News written by James Delahunty (March, 2007)

Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes service has struck yet another content deal; this time with Major League Baseball. The deal will bring sports highlights to the iTunes download store, priced at the usual $1.99. The content includes a "MLB.com Daily Rewind" highlight show, as well as two weekly "Game of the Week" full-length games.

To promote the premium content to iTunes users, MLB is offering a free download of "2007 Season Preview Show" to every iTunes user. An iTunes "Season Pass" for the highlight show will cost $7.99, and $19.99 for all full games. Users who decided to buy an Apple TV device will also be able to watch their content on a proper television by streaming it using iTunes.

Source:
Betanews

Sony released the latest version of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) console, v3.30. The latest firmware makes a few tweaks to the system including support for video playback at 720x480 resolution, versus the prior scaled-down 320x240 resolution. It also has added expanded support for PlayStation Network games, and offers PSP users free access to T-Mobile HotSpots for a limited time.

Fir six months, PSP users will be able to use T-Mobile hotspots, most commonly found in Borders and Starbucks, for free. The services usually charge a onetime $9.99 fee for 24 hours of use and T-Mobile offers a variety of monthly subscription packages at flat rates. To sign up for the promotion PSP users must log into a T-Mobile HotSpot by March 28, 2008.

Source:
GameSpot

Google Inc. has fired back at Viacom in the ongoing war of words between both. Managing Counsel Michael Kwun has called Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, "an attack on the way people communicate on the Web and on the platforms that allow people to make the Internet their own," adding that Viacom is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The DMCA provides a "safe harbor" for web hosts who comply with takedown notices and remove infringing content on request. Kwun said that if Viacom wins in court, it would "place the burden on hosting platforms" and "would turn the DMCA on its head." He also said that Viacom's lawsuit has no basis in law.

He pointed out that Google previously complied with requests made by Viacom to remove about 100,000 videos from YouTube. Later on however, YouTube rescinded some of those requests over confusion whether they actually infringed and Kwun has argued that Viacom was attempting to force YouTube to make such a decision.

"Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side," he concluded.

Source:
Betanews

UK retailers were absolutely delighted with the amount of PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles that were sold in the territory since launch, saying it was the biggest ever launch of a "home console". "Given the relatively plentiful supply, it's fair to say this was our biggest-ever console launch in unit and value terms," HMV's head of games Tim Ellis told GamesIndustry.biz.

He added: "We still have some consoles in stock around the chain, as we were able to order plenty, but we expect these to sell these through over the coming days and weeks, especially as new games titles are released." Retailers will continue to unload stock over the busy Easter period, but some have warned that lowering prices to move stock could harm long term sales.

"It's been a remarkable week for us here at GAME following the successful launch of the PlayStation 3," revealed Anna Macario, marketing director at GAME. "We have seen huge demand and seen fantastic sales throughout our 400 stores around the country."

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) has suffered a defeat after a judge ruled in favor of Kaleidescape, a manufacturer of home media servers. The California judge found that Kaleidescape did not violate its CSS license. Kaleidescape makes home media servers that aim to store all the movies and music of the owner. The servers start at $10,000.

Media is ripped from its original disc and stored on the server. The DVD CCA found that this functionality opened the door to massive copyright infringement saying that any device that played movies from a DVD disc, had to have physical access to the disc to do so.

Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled in favor of Kaleidescape, saying that the 20-page CSS spec was not technically included as part of the license agreement. "Kaleidescape has been operating in the shadow of the DVD CCA's allegations for over three years," Michael Malcolm, CEO of Kaleidescape told Ars Technica. "We are gratified that after hearing all of the evidence, the Judge has completely vindicated our position."

Source:
Ars Technica

IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon has warned that the forth coming release of the Xbox 360 Elite will not boost Microsoft's market share this year. Instead, he believes that it is software titles that will make a difference for the company. "The Xbox 360 Elite may sway some gamers waiting to decide on a new system, but I don't expect the Elite to have much an effect on the 360's market share this year," he told GamesIndustry.biz.

He added: "The higher price and the 120GB hard-drive upgrade should increase revenue for Microsoft and for retailers, but system-selling games such as Halo 3 will increase the 360's position more significantly." He did say however that the release of the console and Microsoft's further expansions to online gaming shows that the company is working hard to dominate the area.

"With the 360, Microsoft is extending the online capabilities of Xbox Live including downloads of long form video as well as games and game add-ons, and the point of increasing the hard-drive to 120GB is to enable 360 Xbox Live gamers to download more items more often," he said. "Extending Live to Vista systems will also increase Microsoft's online audience, which is an important metric now and going forward."

Reports are circulating that Apple Computer Inc. is currently looking for one European network to get exclusivity over the iPhone, and industry insiders are saying that the most likely candidate at this stage is Vodafone. Apple needs to make a decision on a network some before the end of the year, as the iPhone is set to make its European debut around then.

Cingular Wireless, the mobile unit of AT&T, announced just days ago that at least one million people have shown interest in the iPhone through a website setup for consumers to register their interest in the device. The iPhone version that contains 4GB of flash memory will cost $499, while the 8GB version will cost $599.

Apple has said that it could possibly sell 10 million iPhones. The company has run in to some disputes since the gadget's MacWorld debut, including one with Cisco Systems over the use of the "iPhone" trademark, used by Cisco subsidiary Linksys. Apple and Cisco came to an agreement allowing each to use the trademark.

Source:
About Electronics

Canon Inc. is to appeal an "expected" court decision in the United States regarding technology used in surface-conduction electron-emitter displays (SED). The company expects the ruling in the first trial to go against it after the court judged earlier this year that a licensing deal stuck with Nano-Proprietary in 1999 did not extend to Canon's partner, Toshiba.

Tokyo-based Canon expects that ruling to come in late April, President Tsuneji Uchida said at a general shareholders meeting. SED displays tout brighter images and less power consumption than LCD and Plasma sets currently on the market. Canon had hoped to enter the $84 billion market for flat-panel TVs in partnership with Toshiba.

Source:
Reuters

Sony has unveiled two items that will compliment the launch of its first European Blu-ray hardware. The company unveiled the Bravia D3000 series, a range of LCD displays that are available in 32, 40 and 46-inch versions. It offers support for 24fps film video, matching the original framerate of films. Couple that support with Motionflow +100Hz technology to double 50Hz material's refresh rate and cut down on juddering during movement.

The sets include three HDMI connections too, making it easy to hook up all of your HD equipment. The company also unveiled a stand that is designed to work with the the Bravia D3000 series, the RHT-G800 stand. The three shelf stand can hold a screen up to 46-inch in size and it has an included surround sound system inside it, featuring seven speakers (two subwoofers).

Source:
T3

Panasonic, the leader in high definition and Plasma TV, recently announced its full line of Plasma HDTVs for 2007, including a 42-inch, a 50-inch and 58-inch 1080p high definition model, which join Panasonic's current 65-inch and the world's largest Plasma, the 103-inch, to provide a wide choice of Plasma televisions in the 1080p resolution arena.

The full line brings ten new Plasmas to consumers for 2007, and further demonstrates Panasonic's industry leadership and cutting edge technology in big screen Plasma entertainment. "With our 2007 HD plasma line, we've maintained and continued to improve upon the same expertise that resulted in numerous best of awards last year," said Dennis Eppel Vice President, Panasonic Display Products Company.

He added: "And we have every intention of maintaining the market share lead that we've held for virtually the last two years. With additional manufacturing capacity, we expect to address a planned 11.5 million-unit production schedule for 2008. Continuing our philosophy of listening to our customers we've expanded our line of 1080p Plasmas, and, enhanced our cosmetics -- our 2007 line of plasmas feature a beautiful gloss black finish."

Record label SonyBMG has revealed that it will no longer accept sample music from unsigned artists on hard copy formats, instead directing them to record label websites to blog their music, photos and videos. "Blogging is clearly one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment," said SonyBMG's UK and Ireland Music Entertainment Chairman and Chief Executive Ged Doherty.

He added: "100,000 new blogs go online each day at the moment, and the blogosphere is doubling every 230 days so it makes complete sense for the major labels to use the process in a creative way to encourage, discover and communicate with new artists." Social networking sites across the world already offer features to musicians to help them promote their work.

Source:
Reuters

CyberLink Corp. has announced the availability of their Vista-ready software on Samsung's PC products. CyberLink DVD Suite for Vista, a combination of award-winning CyberLink products, will be featured in both Samsung's MagicStation desktops and SENS series notebooks. CyberLink DVD Suite for Vista provides an all-in-one software package, offering playback, Authoring, editing, backup and burning. Applications include:

• PowerDirector 5 for editing video content
• PowerDVD 7 for watching DVDs and videos
• PowerProducer 3.7 for authoring DVDs
• MediaShow 3 for creating photo slideshows
• Power2Go 5.5 for making music discs and burning data
• PowerDVD Copy for duplicating DVDs
• LabelPrint 2 for designing disc labels

Microsoft Corp. has released the delayed 1.3 update for the Zune portable media player. Last month, Microsoft announced that Zune owners will be able to download a software update to fix several bugs with the device in mid-March, but the patch release had been delayed until Wednesday. The update fixes some known bugs with the player.

The 1.3 update brings a promised fix for the skipping issues that some users were claiming to be getting with songs purchased from the Zune Marketplace. The update also brings improved device and software reliability and changes made to the FM tuner that prevents it from draining battery while in sleep mode.

The last Zune update was issued in December, adding support for the Windows Vista operating system.

Source:
Betanews

An Indiana man has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for selling more than $700,000 worth of counterfeit computer software on the eBay Internet auction site. Courtney Smith, 36, of Anderson, Ind., was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Sarah Barker of the Southern District of Indiana for selling counterfeit computer software over the Internet in violation of criminal copyright infringement laws.

At today's guilty plea and sentencing, Smith admitted that he purchased counterfeit Rockwell Automation computer software through the eBay Internet auction site and then duplicated and resold the copyright protected software to other eBay users. Between March 6 and May 26, 2004, Smith sold counterfeit copies of Rockwell Automation software in 32 or more separate eBay auctions, receiving $4,149.97.

"Mr. Smith exploited eBay to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit software at drastically reduced prices, thereby illegally profiting on the back of the copyright holder," said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher. "The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting individuals who exploit legitimate online auction sites to sell pirated software and commit other acts of fraud."

Sony Corp. has announced a new Blu-Ray player for the European market. The BDP-S1E is described by the company as ",one of the most powerful and intelligent consumer audio and video devices", it has ever manufactured. It supports 24p True Cinema, playing back video at the original 24 frames per second if the television set supports it.

The player provides full support for 1080p (1920 x 1080p) video content and can upscale DVD-Video content to 1080p. The company said that the BDP-S1E will be available throughout Europe from summer this year. However, consumers may want to hold off on investing in Blu-ray player until after October 31st.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has mandated that all hardware released after that date must fully support BD-J, which provides interactivity features for Blu-ray movies including menus and PIP.

The HD DVD promotional group has promised 70 new movies releases on the HD DVD format within the coming four months. The group, led by Toshiba, has denied claims from the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) that HD DVD has lost the format war. The group pointed out the difference in stand-alone sales for each format so far, and Toshiba also has more price drops coming in a few days.

Toshiba's HD-A2 will cost $399 from April 1st on. New HD DVD titles that have been promised include newer movies such as Children of Men, Good Shepherd and Happy Feet. Also in the line-up is HD DVD boxsets of the Matrix trilogy. Other releases will include Dreamgirls, 40-Year Old Virgin Unrated, Flags of Our Fathers: Special Collector’s Edition, The Hitcher, Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 2, Black Christmas (2006), Harsh Times, The Battle of the Bulge.

Source:
Pocket-Lint.co.uk

Sony has confirmed that over 600,000 PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles have been sold in Europe since the console was launched last week. This means that 60% of the stock shipped to Europe (1,000,000 units estimated) has been sold. The 60GB version of the console (20GB not yet available in PAL territories) sells for €599 on average in Europe (£425 in UK).

Sony had previously sold 165,000 units in the UK in two days, which compares well against 105,000 Nintendo Wii consoles and 70,000 Xbox 360 consoles. Sony achieved the figure by delaying the European launch by four months, giving itself time to manufacture enough units to avoid shortages seen by Nintendo and Microsoft.

"Yes, 600,000 is the figure for Europe," a spokesperson told Eurogamer.

Source:
Eurogamer

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. has revealed that it will offer a backseat television service for DaimlerChrysler cars and minivans later this year. The company said that three live child-themed channels would be available in 2008 model year cars in the Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge lines. Sirius and rival XM have proposed a merger which is now waiting on regulatory approval.

The company had planned to offer a service like this since 2004 but had to work it out with content companies and manufacturers first. The system will cost about $470, which includes the first year of service, when packaged with Chrysler's rear seat entertainment system in new cars. Customers must subscribe to the Sirius Satellite Radio service.

The service will cost $7 per month on top of the $13 per month fee for the radio service after the first year. Channels on the service include Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon, Walt Disney Co.'s Disney Channel and Time Warner Inc.'s Cartoon Network.

Source:
Reuters

IOGEAR is aiming to simplify home entertainment connections with the world's first true automatic HDMI switch. The new HDMI 2x1 Automatic Switch (HDAS) is the only product on the market that senses which HDMI product is currently in use, with IOGEAR's patented HDAS technology, and instantly locks and transfers the appropriate audio and video content to the connected HD display.

It also eliminates the hassle of having to plug and unplug HDMI cables between home entertainment equipment in order to connect to an HDTV that does not have enough input ports. According to In-Stat, HDMI-enabled device shipments will grow 78 percent per year through 2010. As the technology becomes increasingly incorporated into common consumer electronics products such as set top boxes, DVD players, gaming consoles like PS3, and even computers, end users may run into the issue of having too many HDMI-enabled pieces of hardware and not enough inputs on their televisions.

"The majority of new home entertainment products support HDMI, however, most televisions do not have enough input ports to connect to all of them at once," said Miranda Su, vice president of sales and marketing at IOGEAR, Inc. "Our new HDMI 2x1 Automatic Switch eliminates frustrations associated with having to continuously plug and unplug devices. Additionally, it is the only true automatic switch available that intuitively detects which source is active and delivers the audio and video content completely in sync with almost no latency."

A woman has filed a lawsuit against Vivendi Games, Sierra Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and a defunct rental store called Hiawatha Video, after her infant suffered an epileptic seizure while playing Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly on a PS2 console. The lawsuit alleges the defendants were "negligent, careless, and reckless with regard to the design and manufacture" of Spyro.

According to the lawsuit, the child has suffered permanent disabling injuries that will affect him "in all activities of daily living." As with all other games, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly came with a warning about the possibility of experiencing epileptic seizures "when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights."

The woman is seeking damages on behalf of the child "for such fair and reasonable amount as may be awarded by a jury of his peers." Sony has requested that the woman specify the total amount of damages she's seeking.

Source:
GameSpot

Microsoft Corp. has added more popular video content to its Xbox Live Video Marketplace through deals stuck with Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, A&E Network, ADV Films, National Geographic and TotalVid.com in the US. The deal means that films such as Braveheart, Team America: World Police, World Trade Center and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut will be available for download in HD.

Microsoft recently revealed double-digits growth for Xbox Live downloads, with a 400% increase since the company started offering movies and TV show content for download in HD. The Xbox 360 is an ideal device for video downloads, as it is connected to a TV already, removing the need for any further equipment to bridge the gap between Internet video downloads and the TV.

Source:
Pocket-Lint.co.uk

While Microsoft Corp. has not yet announced any release information for the Xbox 360 Elite unit in Europe, retailer HMV has revealed it expects the console will be available by late summer. "All we understand is that it's at some point perhaps around the late summer," a spokesperson told Eurogamer.net.

The spokesperson added: "We're expecting the product to be sold sooner rather than later, and obviously at that point we'll have a fuller idea of all their launch plans, precise timings, pricing and everything else from a retail point of view." The Xbox 360 Elite includes an all-black finish, headset, controller, component/SD cable, 120GB HDD, HDMI output and cable and a one month subscription to Xbox Live Gold.

"I feel sure that there'll be demand for this product, and Microsoft now enjoys the level of brand penetration and player loyalty for it to be successful." Tim Ellis, head of games at HMV said. "There should be quite a few core gamers out there that may want to upgrade or who will at least want the extra capacity now on offer."

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

AT&T Inc. claims to have sold its U-verse Internet-based video service to 10,000 customers, saying sales dramatically increased in the past several weeks. Ralph de la Vega, group president of AT&T's regional wireline operations, revealed the data at at a Bank of America conference in New York on Wednesday.

There has been concerns about the expansion of U-verse, a video service delivered over high-speed fiber-optic cables, after it failed to launch in a targeted 15 U.S. markets, reaching 11 instead. AT&T is selling the service as an alternative to offers from cable companies.

"In terms of U-verse, I am really pleased with what I've seen in the last few weeks," he said. "Our sales have dramatically increased over the last several weeks." The company is aiming to make the service available for 8 million people by the end of the year, but has not revealed any targets for subscribers.

Source:
Reuters

In a suggestion that would tackle street crime, a British government crime review talks about adding fingerprint activation technology to music playing devices like iPods. MP3 players are fairly expensive CE equipment and since they are designed to be used on the move, they have become a major target for thieves.

The report proposes, "working in partnership with businesses to crime-proof their products, services and processes to the highest standards. One example could be introducing fingerprint activation of MP3 players." Such technology is already used in laptops for example, but its goal is really to protect the data than to protect the actual device.

Many people have been seriously injured, or killed in cases, while being mugged for an MP3 player or a similar device.

Source:
Electronic News

Cingular Wireless, the mobile unit of AT&T, has announced that at least one million people have shown interest in Apple Computer Inc.'s iPhone. AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson made the announcement on Tuesday. AT&T will be the first to sell Apple's phone when it ships in June this year. The company is not taking pre-orders for the phone but left a website for visitors to leave their email address to receive information.

"One million people have asked us to call when this phone is available," Stephenson said in his keynote speech at the CTIA wireless technology conference. The iPhone version that contains 4GB of flash memory will cost $499, while the 8GB version will cost $599. Apple has said that it could sell 10 million iPhones.

