News written by Andre Yoskowitz (January, 2008)

The infamous torrent Tracker The Pirate Bay which has been back in the news recently because Swedish prosecutors have dragged them into court after complaints from Warner Bros., Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI just had its first day in court.

One of the early surprising situations that has occurred is the fact that Swedish prosecutors are claiming that the Pirate Bay makes $4 million USD a year from advertising alone. The site does not host any of the files making that figure even more impressive.

Currently, TPB tracks one million BitTorrent files, has over 2.5 million registered users and has even peaked at "more than 10 million simultaneous users downloading files at one time." Those numbers are not so great for advertisers but it seems in a volume business like BitTorrent, a big name like TPB is worth every cent.

The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) has made a new claim that 90 percent of all North American Nintendo DS users play pirated games via the now infamous R4/M3 cartridge.

John Hillier, manager of ELSPA's Intellectual Property Crime Unit, stated that the cartridge, which plays downloaded Roms via a microSD slot, harms sales for Nintendo and it has actually made it the least profitable console on the market.

"The implications are massive. In America it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s," said Hillier.

"Takings from Nintendo DS games in the US are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact here," he added in reference to the UK.

What makes the R4/M3 so popular is its easy accessibility from overseas and the fact that there is no need for any hardware modifications.

Hillier also added that the cartridge is one of the biggest threats to the gaming industry.

"That's the real danger - you may think you're getting a good deal but using the R4 is risking the future of the games industry." Read more...

After a successful initial release in Japan JVC has announced that it will be bringing its two new Everio HD camcorders to North American markets.

The HD5 and HD6 will replace their bulkier predecessor, the H7 and will be the first to output a full-speed, 60 FPS, 1080p image when attached to an HDTV. An HDMI 1.3 connector provides x.v.Color support for added color depth in HDTVs that support x.v.Color. The company also says the shots are saved to disc at 1080i.

Just like their Japanese counterparts, the HD5 and 6 are mainly different only by storage capacity with the HD5 having a 60GB HDD and the HD6 having a 120GB HDD. The smaller capacity model will "hold up to 12 hours of standard-ratio (1440x1080) HD video" while the larger capacity model holds double that. The HD6 also adds a headphone jack and lens hood.

According to a new claim by the advertisement magazine MarketingWeek it seems that giants Google and Dell may be collaborating on a new mobile phone handset.

Citing "senior industry sources," the claim believes that the phone, kept under wraps for now, will be announced at the Mobile World Congress show in mid-February. Besides the claim the magazine had little details to give but the phone is most likely to be powered by Google's impressive Linux-based Android mobile operating system.

Over at Google however, "insiders" have denied any near-term announcements but this isn't the first time we have heard rumors of Dell's return to the smartphone market. Recent reports have claimed that former Motorola mobile chief Ron Garriques is "spearheading" the revival of handhelds over at Dell after the demise of the Axim PDA.

We will keep you updated.

Sony Europe has released the latest firmware upgrade for its popular PSP handheld which allows gamers to make and receive phone calls using Skype software.

Users of the new PSP Slim and Lite can use the very popular communications package which, for those unfamiliar, allows free calls over the internet to other Skype users and the option to pay to make calls to cellular phones and landlines.

The update also added the Go! Messenger icon to the icon in anticipation of the launch of the service next month. Go! Messenger allows for video calls, instant messaging, voice messaging and voice chat.

Sony announced the addition of Skype to the PSP at CES early this month. There is however, one catch. To use Skype you must have the PSP Headset plugged into the Slim-only remote control which does not come included with the unit. Therefore you must buy it for $30 USD.

Following the announcement of impressive sales in Japan for its very popular DS handheld, Nintendo Australia has announced that the DS has sold one million units in the country, citing data from the data research company GfK.

The DS sold 509,869 units in 2007, slightly more than was sold in 2006. The sales were boosted by a December surge in which 133,691 units were sold.

The company also reported that the Wii console saw strong sales as well, following similar announcements in Japan and Europe. In the 58 weeks since launch the Wii had moved 300,000 units said the company, matching the last reported sales figures for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which has been out much longer.

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Sonic Solutions has announced that it will be ending all sales of its popular Scenarist authoring product for HD DVD in an effort to condense operations and put emphasis on Blu-ray and digital distribution of HD content.

The company has also said it believes giving full support to Blu-ray and the Web-enabled BD-Live interactivity will give them a better "return on investment" than by splitting their investment between two formats.

Starting now, the Scenarist product will only be offered as a Blu-ray authoring product and will have an update soon with new BD-Live creation features. As an added bonus, any current Scenarist HD DVD customer has the option to exchange their product for the Blu-ray version.

Broadbandtv, a company which specializes in distribution of video content via the Internet has announced that it had started an alliance with Vuze, the rapidly growing HD IPTV platform. The new alliance will offer Broadbandtv's "premium content" to Vuze on "an advertising supported basis."

Vuze, which currently has 18 million users, will offer Broadbandtv's library of premium TV and movie programming which easily exceeds 15,000 titles.

"Vuze has an amazing roster of premium content partners," said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze, Inc. "Today's partnership with Broadbandtv will expand Vuze's expansive library of premium entertainment content to our growing audience of users. Beyond delivering an excellent library of titles, Broadbandtv is at the forefront of content discoverability, which is important because Vuze delivers more than one million hours of high-quality video per month."

"We are thrilled to add Vuze to the Broadbandtv network, a truly first rate IPTV platform that is exhibiting staggering organic growth," said Shahrzad Rafati, CEO of Broadbandtv. "We are focused on providing our content partners with unparalleled distribution opportunities with the top InternetTV properties on the net and working with a market leader like Vuze is a big part of that strategy."

Sony Europe has told GI.biz that they have no plans to introduce a 120GB or 160GB model of the PlayStation 3 in the UK.

An internal Best Buy memo showed that supply of the 80GB model was being cut and since then rumors have exploded across the internet that the US will see a 120GB version for the same price as the disappearing 80GB. Sony has yet to confirm or deny the rumors however.

In the UK though, the story is different. "We do not currently have any plans to release a 120GB PlayStation 3 in the UK," added a spokesperson for Sony Europe.

The rumors are not all that far fetched as in the past Sony has implied that it would consider PS3 models with larger hard drives if consumers demanded it.

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Early last week it was reported that Best Buy would no longer be carrying the 80GB model Sony PlayStation 3 due to a discontinue in supply. If the memo is true and applicable to other North American retailers than that will mean that only one model of the PS3 will exist in the North American market, the BWC-crippled 40GB version. An insider has said however that a new model could be coming, and soon.

“Sony is, in fact, phasing out the 80GB PS3. Sony is going to stay with the two-SKU approach though, and the prices look to stay the same,” the source said. “The Spiderman 3 pack-in will disappear as well once the 80GB unit is gone. In order to maintain a similar value proposition to the 80GB/Spiderman 3 bundle, I expect to see a storage increase to 120 or 160GB at the same price point, plus the new Dual-Shock 3 controller...”

In response to the posting of Best Buy's memo, a Sony spokesperson gave an official "no comment". “I caught up with all of the posts and news last night, and as you know, we don't comment on rumors and speculation,” he added

The large mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson has announced that it has signed deals with 10 major record labels so it can add content to its PlayNow service, which allows users to download music directly from their handsets.

The company added that the deals added 5 million new tracks to its catalog of available music. The deals were signed with Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, The Orchard, IODA, The PocketGroup, Hungama, X5Music, Bonnier Amigo and VidZone.

Sony Ericsson also added that they were still in the process of negotiating further deals.

PlayNow was first introduced in early 2004 as a way to preview and purchase ringtones for mobile phones. It has since expanded allowing for downloads of full songs, games and wallpapers. It is now available in 32 countries.

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Woolworths has announced that beginning in March it will no longer sell HD DVD movies in its stores and will instead be Blu-ray exclusive.

The company cited Christmas sales as a main reason for the drop, stating that Blu-ray outsold HD-DVD by 10 to 1 over the period. The company also called the Sony PlayStation 3 the major factor for Blu-ray's emerging market dominance.

"Sales figures clearly show that the market is moving towards one format of high definition DVD," commented DVD buyer for Woolworths Steven McGunigel.

"The main reason is the success of Sony's PlayStation 3 machine. Because it plays Blu-ray discs, there are over three quarters of a million homes in the UK that can view the new high definition format."

Amazon has announced that in 2008 the company will begin to expand Amazon MP3, its popular DRM-free digital music store to the international stage. The service, which is seen as a strong competitor to Apple's iTunes platform, sells all its songs DRM-free and in MP3 format meaning it is playable on most, if not all digital music-capable devices including the Zune, iPod Touch and mobile phones.

Thanks to deals with big labels and tons of independent labels, Amazon MP3 boasts of 3.3 million songs from 270,000 artists.

"We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can't wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. "We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year."

According to P2P blog, the German music rights holder GEMA has won its court case against the massive file hoster Rapidshare.com. In a press release, GEMA announced that the Dusseldorf district court had ruled that Rapidshare will for now on have to block access to any works in the GEMA repertoire.

