News archive (7 / 2008)

The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), along with Italian authorities, have announced the shut down of Colombo-BT.org, Italy's largest BitTorrent site.

Over the course of two days, the tracker's servers were seized and two bank accounts associated with the site have been frozen. The administrators of the site have been charged with multiple counts of criminal copyright infringement and can face large fines and prison time.

Visitors to the site will be greeted with a new splash screen, "Access denied in execution of an Italian Court Authority injunction."

"Colombo-BT.org was Italy's version of The Pirate Bay," said FPM (anti-piracy group) president Enzo Mazza. "Its operators deliberately facilitated availability of copyright infringing content to line their own pockets. The gang of three now face potential prison sentences and hefty fines as a result of their activities. This police action sends a strong message that Italy will not tolerate serious online music piracy so criminals looking for get rich quick schemes should consider other options."

Yahoo has finalized the reimbursement options for users affected by the recent shutdown of Yahoo Music Unlimited and has said users can either get their money back or be given credits to use at Rhapsody.

Last week the company said they would be refunding users but did not reveal the alternative reimbursement options.

"For any consumers that have problems with their DRM licenses after the store closes, our customer care group will provide coupons to the Rhapsody MP3 store so they can purchase an equivalent collection of MP3s," Yahoo added in a statement. "If any users have serious problems with this arrangement, we will provide refunds to them through our customer care service."

Any interested former users can get reimbursed until December 31, 2008, 3 months after the DRM servers shut down for the Yahoo! Music Store. The offer is only available to those who purchased individual songs from Yahoo Music, as subscribers will have their entire library migrated to Rhapsody for free.

At the 200 CES event, LG announced that they would in time be introducing a device that could stream movies from Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming, on-demand service. At the time however, there was no word on what the device was or how much it would cost.

This morning however, LG announced that the device would in fact be a Blu-ray player with the built-in ability to stream Netflix movies.

There was still no exact word on price, but the company did say it would be "well under $500 USD." Allan Jason, LG’s vice president for sales and marketing in its digital media division, did add however that he expects the player to retail for $400 USD.

One notable feature that is lacking however is a wireless networking connection that is even available in the $100 Netflix set-top box from Roku. Mr. Jason does not believe that is a problem however as he feels "the sort of early adopters who are likely to buy Blu-ray players in the next few years mostly already have Internet connections in their family rooms."

Following the growing trend, the large Italian broadcaster Mediaset has announced a new lawsuit against Google and its video sharing site YouTube claiming the site illegally used its material. The broadcaster is asking for damages of 500 million euros.

Mediaset, controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio joins other broadcasters in claims that YouTube is infringing their copyrights.

YouTube however, did not see the need for the suit. "YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously," a spokesperson added.

"There is no need for legal action ... We prohibit users from uploading infringing material and we cooperate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."

For its case, Mediaset added a "sample analysis" that claims that as of June 10th, "at least 4,643 videos and clips owned by us, equivalent to more than 325 hours of transmission without having rights". The broadcaster also noted that those videos equal to "the loss of 315,672 days of broadcasting by its three TV channels."

Just one day after they announced a lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of the R4 Revolution device, Nintendo has reported that they have already seized over 30,000 piracy devices which they believe infringe company copyrights.

The lawsuit, a joint venture with 54 other publishers hopes to get injunctions on the R4 and other devices that promote piracy on the Nintendo DS.

"Nintendo takes a global approach to piracy and has pursued the illegal game copying devices in 11 countries this past year," said the company.

"Nintendo has worked with enforcement officials in Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and the US, seizing close to 30,000 infringing game copying products, as well as taking actions against those distributors and manufacturers."

The popular R4 device is a flash cart and MicroSD adapter that allows user to install the custom Moonshell software on their DS and then load ROMS onto the MicroSD card and play them back on the handheld. The R4 bypasses all Nintendo firmwares and loads the Moonshell allowing the game playback as well as music, movies and even classic system emulators.

The MPAA has announced two new lawsuits against movie streaming sites, this time trying to get Fomdb.com and MovieRumor.com taken down for good.

Both sites are very similar and allow access to current movies such as "The Dark Knight", "Hancock", and "Get Smart" all available as streaming video, no BitTorrent client necessary.

"There are many people operating illegal websites like these who are profiting from the theft of protected content. We have filed several other similar lawsuits and will continue to do so in order to hold operators accountable for their illegal activities. We have every intention of shutting down these, and sites like them, for good,” said John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA.

In their press release the MPAA states that both sites combined generate about 27,000 unique visitors every day and that the sites have about 100,000 pages available to users.

A group of hackers on the forum Haklabs have posted a download link for Sega's Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone, claiming they have broken Apple's FairPlay DRM and that the pirated game will run on any iPhone with jailbroken firmware 2.0 using SSH. The main application was patched to exclude the SHA 1 checksum of the game, and the process should work perfectly.

So far posts following the report have been mixed with users commenting that the game does work while others confessing they could not get it to work.

If the hack does prove to be legitimate, the AppStore could be facing a major issue. Super Monkey Ball for example, sells for $10 USD on the store and is protected with the DRM that Apple has been using for years on its music and videos in the iTunes store.

Two former uploaders for the music torrent tracker OiNK have been cleared of all charges today after being arrested in the UK earlier this summer. Four others still remain charged.

There was little known about the identities of the uploaders but we do know that one was a 18 year old male and the other was a 28 year old female.

The users were arrested this May in conjunction with “Operation Ark Royal.” The charges were "suspicion of conspiracy to defraud the Music Industry” as well as the standard copyright infringement offenses.

At its peak, OiNK was one of the largest private torrent trackers, home to hundreds of thousands of high quality album releases as well as audiobooks, ebooks, and software.

The site was taken down in late 2007 by British and Dutch law enforcement based on mostly false intelligence provided by the IFPI and the BPI.

LG, the world's fourth largest mobile phone distributor, has announced they have signed a deal with Dolby which will allow for Dolby Mobile surround sound technology to be added to upcoming handsets.

The idea behind the deal is to give LG users improved sound quality for their music files and video files and follows in the trend of phones moving towards full fledged multimedia devices.

According to the Washington Post, the service features: "Mobile Surround, which delivers a realistic surround sound experience using headphones-- Sound Space Expander, which creates a wide, rich, and spacious soundstage experience especially suited to music playback-- Natural Bass, which adds powerful boost and bass extension-- High-Frequency Enhancer, which enhances music and other content by restoring high-frequency effects-- Graphic EQ, which helps tune the audio experience for different content types-- Sound Level Control, which helps level out audio for a more consistent playback volume-- Mono-to-Stereo Converter, which improves the playback experience of user-generated content."

The file sharing case of Tenise Barker has been going on for nearly three years now. Despite their best efforts, and even a brief in support of their case from the Department of Justice, all recording industry lawyers have managed to accomplish is to get their claim that simply sharing files is copyright infringement denied by the judge.

In response to an amended complaint filed in April she's now challenging the financial award RIAA lawyers are asking for. Her lawyer, Ray Beckerman, is arguing that the amount of $750 to $150,000 per song, which is several thousand times any real damages claimed, would be a violation of her constitutional right to due process.

According to Mr. Beckerman there are several options available to the judge, any of which would be likely to drastically increase the number of defendants who refuse to settle and choose instead to make the RIAA prove their cases in court.

One option offered would be to treat the entire case as a single act of infringement and assign an automatic $750 award to remain consistent with the letter of the law. Another alternative listed would be to award a total of $3.50 for each song in order to keep the amount less than 10 times the actual damages claimed (ie a single download of the song).

Last week a blogger received a DMCA takedown request from the IFPI telling him to remove some music from his website. The IFPI, which does in fact represent the label that distributes the song in question, claimed that the website somuchsilence didn't have permission to use the songs.

It turned out that the real problem was the IFPI didn't bother to find out whether the music had been licensed or not. They sent the letter based on an assumption.

In fact they put so much effort into the whole affair that they managed to list a different song than the one they were complaining about. From a completely different band even.

Eventually the matter was cleared up and the IFPI sent what could only be described as an apology in the loosest sense of the word. Here's the text of the letter.

"IFPI was contacted by a member of the label who confirmed you were given permission to post the file on your site.

We were unaware of this agreement but now that it has been notified to us please feel free to upload the file.

Zenith has already shipped more than 1 million DTV converter boxes to retailers across the US. Today they announced a deal to sell more of their $60 through K-Mart.

"Today, we're pleased to announce that K Mart has joined the list of large retailers now carrying the Zenith DTT901, a remarkable product no bigger than a hardback book that can bring the wonders of digital TV broadcasting even to the oldest of analog TV sets," said Zenith Senior VP Richard Lewis.

"Sales to retailers have already exceeded a million units at a wide assortment of stores, from national retailers Circuit City and RadioShack to regional dealers such as Fry's, h.h.Gregg, Abt Electronics, Brandsmart, PC Richard, Nebraska Furniture Mart and others," Lewis said, adding that production is increasing to meet the growing demand.

With just over 200 days remaining before the mandatory shutoff of nearly all analog TV signals in the US they're also offering a new widget for Google Desktop and Yahoo Widgets. Called the DTV Countdown Clock, it's a timer that counts down the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the official cutover on February 17, 2009.

According to a report in the Nikkei newspaper, Panasonic is planning to bring a 40-inch OLED display to the market within three years, proving that OLED can be the next generation of HDTVs.

The word is that the Japanese company will spend a "several dozen billion yen" to convert its Kyoto semiconductor R&D lab into a full-scale OLED TV factory beginning later this year.

Before the 40-inch models hit however, 20-inch prototypes are set to hit the market as early as next spring and should gauge the popularity of OLED. The company also hopes to add another OLED production line in a facility in Himeji while moving 200 top staff onto the project.

Panasonic did not deny the rumors but did say, "Panasonic is continuing R&D on OLED panels with an eye toward the future development of the Himeji… plant. At this time, there is nothing decided about how this R&D will develop into a specific business operation."

The popularity of Video On Demand (VOD) in the US continued to grown in 2007. According to numbers released by Rentrak from their "State of VOD Report" 2007 saw an increase of more than 40% in the number of VOD programs ordered over the previous year, and nearly 30% in the number of set-top boxes used to watch them.

Not counting adult content, Rentrak's report indicates more than 3 billion billion programs were ordered in 2007. Free content accounted for the lion's share of those orders, with just 27% coming from subscription VOD programming, included with premium channels like HBO and Showtime.

TV shows saw the most significant growth over 2006. According to Rentrak there was a 120% increase in orders for this category, combined with an increase of 68% in the number of set-top boxes used for viewing them.

Nintendo, along with 54 other companies, have launched an extensive new lawsuit against the makers and distributors of the R4 Revolution device that allows for playback of ROMS on the Nintendo DS.

The popular R4 device is a flash cart and MicroSD adapter that allows user to install the custom Moonshell software on their DS and then load ROMS onto the MicroSD card and play them back on the handheld. The R4 bypasses all Nintendo firmwares and loads the Moonshell allowing the game playback as well as music, movies and even classic system emulators.

Although the R4 can run all sorts of homebrew, most use it exclusively to play pirated games, and Nintendo has noticed. The new lawsuit hopes to stop the manufacturing and distribution of the R4 and among the companies supporting Nintendo are SNK, Capcom, Square Enix, Tecmo and The Pokemon Company.

Having finally gotten the blessing of the FCC yesterday, satellite radio providers SIRIUS and XM announced that their merger is complete. Both companies are now part of SIRIUS XM Radio.
The merger has actually been in the works for more than a year and a half, but had been held up by the FCC, who finally approved it in March. Yesterday FCC commissioners voted 3-2 in favor of allowing it.

"I am delighted to announce the completion of this exciting merger between SIRIUS and XM," said Mel Karmazin, CEO of SIRIUS XM Radio. "We have worked diligently to close this transaction and we look forward to integrating our best-in-class management teams and operations so we can begin delivering on our promise of more choices and lower prices for subscribers."

"We also believe that the completion of the merger will eliminate any confusion that has been lingering in the marketplace," added Karmazin.

The long approval process was largely a result of anti-trust concerns voiced by consumer interest group and other (terrestrial) broadcasters. However, unless significantly more subscribers are added in the next couple of years the new company's monopoly won't even be enough to help them survive.

Warner Brothers executives are claiming a huge win in the war against piracy was instrumental in 'The Dark Knight' becoming a huge hit. According to company representatives they spent months ensuring that no copies of the film would disappear, and no one was recording it in Australian theaters in the two days it ran there before its US opening.

"One of the reasons why it's so important to try to protect the first weekend is that it prevents the pirate supply chain from starting," said Darcy Antonellis, president of Warner's distribution and technical operations. "A day or two becomes really, really significant. You've delayed disc manufacturing that then delays distribution, which then delays those discs from ending up on street corners for sale."

The problem with this reasoning is obvious. Tickets for opening day showings across the country were sold out far ahead of time. The record box office results were being predicted weeks in advance. Oh yeah, and people like the movie. It's entirely possible that might have some sort of impact.

Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne Online Media Measurement, was quoted in the LA Times saying "If the movie's a stiff, and word gets out too early that it's a stiff, it's devastating to the business model."

In May Canadian journalists began reporting on their government's involvement in drafting a controversial new intellectual property treaty with other affluent countries including the US. It turns out that's not the only copyright-related activity they've been hiding from their citizens.

It seems that there's also an internal government an Intellectual Property and Trade Advisory Group. The group is apparently comprised of representatives from 12 government departments and 14 different lobbying groups, including lobbyists for the music, movie, and software industries.

According to columnist Michael Geist, several industries are conspicuously missing from the group in the area of telecommunications, technology, and the internet. Privacy groups are also not represented on either the private or government sides.

Among other responsibilities, this group is supposed to be consulted about all aspects of the controversial ACTA treaty, which the public has been largely kept in the dark about. They're also being forced to sign confidentiality agreements, meaning they couldn't discuss the matter publically even if they wanted to.

Verizon has officially started offering FiOS TV service in New York City. The company had already been selling internet service in the city over their fiber optic network and earlier this month year they finally the necessary agreements with city and state officials to begin providing television service as well.

This will give New York City residents a choice besides incumbent cable television providers Time Warner Cable and Cablevision. Well eventually anyway. For now only about 300,000 New York City residents will actually be able to order FiOS TV. By the end of 2008 that number should be around 500,000.

"Our advanced fiber-optic network was built for HD, and we're offering more HD options than Time Warner or Cablevision" said Virginia Ruesterholz, president of Verizon Telecom. "With all-fiber connections running straight to their homes and apartments, viewers get eye-popping, jaw-dropping TV in both standard and high definition."

It looks like the MPAA has come up with a novel approach to getting consumers to stop downloading illegal movies on the internet. Well novel for them anyway. Instead of concentrating on lawsuits like the RIAA they're apparently developing a website to help consumers find legal ways to watch movies.

According to an anonymous source the MPAA is building a new website where consumers can search for a movie and be presented with options to buy, rent, or view it legally. For example, a search for a movie that's still in theaters might result in links to online movie ticket sites, while an older release would give you options for buying or renting the DVD, and perhaps others for downloading or streaming it.

Variety was reportedly told that the project was initiated after research showed that consumers often have a hard time distinguishing between legal and illegal sources for movies online.

Shanghai United Optical Disc has announced that the first CBHD (China Blue High-Definition Disc), formerly known as CH-DVD (China high definition DVD) production line as been established and is ready to begin production on the format.

Volume production is set to begin in the Q4 2008, for the Chinese market exclusively at first and then moving to other parts of Asia later.

However, many optical drive producers in Taiwan feel CBHD is already a dead format and will not be able to compete against Blu-ray, in China or elsewhere. They did note however, that DVD production lines can be refitted to manufacture CBHD for $800,000 USD, much cheaper than the estimated $3 million USD price tag it costs to set up BD production lines.

The sources also noted that royalty fees to produce CBHD players is almost half that of BD licensing rates, about $8 USD.

According to a leaked discussion paper relating to a secret treaty the Australian government is negotiating, iPod and laptop owners may have their media devices searched randomly and sanctioned if found to have large libraries of "pirated" music.

These searches will be conducted when travelers are leaving the country for vacation or business, with Customs Officials getting full power to search MP3 players and other media devices. Music fans could then be unwittingly hit with large fines.

Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos added of the discussion, "It talks about (sanctions for) commercial infringements does that mean one, 10, 20 or 1000 songs?

"It could be that people get sent to jail for being in possession of commercial-scale quantities of copied music."

Although no agreement has been signed, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has confirmed that the Government is indeed in negotiations.

One critic of the proposal, Choice spokesperson Christopher Zinn noted, "Searching into people's iPods is out of order."

Last week leading members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans to introduced yet another copyright bill. The latest is called the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008.

The new bill borrows heavily from other recent proposed legislation, most notably the PIRATE Act which was passed in the Senate in 2004, and the US House of Representatives earlier this year. It includes controversial provisions which would increase the maximum damages available for copyright infringement and make the Department of Justice responsible for taking civil action on behalf of copyright holders.

A statement from Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of the bill's sponsors, said "Many times, a criminal sanction is simply too severe for the harm done." It fails, however, to mention why the solution isn't to simply increase criminal penalties rather than giving copyright holders free legal representation.

Ironically Leahy also used the recently released blockbuster 'The Dark Knight' as an example of the products which are at risk of losing money from piracy. Perhaps someone should explain to Mr. Leahy that 'The Dark Knight' is already one of the most profitable movies of all time, and Warner Brothers seems to be doing well enough to hire their own lawyers.

Two weeks ago we reported that the FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin was recommending that the ISP Comcast be punished for violating net neutrality laws.

It appears now that most members of the FCC have voted in favor of Mr. Martin's proposal and that Comcast will be facing some sort of punishment soon.