Source:
Reuters

Nintendo has altered the hardware components of new Wii units in an attempt to block the use of currently available modchips that enable users to play copied games. The new units are part of a new shipment of Wiis and contain an altered circuit layout that makes modification much more difficult than with the earlier versions of the console.

Sources noted that attempting to modify the newer consoles with the older modchips will most likely lead to damage. However, new generation modchips for the Wii may become available within a month of the newer Wiis hitting the streets. Services that offer Wii modification said it's likely that Nintendo will adopt BGA (ball grid array) IC packaging to prolong the time needed to develop new modchips by about four months.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all altered the circuitry of their consoles before to combat against modding.

Source:
DigiTimes

Texas Instruments is showing off a prototype digital light processing (DLP) movie projector that is designed for use in mobile phones. The projector was shown off at the CTIA Wireless 2007 Show. The Dallas-based company is showing off its "Pico" prototype. It is equipped with a DLP processor, three lasers and a power supply. It is approximately 1.5" in length.

The company claims that the projector can beam images onto a wall in DVD quality. The company has not revealed the technology is expected to be used in any phones. Texas Instruments is dedicated to a possible rejuvenation of DLP projection technology.

This is not the first time that a company has shown plans to put video projectors into mobile phones. A projector definitely seems like a more viable option for viewing content from a mobile phone than a tiny LCD screen.

Source:
Monsters and Critics

A Russian piracy case against a head teacher has been ordered to go to retrial by a Russian court. Alexander Ponosov was accused of installing pirated copies of a Windows operating system and copies of Microsoft Word on several school computers. He denied the claims and said the software came pre-installed with the computers and that he didn't know it wasn't legitimate. A lower court had dismissed the case as "trivial".

But now a higher court has ruled that it should proceed. The trial has been seen as a response to international pressure to crack down on piracy in Russia. Russia ranks second to China for use of pirated software and music. Russian President Vladimir Putin said previously that the manufacturers of pirated goods should be targeted and not the consumers.

Microsoft has distanced itself from the case, claiming it had nothing to do with the charges and had opted last year not to bring any civil action. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called upon Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to intervene.

Source:
BBC News

Italian authorities have once again moved against Internet piracy with the "shutdown" of a DirectConnect (DC) P2P hub known as Discotequezone. The Fiscal Police (GdF) executed search warrants issued by the Public Prosecutor of Brescia, and with support from the Federation Against Music Piracy (FPM), raided several locations throughout the country.

The operation targeted five servers and four heavy uploaders involved in the massive distribution of copyright infringing music tracks through file-sharing platforms. Eleven people have been charged with copyright infringement. The police crackdown led to the seizure of 16 computers, 27 external hard disks and more than 1000 DVD-Rs and CD-Rs with a total of more than five terabytes of copyright protected works.

Since 2005, More than 195 individuals have been criminally prosecuted for illegal P2P distribution in Italy.

Source:
Press Release

Cyberlink Corp. today support for the Advanced Video Codec High Definition Standard (AVCHD) for video playback and authoring. CyberLink has already incorporated AVCHD support in high-definition disc player software PowerDVD Ultra, and will launch support for disc authoring software PowerProducer mid-year. "The AVCHD format offers exceptional quality for the recording, storage and playback of high-definition video content," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink.

She continued: "With our expertise in developing leading playback and authoring products, CyberLink's support of the AVCHD format delivers greater flexibility for our hardware partners and even more choice for consumers." CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra has passed certification for the AVCHD format
from official tests conducted by the AVCHD Testing Center in Japan.

AVCHD is based on the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video format, enabling recording of high-definition 1080i and 720p video onto discs, providing faster seek times for accessing content compared with miniDVD, and offering higher compression requiring less storage space than MPEG-2. Currently Sony and Panasonic have camcorders supporting the AVCHD for recording, while Blu-ray Disc players support AVCHD playback.

Hitachi has announced it plans to spend ¥3 billion on a plasma production plant in Malaysia. The plant will produce units to meet demand in Australia and Southeast Asia. Hitachi spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said that the company will produce 42-inch displays in the country and will eventually expand to 50-inch displays.

Global sales of plasma and liquid-crystal display televisions will gain 8 percent this year to $92 billion, industry researcher DisplaySearch said. Hitachi follows rivals such as Panasonic, Toshiba and Sony in expanding its TV production overseas to meet demand for flat-panel screens.

Hitachi hopes to use the facilities of its optical devices subsidiary in the country to produce 10,000 units per month starting April. In October, the company also said it will spend ¥8 billion building a flat-panel TV factory in the Czech Republic. The plant is set to begin production this summer and is expected to achieve a monthly output of 80,000 units.

Source:
About Electronics

Napster Inc. and AT&T Inc. have struck a deal that will provide digitals music to some of AT&T's wireless and high speed Internet customers. The deal will provide free digital music to the subscribers. It will come in to effect on April 1st allowing qualifying users access to more than 3 million songs for one year through the Napster To Go service.

Customers who download the music will be able to transfer the tracks to compatible wireless phones and music players. The offer is available to qualifying new or existing AT&T wireless customers outside of the AT&T's traditional 22-state territory when they agree to a 2 year wireless agreement with purchase of the SYNC phone by Samsung, or the BlackJack phone.

Source:
Reuters

The PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has had an extremely successful launch in the UK, with gamers buying up 165,000 units in two days following the launch according to Chart-Track estimates. This would make the PS3 console - which retails in the territory for £425 - the fastest selling "home" console there yet, ahead of Nintendo's Wii console and Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.

When the Xbox 360 console launched in the UK in November 2005, it sold 70,000 units during its first weekend. As for Nintendo's Wii console, it managed to move 105,000. Both launches were noted to have suffered from shortages with both company struggling to keep up with demand.

Sony delayed the launch of the PS3 in PAL territories for four months, giving the company time to produce enough units for a shortage-free launch. Overall, the excellent figures puts the PS3 in second place for the "fastest selling games hardware" to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), which sold 185,000 units during its launch weekend.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

The excellent freeware DVD burning tool, ImgBurn, has been updated to v2.3.0.0. The update brings several fixes and adds quite a few new features (as usual with an ImgBurn release). Here is the complete changelog of the release.

• Added: Parsing of the Joliet filesystem (in addition to the existing UDF/ISO9660 parsing) for pin pointing the file where a read error is occurring.
  
• Added: Ability to have the program use erase/format commands where DVD-RAM and BD-RE disc then give their full capacity to the user data area and do not keep any 'spare areas' for error recovery. (Potentially useful for PS3)
  
• Added: A little 'Erase' button to the main screen for easy access to disc formatting/erasing functions.
  
• Added: Support for images with a 2332 byte sector size (Easy CD Creator v5 ?)
  
• Added: Support for converting a few additional image formats over to the correct format for burning to DVD (Mode1/2048).
  
• Added: Import / Export of 'Automatic Write Speed' configuration.
  
• Added/Changed: If Build mode detects the file 'I386NTLDR', it will automatically enable the ISO9660/Joliet options to allow file names without extensions.
  
• Changed: When files/folders are dragged + dropped into the source list in Build mode, they're now added to the MRU list - but only if 8 or less items are added at a time.
  
• Changed: When files added to the source list in Build mode via the 'Browse for file' button, they're now added to the MRU list - but only if 8 or less items are added at a time.
  
• Fixed: Browsing for (and opening) a file (especially in 'Verify' mode) could fail due to some garbage being appended to the filename.
  
• Fixed: A potential error when unlocking a volume from exclusive access when locking it had failed in the first place.
  
• Fixed: File/folder names parsed from the ISO9660 file system could have garbage appended to them if there was no trailing null.
  
• Fixed: Thread synchronization issue where MD5 values might then be missing from the Log.
  
• Fixed: The first cell in an angle block was being ignored and hence never shown in the 'Create Layer Break Position' window. (The first should have been visible, but not the others)
  
• Fixed: The program displayed the incorrect 'previous' cell in layer break preview if the chosen cell followed one or more interleaved cells.
  
• Fixed: UDF Filesystem didn't allow for the ';' character in file names.
  
• Fixed: The 'Don't Prompt VIDEO_TS Content' option wasn't actually using the answer specified in the settings.
  
• Fixed: The Filter Driver Load Order page was listing 'Upper Class Filters - [None Found]' for an item that should have said 'Lower Class Filters - [None Found]'.
  
• Fixed: The wrong item in the Build mode MRU list could get deleted when the 16 item limit was reached. (Number 8 was deleted rather than number 16)

Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has sold 20,000 units in Australia since it was launched on Friday, Sony Australia has announced. According to the company, sales of hardware, software and accessories generated AUD$25 million (USD$20.2 million €15.2 million). The PS3 sells for AUD$999 in Australia and games go for an average of AUD$99.

The Xbox 360 console was launched in Australia on the same date last year, March 23rd 2006, and in the following four days it managed to move 30,421 units and went on to to 700,000 by October that year. These figures made the Xbox 360 the fastest selling console in the territory until the Wii was launched in December.

Nintendo's Wii was launched in Australia on December 6th and in the following four days it just past Microsoft by moving 32,901 units.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

Google Inc.'s YouTube service has announced the winners of its inaugural awards. The popular video-sharing site wanted to pay tribute to the users who created content and uploaded it to the service, helping to make YouTube what it is. The winners included an animated video about a kiwi bird trying to fly and a Sydney man hugging complete strangers on the street.

"They saw an opportunity for worldwide visibility and through their success have changed the landscape of how a 'star' is defined," Jamie Byrne, head of YouTube product marketing, said in a statement. "As the masses learned about online video, many of the creators of these videos established themselves as personalities, going from the seemingly unknown to international celebrity, overnight."

NBC Universal, News Corp. and several other companies unveiled plans for a YouTube rival several days ago. YouTube was purchased by Google last year for $1.65 billion and is currently being sued by Viacom for $1 billion.

See the award winners at: http://www.youtube.com/ytawards

Source:
Reuters

As we reported several weeks ago, YouTube set up a channel for U.S. 2008 Presidential hopefuls to communicate with users and campaign. Recently, there has been a lot of media attention around videos that address Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama. The videos were parodies of a 1984 Apple commercial that attacked its larger rival IBM as totalitarian.

The anti-Clinton video was particular popular. Dubbed Vote Different, the clip received 1.4 million views on YouTube since March 5th. In the anti-Clinton video, we see virtual clones with shaved heads, walking with military precision while Hilary praises the start of her presidential bid, which she has dubbed as a "Conversation with America".

"On January 14th, the Democratic Primary will begin. And you'll see why 2008 won't be like 1984." the video states, ending with the URL of Obama's website. The anti-Obama clip is a parody of the same commercial, and uses a speech in which Obama unveils his support for the Chicago Bears professional football team in the Super Bowl. "The Bears Lost So Will Obama. Clinton for President," the video reads.

"This is the opening round," said MsCarol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. "The Internet is going to be the main event. Anything that gets the attention of millions of eyeballs - and particularly millions of eyeballs of people who at this early stage are watching - matters."

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given the green light to HD radio. HD Radio, which is seen as the savior of terrestrial broadcasting, offers radio stations the chance to broadcast more streams of higher quality digital programming. The technology is said to be superior to Satellite Radio. Some stations have been broadcasting in HD already with permission from the FCC.

HD radio enables radio stations to divide their spectrum into 5 or more streams, an improvement which supporters of the technology claims will boost diversity of content on radio. This move may also bring the proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio even closer as both companies can add HD Radio to their list of the existing competition that a combined company would face.

Source:
Engadget

Several days ago, Qualcomm withdrew all of its patent infringement claims against Broadcom. Broadcom responded by doing the same for all of its counter claims except a few. This came after US District Judge Rudi Brewster ruled in Broadcom's favor, finding that Qualcomm's failure to provide information to the US International Trade Commission on the two patents in question back in 2003 was perceived as the company waiving its rights to enforce the patents.

The two have been locked in litigation over two patents related to H.264 video compression technology. Judge Brewster also dismissed claims that Qualcomm withheld key data from the US Patent and Trademark Office, saying the court "finds no clear and convincing evidence of inequitable conduct."

Broadcom general counsel David Dull issued a statement saying the decision reflected the industry's suspicions of Qualcomm. "Qualcomm does not shoot straight with standards bodies. We are continuing to examine their conduct before various cellular and other standards bodies." he said. Qualcomm took the court's decision as a victory. "Qualcomm is gratified by the court's confirmation that our conduct before the Patent Office was lawful and consistent with our duty of candor." Qualcomm's general counsel, Lou Lupin, stated.

We have added another guide to our guide section today for streaming video to Xbox 360 without having to encode to WMV yourself and without needing a Windows Media Center PC. This is achieved using TVersity, which can stream to multiple devices over a wired or wireless network. In the guide a wireless network is used as an example.

TVersity transcodes to WMV on-the-fly and streams it to the Xbox 360, so needless to say a fast PC is ideal.

Stream video to Xbox 360 with TVersity:
https://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/stream_video_xbox_360_tversity.cfm

If you find any errors whether they are with spelling or anything else, or if you have any criticisms or suggestions or anything, don't hesitate to send me a Private Message (you need to be logged in). User feedback has helped us so many times in the past to get stuff "just right".

We have added another guide to our guide section; this time showing how to use PiMPStreamer to stream video files to a PlayStation Portable (PSP) over a wireless network. PiMPStreamer processes the files on-the-fly while streaming so it takes away the need to encode first and transfer to Memory Stick, so it is useful for things you might want to view on your PSP in your home and supports a large amount of file formats.


Stream multimedia files to PSP without encoding:
https://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/stream_multimedia_to_psp_with_pimpstreamer.cfm

Visit PiMPStreamer site and download from:
http://www.pimpware.org

Hopefully this guide will help any of you who are interested. Note that you do need a PSP with either 1.50 firmware or homebrew-friendly customer firmware for this to work. Since we don't usually cover PSP homebrew, any tips, criticisms, suggestions or complaints of any kind can be sent directly to me via Private Message (you need to be logged in).

We have recently published quite a few new guides to our guide section and are currently in the process of "reforming" many of our articles and have a to-do list longer than Santa's annual list. We now strive to cover everything our users may need and last year made a discovery that a lot of our new users didn't need to know how to encode/convert anything, but just how to play their acquired video.

Since then we added comprehensive guides to AVI playback, MPG (MPEG) playback and MKV playback and to our surprise, some of them jumped to the top of the most popular guides. So in a effort to be more complete with the playback section, we added guides to playing the OGM container files, FLV files like those gotten from YouTube, QuickTime MOV files and MP4 container files.

To many of the regulars here, there guides aren't very useful, but we really hope that the newer users, most often directed here from Google, will benefit from reading them. For the rest of you, it gives you something to link to on the forums.

According to iSuppli, the Plasma TV industry will see steady growth in the next few years, but makers of Plasma displays will not see any major rise in revenue. iSuppli expects the industry to see growth of about 14% annually for the foreseeable future, and that unit shipments will see growth from the 13.4 million figure this year, up to 22.7 million in 2011.

However, due to increased manufacturing efficiencies and constantly growing pressure from liquid-crystal display (LCD) TVs, revenues for Plasma TVs will only see slight growth over the next five years as the average selling prices of the units will decline by about 13% per year.

Matsushita is currently performing the best in the market, staying ahead of LG Electronics and Samsung. Matsushita, which sells its TVs under the Panasonic brand, increased its market share to 37.3% in the fourth quarter.

Source:
News.com

Last month, Microsoft announced that Zune owners will be able to download a software update to fix several bugs with the device in mid-March, but the patch release has been delayed. For some Zune users, this update is vital, as it fixes a bug that makes music tracks skip during playback. These are songs downloaded from Microsoft's Zune marketplace.

Marketing director Jason Reindorp didn't give any new time-frame but assured that the patch is "very close to being ready." "The original date was an estimate based on how long we thought it would take to finish development work and put the update through normal testing processes," Reindorp said. "As with any project like this, things can sometimes take a little less time or a little more time."

The last Zune update was issued in December, adding support for the Windows Vista operating system.

Source:
News.com

A deal between Apple Computer Inc. and Sony Pictures Television has brought old classic TV shows from the 70s to the iTunes download store. Episodes of TV shows including Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels will be available on the service, and like all other TV show content, will cost the standard $1.99. Other Sony content available via iTunes includes Til' Death and Rules of Engagement.

Slowly, authorized services such as iTunes are building catalogs of TV shows and movies. The market for online video is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, but analysts warn it is vital that solutions to free content acquired online for use with regular TV sets and other consumers electronics equipment are developed.

Source:
News.com

While Sony has stated that it will take years for game developers to really utilize the PlayStation 3 (PS3)'s potential with software, Folding@Home, which is a feature added with the 1.6 update, is giving some indication of the PS3s sheer power. According to the Stanford project's latest statistics, the PS3 is leading all other platforms.

The statistics are sorted by operating system and show that the PS3, at the time of writing, has 516 current TFLOPS, very far ahead of the windows users that come in at 152, despite having thousands and thousands more active CPUs. Another statistic worth mentioning is for ATI GPUs, which currently sits at 41 TFLOPS with just 708 active CPUs. The PS3 currently shows 21062 active CPUs.

This is an incredible boost for the project and we can only hope that it will continue to grow. Here are the statistics at time of writing.

TDK, a world leader in digital recording solutions, today announced that it has begun shipping recordable Blu-ray Discs with printable surfaces. The two new products are the BD-R25PWX25CB for inkjet systems, and BD-R25THX25CB for thermal systems. The discs cost $24.99. Both incorporate exclusive surface coatings to deliver professional quality printing results. The discs utilize TDK's exclusive Durabis protective coating technology to offer enhanced durability.

You might remember that the first talk of Durabis and Blu-ray claimed you could apparently attack a protected BD disc with a screwdriver and it would be fine. "With the launch of these two new Blu-ray Discs, TDK is reaffirming its role as a leader in the format's advancement," commented Sethu Palat, TDK Director of Marketing.

He continued: "TDK's new 25GB BD-R printable surface media products deliver the exemplary performance and durability required for professional applications. Not only do the discs incorporate TDK's award-winning recording and hard coating technologies; they also offer optimal printing results with specially formulated print to the hub surfaces designed for inkjet and thermal systems."

Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan has ruled in favor of several Hollywood studios and television networks in the case over Cablevision Systems Corp.'s plan to create a network-based digital video recorder for its customers. Several Hollywood studios and television networks owned by Time Warner, Walt Disney Co., CBS and News Corp. claimed that Cablevision's plan would breach U.S. copyright laws.

The Remote Storage DVR, or RS-DVR, would have meant Cablevision wouldn't have to install hundreds of thousands of digital set-top boxes in subscribers' homes. The company has already installed more than 500,000 set-top boxes in customers' homes, and the planned RS-DVR would have saved the company a substantial amount from administration and maintenance costs.

While other cable operators had supported the idea for the system, the judge sided with Hollywood, finding that Cablevision storing recorded programs on their servers for their customers would break copyright agreements with content providers. "The RS-DVR is clearly a service, and I hold that in providing this service, it is Cablevision that does the copying," Chin said in his ruling.

The National Football League (NFL) has gotten itself caught up in an online battle over a YouTube clip with Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer, and has managed to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) through its actions. As a lesson to students about how content owners are beginning to exaggerate their rights, Seltzer posted a clip of the NFL's copyright message that aired during the Super Bowl.

"This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited," the notice read. Just five days after posting the clip on her blog, she received a takedown notice through YouTube, and the clip was removed.

However, Seltzer is also staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the founder of Chilling Effects, a website that educates the public about their rights online. She sent a counter-notification to YouTube which cited Section 512 of the DMCA. It meant that YouTube was compelled to replace the material on receiving a counter notification asserting "good faith belief" that the material removal was a mistake.

Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin testified to a Senate committee this week to attempt to convince the committee the proposed merger with XM Satellite Radio should not be considered an antitrust issues. Both satellite radio companies have proposed a $13 billion merger but the FCC is reluctant to play along. Karmazin made some promises and let his opinions known to the committee.

"I should point out that XM has the largest digital radio facility of its kind in the country and is headquartered right here in Washington where the combined company will continue to have a significant presence," he said at the beginning of his testimony, reminding the senators of the jobs that the companies have created. He also said he didn't believe this was an anti-trust issue because the combined company would still face a lot of competition.

He listed AM/FM analog radio, Internet Radio, HD Radio, streaming music to mobile phone and even equipment to use MP3 players in cars as competition. It was his belief that the market here is for digital audio and that how it is delivered doesn't really matter; its not just "Satellite Radio" to think about anymore.

AT&T is hoping to lure new customers by bringing U-verse services to PCs. Until now, U-verse was considered just a competitor to to traditional cable and satellite companies, but now with a new package called U-verse OnTheGo, subscribers can watch TV channels on a PC if there is a broadband connection available. The initial TV stations that will be offered include The Weather Channel and Bloomberg Television.

The company is offering a 14 day free trial of OnTheGo to customers but requires a prior subscription to the U-verse IPTV service. The service currently offers just under 30 channels in total. After the trial period ends, it will cost $10 per month on top of the existing U-verse package.

The service, like AT&T's U-verse IPTV offering, is only available in a limited number of U.S. urban markets. The company pledged to add more channels to OnTheGo as time progresses and to expand throughout the country. The OnTheGo service is currently limited to the Windows XP operating system using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

Source:
News.com

The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has filed a lawsuit against XM Satellite Radio, accusing the service of copyright infringement over its "XM + MP3" music service. XM + MP3 allows users to record on-air tracks through devices like the Pioneer Inno player. Music publishers are crying foul, saying that XM users are making permanent copies with compensating songwriters and without any permission.

Lead attorney Debra Wong Yang wrote in a statement that the service, "constitutes pervasive and willful copyright infringement to the overwhelming detriment of copyright holders, legitimate online music services and, ultimately, consumers." XM and Sirius also have the RIAA on their backs over ability of listeners to record music from the services.

XM has argued that its listeners are fully entitled to make recordings under the 1992 Home Recording Act. However, the record labels insist that the devices used to make the recordings are "iPod-like" and that the services have become more like music download services like iTunes and so should fall under a different copyright licensing regime.

Microsoft Corp. has closed its Soapbox video sharing service to new users while the company attempts to improve anti-piracy measures on the site. Just like any other video sharing site, Soapbox immediately began to fill up with pirated video clips when the test version of the service was launched last month. No new subscribers will be allowed to sign up for access the site, but anybody who already holds an account can access the site.

Microsoft could have been faced with a dilemma of distributing legitimate videos for major content companies on one of its units, while on another there were thousands of unauthorized videos available for free. YouTube found itself the recipient of a billion dollar lawsuit courtesy of Viacom due to the thousands of video clips users have uploaded without permission.

Microsoft has licensed digital-fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic to help filter out unauthorized material. Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online-services group, said that the temporary closure of Soapbox was not forced on Microsoft by its partners, but said that they were interested in how the company planned to clean up Soapbox.

Sony has given a great surprise to those waiting to buy a PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in London; a 46" LCD HDTV television set and a free ride home. The giveaway involved more than 100 gamers and cost about £250,000. "I feel fantastic. I'm delighted that everyone here also gets a television." 17-year-old Ritatsu Thomas, the customer at the head of the queue, said.

The PS3 costs £425 in the UK and its game line-up is starting to improve. It includes a Blu-ray drive for games and for movies and a powerful Cell processor. The launch in the UK and the rest of Europe was delayed by four months due to production problems. Australian gamers are also able to get their hands on a PS3 now.

Ray Maguire, head of Sony Computer Entertainment in the UK, said that the TV giveaway at the London event was a reward for the patience of the gamers. Say what you want about the £425 price tag for the PS3, but if you are one of the lucky people who also got a free LCD TV, then you got a bargain!

Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has launched in Europe and Australia today, March 23rd 2007. The latest installment of the PlayStation franchise launched in both the North America and Japan in November 2006, but production problems led to an additional four month delay for PAL territories. The PS3 console is a powerful gaming console/home entertainment device/computer, striving to be the most powerful gaming console of the generation when pitted against Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

While being last to the starting line, at least in Europe, the PS3 still has received phenomenal demand according to retailers, despite also being the most expensive console. It costs AUD$999 in Australia and the price in Europe is set at €599 but varies in many countries (€629 in Ireland, £425 in UK etc.). Another notable difference between the launch in PAL territories and the launch in NTSC territories is the absence of a 20GB model in Europe and Australia. Only the more expensive 60GB model is available for the launch.

A new site, Kongregate.com, aims to bring independent game developers to a YouTube-like system that offers revenue sharing. Video game maker Jim Greer came up with the idea, and after pitching it to some Silicon Valley investors, he received $1 million for the start-up. The site was opened shortly after Christmas and is open to all developers.

Currently it only hosts about 300 games. "Not all of them are gems, but the top 100 are," said Greer. The 36 year old founded the company with his younger sister Emily, 32. Reid Hoffman, founder of business networking site LinkedIn, said that the timing was the reason for his decision to invest in the company.

"If you get thousands of people creating content, really interesting things emerge," said Hoffman, who describes himself as an occasional gamer. Greer is not new to the video game business at all, having made his first computer games on an Apple II at the age of 12 and proceeding to work with Origin Systems. He also served as technical director Electronic Arts Inc.'s Pogo.com Web site, which attracts about 14 million gamers (mostly middle aged female).

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is now in a tough position after a judge made it clear that the trade group cannot walk away quietly from its case against New York resident Patricia Santangelo. The court said that Santangelo has the right to have her legal status resolved "one way or the other". This leaves the RIAA with a choice to either go to trial or dismiss the case with prejudice.

If the RIAA goes to trial, it is very likely that Santangelo's defense will prove she was not guilty of copyright infringement. That loss would be devastating to the RIAA's campaign against file sharing. If the trade group decides to dismiss the case with prejudice, it is still a resolution in Santangelo's favor and makes the RIAA responsible for court costs and is basically an admission of no case against Santangelo.

Either choice will also, no doubt, impact the RIAA's case against Patricia's children, Michelle and Robert, both of whom were targeted by the RIAA in November. "This case is two years old," Judge Colleen McMahon wrote. "There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright or they do not."

Toshiba Corp. has responded to Sony's previous announced of the BDP-S300 Blu-ray player, which will cost $599, by making further price cuts to its standalone line up. Begining April 1st (not a joke), the HD-A2 will sell for $399 and HD-A20 will sell for $499, meaning that Toshiba is now selling the lowest price next-gen, stand-alone high definition disc player on the market (below $400).

The company has also made a price cut to the HD-XA2, which will cost $799, down from $999. Price cuts for HD DVD were expected with the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and the BDP-S300 Blu-ray player. Deputy General manager of HD DVD at Toshiba, Olivier Van Wynendaele, said recently that it is far too early for either side to declare victory when so few players are being sold, but promised to undercut any forthcoming Blu-ray price drops.

Source:
Hi-Def Digest

NBC Universal has decided to build its own social networking service aimed at challenging the dominance of News Corp's MySpace and Google Inc.'s YouTube. Like its rivals-to-be, NBC's service, which will be hosted at NBC.com, will allow users to share NBC video content and post them on blogs and other social networking sites. NBC hopes to capture some viewers from sites like YouTube.

Again, like MySpace and YouTube, users can upload their own produced video content and images, and share them with other users. Public profiles will also be offered and users will be able to create fan groups around their favorite television shows. Huge content providers such as NBC hope to use their influence to gather a lot of web traffic to earn advertising dollars.

Source:
Reuters

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has requested that a federal court protect the free speech rights of activism site MoveOn.org and Brave New Films after a Viacom DMCA takedown notice resulted in the removal of a legitimate video. The video, titled "Stop the Falsiness," was a parody of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report". It pokes fun at both host Stephen Colbert and MoveOn's own political activism.

The video was uploaded to YouTube in August 2006, and does in fact include clips from The Colbert Report. However, as far as the EFF is concerned, use of these clips is protected by the same fair use that protects comedians such as Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart. "Our clients' video is an act of free speech and a fair use of 'Colbert Report' clips," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Viacom knows this -- it's the same kind of fair use that 'The Colbert Report' and 'The Daily Show' rely upon every night as they parody other channels' news coverage."

The EFF has challenged many abusers of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's takedown notice system, saying that even just an allegation of copyright infringement is enough to result in content removal; a "shoot first, ask questions later" later policy that the group says can silence online artists and critics, creating unfair hurdles to free speech.

Plextor has revealed its compact "dual-bay" PX-DB600, which enables two optical slim line drives to be positioned into the space of just one 5.25" drive bay. This is ideal for small form-factor media center PCs. The Plextor PX-DB600 combines with the Plextor PX-608AL as PX-DB608AL. The PX-608AL is a multi-format DVD burner that supports DVD+/-R and DVD-RAM.

"By their very nature lifestyle PC systems are compact and designed to take up less space. Unlike traditional desktop systems, extra drive bays are often unavailable, therefore limiting opportunities for adding optical drives. So for those users who do not want to add the extra clutter of an external USB box, the Plextor PX-DB608AL is ideal." Rudy de Meirsman, Sales & Marketing Manager of Plextor Europe, said.

Plextor will sell the PX-DB608AL product, which will include the PX-DB600 dual bay unit with 2 slim line slots, including interface boards, and slot covers, PX-608AL slim line slot loaded optical drive and a suite of software including Nero and Plextools.

With the Sony PS3 console set to launch tomorrow in Europe, retailers are reporting phenomenal demand for the console. The European launch was originally set for November 2006, but was delayed due to many factors including Blu-Ray component production problems. Now the PlayStation 3 (PS3) is about to be launched (and some Italian retailers have broken the street date) but some European gamers are still disappointed and upset that the delay took place.

However, David Reeves, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) president and CEO, has said that he doesn't see the launch delay as "disappointing", but instead it will be beneficial for Sony. "It's not. It has been really beneficial to us. We're going to get it right." he said in an interview. "It has been rather like taking a bottle of soda water and we've shaken it so hard over the last six months that when we take the cork off, it's just going to explode."

He also took the opportunity to respond to critics claims that the console's demand is being over-estimated and that because pre-orders are still available even now, the phenomenal demand claim is hard to believe. Reeves said that just because the stores aren't out of stocks yet doesn't mean that the console is selling strongly.

Microsoft Corp. is currently investigating claims of fraud on the Xbox Live network, but has re-assured the six million users of Xbox Live that there has been no security breach. "Recently, there have been reports of fraudulent activity and account theft taking place on the Xbox Live network," Microsoft said in a statement. On March 11th, a user posted a complaint to the Xbox forums about a stolen account and credit card details.

"We want to reassure all of our 6 million Xbox Live members that we have looked into the situation and found no evidence of any compromise of the security of Bungie.net or our Live network," the company said. The Redmond-based software giant said that there was a few isolated incidents where malicious users attempted to get personal information from unsuspecting users, and in turn use the information to access the victim's Xbox Live account.

Security on the Xbox Live network is a huge concern for Microsoft, who's products are targeted the most by hackers.

Source:
Reuters

It appears that efforts to hack Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console may have gotten a big boost today with the discovery of a bug that could lead to working exploits to inject code. This in turn, could lead to PS3 homebrew and ISO loaders. Hacker "hacked2123" is given credit for distributing a proof-of-concept example for the LibMPEG exploit, which is confirmed working with v1.10 and v1.11.

There has been a lot of rumor and speculation lately about possible methods to hack the PS3 console and possibly boot games. Blu-Ray games can be fairly easily dumped to the PS3 HDD and several have been available to download for months now. It will be interesting to see what this develops in to.

Source:
PS3News

The mega-popular Xbox 360 video game Gears of War will follow Halo in a transition to film. The film rights to Gears of War have been acquired by New Line Cinema. The title sold more than 3 million copies in 10 weeks after its launch and replaced Halo 2 as the most popular title on the Xbox Live service. It received several awards including "Game of the year" from Gamespot and the Interactive Achievement Awards' "Overall Game of the Year".

Gears of War tells the story about a war between humans and the Locust Horde on the planet of Sera. Players are part of Delta squad as they execute a plan to end the war for good. Lead game designer, Cliff Bleszinski, has been working for screenwriter Stuart Beattie, aiming to create a movie that will appeal to both the fans of the game and regular moviegoers.

The team hopes to create a motion picture that will improve greatly upon several past attempts to bring popular video games to cinema screens. "We're not going to do a to a lowest-common-denominator movie," said producer Matty Bowen, who is working on the project with Wyck Godfrey. "We're going to attempt to elevate it. And we're starting off by having an A-list writer doing it."

Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN has taken down another P2P site: dsb-tracker.org. This Dutch language BitTorrent site offered torrent links to popular films, music, games and software to 8,300 registered users. BREIN executes structural civil law enforcement against illegal P2P sites and over the past 15 months 131 sites that facilitated around 1.6 million users were taken down.

BRIEN had previously contacted and threatened the site owner, but was ignored. BREIN then demanded the site's hosting provider, Leaseweb, take down dsb-tracker.org, a move which led to the operator taking it down himself. This operator was also owner of the site dsb-scene.org, which was also put on notice by BREIN. "Although this action concerns smaller sites we did consider requesting a name disclosure because the operator continued his activities after our notice." Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, said.

BREIN demands that site operators to give themselves up and sign an undertaking to cease and desist from their "illegal" activities under forfeiture of a penalty. If the operators cannot be reached or fail to respond, BREIN requires the service provider to take the site down and disclose the name and address of the owner or operator. BREIN holds the owners and operators of P2P sites liable for the infringements that take place through their services.

Skype and PayPal have teamed up to offer users the ability to send money to other Skype users easily using the PayPal system. Niklas Zennstrom, Skype co-founder, revealed the new service on Tuesday at a technology conference in Silicon Valley. He did not say when this service will be available for Skype's millions of users. Both Skype and PayPal are units of auction giant eBay.

PayPal is already the most popular payment method for Skype users paying for long-distance Skype phone calls to other phones. "You can send money over Skype," Zennstrom said of the upcoming service plan. "This is basically connecting the Skype community over PayPal. All the user needs is a PayPal account."

A Skype spokesperson said that the service should be formally unveiled within a month. "A lot of people using Skype are people who have friends and family on the other side of the world," Zennstrom said. At the end of 2006, Skype had 171 million registered users worldwide.

Source:
Reuters

Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio have both been sued by Austin, Texas-based company Keystone Autonics, for alleged patent infringement. Keystone Autonics claims that both radio companies are using technology taken directly from patents it owns. Sirius and XM are already experiencing several problems, which include the RIAA and critics of their proposed merger.

The patent in question was awarded to George Hindman of Keystone Autonics in January. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is also clashing with the pair over a bill the trade group supports that would prevent users from being able to locally store and record songs aired over satellite radio.

Sirius and XM have previously agreed to merge in a $13 billion agreement, but have met opposition from several sources including the FCC, which indicated the companies would have a hard time getting that deal through and that an approval would be unlikely.

Source:
DailyTech

LG Electronics has revealed that it expects retailers to charge about $60 for devices used to convert digital TV signals to analog. LG is one company that is producing these boxes, which will prevent analog TVs from "going dark" when the United States changes to digital-only broadcasts. "We plan to have the boxes available in early 2008," John Taylor, LG's vice president of U.S. government relations, said.

The transition will be made in the United States on February 17, 2009. Without a converter box, analog TV users will have to either subscribe to satellite or digital cable, or replace their TV with a digital television. The production cost of the devices was not revealed by LG.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency, is responsible for a "coupon" system that $40 discount coupons to consumers to help buy the converter boxes. It expects to have a system in place to accept requests for coupons by January 1, 2008.

Source:
Reuters

Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. has announced the launch of its Removable Hard Disk Drive iV, the world's first iVDR standard hard disk drive capable of recording copyright protected High Definition (HD) content without quality loss. The small iVDR fits in the palm of the hand but features a maximum capacity of 160GB and a data transfer rate of 540 Mbit/s. Employing SAFIA copyright protection technology, Removable Hard Disk Drive iV is a new iVDR-Secure type media ideal for recording and transferring HD and SD content.

In recent years, as terrestrial digital broadcasting has become more commonplace, HD video content has become more widespread. Recording long HD broadcasts requires a lot of storage space. Moreover, recording copyright protected digital content or moving it from a recorder or other internal hard disks requires media capable of copyright protection.