In its defense, Rapidshare was saying that "only its users can be held responsible for copyright violations." The court apparently disagreed and said that the site was used mainly for illegal activities and that the company generates "substantial" monthly revenue from those illegal activities.

The ruling could have implications for the future of the site on the whole. GEMA's press release read, "The ruling forces Rapidshare to 'take measures that might have the risk of making Rapidshare's service substantially less attractive or even close it down completely.'" That statement means that potentially GEMA can get the entire site shut down if access isn't blocked to GEMA's copy written material.

Warner Music Group, one of the big four record labels, has announced that is suing the MP3 access service SeeqPod just days after signing a deal with the similar service Last.FM

For those unfamiliar, SeeqPod "maintains a public index of stored music tracks throughout the Internet". The service also offers a search tool that makes it easier for users to locate the music they are looking for. It also offers a music player to play the files.

According to Warner though, thew site links "to sites containing unauthorized and illegal copies of copyrighted music that can be played on demand or saved as playlists."

Curiously, SeeqPod has "5% of the company is owned by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the US Dept. of Energy, whose algorithm for recognizing music within sound files that might also contain other forms of sound, speech, or Noise, is actually being put to the test by the firm." Read more...

According to Rockstar Games VP of product development Jeronimo Barrera, development for the Sony PlayStation 3 was a contributing factor to the delay of the upcoming blockbuster game GTA IV.

In his interview with MTV, the VP praised the game and explained why the game had been delayed so much.

"I don't see anything being bigger in 2008 in any entertainment," Barrera said. "We think it's that big, and we just have to get the word out."

The game was supposed to hit retailers in October 2007 but the game developer made the decision to delay the tile until April 2008. At the time Rockstar CEO Strauss Zelnick blamed "technological challenges" for the delay.

"It's really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to that," Barrera told MTV.

"Now, we're neck and neck. That's not an issue anymore. But back then that was something we were taking into account."

"We wanted the time, and I think we made the right choice," Barrera added.

"It was very difficult to make the choice because everybody wanted it. But we thought, you know, what with that extra bit of time, it's just going to be that much better and there will be more systems out."

Following Nintendo Japan's announcement that 5 million Wii units had been sold in the country, Nintendo Europe has revealed that sales of the Wii had reached 6 million and DS handheld sales had reached 20 million units.

The company also revealed that first party software sales for the region had been impressive, with four titles for the Wii blasting past one million units sold. "Wii Play" has sold 2.3 units while "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" and "Super Mario Galaxy" sold 1.3 million each. "Mario Party 8" just hit one million units sold.

DS games continued to sell very well with the "Nintendogs" series leading the pack with over 8 million units sold.

2008 Wii titles coming to Europe should also be hot sellers especially the upcoming "Wii Fit", "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" and "Mario Kart Wii". The last two titles are successors to blockbuster hits for past consoles.

Nintendo also revealed that for the 9 month period ending December 31st 2007, profit was $2.43 billion USD, almost double its 2006 profit.

Melbourne police announced today the busting of a $12 million-a-year DVD piracy ring that had been operating in Australia for years.

Police announced that shops had been set up at houses in west Melbourne and customers chose from thousands of pirated DVDs via catalog. The homes where raided early Tuesday.

The two owners of the houses were arrested and charged after the authorities seized 400,000 pirates DVDs, CDs and video games. 100 DVD burners were also seized along with $10,000 in cash.

The people arrested, a man and woman in their mid 40s, were charged with infringing copyright.

Police Commander Terry Purton went as far to say that DVD piracy was so lucrative that criminals were moving away from drug trafficking and into DVD piracy.

"They are making an obscene profit," Commander Purton said.

"They are producing DVDs for 20¢ and selling them for $10."

The Commander also said that one of the houses had been raided in November 2007 and that he was surprised to see it back in full production. The police were notified by neighbors who believed that the house was being used to deal drugs. Read more...

After months of an uncomfortable stalemate between the two giant companies, it seems that Apple and NBC may be making up and an iTunes reunion could be in the works.

A few months ago NBC and Apple's relationship took a turn for the worst when NBC split from Apple's iTunes platform and refused to sign a new contract. Apple responded by saying NBC wanted a slice of iPod revenue which was unacceptable. NBC has since signed deals with Amazon and SpiralFrog.

Currently NBC still offers older content via iTunes and because of the ongoing writer's strike there has been little new content to offer. Earlier this month tensions began to ease when NBC Universal signed an agreement to provide Universal content for Apple's iTunes rental service.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker have been recently quoted throwing flattering comments back and forth about each other's companies and services with each hinting that a reunion was possible. During an interview, Zucker is quoted as saying "We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple...We're great fans of Steve Jobs."

Earlier this morning, at an event in Beijing, the video card maker ATI announced that they will be incorporating Blu-ray and HD DVD playback support into their upcoming low end video cards.

ATI confirmed that they had added DirectX 10.1 support to two new Radeon division cards at the lower end of the price spectrum, namely the HD 3400 model which should retail for as low as $49 USD. The other card is the HD 3600 which is essentially the same card just with more transistors, a significant 378 million versus 181 million.

Despite their relatively low specs, both feature the on-board support for decoding Blu-ray and HD DVD video at full 1080p resolution. This alone should make the cards very appealing to media center PC builders on a budget.

Despite Sony's recent decision to discontinue the 20GB and 60GB models of its PlayStation 3 gaming console it seems they will be bringing a new model to North American.

An FCC filing has shown that Sony is planning to bring the "Ceramic White" 40GB model to North American stores but there is no official launch price or date known as of yet.

The filing, along with letters from Sony itself have confirmed that the white PS3 is ready for a North American launch. The model number, CECHH01 is different from the Japanese white PS3 but the model revision is more of a subtraction than any addition. The new model will come standard with a SIXAXIS wireless controller and not the DualShock 3.

There was no release date or launch price indicated by the filing or the Sony memos but the popular rumor is that an official announcement is coming next week and that sales of the new model can begin in early February. Other rumors have suggested that the black 40GB model will receive a price cut with the addition of the new white model to Sony's lineup but be reminded none of this information is verified.

According to Enterbrain's latest data figures the ever popular Nintendo Wii console has hit a new milestone in Japan, hitting 5 million units sold.

As of last Sunday, the console sold 5,109,337 units in the country since its launch in late 2006. The Wii acheived its latest milestone in only 60 weeks surpassing the Sony PlayStation 2 as the fastest selling console in recent memory. The PS2 hit the milestone in 66 weeks. Nintendo's other hit, the DS, hit the milestone in 56 weeks.

As has been the trend of late, Wii, DS and PlayStation Portable sales all continue to see nice sales and growth while the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 continue to lag behind in Japan.

In an interview with BetaNews, Universal Studios executive vice president and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group Ken Graffeo has said that despite rampant rumors the struggling format is here to stay. He did however leave the door open for putting an end to the format war if Blu-ray is willing to make an agreement.

When asked by the interviewer how Universal felt about Warner's move to Blu-ray exclusivity, Graffeo had this to say: "Well, we heard about the whole move when everyone else did -- when a lot of us were on planes flying to CES in Las Vegas. To be very honest with you, we have not addressed that yet -- Warner is still releasing HD DVD titles up until May. Warner has always been in two formats, and prior to Paramount's switch, they had been in two formats, so now that Warner is exclusive... we just haven't addressed it yet.

The large Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC has finally released its sales report for 2007 and it seems their Apple iPhone rival, the HTC Touch, is selling pretty well.

The Touch and Touch Dual run on Windows Mobile 6 and use the same touch interface as Apple's iPhone. Because of its use of WM6, the Touch has been better suited for corporate and business accounts and it has showed.

At the Macworld event last week, Steve Jobs noted that his company had sold 4 million iPhones worldwide since its launch. HTC reported that it had sold 2 million Touch phones and in total "the company reported sales of 11.8 million handsets, 12% more than it had sold in 2006, garnering 12% more revenue as a result."

It is good to see strong competition and with the LG Voyager now in retail stores 2008 should be interesting to watch.

The large game distributor Electronic Arts has announced that it will be offering a brand new free Battlefield game that is completely ad-supported.

The new game, Battlefield Heroes, will be available free of charge starting this summer and will generate all its revenue from ad support and micro-transactions.

"Online gaming garners a massive audience," commented Gerhard Florin, executive vice president of publishing at EA.

"People want to play games in new ways, with easier access that is quick to the fun. With Battlefield Heroes, EA brings its first major franchise to North America and Europe with a new distribution model and pricing structure adapted to the evolving way that people play."

The company even promised regular content updates for players that should "customize" the experience.

"There's something here for all types of players – be it our core Battlefield fans or casual gamers," added Ben Cousins, senior producer at EA DICE.

"With the new online model, we will continually add new content to keep the game fresh and keep players engaged, while integrating player feedback in real time. As a game developer, it is such a cool new way to make games."

