News archive (12 / 2008)

According to Tech Crunch, three independent sources "close to Apple" have confirmed that a large screen, (7 or 9 inch) iPod Touch will be released in the fall of 2009.

The "sources" have seen the prototypes and Apple is currently in talks with OEMs in Asia over mass production.

One of the sources says Apple has been experimenting with large form media devices for at least a year but concerns were that it would not sell well. Now however, with the App Store in full swing and iTunes selling movies at a fast clip, a large screen media device should sell well, especially branded by Apple.

There was no word on pricing but expect it to be around $500 USD at launch, if this rumor is true.

Viacom has pulled 19 popular networks from Time Warner Cable systems after a dispute over fees left no resolution.

The conglomerate has been displaying ads on the bottom of the 19 networks explaining how Time Warner is forcing them to pull the stations and is expected to take out full page color ads in the major newspapers explaining the situation.

A few of the affected networks are powerhouses such as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Spike TV.

Viacom says the fees it receives for the stations is too low and wants a 20-30 percent increase. Time Warner counter argues that Viacom's profits are slipping thanks to the soft advertisement market and the company is simply desperate to increase revenue however they can.

The 19 networks account for 25 percent of total cable network viewers at any given time, and the service disruption should prove costly for both companies if it continues.

The RIAA has been denied their request to appeal a judge's decision that has granted a retrial in the RIAA's case versus Jammie Thomas.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota originally declared the trial a mistrial, and nullified the jury's $222,000 award against Thomas over her alleged sharing of 24 songs on Kazaa. The mistrial was declared because the judge erroneously told the jury that downloading music from P2P networks constitutes as copyright infringement, when it in fact, does not.

Davis added that "actual distribution of copyrighted music must be shown," meaning that the RIAA must prove that others downloaded the music Thomas was sharing. The RIAA admitted that it would be virtually impossible to do so.

The retrial is scheduled for March 9th.

The well-known Apple iPhone case manufacturer Vaja has fueled more rumors of an upcoming iPhone Nano by listing a case for an "iPhone Nano" coming soon. The link directs you to a form that asks for your email address for information on "the upcoming release of our iPhone nano cases."

Of course it is possible that the company is playing off the recent hype of a possible iPhone Nano or is just looking to increase its email list, but it could also prove to be more proof that a Nano is indeed in the works.

While Apple has not confirmed or denied a new "Nano" iPhone, case manufacturers have leaked designs of what the Nano would look like, and fakes have showed up in Asia as well as parts of Europe sporting the new "Nano" design.

LG has announced the development of the world's first 480 Hz LCD TV panel. The TV is capable of a refresh rate of 480 images per second. In comparison, most commercially available LCD TVs currently have refresh rates of 120 Hz or 60 Hz.

The electronics company explained "that the technology is enabled by combining existing 240 Hz panels with “scanning backlight”, which repeatedly turns the backlight on and off to reduce motion blur. According to the company, the panel also posts a low motion picture response time of 4 ms, which should eliminate motion blur to provide a realistic out-of-the-window view."

There are also "a few other new features in this panel, such as technologies to create more contrast and a greater brightness level, as well as the ability to adjust the backlight brightness to reduce the power consumption of the LCD panel."

A prototype will be shown off at CES and the first consumer TVs will hit North American stores in the Q3 2009.

According to a Financial Times report, the Big 4 labels are strongly considering building a streaming video site that will directly compete with market share leader YouTube.

The site will be modeled after the very popular Hulu service, which shows full TV episodes and movies with minimal advertisements.

Warner Music recently pulled their music videos from YouTube after contract negotiations fell through. Currently, the Big 4 labels get a fee each time one of their videos is played, but Google (owner of YouTube) wants to reduce the fees and instead share more of the ad revenue.

EMI, Sony and Universal are still in contract negotiations with YouTube but may pull their videos as well if terms can't be agreed upon.

LG has announced that their upcoming 2009 lineup of networked Blu-ray players will include not only content from Netflix but also from CinemaNow and YouTube.

The electronics company will show off the new options next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

"Future LG Network Blu-ray Disc Players will also offer consumers a variety of ways to enjoy more than 12,000 choices of movies and TV episodes from Netflix," LG added.

"As millions of U.S. consumers view and download movies or TV shows through the Internet, they are demanding easier ways to access content and more home entertainment options," noted Tim Alessi, director of product development for LG Electronics USA.

The CinemaNow partnership will add 14,000 titles to the already 12,000 titles Netflix offers through their "Watch Instantly" streaming service.

According to a new Bill of Materials (BOM) report from iSuppli, the second generation 80GB PlayStation 3 console costs $448.73 USD to produce, a 35 percent reduction from first generation pricing as of 2007.

Please note that the number does not include royalty expenses or box content.

iSuppli explains, "A portion of the cost decrease is attributable to normal learning curve and supply/demand factors that bring component prices down over time. A more significant factor is the clever integration of discrete components into the core silicon of the PS3, dramatically reducing the component count. The new generation PS3 contains an estimated 2,820 individual parts, compared to 4,048 in the previous-generation model with a 60Gbyte hard drive. This also dramatically reduces the overall cost of the console."

First generation PS3 consoles were sold at a significant loss, but software sales and royalties helped make up some of the difference. It is anticipated that the PS3 will break even or even make profit on each console sold in 2009, especially if further hardware revisions are done.

iSuppli goes into detail about different parts of the hardware but a few of most notable declines in price are the Delta Electronics power supply at $21.50 (down 30 percent), the Kionix accelerometer at 90 cents (down 60 percent), the Cell Broadband engine at $46.46 (down 28 percent) and the GPU at $58.01 (down 30 percent).

According to rescue authorities, two men lost in the Swiss mountains were able to be rescued thanks to the light from their MP3 player.

The two men, both from France, "got lost late in the day Friday outside marked runs near the resort of Savognin in southeast Switzerland," added Gery Baumann of the rescue service.

One was able to alert authorities using a cellphone but the phone promptly died.

"The two winter sports enthusiasts were found by the crew of the Rega helicopter shortly after midnight -- thanks to the faint light of their MP3 player," Baumann noted.

Both men are being treated for mild hypothermia.

$99 USD Apple iPhones are finally a reality, but not from Wal-Mart as many anticipated.

American iPhone exclusive carrier AT&T has begun selling refurbished 8GB iPhones for $99 and 16GB for $199 USD. At Wal-Mart, the 8GB model sells for $2 less than MSRP, at $197.

The refurbished iPhones will remain on sale until the end of the year or until supply runs out, whatever occurs first, added the carrier.

In terms of quality, the "iPhones were either unused or lightly used and were returned during their 30-day trial period. The phones may have minor scratches but otherwise are in great condition."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sony PlayStation Home virtual world uses a severe filter that censors choice "offensive" words.

The problem however is that some of the words that are filtered don't make much sense. A few of the censored words include "Jew", "Christ", "gay", "lesbian", "bisexual" and most other terms relating to homosexuality.

At its most ridiculous, the filter censors the word "hello" because it begins with the banned word "hell."

The filters were discovered by Michael Marsh, a beta user who tried to create a Gay/Straight Alliance club within the service. Marsh contacted Sony on December 11th, before Home went public, but nothing came of it.

For its part, Microsoft employs a filter as well on Xbox Live profiles which bans words such as gay, lesbian and bisexual. However, unlike Sony, words can begin with banned words.

Giganews, the gateway used by millions to access Usenet, has reported that they have seen "unprecedented growth" over the past 12 months.

Newsgroups have been around since the 1970s as a source of information and file sharing and many argue today that it is safer and faster than BitTorrent.

Since the company increased retention levels to 240 days, growth has accelerated.

"During September 2008, Giganews completed storage upgrades which increased retention levels to 240 days," Giganews notes. "Shortly thereafter, Giganews' upload traffic jumped to a sustained level averaging well over 400 megabits per second, representing more than 4.3 terabytes of new user generated content and discussions per day. Giganews has seen steady upload growth throughout the decade, but the pace following the recent storage upgrade exceeded all expectations."

Giganews adds that "retention extending 'well beyond' 240 days should be ready by 2009." Giganews is known for their speedy upgrades so users shouldn't have to wait much longer than a few weeks.

A chart of the growth from the source:

An initial beta of the upcoming Windows 7 operating system has hit torrent trackers across the internet, and one reporter, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet has impressions on it.

He says the new OS is "solid and fast", but also adds: "The new revamped taskbar is visually very interesting (and certainly a lot easier to use at higher screen resolutions that the Vista or XP taskbar), but it tries to do too much and as such comes across as kludgey and counter-intuitive. One failure is that it's hard to tell the difference between apps that are running and shortcuts that have been pinned to the taskbar. "

The OS was demonstrated recently by Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference, but many could honestly not find any differences between 7 and Vista.

An official first beta is expected to be sent to beta testers in January.

James Joseph Cialella of Philadelphia has been arrested after shooting a man he accused of being too loud during a screening of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Police say family of the man continually disrupted the movie and Cialella eventually threw popcorn at the man's son before shooting the father in the arm.

The shooter was found by detectives still carrying the gun in his waistband, at the United Artists Riverview Stadium theater in South Philadelphia.

"(It) is really scary that it gets to that level of violence from being too noisy during a movie," Lt. Frank Vanore added.

Cialella has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and a firearms count.

According to a government-commissioned report, the UK should be moving fully to digital radio beginning in 2017.

The Digital Radio Working Group (DRWG) noted however that the government must "ease current regulatory burdens before digital radio can be widely adopted." The report found that by 2015 under 50 percent of all UK radio listeners will be using traditional analog radios to listen to FM and AM broadcasts.

The DRWG is made up of representatives from commercial radio, manufacturers, the BBC and the government.

"In the short term we believe the government should consider options for funding to support the reduction of carriage costs," added the report.