The iVDR Consortium was established in March 2002 and now consists of more than 50 companies promoting the iVDR standard. With this, the diffusion of iVDR-compatible devices is expected to increase dramatically. These iVDR devices will be used as bridge media to record HD and SD content that can then be viewed on a player or in a car, for example.

The popular burning/multimedia suite Nero Burning Rom has been updated today to version 7.8.5.0. Nero 7 Premium is compatible with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system and supports, among other things, Blu-ray and HD DVD writing, free VoIP telephony, unlimited MP3 support and offers a media center for mobile devices. Monthly updates are available for free.

Download Nero Burning ROM v7.8.5.0 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_applications/nero.cfm

Visit Nero's Homepage at:
http://www.nero.com/enu/index.html

No changelog was provided with the update.

Source:
CDFreaks

Sony Corp. has moved to soften worries about backwards compatibility issues in the European PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, set to launch in PAL territories on Friday. The hardware (emotion engine) that provided support for PS2 titles was removed and replaced with a software emulation solution instead. Sony had previously said the console will support 1000 older titles at launch.

"If your game is not listed here, emulation is not yet supported on PlayStation 3," The backwards compatibility website, which can be found here, reads. "We will be adding additional titles to this list in future firmware upgrades," added David Reeves, President of Sony Computer Entertainment.

Visit the PS3 Backwards Compatibility site at: http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc/

Source:
Reuters

According to Screen Digest, Sony is set to sell 4 million PlayStation 3 (PS3) units in Europe in 2007. Analyst Nick Parker, told the Times Online that plentiful stocks of the console could not be seen to indicate poor sales performance. "The lack of shortage is supply driven; what Sony has shipped will sell," he said. "We estimate that Sony will sell around 4 million units in Europe this year, with 1 to 1.5 million in the UK."

He said that PS3 could overtake Wii in the sales stakes next year, if not by the end of 2007. He also claimed that Microsoft's Xbox 360 is showing signs that its demand has peaked, with sales being only 1% higher than the same time last year. The PS3 will go on sale in Europe on March 23rd for €599 (£425).

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

According to DigiTimes, DVD burners capable of writing speeds up to 20X stand a good chance of becoming the mainstream writing speed of DVD burners by the fourth quarter of this year. Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell are evaluating the adoption of half-height 20x DVD burners, and other PC brands already having decided to adopt such burners.

Lite-On IT started volume production of 20x DVD burners in late 2006. Both Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) and Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology (TSST) began 18X DVD Burner production at the same time, uninterested in producing 20X models then. However, sources claimed that in the emergence of OEM and ODM orders for 20x DVD burners, HLDS, TSST and Pioneer are preparing to begin volume productions of 20X burners in the second quarter.

Source:
DigiTimes

In a yet to be aired interview with the American PBS program CEO Exchange, Sony boss, Sir Howard Stringer is noted to have called Nintendo's Wii console "a wonderful device." Nintendo's Wii has topped the console sales for both January and February in the United States. Honesty exists in the games industry, but it is rare, and is always followed with some form of a "but..".

Naturally, Stringer sang praises for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, referring to it as the "Mercedes of the video game field". "If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field." he said in the interview. "PS3 is after a different audience and it can be whatever it wants — a home server, game device, even a computer."

He also expects Blu-ray to win the format war with HD DVD, mainly due to increased movie studio support.

Source:
Pocket-Lint.co.uk

Movie Gallery, which operates both Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video, has announced that the company will offer its customer online DVD rentals in an effort to take some customers back from Netflix and Blockbuster. The company's own research showed that its customers were loyal when looking for newer DVD releases, but turned to online alternatives for older movies.

The chain also said it plans to avoid the high-cost advertising battle now underway between Netflix and Blockbuster, and instead aims to simply offer its existing customers access to low-cost online rentals through the service. Ever since its acquisition of Hollywood Video back in 2005, the chain has been struggling, plunging deep into debt.

At the end of 2006, it was $1.1 billion in debt. It is currently re-negotiating the terms of its debt agreements and hopes to return to profitability this quarter.

Source:
Betanews

Nintendo has denied rumors circulating that the company is currently developing an external hard disk drive for the Wii console. The rumors sourced from a Japanese gaming magazine Gamelabo report that Nintendo executives had a meeting to discuss the new HDD component. GamesIndustry.biz contacted a Nintendo of Europe spokesperson, who denied the claim saying it was just "pure rumour and speculation".

However, the company did confirm that a new headset peripheral for the DS handheld device will be available in the United States soon. It will allow players to take part in online voice chats and is due to go on sale alongside Pokémon Diamond and Pearl next month. No European release for the peripheral has been confirmed just yet, but it is likely to be available at the some time as Pokémon Diamond and Pearl this year.

Sources:
GamesIndustry.biz
GameSpot

Toshiba has rejected claims from the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) that Blu-ray is winning the format war. Olivier Van Wynendaele, Deputy General manager of HD DVD at Toshiba Ltd, accused the group of using propaganda in their press releases and at CeBIT in Germany this year. The BDA and news sources have been reporting that Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by a ratio of 3:1 in the U.S., which Van Wynendaele strongly denies.

He told Tech.co.uk that the reason for the sudden surge in Blu-ray figures was due to new owners of the PlayStation 3 console redeeming Blu-ray movie vouchers given to them by Sony. The vouchers can be exchanged at retail stores and Van Wynendaele said this has distorted the genuine sales figures.

He then went on to say that over 200,000 HD DVD stand-alone players were sold in the United States, compared to 30,000 stand-alone Blu-ray players, and criticized the BDA for attempting to count all PS3s as Blu-ray player sales when they have no proof that customers are using them for anything other than games or are interested in buying any Blu-ray movies at all.

Google has stepped into the in-game advertising business with the acquisition of Adscape, the Internet giant revealed on its website on Friday. Financial details were not disclosed, but technology site Red Herring, previously reported the value of the deal to be around $23 million. Video game analysts said Google's step into the field could boost the business significantly.

"As more and more people spend time playing video games, we think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences while maintaining a high quality, engaging user experience," Google said on its site. "We think this rich environment is a perfect medium to deliver relevant, targeted advertising that ultimately benefits the user, the video game publisher and the advertiser."

Microsoft Corp. previously purchased Massive Inc. for $200 million, sealing itself into the market. Massive struck several deals with publishers including UbiSoft Entertainment SA, THQ Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. to place advertisements in their titles. Many experts say that Google dropped the ball when that deal was struck.

Source:
Reuters

Sony Computer Entertainment Australia (SCEA) has announced it will hold its official midnight launch event for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in Sydney's Pitt St Mall. Retailer Myer has teamed up with SCEA for the event. The retailer will set up a big viewing space outside its store and will hold a free public screening of Casino Royale for the gamers waiting to get their hands on a PS3.

The film will be played directly from a PlayStation 3 and will begin at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 22. Sydney radio personality Lizzy Lovett from 2Day FM will be the host for the event and gamers will get a chance to play the PS3 on the big screen and there will also be "PlayStation-themed" giveaways.

Additionally, Myer will provide a free Blu-ray copy of Talladega Nights to the first 100 people who buy a PS3 console (The first 20,000 Australian users to register their PS3s on the PlayStation Network will get a copy of Casino Royale). The 60GB version of the console will be available for purchase for A$999.95 from March 23rd.

Source:
GameSpot

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all had their personal response to the NPD figures for February hardware and software sales, which showed Nintendo's Wii as the dominating console in the United States. Nintendo wasted no time in issuing a press release about the 335,000 Wii units and 485,000 DS units sold, accounting for 54% of (gaming) hardware sales for the month.

Nintendo also pointed out that of the four best selling games, three were for Nintendo systems. Microsoft responded to the figures by pointing out that the title Crackdown for the Xbox 360, was the best selling for the month. The company also said that an average of 5.4 games were sold to each Xbox 360 owner, compared to PlayStation 3's ratio of 2.3, and the Wii's rate of 2.8. Microsoft claimed that at the same point in the Xbox 360's lifespan, the attach rate was 3.8.

As for Sony, the company compared the month against February 2006, and told GameSpot that it brought in 67% more retail dollars in February 2007. "The PlayStation brand remained the number-one revenue driver for the month in the industry owning 38.5 percent of total sales," a representative said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has recently taken on several individuals that have abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) takedown notice process. The group recently filed two cases against two abusers, and it is rumored that Viacom may also be tackled by the group. The first of these cases was against Michael Crook.

Crook responded to Craigslist personal ads and made a list of those he considered "perverts" and posted them publicly online. After a Fox News appearance, several pictures of him (from that appearance) appeared on some blogs. Crook used DMCA takedown notices to order that the pictures be removed. He also claimed that he owned the copyright to the images.

Of course, the two problems with the notices are that he didn't own the copyright to the images and that "fair use" would have allowed the pictures in any event anyway. The EFF stepped in then and in a settlement, Crook agreed to stop using the takedown notices and recorded an apology video.

In another interesting ongoing case, the EFF has gone after Richard Silver, the "creator" of the Electric Slide dance. He claimed that a video uploaded to YouTube violated his copyright. According to the EFF's complaint, the video actually only had about 10 seconds of steps that "resembled" the Electric Slide, which was enough for Silver to issue a DMCA takedown notice against YouTube.

ASUS is showing off new notebooks that include a HD DVD drive at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. "In both computing and entertainment, content increasingly available in high definition up to native HD resolution has created a whole new level of multimedia experience. This new high resolution entertainment and gaming experience allows users to reach the heights of excitement, awe, and joy on various type of displays," a company news release states.

Incorporated with Toshiba's HD DVD-R optical drive, the W1 and W2 notebooks can read discs with up to 30GB of data, including video, photo and music all from a single HD DVD disc. The HD DVD-R optical drive also plays HD DVD movies at a resolution that is six times sharper than the DVD format, presenting a vibrant, incredibly sharp and state-of-art multimedia experience.

The W1 and W2 series offer an all-round high-definition experience with built-in digital TV tuner and HDMI interface, supporting standard, enhanced, or high-definition video, plus multi-channel digital audio on a single cable.

New internal and external Blu-ray drives are being shipped by Other World Computing (OWC), designed for both Macs and Windows PCs. The prices start at $559.99 for internal drives and US$649.99 for external drives. For Mac users, OWC also offers the full version of Roxio's Toast 8 Titanium software with the drives.

The internal drive configuration is a standard IDE/ATAPI drive. The external drive features both USB and FireWire 400 ports to connect to the computer. Two 25GB (single-layer) Blu-ray media discs are included with the drives.

Blu-ray is currently outselling the HD DVD format in the United States, helped by the November launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console.

Source:
PC World

Those who are interested in purchasing a TiVo Series 3 HD digital video recorder (DVR) but are put off by the $800 price tag will be happy to know that the company is working on reducing the price to boost falling sales. TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in a conference call that it is important for the company to drop the price of the device if its to move further into the HDTV sector.

"We will be highly focused this year on moving forward with a lower-priced, mass appeal High-Def unit, which will allow us to much better participate in the HD television trend," said Rogers to analysts in a recent earnings report. "The other clear learning at retail is that High-Definition television sets are the most important new consumer electronics item."

He continued: "Given the price of our HD unit, we were not able to meaningfully participate in that trend. This also clearly contributed to lower sales volume compared to a year ago, when this trend was nowhere near as significant."

Source:
DailyTech

LG Electronics has revealed the price of its new internal disc drive that is capable of reading and rewriting Blu-ray blank media and reading HD DVD-ROM discs. LG already offers a hybrid stand-alone player for both formats, but it lacks support for several aspects of HD-DVD, meaning it carries no HD DVD logo. The GGW-H10N "Super Multi Blue" drive will cost a whopping $1,200 to buy.

It can burn both single layer and dual layer Blu-ray discs, supporting up to 4x write speed for single layer (24 minutes per disc), but drops back to 2x for dual layer. The 4x write speed is welcome, but the market currently only offers consumers single layer Blu-ray media, mostly with 2x write speed support for about $11 to $20 per disc.

The GGW-H10N will also read and write DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CD-R and CD-RW.

After it emerged earlier this week that Viacom Inc. had filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google over its YouTube video sharing site, Google was quick to claim it had protection under the "safe harbor" provisions set present in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Google also said that the lawsuit would not alter its service or distract it from its work.

However, Viacom lawyer, Don Verrilli, has struck at Google's claim of protection under DMCA and at the law itself. Firstly, he said that Google does not fit the criteria needed to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions. He said that under Section 512 of the DMCA, a "service provider" must be unaware of infringing activity and must not make direct financial gain from it.

He believes that Google is aware of the mass-infringement on the site and has no problem filter content for any distribution partners. "YouTube has done a lot of social good that comes with a very significant problem," Verilli said. "And the significant problem that comes along with the good is that there is an enormous, enormous amount of copyrighted video works uploaded onto YouTube and viewed on a staggeringly high level by YouTube users."

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been given until March 26th to produce billing records and timesheets in a case against Debbie Foster and her daughter Amanda. The records are necessary to help Foster calculate how much the RIAA has spent in attorneys fees after failing to sue the Oklahoma woman. This case spans back to 2004, when Debbie was originally sued for allegedly illegally sharing pirated songs on P2P networks.

Foster denied any part in illegal file sharing, but the RIAA kept up its case and added Debbie's daughter, Amanda, to the lawsuit. Instead of settling like most do, Debbie challenged the RIAA to produce further evidence including dates and times and records of the files she supposedly pirated. After not producing any records, the RIAA offered to withdraw its case.

In response, Debbie has asked to be awarded reasonable attorneys fees after the whole ordeal. She submitted her expenses to the court, to which the RIAA claimed she was asking for too much. It is this claim that led to the Judge ordering the RIAA to disclose its own legal fees.

A new start-up from San Diego is set to pit itself against giants in the music industry including Apple Computer Inc. and XM Satellite Radio. A beta version of Slacker was launched on Wednesday, and it aims to take digital radio beyond the web. It's founders include former CEOs in the business, including Dennis Mudd from MusicMatch and Jonathan Sasse from iRiver.

Its service is similar to those offered by Yahoo! Music and Pandora, allowing users to select radio stations based on their preferences or creating custom stations by selecting songs as their favorites. A user cannot play any track on-demand, instead the service will use a recommendation engine to play music the user will probably like, introducing them possibly to new artists.

Later this year, the company will release Slacker Jukebox, desktop software that will have an optional $7.50 per month Premium subscription service to remove advertisements and store all "favorited" songs on a computer. The company also plans to launch a portable player later on with a 4-inch color screen and WiFi connectivity.

Source:
Betanews

At CeBIT technology fair in Hannover, Germany, Devolo is showing off technology to route data throughout mains power circuits in a home. While this concept is already in use and is improving as time goes on, Devolo has developed technology to route TV signals throughout the home using mains power circuits. These systems typically work using a specially adapted plug that acts as a mini-hub to route data to devices around the house.

"It connects to the set-top box and converts that TV signal to an IP signal," said Andre Jansen, a spokesman for Devolo. "The adapter has a range of 200m and that's enough for a normal private household." Devolo has yet to announce prices or availability of the home TV network system.

Source:
BBC News

Nero announced today that Nero Linux 3 will be unveiled at CeBIT in Germany. The new version of the definitive burning application for Linux operating systems will add Blu-Ray and HD DVD data recording support as well as an improved graphical user interface (GUI) that is similar to the look and feel of the current Nero Burning ROM 7 edition.

"Nero has long recognized the importance of including the Linux community in our broad user base," said Udo Eberlein, Chief Operating Officer, Nero AG. "By ensuring that the functionalities of our most popular application are available to users of the Linux operating systems, we are also ensuring that Nero's cutting-edge burning technology is enjoyed by users all over the world."

In addition to Blu-ray and HD DVD burning capabilities, Nero Linux 3 will also natively support 64-bit systems, as well as Unicode in all languages currently supported by Nero's flagship product, Nero 7. A beta version of Nero Linux 3 is expected to be available at the end of March 2007. Nero's OEM partners will be able to bundle Nero Linux 3 starting in mid-May 2007 offering a unique solution to the growing community of Linux OS users and fans. Many Linux distributions will be supported in the new upgrade including Red Hat Enterprises, Fedora Core, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Linspire, and Mandriva.

Fengtao Software Inc. has become the latest to offer a solution to the average computer user to bypass Advanced Access Content System (AACS) on HD DVD discs to copy the content. DVDFab HD Decrypter 3.0.9.0 Beta has been released, adding support for HD DVD and there is support promised for Blu-ray titles soon. Here is a changelog...

• New: Added support for HD-DVD.
• New: Copy HD-DVD to hard disk in "Full Disc" mode, in less than one hour.
• Change: Significantly reduced the time to open DVD.
• Fix: Several minor problems.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) head of corporate communications, Nick Sharples, said that the company is still on track to reach its target of 6 million PS3 units shipped by the end of March. He re-confirmed Sony's target in an interview with Bloomberg at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. He also said that Sony will reveal shipment estimates for financial year ending March 2008 on May 13th.

Some have cast doubt on Sony's target, which was initially set about a year ago when the PS3 was still on target for a global launch in November. However, some Blu-ray component production problems and other issues, saw the console being delayed in PAL territories. The European launch of the PS3 is on March 23rd.

To make up for the delay in Europe, Sony has promised that one million units will be available on launch date, more than the number of Xbox 360's and Wii's available on day one, put together. Sharples also revealed that a beta test of the PlayStation Home feature will begin next month.

Toshiba has shown off a new stand-alone HD DVD player at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. This is the third player that will be available in the European market. The HD-EP10 offers 1080p full HD output, improving upon the HD-E1's performance. The player also features upscaling abilities for DVD-Video, up to 720p, 1080i and 1080p. It is set to retail for about €699.

Included also is support for the lossless audio compressions Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (but unlike the top-end HD-XE1, there are no analogue 5.1 audio-out connections). "Toshiba’s HD-E1 and HD-XE1 set benchmarks in high definition home entertainment, both in terms of performance and value for money," said Olivier Van Wynendaele, Deputy General Manager, HD DVD, Toshiba Information Systems(UK) Ltd.

European Commission (EC) telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, has called on those involved in the emerging Mobile TV technology to agree on adopting a single technology standard, and warned about possible intervention if such an decision is not made soon. She said that Europe is risking blowing its chance to become a player in the global Mobile TV market. She made her comments at CeBIT in Hannover Germany.

