News written by Andre Yoskowitz (June, 2007)

Simultaneous to its retail store release, the iPhone has been added to Apple's online storefront with the same pricing, $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model.

Customers who are ordering online will have to wait however. Apple has posted an "expected 2-4 week" wait for online orders to arrive. Online users are also only allowed to order two at a time.

Reports surfaced about the iPhone's much hyped launch with customers complaining that many AT&T stores were understocked while Apple stores had more supply than demand. Overall numbers for the first day were not in yet, but rest assured we will post them when they become available.

Source:
MacNN

Today, Sony gave word that the PlayStation 3 was finally in full production, now that blue-violet laser diode shortages were out of the way.

In April, the company announced that they had stepped up production of the diodes to 1.7 million units per month, as the diode is critical to the Blu ray drive. Shortages of the diodes are largely cited for the delayed European launch of the console.

“Production problems have now ceased, we're in full production as far as PlayStation 3 is concerned and there's a steady chain of supply in North America, Japan and Europe,” a Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also added that with the production issues a thing of the past, the company is confident the PS3 can match the success of the PS2, which has sold over 115 million units worldwide since its launch.

“We're aiming towards a much broader lifestyle for home entertainment enthusiasts, that's one of the reasons the PlayStation 2 went on to sell over 115 million units worldwide,” said the spokesperson. “Ultimately it will come down to content ... What it offers for its price is exceptional value for money – a quarter of the cost of a PC of similar capability and about the same as a commercial Blu-ray player.”

The latest PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 1.82, released yesterday by Sony, promises to improve AVC playback as well as backward compatibility.

AVC High Profile (H.264/MPEG-4) format video is a high image quality encoding method used by Blu ray discs among others.

“Hopefully this update is moving us closer to the audio playback features many of you commented about,” wrote Eric Lempel, director of PlayStation Network operations. “We’re continuing to evaluate and improve things across the board, including PS2 software compatibility. Thanks for all of your support and feedback, keep it coming!”

Along with the improved AVC High Profile playback, also improved is the backwards compatibility for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games although no specific titles were mentioned.

The new firmware is just a small incremental update building upon the 1.80 firmware which added 1080p upscaling for backwards compatible games as well as DVDs. 1.81 added an RGB Full Range setting for HDMI users.

Source:
DailyTech

LeaseWeb, the web host that is caught in the middle of BREIN's crusade against torrent trackers such as Demonoid, announced that they will be appealing the decision of the lower court that said they must shut down Everlasting.nu and reveal the owner's personal details. LeaseWeb is also claiming "harassment" against BREIN.

"Leaseweb is to file an appeal against the preliminary injunction relating to the 'Everlasting' bit torrent site hosted by Leaseweb,” the release states. “This means that the court of appeal in Amsterdam will hear the full case against the Brein foundation again. The reason for this is that Leaseweb is of the opinion that upholding the judgment resulting from the preliminary injunction proceedings would constitute an unacceptable and unjustified violation of the freedom of expression which is inherent to the internet and the protection of privacy. Instead of awaiting the result of this, Brein has continued to harass Leaseweb and has not shown itself open to reasonable discussions.”

LeaseWeb also reiterated the fact that they remove "illegal" content when all proper channels are followed, and noted that BREIN used a process that is shallow, unsubstantiated, and undermined privacy and freedom of speech. Read more...

Last month, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called for a very aggressive re-write of criminal copyright laws, some so harsh that it even included prison time for "attempted" copyright infringement, a life sentence for using pirated software and the ability to use more expansive wiretapping on suspects.

On Wednesday, he went even farther, and the full text can be found here for those interested.


"IP (intellectual property) theft is not a technicality, and its victims are not just faceless corporations--it is stealing, and it affects us all," Gonzales said, at an intellectual property event sponsored by the lobby group TechNet. "Those who seek to undermine this cornerstone of U.S. economic competitiveness believe that they are making easy money; that they are beyond the law. It is our responsibility and commitment to show them that they are wrong."


He also reminded us that his department submitted the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 in May to Congress. The bill would allow for easier seizures of computers and other assets "used to commit copyright crimes", as well as punish certain attempted copyright crimes. The kicker of the bill is the fact that Homeland Security will be required to notify the RIAA of any attempts to import "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance."

Today, Toshiba announced that they had added functionality that will allow users of HD DVD standalone players to access exclusive web content.

The new functionality will allow the players to access and download exclusive content from the movie studio's servers. After it is downloaded, it is saved within the storage of the player for access.

Using the new functions, movie studios can choose to "lock" certain extra features on the HD DVD itself which users can only unlock by downloading a key.

"While others may talk about interactivity, HD DVD has proven time and time again that it offers true interactive features and capabilities for consumers which can make the enjoyment of movies a new experience every time they're viewed," Toshiba Digital AV marketing chief Jodi Sally said.

If you already own a standalone player, the new functionality can be turned on through a firmware update. Toshiba also said that an upcoming firmware update will give owners of the HD-XA2 and HD-A20 players the ability to play their movies at 24fps at 1080p which is the same framerate at which movies are usually captured.

Finally, Toshiba reiterated that they now hold 70 percent of the standalone market, most likely due to very successful promotions the last two months.

Taking its turn in the everlasting war against hackers, Sony has updated the firmware of the PSP to version 3.51 after 3.50 was recently discovered to be hacked.

Hackers found a way to exploit firmware version 3.50 using the game Lumines. According to PSPupdates.com and our own users here, if you have a legitimate copy of Lumines then the exploit is very easy. Unzip a few files onto your Memory Stick in a certain directory and then hold Start at a certain point during the first loading screen of the game and that is all.

The newest version, 3.51 does not include any other changes helpful to the PSP, so the update was made specifically to block hackers from downgrading using 3.50.

In an funny turn, sales of Lumines increased drastically after the exploit was announced just as sales of GTA: Liberty City Stories did when the PSP exploit for the game was discovered.

The ball is back in your court PSP hackers.

Source:
GI.biz

Michael Ephraim, the managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia has said that the PlayStation 3 continues to outsell both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 in the country and that almost 50,000 units had been sold since the console's late March launch.

Using stats from the market research firm GfK, Ephraim explained that the PS3 has outsold its rivals almost every week since launch.

"Based on GfK, since launch, PS3 has been the number one next-gen console, outselling Wii and Xbox 360 every week, except for last week," said Ephraim.

Ephraim also added that the sales boost were partly due to the fact that consumer electronics stores has begun selling the console, but marketing it as a Blu ray player more than a gaming machine.

"Since March 23, PS3 has been the number one selling next-gen console in Australia, and this is GfK figures.

"We've now sold 50,000 and we're very excited about the fact that it's being sold in retailers that are gaming retailers as a gaming device and other things, but as you'll notice it's now being sold in Harvey Norman consumer electronics stores as a Blu-ray player," he added.

After a month long promotion that sent sales skyrocketing, Toshiba announced that it would permanently lower the prices on its two entry level HD DVD players, the HD-A2 and HD-A20.

Beginning on July 1st, the HD-A2 will be offered at $299 USD while the A20 will be offered at $399 USD. Both are MSRP without any rebates necessary.

For the month, thanks to a $100 rebate promotion on both players, Toshiba saw stronger than expected results, with some retailers seeing 500% increases in sales for the players.

The HD-A2 is the cheapest standalone player available (not including the Xbox 360 add-on drive) and the new price reflects a $200 cheaper pricetag than the lowest priced standalone Blu ray player, the Sony BDP-S300.

Ken Graffeo, co-President of the HD DVD Promotions Group, seemed to state the obvious when he explained to Video Business that his organization "has found that price is the biggest motivating factor for consumers when it comes to buying a high-def disc player."

Source:
HD Digest

Between January and May 2007, site visits to the huge video sharing site YouTube grew by 70 percent, a number that seems to justify Google's $1.65 billion USD purchase of the site last year.

The 64 other largest video-sharing sites grew by just 8 percent during the same period, and YouTube had 50 percent more site visits then all those sites put together.

According to TheRegister, YouTube had 60 percent of the market share of US visits to video sites while MySpace, the site with the second largest share, has 16 percent. Google Video is in third with 7.8 percent followed by Yahoo! Video, MSN and Break.com, all with just under 3 percent. DailyMotion, AOL media, and MetaCafe brought up the rear, all with just over 1 percent share.

Search engines however, still account for over 20 percent of traffic to these video-sharing sites, which is an implication that users are having trouble finding what they want when they are at the sites themselves.

Stats from Hitwise show that the amount of internet users that leave search engines to go to video sites increased over 300 percent from May 2006 to May 2007.

Source:
TheRegister

Thanks to increasing competition from the rival rental giant Blockbuster, Netflix has announced they have lowered the price of their "2-at-a-time DVD rental plan" by $1.

Earlier this month, Blockbuster lowered the price of their 3-at-a-time DVD plan by $1 to hopefully gain some market share on its rival.

Now Netflix customers can have the 2-DVD plan for $13.99 per month and the 3-DVD plan for $17.99 USD, prices equal to that of Blockbuster.

Source:
BetaNews

This morning, MySpace launched the "separate but closely-linked part" of its networking site, MySpace TV.

The new page will bring the same channels and sorting features as YouTube but promises more vast social tools. Users will be able to track their favorite producers as well as tag clips "to put them into a profile" and personalize a video channel based solely on their past viewing history and their personal tastes.

MySpace also promised professional-made content from content providers such as Sony, news segments from New York Times and Reuters, and sports clips and games from the NBA and the NHL.

The page is still considered a public beta but it is available in North American as well as most of Europe and Japan. There is no word on when the beta will end but the company describes it as the "first phase" which will continue to improve until full release.

Source:
Electronista

To the surprise of many, Warner announced today that they would be delaying the launch of their first Total HD dual Blu ray/HD DVD combo releases until at least early 2008.

Warner announced the hybrid format at the CES show earlier this year and it was supposed to hit stores by Christmas of this year. To date, all production and replication issues had been solved and the format was on its way which makes the announcement more surprising.

Warner senior VP of marketing management Steve Nickerson confirmed that there would be delays.

"There is no expiration date on the viability of this concept, so we're not in a rush to do it," Nickerson said. "We'll do it when it makes sense and when it's right."

Nickerson added that Warner now intends to launch the format with 10 to 20 titles which will "allow retailers to display them together in one section so they don't get lost amid the growing number of home video formats currently hogging store shelves."

Despite their faith in Total HD, Warner also noted that they had no plans to abandon Blu ray or HD DVD and that they will continue to release titles for both. Read more...

BREIN, the Dutch copyright protection agency that has gone on a crusade to rid the Netherlands of "illegal" torrent sites, has claimed that they have taken down Demonoid, a private tracker that has grown in popularity the past few years.

Last week, BREIN got another victory when the site Everlasting.nu was forced to close down and the owner's personal details sent to the group. Apparently, BREIN was not happy enough and demanded that the hosting company, LeaseWeb, shut down Demonoid as well.

Users trying to log in yesterday could not as Demonoid was offline, and BREIN was quick to claim victory.