So far, over six thousand HD DVD fans have signed an online petition that is urging, maybe pleading, for Warner Home Entertainment to reconsider its decision to drop the next gen format in favor of Blu-ray.

The petition, first posted two weeks ago, takes issue with Warner's press release that explains that the "consumer has clearly chosen Blu-ray," and instead points out HD DVD's lower hardware prices and "better technological capabilities." The petition also says the format is more consumer and user friendly than its rival.

Supporters are hoping that the petition will convince Warner to change its mind on the decision and that it will also prove that HD DVD still has many supporters.

The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced that a new company, BluFocus, has been formed to help assist Blu-ray studios in "quality control checks" of their upcoming Blu-ray releases.

Many have hoped for such a group as titles on Blu-ray and its rival HD DVD are very sophisticated systems of interactivity and many make it to retail shelves with flaws that need later patches or even recalls. The new group will test all titles to ensure they operate on all players before release.

The company has an expertise in the Blu-ray authoring language BD-Java and is "able to run the discs through a variety of tests in order to ensure compatibility with the set standards."

Following Time Warner Cable's decision to begin trials of bandwidth caps, analysts and critics have begun speaking out about it.

As company spokespeople have have confirmed, the trials, beginning in Beaumont, Texas, will have "5GB, 10GB, 20GB, and 40GB limits depending on the service level" and there will no longer be an unlimited access option. Any subscriber which goes over the alloted bandwidth will be charged an undisclosed amount for each GB of data over the limit. The company did however say that the caps will only be given to new customers in the area while "legacy" customers will continue to have unlimited access.

The new model is not unique but it is very rare in the US where most ISPs opt for an unlimited model or "soft caps" where excessive use will merit a warning and possible ban if the numbers are extreme.

However, the critics of the new model certainly have a point. The future of online video will depend on unlimited bandwidth, especially as the world moves to HD. For example, a full length feature film in SD will normally consume 700MB to 1GB of bandwidth and HD videos available through Apple TV, Xbox 360, and other services normally consume 5GB of bandwidth. Downloading a few HD videos might cost you a ton of money if Time Warner has its way.

According to anonymous sources, the wireless carrier AT&T will soon begin offering the Apple iPhone to corporate and business accounts. The sources claim the announcement will come tomorrow and have some rumored details to.

Among these "is the continuity of corporate discounts, which may serve to lure in a number of customers. There may however be some restrictions, such as having a data plan at or above $25 a month. It is also said that there will be no equipment discounts, and buyers will have to run through a pre-activation process before the normal one in iTunes."

If the rumors turn out to be true, it should help to bring the iPhone into business circles where it has had little success. So far the main obstacle has been compatibility issues with Microsoft's dominant mail technology, Exchange Server and Outlook which is used by many large corporations.

We will keep you updated.

According to BBC technology director Ashley Highfield, the company is "strongly contemplating" offering its iPlayer web video service through the new updated Apple TV.

Apple's new move to a rental and purchase model would allow the BBC to "mimic the functions of the website while providing a more comfortable TV environment," added Highfield. The shows would be free of charge and the DRM involved would clear episodes after their viewing period is up which is a feature that the show's producers have insisted upon for the website.

Highfield would not say if the company had already talked with Apple but did note that the iPlayer will hit digital set-top boxes such as Virgin's cable service in the UK in the spring.

The media giant NBC Universal has announced "record performance" profits for 2007 despite its decision to leave Apple's iTunes platform earlier in the year.

The statement, made by CEO Jeff Zucker, stated that profit for 2007 rose to $923 million USD on $2.1 billion USD revenue, a nice 10 percent increase from 2006. Zucker attributed the success to its cable and film business which saw huge releases such as "The Bourne Ultimatum" and increased viewership to CNBC and the Sci-Fi Channel.

An NBCU senior studio official also noted that the increase was in spite of the ongoing writer's strike which started in October of last year. "Careful management of scripts will also let the movie and TV divisions continue significantly into 2008 without damage to the company's bottom line," added the official.

Instead of using iTunes, NBCU has pinned its hopes on Hulu and smaller offerings such as Fanfare.

According to reports today the extremely popular video sharing site YouTube has been banned in Turkey because of clips that allegedly insult the country's founder.

This situation marks the second time Turkey has banned the site and for the same reason. It is actually illegal to insult the national icon, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Turkish courts have deemed twice that YouTube left clips up that insulted him.

In March 2007, the site was banned for two days in Turkey until offending videos were taken down.

Turkey is not the first country to block YouTube however. Last year the Thai government blocked access to the popular site for 4 months because of clips the government deemed "offensive" towards the Thai monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej. In Morocco, access was blocked in early May after videos were posted that were "critical of Morocco's treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975." The Moroccan government never officially spoke of the ban and called it a "technical glitch" that only affected YouTube.

The BDA has explained why early adopters of the format will not be rewarded for supporting the HD format in its earliest stages because the Blu-ray camp needed to "create momentum" in its battle against rival HD DVD.

Frank Simonis, the European chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, was the one who spoke out about why new standards (such as Profile 1.1) took so long to hit the market.

"We needed to create momentum and get the players on the market", he said.

"If we had postponed launch to add in the hardware for the latest features, we would not be in the situation we have today."

Most early adopters who do not have the latest "Final Profile" will not be able to take full advantage of the format and its additional bonus features, without purchasing a new Blu-ray player. The new profile will not be available as a firmware update for older players, he added.

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AT&T has said that it will be replacing over 17,000 batteries that are a primary power source for its U-verse IPTV service following a well documented series of explosions and fires by the batteries.

So far there have been two reported and confirmed reports of explosions as well as two reported and confirmed reports of fire the latest of which occurred in mid-December of 2007. The incidents are thanks to the "the lithium-metal-polymer batteries housed in outdoor telecommunications equipment cabinets" said the company.

U-verse has 126,000 customers in the US but AT&T stopped installing the batteries in the Q1 of 2007 when the manufacturer of the batteries, Avestor, filed for bankruptcy.

According to Pocket-lint, despite Steve Jobs' admission that the Apple TV has so far not been as successful as the company had hoped, they will not be dropping the price of the device in Europe.

Recently, at the Macworld event, Jobs launched Apple TV 2.0 which has an upgraded user interface along with the ability for American users to rent movies in SD or HD via the internet. Along with the firmware upgrade, US users also saw a drop in price for the device, from $299 to $229 USD.

European users will see the firmware update (minus the movie rentals), but not the price cut. In the UK the device sells for £199 for the 40GB version and £269 for the 160GB version repsectively.

New figures have shown that in Japan, next gen discs have picked up steam but that Blu-ray is pulling away in sales over its rival HD DVD.

The figures, result of a 2300 electronic store study found that Japanese consumers are buying the next gen discs and players at a higher rate than had been seen earlier in 2007. The study, released by Japan's Business Computer News also stated that HD players sold in proportion to standard DVD players rose from 6 percent in October to 20 percent in December. Due to the higher price of the players, Blu-ray and HD DVD players made up a hefty 35 percent of the total value of "DVD player sales in the last two months of 2007."

Blu-ray, backed by Sony and Panasonic among others accounted for 90 percent of those sales for the three month period ending January 1st 2008.

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Mirroring their decision to cut prices in the US, Toshiba has announced they will be cutting prices for their HD DVD players in the UK as well. The company also talked about new marketing initiatives it hoped to bring to the UK.

The company, along with other companies in the HD DVD camp, will push their player's DVD upscaling abilites more prominently now.

Additionally, the company released updated sales figures and said that over 200,000 standalone HD DVD players had been sold in Europe to date.

"According to the latest available independent research, Toshiba's accumulated share of the high definition standalone player market was close to 60% at the end of 2007," says Toshiba's press release. In the US the company claims a significantly lower 50 percent.

"While it's still early days for HD on optical disc, these results confirm HD DVD performed strongly throughout 2007", added Yoshio Abe, president of Consumer Products Europe for Toshiba. Read more...

According to Van Toffler, president of MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films, gamers have downloaded and purchased over 2.5 million songs for its hit game Rock Band since the game's release late last year.

"Our goal with Rock Band was to create an entirely new way for people to interact with the music they love, the incredible response to the downloadable content we've released to date motivates us even more to establish this platform as a way for people to discover new, up and coming artists through the game - in addition to delivering great game play experiences set to the music of mega-artists," Toffler explained.

Currently, the top selling download is a Metallica triple pack including their hit tracks "Ride The Lightning,” “Blackened” and “And Justice For All”. Triple-packs from other artists such as The Police, Queens of the Stone Age, and David Bowie are also selling very well, added Toffler. For singles, Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero," Weezer’s "Buddy Holly" and covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son," and The Knack's "My Sharona" all sold equally as well.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was recently interviewed by CNBC's Jim Goldman and he had a few bold statements to make. For one he called rival Microsoft's Zune media player a "failure" as well as proclaiming that although Blu-ray may have won the format war over HD DVD it had most likely lost the HD content distribution battle.

When Goldman asked Jobs if he had heard Microsoft executive Robbie Bach's comments that the new Zune would be a worthy alternative to the iPod line Jobs went off. "Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?" he added.