According to a DTV transition regulator, the government coupons that help subsidize the price of DTV converter boxes are going to be hard to come by soon, and he recommends ordering one now.

Rep. Ed Markey, the Department of Commerce official who oversees the subsidy program, added that he expects demand to exceed supply in the next month before the government mandated transition in February.

Congress may also need to "pass additional funds" for extra coupons.

The mandatory switch to digital signals goes into effect February 17th, 2009.

To learn more about the transition and what you will need if you are still unsure, please read this very helpful guide here at AfterDawn: Preparing for the US DTV Transition

According to Apple Insider, knockoff iPhone Nanos have surfaced in stores around Thailand, all fitting the description of the rumored Nano which has yet to be confirmed by Apple or any manufacturer.

Many of the devices even include the official Apple logo and iPhone labeling and branding, making some of the fakes very hard to spot.

The OS of the phone also mimics that of official iPhones down to the icons and wallpapers.

A few pictures from the source:

Harmonix has assured gamers that although it was promised in September and delayed, downloadable content (DLC) for the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will be coming soon.

"The downloadable content is in the final testing stages and Harmonix is working as fast as possible to deliver the 20 free bonus songs for Rock Band 2, plus an additional 30 songs from the Rock Band DLC Catalog to fans as early in 2009 as possible," notes the company. "As soon as we can announce a firm date, you can be sure the Rock Band community will be the first to know."

20 free bonus tracks will be identical to those in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, but the company has not yet leaked what the other 30 tracks will be.

The new Mozilla Fennec browser for mobile devices has been updated to a second alpha, announced the developers of the browser today.

"While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted," added Stuart Parmenter, manager of engineering. "We’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance."

The update should improve "performance while panning, zooming, loading pages or starting the program. Touchscreen support has been added and the team has progressed compatibility with Windows Mobile and Symbian."

So far the alpha is available only on one phone, the Nokia N810 tablet running OS2008 but curious users can download the browser to test on their Windows, Mac, or Linux computer.

The New York Governor David Paterson has recently proposed a new way to cut down the hefty state budget deficit but has run into many criticisms over the proposed tax increases.

One of the more ridiculous increases is a 4 percent tax on any legally purchased music and movie downloads. All 99 cent downloads from the iTunes store would immediately become $1.03.

If passes, New York would become only the second state to impose a tax on digital downloads. New Jersey currently has an "iTunes Tax."

Critics note, probably correctly, that iTunes will see a slight sales drop from the New York area as consumers turn back to P2P and other means to get their music.

Aside from the iTunes tax, Governor Paterson wants to tax over 100 other entities, including an 18 percent tax on soda, a 4 percent tax on gym memberships, and a 5 percent tax on movie tickets.

Wal-Mart has noted that they will begin sales of the Apple iPhone 3G on Sunday, and that the 8GB model will sell for $197 USD and the 16GB model for $297.

The prices are for the phone with a new two-year contract with the exclusive carrier AT&T or for a "qualified upgrade."

The phone will be available on Sunday at 2,493 of the retailer's 3,200 locations, and a spokesperson noted that Wal-Mart will price match any lower price on the iPhone 3G.

With the new move, Wal-Mart becomes the second retailer to sell the phone, following Best Buy which began selling the phone earlier this year.

According to an interview with the NYTimes, Microsoft's Shane Kim seems to suggest a deal with Hulu may be in the works that will allow Xbox 360 owners to use the excellent video streaming service.

Their deal with Netflix, the company's first streaming partner, is "just beginning to scratch the surface.” Kim also noted that they were looking to add a music service as well. (Most likely Zune, but you never know)

The interview, paraphrased says, "He argued that while there may be hundreds of video sites, most of the activity is concentrating on a handful of sites like Hulu and YouTube. So his first instinct is cut a handful of deals that integrate the Xbox more deeply into such sites."

A deal would make great sense for both parties. Hulu would gain audience and advertising revenue and Microsoft would be able to turn their console into a very formidable video streaming hub.

Obviously there could be no deal at all in the works. We will keep you updated.

Nokia has announced the availability of the Nokia N96 with Comes With Music service in the UK, marking the first time the service will hit the region.

The unlimited downloads from the store come with Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM and is licensed to only the phone owner.

The N96 offers 16GB of internal memory and has expandable memory via MicroSD for another 8GB meaning the thousands of tracks can be played back using the phone.

The company calls the service "a revolutionary program that enables people to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to millions of tracks from a range of great artists - past, present and future. Once the year is complete, customers can keep all their music without having to worry about it disappearing when their subscription is over."

Verismo Networks announced this week that their new VN100SD media hub device will allow users to "watch YouTube videos and other online video content directly on their TVs without having to connect to a computer first."

The device will connect to the TV through an HDMI and will require a wired Internet connection.

Electronista explains that "users will be able to sign into their YouTube accounts and search for videos using the interface and a soft keypad. The Verismo VuNow PoD is available for purchase online now, priced at $99. It can be upgraded to support Bit Torrents and live global Internet TV channels for a $29 fee, and Verismo promises CinemaNow support is coming soon. A high-definition capable version (up to 720p) of the product, the VN1000HD retails for $149 and swaps the standard definition version's S-video output for an HDMI output."

Nintendo will be joining up with the ad agency Dentsu to start a video distribution service for the popular Wii gaming console in an effort to establish a new revenue stream.

New entertainment content and cartoons will be available on the service, differentiating it from current content delivery services.

The service will be available in Japan starting the Q1 2009 then moving to Europe and North America after.

According to industry sources in Taiwan, OEM Blu-ray manufacturers have been hit with "seriously stagnant sales" due to Sony, Samsung and Sharp's decision to drop prices of standalone Blu-ray players to under $200 USD.

The manufacturers began shipping players out in October and November aimed "at the $199 to $299 price range" which became nearly impossible to sell at profit after the bigger brand name companies began selling the players at under $200.

The companies should be okay now however, as brand name Blu-ray player prices have crept up to their average prices before the special holiday cuts.

Digitimes noted that U.S. buyers bought almost exclusively from big name companies such as Samsung and Sony during the holiday season, leaving less reputable OEM brands out to dry.

Yesterday we reported that rumors were flaring that an iPhone Nano was in the works.

The iPhone case manufacturer XSKN had labeled a a category of their site iPhone Nano and today the site has begun selling cases for the so far unreleased and unconfirmed smartphone.

The cases, available in over 10 colorways, is selling for $25 USD.

It is possible the manufacturer is trying to make a quick buck off the rumored hype of the iPhone Nano or we could have a mock up of what the upcoming device will look like.

GameStop has begun a "reservation system" in response to the popularity of the Nintendo DS handheld as a way to ensure customers get the console in the color they want most.

Would-be buyers can reserve crimson and black, cobalt and black, and metallic rose-colored DS consoles by putting $130 USD down in advance at the retailer. GameStop will then begin delivery of the handhelds on December 28th.

"The DS seems to be at the top of the wish list for many this holiday season, so we are preparing for the last minute rush and giving consumers an option in the event the color that they desired is not available," GameStop spokesman Chris Olvera added.

According to MacRumors, the iPhone case manufacturer XSKN has labeled a category of their site iPhone Nano fueling more rumors that a Nano version of the popular phone is in the works.

XSKN gained some attention earlier this year when it began selling cases for the iPhone 3G that had yet to be released. In September, the company began selling cases for the unreleased 4th Generation iPod Nano. They have so far not produced any images of the rumored iPhone Nano, but their addition of a whole section for it has raised eyebrows.

We will keep you updated.

IFC Entertainment has announced that it will be releasing the Che Guevara biopic, Che in theaters beginning early January, then on VOD (video on demand) a few days later, and then on DVD within a short period after that, exclusively at Blockbuster.

The indie supplier notes that Che will be its "highest-profile day-and-date release yet," and they wanted to seek the widest possible audience.

The movie is four hours long and will play in theaters with an intermission break at 2 hours.

“This is definitely our biggest one, with the biggest cast and director. This is a $65 million production,” added Ryan Werner, VP of marketing at IFC. “And because of the fact that the movie is so long, we wanted to give people a variety of ways to see it.”

According to a Cnet review, the new eSlick e-book reader from Foxit Software will hit early next year at a price cheaper than the current market leaders, the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.

Due in early March, the eSlick will have an introductory price of $230 USD but will also be a pretty simple machine lacking built-in wireless. Foxit is a company known only for their excellent PDF software so the eSlick should read all PDFs without a hitch.

The device will use the same E-ink technology as its competitors and will come with a 2GB SD card for use in the available expansion slot.

Critics of the Kindle and the Reader have complained about the PDF support of each of the devices but Sony addressed concerns with its latest device, the PRS-700.

According to an attorney for the company, Circuit City sales have fallen 50 percent since the electronics chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over a month ago.

The company had projected a decline of 28 percent and had forecasted that projection into their budget. Yesterday, the court approved a $1.1 billion USD revolving credit line for the retailer in hopes that it can get out of Chapter 11.

Circuit City spokesman Bill Cimino added that the weak sales “should not be considered a negative,” considering the economic recession. He also noted that the company was improving its gross margin rate which was helping offset the sales decline.

Not everyone sees the numbers as a positive however. Retail consultant and investment banker Howard Davidowitz said it would be nearly impossible for the company to get out of bankruptcy protection given the harsh terms of the loan and the "collapse" of the retailer's customer base.

VUDU has dropped the price of their networked media hub to $150 USD down from $300 as well as a free $50 USD in VUDU credit to purchase or rent TV and movie content.

A new bundled deal will offer the same hub plus an "802.11.g Wi-Fi kit that bridges the media device to a home router" for $200 USD. The hub itself plays up to 1080p resolution content and has a 250GB HDD.

