News archive (9 / 2008)

PC giant Dell has announced that it will begin pre-loading movies on some of its new PCs.

Beginning with the blockbuster hit Iron Man, Inspiron 1525 notebooks and XPS 420/630 can optionally have a digital copy already installed on the PC when you purchase it. The digital copy will also come with bonus special features.

The company says you cannot burn the copies to DVD but you can share them around a network using a Windows Media Extender such as the Xbox 360.

Dell says it will have titles from all studios but will focus only on blockbusters or classic movies rather than offer an entire catalog. The optional digital copy will be priced at $20 USD like its DVD counterpart but there was no word on whether that is standard pricing.

There was no technical details available about the digital copy but it will most likely have over 4000Kbs video bitrate and at least 192Kbs audio bitrate, just as most digital copies have now.

Earlier this month we reported that a legal DVD ripping application was coming from RealNetworks by the end of the month.

The software, RealDVD, has now successfully launched today and with the launch RealNetworks has also announced they have filed a lawsuit against the major Hollywood studios hoping to have the court rule that the program "fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association's license agreement."

The suit names the DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox among others.

RealNetworks claims that the software "allows consumers to securely store, manage and play their DVDs on their computers" and "does not enable users to distribute copies of their DVDs." It also mentions that RealDVD adds another layer of DRM to the ripped movies which makes it much harder to move to films off the computer that has the program installed.

Microsoft has made a statement saying that since they cut the price across the board for their Xbox 360 console, the system has been outselling its rival, the Sony PlayStation 3, by a two-to-one ratio.

Figures from Chart Track seem to back up that statement, saying sale are up 215 percent since the price cut was announced in Europe.

"This data shows that the Xbox 360 trajectory continues upwards, and not just in the UK," added Chris Lewis, VP of Xbox in Europe.

"We've seen uplift in all countries in Europe and are confident that even at this rate of growth we can keep retail satisfied with a steady supply of consoles throughout the Christmas season."

The company did not however, go into detailed units sales for the last month.

"Our commitment to continuously improving and innovating new content, our new high-profile marketing campaign and the fact that we’re now the best-value next-gen console on the market with an entry-level ERP of GBP 129.99 combine to make Xbox 360 the right blend of gaming and wider experiences at the right price to offer unparalleled entertainment for everyone. And these figures prove it," finsished Lewis.

According to the Xbox 360 DVD Drive Database, the new 'Jasper' Xbox 360s have begun shipping as of August in the UK and in the US.

The 'Jasper' hardware revision is the shrinking of the GPU from a 90nm chip to a 65nm chip which the company hopes will keep the system cooler and significantly reduce the now infamous 'red ring of death', the sign that your 360 needs to be replaced.

Overall, Microsoft has spent $1 billion USD in replacing 360s that have failed (mainly from overheating) which has dipped into profits the software maker is making on the console.

The database says the Arcade model is shipping with the Jasper revisions in the UK, the US and other countries around Europe. A new update marked this week shows the Elite model shipping to the US with the Jasper revisions.

While we don't normally post simple Blu-ray or DVD releases, it is clear that the blockbuster smash The Dark Knight is going to be the biggest Blu-ray release of the year and possibly the biggest Blu-ray release to date, so we felt it was important to write on Warner Bro's announcement that the film will be the studio's first BD-Live capable release when it hits stores on December 9th.

According to HDDigest, there will be a standard release and a "limited edition release" and that the "tech specs for the standard version include the 153-minute feature film spread across a BD-50 dual-layer disc with 1080p/VC-1 video (2.40:1) and English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround audio. (Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround dubs and subtitles are also provided in English, French-Quebec and Spanish.)

The House of Representatives has unanimously passed the bill that will greenlight an agreement between Internet Radio companies and SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization that collects royalties for the record labels and the RIAA.

In March 2007 the federal Copyright Royalty Board negotiated new royalty rates for digital broadcasters that would have increased the rates to levels where the Internet Radio companies could no longer stay in business. Recently however, before the new rates come into effect, the two sides have been negotiating a deal and the deal seems imminent. There is however, one problem, and that is the fact that Congress is preparing to adjourn until the elections and "because Internet radio companies operate under a government license, any final agreement needs congressional authorization."

The new bill that passed means the sides can continue negotiatons until February 15th of next year and makes sure that any deal agreed upon while Congress is in recess is legally binding.

Earlier this week, the most popular of Internet Radio sites, Pandora made a call for help asking to get the bill passed through and it seems to have worked. Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora said that if the rates go up then over $17 million of Pandora's estimated $25 million revenue will go to paying off royalties.

Norway Consumer Ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon, after two years of being at odds with Apple, is now bringing his case to the Norwegian Market Council, hoping the council will force the company to remove its FairPlay DRM and allow users to play back their iTunes-purchased music on players other than the iPod.

"The Ombudsman demands that the consumers themselves should be able to choose what music device they would like to use to listen to music bought from the iTunes Store," he said.

Thon adds that Apple uses the DRM to "dictate" what hardware the music is played back on. "As of today, the only portable players able to play files downloaded from iTunes are Apples own iPods," read his original complaint from 2006.

This morning, the popular software maker Nero AG announced the launch of three new exciting products, Nero TiVo PC, Move it and an updated media suite, now known as Nero 9

If you are interested in purchasing Nero, please visit their site while supporting AfterDawn by using this link: Download Nero 9

If you have any questions about Nero or need help, please visit our unofficial forums here: Nero discussion forums

Nero TiVo PC

According to a new report, Hitachi is expected to show off a new "super resolution" upconversion technology at the upcoming CEATEC show in Japan.

The company says the technology will upscale DVD and SDTV images to near 1080p resolution and will also improve the way HDTV broadcasts look.

There was no detailed information on how the process will work but a researcher at the company says the technology "analyzes the luminance signals of input images before processing multiple regions at a time."

Electronista says the "super resolution technology processes images on a frame-by-frame basis, and does so in real-time. It has the ability to selectively process SDTV and HDTV images on the same screen that occur during relay broadcasts, for example, upconverting either. Also, the software can differentiate between a sharp image, such as a close-up, and less vivid areas, including backgrounds, thereby not having an adverse effect on perspective. This is in contrast with existing upconverting methods, which enhance images from a specific resolution at a fixed rate."

According to Bloomberg, the class action lawsuit filed last year over the iPhone battery has been thrown out.

The suit was started by an angry iPhone owner by the name of Jose Trujillo and claimed that Apple was misleading customers by not informing them that the iPhone battery was not user-replaceable and that battery would only last a little over a year. A replacement from Apple costs $86 USD.

U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly has thrown out the case however and added, “Apple disclosed on the outside of the iPhone package that the” battery has “‘limited recharge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced by Apple service provide,…Under the circumstances, no reasonable jury could find that deception occurred.”

AT&T, also named in the suit, may not be so lucky however, as they attempted to force the matter into arbitration as per their service terms. The judge said however that Trujillo did not have paper copies of the TOS when he bought the phone and scheduled a hearing for September 29th.

Apple has begun selling unlocked iPhones in Hong Kong today, marking one of the few times the company has allowed the phone to sell in such a fashion. An unlocked phone can be used on any GSM carrier and is not tied down to any specific carrier.

Until now in Hong Kong, only users of Hutchison Telecom could use the iPhone but now the phone will be available to anyone using a GSM carrier.

The unlocked iPhone will sell for a high premium however, $695 USD for the 8GB model and $795 USD for the larger capacity 16GB model.

In the US, where the phone sells the best, AT&T sells the phone with 2 year contract for $199 and $299 USD but will eventually sell the phone unlocked for $599 USD.

According to a new Nikkei business daily, gaming giant Nintendo is planning to release a new model of its popular DS handheld before the end of the year, one that has a built-in camera and a music player.

The price will be a bit more expensive than the current model, but will also come equipped with "advanced wireless communications functions." The price is expected to be about $189 USD in Japan, according to the Nikkei. The console sells for much cheaper in the US, but there was no word on a NA release.

The official announcement is set for next week at a Tokyo press conference.

The DS is currently the most popular of all consoles and regularly outsells its main rival, the Sony PSP. The PSP however, has been outselling the DS in Japan for some time now, which is a potential sign that the current model's sales growth is slowing.

Last month we reported that SoundExchange had killed off Internet radio by upping royalties to levels that cannot be sustained by any company. Pandora, the largest and most popular of current Internet radio companies, admitted that day that they are most likely going to have to shut down if the royalty charges are not lowered.

Yesterday we received an email from a Pandora representative which was very interesting and I will post in its entirety later in this article. In the email, the rep says that the RIAA and SoundExchange have come to their senses and are ready to agree to lower royalties to levels where an Internet company can survive and the trade groups can make the profit they want. It appears there is another roadblock however, one being brought forward by the traditional radio broadcasters, most notably Clear Channel Communications. The entire email as we received it:

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora;

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, SoundExchange and the RIAA are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we've gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.

The European Parliament has once again voted against the proposed "three strikes" plan on unauthorized files sharers that would ban three time offenders from the Internet.

Earlier this year MEPs backed an amendment to the Bono Report on the Cultural Industries in which EU members were asked to "avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights... such as the interruption of internet access".

This time, the vote was a landslide however, 573-74 in favor of the amendment and the killing of the "three strikes" plan.

"You don't play with individual freedoms like that," added Guy Bono, the MEP who originally proposed the amendment. Bono believes France should revoke their current "three strikes" plan.

Earlier this week the BPI said that there was "no way" that UK ISPs would cut off file sharers from the Internet.

Steven Fiatarone, 55, of Florida, has been sentenced to three years probation today for his part in running a server used by a Warez scene group. Additionally, Fiatarone was fined $2000 USD.

According to the US DOJ, Fiatarone's server, nicknamed "The Nite Ranger Hideout" was located in a school in Virginia and Fiatarone uploaded over 23,000 files to the server in 2002 and 2003. Fiatarone faced up to 3 years if convicted by a jury but instead pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

A few of the cracked programs Fiatarone was accused of uploading include Pro/Concept and ColdFusion MX version 6.0.1.