When the discussion moved onto Blu-ray he said he believed that the format had won the war over HD DVD but that both formats would lose to HD downloads. Although he is one of the more prominent people to proclaim that, analysts have repeatedly said that the battle only accomplished one thing: Making enough time for streaming HD to become a viable option.

Jaman, the large distributor of independent films has said that they have struck a deal with TiVo to offer thousands of its titles from its extensive catalog to the DVR maker's subscribers.

The deal would be very similar to the deal Amazon's Unbox has in place with TiVo customers. Jaman's catalog of movies will be downloadable to the DVR in SD or HD. The deal should significantly add to the titles available to TiVo customers.

Jaman has been recently extending the reach of the service making it available on PC, Macs, SanDisk's TakeTV, through DivX and now on TiVo's DVR service.

The movies from Jaman will be either rentable or up for purchase starting at $1.99 and users will need "a broadband-connected Series2 or Series3 DVR in order to use the service."

DivX has announced that it will be teaming up with AMD to certify a few of its new Xilleon processors meaning native DivX functionality could be coming for HDTVs and set-top boxes.

For those unfamiliar, the Xilleon line of chips are "a system-on-a-chip MIPS processor found in set-top boxes and digital TVs" and was formerly a project of the large video card maker ATI. ATI was acquired recently by AMD and the project continued on. There has been no word on which of chips in the line will be certified.

In the past few months AMD has announced a new line of Xilleon panel processors which promise "advanced motion compensation and frame rate conversion for future LCD digital TVs." The use of the processor should result in clearer picture for all displays that use it.

For the week ending January 13th, the first full week following Warner's decision to go Blu-ray exclusive, the Blu-ray camp had its most dominating disc sales week.

Since the beginning of 2007 Blu-ray has outsold HD DVD by an average of nearly 2:1 but the week in question saw the gap get even further. Blu-ray took a dominating 85 percent share of all HD discs sold.

HomeMediaMagazine also reported that from the top ten selling discs for the week, none were HD DVD. The top selling Blu-ray Title "3:10 to Yuma" sold about ten times as many discs as the top selling HD DVD title, "The Kingdom".

The latest news is another setback for HD DVD which had been holding its ground during the holiday season with a 40 percent share of disc sales.

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Hewlett-Packard outsold its largest rival Dell in the PC market for 2007, one year after the two companies split the market.

According to Gartner Inc., a research firm, HP held 18.2 percent of the market compared to Dell's 14.3. Last year, 2006, each company held 15.9 percent.

"HP established a solid number one position in 2007,'' Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa told Bloomberg. "Robust consumer and mobile PC sales across all regions were two main drivers of HP's overall growth.''

Although the figures are slightly different, research firm IDC released the same result. They showed HP with a market share of 18.8 percent compared to a 14.9 percent share for Dell.

Another data figure of note was the increase of PC shipments by the top 5 manufacturers. HP's shipments rose 30 percent while Dell only rose 1.7 percent.

According to an internal memo, it seems that the high-speed cable ISP Time Warner Cable will be starting bandwidth caps aimed at "collecting revenue from those who utilize over half of the total network bandwidth."

Besides confirming the legitimacy of the memo, Time Warner has declined any other details on its plans.

The memo explained that the first subscribers subject to the bandwidth cap test would be in Beaumont, Texas with a national deployment following if the company finds the system to be practical. The customers will have their bandwidth metered and charges will be applied if the caps are exceeded.

Bandwidth capping policies have its pitfalls and Comcast can certainly tell you about that. Consumers have responded well to "unlimited" bandwidth policies and would certainly not appreciate being capped. There are legitimate reasons for use of large amounts of bandwidth and caps would surely infuriate those users.

More updates if and when there is any backlash to the tests.

It has been nearly two months and the once very popular torrent site Demonoid is still on its extended period of downtime. The infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay however, has recently offered two brand new servers to the Demonoid crew, in Sweden.

It has been unclear since December whether Demonoid would ever return but tens of thousands of users became hopeful when the founder of the site said he was looking for a new location to host the site. “Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there’s some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help,” he added.

Brokep, one of the admins of TPB recently said in an interview that he hopes Demonoid will make a comeback and has claimed to have two new servers already waiting for them if they choose to. “We tried to contact the guys behind Demonoid and we’ve set up a tracker for them but they haven’t responded. But, we have two servers running for them if they want to set it up.”

Wayne Rosso, the founder of the P2P startup Mashboxx believes that Limewire's newfound initiatives aimed at combining file sharing with contextual ads violates a few of his company's patents and he has vowed to “go after anyone who comes near to it.”

Mashboxx was originally supposed to be licensed by the music industry but financing issues have so far almost killed off the company.

LimeWire CEO George Searle added some words about the company's upcoming initiatives. As Newteevee writes, "He talked about its upcoming music download store, as well as a new project called “LimeSpot,” which will offer bands and their fans forums, wikis and blogs. All of these web-based initiatives will tie into the LimeWire client in what Searle compared to Google’s Universal Search, whereby P2P search results are combined with context and contextual ads: “Soon, within LimeWire you’ll be able to connect with participating artists, and drill down or sideways to see photos, find tour dates, watch music videos, find lyrics and buy music, tickets and merchandise.”

Despite Warner's decision to go Blu-ray exclusive and the subsequent decisions by HBO and New Line to follow their parent company into HD exclusivity, many figured that the BBC, whose U.S. releases are distributed by Warner Bros., would follow suit.

A company spokesperson for BBC has announced however that the company will remain dual format for the time being and that they need to "evaluate the marketplace before committing to one format."

BBC also cited the remarkable sales of its "Planet Earth" box set, which sold well in both formats (but better in HD DVD than Blu-ray). The spokesman also explained they had high hopes for upcoming dual format HD titles already planned for 2008.

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Verizon's popular V CAST Mobile TV service, the service that provides television programming to capable mobile phones using MediaFLO has now seen its service upgraded to areas outside of New York City.

Current areas with service including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx will all see a "service enhancement" and new areas, the greater part of Suffolk County including Lindenhurst, West Islip, Holbrook, Centereach, and from Coram east all the way to Riverhead, All of Staten Island, portions of Essex, Union, Passiac, and Morris Counties in New Jersey will finally receive the service.

V CAST Mobile TV was originally introduced in Manhattan in May 2007 and has slowly added a greater and greater service area in the time since.

"This is real broadcast television with a wide range of channels and great shows," said Charles Hand, president of Verizon Wireless' New York Metro region. "Our customers throughout Long Island, Northern New Jersey and in all five boroughs of New York City now can carry TV with them in the palms of their hands and watch virtually whenever they choose. Read more...

The German Usenet provider United Newsserver has won an appeal in a suit that was initiated by EMI.

The large record label had wanted to block access to music on the provider through an injunction but a German court has found that the company is not legally repsonsible for the misdeeds of Usenet users.

In May 2007, the court sided with EMI and the IFPI was quick to praise the decision. People "who make illegal content available on the Internet cannot bail out of their resposibilities", said local IFPI boss Peter Zombik at the time.

As could be expected Newsserver CEO Heinz-Dieter Elbracht was very content by the decision. "Usenet has become a platform for the exchange of all kinds of information. It should be in the interest of all users, providers and rights holders to find solutions to act together against inevitable cases of people breaking the law on Usenet."

Jango, the "social jukebox" internet radio site which launched as a public beta in November 2007 has announced today that they have hit a new milestone, one million users.

In order to continue the fast growth, the company has released its long promised Jango jukebox embeddable widget. The widget includes a "scrolling repertoire of artists and continuous free stream of music in a simple skinnable form." The company will also be releasing a Facebook application version of the widget soon.

So far legal constraints have prevented many popular artists from appearing on the site but the company hopes that increased user participation will bring the absentee musicians in. There are however, some artists that do not even sell their media digitally meaning Jango is the only place to legally find samples of their music.

When the Sony PlayStation 3 launched in November 2006, many criticized its expensive price and its inclusion of an internal Blu-ray drive.

It was not only consumers that felt the squeeze however. The industry group iSuppli estimated last year that the initial cost to manufacture the 60GB unit was $840.35 USD, way higher than even Sony was charging for the console meaning the company was losing hundreds of dollars per console.

A year later however, Sony has managed to close the gap a substantial amount although they are still losing money. BusinessWeek reported this week that the PS3 now costs around $400 USD to manufacture and that Sony will only lose $1.4 billion USD in its gaming division for 2007 compared to $2.1 billion USD for 2006.

Production cost drops have been attributed to a few new advances in technology as well as higher supply. Firstly, the Cell Broadband Engine chip was shrunk to 65nm. The blue-violet laser diodes used for the Blu-ray drive have also seen a huge increase in yield and supply. Sony also removed the backwards compatibility engine for PS2 titles from its 40GB unit, dropping production costs even further.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has finally confirmed what has been a not well kept secret today at the Macworld event. Jobs announced iTunes movie rentals alongside the announcement that deals had been made with every major studio for distribution.