It is unclear whether the deal will last past Christmas but the new deal will make the VUDU player $80 cheaper than the rival Apple TV which does not offer as much storage.

iSupply has reported that they believe the Sony PlayStation 3 will sell for a profit in 2009, assuming that the Yen stops gaining traction on the USD.

At launch, in 2006, the 60GB PS3 cost $840 USD to produce and still cost over $800 USD to make as late as 2007, according to iSupply. Today though, the 80GB PS3 costs about $448 USD to produce.

The report says "two key chips in the PS3 have moved on to more advanced manufacturing technology. In 2006, the main chips in the console, like the Cell processor and the Nvidia (NVDA) Reality Synthesizer, which handles graphics, were built on 90-nanometer manufacturing technology. Now they're even smaller, and are built on 65-nanometer processes, meaning they cost less to make than before. ISuppli estimates the Cell chip costs Sony $46, down from the $64 in 2007, and $89 in 2006.

The Nvidia chip has come down in price, too. It now costs $58, down from $83 last year, and $129 in 2006. In both cases, Rassweiler says, the chips have been significantly redesigned with new features for functions that used to be handled by separate chips inside the system, which also helps reduce costs.

The new startup company FilmOn has claimed that they will offer HD video streaming with little to no buffering time using a new compression technique they call HDi.

Using HDi, the company says the footprint of HD videos can be reduced to 2Mbps. The service did not explain how that type of compression is accomplished.

Many of the movies available on the site are free as well and costs are offset by private financing and the use of Amazon Web Services for hosting.

Alki David, the company's founder, notes the service will work in the US and the UK and that "premium" movies are available, mainly new releases, for $6 to stream and $8 to buy.

According to an LA Times piece, Distribution Video Audio, the last known large distributor of VHS tapes, has shipped out its last batch of tapes, marking the end of an era.

VHS, and the players they are played on, VCRs, hit retail shelves in 1965 and allowed users to time-shift shows by recording them to video tape for playback whenever they chose. Earlier this year we reported the final demise of standalone VCRs although many companies still make combo DVD/VHS players or even Blu-ray/VHS players.

Ryan Kugler, the CEO of Distribution Video Audio, said that any leftover tapes would be given away.

"It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt," he added. "I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done."

The last Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was A History of Violence which was released in 2006.

According to numbers from VG Chartz, the Nintendo Wii sold over one million units in the US in the last week alone, the highest one week sales count for the console yet.

For the same period, there were 535,806 Xbox 360s sold in the US, and 239,576 PlayStation 3 consoles. The Nintendo DS was the winner in the handheld market, selling 935,000 units to the Sony PSP's 298,000 sold.

Outside of the US (excluding Japan), the DS was king, selling just under 1 million units. The Wii was second with 700,000 units sold and the Xbox 360 was third with 383,000 units sold. As with the American numbers, the PS3 lagged behind selling 246,000 for the week.

Once again, it is the time of the year when AfterDawn.com team would like to wish all our users, moderators, associates and employees very, very merry Christmas and happy holidays!

It is time for us to take a short break here at the AfterDawn.com office, but we will keep our eyes and ears open in case something interesting happens. If you're hungry for more, check out our forums!

On behalf of AfterDawn.com Team,

Jari Ketola

The Australian government has said today that new technology could be used to filter all P2P traffic.

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy added, "Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial."

The controversial censorship plan was originally believed to be for restricting certain Web traffic and internationally-hosted content that did not fall under Australian regulation.

On the Digital Economy Future Directions blog launched by Conroy earlier this month, the replies to the plan are very critical.

"I'm aware that this proposal has attracted significant debate and criticism – on this blog and at other places in the blogosphere," Senator Conroy noted.

The filtering proposal as a whole has made headlines since its first appearance and there were even protests around Australia earlier this month.

According to a couple of analysts, sales of Blu-ray discs in Europe are doing "better than expected", given the worldwide recession.

FutureSource says that in the UK, for the month of November, consumers purchased 462,000 BD movies, a large 165 percent increase from the month before it.

"The Blu-ray disc format offers an unparalleled home entertainment experience, something all those involved with this technology have always known," notes Futuresource Director Jim Bottom. "Once people see the benefits of Blu-ray for themselves, they soon realize the difference it can make. Seeing is believing after all! We fully expect Blu-ray to keep on bucking the current economic trend and continue its rapid growth over the next few months and beyond, stimulated by falling prices and even more bundling deals with large screen TVs."

Bottom also adds that Blu-ray players, including the PS3, have "outsold DVD by 'about five times' over the first three years of DVD's release."

Roku has announced that the popular Netflix Player by Roku has been updated to support HD video, following the recent trend started last month by Samsung, TiVo, LG and Microsoft.

The firmware upgrade, version 1.5 will add the ability for users to watch 300 HD movies from Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming library.

Additionally, Roku has noted that they will soon be bringing non-Netflix programming to the device. A splash screen under "What's New?" reads:

"This screen will become your launching pad for a number of great new channels that will begin to appear on your player in early 2009. In addition to the hugely popular Netflix channel, you'll see new movie channels, TV channels, web video channels and more."

Infinity, the Japanese-based disc producer, has annouced that it will be bringing Blu-ray/DVD combo discs to the market, and that the boxset for the TV series Code Blue will be the first video to use the combo disc.

The disc will only be a single layer Blu-ray on one side and a dual layer DVD on the other, but the company says a full BD-50 dual layer on one side is possible.

Before its demise earlier this year, a good amount of HD DVD discs were combo discs as an effort to spur interest in the format and in HD in general.

The Infinity BD/DVD Hybrid discs will begin shipping in mid-February, and the 11-episode Blu-ray boxset will retail for the equivalent of $408 USD.

The BBC has announced they have finally created a version of the popular iPlayer that will work on Mac and Linux computers.

Although Mac and Linux users have had the ability to stream content for over a year, downloads were not available. With the new BBC iPlayer Desktop, both operating systems will be able to handle both streaming and downloads.

The latest version "has been written with Adobe's AIR technology which aims to make it possible to create applications that can be downloaded to your computer, rather than just embedded in browser web pages as is possible with the widely used Flash software."

The iPlayer has come under fire in Europe from ISPs who claim that users of the service clog bandwidth.

Electronic Arts, the publisher behind the most pirated game of 2008, Spore, has now released a De-Authorization Tool which it hopes will help quell some of the anger consumers have felt over the game's crippling SecuROM DRM.

The site says:
"By running the de-deauthorization tool, a machine "slot" will be freed up on the online Product Authorization server and can then be re-used by another machine.

You can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize."

Previously, buyers of the game were stuck with only a few authorizations and lost one each time the game was installed, even after hard drive failure or video card updates.

This is only important to those that have already purchased the game though, because Spore is now available via Steam without any DRM.

Get the tool here: Spore De-Authorization Tool

The large publisher Electronic Arts has announced that they have joined Valve's digital distribution platform Steam, bringing notable titles to the service such as Spore, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect and Need For Speed Undercover.

In the next month the publisher will add Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Mirror's Edge, and Dead Space as well.

Steam currently has 15 million active user accounts globally.

"We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam -- a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry's most successful digital distribution services," added EA COO John Pleasants of the deal.

According to Warner Music Group, negotiations between them and video sharing giant YouTube have broken down, and the group has removed all their music videos from the site.

Currently each of the Big 4 labels are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube.

"We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists' content to the site," Warner noted. "Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."

Earlier this week, Universal Music noted that YouTube had become a strong revenue stream for the studio, and that it "has generated 'tens of millions' of dollars for the recording company this year, up 80 percent from last year." Universal hopes to add more content to YouTube soon, likely full length feature films.

"If we can't reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners," Google (owner of YouTube) added. "For example, you may notice videos that contain music owned by Warner Music Group being blocked from the site."

The guys over at The Pirate Bay have announced the launch of a new freeware video converter, dubbed the Vio Mobile Video Converter.

The company claims "The ViO mobile video converter converts virtually any web video format file into a file that’s 100% compatible with your portable media device, compressing it up to 20% of its original size without any reduction in image quality. ViO converts your media faster than any tool on the market today."

The program also "comes complete with general audio/video settings and you can also personalize your ViO experience even more with advanced audio/video settings. For example, you can customize the size of the output file and its BitRate is calculated automatically."

The site notes the program is also optimized for Blackberry users. Best of all, its free.

You can download the program here: Vio Mobile Video Converter

After suing over 35,000 people since 2002 over music piracy, the RIAA is changing its policy and will discontinue suing individuals over unauthorized music sharing through P2P networks.

With that good news however, comes possibly worse news.

The RIAA is now making agreements with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that would have the companies send out emails to customers they believe are "making music available online for others to take."

The first three emails will be warnings asking the customer to stop, but a 4th may warrant having your Internet connection cut off entirely.

Although they will stop sending out mass lawsuits, the RIAA retains the right to sue "heavy users." All current lawsuits will be settled as well.

Thanks to a new teaser image posted on the DivX site, (shown below), it appears that the latest update to the popular DivX software bundle, DivX 7, will be available next month.

Although not much is known, the site tells us that the new update will be "featuring True HD with H.264 video and AAC audio."

We will keep you updated.

Teaser Image:

According to the official YouTube blog, the site has expanded their high definition player, making it official after weeks of testing new HD capabilities.

Says the blog:
"Starting today, if you click the "watch in HD" option below any HD-enabled video, the video will automatically play in widescreen – so you can find out where the hell Matt is in glorious HD, if you so wish. As part of this launch, we have created an HD Videos area where you can browse videos uploaded in the HD format. In anticipation of your questions – including how to encode your videos to take advantage of this new feature and how to avoid the dreaded "windowboxing" – we have prepared an FAQ in the Help Center."