Fiatarone was the second of five men charged in the same indictment for their warez activities. Robert Hardick of New York was sentenced last month to three years probation and the other three cases are still pending.

Just like almost every other DRM-based music store before them, Wal-Mart has announced that they will be shutting down their DRM servers as of October 9th, killing off any music you have purchased from the retailer, unless you burn the music to CD and then rip it back DRM-free.

The full email from the Wal-Mart team is as follows:

From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com

Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases

We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart's MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.

According to a Billboard report, Universal Music Group is set to launch their own online music video portal, one that should be set up similarly to NBC's Hulu movie and TV streaming site.

Citing insider sources, the report says the service would host music videos as well as "artist-focused content and editorial." UMG said it would also welcome content from other labels.

UMG currently has a licensing deal with YouTube for music videos and other clips but the company says the new site will not affect the YouTube deal.

The UMG channel of YouTube is the second most popular of all licensed deals, with over 2.6 billion videos streamed so far.

This morning the popular social networking site MySpace launched its highly anticipated MySpace Music service, a joint venture between MySpacec and the Big 4 record labels.

Evolving from simple artists pages, the new MySpace Music allows for artist's pages to stream their entire catalogs if necessary and a few artists have already made hundreds of songs available. Prince for example, has almost his entire catalog available already.

The service makes money from advertising revenue, which surrounds all the music but will not impede listening to the song. The site will also direct you to Amazon MP3 if you want to download the track after you have streamed it.

The service will also offer artist merchandise and concert tickets at some point and will allow users to make playlists of up to 100 songs and then embed it in their profiles.

The Pirate Bay has won their appeal against the decision that had their site blocked in Italy last month. The Court of Bergamo has ruled that the block was unlawful and that Italian users must regain their access to the site.

Last month the infamous torrent tracker was blocked all access by Italian ISPs following the decree by a prosecutor. The move backfired however, and traffic to the site actually increased during the time it was blocked.

In a blog post, Peter Sunde, one of the admins at the site adds, "The Pirate Bay won the case in Italy. The lawyers have done a fantastic job!

Will report on this later!

Update: Even though I don’t think the site is accessible in Italy via many ISPs yet, the site had a new record in visitors coming from Italy today. By 12%!"

According to the South China Morning Post, China Mobile is set to start selling the Apple iPhone 3G, but stripped of its 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities in order to comply with Chinese regulations.

It may not be a difference to China Mobile however, which is excited to sell the popular handset in the most populated country on the planet. The carrier says there are already 400,000 jailbroken iPhones on its network however, despite no official launch in the nation.

One of the reasons behind stripping out the 3G is that it is widely expected that the carrier will build its 3G network using the TD-SCDMA standard. Rival China Telecom is expected to use the W-CDMA standard so stripping out the 3G will make the phone less appealing to users who plan to buy it and jailbreak it for use on the rival carrier.

Researcher In-Stat says the potential market for the iPhone is about 28 million Chinese, a huge reach by any standards.

According to the latest figures from Media Create, the Microsoft Xbox 360 has outsold the rival Sony PlayStation 3 in Japan two weeks running, marking a sharp contrast in the country where the 360 has constantly lagged very far behind in sales.

The figures show Microsoft selling 13,777 units for the week ended September 21st with Sony only selling 8,156 units for the same period.

The Nintendo Wii continued its domination of the market though, selling more than the 360 and PS3 combined at 29,921 units for the week.

Handhelds continued to sell well with the ever popular Nintendo DS selling 61,242 units and the Sony PlayStation Portable selling 29,921 units for the week.

Gamepolitics is reporting that the infamous anti-videogame lawyer Jack Thompson has been permanently disbarred effective October 25th after the Flordia Supreme Court made a ruling in his case.

When reading the decision, the Court cited Thompson's long history of public misconduct while adding the recommendations of Judge Dava Tunis, the judge who was in charge of Thompson's ethics trial last year. In addition to the disbarring, the court is ordering Thompson to pay $43,675 USD in monetary restitution for legal fees incurred by the state.

In response to the decision Thompson has filed an appeal and is looking for an emergency stay on the decision. Additionally, Thompson released a press statement that calls the the decision a "retaliation for Thompson’s Tyndale House book Out of Harm’s Way, published in 2005, which blew the whistle on the Florida Supreme Court’s earlier efforts in the 1990’s to literally pathologize his faith-based and successful activism against the American entertainment industry."

For articles published at AfterDawn that highlight the antics of Jack Thompson please click here: Jack Thompson search results

Sling Media has announced the availability of the HD model of its popular Slingbox media hub, dubbed Slingbox PRO-HD and has said it will retail for $300 USD.

The company says the PRO-HD will let users stream "HD content from a home television source, including over the air HD digital signals (ATSC), digital cable channels (Clear QAM), HDTV cable set-top boxes, HDTV satellite receivers, or HD DVR’s, to a laptop or desktop computer in and around the house."

The stream can also be sent online to your laptop as long as you have SlingPlayer software installed on the system.

The new box uses a technology dubbed SlingStream 2.0 which "adaptively stream high quality television content across virtually any network connection." The technology supposedly improves audio and video quality.

A federal judge has declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who was found guilty of sharing 24 songs via P2P app Kazaa saying he made an error that "substantially prejudiced" her rights.

Thomas' case was the first file sharing case to ever go to trial and after being found guilty she was ordered to pay $222,000 USD to the Big 4 record labels.

Judge Michael J. Davis is now allowing a new trial and is asking Congress to change any copyright law that allows for excessive monetary rewards.

The issue that led to the mistrial is whether the record labels need to prove that anyone actually downloaded their copyrighted music or if just the fact that someone is sharing them is enough for a conviction. For the original trial the judge said it was not necessary to prove that anyone downloaded the tracks but he has since reversed that decision.

"Now they're going to have to prove their claims," Thomas said. "They never had to prove anything before. Now they do. It kind of levels the playing field a little bit."

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronics Arts claiming that the publisher is violating California law by hiding the fact that the hit game Spore install SecuROM DRM which is impossible to remove.

EA has been under fire since the release of the game on September 7th with many gamers taking exception to the crippling SecuROM DRM which allows for the game to only be installed 5 times over its lifetime and only allows for a single user profile.

The more bitter complaint however is that after it is installed, SecuROM cannot be removed and will linger on your PC until a reformat. SecuROM could even be considered malware by some accounts as it will monitor your computer's activities, preventing duplication.

The SecuROM backlash seems to be hitting EA in their wallets as well, with some reports saying 500,000 illegal downloads were made of the game in just the first week.

The new suit, filed by law firm Kamber Edelson on behalf of all Spore buyers, says the publisher violated the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and Unfair Competition Law by not making clear that SecuROM cannot be uninstalled once installed.

Roku, makers of the Netflix by Roku set-top box, have announced that they will be making the player open source, giving developers a chance to create open source software for the device.

Roku CEO Anthony Wood confirmed the announcement and said the company would release an SDK (software development kit) before the end of the year. The new announcement also means that users will not only be limited to Netflix content anymore and will most likely be able to surf the Internet using the first generation devices.

Wood made sure to note that Roku's relationship with Netflix is still sound and the new move will not hurt it. Roku makes all revenue from hardware sales and the company has always said it will be looking for partnerships with any content provider that wants one.

Alltel Wireless, one of the US' largest mobile phone carriers, has announced the the new service nuTsie which should allow users to listen to playlists from their iTunes libraries while using certain Alltel phone models.

Additionally, nuTsie allows users to share those playlists with friends and other Alltel members over the Internet.

The service costs $5 USD per month or $20 USD for a one year subscription and can be accessed from the "Alltel Shop" via your handset. Making the service more interesting, users can listen to the playlists of anyone who is using the service, giving you access to many tracks.

"Our customers are now relying on their wireless phones to provide entertainment as well as reliability," said Kristi Crum, director of multimedia content for Alltel Wireless. "The launch of nuTsie will maximize the music capabilities on their phones so they can now easily listen to their favorite music from iTunes, no matter where they go."

During an interview with Gigaom, Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas noted that although they feel the 250 GB bandwidth caps they will be starting next month are sufficient now, they are willing to raise the caps over time, if digital downloads or other innovations come around that need intense amounts of bandwidth.

For the time being, Douglas says, the caps are set at about 100 times the average user's monthly bandwidth usage. The company has said that only 5 percent or so of users ever use over 100 GB a month.

Douglas gave his word that if "average consumption rises", the cap will as well. We will have to take his word on it for now, although Comcast has been less than truthful in the past about matters like this.

See: FCC suit against Comcast

Earlier this month we reported that director Michael Moore's latest film was to be released legally, and for free via the Internet and as of today, he has followed through with that promise.

The film, which is intended to bring out new voters for the upcoming presidential election, was made available via the movie's official site, but more interestingly through BitTorrent as well, using the Pirate Bay tracker with PeerExchange and DHT allowed as well.

Therein lies the problem however. The film's site says the downloads are only available to US and Canadian residents and makes it very clear that when downloading from the site you will go through an IP lookup system which will then either accept or deny your request. By putting the movie on torrents, especially extremely popular public ones such as The Pirate Bay, there is no way to enforce geographical restrictions.

Was it intentional? Was it an accident or a complete misunderstanding of how the BitTorrent protocol works? We don't know, but more importantly, the film is available and for free, from wherever you want to get it.

According to the latest data from GFK Chart-Track, sales of the Microsoft Xbox 360 console have risen 32 percent over the last 4 days after the company announced a price cut on the console in the UK. On the other end, sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 were down 8 percent for the same time period.

The price cut drove the price down for the Arcade model to GBP 129.99, the Premium to GBP 169.99 and the Elite to GBP 229.99, marking the lowest point yet for next-gen consoles.

