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DIGITAL DIGEST  | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 207

18 July, 2010

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INDEX:

1. Introduction

2. Weekly News Roundup

3. Weekly Software Roundup

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1. Introduction

• If I were to buy a new computer today (July 2010) 
• Game Consoles – June 2010 NPD Sales Figure Analysis 

It's like London buses, they say, you wait ages for one and then two comes along. That's what happened this week with mid-week blog posts – two of them in the same week! I finally updated a feature that I haven't touched in more than a year's time, with a new edition of the "If I were to buy a new computer today …" feature. This feature helps to satisfy (a small part) of my desire to buy new tech all the time, as I can live vicariously through my readers (the use of the plural version may be inaccurate) by researching and finding out what kind of system I would buy, if I were to buy one today. I think I enjoy the research more so than the actual new computer itself, for some odd reason. I posted a couple of specs for different systems, so while everyone will have their opinion on what's best, this may be a good start for those that don't like the research part.

The second blog post was the June NPD US video game sales analysis. It's come quite soon after the May analysis, but that's because the May figures were delayed by NPD. Some good news in there for Microsoft, as their Xbox 360 console beat pretty much everyone except the DS, thanks to the new Elite "slim" form factor. I'm definitely on the market for one of these new slims, but I'll wait until the holidays period to pick up a bargain (perhaps a bundle with Kinect, who knows).

Not a whole lot of "new" news this week, but some follow-ups of previous stories, and I am running a bit late today/tonight, so I'll get through things quickly (and if you want more stuff, you can read my *both* of my mid-week blog posts, of course).

Starting with copyright news, despite the legal authorities trying to clamp down on law firms getting into the anti-piracy-for-money business, the pre-trial settlement style letter campaigns, more law firms are getting into the lucrative business it seems.

The most recent is Gallant Macmillan, who represent the copyright holders of Ministry of Sound albums, amongst others, and they will be asking for £375 from those suspected of pirated a particular MOS compilation. But they claim they are doing things a bit differently, perhaps to avoid a public backlash, or to prevent authorities from finding fault with their actions. The funny part is that the £375 actually includes the cost of the compilation itself, which normally retails for £8.75, and so suspected pirates can actually keep turn their illegally downloaded songs into legal songs by paying the settlement fee. An expensive way to buy music, for sure. And instead of a situation where the copyright holders aren't dealing with the law firm directly, but through another party in between (possibly to avoid the bad publicity if it all turns sour), Gallant Macmillan will only directly represent the copyright owners who have intention to sue, and not just the the threat to sue with no real intention other than to get some money through settlement fees. The law firms will all say the high fees, compared to the actual cost to the copyright holders, is high due to investigative costs and other legal costs, but the real intention perhaps is to scare people into paying and maybe even scare them enough to stop them pirating in the future. Of course, for every person that is scared into submission, there are hundreds of thousands that will still go on downloading.

And if these "small time" lawsuits (or threats of one) can't scare people, then perhaps the government can do so through some kind of global treaty like the ACTA. And scary it is. Claims that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK alone could be jailed if the ACTA is adopted as law, by making copyright infringement a criminal matter, not a civil one, and even making "attempted piracy" a crime (so do a search on Google for "Toy Story 3 torrent" and you may be headed for jail). But most scary of all is that it's all very secretive, as if the government know that the people that they represent will not like what's in the ACTA and have done everything they can to avoid the public knowing about it – the US negotiators have been the key backers of keeping the negotiations secret. However, when the EU Pirate Party (remember that they now have a member in the EU parliament) invited themselves to a meeting to discuss the ACTA, and then were told that not only are they not allowed to discuss any aspect of the meeting of the ACTA with the public (which may very well be illegal under the EU parliament rules), that even notes weren't being taken for the meeting in case it gets leaked. And it is then that the Pirate Party walked out on the meeting in disgust. But the leaks do continue from people that find the secretive actions unacceptable, but the more we read about the ACTA, the more scary it becomes. But you can just imagine members of the RIAA and MPAA sitting in the shadows, smiling contently, watching as their wishes becomes reality. Sort of like Cancer Man in the X-Files (the first few seasons, anyway).