"This outcome demonstrates that the content on offer on large international p2p-sites such as Demonoid is mostly illegal. These kind of sites make use of content supplied by its customers", says BREIN director Tim Kuik. "Sites like these do take the responsibility to refuse illegal pornographic material, but they do not care about the offer of evidently infringing content. That carelessness is calculated because they know that is exactly the content their users want. Many of such sites are hosted in the Netherlands and mainly by Leaseweb. Leaseweb is seen as a safe harbour for these sites. That has to come to an end. We have shown repeatedly that such sites are illegal under Dutch law and jurisprudence. We will continue to do so until none are left."

The BBC announced today that its iPlayer service will be available as a public beta on July 27th and a full launch will happen in the fall

The iPlayer is a standalone application for UK residents that allows for the downloading of TV shows up to seven days after it airs on the many BBC networks.

The shows are downloaded to the users HDD where they have 30 days to watch it before it expires. If you start the show then need to pause, you have 7 days to complete watching before it expires.

The timing restrictions are thanks to Microsoft DRM, which has recently generated controversy from Mac users and open-source advocates. The BBC says they are working on a solution and that Mac support is "absolutely on our critical path."

The application will be XP-only at launch, but a Vista version is forthcoming.

So far, 15,000 private beta testers have been using the application and the BBC said the "public beta" will still be "controlled" so most interested users will not get to try it out until the full launch later this year.

Source:
Arstechnica

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has started a new online promotion that offers "five free discs" with the purchase of any new Blu ray disc player, including the PlayStation 3.

From July 1st to September 30th, when you purchase any player you automatically qualify to receive 5 free Blu ray movies fo free. There are 22 titles available to choose from, including hits from Sony, Disney, Fox/MGM, Paramount, Lionsgate and Warner.

The movies available can be found here when the site launches on July 1st.

There are other deals available such as get 5 free Blu-ray movies with the purchase of a Panasonic DMP-BD10A which means consumers can get 10 free movies if they decide on that player.

Last month, HD DVD announced a similar promotion and there was a substantial sales spike. Blu ray is hoping for the same.

Source:
HD Digest

Today, the MPAA filed a lawsuit against both YouTVPC and Peekvid hoping to crack down on websites that allow users to view streaming TV shows and movies for free.

Although both sites provide access to some of the most popular movies and TV shows available, they do so by linking to other sites where the content is actually stored and do not host anything themselves. Both sites claim to do nothing illegal.

As the sites have grown in popularity, the MPAA has been keeping closer watch. Peekvid currently has over 50,000 unique visitors per day while YouTVPC pulls in just over 5,000 a day. Unfortunately for them, both sites are based in the US and are now an easy legal target for the MPAA.

In a statement, the MPAA added that both sites "profit handsomely from a seemingly endless stream of third-party advertising pitches" mostly provided by reputable companies like Google and Yahoo and so this lawsuit seems more about how the sites profit from what they do then the actual content, which is not hosted in the US.

A new Nintendo initiative, called WiiWare in the US and Wii Software in Europe will allow any developer in the world to produce new downloadable Wii games to be sold through the Wii Shop Channel.

"Wii Software provides developers with big ideas - rather than big budgets - an easy and very accessible way to create new games and bring them to the marketplace," European marketing director Laurent Fischer explained.

Fischer also added that the service would also offer "great additional value for Wii owners who will be able to download fresh new games."

Users can pay for the the games using Wii Points when the first titles launch in early 2008.

When the Wii was first announced, Nintendo said it intended the Wii Shop to host original downloadable games but so far only "Virtual Console" games have been available.

The Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 already support new game downloads but Nintendo hopes the unique motion-sensing control options of the Wii will give developers more fire to produce interesting software that cannot be found on its rival consoles.

Source:
GI.biz

According to the website ZuneScene, Microsoft is preparing the second generation model of their Zune media player and have dubbed the model "Scorpio". There will also be a new flash memory based Zune codenamed "Draco".

According to the website, Scorpio will have an 80GB harddrive and will enter production at the end of July. That could mean that both new Zunes might be available for the upcoming holiday rush.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that they expected to hit 1 million devices sold by the end of the month and that they were very pleased with the sales.

More updates as they become available.

Source:
BetaNews

The online rental giant Blockbuster has decided to settle with Netflix over accusations that it had infringed on a couple of Netlfix's online DVD rental patents when it launched Blockbuster Online.

In April 2006, Netflix accused Blockbuster of infringing on two patents and subsequently asked a judge to bar the company from allowing online rentals. The patents included the concept of the automatic queue and the concept of keeping DVDs for an unlimited amount of time "without incurring additional charges and to prioritize and reprioritize their own personal dynamic queue--of DVDs to be rented."

Netflix accused Blockbuster of completely ignoring the patents when they opened Blockbuster Online and Netflix added that the lawsuit "had to be taken in order to protect its business interests."

Blockbuster then countersued and accused Netflix of fraud and antitrust violations. The company also said the patents were very broad and therefore impossible to be enforced.

The terms of the settlement were not released but Blockbuster noted that it would not have any material effect on future revenue.

Shadowrun and Halo 2, the latest "Vista exclusive" games, have already been cracked by hacking groups that have released patches that will allow both games to function perfectly on computers using the Windows XP operating system.

In May, Falling Leaf Systems boldly claimed that they would be able to crack both games within months and they have delivered.

When the claim was made, CEO Brian Thomason added, "First [Microsoft] claim that it was impossible to implement DirectX 10 compatibility atop Windows XP, and now they also want us to believe that they couldn’t successfully launch two DirectX 9 based titles on XP either. We plan to expose both theories as patently false."

The classic cracker group Razor 1911 has also supposedly cracked Shadowrun to play on XP by simply replacing a few files although its effect on online play is yet to be determined.

You can read more about it here

Sources:
Dailytech
GI.biz

This week, Dell unveiled a new Widescreen 24-inch LCD monitor that boasts what Dell calls TrueColor, a technology that gives the new 2407WFP-HC a greater color gamut than current LCD panels.

Currently, Dell offers the Ultrasharp 2407WFP which uses "Wide CCFL" technology and can only display anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of the NTSC color gamut. Dell claims that with the new TrueColor technology the 2407WFP-HC can display 92 percent of that Color Space.

Here are a few specs of the new monitor, according to Dailytech:
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Response time: 6ms
Contrast ratio: 1,000:1
9-in-2 media card reader integrated into bezel
4 USB 2.0 ports

Users will still have to use expensive calibration devices such as ColorVision Spyder however, if they would like to guarantee a higher level of color accuracy.

There have been arguments that LED-backlights will still outperform CCFL displays with TrueColor due to LED-backlighting having better white point and brightness.

With the much hyped iPhone launch just a few days away many people are hoping to snatch up the 400,000 units on launch day from the thousands of Apple and AT&T stores around the US.

There had been minimum information leaked about the phone until last week when Apple told us about YouTube integration, a glass screen update, as well as a higher-capacity battery upgrade.

Today, more information was released with AT&T and Apple jointly announcing the rate plans that will be available for the phone.

"We want to make choosing a service plan simple and easy, so every plan includes unlimited data with direct Internet access, along with Visual Voicemail and a host of other goodies," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We think these three plans give customers the flexibility to experience all of iPhone’s revolutionary features at affordable and competitive prices."

The base plan will be $59.99 USD and will get you 450 anytime minutes along with 5000 nights and weekend. The $79.99 plan bumps you up to 900 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. The $100 rate plan will get you 1350 anytime minutes alongside unlimited nights and weekends.

The large computer manufacturer Toshiba announced today that it would begin bundling a free 30-day trial of the Starz Vongo movie download service with its Satellite and Qosmio laptops starting in July.

Thanks to their agreement with Vongo, the company will place a Vongo icon on each desktop to facilitate registration of the service. The service is usually $9.99 USD per month, said Starz.

Vongo is host to over 2500 videos and provides access to a live stream of one of the Starz movie channels. Vongo also offers several pay-per-view selections.

As of now however, the content is only available and viewable to those with Windows-based PCs.

Source:
BetaNews

Today, Robert Koster and Yutaka Yamamoto both pleaded guilty to selling almost $6 million worth of counterfeit software through eBay. The software was pirated versions of retail software produced by Rockwell Automation.

When they are sentenced, each could face up to five years in prison and $250,000 USD fines. The Justice Department said these two will join four other defendants in November for sentencing.

Rockwell creates software for factory management and the Justice Department said these latest two defendants made $30,000 USD in profits off 200 auctions of the counterfeit software from September 2003 to September 2004.

These two defendants are the eight and ninth convicted of being part of the same piracy ring.

Source:
BetaNews

Today, RealNetworks announced that they had released a beta for the latest RealPlayer, 11. The new version is completely different from previous versions in that it does not focus on desktop audio and video playback but instead on letting users download video from various websites.

After installing the software for the first time, whenever you visit websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion a "Download this Video" button will appear which will allow you to instantly download the videos off the sites. The new player also supports Flash, Windows Media and Quicktime in addition to RealVideo.

You can upgrade to a "Plus" version of RP11 for $29.99 USD which allows you to burn the videos to CDs and DVDs from within the player. Future updates promise direct transfer to iPods.

Source:
BetaNews

Direct2Drive announced yesterday that they had made an agreement with THQ to digitally distribute their PC games.

The hit games "Supreme Commander" and "STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl" are the first games to be released under the new agreement which will make them available on retail shelves and through digital distribution simultaneously.

"We’re proud to be the first to offer THQ’s roster of hit games to our consumers via digital distribution," said Direct2Drive's Jamie Berger.

"Our customers are passionate about great games and blockbusters like Supreme Commander, the award-winning Company of Heroes, and the full Dawn of War series are exciting additions to our unparalleled library of AAA games available for download."

Other top publishers that have partnered with D2D are 2K Games, Atari, Activision, Blizzard, Eidos, EA, Namco, NCSoft, SEGA, SOE, Ubisoft, and Vivendi-Universal.

Source:
GI.biz

Columbia House, the oldest and largest music and video club on the planet, has announced that they will be now carrying both HD DVD and Blu-ray titles before the end of the year. The statement was posted on the club's website.

The site added a general primer on what high-definition technology is and ended the primer with the following question, "Will Columbia House support both of these new formats?", for which the answer was "We plan to begin carrying both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs in the fall of 2007."

Although there has been no exact details on when they plan to begin selling the formats or what titles, the club has 14 million members worldwide and the addition of the formats should add significant awareness to consumers who otherwise had no idea they existed.

Source:
HD Digest

We reported two months ago that Hew Griffiths, the leader of the Warez group "DrinkOrDie" had pleaded guilty to copyright infringement after years of living as a fugitive. He was extradited from his home in Australia to the US for the sentencing.

Yesterday, he was sentenced to 51 months in prison for his guilty plea for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

"From his home in Australia, Griffiths became one of the most notorious leaders of the underground Internet piracy community by orchestrating the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars in copyrighted material," said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher in a statement.

DrinkOrDie is said to have been responsible for over $50 million USD in losses to software groups, record labels and movie studios during its run from 1993 to 2001. In the latter year the group was dismantled after 70 raids on their servers and homes occurred in the US, UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Australia.

Because Griffiths spent three years in a detention center in Australia the judge said he will only have to serve 15 months of his sentence.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to a Microsoft representative, the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive is the "biggest-selling accessory" ever sold for the console and it is also more popular than standalone HD DVD players.

In April, the HD DVD Group announced that 100,000 standalone players had been sold in the US but did not include figures for the add-on or PC drives.