"[360] sales are up 32 per cent and PlayStation 3 sales are down eight per cent," added Chart-Track's Chris Poole.

Poole also noted that software sales were up, citing specifically the fact that the supermarket Morrisons was selling all chart titles for half off.

"We've had quite a big release with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed but we're on the back of the Morrison's promotion so we've had a drop in units but a rise in value," noted Poole.

Electronics Arts has threatened users on its official forum boards with a ban if they continue to talk about the crippling SecuROM DRM that has been as much of a headline this month as the release of the hit game Spore.

Although it appears now that the company has backtracked on their threats, the fact that it occurred at all is alarming. The SecuROM DRM used on Spore limits a buyer to five installs over the lifetime of the game and only allows for a single user profile.

"SecuROM has been discussed and discussed so much and it causes arguments in threads," commented a moderator on the forum. "If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fansite forum. If there is any change you will be able to read it on the official Spore site."

"Please do not continue to post theses thread or you account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore."

Buffalo Technology announced yesterday a pair of new Blu-ray burners, one external and one internal which both offer the fastest speeds available currently, 8x.

The MediaStation 8x External Blu-ray Drive connects via a USB 2.0 port or through a faster eSATA interface while the MediaStation 8x Internal Blu-ray Writer connects via standard SATA. There are no added drivers necessary for your system to read the drives and both can read and write CDs, DVDs, and BD-R/RE.

Both drives ship with CyberLink suite software which allows for HD playback, Blu-ray capture, editing and authoring.

Both drives will be available within the next week and are priced $350 USD for the internal and $400 USD for the external, respectively.

National Lampoon has announced that will offer up to 12 of its films via VOD (video-on-demand) through ReelTime Rentals over the next year.

The initial titles will be National Lampoon Presents Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo and National Lampoon Presents One, Two, Many but the contract calls for up to 12 per year.

"Having ReelTime Network as VOD partner gives Lampoon fans another convenient platform on which to watch our movies and ensures our titles will be seen throughout America," added Tom Daniels, president of worldwide distribution for National Lampoon.

ReelTime offers 750 movies currently including some big titles such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , National Treasure, Glory and Groundhogs Day.

This is the largest deal the company has secured since it made a deal with Disney in June to provide VOD version of movies from Disney-Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films.

Netflix has made agreements with both Disney and CBS to have content from both studios streamed on its Instant Watch service.

A few of the notable shows from the deals are NCIS, Numb3rs , Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, The Suite Life on Deck and the entire CSI franchise.

Netflix currently has 12,000 titles in their streaming inventory and says the new agreements will add "meaningfully" to that number.

"We are thrilled to enter into these relationships with CBS and Disney Channel and build upon their innovative distribution strategies," added Robert Kyncl, VP of content acquisition for Netflix in a statement.

Netflix says there will be access to 500 Disney episodes and 350 CBS episodes to start.

Sony and Discovery Communications have announced a new Blu-ray-based promotion in which all buyers of Sony standalone Blu-ray players will receive a free, exclusive Blu-ray title from Discovery.

The promotion will begin on October 5th and is for "a limited time only." Over 11,000 retailers are paricipating in the promotion including Sears, Circuit City and Sony Style, and when purchasing a Sony standalone you will be given a coupon redeemable for the Discovery BD. The disc will have episodes of Fearless Planet and Sunrise Earth which are nomally seen on Discovery’s HD Theater network.

To promote the partnership, in-store trailers for Discovery on Blu-ray Disc will be played on Sony Bravia LCD TVs at retailer locations.

“Discovery has emerged as the gold standard among high-definition television programmers,” said Patrick Gates, president and general manager of Discovery commerce. “We could think of no better partner than Sony Electronics to help showcase our spectacular adventure and nature programming to Blu-ray customers.”

Chris Fawcett, VP of marketing for Sony, added, “The Blu-ray Disc format unlocks the true potential of today’s high-definition TVs with stunning full HD experience. Discovery’s high-quality programs are a tailor-made showcase for Blu-ray Disc and a great first experience for a consumer new to the format.”

Sony has announced the launch of its BWU-300S internal desktop Blu-ray drive which will begin Sony's third generation of internal Blu-ray drives.

The company says the drive will burn single and dual layer BD-R or BD-RE at fast 8x speeds, allowing users to fill up each layer (25GB) in 15 minutes. As an added bonus, the drive will ship with a free BD copy of Men In Black.

DVDs can be burnt at the standard 16x speed and CDs can be burnt at 48x speeds.

The drive has a SATA interface and will be the standard 5.25-inch form. For the drive to work you will need a system running Windows XP or Vista.

Also included with the drive is CyberLink suite which will allow users to author BD as well as capture, edit and view the content.

Mozilla has announced that they will be bringing Firefox Mobile to handsets worldwide by 2010 but the alpha testing may come as soon as the end of this year.

There was not much mentioned in terms of details, but Firefox Mobile may have a hard time fighting established mobile browsers such as Opera Mini and Mobile Safari.

In his blog, Mitchell Baker of Mozilla Europe added the following: "I saw one press article wondering if including “have an effective product in the mobile space” in our 2010 goals means that we won’t ship something interesting until 2010. That is not the case at all. We will ship well before then. The intent of this goal was to say: in 2010 when we look at where we are, it should be screamingly obvious that we’ve done this. That means releasing a good product much sooner, seeing good results and acceptance, and seeing those results grow over time.

Comcast, the U.S' largest cable company has officially sent in their plans for broadband management to the FCC fulfilling their punishment for breaking net neutrality laws.

The new plan will not 'throttle' BitTorrent and other specific applications but instead will slow Internet speeds for the network's heaviest users when the network is "congested." We originally reported this in August but Comcast denied.

The filing comes after Comcast tried the new approach in five cities over the last three months. The company added that there were no documented complaints about the the method during the trial and that "less than 1% of customers were affected on a typical day."

Comcast has been at the center of controversy for some time now after they were found to be illegally "throttling" BitTorrent and P2P users, almost shutting down their internet when they would try to use the file sharing applications. The company was sued and was eventually found guilty of breaking net neutrality laws by the FCC.

According to a GamePolitics report, Activision has sued at least six US-based video game pirates since 2007 and has won each case so far.

The report says a Washington man paid $100,000 USD to settle his suit, after he was accused of "reproducing and distributing copies of Call of Duty 3 for the Wii and Xbox 360." Another man, Chris Hyman, settled his case in a similar fashion, but for $25,000 USD. He was accused of reproducing and distributing copies of CoD3 for the Wii and Tony Hawk's Project 8 for the Xbox 360.

The other cases worked the same, with George Laflin settling for $100,000, Kenneth Madden paying the same amount and finally Maryanne Leach settling for $1000 USD. The final case, against James Strickland is still ongoing.

Making the cases more confusing however, is that GamePolitics has updated their original article with a comment from an Activision lawyer. "While we don’t comment on litigation involving clients, we can advise you that we have never filed any litigation against a file-sharer on behalf of Activision." The amount the defendants settled for is surprisingly high as well.

SanDisk and the major record labels have announced a new physical music format which they have called SlotMusic and will begin sales this upcoming holiday season.

Backed by EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, the "new" format will basically be an entire album on a MicroSD card. The large retailers Wal-Mart and Best Buy have already agreed to begin selling the cards starting in November.

While CD sales continue their path to death, this new effort is aimed at all the users of cell phones or MP3 players that have MicroSD slots. The album can be inserted right into the device and played back. The SlotMusic also comes with a USB adapter so you can move the music to your computer.

The press release did not say the bitrate of the music, but it will be DRM-free and in MP3 form.

Hong Kong customs official Michael Kwan has confirmed that his office has arrested a 14-year old boy for allegedly uploading over 2000 Cantonese language pop songs to a website and making them available for free download.

Kwan, who is the divisional commander of the Copyright Investigation Division, added that the child was picked up after he advertised free music downloads on an Internet discussion forum.

The boy has not been officially charged and is free on 2,000 Hong Kong dollars ($373 USD) bail while the investigation continues. Kwan noted this is the third time a teenager has been arrested for uploading music and making it available for free.

All counts of copyright infringement in the nation carry a maximum of four years in prison and a HK$50,000 ($9335 USD) fine.

Hitachi announced on Thursday that among other changes to its HDTV production line, it will be teaming up with Panasonic to develop "next-generation LCD and plasma HDTVs that are thinner, more efficient and distinct from their competition."

Hitachi claims they had an over $1 billion USD loss for fiscal 2007 in the HDTV business and the electronics maker is now hoping to move into the higher-end HDTV market to help make their money back.

The partnership with Panasonic will include the company buying glass panel components from Panasonic as well as purchasing full plasma panels built by the latter company beginning in 2010.

Yahoo and Rhapsody have announced a new service that will allow users of Yahoo's search engine to get full song playback for songs they are searching for without needing to head to other sites.

Users who search for a specific artist's song using Yahoo Search will be able to play the song back in its entirety through Rhapsody's FoxyTunes Player which will be sitting in a shortcut at the top of the search results page.

Yahoo says the new feature is just another part of its new "play the web" strategy which it hopes will open Yahoo to content and services it is not known for.

The company added that there are already 5 million tracks supported but there is of course one large catch. Users can only listen to 25 free full length songs each month before they are only allowed to listen to 30-second clips like on iTunes.

Overall, the service works well and I've screencapped a recent search of mine to show how the service works. After typing in Pink Floyd in the search the artist, with picture, discography etc showed up and underneath there is the "play full length tracks" option. Also, if you stop the song before the one minute mark, it does not count against your 25 free for the month.

First announced last December, Nokia's oft-delayed Comes With Music service is finally official (at least for the UK) and will hit handsets beginning October 17th.

The first handset to include the service will be the Nokia 5310 and the exclusive retailer will be Carphone Warehouse. The service, which allows users to download unlimited DRM-free music for one year and then keep it forever, will cost 70 GBP in addition to the original price of the handset.

