offer directly to the shareholders. Ballmer said that would not be "sensible."

"This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer," Ballmer added. "Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft."

Yahoo officials appear very happy with Microsoft's latest decision.

"Our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft's offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view," Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said.

According to game magazine publisher Enterbrain the Sony PSP outsold all game consoles in Japan handily for the month of April including 2-to-1 sales over its main rival, the Nintendo DS.

For the four weeks ended April 27th, PSP unit sales came to 380,867 units, beating DS sales of 169,911 units. However, in the bigger picture, the Nintendo Wii outsold the Sony PlayStation 3 by a 5-to-1 margin, a margin larger than usual.

Analysts in the US have predicted that over 9 million copies of the blockbuster game GTA IV will ship during this financial year.

The game's developer Take-Two however, has stated that analysts are wrong and the game will do even better than any prediction. Since its release last week, the game has seen almost unanimous straight 10 scores from reputable gaming websites and critics all seem to agree it is one of the best games ever made.

Take-Two's CEO Ben Feder told Reuters: "Our expectations are very high, higher than analysts give the game credit for.

"All the analysts had a (sales) number, give or take, and I think we will be on the upside of that rather than the downside."

Good luck Take-Two.

Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke has confirmed in an interview that they will no longer be offering any of its albums on a "pay-as-you-please" purchase model, and that "In Rainbows" was a one time deal.

A few months ago the band made headlines when it decided to release "In Rainbows" as a digital download, and for free on its website. Fans were asked to pay as much as they wanted for the album. Many took the full CD for free but the band still made millions, without having to pay any in distribution fees or record label fees.

Yorke says however that the move was "a one-off response to a particular situation", and won't happen again.

Yorke also added: "I don't think it would have the same significance now if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time", he said.

Following a deal by the BBC and Virgin Media it appears the BBC iPlayer will be coming to UK TVs, effective Monday.

All of Virgin Media's 3.5 million customers will now be able to watch BBC programming they have missed by simply hitting the red button on any BBC channel. All customers will get access to the BBC iPlayer as well using Virgin Media's EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) menu but the menu wont be updated until the summer.

Malcolm Wall, CEO of Content at Virgin Media added: "We’re delighted to be the first TV platform in the UK to offer our customers BBC iPlayer as part of our on-demand service. The enormous success of iPlayer online has demonstrated the desire TV viewers have for viewing quality programmes at a time that suits them, and now it’s available from the comfort of the living room".

The iPlayer has been very successful since its launch late last year and the BBC has even said that there have been 42 million downloads in the first 4 months of the year.

A Sky spokesperson, a rival broadcaster to Virgin, had this to say:

"We'd expect that the BBC will make available its publicly funded content to all platforms. In the meantime, Sky+ is the biggest on-demand service, now used by 12 million people in 3.4 million homes. Almost three-quarters of enabled customers have used Sky Anytime since launch, watching a total of 32 million programmes to date."

If you are planning on vacationing anytime soon, you may want to book yourself into a Westin Hotel, which has announced that it will be supplying at least 10 of its hotel chains with the popular Nintendo Wii console.

What makes the announcement even more special is that the Wiis will come preloaded with a self updating selection of games, meaning no physical discs are required.

The first games to come preloaded will be Wii Sports, Big Brain Academy and Wii Play. Additionally , Wii Fit will be coming May 19th (alongside its US release date) and will even include the balance board. "The fitness aspects of the platform will feature in Westin's WestinWORKOUT exercise and fitness services," added the company.

So far hotels in Bellevue and New York City already have the Wii, but LA, San Francisco, Toronto, Kansas City, St Louis, Houston and Savannah will all see the Wiis soon.

AT&T has announced that it will be launching its MediaFLO USA mobile TV service in 58 markets, allowing users to "access television programs live through their mobile phones."

Mark Collins, VP of Consumer Data for AT&T's wireless unit, added that the company's research showed that customers wanted to watch movies and have the news on their phones, more than anything else.

"We have exceeded their expectations with AT&T Mobile TV," Collins said in a news announcement. "Together with MediaFLO USA, we are changing the picture of television-viewing by giving our customers an innovative way to stay connected to breaking news from CNN Mobile Live, an arsenal of movie favorites with PIX, and a formidable lineup of other quality programming while on the go."

The new service will have over 150 simulcast or time-shifted traditional programming from CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NBC News 2Go, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and original content specifically for AT&T's mobile users.

Plans start at $13 USD a month for 4 channels, and get progressively more expensive. Unlimited mobile TV costs $15 a month, and unlimited mobile TV, mobile video, and mobile Web browsing will cost you $30 a month.