Comcast is the United States' largest cable company but has been in the news over the last year for violating net neutrality laws by throttling BitTorrent traffic and not allowing its users free access to the Internet.

Three out of the five commissioners have already voted in favor of the punishment, which is obviously a majority. However, the remaining two commissioners still need to vote for the decision to be final. That should be completed by August 1st.

Chairman Martin did note however that any punishment would not include a fine. It will most likely "require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward."

According to new court documents, it appears that the MPAA hired a hacker to reveal the identities of the administrators of the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, the same hacker who was found to be 'spying' on the torrent site TorrentSpy last year.

Robert Anderson, the "hacker" and the center of the new scandal was paid by the MPAA in 2006 to steal e-mails and trade secrets from TorrentSpy. Anderson later admitted to this but it was unknown that he was also asked to spy on The Pirate Bay.

The now public court documents reveal a conversation between Anderson and the MPAA. “We can provide the names, address, and phone (numbers) of the owners of Torrentspy.com and Thepiratebay.org — along with evidence, including correspondence between the two companies.”

The MPAA’s Dean Garfield responded later, “We were going to get information about the location and identity of the people who were running Torrentspy, as well as information related to a general conspiracy and relationship between Torrentspy and a number of other prominent services including ThePirateBay.”

Buffalo has announced that it is releasing the first-ever Blu-ray burners with the ability to record at 8X speeds.

The company has an external and internal 8X drive, dubbed the
BR-816U2 and BR-816FBS and each will be able to write dual-layer BD50s at the new speed meaning in theory all 50GB can be filled up in 15 minutes. Rewritable BD can be written at 2x while CDs and DVDs can write at max speeds.

The external drive has a USB 2.0 interface as well as a eSATA connector providing the same bandwidth as if the drive were attached internally.

Each of the drives comes with Cyberlink software for playback, authoring and burning of Blu-ray content.

The drives will hit Japan in August for the equivalent of $382 USD(for the internal) and $435 for the external.

Over the last year the consortium P2P Next has set out to develop a new bandwidth efficient video streaming BitTorrent client, mainly by utilizing the Tribler file-sharing technology.

P2P Next consists of 21 broadcasting, technology, and academic partners, and was even given a $21 million grant from the EU earlier in the year. Last week, the public beta release of SwarmPlayer, "an open source, cross platform BitTorrent application adapted to the live streaming technology" showed the culmination of P2P Next's work.

Pushing ahead with the technology is the TV show torrent indexer EZTV which has announced it has incorporated the technology into their indexer.

"EZTV has introduced BitTorrent Video Streaming!," a news statement reads. "Instead of having to wait for an entire TV Show to download fully before you can watch it, it is now possible to use BitTorrent to watch a TV Show as it downloads!"

The Software & Information Industry Association announced yesterday it is prepared to sue the auction giant eBay "for failing to do enough to prevent the sale of pirated software" on its site.

The group also claims that eBay refuses to take several simple steps to reduce sales of the counterfeit software. The group has had years of discussions with the site but says eBay refuses to do more than simply take down the auctions that the SIIA has deemed "pirated."

"Once notified, they will do something," Keith Kuperschmid, senior VP of intellectual property policy and enforcement for SIIA said. "What they won't do is what we consider pre-emptory, proactive measures."

A couple of these measures include "placing a notification in the buyer feedback section that the seller has had pirated items removed from the site; penalize sellers of illegal software, even if it's their first offense; and develop technology to try to find repeat offenders who use multiple identities on eBay."

On Thursday we reported that Yahoo had decided to shut down the DRM servers for their Yahoo Music download service. The problem with the decision is that if users ever need to reformat their PCs or move the music to a portable media device they will lose the ability to the play the music, entirely.

The company plans to soften the blow however, by reimbursing customers, possibly giving back every dollar the user spent on the service.

Carrie Davis, spokeswoman for Yahoo Music, has confirmed today that the servers will indeed be shutdown but that reimbursement was coming.

"You'll be compensated for whatever you paid for the music," Davis said. "We haven't said exactly what we will do, but we will take care of our customers."

Because every customer has a different story, the reimbursement plan will be on a case-by-case basis. The company has now posted an FAQ page that includes a "contract customer case" button for any former or current users of the Yahoo Music Store.

The Kyoto District Court has sentenced the second of three defendants for anime file sharing today, but has suspended the sentence for three years.

Kazuhiro Maki was sentenced to 18 months in prison for unauthorized uploading of Gundam and other popular animes over the once popular file-sharing program Share.

According to the ruling, Maki infringed on copyrights for at least 3 months by helping "countless" users download the anime footage originally aired on TV.

On July 16th, Judge Kōji Shibata ordered the first defendant, Moriyoshi Inoha, to serve 18 months in prison but also gave a three year suspended sentence. The third defendant, Takahiro Ōtomo, is still awaiting sentencing.

Share was once a very popular file-sharing program in Japan because it promised high anonymity for its users. When researchers began finding flaws in the program in 2006, its popularity died out.

A new product from Ion Audio gives new meaning to hardware-based video capture. The VCR 2 PC is combines videotape playback and capture in a single unit, allowing you to either play your VHS cassettes or capture and transfer them to your computer via a built-in USB connection. It also features the standard analog video and audio inputs found on other VCRs, allowing you to capture from sources like analog camcorders.

The VCR 2 PC comes in two different versions. One is an NTSC model featuring RCA inputs and outputs. A PAL version replaces the RCA connections with SCART. Unfortunately both versions are limited to mono sound.

At $250 the price is fairly steep, especially considering a decent VCR and capture card would cost less separately. However, if your primary goal is simplicity this may be the perfect capture device for you.

TidalTV, the online television service that recently entered beta testing, has added a new channel featuring past programs from Sony Pictures Television. The new channel features more than 500 full-length episodes from such shows as 'Married... With Children,' 'Bewitched,' and 'Party of Five.'

Scott Ferber, chairman and founder of TidalTV, said, "With the addition of Sony Pictures Television's programming, we can now reconnect fans with old favorites like Al Bundy, Samantha, the Angels and more, while helping to introduce a new generation to these classic characters. Plus, viewers can catch today's stars in their early years -- such as George Clooney on 'The Facts of Life,' Alyssa Milano on 'Who's the Boss?,' Christina Applegate on 'Married... with Children' and more."

Later this month TidalTV will be featuring shows with celebrity guest stars including Mr. T, Ben Stiller, and Milla Jovovich. They'll also be showing something called 'Battle of the Blondes,' featuring episodes of 'Charlie's Angels,' 'V.I.P.,' and 'T.J. Hooker.'

Last year's flat revenue in the DVD market compared to the year before had many in the movie industry concerned about the format's future. Based on information from the first weekend in theatres for the new blockbuster 'The Dark Knight' seems to suggest that the real issue may have been a lack of excitement over theatrical offerings. According to Rentrak firgures, sales last week for the 2005 title 'Batman Begins' on DVD increased 345% from the week before,

In part the increase can be attributed to a limited edition gift set released earlier in the month 2008 to coincide with the July 18, 2008 theatrical release of the sequel. But that wouldn't account for the accompanying 76% increase in rentals.

While last year was a record year for US box office revenue, that doesn't tell the entire story. The increase in revenue from 2006 was actually due to a corresponding ticket price increase with attendance actually remaining flat.

This year, on the other hand, seems to already have more than its share of blockbusters and increased DVD revenue.

According to the results of a recent J.D. Power and Associates and Market Force Information survey plasma TVs are at a disadvantage when it comes to recommendations from electronics sales staff. The '2008 Television Retail Insights Report,' released earlier this week, finds that sales people overwhelmingly recommend LCD televisions over plasma.

More than 2,000 mystery shoppers were sent out to determine the knowledge of sales staff and find out what recommendations they are making. They found retail sales people tended to be ignorant of recent developments in plasma technology. Close to 40% told customers that LCD TVs last longer and warned of image burn-in on plasma models.

"While we see that salespeople are aggressively pushing shoppers to LCD sets, it is important for consumers to understand that plasma technology also offers a number of unique advantages, not the least of which is that inch for inch, plasma sets cost less than LCD sets," said Larry Wu, senior director of the technology practice at J.D. Power and Associates. "In addition, compared with most LCD sets, plasma TVs also display deeper blacks and show fast-moving objects better."

Nokia and Qualcomm have jointly announced they have formed a new 15-year agreement covering mobile standards including GSM, EDGE, CDMA, WCDMA, HSDPA, OFDM, WiMax, LTE and more.

As part of the agreement, the companies will settle all current litigation pertaining to any of the standards. Nokia will also drop its complaint to the European Commission about Qualcomm.

For the next 15 years, Nokia has been granted licenses for Qualcomm patents for use in Nokia mobile phones. Additionally, Nokia has agreed to not use any of Qualcomm's patents directly against the company, thuus allowing for Qualcomm to integrate Nokia technologies into their chipsets.

Qualcomm will receive an up-front payment and yearly royalties but the numbers were not disclosed.

"We believe that this agreement is positive for the industry, enabling the market to benefit from innovation and new technologies," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia Corporation. "The positive financial impact of this agreement is within Nokia's original expectations and fully reflects our leading intellectual property and market positions."

"I'm very pleased that we have come to this important agreement." said Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm. "The terms of the new license agreement, including the financial and other value provided to Qualcomm, reflect our strong intellectual property position across many current and future generation technologies. This agreement paves the way for enhanced opportunities between the companies in a number of areas."

Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings is pleased with his company's performance over the last quarter. The company increased in both revenue and subscribers, just as they have in every quarter but one during their short history. His primary focus during a conference call today was expansion of their streaming video offering.

Hastings repeated sentiments voiced at the company's annual Investor Day earlier this year. Despite the lack of growth in the DVD rental business he predicts that the company's percentage of the market will continue to increase, resulting in overall growth for Netflix over the next 5-10 years.

He plans to get Netflix streaming support built into Blu-ray players, game consoles, internet connected DVD players, and standalone set-top boxes. He mentioned the success of the Roku set-top box and partnership with Microsoft.

Nintendo has confirmed that it is "urgently seeking a solution" for the limited storage space available on the Wii console.

The company has faced growing criticism for the lack of space available for downloadable content including WiiWare titles and Virtual Console games and hopes to have a solution soon.

"We have said publicly that we're looking hard at the storage situation, that we’re working on a range of solutions. We have nothing to announce now. But certainly it's an issue we are aware of and we’re working to find a solution and we will," said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

"From an Americas-centric perspective, here is the reality we see. We have a consumer base who loves virtual console. We have a userbase who really is enjoying WiiWare content. So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis?”

Sony Japan saw sales of the PlayStation Portable explode for the week ended July 20th, with the surge likely attributed to the release of the Metallic Blue edition and the release of a "1 Seg" tuner pack.

According to data from Media Create, Sony sold 74,000 of the handheld in the region, up almost 20,000 units week-on-week.

For those unfamiliar, the "1 Seg" tuner is a "special type of terrestrial digital broadcasts that are specifically aimed at mobile devices such as the PSP."

For the week, the Nintendo DS Lite came in second with over 54,000 unit sale and the Wii came in third with 41,000 sales.

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced the launch of its MediaSync software that will allow a few BlackBerry devices to sync up with iTunes.

The free software promises to let BlackBerry users "easily transfer music and playlists from the desktop to the BlackBerry's media player." The software also transfers over any available covert art.

In a slap in the face to Apple, the program will not sync songs that use any type of DRM and will only work with PCs using Windows XP SP2 or Vista. There is no 64-bit system support however, nor Linux nor Mac. Apple sells most of its music with its own FairPlay DRM.

The software works with all the 8800 series of smartphones as well as the BlackBerry Curve and upcoming BlackBerrys Bold and Thunder.

RIM dominates the smartphone market with over 45 percent share, mainly by targeting professionals with their phones. Apple still lags behind with about 19 percent market share but is growing, mainly from targeting casual users.

If sources at jkOnTheRun prove to be accurate, then Microsoft has a meeting time set in stone to design a Zune-branded mobile phone in an effort to compete with the Apple iPhone 3G.

The new device is at least months away from completion but what is "known" is that it will use multi-touch input and run on a specialized variant of Windows Mobile 7. Windows Live services will be integrated flawlessly and the phone will also share the Zune's primary emphasis on media playback.

There is not much else known about what the device could offer, but Microsoft has divulged that multi-touch is the primary focus of Windows 7 for the PC and should be the same for its Windows 7 Mobile platform. There is also the chance for revamped interfaces as well as support for motion sensing.

Raising more eyebrows is Microsoft's recent purchase of Danger, the designer of the extremely popular T-Mobile Sidekick device. Danger is best known for developing media and messaging-oriented mobile software. Why else would Microsoft need them?

In Afterdawn 's home country of Finland one of the most interesting DRM-related cases ever may be going to the country's highest court if the defendants get their way. At issue is the question of whether the CSS encryption used on DVDs is legally considered "ineffective."

A Finnish court had initially ruled that bypassing CSS encryption doesn't violate Finland's implementation of the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) because it specifically mentions that "ineffective" DRM isn't covered. But is CSS actually ineffective?

According to an appeals court it's not. In May the Helsinki Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's ruling.

It's generally accepted that DVDs will be the dominant home video format for at least the next few years. With the possibliity that it may be legal to break that encryption would make it possible to do things like watching DVDs in Linux and even distribute tools to bypass CSS.

Yahoo Music Unlimited has now officially become limited. In February they decided to partner with Rhapsody and stop selling music through their own premium service. Now they're planning to pull the plug on the DRM servers after the end of September.

That means as of October 1 people who purchased music through Yahoo Music Unlimited will no longer be able be able to listen to it if they upgrade to a new computer, or simply have to re-install Windows.

You may recall that Microsoft made a similar decision regarding the DRM servers for the MSN Music service, but decided to change their minds and maintaing the license servers until 2011 when confronted by their angry customers.

It's almost as though Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to point out just what's wrong with using DRM in the first place. When you no longer have access to the music you purchased with the understanding you'd be able to play forever there's something wrong.

As Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed out today, it's ironic that the more money someone gave Yahoo, the more they're being punished.

England's six largest ISPs have all joined together with the government to "clamp down" on unauthorized downloading of music and movies.

Estimates have suggested that 6.5 million British citizens have downloaded unauthorized files over the last year and that piracy will cost the music industry £1 billion over the next five years.

The new clamp down will begin with thousands of warning letter informing alleged users that their illegal activity has been detected and that they are now being monitored.

The Governments business department will sign the industry agreement soon with BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

All the ISPs have committed to developing legal file-sharing services, with perhaps the option of users paying extra per month to the ISPs to download unlimited legal music.

There was no word yet on what sanctions would happen to persistent online pirates but ideas that have been thrown around are the so-called "three strikes" law or additional broadband fees for heavy users.

Rock star Neil Young made some interesting comments at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference yesterday including his suggestion that music sound quality has been "dumbed down to Fisher-Price toy levels" since the inception of the iPod.

“Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway,” Young said. “Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.”

Young spoke out about the poor audio quality of the most popular audio codec, MP3, and also talked about his "long-term, multimedia archiving project of his entire career" which will be available as a series of Blu-ray discs. Young hopes his project will become the basis for an alternative digital platform with higher quality sound.

The artist spent most of his time expressing his feelings at the decline in audio standards and put the blame mainly on companies such as Apple who he feels have "an increasing focus on convenience versus quality."

Microsoft has announced that they will begin offering original, comedic short films made by horror producers to Xbox Live users beginning in the fall.

The pilots will be available for free and the idea was conceived by filmmaker James Gunn, known for writing "Slither" and "Dawn of the Dead."

The software giant is joining up with the Safran Digital Group to produce the exclusive shorts.

According to WorldScreen, "those working on short films for the new offering include James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence), David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), Lucky McKee (The Woods), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th)."

A few of the known titles that will be available for download or streaming are "Doggie Heaven (Woof!)", "Humanzee!", "MEATDOG: What's Fer' Dinner," "Blue Like You" and "The Miracle of Phil."

"We're excited to launch the Xbox original content with these world-class directors, who are all tremendously talented and at the cutting edge of their craft," Safran said. "Their youthful and innovative approach is the perfect combination for this unique digital venture with Xbox 360, and we expect to see some very creative, horrifying and hilarious shorts as these masters of horror present their comedic vision.”

Samsung has announced a new series of LCD HDTVs including the company's first ever with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The new 950 display line combines improved LED backlighting with "improvements to the panel and image processing" to hit the high contrast ratio. The 950 also is the first LED-lit model from Samsung to have a 120Hz refresh panel.

The new HDTV also has a built-in Ethernet jack that can stream media from PCs and consoles. Users can also use any DLNA media hub or Samsung's own popular WiseLink Pro. USB ports are built in to allow digital content to be played locally.

The 950 series has four HDMI ports with CEC automation support and will be available in 46-inch and 55-inch models. The units will cost $3,200 USD and $4,200 USD respectively when they hit retail shelves in August.

AT&T has revealed today that they have sold twice as many Apple iPhone 3G units upon launch then they did a year ago with the first generation iPhone.

The carrier also noted that it had over doubled its smartphone users year-on-year since June 2007, from 8 percent to 18 percent.

Although official numbers have never been published by AT&T, the general consensus is that 270,000 first generation iPhones were sold in the opening weekend so AT&T's latest comments suggest at least 500,000 iPhone 3G units have been sold in the US by AT&T.

AT&T also reported that they added 1.3 million new subscribers, pushing its user base to 72.9 million, making it the largest carrier in the US over Verizon.

Samsung announced today the launch of its MediaLive add-on which eliminates the need for a set-top media hub while giving users direct access to movies from Vongo and MovieLink and other content.

To use MediaLive you must have a Samsung HDTV from 2008 or later with CEC automation support. Besides the direct movies from MovieLink and Vongo, users get access to content from Fox Sports and Showtime TV. XM streaming Internet radio is also available.