Across the world, trials of Mobile TV technology are currently underway, as content providers and phone companies are assessing the global consumer demand for TV-on-the-go services. Despite the success of the trials, Reding said she was disappointed with the progress being made by the industry in standardizing the technology.

"The industry should agree on one standard. I think there's no more time to lose here," she said. "In the end I could mandate the standard but I do not want to do that." The European Mobile Broadcasting Council (EMBC) was setup last year with help from the EC, and it brought together everybody interested in the technology, hoping to get stakeholders talking and working towards a unified technology.

HMV and SEGA have teamed up for the UK launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. In HMV's Oxford Street store, the launch will take place at 7:30pm next Friday, March 23rd. As part of the promotional agreement, the first 150 customers to buy a PS3 will receive a free copy of Virtua Tennis. Throughout the entire day the store will host demos of the game and other promotional activities.

The original plan to sell PS3s from the store at midnight was changed, although some regional stores will go ahead with that plan. "We will be opening 50 key stores around the country at midnight. However, we have decided to open the doors of our Oxford Street store at 7.30am on the Friday," a spokesman said. "We believe this is the most practical response to various sets of circumstances."

The change of plan was for many reasons, including concerns from police about safety of shoppers at a midnight launch.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners will soon be able to join a Stanford-run distributed-computing effort that researches Cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's causes (amongst other things). The Folding@Home project is similar to SETI@Home, except it studies protein folding in hopes to determine causes of various lethal conditions.

It works by using CPU cycles on a computer to complete workloads sent to it from the project's servers. When completed it sends its results back and downloads information for its next task. When you multiply participating CPUs by thousands you reach the power of super computers.

Folding@Home teams are found particularly amongst computer hardware enthusiasts like overclockers. It is for a great cause and its functionality in the PS3 could boost the project significantly. Ken Kutaragi actually announced that Folding@Home would be part of the PS3 at last year's Tokyo Game Show.

"Millions of users have experienced the power of PS3 entertainment. Now they can utilize that exceptional computing power to help fight diseases," Masayuki Chatani, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief technical officer, said in a statement. "In order to study protein folding, researchers need more than just one supercomputer, but the massive processing power of thousands of networked computers. Previously, PCs have been the only option for scientists, but now, they have a new, more powerful tool--[the] PS3."

The HD DVD group has launched the European version of the HD DVD Promotional Group, to be led by Toshiba, Microsoft, Universal, and French movie producer Studio Canal. In Europe, HD DVD is estimated to have an 85% market share, which it captured in just four months. The HD DVD group is now trying to cement its presence in Europe ahead of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) launch.

The European group has gotten its own site, but it doesn't exactly look very European. For example, it only offers English and German versions and the intro video is helicopter shots of the skyline over Manhattan. it is effectively a copy of the American promotional site.

When the PlayStation 3 (PS3) launches in Europe in a week, it will no doubt alter the market share in little time.

Source:
Betanews

Nintendo's Wii console was the best selling console in the United States in February according to figures from market research firm NPD. In total, Nintendo managed to move 335,000 Wii consoles and the company claims it is still struggling to keep up with demand. Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, which has been out since November 2005, had a good month selling 228,000 units.

Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3), which retails for $499 (20GB) and $599 (60GB), sold 127,000 units in the month, which emphasizes the big difference to Wii's $250 price tag. Unsurprisingly, the low-cost last-cycle king, PlayStation 2 (PS2), is still walking tall with 295,000 units sold during the month.

Source:
Reuters

Sharp Corporation has announced it will begin of the High-Power Blue-Violet Laser Diode GH04P21A2G that achieves a power output of 210 mW, the industry's highest power output, in May. This device will enable high-speed 6X recording on next-generation dual-layer Blu-ray Discs (BD) and HD-DVDs.

This year, the market for recorders and PCs capable of recording on next-generation DVDs is expected to take off in earnest, and demand for blue laser diodes, the key device in this type of equipment, is projected to increase in tandem. Users are also expected to demand faster recording times in the future which will require speeding up the write process for individual layers on these discs.

Since beginning mass production of the industry’s first infrared laser diode for use in CD players in 1982, Sharp has consistently been an industry leader in both technology and production. The GH04P21A2G makes full use of crystal growth technology developed for infrared, red, and blue-violet low-power laser diodes. In addition to a newly developed laser chip with a proprietary facet structure and a high power output of 210 mW that will contribute to high-speed recording for the next generation of DVDs, this current device also features a long service life of 10,000 hours, a level that leads the industry.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has made a bold claim at CeBIT this year. The consortium behind the Blu-ray Disc format, expect the 25GB-per-layer optical medium to actually replace the current DVD technology within three years. "Within three years it will just be Blu-ray," Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association European chairman said at CeBIT, the world's biggest technology trade show.

Having already declared its own victory over its rival, HD DVD, Blu-ray has gone on to outsell HD DVD in the United States where the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console is available. This has led to speculation of further price cuts from the HD DVD camp, in an effort to curb the initial buzz that Blu-ray receives from PS3 owners who are completely new to HD.

However, replacing HD DVD fast could be possible if Blu-ray sorts out its prices and keeps the PS3 console selling strong, but even three whole years is a very short time to hope to replace DVD. DVD is a huge success story in the industry as a medium to sell movies (DVD-Video) and to sell games (PS2, Xbox, PC) and software (DVD-ROM). It has also become a major success for consumers who use the format for data storage, for home movies, in DVD recorders etc.

Sony has held a "PSP in Education National Launch" event in London, showing how the PlayStation Portable (PSP) device can be used to assist in education. Sony Computer Entertainment UK's managing director, Ray Maguire, introduced the project which was organized by ConnectED, which shows how the PSP can be used in schools as a learning tool, even though such devices are not welcome by the administration of most UK schools.

Maguire said that Sony has tried to link products to education in the past, mentioning the 2003 trial of using the PlayStation 2 and EyeToy as a communication method between students in different schools. However, he pointed out that now the possibilities are much wider with the developments since in "connected devices" and wireless broadband.

He said that Sony is not seeking to become a leader in the education space, but wanted to demonstrate to content providers how the PSP could be used to provide data and programs for the space. Richard Owen, from Maplesden Noakes school, said the test had been very positive. He said that teachers found that students benefited from being about to work more at their own pace, like being able to rewind a supplied audio file and listen to it again, or repeat a video clip.

While Microsoft Corp. has an agressive anti-piracy campaign currently in effect worldwide, a senior executive has admitted that software piracy ends up benefiting the company in the long run. Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes believes that piracy of the Windows operating system can lead to legitimate software sales later on, with some pirates who would otherwise not use Microsoft software becoming paying customers in future.

"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else," Raikes told delegates at last week's Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco. Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) currently checks Windows installations and alerts users of illegitimate license information. The campaign, while receiving criticism for major problems associated with it, even for legitimate users, is directed mostly toward weeding out sellers of pirated Microsoft software.

While Raikes estimates that about 20% - 25% of software in the U.S. is pirated, he makes an argument that in the long run, it can have benefits. "We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products," Raikes said. "What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software."

Portable consumer electronics meant for entertainment such as Apple's iPod or Sony's PSP are often used for more beneficial reasons. While Sony is currently promoting the PSP as a platform that can also be used in Educational settings, the English cricket team is using iPods to research techniques both used by English players and the opposition.

Hoping to help plays improve their game, coaching staff have loaded iPods with clips with techniques from the opposition and English team for players to study. The dull Caribbean wickets mean England's usual swing and seam attack must come up with new ways of getting batsmen out, such as bowling slower balls and off-cutters.

Liam Plunkett, an English bowler, said he has been glued to the small iPod screen, hoping to come up with tactical ideas ahead of the opening Group C clash with New Zealand this Friday. "I have to practice the next few days but it will be right for Friday," he told reporters. "My swing has been taken away from me."

Source:
Reuters

The NPD Group has published a study on digital music consumption on the Internet, though legal and illegal means, and has come to some interesting conclusions. The study showed that legal, paid music downloads are gaining on P2P downloads at a high rate. "Legal a la carte downloads were the fastest growing digital music category in 2006, and it is likely that the annual number of legal users will surpass P2P users in 2007," said Russ Crupnick, vice president and entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group.

He continued: "Unfortunately for the music labels, the volume of music files purchased legally is swamped by the sheer volume of files being traded illegally, whether on P2P or burned CDs sourced from borrowed files." While Apple's iTunes store, by far the dominant store in the online music download market, has sold over 2 billion music downloads since it launched, that figure is accomplished by illegal downloading in a matter of months.

The NPD Group found that the number of P2P users did increase in 2006 from 2005, but at a slower rate than previous years. However, the number of file transfers between those users increased a whopping 47%. There were 47 million U.S. households that have at least one member that downloaded, ripped, burned, played, or uploaded digital music by the end of 2006.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony executive Phil Harrison has revealed he expects that Sony will keep its position as leader in the video games market, and that the Blu-ray format will give the console the boost it needs to get there. "I think we have everything that we need to compete, not just relative to the other players in the market but also to grow the market. This is something that is part of our corporate culture," he said.

He pointed out the forthcoming games and network services for the console as factors that will ensure strong sales as well as the Blu-ray player. However, Harrison banks more on the growth of Blu-ray to move PS3s off the shelf. "That is a positive factor which will play more into the consumer psyche as the year goes on, as more consumer electronics firms launch standalone disc players, as more Blu-ray disc movies become available, and as more shelf space is dedicated to the category at retail," he said.

He believes that the Blu-ray disc format will become the mnost popular format in a very short space of time. "In America, where PS3 is already out, Blu-ray disc is surging ahead as the next-generation movie format of choice. It's absolutely trouncing any other formats, and I think we'll see the same in Europe and the UK," Harrison said.

According to Pacific Media Associates (PMA), the average price of a 30 inch+ HDTV-capable set in North America fell by another 3% in January this year. The 32" WXGA high-definition (HD) LCD TV segment was the best portion according to Rosemary Abowd, PMA vice president. These units accounted for 23% of all the units sold in January with an average street price of US$900.

37" WXGA LCD TVs dropped 33% in January, caused by increased sales through online retailers at agressive discounts. LCD models sold beat Plasma displays by about 2 to 1, LCD's largest lead yet by PMA's figures. The top 20 best selling models in January 2007 were LCD sets, compared to just 6 of the 20 last January.

The best-selling model for January was the 50" Panasonic TH-50PX600U.

Source:
DigiTimes

Samsung has confirmed to Pocket-Lint.co.uk that its second generation Blu-ray player, that is set for release in the United States in October, will not be available in the UK at the same time, and perhaps not at all. "We don't know whether the 2nd generation player will be launching in the UK or not or whether we will wait until the 3rd generation player before Christmas," Stephen Mitchell, marketing manager, Samsung Electronics Ltd revealed.

The company's 3rd generation Blu-ray player is currently in development will be released in both the U.S. and UK by the end of the year. Samsung also could produce a hybrid player similar to that offered currently by LG, but is watching and waiting for now. "We can do it, but we are still waiting to see what the rest of the market does," Mitchell stated.

He added: "We could launch a hybrid player or a Blu-ray recorder tomorrow, but until we see what other manufacturers are doing we are not going to be announcing anything." He also believes that, for now, both competing formats can co-exist. "We think Blu-ray is the stronger of the two," said Mitchell. "However we aren't ruling HD DVD out yet."

Motorola Inc. has announced that it has made an equity investment in Amimon Inc., an emerging leader in semiconductor technology for wireless transmission of high-definition (HD) video. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. "We believe that Amimon's WHDI Technology is setting a new standard in wireless HDTV connectivity which nicely aligns with Motorola’s connected home strategy," said Reese Schroeder, managing director, Motorola Ventures, the company's strategic venture capital arm.

"Our investment reflects our belief that Amimon's solution is well positioned to offer a high quality wireless uncompressed HDTV link between video sources such as a digital set-top and a high-definition TV," he added. Amimon's wireless high-definition interface (WHDI) technology enables wireless transmission of uncompressed high-definition video streams in the 5GHz unlicensed band. WHDI enables applications such as wireless flat-panel TVs, wireless projectors, wireless HDMI and wireless VGA repeaters (dongles).

"Motorola and Amimon share a common vision of facilitating connectivity between consumer electronics devices," said Dr. Yoav Nissan-Cohen, chairman and CEO, Amimon. "The investment from Motorola will fund our plan to set WHDI as a new industry standard for connecting high-definition video sources to displays wirelessly.

Malaysia has used two sniffer dogs, Lucky and Flo, to assist in the battle against piracy. This makes it the first country to deploy animals to hunt for discs of illegal recordings in cargo (although it is not the first test). The two Black Labradors sniff through cargo and then sit in front of suspicious packages to signal their handler.

"It's cost-effective, and in terms of time, it's very effective too," said Domestic Trade Minister Shafie Apdal. The dogs went through a pile of boxes in 10 minutes that would have otherwise taken security officials a day to check. Malaysia is currently negotiating a free trade pact with the United States, and is featured on the U.S. watchlist on piracy.

The country has dramatically stepped up efforts against piracy in recent years as a result. The dogs will be used in Malaysia for the next month at cargo hangars and storage centers to determine which environment they function best in. "The arrival and deployment of Lucky and Flo will make Malaysia the first country in the world to test the capability of dogs in detecting optical disks in hidden compartments or shipments," Shafie said at Malaysia's biggest air-cargo center in Sepang outside Kuala Lumpur.

According to figures published on Tuesday by Nielsen/NetRatings, more than one in every three adults who go online, or about 37%, own a video game console, and 17% own a portable gaming device. Interestingly, 71% of adult console users are married, and 66% have at least one child in their household.

"As game consoles have become increasingly sophisticated, families have incorporated them into their centralized home media centers, which include the television, digital recording device, digital music player and the PC," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Microsoft and Sony have gone out of their way to make their consoles more suited for a home entertainment setup by adding excellent multimedia features. Sony is particularly banking on the PS3 being viewed as an entertainment hub, packing in a Blu-ray player into every console it sells. These extra features have given adults more reasons to invest in the consoles.

On the other hand, Nintendo has decided to focus almost solely on gaming with the Wii console, which boasts some very innovative features such as its controllers. While it lacks ability to play full HD content for example, it has attracted torrents of attention from hardcore gamers, casual gamers and has even attracted a whole new audience, helping it to top the U.S. console sales chart in January this year.

Google Inc. is fully confident that current copyright law in the United States provides YouTube and other Google services adequate protection against lawsuits like the $1 billion lawsuit filed by Viacom Inc. today. After months of an escalating argument between Viacom and Google, Viacom filed a lawsuit against the company on Tuesday, claiming "massive intentional copyright infringement."

However, Google's lawyers were quick to defend the company and add that it has strong protections under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and warned that Google will aggressively protect itself. The DMCA limits liability for firms that act quickly to block or remove pirate material from servers when they are properly notified by the copyright holder.

"Here there is a law which is specifically designed to give Web hosts such as us, or... bloggers or people that provide photo-album hosting online ... the 'safe harbor' we need in order to be able to do hosting online," Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, told Reuters. "We will never launch a product or acquire a company unless we are completely satisfied with its legal basis for operating."

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has launched an independent studio called Vuguru, that is specifically geared towards online video content. He announced the new studio on Monday. The first project of the studio will be titled "Prom Queen", and will be launched on April 2nd. The exact plot of the project was not disclosed.

The program will be split into around 80 clips of 90 seconds each to make it more suitable for online viewing. Videos will be distributed both from a website dedicated to Vuguru content, and also from other familiar online platforms. YouTube, Veoh, and its sponsors will also gain rights to distribute the video.

Source:
Betanews

EMI, one of the world's four major record companies, has played down rumors that music from The Beatles will be available for digital download soon. The infamous Beatles are considered the last "major act" to jump on the the music download bandwagon. UK download site Wippit had posted a press release claiming that Beatles tracks will be available from its service, but EMI has dismissed the claim and has requested it be removed.

EMI is believed to be on the verge to offer Beatles downloads on authorized services. There is no doubt that whoever gets the exclusive will receive major success with it. Whilst unveiling the new iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs dropped a hint/teaser by calling up a selection from the band's Sergeant Pepper album. Since last month's settlement between Apple Computer Inc. and Apple Corps. after trademark disagreements, a potential deal has been rumored.

Wippit posted a press release on its site last Friday, titled, "The Beatles available for download on Wippit." However, the full text of the press release, dated Wednesday 14 March, is unavailable.

Source:
BBC News

The Court of Appeal in Naples has imposed jail sentences on several members of an organized gang involved in a major music piracy case since the late 90s. The case stems back to the arrest of the gang members in 1999 after an investigation carried out by Luciano D'Angelo, the district anti-mafia attorney, and the police, with the assistance of the Italian music industry's anti-piracy unit, FPM.

The head of the organization, "A.C.", was known as "The Emperor" because of his influence in the counterfeit music business in Naples in the 90s. The appeal sentence is the final decision in a seven year legal battle that has seen FIMI (Italian recording industry body), and record companies including EMI Music Italy, Universal Music Italy, Sony BMG Italy and Warner Music Italy acting as plaintiffs.

"A.C." was found guilty and sentenced to three years and six months in jail for conspiracy to violate the copyright law. Seven other members of the gang faced prison sentences of between one year and six months and three years. They now face a separate civil claim and will have to pay damages to the plaintiffs.

Source:
Press Release

U.S. households that have televisions using analog technology, will be eligible for $40 discount coupons to buy digital converter boxes as U.S. television stations are required to switch to only digital broadcasts by February 17, 2009. With 20 million estimated to rely on free over-the-air television, the date has often been criticized with many calling for it to be pushed back.

The coupon offer was announced on Monday by the Commerce Department. A converter box would be needed to use an analogue television after the cut off date. Since quite a large amount of U.S. families cannot afford to replace their televisions with a new digital television, it becomes the most viable option to keep TVs from going dark.

Some industry sources have estimated the price of a converter box could range between $50 to $60. "There are a number of options for consumers to effect transition on their own ... This program is one option for consumers," said John Kneuer, head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA). The NTIA expects to have a system in place to process coupons starting on January 1, 2008.