The representative said that 155,000 add-ons had been sold in the US and by "biggest-selling" he meant in overall revenue. Each add-on sells for an average of $200 USD.

With those numbers now released, we now know a ballpark figure as to how many HD DVD capable players there are and that number is between 300,000 and 400,000. That is small in comparison to the number of Blu ray players but most PS3s were purchased with the intent of gaming and not just movie watching.

According to CNET, "an average of one disc per Blu-ray machine is sold, compared to four discs per HD DVD machine".

However, Blu ray still leads in discs sold for the year.

Source:
Dailytech

The large public torrent tracker TorrentSpy, which has been ordered by a judge to start logging user activity, has now decided to give in and begin fighting piracy by adding a content filtering tool called FileRights.

The tool will filter content based on their hashes. FileRights however, will need movie studios and music labels to supply file hashes for their content if the tools is to be at all successful.

This seems to be a "good faith" effort by the admins of TorrentSpy in an effort to reduce penalties or sentences in their pending legal case.

TorrentSpy was ordered last week to log user activity but the site has claimed that they have never kept logs and therefore cannot produce any. The judge has said however, that the information necessary is in the server RAM and that TorrentSpy just needs to record it.

TorrentSpy is fighting the ruling with help from the EFF but have abandoned the fight over filtering. Their decision should show that they have no desire to incite infringement but it wont get them off the hook for the past years of infringement.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to the Hollywood Reporter, MTV will, for the first time, release a full-length movie for mobile phones before it ever airs on television.

"Super Sweet 16: The Movie", an extension of the hit show, "My Super Sweet 16", will premier on Verizon's V Cast TV after it debuts a day earlier on Comcast's Movies on Demand service.

The movie will air on MTV on July 8th and be available for purchase on DVD two days later.

According to the network the movie "chronicles the story of two best friends trying to outdo each other as they both plan their long-awaited sweet 16 party."

Source:
TheHollywood Reporter

Microsoft announced yesterday that it had strategically purchased a 1% stake in the major Chinese TV maker Changhong for about $12 million USD so that they can jointly develop entertainment products linking television and the Internet. Both companies hope to be part of the race for profits in the internet's growing status as a medium to distribute movies and other programs.

Microsoft and Changhong will begin exploring "a wide range of scenarios for digital entertainment needs," said Roger Chen, a Microsoft spokesman in Beijing.

"The project focuses on in-home network digital entertainment - how to connect PCs, TVs and the Internet to provide this digital entertainment experience," he said.

In recent months, Apple, Sony and other companies have announced their plans for devices that will allow downloaded movies and programs to be viewed on HDTVs rather than on the PC.

The fact that Microsoft chose China as a partner is no coincidence. It has the largest population of television viewers, cellphone users, and it is second behind the US in internet users. The country is also the leading producer of consumer electronics.

"Definitely China is a very important strategic market for Microsoft and on digital entertainment, a major potential market," said Chen.

Sony America has confirmed that the latest PSP firmware update, 3.5, has removed the software restriction that has capped the CPU speed of the handheld at 266 MHz.

The PSP is capable of a clock speed of 333 MHz, but it was locked at 80% of its full processing power most likely to lengthen battery life.

Now, thanks to the update, developers are able to code for the full speed and new titles currently in development will be coded for the new clock speed.

Take this news with a grain of salt however, because although the new games will run at higher frame rates, your battery will drain quicker.

Could this be the first step towards a complete overhaul and redesign of the PSP?

Source:
GI.biz

According to analysts participating at the Home Entertainment Summit: DVD and Beyond this week, standard DVD sales are down this year but sales for the year will remain flat thanks to next gen DVDs, namely Blu ray and HD DVD.

The analysts noted that "the disc gold rush days are long past", especially now that there is an 80% market penetration for DVD hardware.

“[The year could end] up flat, or slightly up, depending on the degree to which high-def takes off,” noted Kelly Avery, president of worldwide home entertainment at Paramount Pictures. “Box office for the summer is up 5% [compared to 2006], making it bigger than the last two summers.”

To date, worldwide spending on DVD purchases is down 2.6% from the same period last year, and in the US spending was down 5.2%.

Besides the falling sales, the participants added that they belive HD sales will help the industry stay flat or even return to growth.

“It’s in the very, very early days of our forecasts, but we believe that high-definition discs will help return consumer video spending to growth,” said Helen Davis Jayalath, senior analyst video at Screen Digest.

According to Screen Digest, gamers will have some impact on HD sales in the future, mainly due to the decent sales of the PlayStation 3 and its built in Blu ray drive. According to the group, by 2010, there will be 45 million next-gen consoles sold worldwide with many of those being the PS3. In the same period, there will be 30 million next gen stand alone players sold, with most of those being HD DVD players. Read more...

In another shocking statement by NBC's general counsel, Rick Cotton has once again pushed the limits of what can be seen as sane behavior. He has already said that law enforcement needs to spend more money on fighting piracy then on catching burglars, and bank robbers but now he has decided to show his support for the American farmer.

"In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment."

I will leave this article with not much else to say but that movie theaters are doing great this year (read stickied article) and so are corn farmers. For that matter, pirates can still enjoy popcorn at home and I'm sure many do, considering it is much less expensive that way.

Finally, thank you Rick Cotton for another absurd comment.

Source:
TechDirt

This week at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, HBO announced that all of their HDTV programming will now be distributed in MPEG-4 instead of the standard MPEG-2.

By 2008, HBO will distribute 26 channels in HD MPEG-4, and the decision should have an impact on operators who work in an MPEG-2 environment.

The MPEG-2 operators will be forced to either transcode the HBO signal back down to MPEG-2 or upgrade their customer's set top boxes to be able to offer MPEG-4 distribution. Most operators will have to upgrade their networks as well.

Another complication of the decision is that HBO will encode their signal at 8 Mbps and mandate that there can be no further compression of the signal. That decision will give a competitive edge to cable MSOs and DBS networks that can easily distribute the signal and provide a better viewing experience. Operators using a DSL infrastructure will have problems, because the signal will become a "bandwidth hog" when compared to other signals.

Source:
Engadget

Last year, the former NFL-player OJ Simpson announced that he was set to release a book in which he would detail what really would have happened had he actually committed the murders of his ex-wife and her friend. After weeks of consumer outrage, the book was canned and 400,000 copies were destroyed. This week however, a digital version of the book, "If I Did It", has been leaked to torrent trackers worldwide.

The book begins, “I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve heard the theories. And, of course, I’ve read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don’t know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.”

In 2006, the publisher Judith Regan called the book a confession. “This is an historic case, and I consider this his confession.”

This week, we reported that Michael Moore's "Sicko" was leaked to the internet, a week before its scheduled release date. It was first available on YouTube and then on P2P and torrent trackers.

Although Michael Moore has said that he does not mind people distributing his films online, the copyright owners are taking a different stance. Weinstein Co. has promised legal action if and when they find out who is responsible for uploading the film.

"Every DVD screener that comes from the Weinstein Co. is watermarked and traceable," Weinstein Co. general counsel Peter Hurwitz said. "We are actively investigating who illegally uploaded 'Sicko' to the Internet, and we will take appropriate action against that person(s)."

Although Weinstein Co. promised to find the uploader they may have a very hard time finding the individual or individuals. However, finding the person who was entrusted with the DVD screener in the first place should be much easier.

When Operation D-Elite began after the illegal uploading of Star Wars Episode III, the American uploader, Scott McCausland, got in trouble, especially because he was on an American-based torrent site and because he was also the administrator of the site.

The MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) have unveiled their latest anti-camcording posters in an effort to curb piracy in US movie theaters. The posters' main aim is to raise awareness among moviegoers that camcording in movie theaters is now a federal offense.

Camcorded movies are still big business for pirates as camcorded versions are usually available online and on street corners within days of the movies' release.

“More than 90 per cent of newly released movies that end up on the Internet or in street markets around the world can be sourced to a single illegally camcorded movie from a movie theater. With these posters, we want to remind would-be camcord thieves that they can face serious consequences for engaging in this illegal activity and remind moviegoers to report any suspicious activity to theater management,” said MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman.

“Movie thieves are on notice that camcording in movie theaters is a crime. These new posters underscore our determination to stop illegal camcording in our theaters,” said NATO president and CEO John Fithian.

As of 2005, camcording in a US theater is a federal offense with convicted offenders being sentenced to a maximum five years in prison and/or a fine of $250,000 USD.

On the homepage of their new reality show "Pirate Master", CBS has been linking to .torrent files from several public and private torrent tracker sites. This may be useful if you have missed the latest broadcast, but it is also illegal, as in many countries it is copyright infringement to download TV shows.

The article image is directly taken from the Pirate Master homepage (courtesy of TF). The homepage is supposed to list news items about the show from blogs but it is instead showing torrent links from sites such as Mininova, bitDig and even private trackers such as Torrentleech.

Although it is unlikely that CBS is purposely linking to the files, they are most likely using an RSS feed aggregator that includes torrent trackers.

There is the chance however, that CBS has decided on purposely linking to the trackers. In April, CBS’s chief research officer David Poltrac spoke out about how YouTube and BitTorrent should be considered friends and not foes. He based his sentiments on a CBS poll that showed that people who download TV shows actually watch more TV.

Poltrack is also a believer in free TV over the internet, supported by ads. In his own words, “if [consumers] are going to steal it, give it to them anyway. But also make it easier to access and present it better than YouTube or BitTorrent or anywhere else.”

According to a new Smarthouse survey of electronics retailers, about 30 percent of Xbox 360 systems die prematurely and leave the users with the infamous "red ring of death" around their power button signifying that one or more components are not working properly.

An EB Games manager said that the failure rate is dropping as Microsoft "refines" the process, but that the rate is still much higher than those of the Wii and PS3.

Another anonymous retailer echoed the previous statement, "At one stage we were getting calls everyday however this has slowed down," he noted. "The failure rate must be well over 30% which when you look at a PC or iPod the failure rate is less than 2%."

The failures are mainly due to overheating generated by the 360's processor or graphics chip, both of which are still made using the same process introduced for the console's launch in 2005.

The failures are typically associated with overheating generated by the Xbox 360's triple-core processor or its ATI-made graphics chip, both of which are made using the same chip processes introduced for the console's November 2005 North American launch. There have however, been reports that Microsoft is shipping added cooling on replacement untis to help comabt the overheating issue.

Today, Apple provided an in-depth look into the upcoming iPhone, a week before the phone hits retail stores in the US.

Apple posted a 20-minute guided tour for the phone that showcases the many features of the phone and explains how to best use the touch screen.

The tour doesn't disclose anything major that hasn't been known about the iPhone, but it does provide a first look at many of innovations such as visual voicemail and SMS text messaging the works like the popular iChat program. According to the video, the iPhone's email client will support Microsoft Word and Excel documents, which is a new disclosure.

You can watch the tour here

Source:
BetaNews

Stepping up its efforts to attract new high-definition customers, Cablevision said today that they will have the capability to carry more than 500 channels of HD programming by the end of the year.

In a somewhat surprising move, the 15 HD channels of Voom will become part of Cablevision's new offering, making 40 networks total available to customers. Voom is owned by the DISH Network.