Samsung has introduced a new Blu-ray home theater system, the HT-BD2S which resembles its predecessor but has smaller satellite speakers and is available for over 30 percent less than its older cousin the BD2T's retail price of $1500 USD.

According to the source article, the head unit (the combination receiver/Blu-ray player/amplifier) is identical to its more expensive cousin's, and therefore will see the same flaws that the BD2T suffered from. The included Blu-ray player is slow loading and is limited to the old Profile 1.0 specification. The system also has subpar connectivity options.

Still, for $1000 USD the system and the upcoming, equally priced Panasonic SC-BT100 are decent and cheap all-in-one Blu-ray home theater solutions and hopefully the competition will lead to better prices for consumers in the future.

Creative has become the second company to settle with consumers over a class action lawsuit started in 2005 that companies are "misrepresenting the number of files and hours of songs that players could hold" and other exaggerated capacity claims. The other company was Seagate.

The plaintiffs argued that Creative's definition of a gigabyte was incorrect, which in turn led to false advertisement about the capacities of its players. Creative claimed that 1GB was exactly one billion bytes 1,000,000,000B when it is indeed 1,073,741,824B. Using that logic, the plaintiffs claimed that Creative's gigabytes were seven percent smaller than real gigabytes.

Creative has always claimed it had no intention of misleading consumers and denies that anyone has ever "suffered" from the way drive capacity was stated.

The new settlement has been made public now and anyone who purchased a Creative MP3 player from 2001 to 2004 can file a claim. Newer players all report that "available capacity will be less... reported capacity will vary" and thus are not eligible.

Despite repeated denials over the past couple of months, more and more reports are surfacing that a Blu-ray integrated Xbox 360 is coming, before Christmas of this year.

Last month Microsoft denied rumors that the optical drive maker Lite-On was developing an internal Blu-ray drive for the console, but made sure to avoid excluding other producers. The latest report has Pegatron Technology, a subsidiary of ASUS as the manufacturer of the drive and claims that the new Xboxs will ship in the Q3 2008.

This is of course not confirmed by Microsoft and the report had no leads on how much the console would cost when launched. North America would be the first market to see these Blu-ray 360s.

Many in the video game industry believe Microsoft needs to include a Blu-ray drive to stay competitive in the future, especially against Sony's PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. Each of those consoles have unique selling points where as the 360 does not aside from having the best online service available. PSN and Wii Online are both free however.

Over the last three months I've been working hard on a number of MPEG-4 related guides for tools like SUPER and AutoMKV. I'm now pleased to announce a number of guides for one of the most powerful tools available MPEG-4 AVC encoding, called MeGUI.

MeGUI is one of many programs designed to make converting video from various formats to MPEG-4 with free tools easy for the average user. Although it's a little more complex than other tools made for this purpose, the result is a program that includes more tools, options, and customizable features than any other available at the current time.

To help get you started with MeGUI you can start with MeGUI Installation and Configuration, which walks you through installing and updating MeGUI. In addition to the main program and the tools included in its autoupdate feature, this guide will walk you through downloading and installing additional helper applications, like the Nero AAC (audio) encoder, to take full advantage of MeGUI's features.

Zattoo, a company based out of both Switzerland and the US, by streaming live TV signals from the UK without authorization from the original broadcaster. The broadcasts are available for free from the Zattoo website, along with TV channels from other countries. Although the company has made deals with broadcasters in other countries for re-broadcast of their signals, they're taking advantage of what the company's owners see as a loophole in UK copyright law that they say doesn't require such an agreement as long as they're only providing the live signal.

Although Beat Knecht, chief executive and co-founder, said: "Zattoo is not in conflict" with broadcasters, adding "We feel we have legal title to retransmit."

While the broadcasters clearly aren't happy about the way Zattoo is doing business, there haven't been an actual legal challenge to the practice yet. The BBC is concerned about the lack of a licensing agreemement, but so far has had nothing to say about the legality of Zattoo's operation.

According to the Financial Times, a representative from Channel 4 said "We are looking in detail at the legal position."

Over the past years, the Canadian dollar has seen a steady rise in value to the point where it sits today, at almost equal to the United States Dollar. Despite that fact however, Canadians usually get ripped off with new technology especially in the video game industry.

This has been changing recently however, and now video games are launching at equal prices to that of the US, and consoles sell for almost the same price.

One area that has seen no evolution however, is the downloadable content market. Canadian pricing for the PlayStation Store is much higher than US pricing, but Sony says that is changing this week.

On May 1st the SCEA will completely adjust the pricing for downloadable content, making it almost equal to the US market.

“We are continually looking for ways to enhance the player experience on the PlayStation Network, and downloadable content through the PlayStation Store is just one of our areas of focus,” said Grace Chen, Senior Manager for the PlayStation Store. “We anticipate that this price adjustment will meet the expectations of our Canadian consumers and provide them with a better PlayStation Network experience.”