Source:
Reuters

Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities conducted several major anti-piracy operations on both sides of the Tri-border area earlier this month. The Specialized Anti-Piracy Unit (UTE) in Paraguay executed search warrants on 2nd March against two major labs and three warehouses in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. A total of 126 burners, 24,575 film DVD-Rs and 12,248 music CD-Rs were seized as one person was arrested.

On March 67th, Brazilian authorities in the state of Parana seized a total of 566 DVD-R burners, 16,000 film DVD-Rs, 6,000 music CD-Rs, 475,000 blank CD-Rs and DVD-Rs and half a million inlays as part of an ongoing highway interdiction programme. Three people were arrested as a result of the seizures.

Acting on intelligence from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Paraguay's UTE also executed a search warrant against a warehouse located in the International Free Zone of Ciudad del Este, resulting in the seizure of approximately 100,000 recorded music CD-Rs and 303,000 film DVD-Rs. "We congratulate the Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities for these excellent enforcement operations," Raul Vazquez, head of IFPI's Latin America office, said.

Sony has revealed that it plans to launch its ambitious PlayStation Home service around October this year. The initial download is expected to weigh in at about 500MB and future subsequent updates and patches will be structured to a streaming solution. A closed beta phase that will involve about 15,000 users will take place between April and August and an open beta will include about 50,000 users between August and October.

Details of the Home plans are revealed in a "third party relations" Q&A from Sony's developer website. According to the file, certain aspects of Home will be accessible using the PlayStation Portable (PSP) console and mobile phones. The environment's persistence will be a particularly tough element to master. "Currently Home is not a persistent world, so when you leave Home, all of your possessions go with you. For instance, it is not currently possible for other users to visit your apartment while you're not there," Sony said.

It continued: "We are working on the persistent aspect of Home, and expect to implement it in the long term." Advertising will be kept to "palatable" levels but will be prevalent. "If you consider Home to be a simulacra of the real world then most goods and services found within the real world could theoretically be replicated within Home," the PDF notes.

Bolt.com and Vivendi SA unit Universal Music Group have said they've reached an out of court, multimillion dollar settlement, resolving a lawsuit brought against Bolt in October 2006. UMG claimed that Bolt.com allowed its users to share music videos and other copyrighted material without permission and without compensating copyright holders. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Bolt has also agreed to implement filter technology to block UMG videos and other content from being posted on the site, within 60 days. New York-based Bolt will be acquired by GoFish Corp., which has been a licensed partner of UMG for the last two years. UMG also filed a lawsuit against Sony Corp's Grouper.com back in October.

At the time, Bolt claimed that it had always complied with copyright holders requests to take down videos. User-generated video sites like Grouper and YouTube are currently in the spotlight for copyright infringement, as users have posted literally millions of unauthorized clips.

Source:
International Herald Tribune

According to figures from trade magazine Video Business, Blu-ray titles outsold HD DVD titles by a margin or about 2:1 in February. Around 250,000 Blu-ray movies were sold in the month ahead of 125,000 HD DVD titles sold. While the boost in Blu-ray sales is no doubt helped by the PlayStation 3 (PS3) sales in North America, sales of the title "The Departed" appear to rule out some other offered reasons for the format outselling HD DVD.

Blu-ray buyers grabbed 20,000 copies of The Departed on Blu-ray, while 13,000 bought the movie on HD DVD. While this is not a 2:1 margin, it does appear at first glance to attack the argument that Blu-ray only outsold HD DVD because there were more releases in the time frame. According to High-Def Digest, there were 55 releases of Blu-ray titles in the first 8 weeks of 2007, compared to 23 HD DVD releases.

Although, to be fair, it must be noted that HD DVD version of The Departed is a HD DVD/SD DVD combo disc and so costs $5 more than the Blu-ray version. Sony VP Rich Marty said that he expects the gap between Blu-ray and HD DVD to further widen with the Sony title, Casino Royal, headed for Blu-ray and (of course) not HD DVD. However, Universal VP Ken Graffeo warned against drawing conclusions from these figures.

As we reported, at the recent Game Developers Conference, Chris Hecker, the founder of "Definition 6", unleashed an attack on the Wii and Nintendo, claiming they fail to recognize games as an "art form". His comments, which referred to the Wii as a "POS underpowered computer", and said the Wii development required "two GameCubes and some duct tape", caused a firestorm of controversy throughout the industry and on the Internet.

However, only a day after his comments were blasted across the net, Hecker offered a lengthy apology. "I was trying to be thought provoking and entertaining and fun, and a lot of the stuff went too far over the top on the entertaining and fun side, so that it was no longer thought provoking, just inflammatory. And in the process, I hurt a bunch of people I care about. And so, I want to apologize now," he said.

He insisted that his comments was just him "speaking for himself" and in no way reflected the the views of EA or Maxis and he also apologized to his coworkers, whom he upset with his remarks. "I do not think that the Wii is a piece of s***," Hecker said. He went on to applaud Nintendo for the Wii's unique controller, its user interface, and the system's affordable price.

Arcam released this week, a high-end dock for iPods (and the company's first), the rDock. The stand-alone device designed for use with the Arcam Solo and Solo Movie system, but works with others as well, and can easily be connected to to your own speakers and other equipment. A notable difference in this gadget compared to similar items, is that it does not charge the iPod battery by default, a move the company claims to prolong battery life and actually improve sound quality.

Most docks leave the iPod charging all the time, which can damage the battery. The rDock uniquely features a programmable "charge-off" setting. During research, it was discovered that the sound quality took a major leap when running off the iPod battery alone, with no charging going on. This is akin to some audiophile pre-amps that run on a rechargeable battery to achieve independence from mains Noise. The improvement in sound was so marked, that the rDock now has charge off as the default setting.

The French government is currently mulling over changes to the country's copyright laws, in regard to Internet piracy. Under current laws in France, downloading copyrighted material illegally could get you up to three years in prison and a fine up to €300,000. The Justice minister is now recommending that the punishment be adjusted to better suit the actual offense.

For P2P developers, this means that distributing and promoting P2P tools for copyright infringement purposes be punishable by up to three years in jail and a fine of €300,000. However, the difference between actually writing legitimate tools to share digital data and producing tools made and promoted solely for copyright infringement must be noted, though this is a "difference" that may need to be defined by a court of law.

However, those who share files on P2P networks would also be affected by the changes. The punishment for an offense would depend on many factors, including "time frame" of infringement, "willingness" to engage in the dissemination of content. Users who only download files would be the least punished, with jail time ruled out except in cases of re-offending and uploading the content to other users etc.

At the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg and internet tech TV outfit Revision3, spoke about how Internet TV will seriously damage cable programming once advertisers turn to the medium and delivering the content to a TV screen becomes simpler. Producers of Internet TV are depending on a new range of set-top boxes, such as Apple TV, to boost it significantly.

Devices such as Apple TV will unlock Internet TV content and make it viewable on a normal TV screen and not just with PC equipment. Advertisers are also slowly learning the value of small, passionate audiences. However, a thorn in the side of this forthcoming revolution is, once again, copyright woes from content providers.

Viacom recently demonstrated such hostility toward the trend by scrapping a deal with YouTube, insisting on hosting all its own content and offering a proprietary embeddable player. AOL director of creative development Nicole Carrico was not impressed by the move, saying, "If your content becomes successful, it's going to exceed your grasp. They're going to have to relax their death grip."

Source:
The Register

Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Joseph Harper, has received a letter from US senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn, drawing attention to the issues of copyright protection efforts in Canada. The letter brings up the issue of people recording copies of motion pictures in theaters in Canada, which reportedly accounts for a large number of pirate movies available worldwide

"We are writing to call your attention to the explosive growth of pirating of movies from theatres through the use of hand-recorders known as 'camcorders.' The theft and sale of newly-released movies has always been a serious threat to the motion picture industry. Now, the advancements of digital technology and improved camcorder capabilities have compounded the problem." the letter states.

The letter goes on with details about laws that are currently enforced in the United States that criminalize the unauthorized recording of movies in theaters using camcorder equipment. "Unfortunately, since the United States has enacted tougher laws and penalties against piracy, including camcording piracy, it seems that much of this illicit business has simply moved north," the letter continued.

SanDisk has failed to take on a number of companies holding MP3 technology-related patents in an English court. The High Court said that SanDisk's claims were outside the jurisdiction of the court, which extends to England and Wales. Philips, France Telecom, TDF, and Institut Für Rundfunktechnik were accused of bullying and harassing SanDisk through legal systems.

Each owns patents relating to MP3 technology, and SanDisk claims that they were abusing their dominant position in the licensing terms they offered for their patents. However, Justice Pumfrey said that the High Court did not have the jurisdiction on any of the issues, and that SanDisk needed to take action in a number of European countries instead.

The dispute between SanDisk and the patent holders involved an incident at a German trade show where the Berlin Public Prosecutor raided SanDisk's exhibition stand and seized 37 MP3 players. This was after SanDisk refused to buy a license form a company called Sisvel, a fifth defendant, an Italian licensing company representing the other four firms.

Sisvel has also obtained seizures in Italy and Border Detention Orders across Europe, which stop the transfer of the devices for sale at the border into the EU. SanDisk accused the companies of foul play in many actions, including tying the licensing of essential MP3 patents to deals for non-essential patents, abusing the patents system to acquire a collective dominant market position, demanding excessive royalties and refusing to deal individually with SanDisk.

Have you ever been at an ATM machine, ticket machine, vending machine or something similar outside, and have struggled to see its display due to high ambient light? NEC LCD Technologies' proprietary super-transmissive natural light TFT (ST-NLT) technology is aimed at making display problems like this a thing of the past. The technology is also expected to improve laptop computer displays in the near-future.

On March 8th, NEC announced that it will begin successive shipment of four new amorphous silicon thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCD samples by the end of April 2007. The new products comprise of a 15.0-inch (38cm-diagonal) extended graphics array (XGA) TFT LCD module, a 12.1-inch (31cm-diagonal) extended graphics array (XGA) TFT LCD module, and two 10.4-inch (26cm-diagonal) video graphics array (VGA) TFT LCD modules.

The displays features ST-NLT to achieve display of vivid colors in environments with high ambient light. They also support wide operating temperature ranges of either -10 degrees Celsius to +70 degrees Celsius or -20 degrees Celsius to +70 degrees Celsius. These new and enhanced features make the new models ideal for installation in automated teller machines, automated ticket machines, automatic vending machines, and point-of-sales systems for gas stations.

Digital Lights Processing (DLP) technology accounts for more than half of the global projector market in 2006, according to comments from Eric Braddom, director of DLP Products Asia, Texas Instruments (TI). In the North American market, DLP also managed to dominate the 1080p and 50 inch+ TV markets in 2006. Overall, the global projector market grew 25% last year.

The consumer segment has seen especially strong growth and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70% from 2006 to 2010. This rate is much higher than that of the Plasma TV technology and LCD TV technology, according to Pacific Media Associates (PMA).

The NPD Group released figures also showing that the 40 inch+ TV market in North America grew 25% in 2006, with the 1080p segment seeing significant growth.

Source:
DigiTimes

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) is claiming a victory over P2P piracy in the UK after a file sharer was fined after allegedly uploading an unnamed software title. The software, which apparently was worth about £35 ($65.00), was valuable enough to FAST to spend 10 months identifying the alleged infringer. However, this case is not exactly a victory over file sharing.

What really happened is the accused man simply did not respond to initial copyright notifications from FAST. He then showed up on court in February 27th, and claimed to not have received the initial copyright violation notices from FAST, but the claim did not impress the court and he received an order to pay £3,500 to cover FAST's damages and legal fees.

As a result, this case doesn't exactly clarify anything about the legality of the man's actions or even the reliability of the evidence against him. He uploaded the software using the Kazaa P2P client.

Source:
Slyck

At a round robin test seminar in Taipei, held by the Re-writable Products Promotion Initiative (RW PPI) under the Japan-based DVD Forum on March 8th, market survey organization BOC revealed that is expected the global demand for 8.5GB DVD+R DL / DVD-R DL to more than double in 2007. BOC cited growing demand for high definition content in predicting an increase of 122% in 2007.

In 2006, the demand for double layer DVD discs reached an estimated 90 million discs, and if BOC is right, that figure will approach over 200 million in 2007. RW PPI representative director Koki Aizawa, said that while the global market for optical discs and disc drives is slowly moving to the next generation blue-laser technology, the format war and overpriced products make it unclear when Blu-ray or HD DVD will become wildly popular.

He noted that of the global sales value for all optical discs, Blu-ray and HD DVD are expected to account for just 2% overall in 2007, and 11% in 2011. Therefore, Aizawa believes that production of high definition DVD discs using DVD manufacturing equipment and the advanced H.264 codec for example, will be successful as it will be significantly cheaper than producing a blue-laser disc. This, he believes, will raise demand for DVD significantly, particularly double layer discs.

After the recent dispute settlement between Sony and Immersion, it has been speculated that Sony will use Immersion technology in future products, after the company cut vibration features form the PS3's SIXAXIS controller. Although Sony did say that rumble was technology of the past in the games industry, and that motion sensing technology is the future, the company is open to changing the SIXAXIS controller.

The lack of rumble features in the controllers has been a noted disappointment to gamers and developers alike. However, SCEA CEO Jack Tretton said in an interview with GamePro that he’s open to changing the SIXAXIS controller. "We used to have a narrow approach to controllers. If you really wanted to move outside the standard controller, we left it up to third party manufacturers," Tretton told the magazine.

He added: "But now we're moving to a regional approach. You will see peripherals coming from SCEA that will address the interests of the U.S. consumer. I don't have anything to tell you specifically, but we're certainly open to changing the Sixaxis controller if it addressed North American gamers."

Source:
DailyTech

Qualcomm's MediaFLO mobile TV technology is to undergo technical trials in Taiwan as part of an agreement between Qualcomm and China Network Systems (CNS), the largest MSO (multi-system operator) of cable TV in Taiwan, and Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV), a leading terrestrial TV broadcaster. The trials are set to go ahead later in March according to CNS and TTV.

Four CNS live content items and up to three TTV live content items will be assigned for the trial. Both companies want to test the technology for possibly delivering mobile TV services in the territory. Qualcomm's Internet Services & MediaFLO Technologies president Peggy Johnson, said the trial will be a field demonstration of MediaFLO to other markets in Asia and even around the world.

Source:
DigiTimes

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison has said that after the challenges of recent months, Sony can now focus on PS3 software instead of hardware. "I can't deny that we've had some challenges, but I think those are all behind us," he said. "It's all about software now, it's not about hardware. It's all about services, it's about the way the industry is changing and the way we hope to be taking a leadership position in that change."

He made the comments to GamesIndustry.biz after his keynote speech at GDC 2007. During the keynote, he showed off PlayStation Home, a virtual world under development for the PS3 users to use and enjoy. "We're taking some pretty giant steps forward... The keynote here at GDC was a very, very significant moment for the evolution of PlayStation 3," he observed.

Harrison cited God of War, LocoRoco, Shadow of the Colossus, Eye Toy and Singstar as examples of how Sony is trying to produce innovative software, saying they are, "things which wouldn't come out of perhaps a more conservative product development strategy, and certainly wouldn't come from a multi-platform third-party publisher".

A Shanghai court ruled that the Shanghai Le Ying AV Products Company (Shanghai Le Ying) DVD retail outlet, located in Shanghai's central business district, was guilty of copyright infringement for selling pirated versions of Motion Picture Association (MPA) member company movies. The ruling, from the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, was delivered on March 6th.

The court ordered the defendant to pay of damages and costs of RMB25,000 (US$3,230) to three MPA members. The ruling was a result of 20 civil complaints against three pirate movie retail outlets known collectively as Ka De Club shops, in September 2006 filed by the MPA. The rulings delivered yesterday were part of that series of complaints, and disposed of three of seven complaints against Shanghai Le Ying, a Ka De Club company.

The remaining four complaints against Shanghai Le Ying are scheduled to be heard on March 29, 2007. In seven complaints against Shanghai Le Ying, the plaintiffs asked for total compensation of over RMB1.6 million (US$206,763) in relation to the infringement of 24 movie title copyrights.

The latest version of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software phones home regardless of whether or not a user installs it. Microsoft has admitted, that even if you choose to click Cancel when prompted to install the anti-piracy tool from Windows Update, the software will still phone home to the Redmond-based company.

WGA has been criticized for many reasons; mainly over privacy concerns and the software's mistakes of branding fully legitimate Windows XP installations as pirated. However, even though this latest development has provoked an angry response from web sites and bloggers, Microsoft ensures that it does not send information that could identify an individual user, but is instead used to collate statistics on WGA use.

"The data collection and transfer in question are part of some of our update download services, such as the Windows Update service. As with other programs downloaded via these services, the success or failure of WGA Notifications' installation is sent to Microsoft," Microsoft UK anti-piracy manager Michala Alexander said in a statement.

He added: "If the user interrupts installation of WGA Notifications, we send the number of the screen on which installation stopped (first, second, etc.). In order to establish an accurate count, we also generate several globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) that do not contain any personal information. We use the GUIDs to tally the number of individual machines without identifying the user. Other data sent includes user and machine language settings and whether or not the machine was joined to a domain."

According to a newspaper report by Nikkei, and Reuters, while Europe is the first territory to get PlayStation 3 (PS3) units with less support for backwards compatibility with PS2 games, Sony will begin shipping the version of the machine without the PS2 hardware to Japan and North America later on this year. The move to switch to a software emulation solution, like that seen on an Xbox 360, is to cut production costs.

The PS2 emotion engine provided the PlayStation 3 with graphics and data processing functions for old PlayStation 2 games. Removing the hardware and instead using a solution to emulate it, means that more support for specific titles will added gradually. At least 1,000 games will be working on the console by the European launch date, according to Sony.

Sony loses money for every single PlayStation 3 unit that is sold, due to its inclusion of expensive hardware such as the Cell processor, referred to as a supercomputer on a chip, and the included Blu-ray Disc drive. This business year, Sony estimates its game unit will have lost over 200 billion yen but aims to break even on games for the year starting April 1st.