The company also said that they have so far sold 125 million TV shows and 7 million movies through their iTunes platform but did admit that those numbers were not up to expectations. Jobs confirmed that movie rental partnerships had been made with Touchstone, MGM, Miramax, New Line, Lionsgate, Fox, Warner Bros. Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony.

"We've never offered a rental model in music because we don't think people don't want to rent music. But your favorite movie, most of us watch once, and renting is a great way to do it," Jobs said.

By the end of February there will be 1000 films available for rental and all new releases will be added to the store 30 days after its DVD launch. Users can watch the movies on their PCs, as well as on their iPods and the iPhone.

At the Macworld 2008 event this morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company has sold 4 million iPhones since the device's release and that the device now holds 19.5 percent of the smartphone market in the US.

Jobs also said Apple is shipping on average, 20,000 new iPhones a day but the market share percent still places them behind RIM's BlackBerry.

The CEO also added that new firmware, 1.1.3 for the iPhone would add some nice new features such as "Web Clips", an improved update to Google Maps, song lyrics and the ability to send SMS to multiple recipients.

New applications would also be available on the iPod Touch including standard Mail, Stocks, Notes and Weather. There will however be a catch for Touch users. Existing customers will have to pay $20 USD for the new features while new customers will have it built in.

Apple and China Mobile have called off all talks for a Chinese launch of the popular iPhone device, meaning the phone will not be hitting China anytime soon.

China Mobile has an outstanding 350 million subscribers and the two companies had been in talks since November. Talks broke down to due Apple's want of revenue sharing with any deal. The figure Apple wanted was apparently too high.

"It's not a surprise. China Mobile doesn't want to share its non-voice revenue," said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a Beijing-based telecoms research consultancy. "The two have very strong egos and, as in any relationship, that often doesn't work."

"Our parent has terminated talks with Apple over the iPhone," a China Mobile added.

The iPhone has been a hot selling device in the US as well as in Europe and Apple expects the growth to continue despite this latest setback.

Source:
Yahoo

Amazon has announced today a new advertising partnership with Pepsi that should be the beginning of a new era of authorized downloads.

Last week at CES, many music industry bosses favored ad-supported, subscription based models of music sales, especially now that DRM is almost dead.

Amazon, which now offers 3.25 million DRM-free songs from all the Big 4 labels as well as from independent labels. The new deal with Pepsi will mean Pepsi products will have "points" under the caps which can be collected and redeemed for MP3 songs on Amazon.

There was no word on how much each point is worth but Pepsi noted that over 4 billion bottles will be circulated during the promotion.

Source:
betanews

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In a move brokered by the Movie Copyright Protection Assn. of China, 50 Chinese websites including the popular China.com.cn, People.com.cn and 163.com, have all agreed to stop providing access to pirated movies.

In exchange, the sites will co-operate with Quacor.com to distribute legal online movies. A recent survey has confirmed that at least 30,000 Chinese websites "provide access to visual arts" and that over 61 percent of Chinese web users watch movies online without paying.

Li Guomin, vice-chairman of the association, has said that growing piracy is damaging China's local film industry.

"If these infringements continue, producers might simply stop making movies altogether. And then 162 million Chinese netizens will lose the service they have now," Li added.

Source:
Variety

According to new sales figures released by Microsoft, their Xbox 360 console has sold 17.7 million units since its launch in late 2005.

Software sales were also solid, with Microsoft saying that the blockbuster Halo 3 game has moved 8.1 units since its release 2 months ago.

In a statement, the company declared: “Microsoft is proud of the contributions Xbox 360 is making to the gaming industry, and looks forward to an even more successful 2008.”

Despite their successes in North America and Europe, the Xbox 360 has lagged behind its rivals in Japan by a huge margin. The Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 regularly outsell the 360 by hundreds of thousands of units per month and that gap doesn't seem to be tightening any time soon.

Source:
AV zombie

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The popular online rental service Netflix has lifted the limits on how long subscribers can watch movies and television shows over broadband connections.

The move comes on the eve of Macworld in which Apple is expected to move into the movie rental industry. CEO Steve Jobs has not confirmed the move yet however.

Currently, Netflix has set restrictions on how their users can use the streaming service, based on what service plans they have. For example, if you use the $16.99 USD per month plan customers can watch up to 17 hours of streaming video per month. That restriction is now gone, and users, as long as they have the $9.99-per month or higher plans, can watch unlimited streaming video.

Source:
Neowin

The software developer Reactrix Systems announced at CES that they have developed a gaming system intended for LCD TVs that will mimic the Nintendo Wii.

The system will allow players to "punch in the air to hit a boxing opponent or swing their arms to return the ball in a game of volleyball."

The technology, dubbed WaveScape was created for large advertising displays, intending to draw in new customers by letting them play an interactive game. The system has a sensor that keeps track of a person's hand and body movement so they can interact with the game on screen. Above the display was a sensor that kept track of a person's hand and body movements so they could interact with an on-screen game. The sensor can cover up to five meters.

"Our first application is going to be advertising and interactive signage," said Matt Bell, who is chief scientist at Reactrix and developed the system. "Our first roll-out of these displays will be in the second half of this year iys 150 Hilton hotels. They'll be a mixture of fun, interactive games and information about hotel services."

Bell also explained that new games take a month to create and mini-games take a couple of weeks.

In probably the largest next-gen disc sale to date, Amazon is offering up to 57 percent off on over 300 HD DVD and Blu-ray titles.

The promotions were both launched today by the e-tailer and will include 229 Blu-ray films and 84 HD DVD titles. Among the Blu-ray movies are such blockbusters as 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' 'Spider-Man - The High Definition Trilogy,' 'Superbad' and 'Casino Royale'. You can view the full list here at Amazon.

The HD DVD titles available will include hits such as 'Transformers,' 'Stardust' and 'Serenity'. You can view the whole list here at Amazon.

Large Taiwanese-based LED makers Everlight Electronics, Lite-On Technology, Bright LED Electronics, and Unity Opto Technology have said that their revenues dropped in December but that annual revenue for the year 2007 was up on average, 19 to 39 percent. The manufacturers also expected growth of 30-50 percent in 2008.

Lite-on ranked as the top LED maker for the year with related revenues reaching NT$10.6 billion ($326 million USD. The company predicted 2008 revenue to increase 40 percent.

Revenue was up on strong demand for SMD LEDs used in panel backlighting.

Source:
Digitimes

Leadtek Research has announced the launch of a high end TV tuner card, the WinFast PVR2100 which supports "analog TV reception including PAL, NTSC and SECAM, while it can also receive FM radio. With built-in MPEG2 decoding hardware, users can record videos with the minimal system workload."

The tuner card also includes Leadtek's exclusive Winfast PVR2 software that allows users to change their settings and preferences in a "two-layer user friendly menu." The "Live Broadcasting" software "can turn a PC into a TV broadcasting station and let the users share their videos with their family and friends." The "DirectBurn" software "allows users to transfer home videos and movies from camcorders, VHS tapes, and personal DVDs into a blank CDs or DVDs," the company added.

The card also uses TwinView technology that allows for PIP (picture in picture), POP (picture on picture) and PAP (picture and picture) viewing options, features not standard of TV tuners.

First unveiled in August at the CEDIA event, the "ultimate quality" Marantz branded Blu-ray player finally has a price tag and a release date.

After a couple of manufacturing delays, the player will sell for $2100 USD, and is due to hit retail shelves sometime during the Q2 2008.

So why is this player available at a 400 percent premium over the average player? According to Marantz the player (Profile 1.1 compliant), "features full 1080p output and decoding for all current high-resolution audio formats, including Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Lossless Master Audio and uncompressed PCM, outputting both 7.1-channel analog signals and PCM audio via HDMI."

More importantly, the player will include the Realta HQV video processor, which "allows for advanced video clean-up of even the best high-def signals."

Worth $2100? Lets see how the consumer responds.

Source:
HD Digest

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Although not officially confirmed, it seems that a mobile version of the SlingPlayer application could be in the works for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

According to an unanmed "extremely senior source at Sling", the "iPhone and iPod touch are OS X devices, and we can write OS X apps with our eyes closed. It's coming." This answer was in response to whether a SlingPlayer would ever hit the iPhone. The source did not leave a timeline for the player but acknowledged that it would work better on the iPod Touch due to its exclusive Wi-fi connection.

The source also offered that "we know the 3G iPhone's coming", although once again there is no official confirmation of that.

Source:
Mp3newswire

Now that it has thrown its support behind Blu-ray, Warner Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara has announced that the company has plans to introduce its first Profile 1.1 compliant movies to the market in the near future.

In doing so, Warner will follow other Blu-ray camp studios in producing discs with 1.1-enabled features. Blu-ray players with Profile 1.1 compliance have been in stores for a couple of months now.

Although they have previously used HD DVD's HDi interactivity technology on their discs, the new titles will be the first with profile 1.1 features. Tsujishara added that the first profile 1.1-enabled discs to hit the market would be the dozen titles that Warner had previously used HDi with. Those titles had been used to "deliver the studio's "In Movie Experience" picture-in-picture video commentary and other interactive features."