You can find that FAQ page here: YouTube HD Faq

Blu-ray.com is reporting that the blockbuster hit The Dark Knight is close to hitting 2 million units sold on Blu-ray, a number that smashes all previous releases by a large margin.

In just over a week in stores, 1.8 million units have been sold. 'The Dark Knight' set the launch day record for Blu-ray when it sold 600,000 units on December 9th.

U.S. buyers have accounted for most of the sales, with over 1 million coming from the region.

Another important number to note is 13, the percentage Blu-ray sales represent of all home video formats, including DVD.

Mixtape sites where you can share your music playlists are closing on extinction. RIAA drove Muxtape off in September and now the pressure from the lobbyists has made another mashup, Mixwit, to call it a day.

Mixwit was never sued by RIAA but it was just a matter of time. The service took the songs from the MP3 search engine Seeqpod, which would've led them into trouble with RIAA eventually.

Mixwit founder Michael Christoff was interviewed by TechCrunch, "we thought about continuing with mixwit as a company, but we could never get assurance that the future of mixwit would not be hurt by the perceived liabilities of its past so we decided it was time to to shut things down."

There are a few mixtape sites still keep on rockin', for example Mixaloo and Mixtube. Let us also hope that the upcoming music startups that consumers so much love won't be haunted by the industry.

P2P video service Joost has decided to shift away from P2P and head towards Flash. The company will give up their efforts developing the P2P client that has so far defined Joost.

Joost, which was considered one of the most innovative start-ups in early 2007 when the beta was released, has gone through some hard times lately. Ultimately the P2P client, with its obvious benefits, had more flaws than expected. Without the ability to link to specific videos or embed them on to your own website it became obsolete.

In last September Joost launched the Flash site, which gave users the option to select between Flash and P2P. Now there's no choice to be made. The only platform that will apparently have an own Joost client is iPhone.

Moving to Flash not only means fierce competions with tons of other online video sites, but a much larger bandwidth bill for Joost. P2P streaming was a clever idea, unfortunately it didn't succeed - at least not in this case.

A group of scientists have developed a new audio technology in the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). Directional audio coding (DirAC) technique aims to produce the best possible sound for the listener regardless of how many speakers the sound system has and where the speakers are located. TKK has now sold the protecting patents to a German research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

The technique is based on Spatial Impulse Response Rendering (SIRR) and would use for example a remote control to measure and determine what kind of speaker setup surrounds the listener. By transmitting audio and metadata between the microphone, the audio system and the speakers it would produce optimal audio quality for the listener. The technology is said to be suitable for teleconferencing as well.

According to TKK DirAC could become the industry standard. The recordings would hold 1-3 channels of audio and metadata. However, the studies are not yet finished.

TKK and its researchers will continue to work on DirAC with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Elektron EHP-606 is the re-branded sister of network media player Popcorn Hour A-110 which is also based on the same Networked Media Tank platform. With identical file support and user interface, what does EHP-606 offer that Popcorn Hour doesn't? Well, first of all the EHP-606 has a VGA output. It also has support for NMT (also familiar from the Popcorn Hour) applications such as FTP, Samba and NFS servers and most importantly a built-in BitTorrent client - or actually two different BitTorrent clients.

The box included:

Buyers in Canada will soon be faced with higher prices for blank CDs (CD-Rs), as the Canadian Copyright Board has just increased the levy on the media in an effort to "compensate the music industry for potential duplication of copyrighted material."

The new levies will increase by 38 percent, to 29 cents. The first levy was implemented in 1999 with the intention of helping to compensate the record industry. The idea is that customers will buy blank CDs to duplicate purchased audio CDs or downloaded albums, which will therefore cause massive losses to the music industry and its artists.

Obviously, the Board has not taken into consideration users who will use the CDs to backup their computers or who will copying their own work.

Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau added: “Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to more than 18.”

British Government culture secretary Andy Burnham has recommended that copyright terms for sound recordings should be extended to 70 years, from the current 50 years.

The announcement has brought joy to record labels and UK musicians who had been campaigning for years to have the copyright terms extended. Until recently however, the campaign had fallen on deaf ears.

Burnham added that the new decision should bring “maximum benefit to performers and musicians.”

Horace Trubridge, of the Musicians’ Union, was ecstatic over the decision. “The MU has always argued that term of protection should not run out during a performer’s lifetime, and we would support any proposal that supported this principle and was of direct benefit to performers.”

Feargal Sharkey, CEO of trade organization U.K. Music added: "At this critical time of change, the creative industries have never been more vital to this nation's future prosperity. The announcement regarding term extension is a clear sign that government, like everyone in our industry, is committed to ensuring that U.K. music retains its status as the very best in the world."

Intel and Harris Interactive have released the results of a recent survey they conducted entitled “Internet Reliance in Today’s Economy.” The survey polled 2,119 American adults.

The first "key" finding of the survey was that 46 percent of women and 30 percent of men said they would give up sex for two weeks rather than give up Internet access for the same two week period.

The Internet ranked highest among discretionary spending items, higher than cable television, dining out, and shopping for clothing.

61 percent of women surveyed said they would rather lose TV for two weeks, then have their Internet access taken for one.

“The survey revealed that 65 percent of adults feel they cannot live without Internet access, and even more — 71 percent — responded that it is important or very important to have Internet-enabled devices, such as laptops, netbooks and mobile Internet devices that can provide them with real-time updates on important issues including the state of the economy,” noted Intel.

Amazon has started a new Blu-ray promotion today, offering 50 percent off MSRP on 20 titles.

A few of the notable deals are the Rambo 1-3 Boxset for $25 USD and few other films for $9.99 USD or $10.29.

The deal is running concurrently with Amazon's current B2G1 (buy 2 get 1 free) deal.

For those interested the deal can be found here:
Amazon 50 percent off Blu-ray promotion

The Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV has been nominated for a Grammy award for Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package.

Making this notable is the fact that the album was licensed under a Creative Commons license meaning anyone can legally download it for free from torrent sites and other P2P. For its release, the band even published the first disc on the infamous public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, where it remains highly seeded, even today.

The band released the album for free, but did ask for voluntary donations of $5 USD for the CD. They also sold a few CD packages including a $300 "Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition." Despite offering the album for free, the band still made a large amount of money, proving a record label is not necessary to be successful.

NIN's publicist said in March:

"Nine Inch Nails' 36-track instrumental opus Ghosts I-IV, released March 2 via NIN.com, has amassed a first week total of 781,917 transactions (including free and paid downloads as well as orders for physical product), resulting in a take of $1,619,420 USD."

Ubisoft has released the potential blockbuster Prince of Persia for the PC without any DRM but the company says it still expects piracy to be high.

A post on the official Ubisoft forum from Ubisoft community development manager Chris Easton, notes the decision.

“You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP [Prince of Persia] PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are.”

However, he still expects piracy to be high. How "truthful" will people be? “Not very, I imagine,” he concluded.

When a user posted that developers need to stop blaming piracy for everthing and that "If you make a good game, people will buy it," Easton remarks:

“Well this time we’ve got a good game with no DRM so there really is no reason to pirate it, right? We should expect good sales because there’s no reason to not buy a copy.”

“I’m fairly skeptical as it’s an easy answer given by a lot of people why they pirate games but if you’re going to buy this game instead of pirating purely because of no DRM in the store version, then if I ever meet you in real life I’ll happily shake your hand and buy you a drink.”

Citing a change in the musical landscape over the past few years, the rock band The Smashing Pumpkins have announced they will no longer record any new albums and instead will release singles for iTunes only.

The once extremely popular band who took a 7 year break before returning in 2007 noted that "disappointing sales and a comparatively poor reception" for their comeback album ‘Zeitgeist’ also influenced the decision.

Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins guitarist and lead vocalist, added, “We're done with that. There is no point. People don't even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest.”

“The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance and do the arty track to set up the single? It's done.”

Corgan does feel there are some artists that can "buck the trend" because of how influential they are.

“When Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album, I pay attention. Same with Neil Young. Because they're major artists who have something to say. I consider us in that category. When we do something it should be taken seriously, even when we're off.”

Citing yesterdays disappointing November hardware sales, CNNMoney has called the Sony PlayStation 3 a "sinking ship."

The numbers show that the PS3 sold 19 percent less consoles year-on-year from the same period in 2007, and CNNMoney believes that a substantial price cut is necessary if the console wants to see a growth in sales anytime soon.

After being outsold 840,000 to 380,000 for the month by its main rival the Xbox 360, many analysts have agreed that a price cut is necessary before the console falls behind by an "insurmountable margin."

The CNNMoney article also attributed the slow down in sales to three specific reasons. The high price tag (All Xbox 360 models are cheaper than cheapest PS3), the fact that no one cares about Blu-ray, and the lack of strong selling titles for the platform.

We can all agree that price is an issue, but the other two issues CNNMoney brings up are a bit, for lack of a better word, iffy. Blu-ray player sales and Blu-ray movie sales continue to grow exponentially and show similar numbers to that of DVD when it was the "new" format in the late 90s and early 2000s.

The blockbuster smash The Dark Knight has set a new Blu-ray sales record, selling 600,000 copies in the US on its first day of release. According to Warner Home Video, Blu-ray sales accounted for over 21 percent of the total units sold.

Warner President Ron Sanders believes the movie will hit 1 million Blu-ray copies sold in its first week, a milestone for the format.

“We think we will hit 1 million this weekend,” said Sanders. “What’s really encouraging about it is that the Blu-ray version did exceptionally well across the board. It wasn’t just selling in Best Buy or Wal-Mart, but also it did well in grocery and game stores. It was surprising to us just how well it did.”

The previous record holder was Iron Man which sold 265,000 Blu-ray copies on its first day on way to 500,000 units in the first week.

Possibly even more important for the Blu-ray format is the fact that 21 percent of total sales is much higher than the average 10 percent that most new Blu-ray releases garner.