"The VOOM channels represent the pinnacle of high-definition and we are pleased to extend our leadership position in this important category through the introduction of these exciting services," Cablevision senior VP John Trierweiler added.

Voom runs HDNews, Animania, GamePlay HD, World Cinema, and a few other HD networks.

HD is rapidly growing in popularity as consumers have been buying HDTVs in record numbers. DirecTV has said they will have 150 channels in HD available by the end of the year and Verizon has promised heavy HD focus for their FiOS product.

Comcast has been lagging so far but claims that it will offer 400 "choices" by the end of the year. The company defines choices as "both on-demand and broadcast channels combined."

According to data from a new NPD Group report, Apple's iTunes has surpassed Amazon and Target to become the third largest music retailer for music sales over the first quarter of this year. Wal-Mart finished in first with 15.8 percent of the overall market while Best Buy was second with 13.8 percent. Apple grew to 9.8 percent while Amazon and Target had 6.7 and 6.6 percent respectively.

NPD says they counted every 12 tracks purchased online as the equivalent of one physical CD album. The report does not however, include mobile music sales.

Russ Crupnick, NPD's vice president also noted that CD sales were once again down, while digital music sales continued to climb. "Digital continues to grow at a fairly strong clip," Crupnick said. "Obviously, physical sales have been soft this year."

Surely, Apple has a lot to do with that fact.

Source:
BetaNews

EMI senior VP Lauren Berkowitz recently told Bloomberg that DRM-free music was much more popular than DRMed music and that sales have been "good" since the label began selling its music without DRM this month on iTunes Plus.

Berkowitz noted that since iTunes Plus was launched, sales of the Pink Floyd classic "Dark Side of the Moon" were up 270 percent. Industry analysts have noted that digital sales for other EMI artists have risen but physical CD sales have fallen.

Although iTunes is currently the only store offering the music, Amazon, 7digital and f.y.e will begin to sell the unprotected music soon.

EMI seems confident that the unprotected tracks will continue to sell well, even after the initial hype fades away. We can only hope that sales continue well and other labels follow in EMI's footsteps.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to a BREIN press release, a court has ruled that a Dutch web hosting company, Leaseweb, must shut down a private torrent site, Everlasting.nu. The identity of the website owner will also need to be divulged thanks to the ruling.

BREIN serves the same purpose as the MPAA and although it has been unsuccessful in obtaining personal information in the past, they have recently enjoyed success in taking down torrent tracker sites as well as eDonkey2000 indexing sites. BREIN boasts that they have shut down 150 indexing sites in total.

BREIN sent a cease and desist letter to Everlasting and Leaseweb but neither party chose to cooperate and so BREIN initiated legal action. The presiding judge obviously ruled in BREIN's favor. If Leaseweb continues to not cooperate, the company will face legal ramifications.

“Leaseweb is a known provider of illegal sites" says BREIN."This verdict is the beginning of breaking down this safe haven for illegality. More cases will follow. They must comply or BREIN will sue.”

Source:
Slyck

Sony announced that it expects at least 380 new PlayStation 3 games for the next fiscal year and that it hopes the games will help boost demand for the console which is falling behind in sales behind its rivals.

To date, there are only 150 games available for the PS3, including PSN online titles.

CEO Howard Stringer said on Thursday, "Attractive game software is the key to accelerate PS3 growth over the next year".

Due to the start-up costs of the PS3, Sony's gaming division posted an almost $2 billion USD loss and investors were obviously not pleased.

Stringer said he expected 200 of the 380 titles to be packaged games, and that the other 180 would be available through PSN.

"PlayStation 3 going forward will be vital to our future and we'll succeed," added Stringer.

Source:
Yahoo

On Thursday, Creative updated its iPod Shuffle rival, the Zen Stone, by adding a "Plus" model.

The new model will have double the capacity of the original; 2GB, and will include a color screen, as well as FM radio and voice recording. The Zen Stone works just as the Shuffle does, including play and random features. The Zen Stone Plus will also hold about 500 songs if encoded at 128kbps. There are also silicone skins available that will allow consumers to change the color of their player to any of the five colors available.

The Plus follows the release of the original which hit shelves last month for $39.99 USD. When the Plus goes on sale in July it will have a $69.99 price tag.

Source:
BetaNews

The high-quality music site MusicGiants announced yesterday that they had begun offering DRM-free music, and that the new release of Paul McCartney's latest album, Memory Almost Full would be the first DRM-free tracks on the site. CEO Scott Bahneman added that the service will be releasing more DRM-free albums later in the year.

MusicGiants got itself noticed by offering high quality lossless tracks in WMA format when it launched last year. Lossless tracks should sound exactly as if they are on a physical CD. The company boasts that it is the only site to offer such high quality tracks.

The site is selling the new McCartney album for $15.29 USD, which is a premium over many other legal music download stores. It is good to see more and more stores moving towards consumer freedom.

Source:
BetaNews

Thanks to new third-party modification, Xbox 360 controllers will be able to sense tilting motions and then translate those movements in-game in the way Wii and PlayStation 3 controllers do.

The new mod, called the Tiltboard is basically a circuit board with ICs and solder points in a similar fashion to illegal mod chips. The board must be placed inside the controller casing and will require the soldering of seven separate wires.

The Tiltboard is very similar to the SIXAXIS controllers of the PS3 and it senses motion and maps it to the right analog stick.

The mod also adds two buttons to the back of the controller that enable or disable the tilting as well as adjust sensitivity, angle and inverted settings.

The Tiltboard is to go on sale online only in 12 countries including the US and UK for about $40 USD.

Source:
Dailytech

Today, StarTech released its SLIMDVDRW8U2 compact, portable burner for those lacking optical drives and users who prefer to use the same burner for multiple systems.

The drive, made by Panasonic is ultra-compact, measuring only a half an inch high. It has an max 8x burning speed for single layer burning and 4x for dual-layer discs. The drive can also burn DVD-RW and DVD-RAM discs at 6X and 5X respectively.

The drive is completely powered through its USB 2.0 connection and also uses a special tray-loading mechanism for ability to read mini CDs and DVDs that are used by the occasional camcorder.

The drive goes on sale today or $155 USD and is supported by almost all Mac and Windows PCs.

Source:
Electronista

Izumi Kawanishi and Kanehide, two of Sony's technical officers, recently made comments that they believe there is room for a 30 to 40% improvement in the PlayStation 3 as an AV unit. They believe the improvement can occur in future firmware updates.

The pair also concluded that the upgrades would not have an adverse effect on fan noise, and even implied that there was a possibility of a fan-less model in the future.

"So far, we are not worried too much since we have plenty of processing power left even at peak usage," AV development boss Kanehide said.

Platform development boss Kawanishi agreed: "Nothing yet comes close to the load that Folding@Home applies. And I can see the possibility of a fan-less PS3 in the future, just like there was for the PS2."

Recent firmware updates have added upscaling support for PS1 and PS2 games as well as remote-play.

Finally, the pair added that future firmware updates would be mainly based on what consumers wanted, "The scary thing about the PS3 is that we can continue to add updates as long as there is space on the HDD," concluded Kawanishi. "We won't stop though, since adding new functionality is a lot of fun. We really enjoy getting feedback from the customers, and finding things we really hadn't thought of."

Today, Warner Home Video announced a pact with Dark Castle Entertainment that will mean a series of direct-to-video horror sequels will be coming to both HD DVD and Blu ray.

The line will be the first ever movies to come direct to next gen discs, although the films will also be released on the internet as a legal download and on standard DVDs.

Warner said the first movie will be released in October, entitled "Return to the House on Haunted Hill" a sequel to the 2000 blockbuster "House on Haunted Hill".

The HD versions of the movie will include interactive "navigational cinema" technology that will allow to viewer to make seven choices as the story unfolds, for a total of 90 different variations of the film.

"We are continually looking for fresh and edgy ideas for our films and for our fans to experience," Dark Castle co-founder Joel Silver added.

Source:
HD Digest

BD Plus Technologies LLC announced yesterday that it had begun issuing specifications to content providers that would allow use of its patented BD Plus copy protection system.

The copy protection, usually known as BD+, allows for added levels of copy protection on current Blu ray format specifications. With the announcement, the technology is now ready for implementation by content providers and surely Hollywood will be implementing it as soon as possible. Since Blu ray's launch last year, many major Hollywood studios have expressed interest in added security for their movies, not wanting to see a repeat of what happened to standard DVDs with DeCSS

FOX and MGM stopped shipping new high-def titles in April, saying they would again when BD+ became available.

So far, no studio has announced they will be using the technology, but rest assured the announcements will be coming soon.

Source:
HD Digest

Hostel: Part II director Eli Roth has blamed the lackluster box office sales of his latest movie on "rampant piracy".

"Piracy has become worse than ever now, and a stolen workprint (with unfinished music, no sound effects, and no VFX) leaked out on online before the release, and is really hurting us, especially internationally," he said.

He then insulted critics who reviewed a leaked "workprint" copy of the movie that surfaced weeks before the actual release date. "Critics have actually been reviewing the film based off the pirated copy, which is inexcusable," he says. "Some of these critics I have actually known for a few years, and while I wouldn't dignify them by mentioning them by name, I know who they are, as do the studios, and other filmmakers, and they will no longer have any access to any of my films."

As for his future, Roth proclaimed, "I am not directing Cell any time soon, and I most likely will take the rest of the year to write my other projects. Which means I wouldn't shoot until the spring and you wouldn't see a film directed by me in the cinemas until at least next fall." He goes on to say that in Hollywood, "the R-rated horror film is in serious jeopardy. Studios feel the public doesn't want them anymore, and so they are only putting PG-13 films into production. The only way to counter this perception is to get out there and support R-rated horror."

On Monday, Microsoft announced that it had filed suit against Immersion, just weeks after the company settled its legal battle with Sony. Microsoft said there was a breach of contract due to the settlement, which was over the patent right for rumble controllers.

"We entered into a binding licensing agreement with Immersion and are seeking to have that agreement honored," Microsoft Associate General Counsel Steve Aeschbacher said to CNET in a statement. "Microsoft licenses technology both in and out and relies on these agreements to be honored and enforced. Our request to the court is that all companies and industry partners should play by the same rules and that the binding agreement we signed with Immersion be honored."

Throughout 2002 and 2003, Immersion was trapped in legal battles with Sony and Microsoft over their vibrating controllers and Sony eventually lost while Microsoft negotiated a royalty payment program with Immersion.

"In particular, it provides that if Immersion settles the Sony Lawsuit ... for an amount up to $100,000,000, Immersion shall pay Microsoft the sum of $15,000,000. If Immersion settles the Sony Lawsuit for an amount between $100,000,000 and $150,000,000, Immersion shall pay Microsoft an additional amount equal to 25% of the amount of the settlement in excess of $100,000,000. If Immersion Settles the Sony Lawsuit for an amount in excess of $150,000,000, Immersion shall pay Microsoft an additional amount equal to 17.5% of the amount of the settlement in excess of $150,000,000."

On Tuesday, the huge social video site YouTube launched nine localized versions of its site to countries around the world. The navigation and functionality of the new sites will be in the countries native language.

Eventually, the local YouTubes hope to offer localized content including featured pages targeted towards the consumers of the countries they are in.