Samsung adds that MediaLive will turn the "TV into a viewing point for local content" as it can act as a media extender "for Windows Vista's Media Center and will play H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and WMV videos at up to 1080p, including with Dolby AC3 surround sound. It also handles multiple common audio formats and JPEG photo viewing. A single PC can serve as many as five Samsung TVs depending on the material."

Comments from Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata have suggested that the the company will once again have trouble meeting demand in the US for its Wii console this holiday season

"We are really intending to increase the shipments to the US, especially compared to last year," said Iwata in an interview with Forbes.

"However, I can't give you a 100 percent commitment [that you'll be able to find a Wii this holiday season]. What I can commit myself to is that Nintendo is going to do its best to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible in order to meet demand there."

Iwata added that the company was picking up production of the Wii from 1.8 million units each month to an expected 2.4 million units by the end of August. US retailers will see a good portion of the new units. Is the company still in shock at the amount of sustained demand in the US? "We could not imagine it would be that high," says Iwata.

After passing in the NY senate last month, the so-called "violent videogame" bill has been signed into law by NY Governor David A. Paterson meaning once-voluntary ratings will now be mandatory and monitored. The state will also conduct more studies on the negative effects of violent videogames on children.

The bill calls for an "advisory council" to be established that can conduct studies on the connections between media and real-life violence in children and teens. All consoles sold in NY will now be forced to feature parental lockout controls and all games must clearly display ESRB ratings.

"We have the obligation to be constantly vigilant about amending our laws to protect the residents of New York State. Many of these bills will do just that by closing loopholes or creating new laws to enhance the quality of life for all New Yorkers," added Governor Paterson.

"The first duty of government is to provide a safe society for our resident to live, work and raise their families. These new laws will enhance the protections afforded to the citizens of this state and will address gaps in protection that have existed for years. I applaud the Legislature for working with me and my staff to reach agreements on fixing these problems."

Nintendo has lost in their attempt to have a patent-infringement verdict overturned and are now facing a US ban on their Wii Classic Controller, WaveBird controller and Nintendo GameCube controller.

Last month, the privately held Anascape Ltd. won the infringement case against the video game giant and yesterday U.S. District Judge Ron Clark through out Nintendo's request for a new trial in the case.

The injunction will be put on hold however while Nintendo appeals the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Nintendo will have to put royalties in an escrow account however or the ban will go on as planned, appeal or not.

"Nintendo was already planning to appeal this case to the Federal Circuit court," Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta said. "The recent ruling by the trial court does not impact that decision."

A class action lawsuit against Comcast has been filed in Portland, Oregon alleging the company misrepresented their internet service. The suit was filed by Gilbert Randolph, which was already involved in similar actions in California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington DC where the firm is based.

By filing in Federal Court instead of yet another state they make they're making any settlement or decision against Comcast available to people in every state where the cable giant offers internet access.

That assumes a judge grants the suit, which was filed on behalf of Robert Topolski of Oregon, class action status. Given the large number of lawsuits currently pending against Comcast, the largest cable company in the US, that seems like a good bet.

Alyson Foster, an associate at Gilbert Randolph, said “Comcast surreptitiously installed receiver packets to keep people from using file-sharing programs when it promised it wouldn’t. Of course the competition is fierce in telecommunications, but they were trying to get an unfair leg up,”

Foster characterized Comcast's practices as an attempt to make their internet service seem better than it actually was at the expense of P2P users. “Comcast surreptitiously installed receiver packets to keep people from using file-sharing programs when it promised it wouldn’t." said Foster. "Of course the competition is fierce in telecommunications, but they were trying to get an unfair leg up,”

TiVo has a new deal with Amazon.com to integrate TV viewing with online shopping. This new feature allows viewers to order products from participating companies directly from Amazon using their TiVo remote control.

The general idea is for products like books or albums that are being promoted on various TV shows. Information on available products related to a particular show will be shown after playback, giving the viewer a chance to buy them right away.

Products will also be listed in TiVo's Universal Swivel Search in case you want to buy a product without recording or watching the program its featured on.

"Product Purchase adds a whole new dimension to the TV viewing experience," said Evan Young, Director of Broadband Services for TiVo Inc. "By teaming with Amazon.com, TiVo enables viewers to purchase products related to their favorite TV shows or that they've seen in TV ads without leaving their couch."

He added, "Television advertisers and consumer products companies are no longer limited to the traditional linear shopping channels that require live viewing for product merchandising and fulfillment -- if their product is seen or advertised on any TV show or network, and sold by Amazon.com it can be merchandised to viewers through TiVo."

According to the latest figures by independent market research company GfK Australia, the Nintendo Wii has become the fastest console to sell 500,000 copies in the region, beating out the PlayStation 2 by 23 weeks.

The Wii was launched in the region in December 2006, meaning it has taken only 84 weeks to hit the milestone, far faster then the 107 weeks it took the PS2.

The figures also show that the week ended July 6th had the highest sales for a single console ever, with the Nintendo DS selling 49,000 units for the week.

The Business Software Alliance released a new report yesterday claiming that software piracy in the United States has cost the industry $11.4 billion USD and lost the government $1.7 billion in taxes.

The group did however note that piracy is relatively low in the United States compared to the rest of the world and that the average of the 50 states is about 20 percent. The group did call the 20 percent of counterfeit material a "tragic" loss of revenue for the industry.

Had that software not been pirated, the BSA claims 25,000 police officers could be hired each year to patrol New York, Florida, California and Nevada as well as have 100 new middle schools created for children.

“The United States may have the lowest PC software piracy rate in the world, but still, one out of every five pieces of software put into service is unlicensed,” said BSA anti-piracy and general counsel veep Neil MacBride.

If leaked pictures from China prove to be accurate, then it appears a third model of the Sony PlayStation Portable is already in production and could hit retail stores before Christmas.

The "PSP-3000" would add a built-in microphone, updated buttons, some cosmetic changes and even the possibility of cell phone support. The microphone placed under the screen will make Skype and in-game chat much more accessible.

The new design would also be somewhat thinner than the PSP Slim and Lite and would include a new PSP logo ring on the back.

Sony has not commented on the pictures and for now this should be treated as a rumor but we will keep you updated if Sony confirms or denies the PSP-3000.

Although it was announced last week that Microsoft was cutting the price on the 20GB model Xbox 360 in North America and Australia, there was not word on whether there would be a similar move for Europe.

A couple of UK retailers however have dropped the price on the same model, most notably e-tailers Play.com and Amazon which have dropped the price of the console to GBP 169.99 and 179.99 respectively. The lower price represents a £30 savings off the MSRP.

Microsoft spokespeople have said however that the situation must be "their own deal...It’s nothing to do with us.”

Industry insiders however see the price cut as foreshadowing for an official price cut coming at the Game Convention in Leipzig this August. There is also the possible introduction of a 60GB model just as in North America.

After bullying most of the major ISPs operating in New York into blocking a list of websites and newsgroups alleged to provide access to child porn, and seeing the other involved in a similar agreement with the Attorneys General in 45 different states, you'd think New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would be satisified that his censorship work is done. Based on a letter sent from his office to that other ISP he's not only unhappy but willing to wage a public battle against them if they don't sign on to his plan.

The target of Cuomo's wrath is Comcast, the largest cable provider in the US. Through the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) they've already made a pledge to do basically the same thing he's demanding. Instead of being satisified with that he's decided to threaten Comcast with unspecified legal action instead.

According to a letter sent from Cuomo's office to Douglas Gaston, Comcast's General Counsel, "within five days the Office of the New York Attorney General intends to commence legal action against Comcast." The letter contains no mention of what law Comcast could possibly have broken in ignoring Cuomo's demands.

England's BSkyB has announced the launch of an online subscription music service and they have already signed the Universal Music Group as its first partner.

The service will offer DRM-free MP3 downloads to keep or unlimited listening through streaming, all for the price of a monthly subscription.

The service will be launched in Britain and Ireland and BSkyB hopes its relationship with millions of customers will help the service get off the ground in a hurry. Universal is the largest music label on the planet and hundreds of thousands of tracks will be available.

James Murdoch, Chairman of BSkyB added that the company was in talks with the major labels as well as the largest indies and hopes deals will be signed soon.

Rambler, Russia's third largest search and portal operator has announced it is launching a major TV and movie download site, described as a "Russian Hulu" by the company.

The site is currently in beta and will be launched to the full public in October. Making the site more interesting is that it will not be web streaming but instead users can download the movies and TV shows and share them freely. Yes, you read that write, the files can be shared freely, because they are hard-wired with DRM and advertisements.

Programming will be available from Russia's Star Media, TV Scope, TNT, NTV and CTV networks.

"By the middle of 2009, it will contain approximately 2,000 hours, all premium TV series as well as full-length Russian feature films and TV movies," Rambler's sales and strategic partner director Anna Znamenskaya said "The television channels rarely hold non-linear rights so we are dealing directly and only with the content owners who hold the relevant rights for our use."

Apple has just issued their financial report for the quarter that runs through the end of June - the 3rd fiscal quarter for the company - and it's a record setter. Revenue is up 38% from the same quarter last year and 40% for January through June of 2008 comared to 2007.

Despite the amount of press the iPhone and iPod get Macs are still the star of the Apple lineup. Over 2.5 million Macs were shipped during the quarter, increasing Apple's share of personal computer shares to nearly 20% from just over 15% in the June quarter last year.

iPods and iTunes also helped significantly, accounting for a third of revenue growth. Although revenue from iPod sales was up just 7% from a year ago, the number of units sold was up 12% worldwide, including a 15% gain outside the US. Currently the iPod enjoys a market share of more than 70% in both the US and Australia, greater than 60% in Canada, and better than 50% in the UK, Japan, and Switzerland.

According to the Nikkei newspaper, Toshiba and Matsushita Electric Industrial will become the first Japanese companies to mass produce OLED displays although the displays will be small 2.5 inch varieties.

The joint venture between the two companies, under the name Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co. will begin the production of 1 million 2.5 inch panels per month that can be used in mobile devices, phones and car GPS systems.

The production will begin in August 2009 says the report.

There was no official comment from Toshiba or Matsushita yet.

After only 10 days, it appears the new Apple iPhone 3G is sold out at almost all of Apple's official retail stores in the United States and demand is still picking up.

According to official Apple stats, only 3 out of 188 stores had any of the devices available as of last night. There are stores in 38 different states. One million of the devices were sold in the first 3 days and Apple says the demand has not died down since.

"Apple and its partners can only make them so fast," noted Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. Hargreaves does expect Apple to pick up production soon and end the supply shortage."The current shortage is only negative if Apple isn't able to increase production in the coming weeks," he added.

This latest news adds to the story AT&T has been saying, that most of their 2000 retail stores are out of stock as well and that users may have to wait up to 3 weeks to get the device. The same story has come from the UK, Germany and even Japan.

The popular music website iLike has announced new features that should be welcomed by the site's alleged 30 million users.

Thanks to a new partnership with Rhapsody, users can listen to full songs via streaming whereas before they could only hear 30 second clips. However, users can only listen to 25 full tracks for free each month, afterwards they will be linked to get a Rhapsody account.

iLike runs off private funding from contributors such as Ticketmaster but now has announced an ad platform "aimed at concert promoters, artists and bands, enabling them to target users based on several criteria such as music taste and location."

The site says the full streaming of tracks only works on the main site right now but will soon work with all their popular web applications on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

Artists also get some type of royalty each time one of their songs is played.

Sony Japan's Kaz Hirai has revealed that the company has set a target for PlayStation 3 sales and that number is 150 million for the console's entire lifespan.

Since its launch in 2000, the PlayStation 2 has sold 140 million units, and the original PlayStation sold 102 million units.

"It's not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers. I've seen that movie already," added Hirai.

"I want to try to see if we can exceed the PS2 numbers after nine years, otherwise why are we in this business?"

The blockbuster smash Dark Knight has broken another record this weekend and led Hollywood to its strongest weekend in the history of cinema.

After breaking the records for most sales in a single showing and best opening day, the Batman sequel has also shattered the record for best opening weekend, beating out Spider-Man 3's record that was set last year.

For the weekend, the movie brought in $158.4 million USD, beating out the previous record of $151.1 million. The record breaking pace also helped lead Box Office sales to their largest weekend ever, helping to bridge the gap brought by a drop in overall viewers.

"We knew it would be big, but we never expected to dominate the marketplace like we did," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. He expects the movie to hit $200 million by Friday, its first week in theaters.

For total weekend revenue, Hollywood shattered the previous record of $218.4 million by bringing in $253 million for the top 12 movies.

Half way through 2008 the home video market has made studio executives happy. Although spending hasn't grown from last year's levels it also haven't fallen, which many in the industry considered a strong possibility.

Blu-ray in particular has seen a spending increase of around 300% from the first half of last year. It has amounted to more than $200 million in revenue so far this year.

“I think people are becoming pickier on what they spend their money on, but home entertainment always represents a good value,” said Lori MacPherson, general manager for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, North America. “Thirty dollars for a Blu-ray movie that you can watch over and over again is still a great value.”

Despite the positive spin, the same economic factors that make Blu-ray discs a better value than movie tickets or other alternatives put standard DVDs at a similar advantage over Blu-ray. Even people who already own Blu-ray players may not be willing to part with their money to buy hi-def versions of movies they already own on DVD.

As we told you last week, a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) for allegedly abusing the DMCA takedown process has finally come before a judge. In that case Stephanie Lenz, with the backing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is claiming that the takedown request issued was made in bad faith and UMG should be penalized as a deterrent to future meritless claims.

In an interesting twist UMG's lawyers seem to actually agree that the YouTube video in question is fair use rather than copyright infringement, but they're arguing that they don't have to take that into account before they issue a DMCA takedown request.

When asked by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel "Are you saying there cannot be a misuse of a takedown notice if the material is copyrighted?" UMG attorney Kelly Klaus replied "I don't think 'fair use' qualifies."

The question was in regard to the wording of the DMCA, which states "Penalties are provided for knowing material misrepresentations in either a notice or a counter notice." Material misrepresentation means lying about the facts.

Security vendor Kapersky Labs has made note of a new type of trojan that is aimed at Windows users who download music through popular P2P networks such as LimeWire.

The malware inserts malicious links within ASF files, a container that is usually used for audio and video streams but can also hold images or links to websites.

"The possibility of this has been known for a little while but this is the first time we've seen it done," said David Emm, senior technology consultant for security vendor Kaspersky Lab.

When a user plays an infected file, Internet Explorer is launched and a site is loaded telling users they need to download a codec to play the file. The "codec" of course, is a trojan that then installs a proxy program on your PC. Just like with other proxy programs, hackers can then route traffic through the infected computer, creating a shield to cover their tracks.

Making the malware even more vicious is that once your computer is infected, it looks for any MP3 file it can find and will transcode it to WMA while wrapping it in an ASF container adding the malicious links and starting the cycle again.

"Users downloading from P2P networks need to exercise caution anyway, but should also be sensitive to pop-ups appearing upon playing a downloaded video or audio stream," Secure Computing, another firm said.

The popular P2P firm LimeWire has filed a preemptive motion to dismiss the case brought against them by the record industry in 2006 over "inducing copyright infringement."

Limewire is the only company that remains, most likely only becuase they have the money and the grounds to fight back. Other P2P firms such as BearShare, WinMX andGrokster have all shut down or settled their cases for $30-50 million USD.

Since the lawsuit was filed in 2006, any progress from either side has been slow to say the least. The RIAA, in charge of the music industry side and Limewire have been filing motions for some time but after 2 years nothing has really happened in the case.

The latest motion is a "summary judgement" which acts as a "streamlined tool a judge can use to make a decision on a case based only on the legal briefs submitted."

The iPhone Dev Team released version 2.0 of the Pwnage Tool, which allows you to jailbreak iPhones and iPods running the new iPhone 2.0 software. It also unlocks first generation iPhones, allowing them to be used on any mobile phone network, but won't unlock the new 3G model (yet).

If you happen to have owned either a first generation iPhone or an iPod touch prior to the opening of the iTunes App Store you probably at least considered the possibility of jailbreaking it to take advantage of the third party software being developed for it. With the ability to jailbreak the units while running the current Apple software you can now get the best of both worlds.

You can find links for downloading the Pwnage Tool, as well as some instructions to follow if you run into problems using it on the iPhone Dev Team blog.

A group called the P2P-Next Consortium is testing what they're calling "a next generation Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content delivery platform." They're hoping to develop software capable of offering P2P-based streaming, and they're inviting the public to help them gather data.

If you're interested in helping you need to use a BitTorrent client, called SwarmPlayer. Once you have it installed you can watch either a 5 minute Video On Demand (VOD) test stream provided by the BBC or a webcam feed from Amsterdam. SwarmPlayer sends performance data back to a P2P-Next server which they'll use in future development.

You can also give them feedback on the project, as well as viewing some information about the ongoing experiment.

For the Pennsylvania mother Stephanie Lenz, who has stood up to Universal Music Group after a YouTube video of her son dancing to a Prince song was taken down citing a DMCA violation, the case is gaining more and more attention and Lenz hopes her case at least brings attention to the users who have been bullied over the years by the labels and rich pop stars.

"I figure I have nothing to lose," Lenz said. "The music companies are just going to keep doing this to people. I think it's my responsibility to stand up to them and say, 'That's enough.' "

Lenz' lawsuit claims that Universal and Prince are "abusing" the DMCA and is asking for monetary damages. She is also asking that the court specifically state that she did not violate Universal's copyrights with the YouTube video.

The DMCA takedown notice in question is just one of hundreds of thousands that the labels and studios send out each year to video sharing sites which forces the material to be temporarily removed unless the user decides to fight the decision in court.