The Nintendo Wii dominated the US hardware sales chart for November, selling an astonishing 2.04 million units for the month. For the same month last year, Nintendo sold 981,000 units.

Year on year, hardware revenue was up 10 percent, says NPD.

"One reason for the continued strength of the industry compared to other forms of entertainment comes from a number of sources," said NPD's Anita Frazier. "Certainly, the expanded audience for gaming due to the availability of a wider variety of compelling content is a strong contributor."

The full sales chart:

2.04m - Wii

1.57m - Nintendo DS

836k - Xbox 360

421k - PSP

According to the UK police, a factory raid has netted pirated video games, DVDs and CDs with a street value estimated at £1 million.

30,000 of the counterfeit discs were seized from the factory in West Midlands, and there was an estimated 10,000 each of DVDs, video games and audio CDs.

Along with the discs, seven PCs were seized with 35 DVD re-writers, 19 HDDs, 15 Xbox 360 consoles and two Wii consoles. "Multiple" modchips were also found.

John Hillier, head of ELSPA's crime unit added, "Piracy, like that of any other entertainment industry, costs us dear. Making good and inventive games is an expensive and creative process, with some titles today costing £20m or more to develop".

"When a pirate sells illegally copied games they undermine the viability, value and creativity of our industry. The worst-case scenario is that pirate activity could cost the jobs of some of the UK's outstanding creative talent and that would be a catastrophe".

"The public should be aware of many other pitfalls of counterfeit games - some will even damage hardware such as consoles including PlayStation, Xbox and Wii. Other fakes will not play correctly at all".

According to Major Nelson, sales on Xbox Live Arcade have nearly tripled in the weeks following the introduction of the New Xbox Experience dashboard revamp.

Being updated to include in-game Avatars spurred UNO sales 650 percent in its first day after the NXE update.

For the first week following the launch, movie downloads were up 49 percent and TV episode downloads were up 30 percent.

The current Live service now has over 30,000 movies, TV episodes, and music videos available from 45 content partners.

Microsoft has noted that the software attach rate for their Xbox 360 console has grown to 8.1 titles.

The software giant also noted that third-party games are generating more revenue for publishers than the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PlayStation 3 combined. In total, for the month, third-party game sales reached $300 million USD on the Xbox 360.

"We've created the optimal line-up of experiences this holiday season for families seeking lasting entertainment value, particularly during rough economic times in the US and abroad," noted Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.

"We have the largest library of games, TV and movie content and the most expansive and rewarding social experiences. We're confident Xbox 360 will continue to drive record sales around the world this holiday and beyond."

Including first-party titles, sales for the month were $408 million USD.

Search engine giant Google released its Chrome web browser in early September. As expected the browser was released as a beta version but what was definitely not expected just happened. After three months of beta test development Google has released an official stable version 1.0.154.36 of Chrome.

Approximately 100 days, 10 million downloads and 14 updates. That is the Chrome beta in a nutshell. The latest update improves the stability, speed of start up and JavaScript processing as well as overall performance.

The new stable version also improves the bookmark features - you are now able to easily import and export bookmarks to and from your Google Chrome.

Chrome will be updated frequently in the future as well. Upcoming updates will add form prefilling, browser extension and RSS support as well as Linux and Mac OS X versions of the browser.

Download Google Chrome.

Microsoft has announced 63 new lawsuits against people the company is accusing of selling pirated Microsoft Windows products or Microsoft Office products on eBay and other auction sites.

The lawsuits are global and include pirates from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Belgium.

The apparent target of Microsoft is people accused of selling Windows XP or Office "Blue Edition", which are becoming more and more popular on auction sites as the company plans to phase it out.

Microsoft noted that the pirated copies pose a security risk to users as 43 percent "had tampered code that could create a backdoor into the person's computer."

According to numbers compiled by GfK Retail and Technology, the market share for Blu-ray disc recorders in Japan has finally surpassed that of DVD.

Going back to April 2002, DVD recorders had only 10 percent of the market, with VHS having the rest, but DVD rapidly took more market share.

However, with falling prices, Blu-ray recorder sales are picking up steam in Japan, as well as market share.

According to GfK, in the last six months, the average price for a BD recorder has dropped from $1300 to $950.

A program called Tunebite promises to strip the DRM off your Nokia Comes With Music unlimited downloads, all for the one-time price of £17.50.

Comes With Music, an unlimited music download program that comes with certain Nokia handsets, has Microsoft-powered DRM, but it can be stripped easily with the program allowing users to keep the music forever.

The program works by playing the tracks at 54x speed while re-dubbing them as non-encrypted files. Using this method, the DRM is stripped within seconds, even for long songs.

Should be interesting how long the program is available before Nokia or Microsoft says something.

Tunebite available here

According to a new NPD Group survey, consumers have grown fond of the DVD and Blu-ray Disc digital copy, especially if the copy comes on a separate disc and not as a download.

Over 75 percent of DVD and Blu-ray buyers that watch movies on portable devices said they would "be interested in buying physical discs holding a digital copy."

About 55 percent of those surveyed admitted they have watched a full-length TV show or movie on a portable device such as a phone or media player. 79 percent responded that when receiving a digital copy, they would prefer it be on the disc already and not available as a free download from the Internet.

“The consumer preference for moving their digital copies to other devices as opposed to downloading via the Web shows there are still opportunities for the industry to promote and extend the value of the physical DVDs and BD platforms,” said Russ Crupnick, NPD entertainment industry analyst. “For consumers who don’t have the time or know-how to download a full-length movie or TV show, digital copy provides a flexible and safe solution for transferring a legal version from a purchased disc to a portable device.”

80 percent found the digital copy experience "a positive one" and said they would buy titles with that feature in the future.

Warner Bros. has announced that they will giving the blockbuster smash hit The Dark Knight an early VOD release, at least in South Korea where it will become available two weeks before the physical DVD release.

The decision will mark the first time a studio has released a blockbuster film on VOD before DVD.

The film will be available starting tomorrow on IPTV channels Mega TV and Broad&TV as well as the digital cable TV service Home Choice, said the studio.

"Warner is planning to do active business with digital distribution, based on Korea's strong digital infrastructure as a test bed for a pre-DVD VOD service. We will collaborate with local business partners of digital content, while coping with illegal downloads," added Cho Hong-yeon, director of Warner Korea's digital distribution unit.

According to a NYTimes report, Apple has killed the GPS feature of their iPhone 3G smartphone for the Egyptian market.

The decision was made because the Egyptian government feared the feature would create a national security risk. The government added that the technology should remain limited to military applications.

Critics of the move note correctly that "Google Maps is capable of giving would-be terrorists a bird’s eye view of sensitive government locations" and that the GPS is not even on that level.

Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights program of Human Rights Watch, adds: “Here is the big question for Apple: Is this an ad-hoc approach or is there a fundamental policy, balancing the freedom of expression and information with the demands of the government?”

Good question.

Sir Paul McCartney and his producer and collaborator Youth, under the name The Fireman, are offering their latest CD as DRM-free digital downloads in either 320kbps bitrate MP3s, FLAC files or Apple Lossless files.

The new album, 'Electric Arguments’ is available in many different bundles at The Fireman website.

For those who want even better quality, the group is offering a ‘Digital + Deluxe Limited Edition,’ which includes a "full vinyl package, 13 track CD, 7 track CD containing bonus mixes and alternate versions, DVD containing hi-definition audio recordings 24bit 96Khz, DVD containing multi-track session files for a selection of the album tracks allowing you to remix, exclusive art print, extensive booklet and immediate download of files."

The album itself has received rave reviews in the UK since its release in November. Its also good to see more top artists embracing DRM-free models.

Sony has announced that the highly anticipated PlayStation Home Beta service for the PS3 will be available to many regions beginning tomorrow, December 11th.

Sony describes the service as "a ground-breaking 3D social gaming community available on PS3 that allows users to interact, communicate and share gaming experiences. By leveraging the power of PS3, PlayStation Home delivers overwhelming visual graphics and rich gaming social experiences only possible on the PS3 platform. Within PlayStation Home, users can create and customize their own unique avatars and explore the virtual community in real time where they can communicate freely through text or voice chat. PlayStation Home users will not only be able to enjoy variety of entertainment content such as mini-games, videos and special events along with their friends, but will also be able to create their own community by using the “Club*2” feature to create clubs with other PlayStation Home users who share the same interests. PlayStation Home also allows groups of users to launch directly into their favourite online games together from PlayStation Home."

Nintendo, has announced a deal with the large book publisher HarperCollins to make many "literary classics" available as e-books on the DS portable gaming system.

The 100 titles available at launch will include books from Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. Each title will cost £20 and will be available in the UK at launch only.

To change the page, users only have to brush their finger across the screen. Nintendo begins with a larger fan base then most rival ebook readers, including the expensive Amazon Kindle, due to its already established 20 million user base.

James Honeywell, a Nintendo executive, added: “When you go on holiday, or if you’re a commuter, lugging around a big paper book can be a bit of an inconvenience. Now you’ve got this whole library that you’re taking with you.

“We hope to encourage people to try books that they wouldn’t go out and purchase themselves.”

According to a post over at WiiNewz, there is a new Nintendo Wii drive revision on some current Wii models that renders all current modchips useless. The posts says that the entire drive controller chip has been removed.

The full post reads:

"What they have done is combine the old D1A and drive controller chip in to one which is now called the GC2-D3, as you can see from the photo there is a big blank space on the PCB where the controller chip used to be.

One of these drives will be on its way to the WiiKey team next week and they will of course do their best to work it out, but from what we can tell it could possibly be a few months or longer before it could be figured out as it’s a totally new way of handling drive function, that's just our guess and maybe they will work it out faster. This is all speculation of course for now, but we can see the first generation of chips for these drives being a high wire count such as the D2CKey when they were first released. When we know more from the WiiKey team after they have received the drive and had time to access it, we will make a post in this thread to update everyone on the situation.