The nine initial countries included are Brazil, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

Users in those countries can continue to keep YouTube in English or switch to their language using the menu bar at the top of the page.

Each YouTube will also not only be subdomains of youtube.com, the company in each country except Italy has purchased the domain for their specific country.

Many bloggers and analysts believe that the move was a long time coming. "Opening up the site to a non-English speaking audience will drive a new wave of growth that will further cement YouTube's place as the leading online destination for on-demand internet video," said Duncan Riley of TechCrunch.

Source:
BetaNews

Although his resignation was announced a couple months ago, Ken Kutaragi, the father of PlayStation, officially stepped down today from his position at Sony.

Sony Computer Entertainment will now be lead by Kazuo Hirai, who is currently the president of the worldwide branch of the PlayStation division.

Hirai is considered an ally of CEO Howard Stringer, who was known to be at odds with Kutaragi before he announced his resignation. Sony has said Kutaragi will stay with the company, but solely in an advisory position.

It is also well known that Kutaragi's stubbornness and argumentative personality may cost Sony in the long run. He questioned the manufacturing practices of the console and went way over budget in development. Sony's gaming unit may not see a profit on the console for a couple of years because of that fact, and the PlayStation 3's current price is so high because of it.

Either way, his resignation is the end of an era, and Kutaragi will always be remembered for his work at Sony.

Source:
BetaNews

Yesterday, the Blu ray camp got an unexpected new exclusive backer, the Starz Home Entertainment, which announced its exclusive support alongside the release of its feature "Masters of Horror".

The news came at the Sixth Annual Home Entertainment Summit when Starz Home Entertainment President Bill Clark revealed the exclusive support for the camp.

Although no other titles were announced, Starz did say many more in their catalogue would follow 'Horror'.

The news is even more noteworthy because Starz owns the catalogue of Anchor Bay Entertainment, one of, if not the, most popular independent genre suppliers for standard DVDs.

A few in Anchor's library are the classics, 'Halloween,' 'The Evil Dead,' 'Re-Animator' and the original 'Night of the Living Dead.'

More importantly for Blu ray, Clark said that they had no plans to release any movies for rival HD DVD.

Source:
HD Digest

The creative minds behind Joost have begun talking about including Joost support into televisions and cellphones via embedded support.

Analysts feel this move would and could be a very good move. Joost has a nice arsenal of channels but faces the problems of all other IPTV services. The service is centered around the home PC instead of the home TV and entertainment center. Everyone can agree it is easier to sit around the plasma and enjoy TV then sit around the PC monitor, and clearly Joost understands this.

Joost's new CEO Michelangelo Volpi had this to say, "Joost is a piece of software and it can reside on a variety of platforms… It could be on a television set-top box. Or potentially it could be embedded in a TV set with an Ethernet connection, or on a mobile phone, or in some alternative device that might come out in the future."

Joost might have some issues however. They will have to compete with Akimbo and Slingbox which have been offering video content to televisions for years. Joost however, is free unlike those competitors. Joost's biggest problem will most definitely be getting the large TV manufacturers to include the software with their TVs which will certainly not happen without an extensive revenue-sharing deal.

According to the latest MPAA study, all-media revenue for 2006 was 8% higher than 2005, and reached $42.6 billion USD. The "all-media" references money made from home video, television, theatrical and pay TV entertainment.

The confidential report disclosed that all-media sales grew by 10% in the US and 5% in the top 25 international markets.

In 2005, sales were down and all-media revenue decreased 8.2% from the year before.

Canada, recently deemed a "haven for piracy", showed the biggest growth in terms of dollars by adding $341 million USD, a huge jump of 23%.

Russia, another so-called haven of piracy, moved up to become the 13th-ranked purchaser of U.S. filmed entertainment, a 50% hike from last year.

Theatrical revenue in Europe was $2.1 billion, matching 2004's record. Other notable stats included the death of the VHS which fell to 1% of overall all-media market share for the year.

The survey covered revenue recorded by the Walt Disney Co., Paramount Pictures Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Film Corp., Universal City Studios and Warner Bros. Entertainment.

The only question that remains is, where are all these multi-billion dollar losses due to piracy?

According to paidcontent.org, Sony has decided to close their Connect music and video download division and instead focus on their struggling PlayStation group.

Of Connect, only the eBooks division will remain with the leftover employees transitioned over to work on the PlayStation. The decision was almost certainly based on the digital music market in which Apple has a huge, almost insurmountable share.

The Sony Connect cheif will leave the company and it is not known whether the eBooks division will keep the Connect name.

Sony Connect was doomed from the start, mainly because of its decision to only include the Sony proprietary format in its downloads, a format that could only be read by Sony's players. There was also a lack of marketing, possibly due to internal disagreements over where the division was heading.

Source:
BetaNews

Apple announced on Monday that they have updated the upcoming iPhone and that the estimated battery life was now two hours longer than anticipated. Apple also said they had upgraded the plastic face to optical-quality glass.

Battery life is one of the most common complaints for smartphones and most heavy users are forced to carry around their chargers or a second battery just to make it through the day. With the new upgrade, users should have 8 hours of talk time and 6 hours worth of data.

Apple also claims the device can remain on standby for 11 days and play 7 hours of video, a figure that seems very high.

The new display makes the device more resistant to scratching and better for video viewing.

As always, CEO Steve Jobs released a statement hyping the product and its updates, "There has never been a phone like iPhone, and we can't wait to get this truly magical product into the hands of customers starting just 11 days from today".

Source:
BetaNews

According to the latest NPD sales figures, the Nintendo Wii continues to dominate the North American market, with Nintendo selling more consoles than both Sony and Microsoft combined.

During the month of May, 338,000 Wii consoles were sold, compared to 155,000 Xbox 360s and only 82,000 PlayStation 3s. The Nintendo DS did even better, moving 423,000 units during the month. The Sony gaming handheld, PSP, sold 221,000 units mainly thanks to a recent price cut. The PlayStation 2 continued to sell well, pushing 188,000 units for the month.

Overall, console sales rose 79 percent during the month to hit $221 million USD.

Source:
GI.biz

In an update to our previous aritcle here, Sony has sent an apology letter to the Dean of Manchester Cathedral, apologizing for any offence caused by their hit game Resistance: Fall of Man.

The letter states, "It was not our intention to cause offence by using a representation of Manchester Cathedral in chapter eight of the work. If we have done so, we sincerely apologize."

However, Sony does not accept "that there is any connection between contemporary issues in 21st century Manchester and the work of science fiction in which a fictitious 1950s Britain is under attack by aliens.

We believe a comprehensive viewing of the work will make its content and context clear."

The letter also included an offer for Sony officials to meet with Church officials. The Dean said the Cathedral will accept the offer and hope to continue discussions over Resistance being withdrawn or Sony making a donation towards the Church's initiative against gun violence.

More updates as they become available.

GI.biz

In a joint announcement, Yahoo Japan and Apple have said that Yahoo has replaced a Sony-affiliated music download service with the iTunes platform as the default music store on Yahoo Music Japan.

The partnership is very good news for Apple, due to the fact that Yahoo is Japan's hottest portal site, reaching 84 percent of the country's internet users. Users who visit Yahoo Music Japan will be able to access iTunes through a very prominent one-click access link.

The old download service, Mora, will still be available but it is no longer the default. Users can change their preferences after logging into the service.

Source:
DailyTech

Google has been gathering a few of its top executives for an international press conference in Paris next week and there is speculation that an announcement of a local version of YouTube is upcoming for European countries where English is not the primary language.

A French public TV channel, France 24, confirmed that they have been in talks with Google which fueled the rumor even more. Google however, has not commented on France 24 or the speculation.

YouTube is already very popular in Europe, but the interface is solely in English. Effectively adding more local languages and local TV content would help to boost popularity even higher and help YouTube compete with homegrown alternatives such as DailyMotion.

DailyMotion, which can be viewed in many languages, had 6.6 million unique visitors in April, compared to 5.8 million for YouTube. In Germany however, YouTube was the most viewed with 7.6 million visitors, slightly ahead of Germany's own MyVideo.de.

If Google was to cut deals with European TV programming, it would help avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits and would continue in Google's strategy of joining with media providers for providing content.

Thanks to a new service called MusicStation, European customers will be able to download an unlimited amount of music to their mobile phones.

MusicStation launched in Sweden on Tuesday, and it will hit major markets in the rest of Europe, as well as Asia and Africa over the next few months. The company says it has agreements with 30 operators and hopes to serve over 100 million phones within the year.

North American plans for the service were not specified at all during the announcement.

The service would be like a Napster of sorts, which instead of charging per song, instead there would be a weekly charge of 2.99 euros for unlimited downloads. Your only limitation is the amount of memory your mobile phone has.

The company also said that eventually the tracks would be able to be transferred to your PC, but that part of the service was not currently available.

"MusicStation's launch today heralds the beginning of the next generation of mobile music," Rob Lewis said, CEO of the service's parent company Omnifone.

Over 1 million tracks would be offered by the service, including music from the "Big 4", Universal Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI.

Yesterday, the MPAA accused the large torrent tracker site TorrentSpy of withholding evidence that was stored on the site's servers.

TorrentSpy is involved in a court battle with a few media companies over copyright infringements. According to CNET, a federal judge has decided that, for the first time in history, the electronic trail in a computer server's RAM must be turned over as evidence during litigation.

The judge ordered the site to begin logging user activity and IP addresses and turn the data over to the MPAA. The judge gave TorrentSpy until Tuesday to file an appeal as well as allowing the site to mask the IP addresses of its users for the time being.

TorrentSpy responded to the judges' decision by saying, "We have spent the last year challenging their relentless campaign against the 1st Amendment and personal privacy laws Worldwide. We have succeeded in delaying the court order to turn on logs while we appeal it. TorrentSpy will not create logs of what you do on the site without your consent."

TorrentSpy has also said they will not release any user information and have never tracked IP addresses.

Source:
Dailytech

The highly anticipated Apple iPhone hits stores on June 29th, and many rumors as well as debates have come with its hype.

The latest specification that has come to light is the fact that you will be required to have an iTunes Store account if you ever plan on setting up and configuring your new phone.

Apple is well known for confining their users to its many different services, and this is no different. The account will be a seperate account from the one you can sign up with AT&T, the phone's exclusive distributer, and this move would force non-regular Apple customers to have to subscribe to the store thus expanding the store's market.

Source:
Dailytech

Electronics giant Samsung will be releasing the world's largest commercially available LCD TV when it launches the 70" LN70F91BD in Korea this month.

The new TV will also have an LED backlight instead of the traditional CCFL backlight and the new light should improve picture quality.

"I am pleased to introduce the 70" Full-HD LCD TV with innovative Local Dimming Technology," said Samsung Digital Media President JongWoo Park. "Samsung will continue to strengthen its LCD TV leadership, enhancing Full-HD and large screen LCD TV line-up."

Samsung also said a new technology they dubbed "local dimming backlighting" will help to produce deeper blacks, a problem that has plagued current LCDs. The "local dimming backlighting" will allow for maximum brightness when the LEDs are at full power, or clearer, deeper blacks when the LEDs are completely turned off.

Because of the LED backlights, Samsung says the TV has a very nice dynamic contrast ratio of 500,000:1 and power consumption is cut by up to 50 percent. The TV will also have ACAP, three HDMI 1.3 ports and a single USB 2.0 port.