The service will have include the full catalogs of Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music but notably lacks EMI.

There was no word on the price of the actual handset as of yet but we will keep you updated.

According to the Department of Justice, another member of the once prominent warez scene group aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC) has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of "Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement."

Barry Gitarts, otherwise known as "Dextro", is the 15th person to receive jail time for their part in aPC.

The group was founded in 1997 and is generally known as the first organized warez group that uploaded CDs and MP3s to the Internet. aPC became well known in the scene for their pre-release uploads of CDs which they had acquired from magazine workers and music industry insiders.

The group, and its administrators and uploaders, were taken down as part of Operation Fastlink in 2004.

Gitarts was given the stiff sentence because he was found to have operated and financed a server in which the group strored "thousands of music files, movies, games and software."

A Spanish court has ruled that it is infact legal for a site to provide links to P2P downloads as long as they are not offering the files themselves and not working for "commercial gain."

The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled in favor of Sharemula.com, a site whose sole purpose was to index eDonkey links to movies, games and music. eDonkey links are very similar to that of .torrent files, which do not contain any copyrighted material themselves but lead to such files.

The site went under investigation in 2006 by the Federación Antipiratería and later 15 people were arrested in connection with the site.

The case was even thrown out after being heard last year because the judge ruled the administrators of the site were not doing anything illegal and did not make a cent from the index. The media industry, including Columbia, Disney Company Iberia, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner, Universal, Paramount, Sony and MGM, appealed the decision however but have now lost again, and this decision can not be appealed.

“The hearing confirms the position of the defense that linking to P2P networks does not constitute a criminal offense,” added David Bravo, a lawyer for the defense.

Kazushi Hirata of Kyoto, Japan has been charged with copyright infringement after he was arrested for illegally uploading the blockbuster movie "Wanted" with Japanese subtitles to the P2P file sharing application Winny.

The arrest of a "pre-release uploader" was the first of its kind in the country and Mr. Hirata faces a $100,000 USD equivalent fine and up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The film was released in June in the US, but was released in Japan just yesterday. An R5 (Russian retail DVD) release of the film has been available for months, but it obviously did not include Japanese subtitles which Mr. Hirata added himself before releasing on Winny.

The authorities were alerted to Mr. Hirata by the Japan and Intl. Motion Picture Copyright Assn. (Jimca). The group says that pre-release uploads are becoming a major problem and that "this year, Jimca has identified more than 30 movie files that have been uploaded to Winny before their Japan release dates."

Mounting pressure and harsh reviews on Amazon have seemed to finally get through to EA who has announced that all Spore owners will have 5 activations now for their game, compared to the 3 users are currently allowed.

Frank Gibeau, EA Games Label president, made a statement this morning in which he said, "We've received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect. And while it's easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers."

Besides announcing the added activations, the company said they will also offer easier ways for users to receive additional activations, if they are "warranted." The publisher added that they were currently developing a system that would allow gamers to de-authorize a machine (perhaps before a reformat) and then transfer the authorization to a new computer.

Sony has announced the launch of their "Life with PlayStation" service which will give users live global news and weather as well as 3D views of the globe and even cloud imagery.

The information will be provided from partnerships with The Weather Channel (the weather updates), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (cloud imagery), Google News (the news feeds) and finally the The Earth Television Network (live webcam images of cities).

The application is free and Sony R&D head Noam Rimon adds that the entire service is integrated with Folding@home so "this means that while you're taking a stroll on Life with PlayStation, you're automatically helping Stanford University to work towards curing diseases such as Alzheimer's and various types of cancers."

Sony also adds it plans to add "a wide variety of interactive content and channels" to the service in the future.

To add the service, simply head to the XMB and click on the Folding@home logo.

According to a report over at Hexus, Microsoft's proposed major hardware redesign could also include a new name for the console.

Citing the same source that leaked evidence of the Xbox 360 Elite model in advance, a new leaked memo shows that the Xbox 360 revision could be called The Pure. The memo also shows that the revision so far has codenames "Lean" and "Granite" most likely alluding to a thinner case design and a new colorway.

The memo doesn't show any timetable would would make sense that the name change will come with the upcoming Valhalla chip design. The new chip will move the CPU and GPU into a single chip and will have less power consumption as well as well as make the system cooler. Although there is no official timeframe for the release of the Valhalla revision, many believe Q1 2009 is the time when manufacturing will begin.

Memorex has become the first major electronics producer to sell a Blu-ray player at under $300 USD at launch, setting the new milestone with its MVBD-2510 priced at $270 USD.

The player does however lack Profile 2.0 (BD-Live) but for the average user who does not care about the ability to download extras from the Internet, the player is a great deal for the price and Profile 1.1 is fine. The player has HDMI out and support for Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and raw bitstream audio. It will also play 1080p24p natively without the need for pulldown that degrades quality.

The player is set to ship in November and should be on retail shelves by late November/early December.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has declared that the lawyer Ray Beckerman is a "vexatious litigator" and is now seeking monetary damages in an effort to punish him for his defense of a NY woman in a recent P2P case.

Beckerman, one of the few lawyers who defends alleged file sharers, is also a blogger and that point is at the heart of the new case. The RIAA says Ray "has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs. Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions."

Lory Lybeck, a Washington state defense attorney is in charge of a soon-coming class-action lawsuit against the RIAA laughed at the move and noted that this is the same organization that has sued 7-year old children, 90-year old grandmothers, a printer and even the deceased, all while using the unlicensed investigator Media Sentry.

According to a new NPD Group study, physical media is still king despite the flat growth of standard definition DVD sales, and digital downloads will continue to lag behind.

The report says the average U.S. consumer will spend 80 percent of his entertainment budget on buying or renting physical media (DVD, Blu-ray) and that only 0.5% of the average American's entertainment budget is spent on digital downloads (full downloads, streaming of movies or TV).

The results were based on answers from 11,000 consumers and was presented yesterday at the DisplaySearch HDTV 2008 conference in LA.

“Everyone is guessing when video on demand (VOD) and digital downloads will spell the end for packaged media,” said Russ Crupnick, senior industry analyst for entertainment with The NPD Group. "At this point, digital video is still an extremely small part of overall consumer entertainment spending."

Microsoft has announced that it has signed a deal with the Wi-Fi provider Wayport and with McDonald's franchises that will allow Zune users to access free Internet at any one of 10,000 McDonald's without a password or special web page log-in.

The new deal addresses what could have been a potential problem with the Zune's new ability to stream music wirelessly. Users cannot access any public hotspot that requires a browser redirect (Zune has no built-in browser) but this problem is now somewhat solved as users will have at least 10,000 guaranteed places where they can have internet and access to the Zune store.

The deal is similar to the one Apple has with Starbucks which allows iPod users to buy music from the iTunes Music Store or browse the music that is playing at that Starbucks as they sit there.

With the US DTV transition just months away and competition from all-digital services like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse increasing, one change that's finally coming to the cable industry is the disappearance of analog signals. Although the FCC is requiring cable companies to support analog customers until 2012, that mandate still allows them to do so through the use of digital converter boxes of the type used since digital cable was introduced. Now one cable TV provider in New York, RCN, has decided to go all-digital within the next few months.

The advantage to cable companies is substantial. There's actually been a lot of interest in such a move for years, but the conversion of OTA signals to digital makes it much easier to manage. As long as any analog signal is present, even digital cable and high speed internet signals must also be converted to analog to be transmitted on the same cables.

By switching to pure digital signals cable companies can do a better job of long range transmission since they can be repeated losslessly. Analog signals, on the other hand, must be amplified for transmission across longer distances. The more times a signal is amplified the lower the quality becomes.

A new Broadcom chip, the BCM7440, will allow consumer electronics manufacturers to support DivX video in their Blu-ray players by adding DivX Certification.

"There is strong consumer demand for DivX and so we are pleased to extend support for DivX on our BCM7440 Blu-ray chipset," said Dan Eiref, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Consumer Electronics Group. "Broadcom is dedicated to designing differentiated products for our customers. We believe that the addition of DivX to our product portfolio opens up a compelling new source of content for consumers who increasingly rely on digital solutions for their entertainment experience."

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has begun offering over 6000 movie and TV shows on the site for free today, offering the streaming films with "minimal advertising interruption."

Col Needham, founder and managing director of IMDb.com, added, "We're excited to offer our users a simple online experience to watch full-length movies and TV episodes for free...our goal is to show our users every movie and TV show on the Internet for free on IMDb.com."

The new move will however also provide a new revenue opportunity for the giant e-tailer Amazon, which owns IMDB.

"On title pages where IMDb does not have the content available for free, users can click on the Amazon Video On Demand button to rent or purchase the video from Amazon," an Amazon spokesperson said. "It's great to offer customers choice. They can decide whether to watch an ad-supported movie or show on IMDb for free or rent or purchase a movie and show immediately from AVOD without commercials. So it's really the best of both worlds for TV and movie fans."

After days of rumors, Microsoft has officially confirmed that the Xbox 360 gaming console will be receiving a price cut in Europe.

Beginning September 19th, the lower end Arcade model will drop to GBP 129.99/EUR 179.99, the Premium model will drop to GBP 169.99/EUR 239.99 and the higher capacity Elite will drop to GBP 229.99/EUR 299.99.

"Xbox 360 has now sold over 20 million consoles worldwide and due to its unprecedented success, we are now able to pass on the rewards of that success to the consumer with a new retail pricing from £129.99," noted Neil Thompson, senior regional director for Microsoft UK.

"With more games, more entertainment with Xbox Live and now even more value, we are looking forward to welcoming more customers into the leading next generation console, Xbox 360."

EA has publicly defended its use of the crippling SecuROM DRM used in games like "Mass Effect" and more notably, Spore saying that it is necessary to prevent piracy.

Last week we reported that Amazon users were systematically rating the game Spore 1-star (out of 5) with most users blaming the low rating on the DRM and not the actual gameplay.