Ricoh has launched the world's first 16x DVD+R Double Layer blank disc, that is officially certified by the DVD+R/+RW Verification Laboratories Group. Delivery of the first samples for hardware manufacturers started on 7th March 2007. The market for DVD+R double layer blank discs more than doubled last year and the boom in demand has continued unabated.

Compared with single layer discs, however, double layer media have hitherto required considerable time to write their large volume of storage space. With the development of the first 16x DVD+R DL Ricoh has now radically increased writing speed while at the same time significantly reducing the writing time for the medium.

The "Inverted Stack Method" invented by Ricoh is already regarded by some to be the best possible technique for the attainment of high recording speeds in high-precision DVD+R DL media production. This Ricoh production method differs considerably from the "2P method" in which all layers are stacked on a single substrate. Separate production of both recording layers as practiced by Ricoh, initially takes place separately on both substrates. The two components are then pressed together. Thus in practice Ricoh’s Inverted Stack Method provides increased precision for both recording layers.

It appears that some subscribers to Blockbuster's online DVD rental service are reporting problems with the service in recent weeks. In cases, customers are claiming to not have received movies from their queues for two weeks or more. One customer told Ars that after repeated fruitless calls to customer service, one rep told him the DVD rental system was shut down and the issue would be fixed shortly.

"We've been continually shipping product," a spokesperson originally told Ars. "If a customer feels like they are not getting a movie, they should follow up with our customer service. But in terms of product being allocated and shipped, there has been no interruption." However, users of many sites are complaining about similar problems.

"My experience is similar," said Mike, a customer from Texas. "I have the 3 at a time plan. I turned my three movies in to the store 8 days ago and they still haven't shipped me any new movies although I have about 30 available in my queue. The customer service reps keep giving me a story about a technical glitch. The only thing this company can do competently is charge my credit card for the monthly fee. I will be canceling my membership before my next renewal."

Mexican authorities from the Attorney General's office (PGR), the Public Security Group from Mexico State, as well as local police, have stepped up their anti-piracy enforcement operations in the past two weeks, with significant results. These actions are part of the new administration's programme dedicated to stepping up operations against the organized criminal groups behind music, film and games piracy.

The significant amounts of pirate product seized are leading authorities to conduct follow-up investigations with the goal of determining cracking the structure of these organized criminal gangs. Here are more details on the numerous raids conducted...

Tepito

• "Operation Rolex" consisted of raids against 16 warehouses and nine duplication labs in the suburb of Tepito that led to the seizure of 232 burners, 130,000 CDRs and 200,000 inlays. A total of 350 police officers and 20 prosecutors participated in the raid.
• A further raid in Tepito against 160 warehouses and three replicating labs which netted 149,000 recorded CDRs, 160 burners and five million inlays. In addition, authorities seized two homemade duplicating blank CDR machines. A total of 250 police officers and 10 prosecutors participated in the raid.
• Authorities executed search warrants in an area known as Matamoros Plaza in Tepito on 52 warehouses and one lab, which resulted in the seizure of 83 burners, 125,000 CDRs and six million inlays. A total of 400 police officers and 14 prosecutors participated in the raid

Puebla

• A raid against 232 points of sale in the infamous "La Cuchilla" market in the state of Puebla led to seizures of 1.4 million CDRs, 1.2 million films, 300,000 games and 144 active burners. A total of 500 police officers and 13 prosecutors participated in the raid

Guadalajara city

• Authorities in the city of Guadalajara conducted an operation in the major market of San Juan de Dios, raiding 95 warehouses, five labs and seizing 395,000 CDRs, 102 burners and almost one million inlays. A total of 150 police officers and five prosecutors participated in the raid

Verbatim/Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co. has issues a warning on the company's website about a number of prominent and not so prominent brands in Australia and New Zealand distributing certain types of blank recordable DVDs with MCC MID codes and other information. These DVDs are manufactured without the same quality control and specifications as DVDs supplied by Verbatim in Australia and New Zealand.

The company is preparing to legal action to stop the misleading supply in Australia and New Zealand of these DVDs. An MID, or Media Identification Code, is used on the DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RAM recordable media. It is used to identify the manufacturer of the media and to help a DVD burner choose an optimal write strategy.

Source:
Press Release

According to Industry sources, the HD DVD format is retaining a lead in the European market next-generation blue-laser optical disc drives/players/recorders. Toshiba's HD-E1 HD DVD player, accounted for an 85% market share in January, leaving Sony and Samsung Electronics equipment for Blu-ray Disc trailing behind with 15% of the European market.

Before the launch of the HD-E1, Toshiba's European market share for blue-laser products in 2006 was about 58%. HD DVD's lead in Europe may not last for much longer however, with the March 23rd launch of the Blu-ray-equipped PlayStation 3 (PS3) console approaching quickly.

Rising demand for HDTV equipment will boost consumer interest in blue laser HD formats. As more homes turn to HD, the format that can provide the best prices for both hardware and HD content should capture the growing market.

Source:
DigiTimes

Cingular Wireless, the top U.S. mobile service provider, owned by AT&T Inc., is to announce an agreement with World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. to offer everything from ringtones with famous wrestlers' voices to videos. The company believes that enough of its subscribers are Wrestling fans to make the offering worthwhile and successful.

World Wrestling videos will be available as part of Cingular's $19.99 a month media service plan. Cingular will also sell a premium video package for $4.99 a month featuring highlights from WrestleMania and other shows. Related ringtones will be sold for $2.49 each and graphics for $1.99.

The service is available for phones with high speed Web links and is expected to grow over the coming months. WWE is estimated to have 15 million weekly viewers.

Source:
Reuters

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) has shown off a first-of-its-kind 3D online user community service for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. The service, known as "Home," will enable users to create their own avatar and explore a real-time virtual community, as if they are playing a detailed 3D game for PS3. The service will become available globally beginning in fall 2007.

It allows PS3 users to interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share private content and even build and show off their own personal spaces to others in real time. Home will be available as a free download from the PlayStation Store and will launch directly from XMB (XrossMediaBar) on PS3. Home is a sleek, modern environment featuring spacious common areas; custom spaces dedicated to specific games; and personal apartments.

Each user is assigned an apartment in Home where they can invite others to join them as they show off their own style in an area they can personalize themselves with furniture, art and other items – even a different view from their windows. They can also show their personal video, pictures and other digital media content found on their PS3 hard drives in their apartments. Very rich interactive communication with others is achieved through built in text, audio and video chat, along with sophisticated emotional animations for each character.

Several movie download stores have teamed up with Macrovision, one of the world's largest DRM technology providers, for use of its technology in the distribution of major motion pictures and TV shows. Agreements have been struck with Netflix, BitTorrent, Movielink, and Instant Media to use Macrovision's Analog Copy Protection (ACP). Macrovision claims that the DRM technology will actually give customers more choices in viewing content.

Armed with Macrovision content protection technology, Netflix hopes it will be able to expand the amount of content available for immediate viewing online and Instant Media hopes the deal will make collaboration with studios easier since it re-enforced content protection.

"Macrovision's technology is a foundation for the growth of digital distribution in an open market," Macrovision president and CEO Fred Amoroso said. "By making media content protection easier to integrate in the distribution channel, we're enabling the distributors to execute innovative business models and respond to consumer demand for more access to their favorite content online."

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) confirmed today that eleven companies have filed a lawsuit against Yahoo's China division for about 5.5 million yuan (US$710,690). The companies accuse Yahoo! China of copyright infringement. It should be noted that up to 85% of all music in the country is believed to be pirated.

The IFPI said that China is an important market, and that the group is working to eradicate piracy in the country. Yahoo! China responded to the allegations by saying it does, and has always respected copyright and supports the fight against piracy. It also said that precedence has been set for such cases, and has shown that web site owners/operators are not liable for the actions of third party users.

Source:
Betanews

Turkish Internet users are now greeted with a message when they try to access Google Inc.'s video sharing site informing them that its access has been blocked in the country. A court order was issued to telecommunications companies in the country after videos appeared on the site that reportedly insulted former Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Turkish media reported that a "virtual war" between Greek and Turkish users of the site followed the videos, with more insulting video responses posted by both sides. The clip that started the whole fuss referred to Ataturk and Turks as homosexuals. Insulting Ataturk, the founding father of modern Turkey, or "Turkishness" is an offense which can result in a prison sentence.

Turkish users who try to access YouTube currently see this message...

"Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court".

AT&T and Verizon Wireless (the top two U.S. wireless providers) have both announced new features that will allow customers to remotely record TV shows by programming their DVRs with their mobile phones. AT&T said that its subscribers can now use their mobile phones to record TV shows on home TVs using Homezone, a video-on-demand service that AT&T offers with satellite TV provider EchoStar Communications.

Verizon Wireless said its customers will be able to use their phones to program TiVo Inc. digital video recorders remotely, starting next week. The third largest provider, Sprint Nextel Corp., also plans to make a similar offer available later in the year through its venture with cable providers such as Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc.

While analysts agree that such services can help to either attract some new customers, or retain current customers as competition gets tougher, the demand for such features is not very high. A survey conducted by a Jupiter Research analyst showed less than 10% of respondents as interested in such features.

Source:
Reuters

A new service launched by Amazon and TiVo will enable movie downloaders to purchase (or rent) movie and TV show downloads from Amazon's Unbox service and play them on a proper TV. "Amazon Unbox in TiVo" brings 1.5 million more potential customers to Amazon's download service. TiVo is currently offering an introductory offer of $15 in free movie and TV show downloads to those who sign up.

TV show episodes can be downloaded for $1.99 and movies cost between $9.99 and $14.99. The partnership between the two companies brings the service one step further than those offered by Apple and Wal-Mart, by making it easy for viewers to download content over the Internet and view it on a TV. Apple will soon attempt to accomplish this goal too with the Apple TV set top box.

Source:
Reuters

The world's largest mobile phone handset maker, Nokia, has shown off its new N-Gage efforts at GDC. The latest development in the N-Gage mobile gaming brand provides a software, not a hardware, platform to run on Nokia S60 3rd edition devices. The company announced its next generation software development kit (SDK 1.0) for the new N-Gage games platform.

"The availability of the N-Gage SDK 1.0 today is the corner stone of Nokia's new development eco-system for developers to create connected mobile games in a familiar C++ environment," said Mark Ollila, Director of Technology & Strategy and Nokia Games Publishing, Nokia. "This single development channel impacts positively on development cycles and budgeting as well as creating new social connected gaming experiences that will lead the way to how people discover, buy and play games in the future."

Nokia also announced a new compliance testing program for SNAP Mobile's Java platform, which the company believes will lower the cost barrier of entry for game developers by combining a self-testing process with a traditional certification program.

"We are reinforcing our commitment to this industry with two significant initiatives that will help the mobile games industry evolve. Our N-Gage platform will deliver a global games platform that leverages the performance of the tens of millions of S60 converged devices that we are shipping each year," said Gregg Sauter, Director of Games Publishing, Nokia. "Likewise, our support for Java development continues to evolve with more tools for developers supporting SNAP Mobile."

Apple Computer Inc. has warned its users about using iTunes 7.1 with Windows Vista, especially when using iTunes with an iPod connected. Despite the iTunes 7.1 update adding support for the Apple TV device, as well as other things, Apple revealed that there were no proper fixes for known issues with Windows Vista yet, and that the company continues to work with Microsoft to resolve the bugs.

Apple has warned that using the Windows Vista "Safely Remove Hardware" feature can actually corrupt your iPod, requiring a full restore. iTunes text and graphics also reportedly have display issues with Windows Vista. iTunes and iPod are also still considered incompatible with the 64bit version of Windows XP as well.

Source:
Betanews

Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service has reached its milestone of 6 million members, months ahead of expectations. At E3 last year, Microsoft had set a target to double its Xbox Live member count (three million) to six million by June 2007. After hitting 6 million members, Microsoft has released some Xbox Live statistics.

Since the service launched in 2002, gamers have added up more than 2.3 billion hours playing games on Xbox Live, and now, each day, members exchange over 2,000,000 voice and text messages. Halo 2 is still the most popular game on the service to date, with Gears of War coming in second and Xbox Live Arcade title Hexic HD in third place.

However, even though Xbox Live has reached 6 million members, Microsoft did not announce how many of these are Gold members (subscription) and how many are Silver members (Free Service) - or at least how many were even temporarily paying for the premium service.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

LG Electronics has knocked a third off of the price of its GBW-H10N Blu-Ray Disc (BD) Super Multi DVD burner (Super Multi Blue) for the Taiwan market. The model was launched in September 2006 for a price of NT$29,900 (US$908), and has now been dropped by LG to NT$19,900 (US$605). The burner features support for 4X speed burning to single sided single layer (SSSL) Blu-ray media.

4X is currently the fastest burn speed available for BD-R media. The reason for the price drop is to both clear out inventory and gain more market share since more Blu-ray models were released in the territory this year. Sony, Pioneer, Samsung Electronics and Philips may follow suit and lower the price of their hardware in the area.

Source:
DigiTimes

Broadcom Corporation has shown off a new dual-channel AVC/MPEG-4/VC- 1/MPEG-2 video decoder system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed in a 65 nanometer process. The new high-performance video decoder SoC is being demonstrated at this week's CableLabs Winter Conference, and provides leading-edge functionality and performance when compared to existing set-top box (STB) solutions currently available.

"Our new 65 nanometer solution provides our customers with the industry's most advanced, highest performance, and most integrated solution for dual advanced video decoder media center set-top boxes," said John H. Gleiter, Senior Director of Marketing for Broadcom's Set-top Box line of business. "Customers will enjoy state-of-the-art performance, video quality, security, and system cost savings improvements provide by this new advanced 65 nanometer chip."

Announced today is the 65 nanometer Broadcom BCM7400B dual-channel video decoder solution. The BCM7400B video decoder enables set-top box manufacturers to develop extremely high performance media centers, integrating the most advanced hardware features and functionality to securely decode, store and share multiple types of media including HDTV, video-on-demand, Internet, and digital music content.

Microsoft Corp. is preparing to attack the policies of Google Inc., in prepared remarks to be sent to the Association of American Publishers, that regard copyright protection. Microsoft Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin claims that Google's move into new media markets comes at the expense of publishers of books, videos and software.

"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," Rubin said. "Google takes the position that everything may be freely copied unless the copyright owner notifies Google and tells it to stop."

He also addressed Google's YouTube service. "In essence, Google is saying to you and to other copyright owners: 'Trust us - you're protected. We'll keep the digital copies secure, we'll only show snippets, we won't harm you, we'll promote you,'" he said. "But Google's track record of protecting copyrights in other parts of its business is weak at best."

Microsoft's outburst is fueled by Google's dominance in web searching, which the Redmond-based corporation has been useless to break. YouTube also is set to stay far ahead of competition for traffic, including Microsoft's own Soapbox site. Also, Microsoft could be worried of Google's recent step into the business software market with a set of Web-based subscription services that could hurt Microsoft's progress in that area.

Apple Computer Inc. has released new versions of its QuickTime software for both the Mac and Windows operating systems. The update addresses several serious security flaws with the software. A malicious individual could take advantages of the flaws by creating a modified QuickTime file that executes arbitrary code when run. This type of vulnerability could lead to a full system compromise.

Affected file types that have been corrected include QuickTime, MIDI, 3GP, PICT and QTIF files. Also updated today was Apple's iTunes software for both operating systems. The update adds support for the Apple TV device, which aims to bridge the gap between PC equipment and televisions by using a home network to stream multimedia using the iTunes software.

Source:
Betanews

Electronic Arts chief executive Larry Probst revealed that the world's biggest publisher of video game software expects Sony's dominance over the gaming console market to slip in the current war. "We expect that there will be a more level playing field this time around than last time," said Probst. He still expects Sony to win, but with figures that are nowhere near those seen with the PlayStation 2 console.

Sony claims to have shipped more than 115 million PS2s globally, over 60% of all combined unit sales in the last console cycle that kicked off back in 1999. However, when Sony delivered its console a year later than its competitor with a much higher price tag, many looked toward Microsoft as an even more serious contender and the seemingly underdog Nintendo Wii console has enjoyed incredible success.

"I think the issue is that (the PS3 is) expensive," Probst said. He added that EA's prediction should not surprise anybody, saying even the crowd at last year's E3 conference were stunned to find out that Sony's high-end PS3 would cost $600 in the U.S. while the Xbox 360 was selling for $400. "No one should count Sony out at this point in the game. This is going to be a long race," Probst cautioned, saying that the PS3 delivers potent technology for the money.

According to research conducted by ratings firm Nielsen, the number of gaming consoles present in U.S. households with televisions has risen by over 18% since 2004. The report was titled "The State of the Console," and was published after a study was conducted by Nielsen between Q4 2004 and Q4 2006. The number of U.S. households with Televisions that also had a gaming console rose to 45.7 million from 38.6 million.

Overall, that is a rise of about 18.5%. In the time period, Nielsen noted that the number of U.S. households with televisions rose only 1.6%. The firm said that this report is the first in a projected series of studies that focus on trends in the gaming industry.

Two-thirds of all men in television-owning households aged between 18 and 34, and 80% of those aged between 12 and 17 have video game consoles in their homes. 74.4% of all console use came from the top 20% of American gamers.

Source:
News.com

Police in Naples launched an anti-piracy raid on a premises in in the suburb of Arzano, which turned up approximately 150,000 pirate discs, including music and movies. Police seized the counterfeit material, and also seized 276 CD burners and arrested the 25 year old male suspect. Police had been watching the location of the raid since Christmas.

The operation was carried out during the week of the main Italian music TV show Festival of Sanremo. More anti-piracy raids around the world recently also turned up huge numbers of counterfeit CDs containing software, games, music and movies. As a fine example, Guatemalan National Police in co-ordination with the Attorney General's Office conducted a massive raid in downtown Guatemala City that turned up over one million counterfeit discs containing pirated music and movies on February 9th.

Source:
Press Release

Microsoft Corp. has revealed that a new memory unit with a storage capacity of 512MB is to be released for the Xbox 360 gaming console. The new memory unit will be available worldwide starting on April 3rd and will cost $49.99 in North America. For a limited time, the new device will will be pre-loaded with the Xbox LIVE Arcade game "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved" from developer Bizarre Creations Ltd.