A report based on research from the Library of Congress in conjunction with a number of groups advocating the open availabillity of information in digital formats. The report paints a very negative picture of the influence the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has had over the ability to legally archive works stored in digital form.

Specifically, the report notes "There is no specific authorization for libraries and archives to make preservation copies of published works in their collections. Section 108(c) deals with copying for replacement and does not specifically address preservation." It goes on to point out that "to be eligible for copying under this section, the work must be lost, stolen, damaged, deteriorating or in an obsolete format, and then may be copied only if, after reasonable effort, the library or archives determines that an unused replacement cannot be obtained at a fair price."

Beyond that a library may make no more than three digital copies of traditional works, which the report characterizes as insufficient to ensure the work's survival due to the relatively volatile nature of digital media. It points out that "Long term management of a digital work usually requires that multiple copies of the work be made over the course of its lifetime."

The US' latest box office hit, Warner Bros' masterpiece The Dark Knight has already broken two records and is well on its way to shatter more, according to figures released today.

A press release from Warner Bros. reads that "Just past the stroke of midnight, Warner Bros. Pictures' The Dark Knight broke the record for a 12:01 a.m. film opening, earning an unprecedented $18,489,000 at the box office... That total does not include the grosses from the subsequent 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. showings."

One record down.

Later in the day, the studio, as well as such reputable sites as Box Office Mojo revealed that The Dark Knight had broken the record for sales on opening day, bringing in about $66.4 million USD. The previous record was the $59.8 million USD brought in by Spider-Man 3 last year.

The next record in TDK's path is that of all-time opening weekend, which is currently held by Spider-Man 3 with a gigantic $151.1 million. Judging by the first day sales as well as the huge amount of pre-orders, analysts, as well as the studio, expect the Batman sequel to top the record and bring in almost $160 million USD.

Apple is suing Psystar over their Mac clone, saying the terms of the OS X End User License Agreement (EULA) forbid the owner from installing it on anything but Apple hardware. They allege Copyright Infringement by Psystar, as well as Inducement of Copyright Infringement, Breach of Contract, Trademark Infringement, and Trade Dress Infringement. In short they're trying to put Psystar out of business citing language in the Mac OS X license forbidding the owner from installing it on anything but Apple hardware.

Psystar's Open Computer takes advantage of Apple's switch from Motorola to Intel processors to make clones that run OS X. Although Apple licensed their OS to a number of different vendors in the 1990s, when Steve Jobs returned to the company license fees were increased and all the licensees eventually gave up the business.

The issue of whether a vendor can impose additional restrictions via EULA is a hot one. Apple lawyers say the license terms change the consumer's legal rights once they accept them. On the other side of the argument that puts Apple in an unfair position to require things that are unreasonable because otherwise consumers can't use the software they purchaed.

Sony Europe boss David Reeves has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 PlayTV device will launch in Europe beginning on September 10th in the UK and then launching in other regions until December.

For those unaware, the PlayTV is a device that acts as a DVR add-on for the gaming console, one that will allow users to record TV, even if they are playing games.

"Yep, it's going to be 10th September that PlayTV comes out," said Reeves in an interview.

"It was very difficult for some of the tech guys but we had to include it in the firmware upgrade, 2.41, but it's done now," he added in regards to the new option to record while playing.

The PlayTV will cost EUR 99 when it launches and there was no word on a North America release. Other PAL markets however, will see the device soon.

Microsoft, as part of its larger earnings report today noted that for the fiscal year ended June 2008, the Entertainment and Devices Division, home of the Xbox 360 and Zune had a USD 426 million profit for the year.

The division had a loss for the Q4 despite a huge surge in revenue but the loss was much smaller than years past. For the Q4 2007, the division reported an operating loss of $1.223 billion USD but that dropped to $188 million USD for the 4Q this year.

Revenue was up 34 percent to $8.15 billion USD and the software giant attributed the surge to higher sales of the Xbox 360. The company shipped 1.3 million consoles during this Q4, compared to 700,000 in Q4 2007.

Operating profit was so low because of a large $1.1 billion USD charge taken by the company relating to their decision to expand the warranty coverage of all 360 consoles.

The games developer Ubisoft recently released the latest PC patch for its hit game Rainbow Six Vegas 2 but with the release came problems for all users who had purchased the game via “Direct 2 Drive”. The patch works fine for users with a physical copy of the game, but those who downloaded it legally from D2D could not load up the game.

The Ubi forums were hit with thread after thread with gamers asking for a fix for the issue and many threads noted correctly that an illegal No-CD crack created by the scene group RELOADED would fix the problem. Ubisoft moderators however, made sure to warn anyone who posted such suggestions that No-CD cracks/fixed .exe are unofficial and illegal and would not be tolerated in the forums.

Later in the day, Ubisoft released its own patch to solve the problem and it it. However, some users ran the patch through a Hex editor and found that Ubisoft's "official" patch was in fact the RELOADED No-CD crack, just renamed.

Now, this would not be so big of an issue if not for Ubisoft's own terms of use. Their licenses state specifically that cracks are illegal in the United States and that users using them will violate their license. That is also not to mention that forum users had been punished just a day before.

According to data figures from the NPD Group, the Nintendo Wii once again led US hardware sales for the month of June, selling just over 666,000 consoles for the month. That figure also helped the console become the highest selling "next-gen" system, surpassing the Xbox 360 which was released a year earlier.

Since its launch in late 2006, Nintendo has sold 10.9 million units in the US, just beating out the Xbox 360's 10.7 million since its launch.

NPD also noted that the Wii had beaten out both the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in every month but one since its launch.

"Wii is bringing people of all ages into the video-game experience," Cammie Dunaway, head of marketing for Nintendo's U.S. unit, added.

Sony has announced they have begun shipping their new BD-Live (Blu-ray Profile 2.0) player, the BDP-S350. The player is Sony's first standalone BD-Live player and should become the new standard for Blu-ray standalone players.

The player has support for BD-Live internet extras through its built in Ethernet port and also has a faster boot time then previous Sony players. The company also adds that there is an external port for "local BD-Live storage."

Sony's BDP-S350 also includes Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology, which enhances SD signals to full 1080p HD. The player also includes Precision Drive HD, "which prevents discs from wobbling inside the player from three directions."

After it was initially announced in March, TiVo's YouTube player has finally gone live today, allowing for full streaming of all H.264 YouTube videos.

The update only affects Series 3 and HD TiVos users.

"With YouTube content now available on TiVo, on top of all the movies, music videos, songs and TV shows that are simply unavailable on cable and satellite, TiVo subscribers have more choice on their TV sets than any other TV viewers in the world,” said Tom Rogers, President and CEO of TiVo Inc.

To access the feature, you must got to the Find Programs menu, in the Download TV, Movies, & Web Video selection. YouTube will now be one of the options.

"From this YouTube menu you'll be able to select from popular videos, recent videos or search for videos using the onscreen keyboard. Alongside each video there will be a thumbnail, title and a short description just like YouTube.com. Once a video is selected the player will automatically go full screen and start streaming within seconds. Since the video streams live there is no need to go the Now Playing List and there is no option to save the video there," reads early reports.

AOL has announced that the latest update to their popular WinAmp software will give the program access to online music stores.

The update, to version 5.54, lets users buy songs, ringtones, tickets and physical CDs directly from the Jukebox although AOL has not revealed which online music stores will be integrated into the software. There was word that the stores integrated would offer DRM-free MP3s.

Besides the online music store integration, the update "builds in access to AOL Radio's streaming channels, an ability to find videos and other artist info without leaving the software, and a toolbar to let Firefox and other web browsers control WinAmp."

The new version is available for free in a Basic version as well as part of the Pro edition which sells for $20 USD and allows for built-in ripping of CDs to any format the user wants.

You can download WinAmp from here: WinAmp 5

Lionsgate, the movie studio, has confirmed that is has struck an ad-sharing deal with YouTube, the first of its kind.

The deal, according to sources, could be the first of many, with Disney, MGM, Universal and Warner Bros. likely to follow in the near future.

The deal was first announced by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and subsequently confirmed by Curt Marvis, president of digital media over at Lionsgate.

"You can take the strategy of fighting an endless war of trying to take down and resist YouTube or you can take the strategy of embracing the fact people seem to want to watch content in this way," Marvis said.

All the details of the deal were still being hammered out but what is clear is that there will be a Lionsgate-branded channel created which will include advertisement on clips from Lionsgate content, such as the popular "Saw" series of movies and the popular TV show "Weeds."

Marvis also added that the company was trying to work out a transactional model in which YouTube users can watch a clip, of say "Saw IV", then be served a link that will lead them to a service where they can purchase the full digital download of the film.

Amazon has launched a new streaming video service dubbed Amazon Video on Demand today. The service is entirely separate from the current Unbox download service which allows for downloads of movies and TV shows. The main difference however, only seems to be that the new service is streaming, meaning customers can watch their content instantly.

Amazon already has deals in place to distribute 40,000 movies and television shows.

Making the launch more notable is that the service will also be available though the Internet Video Link found in Sony Bravia HDTVs so customers can stream the videos directly to their TVs without the need for a PC.

“For the first time, this is drop dead simple,” said Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital media. “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.”

Sony recently announced at the E3 event that they were phasing out the 40GB model of the PlayStation 3 as well as dropping the price on the higher capacity model by $100 USD. That announcement however, was only relevant for those living in North America.

The word has now come down from Sony Europe boss David Reeves that the 80GB PS3 will be headed to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand beginning on August 27th. Russia will get the console two weeks later.

The model will cost €399 in Europe and £299 in the UK. The pricing schemes were not revealed for the other territories yet.

Reeves confirmed that Sony Europe was also phasing out the 40GB model but there was only "a small number left in the channel" anyways. The new range of Platinum hits, just as in North America, was revealed including the hit games Resistance: Fall of Man, MotorStorm, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Virtua Tennis 3, and Assassin's Creed coming with reduced prices on August 1st. The Platinum games will cost €29.99 in Europe, £19.99 in the UK, A$49 in Australia, and NZ$59 in New Zealand.

Last month, iSuppli did a "virtual teardown" of the new Apple iPhone 3G and came to the preliminary conclusion that it cost $173 USD to manufacture before IP royalties and other costs such as development and shipping. Today however, the company has released the results of their physical teardown analysis and their conclusion was almost identical. The 8GB model costs $174.33 to produce, before noted costs.

iSuppli used the teardown to identify the component suppliers as well as cost of parts. The aforementioned figure consists of the Bill of Materials and manufacturing expenses.

The new $174 USD manufacturing cost is a sharp decline from the production costs of the first-generation, 8GB iPhone which was estimated at $230.

“The addition of 3G wireless capability represents an evolutionary design step for the iPhone, not a revolutionary one,” said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and principal analyst at iSuppli. “iSuppli believes Apple aimed for a more cost-effective design for the 3G iPhone compared to the 2G, in order to lower the retail price—which will allow the company to seed adoption and to capture maximum market share now—while the company still has buzz and a perceived differentiation relative to its competitors.”

DISH Network has announced that following the launch of the EchoStar XI broadcast satellite, it plans to launch more HD video channels in an effort to compete with its strongest competitor, the DirecTV Group.

The rollout of new channels was intended for March but "a satellite launch by SES Americom failed to reach its intended orbit." The satellite launch was funded by EchoStar.

DISH now has 100 total HD channels, compared to 150 for DirecTV. Most cable or fiber providers offer between 30 and 60 channels in HD.

"Offering a wide variety of HD channels is important among pay-TV providers and is really important in today's market," said Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan. "DISH would have been at a disadvantage to its competitors if this satellite did not launch successfully."

According to the official blog over at blog.iphone-dev.org, the developers there have already jailbroken the Apple iPhone 3G using their own software.

The software is not yet available to the public, but it is expected within a week. We will keep you updated with any developments, but for now, here is a video from the iPhone Dev team.


World's 1st Jailbroken 3G Phone from iphonedev on Vimeo.

Despite recently denying they would be cutting the price on their PlayStation 3 console, Sony has flipped on that notion and announced at this week's E3 event that they will begin phasing out the 40GB model of the console while dropping the price of the 80GB model by $100 USD.

The higher capacity model will now retail for $399 USD, taking over the price spot that has been held by the 40GB model for some time now.

Sony's Jack Tretton says the company hopes the new price point will "attract millions of PlayStation 2 users who are on the cusp of upgrading."

The latest decision follows on the heels of Microsoft's similar decision, to phase out their entry level 20GB model and replace it with a 60GB model.

At this week's E3 event, Sony has confirmed that 6 new studios have joined Sony Pictures as the foundations of the new PSN Movies service.

Fox Film, MGM, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Turner and Funimation have all joined up, revealed Sony's Jack Tretton.

Tretton also confirmed the pricing model for the service, saying that TV show rentals will cost 1.99 USD in SD and anywhere between $2.99-5.99 USD for HD content. All movies can be purchased for $14.99 USD directly from the service.

The PSN store has already begun offering the movies and TV episodes as of last night. At launch there is expected to be 300 full-length movies as well as 1,200 TV episodes in both SD and HD. In comparison, Microsoft now offers 20,000 videos through its Xbox Live service, thanks to a new deal with Netflix.

Warner has announced that it will bundle its upcoming September release of Speed Racer on Blu-ray as a special 3-disc set that will include both a standard definition digital copy and an exclusive video game.

Despite its mediocre reviews and horrendous worldwide gross, 'Speed Racer' is expected to see large sales on Blu-ray thanks to its intense CGI and use of a wide palette of colors that should look great in HD.

The BD will be released same day as the standard DVD, on September 16th and will include a 1080p/VC-1 video transfer along with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround soundtrack

The special features disc of the Deluxe edition will include the fully playable videogame "Speed Racer Crucible Challenge," as well as an SD digital copy of the film that can be played back on all PCs as well as portable media players.

Amazon has announced the start of a new "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" promotion on Blu-ray discs, and there is 109 titles available as part of the sale.

A few notable films are part of the deal, including "Shooter", "Mr & Mrs Smith", "3:10 to Yuma", and "Kingdom of Heaven" among other hit films of the last 20 years. All of the Blu-ray titles on sale are either $20.95 USD or $27.95 and if you purchase any two, you get a third one free, the cheapest of the three you have selected.

If you intend to purchase two of the cheaper titles, then including the third free one, the total for each film is $14 USD, a very reasonable price for HD media and only a few dollars more expensive then their standard definition counterparts.

You can view all the titles available here: Amazon B2G1 promotion.

Topware Interactive, the developer of the popular Nintendo DS and PC game Dream Pinball 3D is suing 100 British citizens, claiming that each allegedly uploaded the game to file sharing sites and networks.

The move is thought to be the largest such single effort against uploaders of a certain game on P2P networks but lawyers for the gaming industry have reported that thousands of more cases are coming before the end of the year.

David Gore of UK law firm Davenport Lyons (taking action for the US-based Topware) added, "There is no difference between stealing a DVD from a high street retailer and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network.

"We hope that it will act as a deterrent. There is a hard core of file sharers who are just interested in getting something for nothing."

Four file sharers have already been ordered to pay damages of £750 although that fine can skyrocket to £3,500 once costs are added in.

There are more than 15 million IPTV subscribers around the world according to the figures released today at the Broadband World Forum Asia in Hong Kong. It's double the number of subscribers from a year earlier. That's out of 370 million broadband internet connections.

Of particular interest is the geographical diistribution of customers. More than half of all IPTV subscribers worldwide are in Europe. North America is in third place with fewer than a third as many subscribers.

Not surprisingly Europe also has the largest number of broadband internet subscribers. In total just over 115 million Europeans have broaband connections. Western Europe saw in increase of 16% but Eastern Europe broadband subscriptions grew a staggering 32%. Similar growth was seen in Latin America as well as the Middle East and Africa.

Growth in cable internet subscriptions has slowed to 18%, while fiber optic connections increased by 33%. DSL still accounted for 240 million, or almost 65% of boradband connections.

"This report shows that although DSL remains the key vehicle for delivering broadband associated services, alternative access technologies, such as fiber, are increasing their footprints and their requirements need to be considered in our work," said George Dobrowski, Chairman and President of the Broadband Forum.

Whatever your feelings about the iPhone, it has had a major impact on the web browsing habits of owners. A new comScore report inidicates that 80% of iPhone users in France, Germany, and the UK use their phones to browse the web. By contrast, only 32% of those using other smartphones use it for browsing.

Perhaps just as interesting is that more than half of those browsing the web on their iPhones are using them to visit social networking sites. That's not just more then the 3% among other smartphone owners, but also significantly higher than the 10% of all mobile phone owners who visit those sites via other means. Of course that's not entirely surprising given the younger demographic shared by both social networking participants and iPhone owners.

The web features of the iPhone seem to be just as important to its owners as playing music. While 70% used it to listen to music, a nearly identical 69.5% used it for email.

According to MovieTickets.com pre-sales tickets for 'The Dark Knight' are more popular than three of the best performers in the website's history. The sequel to 'Batman Begins' has sold more than three times as many tickets as 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' had with the same amount of time to go before release. It's also sold more than twice as many as 'Spider-Man 3,' and nearly doubled 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.'

Just in New York and Los Angeles there are already more than 150 sold out performances in New York and Los Angeles alone and is scheduled for more than 1,300 midnight showings which are listed on the MovieTickets.com website.

In a survey they conducted more than 90% of moviegoers ages 34 and under expressed interest in seeing the movie, as did nearly 80% of those between 35 and 44, and even 2/3 between the ages of 45 and 59.

I guess we can stop feeling sorry for the movie studios and all the money they're losing from piracy.

Borders Books is launching a new MP3 store of a different kind. Instead of selling music Borders.com will feature audiobooks in MP3 format, making them compatible with standard portable media players. They'll initially be offering a selection of 15,000 titles. Borders.com was launched just last year following a split from Amazon.com, where their online store had been hosted for seven years.