The DRM only allows the game to be installed three times total where afterwards you are forced to call EA and beg for another serial. The game only allows for one user profile as well, so households with multiple kids are forced to purchase the game multiple times.

"EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system... We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication," says Mariam Sughayer of EA's corporate communications, however.

The UK retailer Woolworths has declined comment on the rumors that have been swirling for days after scans from the company's upcoming holidays catalog showed a UK price cut across the board for all the Xbox 360 models.

The scans show the price cuts for the UK as GBP 129.99 for the Arcade model, 169.99 for the Premium model and 229.99 for the higher-capacity HDD Elite model.

"Woolworths will not comment directly on the speculation that has appeared on various gaming websites as it is commercially sensitive information," said the company.

"The Christmas 2008 Woolworths Big Red Book is not released until the first week of October and, until that date, remains a confidential document.

"There are several draft editions in existence, with prices, products and descriptions varying dependent on the draft."

Dell is expected to become the first company to offer DVD drives that will allow users to burn their legal movie downloads and then play them back on any standalone DVD player.

What makes the drives different is that the drives will add CSS copy protection, thus appeasing the media companies.

The new drive will use Sonic Solutions’ "Qflix technology with CSS" and will cost $120 USD as an add-on to its laptop and desktop computers. Dell will also be offering legal movie downloads through CinemaNow which has partnered with Sonic in the past to use Sonic's Roxio to burn movies with CSS.

CinemaNow says they will offer 100 new releases from Warner Home Video, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment and Lionsgate. The company hopes to offer CSS burning from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and MGM Home Entertainment soon.

The retail giant Best Buy has announced the acquisition of Napster Online, the subscription music download service for $121 million USD in cash and investments.

The acquisiton values the music service company at about $2.65 USD a share, a 120 percent premium over its stock value at the bell on Friday.

Best Buy said the move was designed to have the retailer "reach new customers" while taking all of Napster's current 700,000 subscribers. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

"We can foresee Napster acting as a platform for accelerating our growth in the emerging industry of digital entertainment, beyond music subscriptions," said Dave Morrish, an executive vice president of Best Buy.

Napster, a name once synonymous with the world of piracy and P2P networks, has completely reinvented itself over the past few years into an authorized, subscription-based online music store but has been struggling financially and recently reported a $16.5 million USD loss for the 2008 fiscal year.

After over 100,000,000 downloads of version 0.8.6, VideoLAN has updated their excellent media player software to version 0.9.2, with the codename Grishenko.

The new updated software brings a new interface for Windows, Linux and Unix as well as new inputs, more codec support and new on the fly audio and video filters.

I cannot do all the updates justice in a paragraph or so, so I have embedded the video showing the updates from the team behind the software.

If you want to download this excellent update, we have it here at AfterDawn: VLC media player 0.9.2




VLC media player 0.9.2 - Grishenko from Antoine Cellerier on Vimeo.

The video-sharing site YouTube has added new stipulations to its community guidelines, this time banning terrorist training and 'drug abuse' videos.

However, the entire system will be based on users reporting videos that infract the new guidelines. This will of course be an impossible task, judging by the fact that 13 hours of new video are uploaded every 5 minutes to the site.

An AP report showed that the battle will be an uphill climb as there was at least 10 videos available using a quick search that showed how to make bombs.

The new guidelines specifically bans videos "that incite others to commit violent acts, videos on activities such as how to make bombs and footage of sniper attacks."

"It's good news if there are less of these on the Web," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said, speaking about terrorism training videos. "But many of these jihadist videos appear on different Web sites around the world, and any time there is investigative or intelligence value we actively pursue it."

Sim2, manufacturer of high-end home theater projectors is set to launch a new HD disc which it claims is "Better than Blu", a reference to the industry-backed Blu-ray Disc.

The announcement was originally made at the CEDIA event last week where the manufacturer said the launch would occur in January in conjunction with Entertainment Experience. Entertainment Experience currently makes high-end home theater systems which are basically top of the line HP PCs with Entertainment Experience software that the company says offers picture quality better than 1080p Blu-ray discs.

The new system will be bundled with Sim2 projection TVs but there has been no word on price yet.

EE has said that it will be offering movies in the format, and from major studios, for $40 USD and on double-sided dual-layer DVDs with a capacity of just over 16GB.

There was however, no confirmation from any of the Hollywood studios and industry insiders say the format is a sham.

“This high-def alternative is bull; it’s all about Blu-ray,” one insider said. “They’re grasping at straws. The entire industry is all behind Blu-ray.”

The Consumerist has posted an article on another crippling feature of Spore's SecuROM DRM which outlines how the game allows for only one profile per install meaning if multiple family members or friends living in the same house want to have their own individual online personas, they will have to purchase an entire new copy of the game.

The official Spore manual however reads that "You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game." An EA spokesperson has posted however that the manual is a misprint and and there is only one profile allowed per purchased title. "That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time. I have sent your guys' feedback to the game team though since I can understand the desire to share a game on a system that you entire family uses," reads the post on the official Spore forums.

A consortium of media industry companies have announced their plans to bring the digital world together using what they call the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE.

The consortium, which consists of media giants Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy Co Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Comcast, News Corp's Fox Entertainment Group, Hewlett-Packard Co, Intel, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Microsoft Corp, General Electric Co's NBC Universal, Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony Corp, Toshiba, VeriSign, and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros Entertainment are working on a "uniform digital media experience" but admits it will not announce any more details until the CES event in January.

DECE President Mitch Singer added however that the group wants "interoperability of devices and websites" and fair usage rights that will allow consumers to copy content for household playback devices as well as burn their purchased content to physical media for playback or storage.

The iPhone Dev Team, the makers of the iPhone jailbreaking tool PwnageTool have announced that that the application now works with new iPhone firmware 2.1 and will work with iTunes 8 with no patches.

The group did say however that the application had not been tested on the second generation iPod Touch but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

The App store has seen over 100 million downloads in 2 months yet there is still huge interest in jailbreaking the iPhone and iPod Touch, especially for homebrew applications such as the NES emulator that Apple refuses to accept to the App Store.

For those interested, the tool is available here: PwnageTool.

Earlier this week we reported that Amazon users were slamming the blockbusters game Spore for its SecuROM DRM which only allowed 3 installations and required authentication to an EA server.

Over 2200 reviewers have given the game a 1-star rating (on a 1-to-5 scale) with most of the complaints completely against the DRM and not at the actual gameplay.

Last night and earlier this morning though, all the reviews disappeared and angry customers began slandering the company for apparently giving in. The company has said the temporary take-down was nothing more than a glitch and all the reviews are back up now.

"There's just a glitch on the site that ended up wiping those reviews clean," said Amazon.com spokesperson Tammy Hovey. "So we're working on putting them back up. I don't have any details (on what happened). But we're working on it so all the customer reviews will be back up on the site."

In response to mass consumer complaints about overall "sluggishness" of their iPhone 3G handsets, Apple has released firmware update 2.1 which adds new features as well as "fix many bugs" that consumers have complained about.

The update should improve "the accuracy of the 3G signal strength display, as well as decrease the number of dropped calls." The last point so much of a complaint that it even led to a lawsuit against Apple. CEO Steve Jobs has said that the problems only affect "a few percent" of iPhone users however.

Other users complained of their phone crashing after downloading applications from the App Store but Apple says that it should no longer be a problem as the update will make the App Store more reliable and installations of the apps quicker.

IW adds that "users with the updated firmware should have a reduced time backing up the handset before syncing with iTunes. Additionally, contacts and searches should load quicker, and the virtual QWERTY keyboard is supposed to be much more responsive."

According to new reports, Nokia's 'Comes with Music' unlimited mobile download service may cost as high as $150 USD, although the price would be a premium on top of the cost of the handset.

The price in North America is likely to be $100 USD though as Nokia generally sells their phones for cheaper outside of Europe.

The new reports come from UK smartphone retailer Expansys and gives the best insight into pricing we've seen since Nokia's announcement last winter.

For those unaware, the Comes With Music service is a flat one time fee bundled with the cost of the handset which then allows users to download unlimited music tracks for a year and keep them forever after that.

Expansys is selling the Nokia N95 8GB for £395 or £480 with the service included but we will know the official prices soon from Nokia.

The torrent search engine isoHunt has announced that it is suing CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) in an effort to see what the judicial system thinks on the legality of torrent search engines.

From the isoHunt official blog, President Gary Fung writes:

"This is one of the hardest decisions I had to make, to sue one of the most powerful lobby and corporate conglomerates in Canada. But for sake of continuing operation and development of isoHunt, this is something we must do. I don't pretend to speak on behalf of all BitTorrent websites or users, but I speak to point out that with a lawsuit from CRIA hanging over our heads, we fight not just for our survival as an internet company of search engines and social networks, but also for other websites, from BitTorrent sites to larger search engines like Google, on which most of us have come to depend. The legal ramifications concerning search engines and linking here are far reaching.

Last week we reported that the torrent tracker The Pirate Bay was under fire from the Swedish media for not taking down a user-uploaded torrent that included autopsy pictures of two murdered children. The request was from the father of the murdered children but The Pirate Bay stuck by their morals and refused to take it down, claiming that the Internet is a free place and they refuse to censor.

“People can express themselves and spread material they think is important, that’s one of the things we’re fighting for and if it’s then used for things which can be uncomfortable for some, so be it,” Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said at the time. “It’s more important that such a possibility exists than it doesn’t exist,”

The whole situation has taken a turn for the worse however, as last night Peter Sunde was invited to a debate on a TV show which turned out to be more of a trap than anything. He was invited to speak out on free speech and Swedish policy on documents that are in the public domain. Against their word however, the show began with the father of the children speaking via video about how rude Peter had been to him through their email response and how the Pirate Bay was wrong in this matter.

According to new data figures from research firm NPD, overall US video game sales rose 9 percent for the month of August year-on-year, the smallest monthly increase in over 2 years.