And you can see why the likes of the RIAA and MPAA want government to take over their job of preventing piracy. Because it's expensive, and relatively unproductive. The RIAA's latest accounts showed that in 2008, they spent $17.6 million in fighting online piracy, but only got $391,000 back in damages. Of course, they'll say that getting money back from past acts of piracy is not the main point, the main point is to stop future piracy. But I'll leave you to judge whether their efforts in 2008 have paid dividends or not in 2010, whether piracy is more or less common now. But not everyone in the music biz thinks the fighting piracy head on will result in anything. Peter Jenner, president of the International Music Managers Forum, a group that present feature artist music managers, says that the current thinking about copyright enforcement is no different to the 1930's thinking about alcohol enforcement, also known as prohibition. And both, he says, are laws that is "offensive" to the general public. Jenner proposes some kind of levy to help pay for content being shared online, much like how people in the UK pay their licensing fees for the BBC. I'm not sure I agree with a "piracy tax", since it's unfair on those that don't download pirated stuff on the Internet, however if there is a legal, publicly owned point of distribution, say a BBC for the Internet, and where a small costs are paid to access a good amount of content, then perhaps the solution has some merit. Much like how free to air TV exists, perhaps a free to download service, paid for by taxes and levies, might also exist to provide a good amount of digital entertainment to those that cannot afford to pay for premium content on a subscription based service, much like subscription TV. Using the same analogy,  there will always be people who will try and succeed at getting "illegal cable", but you can't prevent all piracy, that's just impossible.

And speaking of expensive lawsuits, Viacom's billion dollar lawsuit has cost Google $100 million to defend (successfully, for now), Google's CFO revealed. It's money well spent (and peanuts to a company like Google, to be honest), and it's an important victory for the Internet, not just Google. However, you can only imagine how much money was spent by Viacom, and you add both together, and apart from making a lot of lawyers happy, what else did it really achieve. Piracy is a cost to the economy, but sometimes anti-piracy is also a cost, and perhaps more costly if lawsuits had stopped websites like YouTube before it got off the ground.

On to HD/3D news. The news last week was that the PS3 will get the Blu-ray 3D firmware sometimes in September. It's good news for buyers of 3D TVs, and for 3D TVs in general, since it suddenly means there are millions of potential Blu-ray 3D capable players on the market all without people having to pay anything for it (other than the loss of the PS3's Other OS feature).

There's still some confusion about whether HDMI 1.4 will be needed, since the HDMI hardware on the older PS3 predates even HDMI 1.3. But Sony seems to think that this won't be a problem, and I guess you have to trust them on this, and they even went as far as saying "The [June] upgrade basically makes every PlayStation 3 HDMI 1.4 compatible". I don't remember anything about an update that made the PS3 HDMI 1.4 compatible, other than the "HDMI deep color" option added in 3.40. But as long as the HDMI hardware can handle high bandwidth transfers, then it should work perfectly with Blu-ray 3D, without having to limit the resolution for each eye to only 1080i or something. And as part of the announcement, 3D support for YouTube will be coming to the PS3 soon, which will be interesting. It's either going to be the same kind of 2D to 3D feature that exists on Samsung, Sony and a few other manufacturer's 3D TVs, or it will mean that YouTube will accept uploads of native 3D content in the future and display it as so. Interesting anyway.

Not much going on in gaming other than what I wrote for the NPD analysis.

And that's another WNR for another week. I hope you have a good week ahead and see in at the same place, same time next week for another edition of the WNR.

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3. Weekly Software Roundup

July 18, 2010	MeGUI 0.3.5.6 Freeware
July 18, 2010	ProgDVB 6.45.1 Freeware
July 17, 2010	multiAVCHD 4.1 build 759 Freeware
July 17, 2010	Replay Media Catcher 4.0.1.0
July 17, 2010	madVR 0.23 Freeware
July 17, 2010	Vista Codec Package 5.7.9 Freeware
July 17, 2010	DV Scheduler 5.54 Freeware
July 16, 2010	MediaCoder 0.7.5 Build 4702 Freeware
July 16, 2010	VSO PhotoDVD 4.0.0.33
July 16, 2010	DVDAuthorGUI 1.025b test Freeware
July 16, 2010	StaxRip 1.1.6.4 Beta Freeware
July 16, 2010	x264 r1677 Freeware
July 15, 2010	K-Lite Codec Pack 64-Bit 3.7.0 Freeware
July 15, 2010	K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 6.2.0 Freeware
July 15, 2010	K-Lite Codec Pack 6.2.0 Freeware
July 15, 2010	WebM 0.9.9.0 Freeware
July 15, 2010	Windows 7 Codecs 2.5.7 Freeware
July 15, 2010	Vista Codec x64 Components 2.6.1 Freeware
July 14, 2010	BluffTitler 8.0.8.4
July 14, 2010	MKVcleaver 0.5.0.0 Freeware
July 14, 2010	DVDRemaster Pro 6.3.3
July 14, 2010	DVDRemaster Standard 6.3.3
July 14, 2010	Moovida 2.0.0.15 Freeware
July 14, 2010	MKVtools 2.3.1 Freeware
July 13, 2010	Total Video Converter 3.7
July 13, 2010	TVersity Free Edition 1.9 Freeware
July 13, 2010	BurnAware Free Edition 3.0.1 Freeware
July 13, 2010	PopCorn MKV AudioConverter 1.82.4 Freeware
July 13, 2010	DVD2oneX 2.4.1
July 13, 2010	DVD2one 2.4.1
July 12, 2010	WinMPG Video Convert 9.1.5
July 11, 2010	CDBurnerXP 4.3.5.2256 Freeware
July 11, 2010	MediaInfo 0.7.34 Freeware