According to figures from DisplaySearch, sales of standalone Blu-ray players (excluding the PS3) were up 300 percent week on week for the week of Thanksgiving including Black Friday.

The added demand was sparked by Sony and Samsung's decision to drop the price of their entry-level players to under $200 USD, says the firm.

Consumers purchased 147,000 players for the week and spent over $30 million USD, coming out to an average of $204 per player, a number lower than half of what consumers were paying last year during the same period.

25 percent of all video-disc player purchased for the period were Blu-ray players, added DisplaySearch.

"Blu-ray had a pretty good Black Friday," Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research at DisplaySearch, added. "This is primarily due to one factor: sub-$200 pricing."

Sony America has announced that the much delayed PlayStation Home online social service will in fact launch before the end of the year, although as a beta and not a final release.

There was no specific date set or how many beta users will be allowed to test out Home but it appears that the service will come as part of a new firmware upgrade.

At the beginning of the year, Sony promised Home would be available by the fall, after promising before that it would be ready by the spring.

Electronista explains that Home "will allow users from around the world to interact with each other and set up uniquely furnished apartments, virtual stores that can earn them virtual credits and play casual games. Users will be able to spend real money in the virtual world as well by shopping for games and products. Home also promises to double as an online interface for Sony's TV and movie offerings."

According to TorrentFreak, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has gone after a number of torrent sites including the large Bulgarian tracker RARBG which had over 100,000 users.

ArenaBG and many other large sites have been taken down as well. It appears that the police and BREIN are aiming to take down Bulgarian trackers, and working to identify the administrators of the site.

Once their identities were found out, each was asked to a meeting where they were told that their sites needed to be shut down. If they were not shutdown, the police would physically take the servers.

ArenaBG, P2PBG, MastersTB and AvatarBG are all either shutdown or moving on to new hosts.

Torrent-BG, WordBG, and Zarta.org are all shutting down as well.

According to Eldar Murtazin, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a smashing success in Russia, the first country in which it was made available.

Analysts had expected the 5800 to outsell the Apple iPhone but actual sales were way higher than anyone imagined.

From the period of November 26th to December 7th, 58,000 handsets were sold in the region and retail orders for 46,000 more units were taken.

The current Russian price for the handset is €400, much higher than the €279 Nokia originally promised for the country.

Amazon, known for its excellent year-round sales, has just begun a new promotion for the Sony PlayStation 3 which I feel is great if you were on the fence about buying one.

For a limited time, consumers can purchase the newer PlayStation 3 80GB model, bundled with the blockbuster hit The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, along with the new game Resistance 2: Collector's Edition , all for $400 USD, the retail price for the console itself.

The movie retails for $25 and the game for $60, so all in all you are get $85 worth of items while getting the console you may have been purchasing by itself for the same price.

For those interested, the link is here: Amazon PS3, Blu-ray promotion

Mozilla has released a new beta version of the popular Firefox browser. According to Mozilla Developer Center Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 includes improvements to speed, performance and compatibility. Download it and you'll also get try out couple of new and anticipated features.

The speed and performance improvements come from the updated version of Gecko layout engine and the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. TraceMonkey especially is a welcome addition as it provides a huge boost to JavaScript processing speeds. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 also includes the new Private Browsing Mode which allows users to browse the web without leaving any traces. You can also now choose to remove the history of for example only past hour of browsing.

Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

The website PiracyIsACrime has announced the launch of their Warez Bust Database which provides an easy to search database if you are looking for any arrests attributed to piracy crimes.

The post, from the site reads:

"I get a lot of questions regarding people in the present and past that were involved with the warez community in one way or another. I have put this database together to answer those questions. The goal of the database is to be able to search by Real Name, Group Name, or Nickname, and to be able to find out what happened to that person, his sentencing, and to read court documents if available.

I have spoken too many of the people on the database and they all agree with me: getting involved with warez is just not worth it. That is the entire point of this website. Companies get paid millions of dollars to lobby the government to go after the warez community. This is very real and it’s not going away any time soon. It’s just not worth it.

You will notice some very interesting cases in the database. Foe example, a supplier for a warez group might get a lesser of a sentence then a person who just downloaded for personal use. Or a trader gets jail time but the leader of a very large music group gets off with probation.

TiVo has announced that the hotly anticipated Netflix HD streaming feature is now available for owners of Series 3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL DVRs.

Any user with an active Netflix subscription that costs over $9.99 USD per month will now be able to stream HD movies through their TiVo from the rental company's "Watch Instantly" streaming service.

The TiVo remote can be used for playback of the film as well as rating the film for other users. The feature is a free upgrade as well.

Netflix now has its HD streaming service available through the Netflix player by Roku, a couple LG Blu-ray players, a couple of Samsung Blu-ray players, and the Microsoft Xbox 360 console.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has noted that Wii console sales in the US for the Thanksgiving weekend were 'huge', with the company selling 800,000 units in three days.

Last year for the same period the company sold only 350,000 units of the popular game console.

As if there was any question on where the Wii would fall on the hardware sales charts, these numbers guarantee the top spot. However, many retailers are reporting that they are sold out of the console, with one notable exception, Wal-Mart, which says they have "tens of thousands" extra in stock.

"When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list," Iwata said to Reuters. "But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list - Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list."

EMI Music has announced that they have signed up a few top artists to appear in a new version of the popular iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge.

Tap Tap Revenge, created by Tapulous, was a hit game on jaibroken iPhones and iPod Touches before it was made "official" and offered in the Apple App Store for free.

The new version, Tap Tap Dance, will feature songs from Moby, Chemical Brothers, Digitalism, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Justice, Junkie XL, Soul Magic Orchestra and Morgan Page.

EMI added that it plans to sell a Tap Tap Dance soundtrack that will feature the 10 songs.

"We are close to having a formula that the artists, labels, publishers and Apple are all happy with," noted Tapulous' CEO, Bart Decrem.

The game will cost $4.99 USD from the App Store when it is released.

According to a Waffles.fm post, the private music tracker has banned one of their "power users" after it was found that he was selling invites on the auction site eBay.

From the post, "Thanks to a cooperative effort with staff at what.cd, we’ve busted one of our own well-known members for selling invites on eBay. towelie, aka shad0w on what.cd, eBay username sueles810 has been banned, along with all of his invitees."

Staff from both sites have long said they are scouring the Internet for users trying to profit off the site, and this member made it pretty obvious. All staff had to do was purchase the invite from the eBay auction and then see what nickname had invited them after they joined.

There is no word on whether it was all of the user's "direct" invitees there were banned or everyone in his invite tree but chances are everyone was, unfortunately.

California-based Tzero Technologies has demonstrated its new second generation ZeroWire in Tokyo. The new ZeroWire enables wireless HDMI transmission with Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology, which is able to transfer Full HD (1080p) resolution video at 60 frames per second. The product is at first targeted at Japanese market, but has passed the regulatory tests in Europe and the U.S. as well.

Tzero calls ZeroWire the first commercially viable wireless HDMI solution with an estimated material cost of less than $50. It support HDMI 1.3a and HDCP and therefore is "Hollywood Approved", according to the press release. With 480 Mbit bandwidth the ZeroWire is able to transmit Full HD resolution video and 7.1 digital surround audio at ranges greater than 20 meters.

According to five employees of the cell-phone departments at Wal-Mart stores around the country, the giant retailer will become the second mass-market chain to sell the popular Apple iPhone starting this month.

The employees were contacted by Bloomberg and each said that they were currently being trained on how to sell the device.

In September, Best Buy began selling the device, making it the first mass-market retailer to do so. Before that point, the iPhone was only available direct from Apple or from AT&T stores.

Although unconfirmed by both Apple and Wal-Mart, BoyGeniusReport is saying that they have received a tip that Apple will make a 4GB model of the popular iPhone 3G available at the giant retailer for only $99 USD with 2-year contract.

Having the phone priced so low would make it readily available to most consumers, especially those that don't care so much about having tons of music or movies on their phone and also want to be able to go out and say "I have an iPhone!"

Apple initially sold a 4GB model of the 1st generation iPhone but dropped it from its lineup when it introduced a 16GB model. The 4GB models' price back then? $399 USD.

Google's Android team has announced that they will begin selling the unlocked Android Dev Phone 1 for $399 USD. The mobile phone will be the first Android-based phone to be both SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked and available to the public.

Google created the Linux-based OS to compete against other mobile operating systems such as Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian, Apple's iPhone and RIM.

The move should prompt extra sales to consumers who do not want to buy the T-Mobile-locked G1.

The unit will be available in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary and will work with any GSM carrier.

In a decision that should come as no surprise to anyone, BitTorrent Inc. has shut down their struggling Torrent Entertainment Network paid download store.

Last month the company drastically reduced their staff by half and removed the CEO in favor of former CTO Eric Klinker.

BitTorrent vice president of marketing Simon Morris added that the company has been taking down the store since Nov. 17.

The store launched in February of last year and had content deals in place with 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., MTV Networks, and Paramount Pictures. Unfortunately for them, the customers just never came.

Apple has noted that they have reached the 300 million download milestone for the App Store, almost five months after the store went live. Despite being a large number, a deeper look shows that growth has flattened.

Silicon Valley Insider estimates that it took 61 days to hit the first 100 million apps downloaded, and then 43 days each for the next hundreds.

Although Apple must be disappointed with the flat numbers, compared to the floundering mobile app industry the numbers are certainly impressive.

SVI also estimates that there are about 25 million iPhones and iPod Touches out on the market which means that each user could possibly be downloading up to 15 apps per device, an average far higher than that of any other mobile device.