Hardware sales only rose 3 percent, with software and accessory sales making up the rest of the increase. Despite seeing decent growth in comparison to other industries, the 9 percent increase is the first time in 27 months that growth was under 10 percent.

Interestingly, the Microsoft Xbox 360 outsold the Sony PlayStation 3 for the month selling 195,200 units compared to 185,400 for the PS3. The Nintendo Wii saw its sales drop but still outsold its rivals combined, selling 453,000 units for the month.

The Nintendo DS more than doubled up on its rival the Sony PSP, 518,300 to 253,000 units.

Viddyou has announced the launch of a new High Bitrate (HBR) video sharing service available at Viddyou.com that the company says will "allow users to share near original-quality video from their digital camcorder or camera without the quality degradation typically seen in online video."

The company wants to differentiate itself from other online video services such as YouTube or DailyMotion which usually offer poor playback and degraded video quality in an effort to make file sizes smaller and buffering times shorter.

Viddyou says the "HBR service delivers video at more than 1.1 megabytes-per-second at the native 640x480 resolution at which personal video devices commonly record."

"The innovative High Bitrate service introduces a new class of video sharing possibilities, at no cost," said Aaron Wadler, CEO and Co-Founder of Viddyou. "We are consistently pursuing new opportunities to push the limits of video delivery on the Internet, providing unmatched technology and capability within our market. Viddyou's High Bitrate functionality is a redefining step in the evolution of personal video sharing."

Almost one year after authorities shut down the private torrent tracker OiNK, the site's administrators and a few alleged uploaders have been charged, putting an end to the year-long investigation.

Alan Ellis, the administrator, was charged with “conspiracy to defraud” and the uploaders were charged with copyright infringement for the unauthorized upload of one CD.

To give some back story on the situation, in addition to the administrator, five men and one woman were arrested for uploading music to OiNK and since their arrest they have been in questioning and required to provide DNA samples. Within two months, two were released from investigation and not charged but it appears the rest are not as lucky. Each was charged with infringement for the unauthorized upload of one CD.

In an interview with TorrentFreak, one of the charged uploaders said he is being made into an example for other uploaders. "I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut,” he added.

The British rock band Marillion has announced that they will be offering their latest album as a free download through file-sharing websites.

The only catch, says the band, is that a pop-up will appear on your computer the first time the tracks are played with a link pointing to the band's website and encouraging them to submit their email addresses. Those who sign up would then be contacted with offers for concert tickets as well as other merchandise.

"We're willing to try new things and we want to see what happens," said keyboardist Mark Kelly.

"Everybody's aware of the effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing on CD sales and the music industry in general," he added.

"Up until recently we've felt fairly immune to that because the fans have been really supportive of the band and, I suppose, because of the age demographic, they do tend to prefer CDs to downloads."

The US District Court has ruled in favor of Harry Potter author JK Rowling which was suing author Steven Vander Ark over his publication of the encyclopedia "Harry Potter Lexicon." Rowling had called the publication "wholesale theft of her work" and it appears a judge agreed.

Judge Robert Patterson says the encyclopedia would cause "irreparable harm" to Ms. Rowling as a writer and with his decision the book is now blocked from publication, permanently.

Additionally, Ms. Rowling and the publisher Warner Bros Entertainment received £3,850 in damages.

"I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work," Rowling added.

"The court has upheld that right."

RDR Books, who was publishing the Lexicon admitted it was disappointed with the decision but is considering "all of its options."

Microsoft has made a statement confiding that sales of their Xbox 360 console have jumped over 100 percent since the announcement of a price cut in the US last week.

The statement cites Microsoft's own numbers as well as word from retailers who are reporting "that between Friday, Sept. 5 and Sunday, Sept. 7, some Xbox 360 models were selling at six times the rate they were the weekend prior" before the price cut was announced.

On September 4th the software giant announced that they were dropping the price of the Arcade model to $199 USD, the Core to $299 USD and the Elite to $399, steep price cuts that make the system cheaper than its rivals in every category. In comparison, the Nintendo Wii sells for $250 USD and does not have a HDD (like the Arcade model) and the Sony PlayStation 3 sells for $400 USD with an 80GB HDD (the Elite has an 120GB HDD).

According to an Engadget report, the popular Internet-based movie and TV show rental store VUDU may begin offering HD downloads "equal in quality to Blu-ray movies" soon and is already currently in private beta testing for the new content format, which is dubbed HDX.

If the report is true, the downloads will be over 6GB large and the company would need to address the added lead-in time that is necessary for such a long download. The downloads would take over 2 hours in most cable cases, and over 4 for most DSL users.

The company currently offers SD as well as HD downloads but it appears it is aiming for the high-end home theater owner with this new HDX codec. The custom Vudu XL product offers one terabyte of capacity so this new move does not seem so far fetched.

Microsoft has finally officially confirmed new updated Zune media players which will include higher storage capacities as well as the ability to buy music directly from the FM radio built into each device.

Beginning on September 16th, all Zune media players will also allow "consumers to wirelessly download or stream millions of songs on the go from thousands of wireless hot spots around the country," says Microsoft. The new ability will come via a free firmware upgrade for current users and will come already installed on the new Zunes.

The flash-based Zunes will come in a 16GB variety now and the HDD-based Zune will have 120GB capacity now. There will also be two new colorways, blue-on-silver and all black.

“Digital music services really come alive when they help people find not only the music they know they like, but the music they didn’t know they would love,” said Chris Stephenson, general manager of Global Marketing for Zune at Microsoft. “With the combination of subscription, wireless access to millions of tracks, and powerful discovery features like personal recommendations and the ability to buy music from FM radio, Zune is taking the digital music experience to the next level.”

“Microsoft’s decision to integrate an FM tuner into the Zune was revolutionary and they continue their extraordinary leadership with Buy from FM,” added John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. “We’ve always known that radio is the primary source for discovering new music, and Microsoft’s decision to marry music discovery and delivery does two things: enables consumers to instantly satisfy their passion and enables FM song tagging to be enjoyed by all radio listeners, everywhere.”

A court in Germany has ruled in favor of an administrator of an Edonkey server saying that he can not be held liable for infringing downloads through his server as long as he takes "reasonable steps" to prevent those downloads.

In the decision, the court ruled against Warner Music Germany which had sued the admin last year after they found Warner Music songs indexed on the server. Earlier this year Warner actually won the case but the admin appealed and was successful this time.

Warner Music contacted the admin after finding a single CD being shared and asked him to take it down. The admin complied accordingly and put "keyword filters in place to make sure that the songs in question wouldn't get indexed again." Warner however then found another CD by the same artist and began the lawsuit.

The ruling, which should set a precedent at least in Germany, says the admin cannot be held liable because his server did not actually host the files in question. The court also added that "keyword-based filtering system was enough to stop infringement and that the server admin wasn't required to proactively stop future infringements of titles that were not part of the original complaint."

After being found guilty in June of criminal copyright infringement for his role as an administrator for the now-defunct torrent site EliteTorrents, Daniel Dove now faces 18 months in prison after being sentenced by the Justice Department this morning.

In addition to his prison time, Dove was also sentenced to three years of supervised released and a $20,000 USD fine. The sentencing was considerably light considering he faced up to 10 years and a $150,000 USD fine.

The sentencing concludes the investigation into the EliteTorrents administrators who were held responsible for the leak of a workprint of the blockbuster hit "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" two days before it hit theaters.

The government described Dove as "an administrator of a small but crucial group of Elite Torrents members known as 'Uploaders,' who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group."

Yesterday we reported that Amazon users were rating Spore poorly under user reviews due to EA's crippling SecuROM DRM. As of writing, there were 1700 1-star ratings for the game on Amazon, with most if not all reviews citing the DRM as the only reason for the low score.

The SecuROM DRM only allows three installs of the game and it appears that although the game has only been out for a few days some users have already used up their installs for various reasons (computer crashed and needed reformatting anyone?)

In an apparent reaction to the headlines, EA has posted that they have loosened up the DRM for their upcoming game Red Alert 3 although it will still have SecuROM.

Executive producer Chris Corry posted that this time the SecuROM will allow for up to 5 activations, a slight upgrade from Spore's 3. You will also only need to authenticate the game online once, on initial launch and never again. "In other words, no reaching out to a central server post-install to see if you're 'allowed' to play," Corry wrote.

Apple has unveiled the second-generation iPod Touch today at the "Let's Rock" event in San Fransisco and with it comes a few notable updates as well as a price cut.

The media device has a new revised casing that includes stainless steel in replacement of plastic. The casing also gives the device a shape more like the iPhone 3G, Apple's popular smartphone. The new device is thinner than the previous generation and includes new volume buttons as well as a speaker which will allow users to hear alerts as well as their music or videos.

Natively integrated into the updated device is the Nike+ sport system which allows users to measure and record the distance and pace of a walk or run. The device has a built-in receiver that will match up with Nike shoe transmitters. The software is also included and already installed.

The interface saw a slight tweak as well, one that follows in the footsteps of the new iTunes 8. The interface can generate "Genius playlists" which are based on your favorite music or purchased tracks.

Just weeks after announcing its PlayNow Arena, an FT report has surfaced saying that Sony Ericsson plans to unveil an unlimited music downloading service for mobile phones before Christmas as well, in another effort to boost its market share.

The new service will be very similar to that of Nokia's Comes With Music which is set to launch next month and will allow users of certain handsets to download as much music as they like for a year.

Although Sony Ericsson declined comment, FT says the company is in talks with all the major labels currently about opening a service similar to Comes With Music.

Sony Ericsson used to believe unlimited music services "devalued music" says Dan Cryan, analyst at Screen Digest, who also added that, "Sony Ericsson's market share is shrinking. If everybody is launching 'all you can eat' services, which make handsets more attractive to end users and to operators, they don't have much choice, especially when so much of their brand value is built around the Walkman."