The TV will be available outside of Korea later this year, and currently has an astonishing price tag of $63,000 USD.

Sony boss Howard Stringer has reiterated that the company understands consumers overwhelmingly would like the cost of the PS3 dropped, and said Sony is working on "refining" how far it can afford to drop the console's price.

According to his interview with the Financial Times, Stringer noted that "While people have not bought as many PlayStation 3s as it looks, it is no different from PS2 and PS1 in terms of percentage of sales...I think that the public would like the cost to be lower, there’s no question about that."

When the interviewer asked how much Sony could afford to cut the price, Stringer responded, "That’s what we’re studying at the moment; that’s what we’re trying to refine." Stringer also confided that the "refinement" would be done before Christmas and that he understood that the recent price cut of the Sony gaming handheld, PSP had sent sales "into an upward spiral".

"So I think PlayStation 3’s travails are usually solved by time. And it will have an instant gratification environment, not only in life but in the press as well as everything else. It’s a good story right now, 'Will PlayStation 3 get to Christmas?' And the answer is, of course it will get to Christmas."

The giant music label EMI has begun allowing more legal music downloading stores to use its catalogue, DRM-free.

PassAlong Networks, a company that provides the technology for online stores such as f.y.e and 7digital, a UK online music store, have secured licenses to use the catalogues and both plan to sell the tracks at a higher bitrate then iTunes currently uses.

iTunes encodes the EMI catalogue at 256 Kbps, but the new licenses can go even higher, as high as 320 Kpbs. The new services will also use MP3 instead of Apple's AAC format.

"We applaud EMI Music's bold decision to test the DRM-free waters," said PassAlong Networks' CEO Dave Jaworski. "Music consumers have demanded interoperability and ease of use and we hope that by offering EMI Music's DRM-free music files, we will simplify and improve their digital music experience."


Source:
Arstechnica

Today, Microsoft announced that it had concluded its multi-player beta of the upcoming Halo 3 game and noted that it was a huge success which had attracted over 820,000 unique participants and 12 million hours of game play.

Microsoft is now turning its focus towards Halo-related merchandise by allowing pre-orders of accessories such as special edition controllers and headsets. There will also be a special edition Halo Zune and a Marvel comic series by September.

Microsoft and Bungie launched the beta last month and the strain on XBL was huge. Downloads of the beta equaled 350 terabytes of data.

"The participation in the 'Halo 3' beta was staggering," said Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. "Witnessing such a great reaction to a small portion of the game has been inspiring."

Halo 3 will hit shelves on September 25th.

Source:
BetaNews

After reports surfaced that hackers had cracked the PlayStation 3's anti-piracy software, Sony America has declared that it will "aggressively pursue" anyone who is caught doing so. They have said the activity will merit legal action if caught.

"Unfortunately, hackers will try to exploit any hardware system software," SCEA spokesperson Dave Karraker said.

"The best we can do as a company is to make our security that much stronger and aggressively pursue legal action against anyone caught trying to use an exploit in an illegal manner."

According to CVG.com, hackers have cracked the PS3 firmwares 1.10 and 1.11, which allow the consoles with those firmwares to boot pirated games.

Although the games boot, so far hackers have not gotten any pirated games to actually play.

So far, despite diligent efforts, all consoles have been hacked but there are some repercussions besides legal action. Hackers run the risk of bricking their expensive consoles, as well as getting banned from the PlayStation Network.

"Naturally, any use of an exploit on the system software does void the warranty on the PS3 system... Which could be a costly mistake to see if you can run an old SEGA CD game on it," said Karraker.

As reported earlier, a rumor has been circulating that the Xbox 360 might see a price drop soon.

Microsoft's David Hufford however, has said that there are no plans, at least in the near future for a price drop on the console.

Talking to Gamerscoreblog.com Hufford said: "With Xbox 360s selling well at their current price point, Elites selling out at $479, and an insanely great portfolio of games in the market, there's no reason to announce any kind of price drop any time soon.

"The comment, which is accurately reported, unfortunately has now been taken way out of context and being reported as if I am signalling a price drop. I was not, I am not," he added.

Looks like the current price tag is here to stay.

Source:
GI.biz

Cal IV Entertainment, a country music publishing company that owns copyrights to many hit singles including a few by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube last week.

The company alleges that the video sharing site is home to more than 60 copyrighted songs and accuses YouTube "of direct, induced, vicarious and contributory copyright infringement."

"YouTube has failed to adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for the termination of repeat-infringing YouTube subscribers and account holders," the complaint reads. "YouTube also fails to monitor works it [had] previously been notified are being infringed."

YouTube is under fire from a few lawsuits including ones from the English Premier Soccer League, David Grisman, and the state of New Jersey.

Cal IV complaints that it is very hard for the company to track down work that may be infringing due to the random nature the videos are tagged by users. The company also alleges that although they are enrolled in YouTube's Content Verification Program, new copyrighted material is found on the site daily.

Source:
Yahoo

Yesterday, the Church of England demanded an apology from Sony, claiming that a re-creation of Manchester Cathedral in the hit PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man was used without permission and that the re-creation upset the local area which has been trying to shed its bad reputation for gun violence.

The Church also said it is considering legal action depending on Sony's response. "It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem," The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, told ITV News.

"For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with a photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.

"Here in Manchester we do all we can to support communities through our parish clergy, we know the reality of gun crime and the devastating effects it can have on the lives – it is not a trivial matter," he said.

This morning, Sony responded to the allegations and they seem to be apologetic without necessarily accepting blame.

"Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is aware of the concerns expressed by the Bishop of Manchester and the Cathedral authorities about the use of Manchester Cathedral in the game Resistance: Fall of Man, and we naturally take their concerns very seriously," the statement reads.

"Resistance: Fall of Man is a fantasy science fiction game and is not based on reality. The game is set in an alternate and mythical version of Europe in the 1950s, in which the enemy are strange looking alien invaders seeking to destroy humanity. Read more...

The video codec company DivX announced they are looking for a few individuals to help beta test "secret" items the company is creating. Although it is not entirely clear whether the company is testing hardware or software, the company has built a streaming media set top box named GejBox, named after DivX's creator.

According to Gej's post on the DivX Labs site, "Here at DivX we’re always looking out at the horizon, trying to figure out what the future holds. We’re aiming for peace, love, happiness, and goodwill to all mankind. We have a few slightly shorter-term sights as well, and the team in the labs have concocted up some pretty impressive stuff. This time, however, we want to include a few avid DivX fanatics to help us make sure we’re building the best technology we can come up with. We can’t go into more details just yet, but if you meet the following criteria, please fill out our application survey, we’d love to have you on board!

* You need to have a home network and a computer that’s fairly modern (let’s call it less than 2 years old)
* You’ve gotta have a few hours every week to use the technology, and give us feedback on it
* You have to have an existing DivX media library" Read more...

According to The Financial Times, Apple is in "advanced" talks with major American film studios over launching an online film rental service that could challenge conventional cable and satellite TV operators.

The report, although not officially announced by Apple, said that a film would cost $2.99 USD for a 30-day rental. The DRM on the films would allow for movement from a computer to portable device such as the iPod.

Although Apple already sells films through its iTunes platform, many studios have not allowed their movies to be distributed due to concerns that digital sales would take away from physical DVD sales. The report said the Apple is hoping to launch the service by the end of this year.

A studio executive quoted in the report, the service would "compete against cable companies and anyone else offering VOD (video on demand) into the home."

Source:
Yahoo

In the past months, buyers of the Toshiba HD-XA2 have complained that the HD DVD player has low bass issues when using the 5.1 analog audio connections.

Since those complaints first surfaced, Toshiba has released a few firmware updates, but none completely fixed the issue. The latest firmware, V 1.6 however, seems to include a temporary fix for the glitch.

According to High Def Digest, "It turns out that the low bass is a symptom of defective speaker and bass management controls inside the player's audio decoder. For viewers with small main speakers who rely on the decoder to redirect bass from other channels to the subwoofer, the player wasn't making any adjustments no matter what settings were entered. Likewise, if an owner had no center channel and needed the dialogue redirected to the left and right front channels, that wasn't working either. As a result, only viewers with a complete set of full-range large speakers were hearing movie soundtracks properly."

The fix is thanks to testing and experimenting by AVSForum members, who discovered that if you change the "Digital Out SPDIF" setting in the player from Bitstream to PCM re-enables bass and speaker management over the analog audio connections.

Yesterday, NBC Universal and News Corp. announced that they had added several prominent cable networks to their online video venture that is expected to launch this summer.

The venture, which is designed to rival YouTube will include short clip media and full length original programming. Gemstar-TV Guide, Fuel TV, Oxygen, Speed, and the Sundance Channel where the latest channels to agree to provide content.

The announcement also said the content would be available through MySpace, AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Comcast.

Source:
BetaNews

Sony confirmed today their PlayStation 3 console had reached the 1 million units sold milestone for Europe and Australia.

According to Sony Europe, the milestone was hit in just under 10 weeks, a timeframe quicker than its predecessors the PlayStation and PlayStation 2.

The PS3 was released in Japan in November 2006 but sales have been sluggish in the region. According to the data collector Media Create, only 910,000 units have been sold since then.

Data from NPD in North America showed that 1.3 million units had been sold so far in the region since its release late last year.

Source:
GI.biz

In what is being called the world's first "3-Dimensional Sound Reality high-def music experience" , Surround Records has announced they are releasing an audio-only HD DVD entitled "Uncommon Bach" on June 15th.

The producer, Alexander Jero says the the title presents the music of the legendary Sebastian Bach using "virtual instruments and modern synthesis," in such a way that Surround Records has called it "3-Dimensional Sound Reality."


According to the press release, the title procss promises a "clarity and sonic perception of these classical works [that] will open a new vision of the original masterpieces."

"Uncommon Bach" is the first audio-only HD release to hit North American shelves, and the company says the complete release will be 57 minutes.

High Def Digest included some tech specs of the movie, which are, "DTS-HD Master Lossless Audio and standard DTS 5.1 surround options. (Note also that 'Uncommon Bach' is compatible only with HD DVD players with HDMI or optical outputs.)"

Amazon has the movie on pre-sale for $19.95 now, and there is no word if any video material or bonus features will accompany the main track. There is also no word on whether a Blu ray version is in the making.

Seeing the success of Toshiba's HD DVD promotion, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has begun an online promotion that will offer the "third disc free" on Blu ray titles at participating retailers including Amazon.

Consumers who purchase 3 Sony Blu ray movie titles will receive the third title free. Although the full Sony catalogue is not included in the promotion, the high selling titles Black Hawk Down and Casino Royale are.

So far the promotion has only been spotted at Amazon and DVD Empire and each offers the same list of movies although Amazon's are slightly lower priced. You only receive credit for the lowest priced title in your checkout cart, for example if you were to select a $20 movie and a $27 movie from Amazon then you would only receive a $20 credit for the final movie.

So far the promotion seems to be working as 8 Blu ray titles have jumped into Amazon's 100 best selling DVDs list. Sony did not give word on how long the promotion will last.

Source:
HD Digest

Yesterday, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi suggested to a Japanese newspaper that the company was not "ruling out" a price cut for its $600 USD PlayStation 3.