"With the launch of Borders Audiobook Downloads on Borders.com, the availability of the download service in our concept stores, and the option to buy audiobooks on CD, we are giving customers what no other book retailer does-the ability to enjoy this great form of entertainment in a variety of formats including the universally compatible MP3 format," said Kevin Ertell, senior vice president of e-business for Borders Group. "We look forward to growing our audiobook catalog so that customers always have access to the best selection of audiobooks available."

The company also recently opened a concept store in Ann-Arbor, Michigan where customers can already download both audiobooks and music directly from computers located in a special area of the store designated as the Digital Center. They can even create and burn their own custom CDs.

The PS3 is gaining ground on the Xbox 360. Through last year Microsoft's console outsold Sony's. With a year's head start in sales, a lower price, and the success of Xbox Live there were many reasons to pick the Xbox 360 over the PS3. That's changed this year, with sales figures through May making the PS3 the number two seller of 2008, still trailing the Nintendo Wii.

The PS3 has had significant obstacles to overcome, including a head start of an entire year for the Xbox 360 and a significant price advantage for both the Microsoft and Nintendo consoles. They still trail the Xbox 360 in total sales, but the gap is closing.

If you believe Sony's Howard Stringer the competition with Microsoft is all that counts since he claims the Wii is "more of an expensive niche game device," and not a competitor for the PS3. He pointed out that the PS3 is "still the best way to buy a Blu-ray player.''

And he's certainly correct that it leads that market, but it seems foolish to believe he isn't disappoiinted about coming in second in the console market, especially considering that the video game market is growing while home video remains stagnant.

Microsoft has announced that it has struck two new deals in an effort to bring more media to their Xbox 360 console.

The first deal is with rental giant Netflix and will allow subscribers with an Xbox Live Gold membership to watch movies online for free. The Netflix feature should be part of a complete overhaul of the Xbox 360 interface which is expected in the fall.

The redesign will use a Cover-Flow-like interface that will allow for visual browsing instead of text. There will also be the addition of a "Primetime" channel "for live events and personalized avatars that can be integrated into games."

The second deal is with NBC-Universal and will add the studio's catalog to the Xbox Video Marketplace for rentals and downloads in both SD and HD. There will also be NBC's TV shows available. NBC programming is already available in the Zune Marketplace.

According analysts at comScore YouTube continues to lead the pack in online video viewing in the US. According to their numbers more than a third of the online videos viewed in May were from YouTube. That accounted for 98% of Google's top ranking among all online video providers.

Despite an impressive gain by their next closest competitor, Fox Interactive Media, they served fewer than 20% as many videos as Google in May.

More notable than YouTube's continued dominance was Hulu's first entry on comScore's monthly ratings. Even though they just made it on at number 10, if you were to list them by the amount of profit they'd likely be in first place. That's an impressive fact if you consider YouTube served around 50 times as many videos.

Google also led the way in unique visitors and average number of videos viewed per visitor, but they didn't have nearly as big a lead in either category. Interestingly Hulu didn't make the top 10 in either category. Instead ESPN.com made the list.

In total over 141 million Americans watched more than 12 million videos in May, with an average of 228 minutes of viewing each. That amounted to almost three quarters of all US internet users.

According to data from both Chart-Track and ELSPA, UK video game sales have risen over 40 percent year-on-year for the first 6 months of 2008 to 31.3 million units. Revenue increased to GPB 738 million.

Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo DS software accounted for GPB 690 million of the total with PC gaming accounting for the rest. The low 3.9 million units sold of PC software represents a 29 percent decline year-on-year from last year.

"Games are now one of the most popular pastimes of the British – hence these remarkable figures," said Paul Jackson, director general of ELSPA.

"Our gamers are more mature than those of most countries – the average age of a player here is now 33 – and as our core gamers have grown up, so too have the revenues they bring in. Games are also proving themselves to be robustly recession-proof.

Sony and Sky have announced that their handheld video-on-demand service Go! View has finally gone live today, in both the UK and Ireland.

Users of the service can download and transfer content from their PCs to the PSP after they have signed up for monthly subscription packages ranging between GBP 5 and GBP 10 per month.

"We are working with our content providers to secure a quality range of programming and ensure that PSP owners are getting the best possible service on-the-go and on-demand," added Alison Turner, general manager, of Go! View Entertainment UK.

Known partners of the service include Disney-ABC-ESPN, BBC Worldwide, Sony Pictures Television, NBC Universal International, National Geopraphic and Sky Sports.

If you've followed the on-going saga of record label lawsuits against their customers over P2P file sharing you've probably already heard of MediaSentry. If so, you may have read about how they've gone on the defensive as the legality of their investigations on behalf of the RIAA has been called into question. Defendants in more than one case have claimed MediaSentry's activities make them private investigators, even though they're not licensed in any state.

Now the company is being investigated in North Carolina in connection with several John Doe lawsuits. In these suits Capitol Records is going after North Carolina State University students whose identities have so far not been revealed. Attorney Stephen E. Robertson, who represents at least one of the alleged file sharers, has filed a complaint with the North Carolina Protective Services Board accusing the RIAA of conducting investigations that are "both illegal and seriously flawed."

Mr. Robertson alleges that MediaSentry representatives are acting as "unlicensed and unlawful investigators" who "claim to have entered the hard drives of hundreds, if not thousands, of private North Carolina citizens to look for music recordings stored there." It goes on to say that MediaSentry then sells the IP addresses of individuals found sharing copyrighted content to the labels.

On Friday, Konami announced that it had begun a lawsuit against MTV, Viacom and Harmonix over alleged patent infringement have to do with the blockbuster game Rock Band.

Konami claims that Rock Band infringes on patents pertaining to "musical-rhythm matching game."

"Konami's actions are extremely surprising," an MTV spokesperson said.

"Unfortunately, successful products such as Rock Band can often become targets for baseless litigation. We have substantial defenses to this claim and intend to vigorously defend it."

Konami is currently working on a new "musical-rhythm matching game" dubbed Rock Revolution and is seeking to have an injunction placed on the instruments sold along with Rock Band.

Along with their announcement that they've already sold a million iPhones, Apple is making a big deal about the number of programs downloaded from their newly opened iTunes App Store. The App Store offers a variety of programs, most costing less than $10, for the iPhone 3G. There's also a free upgrade to the 2.0 version of the required iPhone 2.0 software for the first generation iPhone, as well as an update for iPod Touch owners that costs $9.95.

Before anyone starts counting the money Apple must have made from the App Store you should keep in mind that many of the programs available are actually free. In fact some are actually either translations of web apps that have been around for the iPhone for months or even programs originally written for unlocked iPhones before the SDK was even announced.

While there's no way to tell how many downloads can be attributed to these free programs, it's reasonable to assume they're among the most popular titles. This would seem to be backed up by the lack of any breakdown from Apple when they announced the numbers.

Apple today announced that the 1 millionth iPhone 3G was sold on Sunday, making it an even hotter product than its predecessor, the original iPhone.

“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

The iPhone 3G is currently available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the US and will be offered in France later this week.

Apple's press release announcing the sales figures didn't mention what percentage of iPhones had been successfully activated.

NBC isn't the only company planning to offer online video from the Beijing Olympics later this year. PPLive, a Chinese company that provides streaming TV feeds using P2P technology, has inked a deal with China's state run China Central Television (CCTV) to provide coverage of the event. The video offered will be provided by CCTV.com, which is the official internet broadcaster of the event in China. According to AC Nielsen ratings PPLive streams video to 35 million people worldwide each month.

"We are very excited to partner with CCTV.com to broadcast the Beijing Olympic games through our new Internet media platform. We are committed to delivering to our viewers the highest quality and most in-depth coverage of the sporting games that make up the Olympics." Bill Yao, Founder and CEO of PPLive PPLive Inc. said

The streams will be encoded using the On2 Flix Engine to encode the video to On2 Technology's TrueMotion VP6 video codec, which will then be delivered via Adobe Flash on both the CCTV and PPLive websites.

Following last week's victory in court over the web host LeaseWeb, BREIN has scored another "win" against the file-sharing community, this time against the web host EuroAccess.

EuroAccess was the host for Torrents.to and a court has ruled that the company will have to disconnect the site and provide the administrator details to BREIN. The LeaseWeb decision was exactly the same.

"In a ruling in summary proceedings, the District Court of Den Bosch (the Netherlands) ordered hosting provider Euroaccess to shut down the illegal website “Torrent.to” and to surrender the personal data of site administrator and to pay all the lawyers’ fees incurred by the BREIN foundation, which is an organisation that fights piracy," a BREIN press statement says.

"Hosting providers have to live up to their responsibilities," added Tim Kuik, BREIN’s Managing Director. "Euroaccess shelters numerous illegal sites and servers and it refused to respond to notifications from various parties, including BREIN. That had to change."

The German manufacturer X-PROTECT has announced a new layer of copy protection for use on Blu-ray Discs, meant to add extra security to the existing AACS.

X-PROTECT, known for its creation of anti-piracy-protection systems for DVDs and DVD-Rs, say the new X-PROTECT blue solution will work with both HDMV and BD-J Blu-ray Discs and will be updated regularly to stop new piracy attacks.

Blue "fulfills all Blu-ray requirements and specifications" and also works "flawlessly" with current AACS protection.

The company says the main advantages of the X-PROTECT blue "is that it can be implemented seamlessly into the current workflow and does not impact the authoring and replication process. The material stays within the normal secure environment and does not need to be sent out to any offsite facility."

Ending all speculation, Microsoft has finally officially confirmed that it is cutting the price on its Xbox 360 Pro model by $50 USD as well as introducing a new 60GB model that will retail for $349 USD.

Starting today the 20GB Pro model will sell for $299. The software giant says the new model will go on sale beginning in early August. Strangely though, Microsoft will continue to sell their stripped down Arcade model for $279. The Elite model will stay with its $449 pricetag.

Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management, explained the release of the new model.

“No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you'll have three times the storage to manage all that great content,” he said.

The confirmation puts an end to a poorly kept secret. For weeks now flyers from different retailers have shown off the $50 dollar price cut, yet Microsoft refused to comment.

Kodak has announced today that is has launched a networked media hub dubbed the Theater HD, joining an ever crowding market.

The set-top box will be able to stream music and HD video up to 720p from any computer on the same Wi-Fi network. Just like its competitors, the box can also stream Internet radio, play YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, and view complete photo galleries from Flickr or Kodak Gallery. A few web sites can also be accessed through the TV in "a TV-optimized format."

A more interesting feature is that of "Kodak Picture Mail." A USB port and an SD card in the box allow users to view content right from their cameras as well as upload the pictures to photo websites directly from the box. With built-in Wi-Fi, the Theater HD can stream the photos to nearby Kodak digital photo frames.

MovieBeam, the video-on-demand service created by Disney has been purchased by the India-based Valuable Group at a fraction of what the service was valued at just a few years ago.

The purchase was made through the private equity investment advisory firm Dar Capital and although not disclosed, the sale price is expected to be $2.25 million USD, or even less. As a point of comparison, in 2006, Disney, Cisco and a few venture capital firms invested $48.5 million USD to continue service. In 2007, Movie Gallery bought the service for $10 million USD, considered a great discount at the time. MovieBeam was shut down when Movie Gallery went into bankruptcy protection.

“Through this acquisition, Valuable will further establish itself as a leader in the media and entertainment space, allowing us to deliver ethnic and Hollywood content to homes and the hospitality industry worldwide,” said Sanjay Gaikwad, head of Valuable. “Films will be delivered in high-definition, and viewers will get access to library films as well as the latest releases on a first-day, first-show basis. We have earmarked an investment of $100 million over the next two years for the relaunch of this service in North America, U.K. and other overseas markets.”

Warner Home Video has announced the launch of aggressive pricing cuts on its Blu-ray catalog beginning in the Q4 of this year.

Starting September, Warner will begin offering a "point-of-sale rebate program" meaning retailers will be able to order a number of catalog tiles for as low as $11 USD.

Even with expected retail mark-up, the new prices will sure to be a steep discount from their current prices of, an average, $24 USD, at retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Amazon.

A few of the featured titles for this new program are "The Fugitive", "Enter the Dragon", "Clockwork Orange", "The Shining", "The Aviator", "Road Warrior" and "Swordfish."

More technically, the program will make retailers buy the titles at present prices but they will get money back after the sale of each unit. The situation is really a win-win for the retailers, at least if the movies are selling well.

Warner also said it will be offering consumer rebates on more popular movies such as "300", "The Departed", "I Am Legend", "Ocean’s 13" and "We Are Marshall." There was no word on how much these rebates would get consumers back, but it is expected to be at least $5. A quick search of Amazon shows me that all of those titles are currently selling for between $19 and $25, and a rebate would make those titles very enticing to customers who were on the fence.

In a recent interview with TWICE, Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow spoke out about his thoughts and the company's views on Blu-ray and IPTV and he had some interesting observations.

Last week, Sony CEO Howard Stringer announced that the new blockbuster movie "Hancock" would be streamed in HD to owners of Sony Bravia HDTVs, through the "Bravia Internet Video Link", days before it hits DVD and Blu-ray. This new "experiment" is exactly what Sony sees itself being in the IPTV business. "The fact that Sony has its own picture company and has for many years, we wanted, No. 1, to take advantage of that. But, more importantly, we wanted to give the consumer more opportunities and options for content."

When asked about Blu-ray's lagging sales since defeating HD DVD in February, Glasgow said, "I feel it is just a perception by the press. Demand for Blu-ray product is far higher than the actual supply ... so we are all gearing up [production]. We can’t keep up with demand."

Kevin J. Martin, the head of the Federal Communications Commission announced today that he is recommending that the ISP Comcast be punished for violating net neutrality laws.

Over the past year Comcast has gotten in trouble for throttling BitTorrent traffic, without informing its users that it was doing so. The Internet traffic was also only blocked for users using file sharing software.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” said Martin,“We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Comcast, in what has become standard, denied that the ISP had blocked Internet content purposely but instead said it was part of “carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network." The company also noted it was part of a strategy to "ensure that all customers receive quality service."

The measure on whether to impose penalties on Comcast will occur on August 1st and the commissioner will be circulating his order recommending penalties tomorrow. His order will require Comcast to stop all blocking of Internet traffic as well as "provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice was used and give consumers detailed information on how it planned to manage its network in the future."

News has come from the Blu-ray Disc Association Press Conference this morning that a BD factory is set to launch in China this December and that the production output will end any shortages that the Asian market has been seeing.

The leading Blu-ray Disc player makers Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer, have each had slow sales, especially in China but this new factory should lead to strong growth over the next few quarters. The Shanghai Epic Music Entertainment Company Ltd. "will produce the high-capacity media storage discs at an 140,000 square foot expansion to its factory in Shanghai." Discs will go into production as soon as December.

Sony for one, will begin selling its players with more incentives until the new factory is up and running selling the BDP-S300 player with three Blu-ray DVDs, including Kung Fu Hustle, Spider-Man 3 and Open Season.

Good Old Games, a European gaming company, has announced that it will begin allowing gamers to access and download old PC games that are very hard to find legally or have been abandoned.

The company will provide titles from as far back as the early 80's and in a downloadable format that is completely DRM-free. The games will also be reasonably priced, ranging from $5.99 to $9.99 per title. Also, once you have purchased the title, you can download it whenever you want, all the times you want.

This new model seems very attractive for the consumer, especially those who want to revisit games that haven't been available in stores for 10 or even 20 years. The fact that they do not have DRM and are attractively priced make the situation all that much better.

Last week, the latest Nas album was leaked to P2P and other file sharing networks but it appears that the rapper is among the growing minority of music industry veterans that see the upside of piracy and leaked albums.

Nas' business partner Anthony Saleh had this to say on the matter, "I don't think the leak has hurt Nas in any way...the leak has helped those who have delivered on their albums with good music ... If (fans) want to support it, they'll go buy it."

The upside of these leaks of course, is a boost in sales, by way of generating a buzz for the album. If the album is good, and the fans like it, the thinking is that they will eventually go out and buy it, or download it from an authorized vendor.

There is no way to skew that theory either, as it is backed up by pure data. Three of the top five biggest CDs over the last year have been hip-hop albums that were leaked weeks before the actual street date. These albums were the very popular "Graduation" by Kanye West, 50 Cent's "Curtis" and Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III."

Giganews has announced plans to increase its current 200 day retention for binary newsgroups to 240 days by the end of the year. Only last year, Giganews broke the retention record by offering 200 days binary retention while maintaining excellent completion and of course, top speed downloads with up to 20-concurrent connections, based on what plan you have with the service.

Some of the most active binary newsgroups receive huge amounts of new data on a daily basis, and so retention (how long posts will remain on the servers) is a vital detail to take into account when shopping for a newsgroup provider. Giganews currently offers over 1,700 days retention for text newsgroups additionally.

Along with providing unlimited, uncensored access to all binary groups, Giganews has a decent price line-up, with an unlimited plan that costs $24.99 per month. An additional $5 will get you SSL encryption and boost your max number of concurrent connections to 20. This package is available as a Diamond account for an introductory price of $19.99 for the first month.

If you bought one of the new iPhone 3G's that were officially launched today you may have been unpleasantly surprised to find that it couldn't be activated due to Apple's servers being overwhelmed. Perhaps this shouldn't come as any surprise considering the same thing happened last year when the original iPhone launched. No doubt many had assumed that experience would have guaranteed Apple would have taken measures to avoid it this time around.

And the issue isn't limited to new phones either. Owners of the original version who decided to take advantage of the free upgrade to the new software version in order to use the new iTunes App Store are also having problems. Like the new phones they must be activated after installing the update, turning a number of iPhones already in use into significantly less useful iPaperweights.