Every year, Torrentfreak makes a list of the most pirated PC games of the year and this year is no different.

Topping the list is Spore, the blockbuster game that made headlines for its unique gameplay and for the backlash it received due to EA's choice to include brutal SecuROM DRM.

In second place was Sims 2, another game from Spore creator Will Wright. In third was Assassin's Creed, which is probably on the list because a pirated version was leaked to torrent and P2P sites weeks before the retail date.

Some of the other titles on the list are more surprising given their release date but they remain popular.

The full list is as follows:
Number on list; Name; Amount of downloads; Date of release

Truphone, a new freeware application for the iPod Touch, promises to use the media player's built in Wi-Fi to turn the device into a virtual mobile phone where owners can make phone calls using Skype.

Although you can currently only make calls to other iPod or iPhone users using the app, the developers say calls to landlines will be in place in the near future.

Geraldine Wilson, Truphone's CEO, added: "There are a slew of new features we're rolling out for the iPod Touch that will let users call landlines, Skype users or send instant messages. We're talking weeks, not months, before these go live."

"We've decided to focus on devices that are wi-fi enabled and have an apps-store. For the consumer, there has to be an easy way of downloading an application."

"Our focus on the consumer side - at least in the short term - is finding devices that fit that category," said Ms Wilson.

Reported last week, Samsung has released the much anticipated firmware update that will allow access to Netflix's HD "Watch Instantly" streaming service.

The two current Netflix model, BD-P2500 and BD-P2550, offer access to Netflix's 12,000-strong "Watch Instantly" streaming service, but almost all of those titles are in SD. A firmware update coming this week will allow the players to handle HD playback however.

The content, in an effort to save buffering time, will be in 720p resolution and will also include only standard definition audio.

“Our state-of-the art Blu-ray players truly have become the ultimate HD digital entertainment delivery system with the latest support to allow HD streaming from Netflix,” said Reid Sullivan, VP of marketing, audio/video and imaging at Samsung Electronics America. “By understanding changing consumer interests, we are making it easier for consumers to experience a vast world of captivating content, instantaneously, all at the touch of a button.”

Flickr has "radically overhauled" their mobile video-sharing features in an effort to make the popular video and photo sharing site more easy to use on your phone.

The completely "revamped" m.flickr.com is currently available to users of the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch but will soon be available to any smartphone using Firefox or Opera mobile browsers.

Flickr mobile is still being developed for Nokia N series owners as well as phones using the Android operating platform.

"More and more of our members are coming to Flickr on mobile devices, and this is a recognition of that change," Flickr senior product manager Shanan Delp said.

$25 USD "Pro" accounts get you "a bunch of new capabilities, like letting you add contacts, favorite images, and change your privacy and permission settings all while you're out walking the dog," Flickr general manager Kakul Srivastava added in a blog posting.

YouTube has announced a music licensing deal with the independent music licensing agency Rumblefish that will allow the video sharing site's users to add Rumblefish content to their videos, for free.

"Using our AudioSwap tool, you can now easily add pre-approved Rumblefish music, or selections from our already extensive catalog of music, to your new or existing videos," YouTube writes.

AudioSwap has been around since February 2007 and has a lot of pre-approved copyrighted material.

Rumblefish currently has a library of 25,000 songs but YouTube did not add how many songs would be available initially.

"This deal is exciting for indie filmmakers because it connects them directly to the same pre-licensed, quality indie music but at a price that they can afford," Rumblefish CEO Paul Anthony added.

Blockbuster has announced that in January they will begin offering 99-cent DVD rentals to all customers.

The drop to under $1 USD will be the first time the large US rental company has ever done so, and CEO Jim Keyes believes the move should lure in cautious consumers scared for their economic futures.

"We do have plans in the month of January to more aggressively roll throughout the system a value offer that will include movies in the 99 cents price range," Keyes said.

"The 99 cents plan is targeted at the value-conscious consumer in this challenging economy," he noted.

New movies would not be priced at $1 but thousands of catalog titles would be. New titles will remain at the same price, $5 USD for a two-day rental.

According to data from Media Create, the Sony PlayStation 3 doubled its previous week sales, selling a solid 35,000 units in Japan for the week ended November 30th.

Japan continues to be dominated by Nintendo consoles however, which saw the DSi sell 87,000 units and the Wii sell 50,000 units, a 30 percent increase from the previous week.

The Sony handheld PSP sold 55,000 units. The DSi's predecessor, the DS Lite sold 26,000 units.

Bringing up the rear after a month of strong sales was the Xbox 360 with 11,000 units sold.

Chart:

* NDS (DSi + Lite) - 114 036
* PSP - 55 090
* Wii - 49 848
* PS3 - 34 978
* Xbox 360 - 11 423
* PS2 - 5 628

Mitsubishi has released a new Blu-ray DVR, dubbed the DVR-BF2000 that comes with a 500GB HDD and the simple ability to burn Blu-ray discs.

User can also record two program simultaneously, one to disc and one to the HDD. Users can also record one program while watching another, thanks to the dual digital tuners set to support Japan's BS/110CS digital and analog broadcast systems.

AVC recording and DVD writing is supported as well. Making the DVR even more special is the fact that you can cut commercials out of recordings automatically and watch video and photos from an SD card.

The DVR is only available in Japan for now, priced at $1940 USD and there was no word on whether it would hit EU or NA anytime soon.

Sharp has introduced two new LCD HDTVs to the North American market, each of which has built-in Blu-ray burners and a second slot for playback of CDs and DVDs.

Sharp Electronics Marketing Company of America president, Mike Troett added that the "32-inch set features 720p resolution and a 7,000:1 contrast ratio, while the 42-inch set has a 120Hz panel with 1080p resolution and 15,000:1 contrast ratio. The new AQUOS DX-series HDTVs are meant to appeal to people who want or need a clutter-free appearance, minimizing the amount of hardware, or want a clean-looking, wall-mount installation."

The Japanese models of the TVs, which were released in October, have built-in dual digital HD tuners which allow users to watch a program in HD while recording a second program to Blu-ray.

Thanks to a new cryptic splash screen posted on the Konami website, the Internet is abuzz with rumors that the blockbuster smash hit game Metal Gear Solid is headed to the Xbox 360 or possibly even the Wii.

The splash screen shows off green symbols and a seemingly cryptic math equation. (A screenshot is posted after the article)

Although it is clear that a new project is in the works, it remains a curiosity as to whether the new project will be headed to a new console or whether MGS 4 will get its much hoped-for Xbox 360 debut. The game is a PlayStation 3 exclusive currently.

Another promising argument is that the game could be headed to the iPod Touch or the Nintendo DSi.

It would be inappropriate at this time to make any guarantees as to what the message means but it is very interesting to say the least. We will keep you updated.

Opera Software has released Alpha 1 version of their new Opera 10 browser. The company claims that the version 10 browser with the new Presto 2.2 rendering engine is 30 percent faster that its predecessor. If you don't mind the bugs that you might - and probably will - encounter you can download it from the AfterDawn.com Downloads section right away.

According to Opera the new Presto 2.2 is not only faster than the 2.1 version - which was released last summer - but renders pages more accurately as well. The new Presto is said to get full 100 points in the Acid3 test, which is the industry standard for testing html, javascript and css rendering. In comparison Firefox 3 gets 71 and Google Chrome 79 points out of 100.

Download Opera v10 Alpha 1 for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Denon Electronics has announced that they will be introducing the world's first "universal" Blu-ray player.

The BD-Live capable DVD-A1UCDI will retail for $3800 USD when it ships in two months and will support DVD Audio, SACD along with standard DVDs and CDs.

Users can use an SDHC memory card to play files in popular formats such as WMA, MP3 audio, DiVX 6 video and JPEG images. A "built-in audio-restorer function improves the quality of compressed music."

The 4th-generation Link port means the player will integrate with any Denon amplifier.

Expected to be the largest anti-piracy campaign ever, the MPA and other anti-piracy groups have vowed to make London a “a fake-free zone” by the beginning of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The clearly impossible goal to completely eradicate DVD piracy was initiated by Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy.

The groups involved are The Motion Picture Association, U.K. Film Council, UK Intellectual Property Office, Federation Against Copyright Theft, London Councils, Trading Standards and the Police.

Lammy added, “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He noted that the campaign should send a strong message to citizens that piracy is a huge problem and will be tackled.

Although it has already banned any type of sexually explicit content, YouTube is planning to restrict "sexually suggestive" content even more.

The new rules will make sexually themed content only available to adults and the content will be banned from the site's more popular pages if you are a guest without an account.

"We've been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages," says the official blog. "Our goal is to help ensure that you're viewing content that's relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn't."

The new rules will be reference to content that is "intended or designed to arouse viewers."

The new rules will however run into the same problems as all other YouTube rules in that the staff of the site rely on users to "flag" inappropriate videos. There are millions of videos available at any given time though, meaning there will always be some videos that slip through.

Although unconfirmed by both Apple and Wal-Mart, BoyGeniusReport is saying that they have received a tip that Apple will make a 4GB model of the popular iPhone 3G available at the giant retailer for only $99 USD with 2-year contract.

Having the phone priced so low would make it readily available to most consumers, especially those that don't care so much about having tons of music or movies on their phone and also want to be able to go out and say "I have an iPhone!"

Apple initially sold a 4GB model of the 1st generation iPhone but dropped it from its lineup when it introduced a 16GB model. The 4GB models' price back then? $399 USD.

Should this prove to be true, Apple has a chance to really move the iPhone into a whole new level of sales.

Apple has noted that despite not even being released yet, the Warner Bros. smash hit The Dark Knight has already become the best selling movie download of the year on iTunes.