======END OF LIVEUPDATE NEWSLETTER======

• New Members 1

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DIGITAL DIGEST  | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 206

11 July, 2010

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INDEX:

1. Introduction

2. Weekly News Roundup

3. Weekly Software Roundup

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1. Introduction

• PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D with Mark II Patch 

Hope you've had a good week. It's been busy again for me, but mostly non website related stuff. So no mid week blog again, but I am working on something (honestly), and it should be up early next week. It was a relatively busy news week, so let's get started.

In copyright news, the big news occurred late in the week and it relates to one of the infamous RIAA lawsuits. Infamous due to the amount of damages awarded to the billion dollar industry trade group. The latest decision relates to the smaller of the damages ("only" $675,000), awarded against PhD student Joel Tenenbaum.

The judge for the case, Nancy Gertner, has finally ruled on the damages awarded by the jury and has reduced what experts have called an "unconstitutional" amount. The new amount is now only a tenth of the original amount, at $67,500, or $2,250 per song. Interestingly, this is exactly the same amount per song that was awarded against single mother Jammie Thomas, after the judge in that case also reduced the amount of damages. However, even this amount was critisized by Gertner as "severe" or "harsh". Despite this, the RIAA is not pleased at the judge's decisions, and they have stated their desire to contest the ruling. I've previously analysed the original verdict and the original amount of damages, and it's easy to see why the judge would think it was excessive. If you take into account the retail cost (not price) or songs, and the number of people that Tenenbaum or Thomas provided a full copy of the songs to, then it would take years of continuous sharing on a fast connection in order to rack up the amount of damages that the RIAA was originally awarded. There is punitive damages, but you have to question when so many people are doing exactly the same as Tenenbaum and Thomas, why only go after these two individuals? So the RIAA's intent was to make an example out of these two, but I'm not sure the court appreciates this, especially when these two hardly represents the most notorious of song sharers, or someone who actually profited from their illegal activities. Perhaps the RIAA chose poorly when deciding to go after a student and single mother. I guess it's better than trying to shake down 10 year old girls.

The "good" court news continues with a news item that was just posted today. A Belgian court has ruled that ISPs don't need to cave in to the demand by anti-piracy agencies to shut down access to The Pirate Bay. It's a big blow to The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), who had wanted the court to order the ISPs to blocks its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. Instead, the court sided with the ISPs, which believe that it isn't the place for Internet service providers to place judgement on whether websites can or cannot be viewed by its customers. The BAF obviously strongly disagreed, calling it the legal protection of "illegal websites". It's becoming clearer that anti-piracy groups wish to circumvent legal establishments entirely in their crusade against copyright infringement on the Internet. And this is exactly why they wish to avoid going through the legal system, since the result can often be quite unpredictable. The truth is that only a court can decide whether something is illegal or not, and only the legal system can provide avenues of appeal to make the system fair. What anti-piracy agencies are proposing, with some success, will remove many of the basic legal rights people have been enjoying for the last few hundred years, all in the name of a "speedy resolution" and an extremely biased outcome. This is a threat to the fundamental principles behind democracy and rule of law, and I'm always surprised that so called democratic governments go along with the demands of the industry without raising any of these issues, but I guess that's easy to do when the same industry bombards you with scary figures about the "real cost" of piracy, some figures that have no basis in reality at all.