Chubachi's comments add fuel to the fire that started last week with the news that Sony's BDP-300 Blu ray player would hit stores with a retail price of $499 USD, a price $100 less than expected.

"Sony does not rule out the possibility of lowering the price of the PS3", said Chubachi to the Japanese daily paper Yomiuri Shimbun. He added that the company was making a "full assessment" of the situation before it made a decision on pricing.

With Blu ray production costs lowering daily, Sony could take the opportunity to lower the price of its game console which is still lagging in sales behind the Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft Xbox 360. Many consumers and analysts blame the large price tag for its lagging sales. Although the comments have certainly caused a stir, a price cut is not set in stone. All that is true as of today is that Sony can no longer claim the PS3 is the lowest priced Blu ray player on the market.

Source:
HD Digest

Yesterday, Warner Home Video announced that their dual-release megahit Planet Earth had become the best selling HD release to date.

Warner, the North American distributor for BBC Video, announced the set had generated $3.2 million USD in revenue since its dual release launch in late April.

The Hollywood Reporter estimated that the sales figure translates to over 42,000 units, which although less than the 100,000 units sold of the hit "The Departed" still translates to more revenue due to the roughly $70 USD price tag. The company says The Departed has so far generated 2.8 million in revenue.

A Warner exec boasted after the announcement, "The consumer response to 'Planet Earth: The Complete Series' on both high-definition formats has been absolutely incredible, and we are truly proud to be a part of it," said Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders. "This landmark series was made for high definition, and 'Planet Earth' will be an iconic staple in our natural-history documentary library for a very long time."

Source:
HD Digest

On Wednesday, NBC announced that it will allow users to post clips
of popular NBC news and sports shows on their personal websites and blogs.
Rival station CBS announced the same idea last week.

According to the announcement, initially Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News
with Brian Williams, Dateline NBC and programming from NBC Sports,
DotComedy.com, and iVillage.com will be offered.

Until today, NBC had allowed users to post clips of the popular shows Heroes
and Saturday Night Live only. The web site owner can post the video clips the
same way YouTube does, by the use of a widget.

Source:
BetaNews

Late last month we reported that mod-resistant Nintendo Wii consoles had hit Japanese retail outlets in an effort to curb piracy. Now it seems that those same consoles are making their way to North American shelves.

Although Nintendo hasn't done much in terms of changing the hardware, they have made the PCB connections alot harder to interface with the current generation of mod chips. The three pins that are currently used by mod chips are physically cut making it almost impossible to modify the new consoles.

Many modders from forums around the net have purchased the new consoles to see what they are up against. Many have concluded that this round of consoles is just temporary until Nintendo can release a completely new chip set that will make it completely impossible to modify.

Source:
DailyTech

Yesterday, Sharp added three new models to its XR series of projectors. The new XR-30S, XR-30X, and XR-40X all have enhanced definiton but "real awareness of HD".

Each projector has DVI inputs with native HDCP support that allows the models to display encrypted video from certain Blu ray and HD DVD discs. The projectors can also play some content stored on PCs with Vista installed.

Each model also has component inputs as well as RCA and S-Video. Each model boasts a new image processing chip for better overall quality and better colors.

According to Sharp, the XR-30S is "built modestly with an 800x600 resolution, a 2,300-lumen brightness, and a 2,000:1 contrast ratio; the XR-30X steps up to a sharper 1024x768 resolution as well as a clearer 2,200 contrast ratio. The XR-40X tops the line with an extra-bright 2,600-lumen image."

All three models will hit retail shelves in July with MSRPs of $700, $800, and $900 USD respectively.

Source:
Electronista

The late singer Bob Marley realeased his excellent "Exodus" album in 1977 as vinyl record but now the record label has decided to re-release the album, not on vinyl, not on CD, but on a USB flash drive.

Island Records, a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group, produced 4000 of the drives for the re-release and loaded them with the original 10 songs plus additional tracks and exclusive concert footage of the singer. The drives will cost a hefty $44.99 USD.

The label says the high price relfects not only the extra content but the fact that the drive can be formatted and reused after the songs are taken off and put on your PC.

Last year, the Barenaked Ladies released their album on USB sticks as well as CDs and the drives have sold almost 1000 copies at $25 USD a piece.

“Once you upload the music to your computer, you have a piece of hardware,” says Adam Smith, who manages artists at the Nettwerk Music Group, “If you’re buying a U.S.B. stick, the cost is not so much different to buy it loaded with music from your favorite band.”

Source:
NYTimes

HTC, the large Taiwanese phone maker, introduced its "Touch" mobile phone on Tuesday, boasting many of the features of the Apple iPhone.

The phone maker, which usually sells its phones directly to mobile carriers which then rebrand the phone as its own is putting alot of faith in the phone as it believes it can contribute significantly to the company's financial performance.

The Touch has a 2.8 inch color LCD screen and is based on the Windows Mobile 6 OS. Also included is a 2-megapixel digital camera, built in Wi-Fi and EDGE, and a microSD slot for added memory. In total the phone is a bit thick, measuring in at 14 millimeters.

HTC said the first carrier to recieve the device would be the European Orange and the carrier is expected to begin selling the phone next week. The rest of Europe as well as Asia will receive the phone later this month and the Americas will recieve it later this year.

While in Europe the Touch will keep its HTC brand, when it hits North America, T-Mobile will launch it under their own name.

The Touch will include HTC's "TouchFLO" technology, a technology that will allow the phone's UI to act similarly to the iPhone.

"This was a smart move for HTC, provide a really cool, local optimized, touch screen device when the iPhone launches in all the markets where you won't be able to get one immediately," JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg said.

Bill Gates took time recently to speak about his vision for the future of gaming, and his vision includes a control system where the players would swing a bat or racket just like they would in real life, yet he says it wont be the same as the Nintendo Wii.

Gates made the comments during a panel interview last week in which he and Apple head Steve Jobs spoke. Gates' response came about when the subject was turned to "how the role of the PC was evolving" and he answered, "As we get natural input, that will cause a change... Software is doing vision and so, you know, imagine a game machine where you just can pick up the bat and swing it or the tennis racket and swing it."

When told by interviewers that the Wii used such a control system, Gates replied, "No, that’s not it. You can’t pick up your tennis racket…And swing it. You can’t sit there with your friends and do those natural things.

"That’s a 3D positional device," Gates added. "This is video recognition. This is a camera seeing what’s going on."

In the past, Gates was critical of the Wii and Nintendo's strategy with the console. He was quoted as saying, "Look at the resolution you get with a controlled experience like that. Say to yourself, how in terms of using a game for a long period of time, what kind of accuracy and capability do you want?"

Brash Entertainment announced today that they had secured $400 million USD in investments that would go towards funding the development of video games based on television, music and movie properties.

The company claims that to date they have received over 40 licenses through their partnerships with 5 major film studios and that 12 games are currently in production including titles based on the blockbuster hits "300" and "Saw".

"Brash is founded on the simple premise that top Hollywood creativity plus top game talent should equal great games," said CEO Mitch Davis.

"We are laser focused on delivering high quality games. The other aspects of our business are left to the experts – best of breed partners we've tapped for their specific expertise."

The company said the $400 million funding came from a syndicate led by ABRY Partners. For its part, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will be the distributor for Brash and hopes to cash in on Brash's ambitions.

"We are very excited about working with Brash as they grow into a major force in the gaming space," said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros.

"We believe that our global game distribution services fir perfectly with the Brash strategic mission."

Through a program it calls "Ignition", Microsoft hopes to give new music artists the chance to get discovered by the 30 million MSN, Zune and Xbox Live users.

Participating bands in the program will recieve a month's worth of "prominent placement" on the Zune Marketplace, Zune.net, MSN's entertainment Web site, and Xbox Live Marketplace.

Microsoft announced that the first band to participate is "Maximo Park" coming from the UK.

Before participating the bands must agree to an exclusive contract with Microsoft and promise to provide exclusive music and music video to Microsoft's entertainment properties.

"Consumers are looking for ways to find new music, and Ignition helps connect artists with potential new fans by giving them multiple opportunities to listen to, watch or read about the artist across Microsoft's online platforms," Zune music marketing head Christina Calio added.

Microsoft will allow free downloads of all Maximo Park's music from Zune.net and access to videos on Xbox Live.

Source:
BetaNews

Yahoo will soon be raising the cost of its online subscription music service by $1 to $3 USD depending on the current customer's plan.

When Yahoo launched the the service in 2005, it had a low price of $4.99 per month. After the raise in price, Yahoo Music Unlimited will cost $11.99 monthly when purchased for a year. If you were to buy the service monthly instead of annually, it will cost you $14.99 now.

Yahoo will still have a version of Yahoo Music Unlimited without the ability to transfer music to your portable device and that will now cost $8.99 monthly, and $5.99 per month with the annual commitment.

Source:
BetaNews

In an update to last night's article here, Microsoft corrected a translation error that came from a response Steve Ballmer had given a German magazine. We reported that the Zune player was coming to Europe, but not until 2008 and now the company has said there is no set timeframe at all.

The comments by Ballmer, correctly translated should have said "we decided not to enter new markets so far and will not do so until after we have reached some of the goals outlined. When this will be the case, I cannot tell you today."

Cesar Menendez, the Zune's product manager also tried to clarify the situation by adding, "We will not expand the device family or our geographical footprint until we are positive that we can provide the best experience from the start."

Source:
BetaNews

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has begun criticizing Apple over its practice of embedding user information into its DRM-free purchased tracks from the iTunes store. The group feels that practice poses a security risk to its users.

Embedded within the files are the customer's name and email address, and the EFF claims that the data can be pose a privacy issue to many users. If, for example your iPod is stolen, the information can be uncovered rather easily by the theif. Although there is not sensitive data embedded, such as credit card numbers or phone numbers, the addition of DRM-free purchases makes it even easier for the information to get stolen.

Although Apple has never given a specific reason for the watermarks, most believe it is because they would like the ability to track files if they end up on P2P networks.

"Bottom line: DRM-free doesn't mean that Apple suddenly supports piracy," Erica Sadun wrote for The Unofficial Apple Weblog last week.

Source:
BetaNews

According to an announcement by Lions Gate Entertainment, 15 movies it has made available on Xbox Live has helped to boost digital revenue by almost 50 percent. The company revealed that over 150,000 download rentals had been made for those films.

The company released the films on XBL in February and were priced at 320 Microsoft points for standard DVD rentals and 480 points for HD rentals. In dollars, those points are equivalent to $4 and $6 USD respectively.

Lions Gate CEO Jon Feltheimer said that video-on-demand (VOD) sales for the film Employee of the Month "exceeded USD 3 million on a film that grossed about USD 27 million at the domest box office".

He added, "Our VOD revenues grew by approximately 50 per cent in fiscal 2007 from the previous year... Our Internet delivered digital revenue grew by a multiple of seven in fiscal ’07 compared to the prior year, although obviously from a relatively small base."

Lions Gate president Steve Beeks also added, "This is an extremely promising sign for our entire library and the power of the virtual shelf space of digital delivery."

Source:
GI.biz

When Microsoft launched their Zune player in the US in late 2006 it was expected that a European launch would follow sometime in 2007.