"We held off releasing them on Blu-ray because we wanted to be able to have the full interactivity," said Tsujishara. "At this point in time, we're still working out all the kinks [with the technology], but they will be released soon."

Representatives of Cowon at the CES event today have confirmed that that the electronics maker is developing a sequel to its well-received D2 touchscreen player, with the sequel adding high resolution video as well as an overall thinning of the device.

Currently the small device only plays videos at a maximum resolution of 320x240.

Spokespeople have also acknowledged that the timeframe for the D3's launch is sometime before July of this year. There was no word on whether that timeframe is for the debut in Korea or the English release.

The Korean D2 was launched in November 2006 and the Americanized model was released four months later. If that trend continues, than the American release of the D3 could see as late of a release date as early 2009.

Source:
Electronista

A patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo and Sony has been filed by the Copper Innovations Group alleging that both companies infringed upon a 1996 patent that "covers a method for connecting devices to a system and sorting their inputs by means of hardware identification numbers tied to each transmission."

Microsoft was not named in the suit because they do not use Bluetooth to connect their controllers to the Xbox 360. Both the PlayStation 3 and Wii use Bluetooth to connect their controllers and therefore were named in the suit.

The plaintiff is hoping for monetary damages as well as an injunction stopping Sony and Nintendo from further infringing upon the 1996 patent.

Both companies have declined to comment on the case as of yet.

Source:
GI.biz

When Warner announced last week that it was moving exclusively to Blu-ray, many questions remained as to why the move happened, whether money was involved, and why the studio would voluntarily shun the growing HD DVD market.

Speaking to Reuters, the studio made it clear that the move was not fueled by a money exchange with Sony, but instead that the decision was based on on fears of a deteriorating U.S. economy, falling DVD sales and even rising gas prices.

"We've typically been recession proof," Warner Bros Entertainment Group President Kevin Tsujihara said. "But the thing that we saw in the fourth quarter...was gas prices beginning to affect sales. And since we're considered an impulse purchase, it's beginning to impact us."

Tsujihara also added that the decision was based in part in an effort to help end customer and retailer confusion over the HD video formats.

Toshiba, the lead proprietor of HD DVD has said that despite Warner's decision, the time for HD DVD's demise has not come yet. Both Universal and Paramount have said they are committed to HD DVD despite published rumors.

During a special "second release event" today at CES, DeepRockDrive co-founder Jeff Henshaw spoke out about the service, which allows would-be concert goers to pay a fee to watch their favorite artists perform live, via Streaming video on the internet.

"The digital music revolution has not yet touched the live concert industry. DeepRockDrive brings fans and artists closer together than ever before, eliminating wealth and geography as barriers to entry into this new entertainment experience," said Henshaw. "We are enabling the other critical part of building long-term artistic careers: the live experience. DeepRockDrive will do for the $10 billion live concert industry what those pioneers did for recorded music," Henshaw added.

DRD's platform will allow fans worldwide to watch their favorite artists live from the comfort of their own homes, a huge plus for fans who do not live near large, popular concert venues.

Tickets, which can be purchased through DRD's site, would be $7 USD and the funds would be shared between the site and the artist.

"We've designed the DeepRockDrive experience to be a hybrid of a live concert and a videogame by giving fans the ability to choose from at least four camera Angles, a vote for what the next song played will be, and live digital shoutouts to artists in the studio. One can watch just the guitarist's chords, the lead singer or an aerial view. We tune the camera angles with every performance, so each show is a unique adventure for both the artists and the fans," said Henshaw. "We're simultaneously producing a world-class HD video broadcast; mixing and sweetening audio in a professional recording studio; and incorporating live, two-way interaction with fans into the performance. Nobody's even come close to doing something this ambitious with live performances before."

Following Sony Japan's decision to drop the 20GB and 60GB models of the PlayStation 3 in favor of the backwards compatibility lacking 40GB unit, Sony America has implied that they have no plans to change their current focus and are satisfied with the models available.

"This morning SCEI made an announcement in reference to Japan no longer shipping the 20GB and 60GB PlayStation 3 configurations. We have already stopped shipping these in the US and have been focused on the 80GB and 40GB configurations which are currently at retail," the company said in a statement.

"As we've said, we will also continue to read and evaluate market trends and communicate with consumers to determine appropriate configurations for each territory."

In North America, the 20GB model retailed in short supply before being dropped. The 60GB was discontinued in favor of the higher capacity 80GB model in July.

Source:
GI.biz

In Sweden, a court case involving a man who had allegedly uploaded 23,000 music tracks and 30 movies to file sharing networks has gone to retrial. The decision in the case will have implications for the future of whether police can raid file sharer's homes in search of evidence.

The man, a 31 year old from Linköping, Sweden, was initially charged with making the music and movies available for unauthorized download. However, there have been doubts surrounding Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s (APB) use of "questionable investigative techniques" and so prosecutors have dropped all the music related charges.

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, commented on the case. “The public prosecutor dropped the bulk of the charges but the record industry decided to pick up the dropped ball and press ahead as a private criminal charge (’enskilt åtal’), meaning they have to act as a prosecutor themselves before a judge and jury.”

On the side of the IFPI, lawyer Lars Gustafsson commented, “We maintain that the technical evidence is sufficient. We have received an inquiry from the court if we would like to continue with the music file-sharing as its own indictment and we have said we would."

At their press conference yesterday at the CES event and sporting the support of investor, famous actor Michael Douglas, XStreamHD spoke out about a network service that should make it a strong challenger in the direct-only HD provider arena.

The XStreamHD wil deliver full 1080p HD video in either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4/H.264 and lossless audio in 7.1 channels.

With an introductory price of only $399 USD for the server and the receiver box., users will get movies, games, music and other content through 4 seperate video streams and a "virtual personal library that personalizes content to your tastes Pandora-style." The unit also has storage up to 500GB meaning space wont run out anytime soon. The unit also has a DVD/DVR and "an embedded PBX connector for your VoIP enjoyment, which means that you could call other users who have XstreamHD for free."

The only catch is to use the service you must set up a small satellite outside your home which will receive content sent to your XStreamHD Media Server. After that, any DLNA device, such as a digital TV, will be able to access the box and play the content.

Despite a widely spread rumor fueled by a quote in Variety, Universal Studios has officially dismissed the rumor that it will be dropping HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

"Contrary to unsubstantiated rumors from unnamed sources, Universal's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format," said Ken Graffeo, executive vice president of HD strategic marketing for Universal Studios Home Entertainment and also co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group.

Graffeo also made it clear that the response would have come earlier but but many members of the HD DVD Promotional Group were on flights home from CES when the rumor started to pick up steam.

Yesterday, Variety started the rumor by saying ""Universal's commitment to backing HD DVD exclusivity has ended." The dismissal of the rumor follows yesterday's news that Paramount is staying committed to HD DVD despite rampant rumors otherwise.

Source:
betanews

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Pyxix, the internet content distributor, has announced it plans to make video available for mobile platforms, giving consumers another choice in a market that is starting to get crowded.

Currently, Pyxix "offers content across three different types of channels" with each offering a platform for new and amateur entertainers to distribute their work. "ComedyPop" offers stand-up and comedies. "DocuPyx" offers documentaries and short films and "Urban Chillers" distributes thriller and horror films for download.

The company plans to add two more channels, "Musyx" for music artists and "PyxNet" which the company describes as "dedicated to the promotion of artists of all genres." The content will be distributed through several different formats with support for file formats used on the PSP, iPod and Zune as well as for mobile phones using the 3gp file format.

Source:
betanews

Despite having its specifications leaked by an FCC filing back in December, one of the biggest hits of this year's CES event has been Creative's inPerson, a striking Wifi video phone device.

Creative has said they hope the video phone will be the future solution for people that wish to forgo voice calling and instead want a more futuristic appeal.

The device will feature H.264 video with SIP support as well as a VGA resolution and 2 Mbps bitrate high video quality. The screen, a 7-inch 16.7 million color LCD, will be powered by a lithium-ion rechargeable battery. The company claims 2.5 hours of talk time on one charge.

The inPerson will be used to make video-calls to other devices but the configuration means the consumer will have to adopt a VoIP service if they haven't already.

Source:
Betanews

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The Nintendo DS finished off its impressive 2007 year with a holiday season flourish in Japan, selling just under 500,000 units in the last two weeks of the year.

The sales data, according to Media Create, shows the DS dominated the Japanese hardware market, outselling the Wii (385,000) and PlayStation Portable(332,000) during that same time frame.

Other consoles saw strong sales as well, with the PlayStation 3 finally firmly outselling its aging predecessor the PS2. These sales however, were still poor compared to the Wii. As usual in Japan, the Xbox 360 lagged behind its rivals, selling only 15000 units for the two weeks being counted.

Source:
GI.biz

Today at the CES 2008 event, Sony Japan has announced that they will be dropping the 20GB and 60GB PlayStation 3 models after a final shipment next week.