But not all government take the approach that everything the copyright holders say is correct. The Brazilian government is proposing changes to their own copyright laws that will copy aspects of the US DMCA, but at the very least, they are also considering the issue of fair use. Where the US DMCA practically overrules fair use whenever any kind of DRM is used, the Brazilian model will ensure that DRM can only be used on content that actually warrants protection, and that once materials fall into public domain, then the DRM should "naturally" wither away. A sort of timed DRM system, that automatically shuts off once copyright holders lose their rights on the content. It would also make it an offence for DRM to restrict access to content that otherwise should not have restrictions, such as public domain content, and that if DRM exists on such content, users will be free to hack away at it to remove it or disable it as they see fit. While it would still be illegal to circumvent DRM for copyrighted content, these provisions at least take into account the side effects of DRM, its ability to lock content forever and affect the way the content can be used. It's one thing for DRM to prevent copying, but many rightsholders are using it as a way to shape way users use the content, and copyright laws should not permit this if these actions interfere with fair use. For example, if a publisher releases songs that can only be played on a certain device, thanks to DRM, and they secretly make deals with the device manufacturer, then how is this good for competition and thus the economy?

And then we have publishers that are obsessed with DRM, to the point where if a good system isn't available, they choose not to publish content to that system. Speaking of Nintendo's new 3D DS console, the 3DS, THQ VP of global publishing expressed his excitement at the new 3D technology, but was even more impressed by Nintendo's promised new anti-piracy technology, citing THQ's reluctance to publish new titles for the original DS console due to piracy reasons. Now this strikes me as having exactly the wrong attitude. Or perhaps the right attitude when a publisher is not confident in the quality of its products. While popular games get pirated more, popular games also sell more. It's only the poor games that almost always have a higher piracy-to-sales ratio, and in an industry where quality hasn't always been the top priority (think of the number of poor to absolutely unplayable games being released every year), piracy is hurting. Of course, DS piracy has been made extremely easy by the use of R4 flash carts, but I'm absolutely certain that without the "easy to pirate" factor, the DS would be less successful than it is today. And it is this success that creates the large userbase in which game publishers can take advantage of, buy only if they produce good games that people want to buy. It seems too often anti-piracy measures are used not to stop piracy, but to stop people finding out too easily or too soon how crap something is, and this goes for content like movies and music too, not just games.

Let's move on to the HD/3D news. The big news of the week was Cyberlink's release of the "Mark II" patch for PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D users. The patch adds Blu-ray 3D support, making it the first Blu-ray 3D solution for the PC that is available for general sale.

So for those with Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision technology, or a suitable 3D TV to connect to, then Blu-ray 3D is now possible with a PC based solution (and if you have the right GPU, it may even be hardware accelerated). Of course, the lack of Blu-ray 3D content means there's not much to use PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D Mark II on. Due to various reasons on my end, I cannot test Blu-ray 3D playback on PowerDVD Mark II with my Samsung 3D TV yet, so that's a shame. PowerDVD 10 does include support for anaglyph red/cyan glasses, and I tried the 3D effects on the Monsters vs Aliens Blu-ray 3D disc, and it worked remarkably well (obviously poor colour reproduction, but that's to be expected with an anaglyph system).

Speaking of software updates, Sony has finally put a date on the launch of the Blu-ray 3D update for the PS3, with Sony reps stating that it will be made available sometime in September. Once again, the PS3 has shown why its flexible architecture makes it a great Blu-ray player, if not the best (to be fair, standalones have caught up in terms of loading speed and versatility, although 2D players still can't be upgraded to 3D mostly). What will be interesting to see is if the PS3's older HDMI port can handle the increased bandwidth required by 3D, whether it can provide 1080p to each eye. In theory, it should, but we'll have to wait and see.

But not everyone is interested in 3D, not even in tech-loving Japan. A recent survey showed that only 31% of those surveyed were interested in 3D TVs, with most citing cost, lack of content and having to wear uncomfortable glasses as major turn offs. I would also add that there are many that just haven't experienced the new wave of 3D technologies (including 3D filmmaking), instead remembering back to the bad old days of red/cyan glasses as a benchmark for 3D performance. 3D definitely isn't for everyone, and after playing around with my 3D TV, I would say that I definitely don't want to watch hours and hours of content with the shutter glasses on, but it's definitely something worth trying out for yourself. And it's easy to get a demo, since every electronic store will surely have a 3D display set up by now thanks to the 3D hype. Of course, the cost requirements will be high right now, and many just don't feel like replacing their recently purchased 2D Blu-ray player with a 3D player.