At the "Let's Rock" event this morning in San Fransisco, Apple has unveiled new models of its flagship iPod line as well as dropped prices on other models, most notably the iPod Touch in hopes of breathing new life into the stagnant media device market.

All in all, Apple showed off upgraded iPod Classics, redesigned iPod Nanos, price cuts on the Touch and a fully redesigned iTunes platform.

Rumors and leaked pictures have been swirling around the Internet for weeks and Apple has finally officially put those rumors to rest.

The new re-invigorating of the iPod line is top priority for Apple which says the line accounts for a fifth of all sales each quarter but has seen a slow down in growth recently as the market reaches saturation.

The updated classic iPods will sell for $249 USD with 120GB capacity. The new, thinner and wider-screened Nanos will sell for $149 USD for the 8GB model and $199 USD for a new 16GB model. The current generation Nanos sell for $199 USD for 8GB.

Nintendo has announced that it will be releasing the Nintendo WiFi Network Adapter, a wireless router for the Wii and DS consoles, in Japan later this month.

The adapter was created to "streamline the process of getting your console online", and will hit Japan on September 18th with a 5,800 yen price tag, about $50 USD.

According to the pictures over at Famitsu, the router is very small and will work with the Wii, DS, PCs and most likely other consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3. The adapter also has three switch options, "Router", "Bridge" and "Auto".

Although this news may be exciting to some we are still waiting on Nintendo's solution to its Wii memory problem. Hard drive coming anytime soon?

Joost has moved from its dedicated desktop video player to a browser-based service citing the fact that the service has not been as successful as hoped.

The new move means users will no longer need a desktop application but will have to download a browser plug-in that is "necessary to support the peer network distribution approach that promised a more scalable and cost-effective solution to streaming video online."

Informitv has tried the new service and says the video playback is a smooth 16:9 640x360 which can then be expanded to full screen.

There is however, not much to differentiate Joost from any other online video service. Others offer the same service but without any plug-in other than Adobe's Flash which is universal.

Nokia has announced that users of the N96 phone will be the first with the ability to run a mobile version of the BBC iPlayer on their phones.

Starting October 1st, the application will be available to download through the BBC website and will also come pre-loaded on newer N96 handsets.

For those unfamiliar, the iPlayer allows users to download and stream a wide selection of BBC TV and radio programs from the last week.

Making the news better, Nokia added that the service would work via Wi-Fi and 3G and that it would be free to use.

Erik Huggers, BBC Director of Future Media and Technology, added, "over the past eight months we have worked tirelessly to ensure BBC iPlayer is available on as many platforms as possible, from the PC and TV to games consoles and mobiles."

"This partnership is critical to ensuring we continue to reach out to audiences wherever they are and allow them to catch-up on their favourite BBC programmes."

Spore, Will Wright's latest blockbuster PC game has been receiving some unwanted negative attention from Amazon users who love the game but have major complaints about the SecuROM DRM that comes installed with the game.

The aggressive DRM allows the buyer to only install the game three times total before you are forced to contact EA and request more codes. EA holds the right to deny you any new codes though.

Over 700 reviewers have given the game a one star rating (out of five) on the site, with most calling the game great but slamming the DRM.

"I came to Amazon to buy it, but clearly the DRM is repulsive and malware in nature. I will not buy it," wrote one reviewer.

"I'm very disappointed that EA has chosen to treat us all like criminals," bluntly stated another.

Other users note that despite the DRM the game was still leaked to torrents and P2P four days before its official US launch date.

After announcing last month that it would be the first retailer to sell the popular Apple iPhone, the chain has finally begun doing so, offering the iPhone 3G in 970 stores and 16 Best Buy Mobile stores.

The move marks the first time the phone has been available in the US outside of Apple's or AT&T's own stores.

To quote the original release:

"We had a lot of work to do, obviously, to get in a position where Apple and AT&T would feel good about Best Buy Mobile carrying it, and that's what we've done in the last 18 months," said Shawn Score, president of Best Buy Mobile.

Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris added that because of the company's good standing relationship (the retailer sells Macs and iPods as well), Best Buy can now sell the iPhone as well.

Just last week Best Buy announced that it had finished its conversion of in-store cell phone departments to the "Best Buy Mobile" brand. Computers were upgraded to handle cell-phone activation and employees received 250,000 hours of extra training.

This morning RealNetworks, the digital media company best known for their RealPlayer and Real video and audio codecs announced the launch of RealDVD, a $30 USD software application that will allow users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs.

Robert Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, says the program is “a compelling and very responsible product that gives consumers a way to do something they have always wanted to do,” such as backup their favorite movies and have them available digitally.

The program itself is very straightforward. You simply insert the DVD in your drive and open the program. The program will then rip the entire disc (including the special features and all audio streams) to your HDD as well as adding all metadata and covert art. You can then only watch the movie in Real's "powerful" video player that comes included.

Of course the only way the program will last is because Real has added DRM so that users cannot abuse the system and rip their movies and place them on P2P networks. The ripped movie will retain all DRM that the disc started with and Real adds a second layer of DRM that will stop users from moving the movies to portable players or other PCs without buying a license. If you want to play the digital copy on another computer you will need to buy a $20 license for that computer.

On Thursday Microsoft confirmed the month old rumor that it was dropping the price, across the board, of its Xbox 360 console in the US.

Following a steep price cut in Japan two weeks ago, Microsoft has officially dropped the price of the Elite, Core and Arcade models. The 120GB HDD Elite model will sell for $399 USD, the Core model will sell for $299 USD and the Arcade model will hit the very important under-$200 barrier at $199 USD. Analysts have long said that for consoles to reach mass market adoption they must sell for under $200 USD and Microsoft has become the first console maker of the new generation to do so.

"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft in a statement.

"Xbox 360 delivers amazing performance at an extraordinary value with the leading online service and best lineup of games, downloadable movies and TV shows available from a console. The majority of consumers make the decision to buy consoles once the price falls to this mark, making this an important milestone for consumers and the industry."

Popular PC maker Lenovo and the legal music download service Napster have signed a deal to have Napster provide new Lenovo PC owners with a free 14-day trial to the Napster To Go digital music service.

It appears the deal is only valid for North American users and the deal will give users access to Napster's 6 million DRM-free audio tracks for free, for two weeks.

Because they are considered subscribers, the trial users will also be able "to access Napster To Go's ad-free radio stations and playlists put together by music industry professionals. They can also transfer the songs they select onto compatible MP3 players and music phones without paying an extra download charge."

Sony has announced that it will be recalling over 440,000 Vaio branded notebooks worldwide due to the fact that wiring faults could cause overheating.

The notebooks in question are 19 separate Vaio models from the TZ series that were manufactured from May 2007 to the present.

Sony says that "wires have been put in the wrong position near the hinge, while a flaw in the circuit board that controls the screen also may cause overheating." As a result, a few customers have been burnt by their laptops.

Sony did note however that there were no complaints in the UK and that "a product recall is not required" in the region.

The electronics giant has received 210 reports of overheating and in seven of the incidents users received minor burns.

According to new data figures from PlusNet, P2P traffic has declined significantly over the past year and legal, streaming content has grown exponentially.

The figures show that P2P traffic is down 8.75 percent year-on-year while streaming content traffic is up 170 percent over the same period. More notably, streaming content traffic is rising almost 9 percent per month, at a very steady pace. PlusNet says with P2P traffic down for the year, P2P only accounts for 26 percent of total Internet traffic, down from an all time high of 36 percent last year.

The numbers can only mean good things for the industry which has long used P2P traffic as an excuse to block high bandwidth users or charge more for those who use excessive amounts of bandwidth. If these numbers prove accurate, then it seems customers are happy viewing their content legally and the media industry is doing a good job in getting content easily available to consumers who otherwise had no alternative.

The two large UK ISPs BT and Virgin Media have admitted they have turned over the personal details of thousands of alleged pirates after the High Court ordered them to.

The personal information was then given to Topwear Inc and their lawyers Davenport Lyons who are set to send thousands of threatening letters to those who allegedly pirated any of Topware's games.

BT admitted that they are being forced to hand over the personal details but added that they are surprised at the "strong arm" tactics of the gaming industry, even in comparison to the music industry.

“It does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry,” said a BT spokesman. “However, it is only one company pursuing a limited number of miscreants at the moment. I doubt the music industry will follow suit as the potential numbers are too great, but who knows.”

Virgin seemed upset at Topware's tactics as well, saying they prefer the "educational" route used by the music industry.

“We certainly prefer the education route we pioneered with the BPI because you can’t assume people are guilty of anything, so we don’t, we let them know of what might have happened and give information on how to ensure they enjoy legal downloads. This would definitely seem to be a very different approach from a different industry,” added a Virgin spokesperson.

The infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay is back in the news today, this time for refusing to take down a user-uploaded torrent that includes autopsy pictures of two toddlers that were murdered in Arboga earlier this year.

The photos are part of a larger collection of material that came from a police investigation into the case.

Niklas Jangestig, the father of the murdered children, pleaded with the admins of the site to have the pictures removed but Peter Sunde, one of the admins, refused.

“We don’t even want to them to remove the investigative material. But we don’t want there to be pictures of my dead children there,” Jangestig said.

Sunde responded to the request with an email that said “that is one helluva gripe. No, No and again no.”

“I don’t think it’s our job to judge if something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet,” added Sunde.

“People can express themselves and spread material they think is important, that’s one of the things we’re fighting for and if it’s then used for things which can be uncomfortable for some, so be it, but it’s more important that such a possibility exists than that it doesn’t exist,” he finished.

Amazon has announced the end of its Unbox service and the birth of the new Amazon Video on Demand.

The new, updated service will allow users to watch ad-supported movies and television episodes on their TVs and PCs.

Users have the option to stream content on their PC or Mac, use media hubs with Web browsers or if you are a Sony Bravia HDTV owner, using the Bravia Internet Link.