In an interview with the German Wirtschafts Woche, Steve Ballmer has now said that the Zune launch for fall 2007 has been canceled indefinetely. He blamed the delay on the fact that the Zune is still not profitable in the US. In late 2006, a Microsoft spokesperson mirrored Ballmer's announcement and said a European launch might not occur until 2008.

Microsoft recently announced it had almost sold 1 million units and expects to do so by the end of the month. New Zune models are anticipated for Christmas this year as well.

Source:
IFU

SunBriteTV has released a 46 inch all-weather resistant LCD that is an upgrade to their current smaller LCDs with the same features.

The SunBrite 4600HD will debut at InfoComm next week. It has a "corrosion resistant enclosure that protects the internals from the elements." It also has a built-in filtered fan system for very hot days and a heater that lets the TV work in temperatures of 24 degrees Farenheit.

The TV also includes many inputs such as HDMI, component, S-video, composite, and RF and has a nice 1366x768 resolution at a 1600:1 contrast ratio.

The TV will be expensive however, $5000 MSRP, and there are no accessories as of yet that would protect your HD sources, but hopefully some are coming.

Source:
CEpro

In a new patent granted to the company entitled "Mobile Information Terminal Apparatus", Sony-Ericsson seems to imply that it can make a balance between serious gaming and phones, a concept that has been tried but has so far failed.

The patent describes the new device that is similar in shape to the Sony gaming handheld PSP but that also includes a swiveling screen that is reminiscent of the Samsung i7. The screen would allow for both movie watching and gaming and can rotate either 90 or 180 degrees.

The description also claims that advanced software would play a role in the new phone. The phone would always monitor for incoming calls and would pause the game to handle the conversation. To resume, ou can either start from the immediate pause point, at the current level, or shut down the game completely.

Although there was no indication that a phone was upcoming, Sony-Ericsson can now do so without worrying about copies.

Source:
Electronista

iGiki.com has announced that they will be releasing a few games designed specifically for the upcoming Apple iPhone.

The games were developed in Adobe Flash CS3 and are specifically modified for use without a mouse. The games are seperated into "GikiSingles", "GikiPacks", and "GikiMinis."

The GikiPacks cost $2 for three months, GikiSingles cost $1 for three months and GikiMinis are free.

A few of the GikiSingles include "iTrek", a space ship piloting game; "HangMan", based on the classic; "Outer Wars", a 3D shooter; "Sink or Swim", a game where you must save overboard crew from sharks and "zBlast", an action shooter.

The GikiPacks are all remakes of classic arcase games and include iTetri, based on the legend.

Source:
iPodNN

According to an Engadget source, Apple has submitted three commericals for television airtime, each of which prominently feature the date June 29th as the release date for the upcoming iPhone.

Although many dates have been rumored so far, this latest rumor seems to be the most credible. There are reasons not to be believe however, mainly that the 29th is a Friday and Apple is notorious for launching products on Tuesdays and that the commercials would air before WWDC when Steve Jobs should officially announce the date.

More updates on the official release date as they become available.

UPDATE:
Confirmed by myself, release date is the 29th, just saw the commerical ;)

Source:
Engadget

According to Olivia Harrison, the widow of Beatle's member George Harrison, the Beatles music catalogue may be coming to iTunes and other legal music download service by early 2008.

Harrison told Reuters, "We just have a few things to work out elsewhere" before the catalogue can be released for digital purchase.

Harrison also noted that one factor for the delay is that a complete remastering of all the CDs is in the works and is taking awhile. "I think we're a little bit behind. We (the band's members and widows) all agree. It's been done. It's just trying to now get it out there."

The Beatles' catalogue will be distributed through EMI meaning they will go online DRM-free.

Source:
IpodNN

According to a company spokesman, SanDisk has decided to put its Sansa View on hold. The company would like to "re-scope" the device which would have been SanDisk's first media player that focused more on video support than music support.

The hold is indefinite but the company reaffirmed its commitment to the player and hopes to release the player when the timing is right.

"The market is changing fast and furious and we want to shift our efforts to develop a [portable media player] that will meet the needs of the market versus pushing out the wrong product," the spokesperson said. "So we're taking another look."

The View would have been the first explicitly HD-capable media players on the market, a player capable of displaying 1080i HD video through TV output. It would have also offered added storage through an SDHC card slot with support for 4GB or more.

Source:
Electronista

Last week, Sony unveiled the VRD-MC5, a self-contained DVD burner that will connect to a few Sony AVCHD camcorders.

This will be the first burner in their new DVDirect line that will be able to support AVCHD. Until now, a conversion software was needed to convert videos to DVD for standalone playback.

Accroding to Dailytech, "The VRD-MC5 offers USB, RCA analog, S-video, and Firewire inputs. The burner will also work with standard definition camcorders. The VRD-MC5 records various formats including DVD, HDD, DV, and Digital8, connected by either RCA or Firewire. The unit does not accept HDV input streams. AVCHD camcorders can only be connected to the burner through the USB port."

The unit comes with a 2.5 inch LCD, navigation controls and a large burn button. "The burner allows for clips to be sorted and placed in a preferred order for burning on DVD+R/-R/+RW/-RW/+R DL discs. It also works as a still photo burner with card slots for MemoryStick Duo/PRO Duo, SD/SDHC, xD, and compact flash."

The burner has no video outputs so it cannot serve as a standalone home DVD player.

The unit has no video output, so it cannot be used a home DVD player. The burnt DVDs will still be in AVCHD format and therefore your playback device must be compatible with the format. Notably, the PlayStation 3 is compatible among a select amount of players.

Recently, the AACS LA, the group in charge of the AACS copy protection, acknowledged that hackers had been very effective in cracking the protection and have since been trying to restore the integrity of the technology. That being said, the new movie titles shipped with Media Key Block (MKB) v3 were cracked by Slysoft a week before the titles hit retail shelves.

Although an official statement has not been made about the latest round of keys being crakced, Richard E. Doherty, director of technology strategy at Microsoft, and who is also very involved with the AACS LA, took time to talk about the protection and how he still has complete faith in it.

“Just to clarify, the original attack was on certain software players that proved to be vulnerable, and did not and does not represent a widespread break in the AACS ecosystem ... In the past PC's have typically been a big target for hacking activities, as they are designed to run arbitrary software programs. But the line between PCs and traditional CE devices is clearly blurring – and many of the best PVR systems (in my opinion) are highly customizable and capable of running user-designed software,” explained Doherty, “Keep in mind, however, that AACS is aware of the history and attack vectors of PC playback systems, and there are several technical measures (such as KCD and the entire proactive renewal system) that are designed specifically to address the particular issues of PC-based protection,” Doherty added.

On Friday, Canada introduced a legislation that would criminalize camcording of films in theaters and make the crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Recently, Japan introduced a similar legislation and Mexico and the US have had legislations in place for a while. The MPAA and other groups estimate that piracy cost the movie industry $6 billion USD per year worldwide and recently Candada has been called a "haven for piracy".

"I don't want this problem of piracy to be seen as an American problem," said Kevin Tierney, producer of the Canadian film "Bon Cop, Bad Cop," who admitted that his movie had been bootlegged worldwide, "This is stealing."

Until Friday, it had only been illegal in Canada to camcord a movie if it was meant for commercial use. Authorities however, have had a terrible time enforcing that rule, as it is almost impossible to prove such recordings were done for commercial distribution.

Now, if you are caught recording the film, you can face up to 2 years in prison, and face 5 years if convicted of doing so for commercial distribution.

Source:
Reuters

According to a new report by Merrill Lynch, Apple is ready to sell more iPhones then they originally anticipated. The analyst group has estimated that to start, production will be at about 200,000 to 300,000 per month and then gradually increase until production hits 1 million in December. That would result in 4 million units being produced by the end of 2007 and after prduction levels, about 12 million being shipped during 2008.

In January, at the Macworld conference, Steve Jobs said he hoped to sell a total of 10 million phones by the end of 2008, a number far lower than Merril Lynch's predictions.

Source:
Electronista

Yesterday, the Canadian encryption vendor Certicom filed a broad lawsuit against Sony accusing the electronics giant of infringing on two of Certicom's patents. Although Sony is sued alot, this latest suit can be potentially cripling. The suit is targeting AACS and by extension, Blu ray and the PlayStation 3.

Back in 2003, Certicom sold patent licenses to the US National Security Agency for $25 million including the two in the latest Sony suit. Now, Certicom wants monetary damages from Sony, claiming that the encryptions found in AACS violate Certicom patents on "Strengthened public key protocol" and "Digital signatures on a Smartcard."

Certicom says that Sony needs to take out a license for AACS, Blu ray, PS3 games, and the PlayStation 3 and standalone Blu ray players or discontinue selling them.

Additionally, Certicom claims that the the Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) scheme is infringing and wants monetary damages for every Sony i.LINK (IEEE 1394) implementation that uses DTCP and every Sony product that uses DTCP-IP. Included in that is many VAIO computers, Sony HDTVs, and even a few DVD players.

We will be watching this story very closely and keep updates coming.

In another win for hackers over content producers, the latest AACS copy protection used in Blu ray and HD DVD discs has been cracked, one day after the AACS LA released the "fix".

A hacker by the name of "BtCB" posted the latest key, which begins with "45 5F" and ends with "2A B2" on the Freedom to Tinker website and the key has spread since then.

The AACS LA is obviously not pleased with the processing keys being posted over the internet, and has vowed to get them removed by cease and desist orders. That vow however, has only encouraged more hackers to post the keys and the hackers are always one step ahead.

This however has not stopped the AACS LA from pouring more money into the protection. It is even rumored that Blu ray discs with an added layer of protection called BD+ are coming soon. Lets see how long until the hackers crack that.

You can learn more about how the keys work at the source down below or in past Afterdawn articles.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer, both Best Buy and Blockbuster are ready to enter the rapidly growing movie download market.

"We have nearly a dozen active agreements in place for digital delivery of our content with such major players as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Blockbuster, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart, with more to follow," said Feltheimer.

Although there has been no official announcement by the two companies, Felthheimer announced that he would be selling on the iTunes store, saying so so he can be considered a reliable source.

Blockbuster's intentions have been well known for a while now, but Best Buy was more surprising. One theory is that Best Buy was influenced by its giant competitor Wal-Mart's move into the movie download business. So far however, consumer interest in Wal-Mart's service have been very low just like Best Buy's music service.

Blockbuster has been linked to negotiations to purchase Movielink on more than one occasion and its main competitor Netflix launched a streaming movie service back in January. It seems Blockbuster has decided to build the service from scratch in hopes to gain another edge over Netflix which is still soundly beating the company in subscribers.

Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" had decided that any television broadcasts that showed his government in a bad light should be off the air and with that in mind, the government dclined to renew Radio Caracas Televisión's (RCTV) broadcast license and had its transmitter taken over by a state-run channel.

Somewhat surprisingly, RCTV journalists and producers have not been arrested or harrassed and have decided to fight back. The station has been given its own channel on YouTube for the show E1 Observador. CNN reports that a Colombian channel also broadcasts RCTV content into Venezuela.

According to YouTube, the show has been viewed 175,000 times since May and the channel as a whole is the most subscribed to this week.

Many users use the site to avoid censorship and it is possible that YouTube may become as important as TV broadcasts in the future. Hopefully governments, like those in Venezuela, will be powerless to stop it.

Source:
Arstechnica