While recently purchased 2D Blu-ray players may already be considered obsolete, thanks to the bad precedent set by the introduction of Blu-ray profiles (ie. constantly upgraded specifications for hardware), HDMI itself may be obsolete, thanks to a new connection format called HDBaseT. The genius behind HDBaseT is that it's entirely dependent on current technology – it users Ethernet cabling and ports, but instead of transferring data, it transfers audio and video (and data, like HDMI 1.4). The advantage is that because almost every device these days already have an Ethernet port, then turning that port into something that can also take audio/video would seem to make sense. And with HDMI not so good a long distances, the HDBaseT's cable length of 100m should solve this problem as well. In fact, people are already using Ethernet cabling to extend HDMI, so this is really just taking an existing solution and turning it into a standard. With Sony, Samsung and LG backing the format, could it threaten HDMI? I for one don't think so because HDMI is too well established. At best, HDBaseT will complement HDMI, but HDMI is here to stay. The bigger question is why didn't we just move straight to something like HDBaseT, since HDMI has far too many shortcomings (like handshake issues, length issues, confusing version numbering, non hot pluggable …)

There really isn't a lot of new things in gaming, unless you count the news that Hulu Plus on the PS3 won't require PlayStation Plus as gaming news (which I don't), so this is as good as any place to end this week's WNR. Have a nice week and see you in 7 days.

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3. Weekly Software Roundup

July 11, 2010	ProgDVB 6.45 Freeware
July 11, 2010	XMedia Recode 2.2.4.4 Freeware
July 11, 2010	DVDStyler 1.8.2 beta 1 Freeware
July 11, 2010	ReClock DirectShow Filter 1.8.7.0 beta Freeware
July 10, 2010	Alive Flash Slideshow Maker 1.2.6.3
July 10, 2010	madVR 0.22 Freeware
July 10, 2010	DVD PixPlay 6.10
July 10, 2010	AVStoDVD 2.3.1 Freeware
July 10, 2010	AVC Streamer 0.01-alpha.b113 Freeware
July 10, 2010	Smart Cutter Ps/Ts 1.2.7
July 9, 2010	MeGUI 0.3.5.3 Freeware
July 9, 2010	BD Rebuilder 0.34.04 Beta Freeware
July 9, 2010	Transport Stream Packet Editor 0.813 Alpha
July 9, 2010	Free AVCHD Editor 0.2.1.46 Freeware
July 9, 2010	CyberLink BD & 3D Advisor 2.0.3105 Freeware
July 9, 2010	ffdshow Rev. 3507 (generic/x64) Freeware
July 9, 2010	VIDEOzilla 3.1
July 9, 2010	BDtoAVCHD 1.1.0 Freeware
July 9, 2010	TMPGEnc MPEG Editor 3.2.0.127
July 8, 2010	EncodeHD 1.2.209.0 Freeware
July 8, 2010	J. River Media Center 15.0.70
July 7, 2010	MediaCoder 0.7.5 Build 4700 Freeware
July 7, 2010	VDownloader 2.9.443
July 7, 2010	Video DVD Maker Pro 3.22.0.60
July 7, 2010	Video DVD Maker 3.30.0.75 Freeware
July 7, 2010	GB-PVR 1.5.24 Beta Freeware
July 7, 2010	MKVtools 2.3 Freeware
July 7, 2010	Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD 5.0.0.109
July 7, 2010	PowerDVD Ultra 3D 10 Mark II
July 7, 2010	Muxman 0.16.8 Freeware
July 6, 2010	Camtasia Studio 7.0.1
July 6, 2010	DVD Swarm 0.9.10.706 Beta Freeware
July 6, 2010	Elecard AVCHD Editor 1.0.100705
July 6, 2010	Cinema Craft Encoder SP3 1.0.3.1
July 6, 2010	cdrtfe 1.3.8 Freeware
July 6, 2010	Elecard MPEG Player 5.7.100629
July 6, 2010	Windows 7 Codecs 2.5.6 Freeware
July 6, 2010	Vista Codec x64 Components 2.6.0 Freeware
July 6, 2010	Vista Codec Package 5.7.8 Freeware
July 6, 2010	BitrateCalc 1.1 Freeware
July 5, 2010	Net Transport 2.94a
July 5, 2010	x264 r1666 Freeware
July 5, 2010	VoltaicHD for Mac 2.5.1
July 5, 2010	Subler 0.9.9 Freeware
July 5, 2010	VideoCacheView 1.72 Freeware
July 4, 2010	AVCutty 3.2 Freeware

======END OF LIVEUPDATE NEWSLETTER======

• New Members 3