Movie rentals cost between $3 and $4 USD and to purchase the movie with no ads is $10-15 USD depending on how new the film is. All TV episodes cost $1.99 but you may save money if you purchase or rent a whole season.

Roy Price, director of Amazon VOD, added that Unbox users had requested the ability to watch movies instantly via streaming. "We're continuing to create new, convenient ways for our customers to watch digital movies and TV shows,” Price said.

Sony has announced the launch of a new BRAVIA flat-panel LCD that has an industry leading 240Hz frame rate for exceptional motion detail during TV and movie playback.

The TV, dubbed the KDL-52XBR7 uses Motionflow 240Hz technology that uses an "algorithm that goes beyond traditional 120Hz technology by quadrupling the frame rate of conventional LCD TVs and interpolating three new frames."

CDRInfo also adds that "other picture enhancements include Sony's Advanced Contrast Enhancer (ACE), which helps deliver a dynamic contrast ratio of 80,000:1 and BRAVIA Engine 2, Sony's digital video processor that enhances all incoming signals to match the TV's 1080p resolution."

As is the new standard, the TV is compatible with Sony's BRAVIA Link that adds internet features as well as the ability to stream movies wirelessly.

After announcing last month that it was stripping some functionality from its PS3 PlayTV device it appears that Sony has changed its mind and added back the ability to transfer recorded shows, DRM-free, from the PlayStation 3 to the PSP handheld as well as any other device that can playback MPEG-4 or 2.

This new revelation comes from a review of the device by CVG, and the review says "Any recorded footage is slapped in a Library menu, automatically tagged with the programme name and description. Hit X on it and PlayTV runs the recording. Again, nice and simple.

Or, brilliantly, you can export videos to your PS3's XMB menu as MPEG-2 video (despite rumours suggesting the feature had been removed). From there you can use it like a normal file - watch it on your PS3, put it on PC, transfer it to your PSP... whatever you like.

One month after being found guilty of breaking net neutrality laws, the large U.S. ISP Comcast has appealed the decision in hopes of having the ruling overturned.

On August 1st the Commission found Comcast guilty of improperly "throttling" P2P and BitTorrent traffic without letting its users know that it was doing so. In court the ISP admitted that it temporarily slowed down service for top bandwidth users when the network was congested.

"The commission's action was legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record," Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen added in a press release.

"I'm certainly disappointed they ended up appealing," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said. "The commission has done a very thorough job on investigating the complaint. We thought we needed to step in and protect consumers' access to the Internet."

The popular documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has announced that he will be exclusively releasing his latest documentary on the Web for free instead of releasing it traditionally via theaters.

The movie, set for release on September 23rd, is entitled "Slacker Uprising" and document's a 62 city tour of what Moore calls "key swing states during the 2004 U.S. presidential election" where he was trying to convince non-voters to register and get out there and vote.

"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans," Moore said in the announcement. "The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November."

The movie had a tiny budget of just over $2 million USD and was entirely funded by himself and the movie executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein who hold all international rights for release.

Moore's last movie, "Sicko", made $24.5 million USD in the theaters and followed up the blockbuster "Fahrenheit 9/11" which made $119 million domestic.

The download will become available at BlipTV on the release date.

According to an interview posted on Pocket-lint.co.uk, Samsung believes that the Blu-ray format will only have a 5 year life span from this point out before it is replaced by either HD downloads or a completely different physical media format.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10", Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics for Samsung UK said in the interview. The 10 years mark is what Sony has committed to its Blu-ray playing PlayStation 3 console.

Griffiths does believe however that Blu-ray can be huge over the next year, and that 2008 is just the start.

"It's going to be huge", he added. "We are heavily back-ordered at the moment."

BBC Worldwide has announced they are set to launch a fully ad-supported online music service which will allow users to access free and paid audio and video content from the BBC.

The content will include coverage from shows such as "Top of the Pops" and is set to directly compete with Apple's iTunes as well as Amazon and Sky who offer similar services.

The service will launch with only 1000 audio tracks but will also include about 300 TV episodes and radio music programs including Radio 1's "Live Lounge."

BBC says they hope to offer up to 50,000 audio tracks and 3000 hours of video while using the full BBC archive.

The broadcaster has a beta launch set for November with a full rollout expected by January.

Differentiating the new service from, lets say iTunes, is that you can stream the entire video you want to watch for free, only with a few ads in the way. It is basically like Hulu except that you can pay to purchase the videos before and after you have watched the file of your choosing. Making it even better, the files are DRM-free if you purchase them.

According to a new press release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and PNY, the two companies have teamed up to release a 2GB USB flash drive that includes, for the first time ever, a full-length feature film already pre-loaded.

The movie is the classic hit Ghostbusters starring Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd and the companies say the file can be played right from the drive.

Andy Armstrong, UK, Managing Director for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment added in the release, "Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is delighted to partner with PNY to offer the first full length movie preloaded on a USB flash drive and ready to play on your PC/Laptop. We are committed to giving the consumer more choice in how to experience their movies either at home or on the go."

PNY says the drive is available now, but there was no word on price and it is not yet available on their official site.

According to Digg.com admin Kevin Rose, the upcoming iTunes 8 will be the first of the platform to allow for HD TV show purchases.

The upgrade notes say users will have the option of downloading TV shows in "HD quality," marking the first time shows will be available in such a form outside of Apple TV.

The leaked excerpt also confirms rumors that have been swirling around for weeks, that a second-generation iPod touch, a 4G iPod Nano and a second-generation iPod classic will be coming soon and will be fully syncable with iTunes 8.

Another notable update would be a "recommendation system" called Genius which will "automatically create playlists based on songs the software believes 'go great together'." The platform would also recommend purchases from the iTunes Store based on your played songs.

Sony has announced more details for the UK launch of the updated PSP-3000 handheld console.

According to Sony Europe boss David Reeves the handheld will hit the region on October 17th and cost GBP 149.99. The new model will only cost about GBP 10 more than the current Slim and Lite hardware SKU giving consumers options when they go out to buy the PSP.

The PSP-3000 has a silver finish and a brighter screen as well as a built-in microphone. Europe has the option to buy the PSP-3000 bundle with Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for EUR 199.

For the same price you can purchase an "entertainment" bundle which includes a 4GB memory card but no game for the same price.

The Slim and Lite PSP will be phased out added David Reeves who said there might be a limited time price cut on the model to help clear the shelves.

The eagerly awaited Google Chrome web browser has been released, and is now available for download. The browser includes a lot of promising features - features that have clearly been thought through rather thoroughly.

One of the most prominent new features is the new "new tab" page. Normally when you open a new tab you are presented with either your home page or an empty page. By default Google Chrome presents you with thumbnail screen shots of your most visited pages and a box for searching through your page history. The browser adjusts to the way you use it - not vice versa. Unlike regular page history that is able to search through page names and URLs, Chrome's history search looks for matches in the actual contents of the pages as well.

There's a lot of cool features under the hood, too. Each tab runs in its own process, so one malfunctioning page, at worst, crashes the tab it is running in - not the whole browser. In whole the browser is designed to meet the needs of modern day web users and web pages.

Officially confirming a leaked story by Forbes, Xbox Japan general manager Takashi Sensui has announced that the company will be slashing the prices of the console in Japan beginning September 11th.

At a media event in Tokyo, Sensui went over the price cuts which are as high as 30 percent and should help the console compete against the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 which sell more units on a weekly basis, by far, in the region.

The entry-level Arcade Model which comes with a small memory card and no HDD, will drop almost 30 percent to sell at 19,800 yen (about $183 USD), the first time a next gen console has hit the under-$200 price point. In theory, the Arcade being under $200 should open the console up to the complete mass market, however with its lack of hard drive and other features there are questions of whether it will do so.

Following weeks of speculation, it is finally official; the Apple iPhone is finally legally coming to Russia.

MegaFon, the third largest mobile carrier in Russia has announced that it will begin selling the device in Russia before the Christmas holiday but did not add any further details about the deal.

Despite never officially being released in the nation, unauthorized sales have been growing exponentially with industry experts saying sales of unlocked iPhones are at about 20,000 per month now in the country. With over 500,000 estimated iPhone users, Russia has the third largest population of iPhone owners in the world behind the US and China.

In a separate announcement, Vimplecom, Russia's second largest carrier, announced they to had reached an agreement with Apple to sell the phone. Many expect the region's largest carrier MTS to announce a similar deal in the next week.

Analysts believe however that sales may initially slow, as Russian buyers are normally put off by being locked to a certain network.

"Typically Russian operators are not strong handset sellers, and users prefer to buy handsets separately from their mobile contracts," said Konstantin Belov, a telecoms analyst at UralSib. "But the iPhone is very popular, and if mobile operators start subsidizing it, they will probably see strong demand."

The German retailer Saturn has announced that it will begin selling music in their online music store free of DRM.

After the announcement the company noted that they had become Europe's first reseller to offer all of Universal Music Group's library DRM-free. For the time being, Universal will be the only label to have all their music available DRM-free in Saturn's store but others are expected soon.

Saturn will offer 215,000 Universal tracks in the best quality available for MP3, 320k VBR.

The tracks are offered for the equivalent of $1.15 USD.

An extraordinary event occurred today at the IFA event in Berlin when German customs police raided and seized flat-screen televisions from the booth of Hyundai IT Corp.

On Thursday a German court ruled that Hyundai and other Asia-based companies were using and marketing unlicensed patented technology at the annual event. The court then authorized 69 raids.

"Hyundai had the chance today to show us that it had paid for the licenses -- then we would have gone. But that was not the case. They could not prove they had paid so we took the devices away," said spokesman Norbert Scheidhauer of Berlin's customs investigation office.

The raid occurred during the event in front of visitors and the booth was left with nothing but wires and cables hanging.

Scheidhauer would not name the other companies that are to be raided but did say that 170 televisions, 140 MP3 music players, 21 mobile phones and 57 DVD recorders had already been seized since the IFA event began on August 29th.