The company is now set to focus on the 40GB model in Japan and it plans to "vigorously promotes" the home console during 2008.

The two discontinued models were available on launch day in November 2006 and the newer 40GB model launched in November 2007. Sony has kept that same strategy worldwide, continuously dropping prices and introducing new models in Europe, North America and Asia.

In October Sony Europe phased out the 60GB model in favor of the cheaper 40GB unit and North America has seen the launch of an 80GB model and the discontinuation of both the 20GB and 60GB units.

Some have complained however about the dropped features of the 40Gb model. Most notably, backwards compatibility for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 titles has been dropped in favor of lower manufacturing costs.

Source:
GI.biz

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Panasonic has announced a brand new line of full 1080p HD Plasma displays today at CES 2008.

The new models will fall under the Viera brand and will offer new screen sizes, higher contrast ratio and improved picture quality.

The top range of the new line is the VIERA PZ800 series, featuring 1080p plasmas in four different sizes, the 42-inch TH-42PZ800, the 46-inch TH-46PZ800, the 50-inch TH-50PZ800 and the 58-inch class TH-58PZ800, respectively. Each screen will also be THX certified, said the company. A more important feature is an improved native contrast ratio of 30,000:1. Each will also include a PC input, VIERA link and four HDMI connections.

The middle of the road VIERA PZ85 series will include 1080p plasma displays in 3 different sizes, the 42-inch TH-42PZ85, the 46-inch TH-46PZ85 and the 50-inch TH-50PZ85, respectively. Each will include the same features as the VIERA PZ800 series but will also include an SD memory card slot.

The lowest of the range,the VIERA PZ80 series, still boasts nice specs. Each include HDMI connections, VIERA link, SD memory card slot and native contrast ratio of 20,000:1.

According to the Blu-ray Disc Association's press conference at CES yesterday, the Blu-ray camp believes that by CES 09 the format's installed base could hit 10 million, triple the current size.

The Association told a jam packed room of reporters and fans that roughly 3.5 million Blu-ray players had been sold to customers so far, with 3 million of those being Sony PlayStation 3 consoles.

The group believes thing are looking up for 2008 and that research has led them to believe that the "format's installed base" will swell to ten million with software sales topping the one billion milestone.

"It should be a year of very strong, explosive growth," said Danny Kaye, executive vice president of research for 20th Century Fox. Kaye would go on to say that Blu-ray should start to see "dramatic gains" beginning at the end of the Q2 2008.

The format backers finally insisted they would now change their marketing plans and shift away from "the format war" to instead focusing on convincing DVD users to make the leap to HD.

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HBO Home Video, following in the footsteps of its parent company Warner, have confirmed that they will dropping HD DVD support and moving exclusively to rival Blu-ray.

HBO Home Video president Henry McGee stated that the company will be "following the same policy as Warner Home Video" and stop releasing titles on HD DVD at the end of May.

New Line Home Entertainment, another studio distributed by Warner recently made the same decision to follow its parent company and move to Blu-ray. BBC Home Video, a third company under the Warner umbrella, has yet to make a decision but it seems likely it will follow Warner to Blu-ray.

Source:
HD Digest

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Paramount Pictures has publicly denied The Financial Times' report that it is following in the footsteps of Warner Bros. and abandoning HD DVD.

"Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format," Brenda Ciccone, a spokeswoman for Paramount, said in an e-mail.

Paramount however, can defect if it so chooses to due to a clause in its contract with HD DVD that allows the studio to switch if Warner Bros. ever decided to. Warner made their decision last week.

Toshiba and Sony declined to comment on the original report.

Source:
Bloomberg

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Anthony Marbella, Chief Marketing Officer for Samsung has said in a press statement that the company plans to put "emphasis" on Blu-ray while continuing to support "all formats."

"We'll support all formats, but with the news from Warner Bros we will put an emphasis on Blu-ray. We will make what consumers want," he added.

This latest news could mean the discontinuation of the company's line of dual format players, the latest of which, the BD-U5500 was just announced yesterday.

When he was asked whether consumers wanted and preferred Blu-ray over HD DVD, Marbella responded, "Yes, especially with the shift in content to come."

The BD-U5500 will play both formats, offer HDMI 1.3 connection, be profile 1.1 compliant, an ethernet connection, and the latest BD-Java and HD DVD interactivity available. The player also offers support for audio decoding of 7.1-Ch PCM, DTS-HD High resolution and Master audio, as well as Dolby TrueHD Bistream.

At CES 2008, DivX has announced a handful of new partners for its Connected platform while also confirming that its D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player will be heading to the US finally.

The most notable partners where Vuze and Veoh which means users of the media player will be able to access tons of TV shows, movies, and other video content.

HD content from the Vuze service will include TV and video content from popular channels A&E, the BBC, National Geographic, PBS, and Showtime, alongside hundreds "of premier production studios and thousands of maverick content creators distribute shows through the Vuze platform." DivX Connected users will soon be able to see the selections from the Vuze library, said DivX.

Veoh will offer just as much, if not more content. DivX says under the terms of the agreement, Veoh will be making most, if not all, of its video content available to DivX Connected devices. For those not familiar, Veoh is a site that allows users to watch Fox shows such as "Family Guy" and "24".

On Sunday, the electronics giant Toshiba revealed that sales of HD DVD standalone players had reached 1 million units sold in North America for 2007. Sales included all HD DVD branded drives and players, not only Toshiba's.

The company said sales will continue to flourish thanks to high demand for Internet-delivered content. Toshiba also took time to stress the potential of its recent alliance with Sharp in the highly competitive LCD market.

So far the high stakes next gen "format war" has caused confusion among would-be consumers and put a damper on what has the potential to be the next DVD. After a decade of growth the industry is finally seeing little to no growth in the standard DVD market.

View all HD DVD player models in the AfterDawn Hardware Section

Creative has announced at CES that it will be adding a built-in speaker to its tiny media player, the Zen Stone and its cousin the Zen Stone Plus.

The Zen Stone comes in the 1 and 2GB variety while the Plus model comes in the 2 or 4GB variety. Each includes FM radio, voice recording, a stopwatch/clock and customizable equalizer settings.

The 2GB non-Plus model will retail for $49.95 USD. The Plus, which also adds a vibrant screen, will cost about $60 USD for the same capacity model. The Plus also adds AAC support for use with legally purchased iTunes tracks.

"The ZEN Stone and ZEN Stone Plus with Built-in Speaker free you from having to wear headphones to listen to your portable music. It is a great way to enjoy your music when you're on a walk or in a group and you want to enjoy a conversation or hear what's going on around you," said Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative. "It's hard to believe that such incredibly small players can have a speaker that sounds so good, enabling you to listen to music together with a friend without headphones."

Source:
pocketlint

At the CES event today, SanDisk has announced that it will be increasing the capacity of two of its popular Sansa media players, the Clip and the View.

The Clip, which is seen as a direct competitor to the iPod Shuffle and Creative Zen Stone, will move up to a top capacity of 4GB while keeping its same tiny size. The View, which directly competes with the iPod Nano, will double in size as well to a top capacity of 32GB.

Both new higher capacity models are set to hit in February with price tags of $79.99 USD and $349.99 USD respectively.

Source:
pocket lint

Despite the fact that it canceled its CES press conference in light of recent news, Toshiba still went on ahead and announced the introduction of the first ever notebook with a HD DVD-R/RW drive.

The notebook, the Qosmio G45-AV690 boasts many other impressive specs besides the debut of the HD DVD writable drive. It features "an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT GPU, 3GB of DDR2 memory, a 320GB HDD, 17" 1080p display, 5.1 surround sound, HDMI output, an OpenCable (OCUR) HDTV tuner and four Harman Kardon stereo speakers with an integrated subwoofer."

“The Qosmio continues to lead the computer industry in terms of high-definition capabilities by bringing many of the most advanced technologies together into a solid and cohesive machine,” said Toshiba's Jeff Barney. “In a digital world that is driven by power cloaked in simplicity, the Qosmio G45-AV690 is the central hub of a user’s personal Digital Ecosystem, providing users with the ability to enjoy their HD content, while expressing themselves more fully in a digital world, and using HD DVD as a personal means of doing so.”

Today at CES, Microsoft and BT jointly announced that UK Xbox 360 owners will be able to access the popular IPTV service, BT Vision, beginning this summer.

Those familiar with the service will tell you that it offers "hundreds of movies and thousands of hours" of all types of TV programming including sporting events, music videos and other digital services for use over a BT Broadband connection.

"We are pleased to partner with Microsoft to deliver a truly compelling connected entertainment experience to our customers," said Dan Marks, CEO of BT Vision.

"For the first time consumers in the UK will be able to experience the advantages of an advanced TV service together with the benefits of next-generation gaming.

"Our aim is to provide BT Vision on multiple platforms — giving customers greater convenience, control and flexibility over what they watch, when they watch and how they watch TV. It also means that we are able to potentially expand our BT Vision customer base by tapping into the popularity of Xbox 360," he added.