For those who didn't download the update early this morning it's proving difficult to even download it. When I tried to purchase the update for an iPod Touch I received the following error (about 50 times over the course of a few hours).

In August Seagate will begin shipping new Barracuda hard drives that hold 1.5TB (1.5 trillion bytes) of data. It represents a 50% over their current Barracuda drives, which go up to 1TB. Some time in the fourth quarter they'll also be introducing the new Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 laptop (2.5") drives, capable of storing 500GB (500 billion bytes).

"Organizations and consumers of all kinds worldwide continue to create, share and consume digital content at levels never before seen, giving rise to new markets, new applications and demand for desktop and notebook computers with unprecedented storage capacity, performance and reliability," said Michael Wingert, Seagate executive vice president and general manager, Personal Compute Business. "Seagate is committed to powering the next generation of computing today with the planet's fastest, highest-capacity and most reliable storage solutions."

Despite the ever-increasing need for more storage, especially for multimedia, it's important to remember that relying on a single drive to hold that much without some kind of disaster-recovery solution like a RAID array or backup (or better yet both) is asking for trouble. If you're planning to buy one of these massive drives you should also make sure you're prepared for the worst.

The publisher Konami has sued Harmonix, Viacom and MTV Networks over alleged patent infringements pertaining to the blockbuster game Rock Band.

Konami's patents were issued in 2002 and cover "simulated musical instruments and a musical-rhythm matching game".

The suit is asking for monetary compensation as well as an injunction blocking Harmonix and Viacom from using the instrument peripherals that are included in the game.

The popular video game, which sells for $150 USD in the States and GBP 180 in the UK has sold millions of copies and has seen over 15 million paid downloads from its online music store.

Konami recently announced "Rock Revolution" a music-based game centered around drumming, which is currently in production in the UK.

Rock Band has been so successful, that under terms of the company's acquisition by Viacom in 2006, Harmonix has earned over $200 million USD in bonuses.

In a meeting with investors, Sony Japan chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda has said that the company has no plans to drop the price of its PlayStation 3 console.

Oneda also notes that the company's strategy remains the same, to bring profitability to the games division.

"Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability," said Oneda. "Our plan is to not reduce the price."

The latest comments come just ahead of Microsoft's expected announcement of an across the board price drop on its rival Xbox 360 console.

Today marks the launch of both Apple's iPhone 3G and the iTunes App Store where developers can sell programs built using the iPhone SDK. Unlike the original iPhone, the new model is being launched simultaneously in 24 countries spread across 4 continents, including the US, UK, Japan, Australia, and of course Afterdawn's home country of Finland.

The iPhone 3G is different from its predecessor, with new features including support for 3G mobile internet connections and GPS. It also has a new version of the iPhone OS, a compact version of OS X, which includes support for the brand new iTunes App Store. Owners of first generation iPhones can update to the new version of the OS for free. If you happen to own an iPod Touch there's an update available for you as well for $9.95.

Sony has announced that it has selected Double Fusion to bring in-game ads to both its European and North American PlayStation 3 consoles.

Double Fusion already has publisher deals in the works and hopes to reach out to Sony's 13 million PlayStation 3 users soon.

"We are very excited about hosting contextually relevant and well-crafted creative advertising on PS3," said Phil Rosenburg, senior VP for SCEA.

"PlayStation is taking a major role in enabling this fast-developing sector that is positive for the games medium."

A few of DF's videogame clients are NCsoft, Gearbox and Eidos. President and CEO Jonathan Epstein added, "We have already received tremendous support from publishers who want to incorporate ads into their PS3 games, across all of the regions of the world," he said.

"We are very excited to work with SCE on this and PS3 will add a vast number of players to our already robust network. SCE’s participation strengthens the in-game advertising ecosystem."

Mobistar SA, the cell phone carrier, has announced that it will be launching the Apple iPhone 3G unlocked in Belgium to satisfy regulation.

In the region, "koppelverkoop", forced bundling, is forbidden and Mobistar will satisfy that regulation by offering the phone unlocked but for a premium over which users in other European nations pay for the phone, locked. The 8GB will sell for €525 and the 16GB version will sell for €615.

In nations like Germany and the Netherlands, users can purchase the smaller capacity model for €1 as long as you purchase the phone with a 2 year mandatory contract.

"The price will be above that in other countries," Chief Executive Benoit Scheen said in a news conference. He also added that Belgian regulations do not allow phones to be sold at a loss, meaning the carrier is getting the phones at an expensive price to begin with.

In January, the social web radio service Last.fm announced that it was going to introduce the Artist Royalty Program which would give royalties to unsigned artists every time their songs are played through the site's ad-supported streaming music feature or Web radio.

Today, the program has finally launched and over 450,000 tracks have been uploaded already in conjunction with the launch. Everyone who uploads music has the option to sign into the Royalty Program.

"We're leveling the playing field by offering them the same opportunities as established bands to make money from their music," Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel said in a press release. "The young musician making music in a bedroom studio has the same chance as the latest major label signing to use Last.fm to build an audience and get rewarded."

Not everyone is happy with the new program however. Merlin, the international rights body that represents 12,000 independent labels feels the program does not "pay artists retroactively for past plays and is vague as to what rights the license gives CBS/Last.fm regarding uploaded music."

EA chief music executive Steve Schnur has finally set down a timetable for when video game soundtracks will be update-able using downloaded music, and has already confirmed some games.

While games such as "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" have update-able soundtracks that continuously expand other video game genres have lacked update-able music, at least officially from the developers.

“You’re going to see it in 2009,” Schnur said. By the time of "Madden '10" gamers can expect “broader-based” EA games to have the ability to “continually recommend” new music that can be downloaded.

It is not known if an EA proprietary music download service will be successful however, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 already allow users to create custom soundtracks from their own digital collections.

It is also unknown whether users will have to pay for these new songs, but assuming EA keeps on its trend (see: charging users for new weapons in "Battlefield") then a $1 USD or $2 dollar price tag seems likely.

After reading a recent study which concludes DVD ripping in the UK is on the rise you might get the impression the home video industry is in trouble. But according to figures from the British Video Association that's simply not the case. Their numbers indicate that 2008 sales are actually up 3.3% from last year.

“Last year proved a bumper year for the home entertainment industry with 250 million videos sold and DVD accounting for 99% of that. We are delighted to see that the half year 2008 figures reveal an increased demand for home entertainment, especially in the current challenging economic climate," said Lavinia Carey, the organization's Director General.

In fact they're predicting continued growth in spite, or more accurately because of the economic downturn which continues to face the world economy as a whole.

She said “History has shown that in times of economic hardship, consumers find even more value in home entertainment when the leisure pound is stretched as it is. As video is one of the most cost-effective forms of entertainment we would expect to see continued volume growth in our market as consumers tighten their belts in response to increasing economic uncertainty.”

A new set-top box from WhereverTV allows viewers to watch internet-based TV feeds from around the world directly on their televisions. The company launched their website last year, where streaming video from providers all over the world is already available. With the introduction of the new set-top box the same content can now be delivered through a broadband internet connection to your TV without requiring a computer.

"The WhereverTV Receiver clearly defines a new era for the television viewer," said Mark Cavicchia, WhereverTV Founder and CEO. "We believe WhereverTV will become a great source of entertainment and comfort for millions of immigrants living away from home, businesspeople traveling abroad, or anybody wishing to enjoy a wide variety of television programming from around the world."

Measuring a mere 5" x 5" x 1", the WhereverTV Receiver is even small enough to travel with. As long as you have access to a broadband internet connection that could allow you to watch familiar TV shows even when visiting other countries.

The Center for Social Media, a group connected with the School of Communication at American University, focuses on the use of multimedia to affect public awareness and social change. They've published a new guide on fair use intended to help creators, content owners, and service providers understand the generally accepted standards for fair use in documentary video.

Their guide isn't a comprehensive guide to the limits of fair use, something that can really only be determined on a case-by-case basis in a courtroom. Instead it combines commentary from a panel of legal scholars with the standard practices established by professional film makers. It offers general guidance on the legal issues that go into a decision on whether particular cases may or may not qualify as fair use.

Whether you're a future professional film maker or just like to make your own videos for Center for Social Media it's an interesting and informative document worth taking a look at. You can get your own copy or read it online for free from the Center for Social Media's website.

The evidence appears to be in and it looks like the anticipated US price drop to $299.99 for the Xbox 360 Pro is coming this Sunday. It will be a $50 drop from the current pricetag of $349.99.

Although there's still been no official announcement from Microsoft, scans of ads for Sunday from both Best Buy and Target have appeared online, joining a previously leaked K-Mart filer.

No doubt expecting a major sales increase from the new price, Target even appears to be offering a $25 gift card to make the decision on where to buy a little easier.

It's not clear yet what this will mean for the price of the bugdet Xbox 360 Core model, which currently sells for just $20 less than the new price for the Pro model.

According to a decision by the Frankfurt Court of Appeal the victims of WiFi theft can't be held responsible for the thieves' copyright infringement. The same court that previously ruled parents can't be held responsible for the flle sharing activities of their children overturned a lower court's decision, and potentially dealt a blow to the campaign being waged by a UK lawfirm against several hundred people for alleged copyright infringement.

Lawyers at Davenport Lyons have been sending out letters to alleged UK file sharers pointing out the German court ruling making individuals whose WiFi connection is used by others without authorization responsible for any infringement. They went on to point out that it was likely that decision would be echoed by UK courts. Don't expect to see a similar claim about this new decision.

With the possible implications of the ruling don't be surprised to see yet another round of arguments before things are decided for sure. Christian Solmecke, a lawyer currently defending around 500 file-sharers said “The future will show us what the highest court in Germany - the Bundesgerichtshof - says to this difficult question.”

Sony and four other Japanese companies have announced that they will be teaming up to develop key technologies for large sized OLED panels to be used in mass produced TVs in the future.

OLED displays are being paraded as a promising next-generation flat display, but so far the only commercial release is Sony's 11-inch XEL-1, which is too small and too expensive to be mass produced.

These new panels offer many advantages over plasma and LCD displays, including richer blacks, slimmer sizes, better energy efficiency, and higher static and dynamic contrast ratios.

The other firms involved in the new joint venture are Toshiba, Matsushita (maker of Panasonic), Idemitsu Kosan and Sumitomo Chemical. The entire project was initiated by the Japanese government.

More details of the project, which is aimed at establishing technologies for HD OLED displays with sizes of over 40-inches, will be announced soon, added the companies.

Parks Associates has released the results of a new survey in the US and Canada that reveals some interesting facts about how people listen to music. Not surprisingly the results indicate around two thirds of all people in both countries with broadband connections regularly play music on their PC and half that many use portable media players, such as Apple's iPod. More surprising was the revelation that as many people seem to use their TV for music as own MP3 players.

"iPods are sexy, but not everybody has one," said John Barrett, Director of Research at Parks Associates. "TVs are ubiquitous and increasingly capable of delivering a range of content, especially with new features like digital music delivery and place-shifting services. This is just the tip of the iceberg for TV applications."

Analysts from the company are recommending that developers consider all three platforms when developing new digital entertainment services.

And organization called the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) will be holding the P2P Media Summit Silicon Valley in San Jose on August 4th. The inaugural conference will be a forum for the various P2P software providers, content owners, ISPs, and other members of the DCIA to discuss everything from technology to business models.

"We are thrilled to be able to present a program devoted to the latest technological innovations and newest business models being introduced in the rapidly emerging P2P marketplace," said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty in making the announcement.

Despite the demonization of file sharing among major content owners from movie studios and record labels to software developers, in recent years many have come to believe that the decentralized distribution model offered by P2P technology is the future for delivering content. Conferences like this one are important in order for the various elements to work together on ways to make it work in a way that's profitable for everyone and still useful to consumers.

Earlier this week we told you about correspondence between the agency contracted to investigate file sharers by the RIAA and the Michigan Department of Labor. In the letter, published on Ray Beckerman's website, MediaSentry lawyers argued that their activities don't require a Private Investigator's license because they merely act as technical experts, analyzing publicly available information. As it turns out the RIAA themselves have made exactly the opposite argument in court to block Mr. Beckerman's efforts to question MediaSentry's employees or obtain details of their operation.

On his blog, Recording Industry vs. The People, he points out that lawyers for Universal Music Group (UMG) specifically claimed on three separate occasions that MediaSentry was not being relied on for any technical expertise, but were in fact only being utilized as investigators. An excerpt from a November, 2006 filing UMG lawyers wrote the following.

Specifically, MediaSentry has not been designated as an expert witness in this case and is not offering any expert opinions. Rather, the MediaSentry investigator who detected the infringement at issue, Tom Mizzone, is a fact witness, having downloaded information from defendant's Kazaa share folder that any other Kazaa user could have downloaded.

Since last year's revelation that Comcast was indeed throttling BitTorrent traffic from customers of their broadband internet service it brought them to the attention of the FCC, where they're already vigorously defending themselves. They've cited a lack of specific rules outlawing their "network management" techniques as proof they've done nothing wrong. They're also being sued in California, where a judge has granted them a stay, pending the FCC's decision.

The California lawsuit does make claims of illegal interference with network traffic, but it also alleges false advertising. The plaintiffs claim that Comcast is advertising more than they're actually delivering when it comes to high speed internet service. The judge has indicated that only the FCC has jurisdiction over traffic management, agreeing with an argument made by Comcast attorneys who wrote the following.

"Because these issues are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the FCC, and because the FCC is actively investigating them, this Court should stay its hand under the primary jurisdiction doctrine."

According to a new study funded by Macrovision a third of all US and UK residents have copied at least one DVD in the last 6 months. In the UK the number is around 32%, compared to around 36% in the US.

Among other things the report from Futuresource Consulting titled 'Consumer Home Piracy Research Findings' concludes that

• Around one third of all respondents in both countries admit to making copies of pre-recorded DVDs in the last 6 months, up from just over a quarter of respondents in 2007.


• UK respondents showed a significant increase in copying TV shows on DVD when compared with 2007.


• In the last 6 months, DVD copiers have copied an average of 12 titles of all genres in the USA and 13 titles of all genres in the UK


• In the last 6 months, the average number of movies copied in the UK was 13 new release and 9 catalogue; in the USA the figures were 7 and 6 respectively.


• The majority of UK and USA respondents would most likely buy these movie titles new at sale or promotional price.

The music download store 7digital.com is reporting that since the introduction of DRM-free music from the labels Warner and EMI, sales have skyrocketed over 300 percent propelling the site into second place behind Apple iTunes as the UK's biggest digital retailer.

Year on year download sales were up 300 percent for the year ended June 30th 2008, with CEO Ben Drury adding, “High-quality, DRM-free MP3 downloads have really sparked a new wave of digital music take up.”

Drury also notes that the MP3 format offers superior compatibility to DRM-crippled WMA files or Apple's use of AAC and for that reason, many users are moving to the site.

80 percent of 7digital.com’s catalog is now DRM-free, (representing over 3 million songs) leading Drury to add, “It is now clear that MP3 downloads represent the future for digital music. With two of the four major labels now supporting MP3 in the UK, we expect to see the whole market supporting MP3 in the not-too-distant future.”

The United States-based TV maker Syntax-Brillian, maker of the once-popular Olevia HDTV brand, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a year "of weak sales", lawsuits, accounting issues and liquidity problems.

The company is now negotiating with creditors and lenders to secure capital, but has stopped its operations in Arizona. A few of the notable creditors of the company are Singapore-based WesTech Electronics Ltd, Taiwan's Compal Electronics, cable sports network ESPN and Taiwan's Digimedia Technology Co.

For the fiscal year ended June 2008, Syntax-Brillian's total assets were $175.7 million USD comapred to almost $300 million USD in unpaid debts. The company cited "a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enquiry and the loss of confidence of suppliers, vendors and employees" as the main reasons for the erosion of its business.

The bankruptcy filing includes all the company's assets with the exception of Vivitar, the company's digital camera unit, which is going up for sale.

According to investigations by AppleInsider, Apple Canada may begin punishing Rogers for its decision to sell overpriced iPhone 3G data plans.

As a way to punish Rogers, Apple will not sell the iPhone at its own retail stores and will instead show them off only as demo units. By doing so, customers will have no choice but to visit a Rogers store to buy the mobile phone. Many would-be customers have already said they will not be buying from Rogers.

Apple only has a small Canadian retail presence but a ban would certainly hurt supply in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver where stores are popular.

The carrier has been drawing criticism from the press and from would-be customers, all of which cite the huge discrepancy in prices compared to iPhone 3G data plans in the UK and the US.

For $75 CAD, Rogers' users get a third fewer minutes per month, only 750MB of data, and only 75 outbound messages compared to AT&T's 200 and unlimited data. Both plans are priced about the same.

A virtual petition continues to gain momentum, now with over 43,000 signatures, with users that refuse to purchase an iPhone from Rogers.

The iPod Touch is something of a marvel of modern technology. But for all its technical brilliance it has one glaring flaw. Replacing the battery is practically impossible.

While previous iPod models haven't exactly been designed in a way that makes the batteries easy to replace, with a little research and a the right tools it's fairly simple. In the case of the iPod Touch the soldered battery connection increases the difficulty level substantially.

As an alternative to sending your iPod Touch to Apple where it would be replaced with a different unit, causing you to lose any media or software on it, you can send it to a company called Milliamp Ltd instead. Milliamp's technicians will install a replacement battery that they guarantee for 10 years, and now they'll even get it done in a day. The best part is the price, which is about 3/4 what Apple would charge you.

As an option you can simply order the battery to replace it yourself, but Milliamp won't provide any instructions or support so it's not recommended unless you have a lot of confidence that you know what you're doing.

SomaFM, an ad-free internet radio provider, now supports streaming to the iPhone and iPod Touch. By simply opening their main webpage at www.SomaFM.com in Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch you'll be directed to a custom portal where you can access their streams optimized for either AT&T's EDGE network or a Wi-Fi connection.