According to figures from BoxOfficeMojo, "The Dark Knight" is $4 million USD away from making $1 billion in theaters and analysts expect DVD, Blu-ray and digital sales to break records as well.

"The Dark Knight" just beat out the Pixar smash hit WALL-E as the top selling download, a more impressive fact because The Dark Knight is running on only pre-orders. Numbers 3-5 in the top selling movies of the year are "Kung Fu Panda," "Iron Man" and "National Treasure: Book of Secrets."

MySpace has announced they have begun testing a streaming video service for cellular phones.

The global rollout of the video beta for MySpace Mobile began today and will work on streaming-enabled phones such as the BlackBerry Bold and Nokia N95.

Users can access the site through m.myspace.com from their phones to view videos they or others have uploaded as well as content from providers such as TMZ, National Hockey League, National Geographic, The Onion, and College Humor.

"Video is a natural next step for us in mobile," John Faith, vice president and general manager of Mobile for MySpace, added in a statement. "MySpace will continue to grow our video library as we increase delivery channels in order to keep pace with our users' accelerating desire for video consumption."

The videos will be supported by RipCode which uses real-time transcoding to allow viewing from multiple headsets.

Amazon today has expanded their popular Amazon MP3 store to the UK, marking the first time the store had been available outside the US.

The store will be almost identical to its American counterpart and will sell DRM-free MP3 tracks and albums that can be played in any media player.

The launch of the site is missing many artists' catalogs but Amazon says they will be adding music regularly.

Another interesting note is the pricing. Apple's iTunes charges a fixed price of £0.79 per song but Amazon will charge between £0.59p and £0.80p "depending on the currency and popularity of the content."

Full albums are steeply discounted and can sell for as low as £3 for major groups.

The large e-tailer expects to expand the store into other countries in the next year including Canada, France and Japan.

The manufacturer Pioneer has confirmed that its upcoming 16-layer Blu-ray discs will play back on most current standalone Blu-ray players including the Sony PlayStation 3.

The discs boast an impressive 400GB capacity and are finally headed into production by 2010 after being introduced earlier this year by Pioneer.

Current Blu-ray discs consist of either single layer 25GB discs or 50GB dual-layer discs.

The company also added that it will begin manufacturing 40-layer 1TB discs in 2013.

Eric Lempel, Sony's Director of PlayStation Network Operations, has posted on the official PlayStation 3 blog that the upcoming PS3 firmware update, version 2.53 will bring improvements to the Flash Player via the internet browser.

From the blog:

"Hi everyone, in the next PS3 firmware update (v2.53), coming soon, we’re improving the way the Flash Player works with the internet browser. In addition to being able to access more sites using Flash, you’ll be able to enjoy:

* Full-screen mode playability
* Live movie (using RTMP format) playability

Now it’s going to be even easier to enjoy web content on your PS3, in full-screen!"

Although that is the most notable update, gamesareevil says this is the full update list:

Users

* You now have an option to set the PS3 to turn off automatically after a background download or installation of content. This option is available when you turn off the system while content is being downloaded or installed.

According to a new report from Forrester Research, digital music sales currently account for just over 18 percent of the US music market but that figure should grow exponentially to about 41 percent by 2013.

The report, "U.S. Music Forecast, 2008 to 2013" also expects that 55 percent of US online consumers will pay to download at least one track in 2013.

Forrester did say however that digital music growth will not compensate for the steep decline in CD sales and that the total market will shrink to under $10 billion USD in 5 years. At its peak, in 1999, the market totaled $14 billion.

Perhaps more notably, the report found that digital music consumers are moving as much as 60 percent of their music budgets to digital and away from CDs and other physical media.

Microsoft has announced the official numbers for Xbox 360 sales during the recent Black Friday weekend and says the sales were so high they broke previous records.

The console also outsold its rival 3-to-1, most likely thanks to cheap 360 bundles offered by many retailers that included, in some cases, up to 4 free games.

"We entered into the Black Friday sales period with cautious optimism, knowing that dollar for dollar, Xbox 360 offers more social entertainment value than any other console on the market," noted Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.

"Record Black Friday sales in the US, coupled with our existing global install base of 25 million and an online community of more than 14 million Xbox Live members, have laid the groundwork for continued global sales momentum in 2009."

In another move that shows the RIAA has little respect for anything besides money, Pittsburgh news channel WTAE.com is reporting that Nineteen-year-old Ciara Sauro has been sued by the anti-piracy group for illegally sharing 10 songs.

Making the situation so awful is the fact that Sauro is hospitalized every week due to her pancreatitis and her need of an islet cell transplant. Her current accumulation of medical bills totals over $100,000.

WTAE says that “because she didn’t defend herself against a copyright lawsuit, a federal judge in Pittsburgh ruled she’s a music pirate, and that could cost the Sauros almost $8,000 in fines.”

Sauro herself paints a sad story. “I already have severe depression. I mean, it’s so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do. It’s not fair.”

Lisa Sauro, Ciara's mother adds: “You want to know the truth? I make $8.25 an hour. She can’t work. This child is very sick. I mean, what am I supposed to do?

“I just want them to know that I have to go through enough stress in my life with my sickness and my family, and I don’t think that they should go after people just because they want money for something that’s not even fair to us.”

According to Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson, Nintendo makes $6 USD operating profit on each Wii unit sold, making it the only "next-gen" console to make a profit on the actual unit.

The analyst also noted that Sony makes a decent sized loss on each PlayStation 3 sold and that Microsoft has the potential to break even on each Xbox 360 console sold, but still may not.

Besides making profit on each console, the Wii sells the most software of the new consoles, selling an estimated 220 million units for 2008. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are estimated to sell under 130 million units each.

Nintendo also capitalizes on its position in the market by selling 60 percent of the Wii games itself compared to only 15 percent for Sony and 30 percent for Microsoft. The Wii's top selling games are all developed by Nintendo.

Hiroshi Kamide, director of research at KBC Securities, Japan, added, "The key thing about Nintendo is they want their things to be at price points that anyone can respond to."

According to recent data from Enterbrain, Nintendo's latest handheld, the DSi, sold 535,379 units in Japan for the month of November, its first full month of sales.

The handhelds' predecessor, the DS Lite, sold 550,000 units in its first month.

Overall, Nintendo's star performing console has sold just under 25 million units to date.

The handheld will not be reaching Europe or North America until at least April however, with Nintendo hoping the DS Lite will sell well during the holidays.

Nokia revealed a new N-series phone in its Nokia World event in Barcelona. The new N-series flagship model N97 features a 3,5-inch touchscreen at 360x640 resolution, full QWERTY keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and a hefty 32GB flash memory.

Nokia told that their first touch-screen QWERTY phone will enable easy access to social media and other web services. Adding to the already mentioned N97 will include A-GPS, standard 3,5 mm jack, FM transmitter, TV-out as well as HSDPA and WiFi connectivity.

"From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence," said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. "Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet".

According to a source over at TechARP, the much anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 2 should be arriving by April 2009, bringing with it a handful of features that were missing in the disappointing Service Pack 1.

A beta release should be available by February with final release scheduled for April, says the source. The launch will be staggered by user language, with English receiving first, European languages second, Japanese third and Spanish and Chinese versions hitting last.

The update will bring native Blu-ray burning, Bluetooth 2.1, Windows Search 4.0, and a much improved Wi-Fi configuration utility. The pack will also incorporate all security updates that have been released since Service Pack 1.

According to new research data from Net Applications , Mozilla's Firefox browser has finally surpassed the 20 percent market share milestone and seems to be taking market share from leader Internet Explorer at a growing pace.

Since the last time the research firm gathered data, Firefox moved up from 19.97 percent to 20.78 percent. Because it is taking away market share mainly from Internet Explorer, the unstable browser has now fallen to under 70 percent market share for the first since 1998. At its peak in 2003, Internet Explorer controlled 95 percent of the browser market.

Apple's Safari browser jumped up a percent as well to 7.13 percent and Google's new, but buggy, Chrome browser jumped to 0.83 percent.

The prestigious Criterion Collection will begin releasing titles on Blu-ray beginning December 19th, following delays that pushed the launch from October until now.

Criterion’s technical director Lee Kline feels the wait will have been worth it once the consumers see the quality of the discs.

“If our Blu-ray discs are going to come out, then they’d better look right,” Kline said. “We had to make sure that the compression was right, that the audio encoding was up to par. And we had to make sure that the discs played on all players, particularly the older generation models, as well as PlayStation 3."

Kline also noted that the publisher has been in the "high-def business" since the late 90's and have been remastering approximately 90 percent of their standard definition library in HD "then down-converting for a standard-def release, giving them a more film-like look.”

“We pulled the high-def masters that we’ve done [for the films in the first wave of Blu-ray releases] and looked them over—and we haven’t had to go back to change anything,” Kline said. “All the technology we’ve taken to make these high-def masters are still fine.”

Following the move recently made by Samsung, LG Electronic has announced that their LG BD300 Netflix Blu-ray player will receive a firmware upgrade as well that will bring HD streaming capabilities to the player.

The LG BD300 was the first standalone player that had built-in Netflix "Watch Instantly" capabilities but will become the third player to upgrade to HD capabilities.

Although not considered a standalone, the Microsoft Xbox 360 also has access to the HD instant streaming from Netflix. The content will be delivered in 720p, with standard definition audio, in an effort to cut down buffering time.

Beginning this month, Samsung’s Netflix-streaming Blu-ray players will be upgraded to allow access to the rental company's over 300 high-definition movie and TV titles.

The two current Netflix model, BD-P2500 and BD-P2550, offer access to Netflix's 12,000-strong "Watch Instantly" streaming service, but almost all of those titles are in SD. A firmware update coming this week will allow the players to handle HD playback however.

The content, in an effort to save buffering time, will be in 720p resolution and will also include only standard definition audio.