BT Vision customers can access the new service using a set top box or through a 360. A few XBL features will be integrated into the service meaning gamers can send and receive messages while playing a video game or watching TV content.

"This is an exciting moment in home entertainment," said Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president of the Connected Television Division at Microsoft.

"Last year at CES, we announced Xbox 360 on Microsoft Mediaroom as a powerful platform capable of enabling new entertainment experiences for consumers, and we are pleased to team with BT to bring this service to market. Read more...

In a deal unveiled at CES, Rhapsody, the joint venture between RealNetworks and MTV, and the large electronics manufacturer Philips will be teaming up to reach out to the international market.

The deal will mean Rhapsody will be the online subscription of choice on all upcoming Philips media devices.

The market for MP3 devices is still very young so the deal has some potential to help Philips and Rhapsody grasp some market share. But I wouldn't bet on it. As of Q2 2007, Apple still controlled 74 percent of the market while SanDisk, Creative and Microsoft combined for another 16 percent. The last 10 percent is owned by many companies with each controlling less than 2 percent share.

Source:
Betanews

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One of the few questions left unanswered by Warner Bros.'s announcement to go Blu-ray exclusive was whether the decision would affect the decisions of studios HBO and New Line, both of which are owned by Warner.

Variety however, is reporting that New Line has indeed moved exclusively to Blu-ray, following its parent company. The move means that only one New Line film ever made it to HD DVD, the remarkable "Pan's Labyrinth."

HBO home video has yet to comment but a decision may be upcoming at CES.

One final note, if there are any collectors out there, now might be a good time to get Pan's Labyrinth on HD DVD cause it seems you will never see it again on that media.

Source:
TMR

According to Privacy International's latest National Privacy Ranking for 2007, the US, Russia, China and a few southeast Asian countries are ranked at the bottom in protecting their citizens' privacy.

The London-based human rights watchdog group assesses and ranks 14 criteria for its report: "Constitutional protection, statutory protection, privacy enforcement, identity cards and biometrics, data sharing, visual surveillance, communication interception, communication data retention, government access to data, workplace monitoring, surveillance of medical, financial and movement, border and trans-border issues, leadership, and democratic safeguards."

In general, the year's result showed a worsening of worldwide privacy standards, "with an overall increase in surveillance attributable to border control and immigration issues."

The US was the worst ranking country in "the democratic world" in terms of "statutory protections" and "privacy enforcement." Basically, that ranking means that laws protecting Americans' medical, workplace, and financial records from government and corporate surveillance are lacking and the group suggests that a regulatory body governing infractions of these rights needs to be implemented.

The AP has reported that 2007 saw another large decline in albums sales, further illustrating that CDs are no longer the top choice for music distribution.

For the year, 500.5 million "physical copies" were sold including CDs, cassettes and LPs, a 15 percent drop from the unit total of 2006.

There is however, a catch to that number. The industry counts every single digital track sold as 1/10th of an album so the 844.2 million single tracks sold in 2007 helps adjust the sales decrease to 9.5 percent, still a hefty number, but not as terrible.

Overall music sales, however, increased again on the back of continued growth of digital tracks, which increased 45 percent year-on-year. For the year, overall music sales grew 14 percent to 1.35 billion units.

The top selling album of 2007 was Josh Groban's christmas album "Noël," which sold an unremarkable 3.7 million units.

Source:
betanews

In response to yesterday's news that Warner Bros. had decided to go Blu-ray exclusive, the HD DVD Promotional Group has announced they have canceled their upcoming CES press conference.

The group, along with Microsoft and Toshiba had planned to tout the Q4 heavy sales of its players and discs. It seems that Warner did not give the group any advanced notice of its decision thus ruining whatever the group had had planned to say.

There is still controversy behind the reasoning for Warner's decision. The studio actually helped in the development of HD DVD and has endorsed the format since its inception. It is also a key member of the DVD Forum, from where HD DVD was born. Many industry insiders have argued that Sony offered Warner a large incentive to go exclusive, somewhere in the ballpark of $400 million for one to two years of exclusivity.

"Based on the timing of the Warner Home Video announcement today, we have decided to postpone our CES 2008 press conference scheduled for Sunday, January 6th at 8:30 p.m. in the Wynn Hotel. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause," the HD DVD Promotional Group said in an e-mail. Read more...

Okay, so the title may not be completely true, but the era of DRM-crippled music continues to fade, especially after today's announcement that Sony BMG has dropped DRM.

The label had been the last holdout of the Big 4, and it now joins EMI, Universal and Warner in offering its music catalog DRM-free and in MP3 format.

The first DRM-free tracks will be likely appearing at the end of the first quarter 2008, according to sources.

Amazon's MP3 store should benefit the most from the recent drop in DRM as users can move away from Apple's iTunes and towards different outlets to purchase their music.

Source:
Business Week

According to an announcement by Barry Meyer, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., the studio has decided to throw its support behind Blu-ray beginning in May 2008 meaning it will no longer be dual format.

"Warner Bros.' move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," explained Meyer. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."

Up until the end of May, Warner will continue to release in HD DVD, Blu-ray and standard definition DVD.

"Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices," said Jeff Bewkes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner Inc., the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment. "Today's decision by Warner Bros. to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner."

Starting at the end of the month, the Chinese government will begin blocking video sharing sites it does not control. The new laws will mean that any website that offers streaming video will need to receive a permit to operate from the government. In order to obtain that permit, the site must be either state-owned or controlled to qualify.

It is unknown on whether YouTube would qualify as a foreign company as it runs a Chinese-language service. If YouTube's servers are hosted elsewhere, the site may be completely blocked by Chinese ISPs.

Banned materials, according to the new law would be aything having to do with "national secrets, content that sullies the reputation of the country, socially disruptive material, and pornography." The videos should "insist on serving the people" as well as "socialist principles."

Source:
betanews

On Sunday, we reported that the RIAA was fighting to make CD ripping illegal.

CNet and a few other news sources are saying however, that Marc Fisher (the Washington Post reporter who originally wrote on the subject) was incorrect in his assessment of the case at hand, that of an Arizona man by the name of Jeffrey Howell who is accused of sharing unauthorized music.

After the story hit the internet, an RIAA spokesman rebutted the story.

"The Washington Post story is wrong," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use."

Motorola has announced today that it will be launching its first MPEG-4 set-top DVR box for cable TV users.

Set to debut at the upcoming CES show, the DCX series of DVRs "are designed to serve as hubs on home networks for consumers who want to manage HD content received over cable."

Each box will support HD video due to its use of the MPEG-4 advanced video compression.

According to BetaNews, the boxes will also support the following; "recording; time Shifting of TV shows; surround sound audio; storage of consumer-created multimedia content; and content sharing among other compatible devices over home networks."

In creating these DVRs, Motorola is set to compete directly with TiVo who has already secured a deal with the cable provider Comcast in which certain markets will exclusively use TiVo software.

According to research analyst Shawn Wu, Macs with Blu-ray drives will be debuting at the Macworld event on January 15th.

Apple has long held a seat on the Blu-ray consortium and CEO Steve Jobs is on the board of directors at Disney, a staunch Blu-ray supporter. These reasons alone have fueled any rumors that Apple, if choosing from the nex-gen formats, would choose Blu-ray. There is a remote chance however, that Apple could release a combo HD DVD and Blu-ray drive and avoid the format war.

A Mac Pro workstation, set for release in the next month, has been rumored to be the first Apple system to have a Blu-ray compatible drive.

Source:
BetaNews

With CES 2008 set to begin next week, rumors have flared up again all over the internet that Bill Gates will be including an Xbox 360 announcement at the end of his keynote.

According to analysts, the announcement may include the previously rumored new Xbox 360 unit with an internal HD DVD drive. Others have speculated that the announcement will relate to Microsoft licensing the Xbox technology to other manufacturers who would then create a hybrid machine to be used as a DVR, game console and HD DVD player (and possibly writer).

Microsoft has not taken an official stand on the rumors so there will most likely not be any updates until Bill Gates hits the stage next week.

Source:
GI.biz

According to her official website, Jammie Thomas, who was recently served with a $222,000 judgment, will be finding new lawyers for her appeal against the RIAA.

Her former lawyers, Brian Toder, and associates, were hardly the best choice for the type of case and that was made clear with a lackluster non-existent defense. Toder is a maritime law specialist.

Ms. Thomas talked out about why she had chosen Toder originally for the case. “I had no idea who could represent me for my case and Mr. Toder was listed on another attorney’s weblog, Mr. Ray Beckerman, as being the attorney from Minnesota who handled cases such as mine,” she also said, “I feel Mr. Toder performed as best he could considering the financial situation I am in and how much I could afford to pay him and his firm.”

Jamie Thomas continues to take donations to be used towards her new appeal. Her website says the following, “She [Thomas] confirmed that the donations collected here are still going into her legal defense fund and will be used to finance her appeal. She is now in search of a capable attorney ready to take the appeal either pro bono or for what is raised through fundraising efforts.”