"We've been expanding our availability on wireless devices, and are excited to now be iPhone accessible," said SomaFM's Rusty Hodge. "The iPhone was one of the last mobile devices that we didn't support, and we've been getting a lot of requests for it."

SomaFM's streaming service doesn't require an unlocked iPhone or iPod Touch to work. It uses standard features included with the official iPhone software. Their programming is also available on internet radio devices from Sonos, Roku, and Slimdevices.

"Our goal continues to be able to connect with our listeners whether they're at their desk, in their car or at a local coffee shop," said Hodge. "As new mobile devices become available, we will work hard to develop the technology to enable SomaFM programming to be available through them."

Today new color DVDs compatible with the LightScribe disc labeling system became available. Like all LighScribe media they can have labels burned into them using a special type of burner. Previously LightScribe DVDs were only available with a gold background. The new discs add red, orange, yellow, blue, and green.

"Customers tell us they love the color background CDs launched last year," said Kent Henscheid, marketing manager for LightScribe. "That media constitutes a significant proportion of all LightScribe CD media, and it was logical to fill out the LightScribe DVD lineup with color background technology as well. We expect these DVDs to be available in more and more channels worldwide."

The new colors won't require any new hardware. They're compatible with all existing LightScribe drives. They're offered in a variety of brands, including HP, Imation, Memorex, Philips, and Verbatim.

In the past few days reports have come out that the MPAA was endorsing the use of a new streaming video system which utilizes 2048 bit encryption. The information was based on a press release from DreamStream, the company that developed the new technology. Today DreamStream issued another press release clarifying their earlier statement.

It turns out there was no actual endorsement by the MPAA. In fact they've only assessed the technology in order to educate their members.

"DreamStream used unfortunate wording to describe our relationship with the MPAA," said Scott Diffenderfer, chief executive officer for DreamStream. "We did not wish to make any implications of endorsement of our technology by the MPAA and apologize for any confusion in this regard."

The original release had been intended merely to state that the MPAA's review had concluded that the DreamStream system is viable without taking a position on whether it's the best choice for studios.

Despite the switch to digital only TV in most of the US next February, there will still be some low power TV stations exempt from the mandatory change, and still broadcasting analog signals. A new voucher eligible converter from Zenith, the DTT901, is designed for people who still need to access these analog broadcasts along with the new digital signals. It includes an analog pass through feature enabling both analog and digital broadcasts to be received by the same box.

"We recognize that many consumers who require a converter box for digital channels also will continue to enjoy low-power analog stations after next February, and including the popular analog pass-through feature provides the means to achieve this important goal," said Zenith Senior Vice President Richard M. Lewis. "Building on our long-time alliance with full-power broadcasters across the nation, we look forward to working with low-power community stations to help educate American consumers about the nation's transition to digital TV and how to choose the best converter box for their needs."

The Community Broadcasters Association (CBA), whose members include many of the low power television stations that will continue to broadcast analog signals, is very pleased about the new Zenith box.

Pioneer has announced that they will begin offering Blu-ray disc recorders to its home country of Japan beginning in the Q1 2009.

Pioneer spokeswoman Kayoko Tanaka added that there were no plans for Europe or North America launches and that the decision to enter the market "anticipated burgeoning Japanese demand for products in the next-generation video format."

The company will develop the recorders with its partner Sharp but will sell the "high-end" recorders under the Pioneer brand.

According to The Nikkei, Sony, Panasonic and Sharp completely dominate the Blu-ray market in Japan with a combined 98 percent market share.

Late last year Pioneer and Sharp began teaming up in the LCD business and have also been teaming up for Blu-ray players.

LeapFrog Enterprises, manufacturers of a number of educational themed electronic toys, appear to be eyeing the more mainstream handheld game console market with the introduction of two new products, the Leapster2 Learning Game System and Didji Custom Gaming System.

Besides their emphasis on educational titles, the new cosoles are unique because they each target a specific age group. The Leapster2 is oriented toward 4-8 year olds, while the Didji is intended for kids between 6 and 10.

Like other handheld consoles the new LeapFrog models will have games featuring familiar properties ranging from Sonic the Hedgehog and SpongeBob SquarePants to Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Of course instead of the typical gameplay they'll feature educational problems and puzzles.

Besides copying the look and feel of other handheld games, the Leapster2 and Didji are also revolutionary for the educational market because of their web connectivity. In August LeapFrog will be launching a new online tool called Learning Path that will allow parents to keep tabs on how their kids are progressing with each game title.

On July 2nd, Sony released the long anticipated 2.40 firmware update for its PlayStation 3 console. A few users however, were met with bricked consoles or otherwise had freezing glitches and other software failure.

Sony then removed the update from its site, and users trying to update through their PS3 were told firmware 2.36 was the latest available.

According to new reports however, the firmware update will be back, this time as version 2.41 and will be released sometime this week, most likely on Wednesday, one week after it was originally launched.

Hopefully the new update will fix all of 2.40's issues and all users who were not able to get the update when it was available will get in-game XMB access and trophies.

The IFPI and Italy's Guardia di Finanza have announced the shutdown of the alleged file-sharing forum Downrevolution.net for thousands of instances of copyright infringement.

In connection with the site, four people have been arrested and each will face a "criminal investigation."

Reports claim that only one of the men arrested was over the age of 18 meaning the rest are minors. There was no word on whether they will prosecuted as minors however. 17 computers, three external hard drives, and hundreds of counterfeit CDs and DVDs were also seized from a house in Sesto San Giovanni.

If found guilty, the men arrested could face 4 years in jail and large fines.

Downrevolution.net, like many other "warez" forums, posted Rapidshare.com and Megaupload.com links, allowing over 30,000 users to share copyrighted movies, music and more. The site stayed in business by selling banner ads and accepting donations in exchange for VIP status.

Jeremy Banks, IFPI’s Head of Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, added: “This shows a real commitment by the authorities to stopping online copyright theft, and it also highlights that forums like these are anything but immune from the law.”

The G8 Summit began today in Tokyo, Japan. Among the topics expected to be discussed is the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty proposal drafted in secret primarily by the office of the US Trade Representative and legislators from Californiia. Not surprisingly, the California lawmakers are well known for supporting just about any legislation that increases the term or scope of copyright or strengthens penaitles for infringement.

Despite some attention from websites like Afterdawn, public interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and news publications in Canada we don't really know anything more now than we did when a draft of the proposal was first published by the watchdog site Wikileaks.

Besides suggesting the controversial move of making law enforcement responsible for investigating and prosecuting intellectual property infringement, the proposal has come under fire for the exclusive group of countries included in the initial discussions. Unlike the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or World Trade Organization (WTO), every member of the G8 have businesses that derive a significant amount of revenue from intellectual property.

The MPAA has approved the use of DreamSteam "military strength" 2048-bit encryption to protect online video streaming content in an effort to stop the unauthorized downloads of the content.

"We are very excited to have the MPAA stand behind our technology," said Ulf Diebel, chief development officer for DreamStream. "The MPAA understands the need to be proactive - rather than reactive -- in addressing the chokehold that piracy has on the motion picture industry. Their recommendation is not something that Hollywood will take lightly."

Since being introduced to the system in March of this year, the MPAA has been reviewing the technology and has finally decided that it is a viable system for securing online content.

"We are very excited about our breakthrough technology. For the first time, digital content can be distributed without fear of piracy. By making it possible for studios and other copyright holders to secure their content, we can make it impossible for movies to be digitally pirated," said Diebel. "DreamStream can restore property rights to their owners and restore the commercial success of music and video recordings with a solution that benefits both producers and consumers."

Blockbuster has decided to back away from their earlier plan to buy Circuit City. The offer, made more than two months ago, was always contingent on a review of the ailing electronics retailer's books. Apparently they didn't like what they saw and retracted the offer.

With this deal at an end the apparent next step for Blockbuster is figuring out if there's another similar company worth buying. Blockbuster's interest in Circuit City was predicated on the belief that their brick and mortar video rental operations are in need of a presence in a more traditional retail setting. They've already been working on kiosks for transferring video directly to portable media players and flash drives.

"We continue to believe in the strategic merits of a consumer retail proposition that would bring media content and electronic devices together under one brand. We will pursue this strategy through our Blockbuster stores as a way to diversify the business and better serve the entertainment retail segment," said Jim Keyes, Chairman and CEO of the company.

The problem is the increasingly tight profit margins for consumer electronics. Even Best Buy, the undisputed heavyweight champion of US brick and mortar electronics specialty stores, faces slimmer margins as video game console sales grow and demand for other products like DVD shrinks.

O2 has noted that due to "extremely high levels of demand" for pre-orders of the upcoming iPhone 3G, their online shop has crashed and they are working to bring it back.

"We have made a limited allocation of iPhone 3G stock available for pre-order online, primarily for those customers that pre-registered their interest."

"Due to extremely high levels of demand, the O2 online shop was temporarily unavailable this morning. We are working to restore the service back to full speed as quickly as possible."

The carrier also added that customers who want to purchase the phone but cannot get it online should try to get to a retail store at 8 am on July 11th, the earliest time available.

"We’ve never seen any mobile device create the excitement and demand of the iPhone 3G," said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 in the UK.

"We want to ensure that everyone who wants an iPhone 3G can get one so we’ll be working with Apple to continually replenish our supplies throughout the summer."

On July 13 Pioneer will be giving a presentation at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage where they'll discuss recent advances that apparently make discs with up to 16 layers possible. Although other companies have found ways to radically increase the number of layers on an optical disc, Pioneer seems to be the first company to manage it with as much as 25GB per layer, making it very similar to Blu-ray.

In fact the company has said "it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs." That could potentially mean a single Blu-ray disc capable of storing up to 400GB with the new technology.

Of course that's assuming a number of things, including that manufacturing costs, which are already very high for even single layer Blu-ray discs, come down significantly. The large amount of data per layer for Blu-ray increases the precision required to make them compared to DVD, resulting in a higher percentage of bad (unreadable) discs. It's reasonable to assume that putting 16 such layers on a single disc would lower yields even further.

As the RIAA's campaign of file sharing lawsuits against customers has gone on a number of interesting legal questions have been raised about how investigations are being conducted. MediaSentry is responsible for finding and identifying computers sharing copyrighted music on behalf of RIAA attorneys. One important question that has yet to be answered is whether they are required by law to be licensed as private investigators.

According to a letter from MediaSentry lawyers to Michigan regulators they believe the answer is no. The letter is in reply to another, in which Michigan officials suggested that MediaSentry's investigations might put them in violation of state law with respect to what activities require a private investigator's license. The original letter notes the following requirement.

A person, firm, partnership, company, limited liability company, or corporation shall not engage in the business of furnishing or supplying, for hire and reward, information as to the personal character of any person or firm, or as to the character or kind of business and occupation of any person, firm, partnership, company, limited liability company, or corporation and shall not own, conduct, or maintain a bureau or agency for the purposes described in this subsection except as to the financial rating of persons, firms, partnerships, companies, limited liability companies, or corporations without having first obtained a license from the department.

Ian Dobsyn, from Manchester, returned home from a vacation in Portugal last week and found that he had been hit with a monumental £31,500 mobile bill from Yes Telecom.

The man had used his mobile broadband connection to download Sky’s "Prison Break" as well as some music and was shocked by the bill. "The figures looked like they had come down from the Moon,” said Dobsyn. "I just laughed. There had to be some mistake."

After hiring a lawyer, the bill was brought down to £229, a number only slightly higher than his standard £150 monthly bill.

Danielle Mestraud, of Farleys Solicitors in Manchester, added that this episode should show customers to read the fine print before accessing television programming while abroad.

She added: "…service providers also have a responsibility. It would be better if subscribers were given a monthly maximum spend so they could be notified if they had breached it, rather than only finding out when the bill arrives. It would be prudent for the provider to contact the customer if their usage was unusually high."

LG has announced the introduction of its inaugural line of digital Freeview Playback DVD recorders with built-in HDDs.

The three DVRs, dubbed the LG RHT399H, LG RHT398H and LG RHT397H can receive up to 40 digital channels and offer time shifting allowing users to record, as well as pause and rewind live TV.

The RHT399H offers the largest built-in HDD, 320GB. The company says that should allow for 935 hours of recording time.

The DVRs also offer a "series link" function which allows you to record full seasons of TV shows with ease. Each also offer "high speed copying mode" which gives users the ability to copy 60 minutes of video to a DVD or the HDD in about 27 seconds.

The high end RHT399H also offers 1080p upscaling through HDMI, Super Multi DVD recording ability, DivX movie playback and "optical output to get digital audio directly to a home cinema system." Each also offers LG's SIMPLINK to easily connect the setup to other LG products in the house.

Image Entertainment has announced they have finally secured a DVD distribution deal with ThinkFilm allowing the company to breathe new air into their DVD rental business that has been stuttering for some time.

The company projects the new deal will bring in $16.5 million USD for fiscal 2009, accounting for 13 percent of the anticipated $125 million in revenue for the period.

As major studios continue to close their independent theatrical divisions, Image feels it can take the market for quality, direct-to-DVD features. Consumers will usually buy the latest Hollywood blockbuster but may be more likely to want to rent star-driven, but unfamiliar movies.

“There are less studios supplying rental product, especially within the indie category” , said Bill Bromiley, Image chief acquisitions officer, “We are looking for product that producers thought would be a theatrical film when they made it and for whatever reason didn’t quite turn out. These are bigger budgeted, cast-driven films. … There needs to be a home for them.”

As we reported 2 weeks ago, Universal Music Group (UMG) wants to dismiss a long-running file sharing lawsuit against Marie Lindor. UMG's lawyers are trying to get the lawsuit dismissed without prejudice, which would mean they make no admission of being wrong, and are therefore not liable for Ms. Lindor's legal expenses. This is based largely on the claim of "false statements and misdirection" by the defendant and her lawyer, Ray Beckerman. They've even gone so far as to request that Ms. Lindor pay their legal costs.

Mr. Beckerman is well known for his blog detailing lawsuits filed in the RIAA's war against their customers. Not surprisingly he's written a response to the judge hearing the case in which he rebuts UMG's claims of victimization at the hands of the defendant.

He denies their assertion that he's attempted to block legitimate discovery attempts, saying his client made it clear to the plaintiffs from the beginning that she was available to be deposed at any time, and also that they instructed her children to cooperate as well.

Onkyo has announced that despite switching to Blu-ray support in February after the demise of rival HD DVD, its first Blu-ray player will not be available until the holiday season of this year.

The player is designed to integrate with Onkyo's high-end A/V receivers and will have full 1080p/24 support through HDMI 1.3a as well as audio decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

Before Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD, Onkyo revealed it had sold just over 2000 players. The company claimed to be an "enthusiastic" supporter of the format at the time.

Onkyo did not give an exact release date or pricing but that information should be available soon.

Noel Gallagher, songwriter and guitarist for the popular band Oasis is making headlines with his comments suggesting that videogames are partially to blame for the explosion in knife crimes that have occurred in London over the course of the year. So far, 18 teenagers have died in knife related attacks.

"People say it's through violent video games and I guess that's got something to do with it," he said, "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they're playing these videogames, it's really, really scary."

The knife crimes have been big news in the UK over the last couple of months and celebrities have called upon the government to find a solution.

"In my day, status was trying to be somebody, do you know what I mean, not trying to kill somebody? I was up in Liverpool for a week a couple of weeks ago and even on the news there it's every single night.

"I don't even know what Cameron or Gordon Brown are going to do about it," he added.

Sony has announced that it will launching a fourth model of the PlayStation 2 in Europe and India on October 28th in an effort to "penetrate India's and Russia's burgeoning market for games."

Sony country manager Atindriya Bose says the launch will be simultaneous for the new markets and that the new model will be a slim model with built-in AC adapters.

"PS2 is an entry-level console, which helps first timers to enter the gaming zone," added Bose.

Bose also noted the new model will keep the same retail price of the outgoing PS2 models, older, fatter versions.

"We feel PS2 has the potential to penetrate further into the Indian and Russian markets. Console gaming is in its nascent stage in India. These are untapped markets and are new to the gaming world, hence we have no plans to phase out PS2 anytime soon," he added.

According to the latest data figures from Media Create, the popular Sony handheld PlayStation Portable has once again topped hardware sales in Japan.

For the week ended June 29th, the PSP sold 58,861 units in the region, followed closely by both the Nintendo Wii and the DS which sold 48,884 and 48,480 units respectively.

With the sales of Metal Gear Solid 4 falling, the PlayStation 3 saw its sales fall abit as well, down to 17,973 from 20,336 console unit sales the week before.

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has announced it has agreed to drop a patent dispute with Interdigital over wireless and 3G technologies in the UK.

Interdigital said the lawsuit had pertained to the whether the 36 technologies were "essential to the UMTS third-generation telephony standard."

The companies had been in the patent battle since 2005 in the UK but despite the latest agreement, still continue to fight it out in the US.

The original suit, filed in July 2005 by Nokia, asked the High Court in London to "declare that 31 European patents of InterDigital were not essential to the UMTS mobile technology standards." Interdigital countersued in December 2006.

Interdigital continues to be in a similar patent dispute with Samsung.

An Amsterdam Court of Appeals has ruled against the Dutch web host LeaseWeb , meaning the host will have to divulge the personal information of torrent tracker Everlasting.nl to the anti-piracy agent BREIN.

Late last year BREIN began its attacks on LeaseWeb, claiming that it was the host to many large torrent sites. It won an injunction on a few of the sites including Everlasting.nl and the courts ordered that the personal information be released to the authorities. BREIN was happy with the decision, but LeaseWeb vowed to fight and the appeal has dragged on for months.