After officially announcing its return to Blu-ray yesterday, Paramount has decided to re-issue 8 of its previously-discontinued Blu-ray tiles from before the studio went HD DVD exclusive in August 2007.

Beginning May 20th, the studio will bring back 'Aeon Flux,' 'Babel,' 'Black Snake Moan,' 'Dreamgirls,' 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,' 'Sleepy Hollow,' 'The Untouchables' and 'The Warriors.' The titles were pulled from retail outlets last year after Paramount's decision to leave Blu-ray.

Paramount says the titles will be exactly identical to the original releases, with no new specs or supplemental features.

There was no word on suggested price, but we will let you know.

GTA IV producer Leslie Benzies has said during an interview with the The Times Online that he believes the blockbuster game has cost Rockstar almost 100 million USD to create and produce, making it by far the most expensive game ever made.

During the interview Benzies also added that over 1000 people worked on the game for 3 and a half years, a huge production by any stretch.

If his estimate is correct than the game's development costs would make it the most expensive game in the history of consoles, topping Sega's Shenmue for the Dreamcast which had a 75 million USD development budget.

If retailer estimates are correct however, than the game has already made back its budget worldwide. In the UK, over 600,000 copies were sold on the first day, and analysts have predicted that the game will gross 400 million USD in its first 7 days.

Benzies also took time to talk about the media bashing of Rockstar, claiming that all those in the government and media that bashed the games had never played them.

Crytek, the developer of the hit game Crysis, has announced that it will no longer be PC exclusive in the future, citing growing piracy as the reason why.

For those not into computer gaming, Crysis was arguably one of the most highly praised PC-exclusive for 2007 and even one some awards for its stunning graphics.

In an interview with the magazine PC Play, the studio's director and founder, Cevat Yerli noted that there are a number of problems besetting his studio, the worst of which is growing piracy.

"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin... PC gamers that pirate games, inherently destroy the platform.

"Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us, and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore."

After that answer Yerli was asked if Crysis would be ported to consoles in the near future. Unfortunately not added Yerli, stating that it would be nearly "impossible," and that the game would have to be "largely changed to bring it to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3."

In a recent court ruling, songwriters could be owed upwards of $100 million in recovering costs for online performances. A court ruled that songwriters should in fact be paid more for their performances than they already are.

A New York court determined that AOL, Yahoo! and Real, who hold license agreements with certain songwriters, had generated some $5.56 billion last year on advertising stemming from online performances. With that, they considered it fair that Yahoo! with 18.7% and AOL with 9.1% in that advertising revenue, they could afford to let go of a bit more to the people that made that possible. The three companies were issued a blanket license by the American composers society ASCAP, but failed to negotiate a proper rate. This was heard and rectified by the courts yesterday.

Yahoo! had already reached an agreement with the with the four biggest proponents of the RIAA, but was slow to adopt a similar plan for paying composers and songwriters.

"Because the benefits of a blanket licence exceed the value of the right to perform the music in the repertory, the blanket licence fee must reflect these extra benefits," the court observed.

Apple has made it clear in recent months that they believe their iTunes online store is capable of taking the lead in online movie downloads in much the same way it practically created the online music market. Now it appears they've taken a significant step in that direction by getting agreements with a number of studios to offer downloads on the same day movies are released on DVD.

Apple 's new deals with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios will allow them to sell movies as much as 45 days earlier than they've been able to in the past, and represents a major departure for the studios.

While this may seem somewhat surprising at first glance, it's not necessarily as shocking if you consider the generally accepted fact that DVD is on its way out. After watching the music industry's failing efforts to prop up the CD market, studios have made it clear that they dont' intend to make the same mistakes. While officially they may still be pinning their hopes on the success of Blu-ray, the faltering U.S. economy would seem to make any predictions of massive growth for that technology less realistic every day.

Coming up on their deadline to become a Blu-ray only production house, Universal has unveiled its plans for the audio it intends to use on the format. Ever since their defection from the HD-DVD camp, they've been working on a way to maximize the 50Gb worth of space available to them on BD-50 discs.

When working for the HD-DVD group, Universal had slapped together some audio configurations with heavy reliance on Dolby Digital Plus lossy audio, instead of the promised Dolby TrueHD audio. Now with their enthusiasm for the winner of the format war, Blu-ray users will see the first of many discs come out encoded in DTS-HD Master Lossless Audio.

The first discs that will see this treatment are a re-release of The Mummy series, previously already released on HD-DVD with only Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio tracks, and not Dolby TrueHD tracks. These titles are expected to hit the shelves on July 22nd.