"Leaseweb is to file an appeal against the preliminary injunction relating to the 'Everlasting' bit torrent site hosted by Leaseweb. This means that the court of appeal in Amsterdam will hear the full case against the Brein foundation again," LeaseWeb originally said.

LeaseWeb first made headlines when BREIN got the huge torrent tracker Demonoid shut down. The tracker however has since moved to servers in other countries and seems to be back up and running.

“In a recent case at the Amsterdam District Court, LeaseWeb was ordered to take down such sites. Although LeaseWeb has filed an appeal and will keep fighting for its client’s rights up to the highest court, LeaseWeb regrettably has no choice but to obey the court order and take down sites that list (bittorrent/edonkey) files,” read the original statement from the web host as well.

A week before its US launch on July 11th, AT&T has finally announced the finalization of its pricing plans for the upcoming iPhone 3G.

As we know, the 8GB model will sell for $199 USD and the 16GB model for $299 along with mandatory 2-year contracts. The reduced prices are eligible to current subscribers, new AT&T customers and anyone current iPhone users that purchased the first generation phone before July 11th.

AT&T users that are "not eligible" can buy the device for $399 and $499 respectively and will have to switch to a new 2-year contract as well.

All users will also have to sign up for the $30-a-month unlimited data plan as well. Each user will need a voice plan to go with the data plan, and the cheapest AT&T voice plan is $39.99 for 450 anytime minutes and 5,000 night and weekend minutes. The most expensive is $99.99 per month and will get you unlimited minutes.

Additionally, if users want text messaging, they will have to pay extra. Unlimited for $20, 1,500 for $15 or 200 for $5. First generation iPhone users had unlimited text messaging included in the data plan.

Earlier this year, it was reported that both the UK and France were planning a "3 Strikes" plan that would ban alleged file sharers from the Internet after three warnings.

Although the legislation has still not gone to a vote, there has been word that a few UK ISPs are voluntarily working with the record industry to come to arrangements that could possibly include a 3 strikes rule. Of course it is important to note that this 3 Strikes rule will not give extra money t the artists, which is the record industry's reasoning for such a move.

The main backer of the legislation, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been putting more weight behind the bill as of late and the subject has been controversial in the UK as well as across the ocean here in the US.

Making the situation even more controversial now is the fact that La Quadrature du Net, a French pressure group, has seen that a 3 strikes amendment has been silently added to the European telecoms law currently in the European Parliament. The bill for the most part is dealing with network infrastructure, universal service and other telecom issues. “One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications (”Telecom Package”), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users..

According to figures by Enterbrain, the Nintendo Wii's lead over the Sony PlayStation 3 has been closing since May, from a 6:1 margin to a much more reasonable 1.7:1 margin.

For the five week period that ended June 29th, Nintendo sold 235,990 Wii units while Sony moved 139,494 PS3 units. The Wii has held a dominant lead for seven consecutive months and this recent gap closing can and should be attributed to the blockbuster smash hit Metal Gear Solid 4. However, sales for the game have slowed down and it placed a lowly 8th last week, behind much older games such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Wii Fit.

My prediction is that the Wii will be back up to a 4:1 margin by the end of July, especially as the PS3 has no blockbusters hitting the market.

Roku has announced that it will be bringing more streaming content providers to its new set-top box soon, allowing users to have more content than just movies and TV from Netflix.

The Roku box has been very popular since its release, even though only 10 percent of Netflix's content is available for streaming and the quality is just under DVD. When the support for other content providers hits, Roku will have the first box to offer content from more than one source. Currently AppleTV and Vudu still offer content from a single source.

Netflix continues to add content daily to its streaming service and over time hopes to have most of its catalog available. If Roku owners can be patient, then the cheap feature heavy set-top box can be a very useful piece of technology in the future.

After receiving tons of complaints, Telia Sonera has changed its tune and will offer upcoming Apple iPhone 3G owners the option for an unlimited data plan. Users will also be able to choose between its existing voice plans.

Last week Telia released details on the upcoming iPhone 3G launch saying users would only be allowed to purchase data plans offering 100, 250, or 1000 minutes, SMS, and data on plans that cost as much as 859 SEK per month. Telia was "flooded" with complaints and has now decided to offer an unlimited plan. There was no word on the price however.

In Canada, a similar situation has been brewing, where Rogers has hit users with very expensive data plans that offer little SMS and daytime minutes. This is also on top of a mandatory 3-year contract. According to Ruinediphone.com, there is a petition going around to stop Rogers' exploitive data rates and has already reached 31,000 signatures.

The Big 4 record label EMI has sued 12 video sites including the social-networking site Hi5 and the video advertising start-up VideoEgg, claiming copyright infringement on hundreds of EMI's music videos.

The label wants $150,000 USD for each song infringed as well as lawyer fees. EMI also wants all the sites shut down for good.

"Defendant VideoEgg purports to offer technology and services that allow users, through websites operated by VideoEgg's 'partners' to upload digital videos to VideoEgg servers, view those videos, and then distribute them virally and for free over the Internet...Among the videos copied, publically performed, and distributed by VideoEgg, Hi5, and/or their users are videos containing Plaintiffs's sound recordings and musical compositions," reads the complaint.

The lawsuit did not add much about the 10 other sites.

Sources have said that Hi5 and EMI have been trying to work out a content deal for over a year but efforts have fallen through.

"We are disappointed that EMI is pursuing legal action when the law provided clear means to address their concerns," VideoEgg said in a statement. "We have always complied with the copyright laws and are entitled to safe harbor under the DMCA from any claims brought by EMI." VideoEgg also says it never once received a takedown notice from EMI and would have taken down the videos had they received one.

Virgin Media has denied recent reports that it plans to disconnect 'pirates' from the Internet for unauthorized file sharing and instead is working a policy out with the music industry. There is “absolutely no possibility” that users will be disconnected or that private details will be handed over to the record industry, added the company.

The BPI, the British equivalent of the RIAA, has been pushing UK ISP's to be more responsible with the actions of an estimated 6 million citizens who allegedly share files. On one end, there is Virgin Media who says it is working with the music industry, while on the other end there is Carphone Warehouse who has refused to comply with the demands.

Virgin has been hit with a publicity blitz as of late after it was revealed that Virgin users were receiving ‘educational warnings‘ at the behest of the BPI. The letters began with “Important: If you don’t read this, your broadband could be disconnected” so many were led to believe that their Internet would indeed be shut off by the ISP. Virgin has changed its tune however and is now saying that header was a "mistake" and that it should be ignored.

Linksys has introduced a new wireless router designed specifically with streaming media mind. WRT610N is a dual band router that the company claims is better suited for streaming than others.

"There are products on the market that are framed as Dual-Band that allow access to only one band at a time or lose transmission speeds when both bands are in use," said Mani Dhillon, director, Linksys Consumer Business Organization. "As consumers begin to use the 5GHz spectrum for their multimedia devices, it becomes more important to have access to the full capabilities of both bands."

On a typical network anything from internet downloads to print jobs can interfere with smooth streaming, which relies on a consistent level of throughput.

The WRT610N also features Wi-Fi Protected Setup, a feature available on a growing number of wireless devices that simplifies setup by allowing them to connect with relatively little user interaction. Instead they can simply push a button on the device and it will automatically negotiate a connection to the router.

Although this has a lot of potential for storage devices it's currently found primarily in access points and external wireless network adapapters. However, the Wi-Fi Alliance currently lists three multimedia projectors certified for the feature.

We have some new addition to our Guides section. The new guides are an entire series intended to help you work with subtitles. They concentrate primarily on VobSub's IDX and SUB format, but also include additional information for dealing with subtitles in VobSub's SRT format, as well as SubStation Alpha SSA files.
Subtitles ExplainedAn introduction to what subtitles are, how they work, and three common subtitle formats

Rip Subtitles with VobSub

Convert Subtitles from SUB / IDX to SRT

Convert Subtitles from SUB / IDX to SSA

Mozilla has officially announced the results of their world record attempt for the most softoware downloads in a 24 hour period and not surprisingly they've succeeded. Technically this only means at least 1 person downloaded Firefox 3 on its launch date, but the official tally is a slightly higher 8,002,530.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," said Gareth Deaves, Records Manager for Guinness World Records. "Mobilizing over 8 million internet users within 24 hours is an extremely impressive accomplishment and we would like to congratulate the Mozilla community for their hard work and dedication."

The real win for Mozilla has been the buzz generated over a new browser release. They still have a long way to go if they want to catch Microsoft in browser market share. Due in no small part to the world record promotion, Firefox 3 was downloaded around 5 times more on launch day than the previous release. It also beat Mozilla's stated goal of 5 million downloads by more than 50%.

US District Court Judge Louis L. Stanton has ruled that Google must turn over to Viacom logs showing what videos have been watched on YouTube and when. The information will include login names and IP addresses for the viewers.

Viacom is suing the search giant for YouTube's allegedl failure to live up to their legal responsibility for actively combating piracy on the service. Google has owned YouTube in 2006.

According to the ruling, "A markedly higher proportion of infringing-video watching may bear on plaintiffs’ vicarious liability claim, and defendants’ substantial non-infringing use defense."

Viacom lawyers are claiming that YouTube intentionally turned a blind eye to copyright infringement because of the traffic it generated, and they're hoping to show that YouTube officials knew, or should have known, the correllation between popularity and piracy.

This is essentially an end-run around Google's claim that they've done everything required by law by responding to DMCA takedown notices in a timely manner.

Viacom hopes to take advantage of the standard established in MGM v. Grokster that a business which is built primarily on piracy isn't eligible to claim a defense of 'substantial non-infringing use.' That would mean the DMCA defense doesn't apply.

As the primary backer of HD DVD, Toshiba spent a lot of money developing technology that they didn't get a lot of use out of. Some features from HD DVD players, like upscaling, fit nicely into standard DVD players. Others, like web-enabled content, aren't quite as applicable. Sure you could put the same capabilities into a DVD player, but with no official standard you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to take advantage of it.

Now it looks like they're hoping to establish such a standard as DVD Download. At their last meeting in June, the DVD Forum's steering committee, headed by Toshiba, approved a logo for it.

Although it's not a definite sign that Toshiba will be adding any type of web-features to their DVD players, as one of the last major companies to seriously support the continued development of actual DVD technology (Blu-ray is separate from the DVD Forum), they may be in a position to push for adoption of HD DVD features in the DVD specs.

On June 11 the DVD Forum's Steering Committee met for the second time this year. Their biannual meetings usually result in boring discussions about bureaucratic matters, but not so this time around. That's not entirely surprising considering it's the first meeting with an agenda set entirely after HD DVD's demise at the hands of Blu-ray earlier this year.

You might think Blu-ray's victory in February would have immediately halted any serious discussion about new HD DVD development, but you'd be wrong. In fact a format called C-HD DVD is still in development. The C stands for China, which is where it's being developed and expected to be sold.

Don't expect this to mean the return of HD DVD in the rest of the world, at least not any time soon. It's not in the studios' interest to rekindle the format war. And it's hard to believe the executives who were apparently blind sided by Toshiba's decision to suddenly drop HD DVD are lining up to repeat that experience.

After many complaints surfaced that the latest PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 2.40, was bricking user's consoles, Sony has confirmed that it is looking into the matter.

The latest update, which will bring gamers a few of their most requested features, in-game XMB (XrossMediaBar) and "trophies" for online gaming, was officially released this morning but many users have claimed that the update is freezing or even bricking their consoles, making reformatting the hard drive the only solution.

"We're aware that some PS3 users are reporting issues after downloading and installing the 2.40 firmware update onto their system," said a rep.

"We are looking into the matter further and will work with our customers to address any related issues they may be experiencing with their PS3 systems."

On the official Sony PlayStation boards, there is currently a 42 page thread based on the problem, and I would implore current PS3 users to check it before deciding to update to 2.40.

Cablevision has announced that it will be giving subscribers access to another 15 free HD channels, making 60 channels available now to customers.

Beginning at the end of July, the cable operator will be adding Nickelodeon, WE tv, AMC, Animal Planet, The Weather Channel, Travel Channel, FOX News Channel, Discovery Channel, Hallmark Movie Channel and FX.

Cablevision currently has 3 million subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and says that 1.1 million of those have "at least one high-definition TV and HD-enabled set-top box."

The move is seen as an effort to fight off growing competition from satellite companies such as DIRECTV and DISH and more notably, Verizon's growing FiOS network.

Analysts have long said that customers are under the impression that satellite TV offers more and better HD quality services than cable, but that is not entirely correct. Although the satellite companies do offer more HD channels, the quality is equal to that of cable. DIRECTV currently offers 95 HD channels and DISH offers 80. FiOS offers 30 but says 30 more are coming by the end of September.

According to sales data from Amazon Japan, it appears that in the region, sales of Blu-ray discs are finally outselling their standard definition counterparts, at least for a couple of genres.

Nikkei has reported that for the first six months of 2008, Sony Pictures’ Resident Evil Trilogy Boxset on Blu-ray was the best selling movie product for the whole site, “significantly outperforming” the DVD version.

"Many software manufactures consider that 'action' is the genre that can make the most of Blu-ray," Amazon stated.

"The Blu-ray share is expected to grow among new titles especially in this genre from now on. Blu-ray 's high definition has greatly improved the reproducibility of details and is enchanting anime fans who put weight on image quality."

Officials from Microsoft have now confirmed that their Xbox 360 console line will be seeing a price cut, at least in Australia and New Zealand.

The Elite and Premium models will drop AU$80 to AU$579 and $AU649 respectively, while the Arcade will drop to AU$349, making it cheaper than the Nintendo Wii in the region.

Last week, KMart fliers showed that a $50 USD price cut was coming for the Premium model in the US, but Microsoft has still not confirmed the cut, or what the price drop would be for the Elite and Arcade models.

Data figures have shown that the 360 is currently being outsold by the Wii by a 4:1 margin and that the PlayStation 3 is also outselling the 360, although it is by a smaller margin. The PS3 sells for AU$699 in Australia and the Wii is priced at AU$399.

Pioneer has announced the launch of 4 new Blu-ray players, three Bonus View and one BD-Live compliant.

The Bonus View players are the BDP-LX08, BDP-LX71, and BDP-51FD and the BD-Live player (Profile 2.0) is the BDP-LX91. The company says the players each have "redesigned chipsets to improve overall performance."

As is now standard, each player can handle 1080p/24 as well as HDMI 1.3a. According to the press release, "HDMI 12-Bit Deep Colour support guarantees smooth transitions between different shades and delivers an unprecedented range of colour tones, recreating the natural world on the TV screen." The players also have internal decoding for DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD.

Mitsubishi has introduced a new line of LCD displays, dubbed the 149 Series, that replace the standard stereo speakers of most TVs with "a 16-point audio system, much like speaker bars, that can generate a 5.1-channel surround effect without occupying the physical space."

The first two TVs to use this new system, called the integrated Sound Projector, are the 46-inch LT46149 and 52-inch LT-52149 and can utilize the system to "optimize the sound field for a certain room size and sweet spot to more convincingly generate audio."

Beyond the excellent speakers, the full HD 1080p 149 series comes with a 120Hz refresh rate and can also accept one-way CableCARDs for tuning cable-based HDTV without the need for a cable set top box.

Apple and AT&T have both confirmed that US customers who cannot, or simply do not want to sign into a two-year contract, will be allowed to purchase the new iPhone 3G, for $599 USD and $699 USD for the 8GB and 16GB models respectively.

For those who purchase the phone along with a 2-yr contract including mandatory data plan, the cost is only $199 and $299 respectively when the phones go on sale July 11th.

There is of course, a hitch to the new announcement. AT&T says to be able to buy the phone at all, consumers must sign up for some type of AT&T wireless subscription.

There was no word on when this new type of agreement would become available.

After Real announced yesterday that it was opening up a DRM-free MP3 Rhapsody store, Verizon followed with an announcement of their own.

The company will be expanding its VCast Music service to allow MP3 downloads as well as the new Rhapsody service, meaning mobile users can download as much music as they want for $15 USD a month. Individual tracks can still be purchased for 99 cents and moved from a PC to the phone via a USB cable.

The new service expansion will work with 7 of Verizon's current phones and 3 that are coming soon. Verizon already has a similar subscription deal with Napster.

The new deal should help Verizon and Real compete with the dominant market leader Apple whose iTunes platform recently hit 5 billion song downloads.

Nokia has announced they have signed a deal with Warner Music Group to make Warner music available through the phone maker's "Comes With Music" service as well as the Nokia music store.

"Comes With Music" is different from most other phone maker content services in that it allows users to keep all the music they have downloaded. It as unlimited subscription based model that costs $20 USD per month.

"(Comes With Music) is the first global initiative to fundamentally align the interests of music companies with telecommunications companies," said Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music Group Chief Executive.

Nokia has already struck similar deals with Universal and Sony BMG meaning the three large labels will have their catalogs available on the service when it launches in the Q3 this year.

Nokia, the world's largest phone maker, says it sold 146 million music-enabled phones last year. The current market for digital music downloads is $2.9 billion USD.

Sony has announced the upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 2.40 which will hit tomorrow and will give gamers a few of their most requested features, in-game XMB (XrossMediaBar) and "trophies" for online gaming.

The in-game XMB will allow users to access the PS3 menu during gameplay by hitting the PS button on the controller. Gamers can then check if any of their friends are online, as well as change settings or send messages without having to quit playback. Less notably, the Friends list will double to allow 100 friends which should be welcomed by those who are avid PSN users.

The new update will also bring "trophies to recognize players’ achievements in the online arena." Many games will eventually have gold, silver and bronze trophies, or platinum if you can get all three.

Sony says the first games to have trophy support are BUZZ! Quiz TV, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm™ Pacific Rift, NBA 09, PAIN, PixelJunk Eden, Resistance 2, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation and Warhawk.