The original memory unit available for the console, which stored 64MB of data, will drop in price from $39.99 to $29.99. Microsoft also announced that the maximum size limit for arcade games available on the Xbox Live Marketplace would rise form the current limit of 50MB to 150MB.

Source:
Reuters

According to several rumors circulating online ahead of the Game Developers' Conference, Sony is set to make some significant announcements about the PlayStation 3 console. GDC Director Jamil Moledina said that Sony will reveal news that will make PS3 owners very happy. Gaming blog Kotaku has reported that Sony may announce "PlayStation Home" features.

According to the report, PS3 could soon be getting its own version of "Mii avatars" and "Xbox 360 achievements", with future PS3 titles featuring virtual rooms, where users "will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game," as part of the achievements system. Social networking features are also rumored, including text chat, voice chat and video features.

Another source said that Phil Harrison will reveal a more refined PlayStation Store, Connect Store support for movie and music downloads and wallpaper options as part of a firmware update coming on March 8th. As for the name "PlayStation Home", Sony recently registered the trademark for it. It is defined as "electronic games services provided by means of the Internet," for the "creation and development of virtual and interactive images and environments," and "introduction and social networking services, namely introducing electronic game players to others."

A handful of Police departments in the United States have turned to YouTube as another resource in catching suspects that have been caught on video. Patrolman Brian Johnson of the Franklin, Mass., Police Department posted a clip from a security camera showing two men using allegedly stolen credit cards at a Home Depot on YouTube. He then emailed about 300 people and organizations with the link saying he was looking the men.

"You don't have to be a technology wizard to figure out how to watch a video on YouTube," Johnson said of the decision to post the video on the world's largest video sharing site. In this case, the suspects were ultimately arrested. A handful of police departments have turned YouTube into a law enforcement tool, posting video clips of suspects and asking users of the site to help identify them.

Of course, as the online video revolution grows and millions upon millions more videos are posted to sites like YouTube, this kind of content may easily fade. There is also worry about the risk of fruitless tips, misidentifications or privacy problems. Another, more publicized case, came from Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada. Police posted a 72 second video clip showing a suspect who had fatally stabbed a man outside a hip hop concert.

Sony is set to bring its own MP3 players with video playback features to the market. The company is showing off it's new NW-A800 series, featuring a 2 inch LCD screen and support for MPEG-4 video playback. The device is less than 1cm thick. The battery life is being advertised as supporting 30 hours of music playback and 8 hours of video playback.

EMI, one of the big four record labels, has rejected an approach made by Warner Music Group, saying the offer was too low and format of the bid too cumbersome. "WMG’s proposal was considered by the Board which concluded that it is not in the best interests of EMI shareholders to entertain a pre-conditional offer which would entail prolonged regulatory uncertainty and unacceptable operational risk at a critical time for the Company," the music group said in a statement

It continued: "The Board also regards a price of 260 pence per share as inadequate, having regard to the stand-alone value of EMI, the synergies available from a combination with WMG and the risks identified above." In October 2000, both companies broke off from a proposed merger because the didn't anticipate regulatory approval.

Source:
The Register

Sony Corp. and Immersion Corporation have entered into a new agreement that will bring rumble technology back to Sony hardware. Sony had left vibration features from the PlayStation 3's Sixaxis controller due to ongoing litigation with Immersion. Recently, both companies settled the dispute and it was expected that an agreement to use Immersion technology in future Sony products would be reached.

"Our new business agreement with Sony is specifically intended to enable advanced vibration capability for the benefit of the PlayStation community." CEO of Immersion, Victor Viegas said. "We are happy to provide our technology in this regard and hope to make technical proposals very soon with respect to use of our technology in the PlayStation products."

Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment said: "We look forward to exploring with Immersion exciting new ways to bring the largest and best range of gameplay experiences to our customers. We are very excited about our new partnership with Immersion and the potential for new and innovative products incorporating their technologies."

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

Well known warez group PARADOX has provided tools that will make Microsoft's anti-piracy aims for Windows Vista much tougher. The group has provided tools and information on how to trick a Vista installation (x86) into acting as if it is installed on an OEM machine, which requires no product activation. Manufacturers such as Dell distribute pre-installed Vista installations on new computers.

These companies embed certain license information into their hardware products, which can be validated by a Windows Vista installation, removing the need for further activation procedures. The installation required hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC information signed by Microsoft. So this method takes advantage of how Vista validates on OEM machines.

By using a device driver, BIOS ACPI_SLIC information can be fed to Windows Vista's licensing mechanism. This, combined with an matching product key and OEM certificate, will render any system practically indistinguishable from a legit pre-activated system shipped by the respective OEM.

The publishing arm of the Warner Music Group Corp., Warner/Chappell Music, has come to a deal with Microsoft to acquire compositions for Halo and Halo 2, as well as Age of Empires, Fable, Kameo and other video game franchises. The deal also includes music from upcoming games, including Halo 3. No financial terms of the agreement were disclosed.

Warner/Chappell will now claim and register Microsoft-owned copyrights worldwide and will identify and develop new synchronization, performance and music publishing opportunities for the Microsoft music publishing catalogs.

Ed Pierson, Executive Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs, Warner/Chappell Music, said about the agreement, "Warner/Chappell is proud to partner with a technology leader like Microsoft and delighted to be the worldwide publisher for the company's video game music catalog. We're confident we can develop and identify some exciting and unique new licensing opportunities for these well-known game compositions."

Source:
DailyTech

YouTube and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had reportedly been in talks about a content deal. Now, both have revealed an agreement that will bring BBC content to Google Inc.'s popular video sharing site. The non-exclusive deal will create three BBC channels, one for news and two for entertainment, on YouTube packed with short clips.

The BBC will use the YouTube deal as a promotional tool for its content, hoping to get some of YouTube's 70 million monthly users to its own sites. Advertising revenue that traffic on the channels generates will shared between YouTube and BBC (although the News channel will have no advertising at all).

Here are some details on the deals...

• BBC: One of the BBC's two entertainment channels will be a "public service" proposition, featuring no advertising.
  
  It will show clips like trailers and short features that add value - for example, video diaries of David Tennant showing viewers around the set of Dr Who or BBC correspondent Clive Myrie explaining how difficult it is to report from the streets of Baghdad.
  
  The channel's main purpose is to popularise current programming and drive traffic back to the BBC's own website, and point the audience to the BBC's pages, where they can watch or download programmes in full, once the BBC Trust approves the corporation's catch-up television proposal, called iPlayer. Read more...

Since the added Blu-ray Disc components in the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console contributed greatly to both its high price (for a gaming console) and its delay in PAL territories, it is one of the PS3's most criticized features right now. Many consumers believe feel that Sony is forcing Blu-ray inclusion on the PS3 console to sneak the Blu-ray format ahead in the console war, but Phil Harrison denies this is the core reason for its inclusion.

"We needed to have Blu-ray disc from a game design point of view. The chipsets in PS3 chew through data at such a rate that in order to build variety and detail and quality into the games, we need more than nine gigabytes," Harrison said. "Now, the fact that we could also adopt the preeminent next generation movie format into PS3 was an added bonus, not an added cost."

The original PlayStation made use of the CD optical disc format, followed by DVD in PlayStation 2 (which worked as a DVD player), and neither formats need to be introduced to anybody; a testament to their incredible success. The Blu-ray camp hopes that this trend will continue with the PlayStation 3 and push Blu-ray far ahead of its rival, HD DVD in the ongoing format war.

Regardless of the massive amounts of news sources and blogs that interpreted research on The Onion Router (TOR) as the meaning it was "cracked", it remains a safe (perhaps the safest) way to gain anonymity while browsing and doing many other things online. Security research done by University of Colorado computer science instead tested a previously known vulnerability in the lab.

The developers of TOR responded to the blog response, with one member of the team saying, "Blogstorms can have real world consequences. Please ponder before you write, critically examine what you read, and ask us for updates." Tor anonymizes web traffic basically by routing data from the sender, through several nodes before it gets to the receiver.

A weakness that could be exploited in Tor is how the protocol tends to route traffic to devices which claim to have high amounts of bandwidth available. By modifying the software, a malicious user could attract more traffic through the network, and by setting up several of these servers, the chances that two could be included on the same path are increased.

If two malicious servers are included at the start and end points in a path, it becomes possible to identify the sender and receiver of the communications passing through. The original research team noticed the huge reaction to the news, and so posted an FAQ and claimed, "Tor is the most secure and usable privacy-enhancing system available".

BenQ has reportedly withdrawn from the DVD recorder market. The company's website has been changed, with all DVD recorders removed, and it has informed retailers that it is no longer selling the products. Disappointing sales was the main reason behind BenQ's decision. Since prices have dropped, BenQ has as decided to drop the segment when adjusting its product structure.

The company will decide whether or not to enter the Blu-ray or HD DVD recorder market based on market demand. Back in 2003, it established Philips BenQ Digital Storage (PBDS), a joint venture with Royal Philips Electronics, and in January 2005, announced a 400GB hard-disc DVD recorder.

Source:
DigiTimes

Having lost its deal with Viacom and subsequently being told to remove about 100,000 clips, YouTube is getting more success in signing up small media partners. The New York Times reported that YouTube is striking deals with hundreds of small media partners, but didn't specify how many were made since Google Inc. bought YouTube last year.

YouTube officials were quoted as saying they are getting about 200 new media partners, mostly small, each quarter. For example, YouTube recently signed a deal with the National Basketball Association to create a channel which would display content from the league and allow users to upload their own demonstration videos.

YouTube also reached a deal with Wind-up Records, an independent record label, to stream music videos and permit YouTube users to incorporate music tracks in their own videos. The company said it has made most of its partnerships quietly, signing up more than 1,000, ranging from the Sundance Channel to small independent video producers.

Source:
Reuters

Toshiba has denied reports that the 51GB HD DVD disc it showed off at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January has been submitted to the DVD Forum for approval. The 51GB HD DVD disc is achieved by packing 17GB of data per layer on a triple layer HD DVD disc. In the past few days, several news sources and blogs reported that the disc was submitted for approval, which it has not been.

While this site did report the news also, the staff was confused by what seemed to be a re-emergence of news from January with seemingly unconfirmed claims. "We’re puzzled ourself by where these reports came from," said Junko Furuta, a spokeswoman for Toshiba. She added that Toshiba has not made any further announcements about the disc since CES.

When the disc was first announced however, the company did say it wanted to get approval sometime this year. Nevertheless, we apologize for also reporting the inaccurate item.

Source:
Macworld

Verizon Wireless has introduced the first commercial mobile television service in 20 states in the U.S., which includes full length programs and quality that is similar to regular television. A Verizon / Vodafone venture will charge customers a $15/month subscription fee for the service which includes 8 channels, broadcasting content 24 hours a day. It was developed by Qualcomm's MediaFlo.

Verizon has been experimenting with video content in an effort to make up for revenue lost as mobile phone calls become cheaper. Verizon Wireless is the second largest mobile phone provider in the United States, and so far its video services have not received much attention from customers, due to its low quality and high prices.

The first phone to support MediaFlo is the U620 from Samsung. It is being sold for $199, or $149.99 for customers who sign a two-year contract. Verizon plans to add another phone, from LG Electronics Inc. in a matter of weeks. Available channels include a feeds from MTV and programming from CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

Source:
Reuters

The DVD Forum has approved the burning of Content Scrambling System (CSS) protected content to DVD-R media at Steering Committee Meeting in Tokyo. "CSS Managed Recording" would make it possible to burn CSS protected content from a DVD source, or download source, to a special type of DVD-R disc for use in stand-alone DVD equipment. The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) recently allowed movie-burning kiosks in retail stores to burn fully CSS-complaint DVDs.

There is really no point in offering consumers an option to purchase downloadable movies if they are completely confined to a computer monitor. DVD-R burning has become so popular, that a possible answer to a successful service is to allow users to download movies and then burn them to a blank DVD disc which can be played on any DVD hardware that they own.

The CSS copy protection system is deployed on DVD-Video releases and has been hacked for years, beatable literally with tools that are now years old.

Electronic Arts Inc. has teamed up with Apple Computer Inc. to sell music from video games the company develops through the iTunes music store. The move from EA, the world's biggest video game publisher, shows how gaming companies are exploring new ways to use the Internet to sell gaming content and other content. Downloads of full songs are priced the same as the rest of the store's offerings, at 99c each.

EA already sells ringtones for $2.99 each, and also sells games such as Sudoku and Tetris on iTunes for $4.99. A list of the available music has been published at www.ea.com/eatrax. Good Charlotte, Jet, Franz Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters and Arctic Monkeys are some of the acts that teamed up with EA in the past.

Source:
Reuters

The running legal dispute between Sony Corp. and Immersion has come to a close finally, with Sony agreeing to pay $121 million to settle the ongoing patent infringement litigation. Both companies are now looking at possibility of Sony including Immersion's "touch feedback" technology in future products after features were removed from the PlayStation 3 (PS3) as a direct result of this dispute.

Sony Corp.'s gaming unit said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit ordered the payment of damages, pre-judgment interest, costs, and interest to Immersion. In March 2005, Immersion won a judgment against Sony that would have halted PlayStation 2 (PS2) sales until royalties were paid.

Sony appealed the ruling, asking for a new trial at the time, but the motion was denied.

Sources:
Reuters
Betanews

It has been a good start for Joost, an Internet TV service created by the original founders of Kazaa and Skype. After striking a deal with Viacom to provide content from its networks, after Viacom abandoned YouTube in a failed agreement, Joost is now reportedly hooking up with JumpTV, which owns the rights to 270 TV stations in 70 countries.

Time magazine reported that both will soon announce their deal. Joost is now battling for the interest of the average Internet user to steal thunder from giants like YouTube and MySpace. While both have achieved incredible popularity, Joost will use its features, including robust protection of content, to win the hearts of content providers allowing it to offer premium video.

YouTube has got its own deals however, including one with NBC and is currently reportedly talking with other content providers, including the BBC. YouTube also moved further into the political arena with You Choose '08, a YouTube service that allows U.S. Presidential hopefuls to post videos and interact with members of the YouTube community.

Source:
News.com

An anonymous hacker has discovered a way to hack Microsoft's Xbox 360 console in a way that could have allowed an alternative operating system to run on the hardware. For the hack to work, physical access to the hardware is required to take advantage of a vulnerability in the Xbox 360 hypervisor.

The hypervisor provides encryption and decryption services for the console, and controls access to memory. This ensures that all games and other code run on the console need to be cryptographically signed with Microsoft's private key and run in non-privileged read-only mode.

Flaws in the interaction between unprivileged code and the hypervisor led to the groundwork for the hack. The hacker tipped off Microsoft about the problem and the company quickly produced a patch. Proof of concept code and details were published on BugTraq on Wednesday.

Severity:
Critical (Unsigned Code Execution in Hypervisor Mode)

Vendor:
Microsoft

Systems Affected:
All Xbox 360 systems with a kernel version of 4532 (released Oct 31, 2006) and 4548 (released Nov 30, 2006). Versions prior to 4532 are not affected. Bug was fixed in version 4552 (released Jan 09, 2007 - not a Patch Tuesday). Read more...

Google Inc.'s popular video sharing site, YouTube has been banned in Government schools in Victoria, Australia's second most populous state. The 1600 schools in the region have blocked YouTube due to an assault on a student that was later uploaded to the video sharing site. Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said the ban was made to fight cyber-bullying.

The case, which is still being investigated by the police, included a group of male students, who attacked a 17 year old girl and then uploaded the video of the attack to YouTube last year. The attack took place in the outskirts of Melbourne. Allan said the schools and their ISPs already filtered Web sites that were available to students, and YouTube had been added to their list.

"The state government has never tolerated bullying in schools and this zero tolerance approach extends to the online world," Allan said. "All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment -- this includes making students' experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible."

Source:
CNN

Microsoft Corp. will release the next firmware update for the Zune music player device this month, according to Zune Insider. The site quotes the Zune release manager confirming that the Zune Firmware Update 1.3 will be available Mid-March. Here is what he said it will include...

• We’re fixing the skipping problem that some users were experiencing – that is, content acquired from Zune Marketplace will no longer skip when played on the device.
  
• Improved device and software reliability, when it comes to device detection, and improved sync'ing.
  
• We’ve made some changes to the FM Tuner so it no longer drains the battery when in sleep mode.

Candidates for the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election are attempting to get some publicity from Google Inc's video sharing site, YouTube. Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson, and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have made their own channel on You Choose '08, setup by YouTube to allow candidates to exchange views with users.

Candidates can post videos on a specific subject and members of YouTube can post video responses or questions for the Candidates to answer. The politicians will of course, have control over what actually appears on their channel, but YouTube has proven to a weapon to use against a political opponent in the past.

If you remember, Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, lost a closely fought election when a video surfaced on YouTube, showing him referring to a rival's staffer as "macaca", which is an African monkey. The man was of Indian origin.

Source:
Reuters

Sony has confirmed that only a limited number of games will be playable on the European PlayStation 3 (PS3) console due to the removal of the hardware necessary for full support. However, the company said the number is supported titles is increasing every day and that by launch, about 1000 titles will be fully supported by the system.

"The situation is changing everyday, but on March 23, we expect the list to include over 1000 PS2 titles," Sony's president of worldwide studios Phil Harrison revealed to blog ThreeSpeech. Sony has noted that consumers expect backwards compatibility as a standard feature, especially since the full support was originally promised by the company.

However, the console maker believes that early adopters will be more interested in PlayStation 3 titles than playing their old PS2 games, and by providing regular updates, a steady stream of classic games will be supported by the system. "We're working to introduce a resource to the Web to detail which titles will have backwards compatibility. And as we make firmware upgrades, we will be able to add to that list," said Harrison.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent out a stark warning to U.S. college students about downloading and sharing music files illegally on the Internet. The trade group, which represents the recording industry in the United States, including the big four major record companies, also offered students a way to settle disputes out of court.

The RIAA said it has sent out 400 letters to 13 Universities warning about copyright infringement lawsuits against students who use the University networks for piracy. It has asked the Universities to notify students that they will be sued, but can settle the cases before any lawsuit will be filed.

The trade group will continue to send out hundreds of letters each month in an effort to stamp out file sharing amongst students. Thousands of P2P users across the United States have been sued by the RIAA for using software like Limewire and Kazaa to download and share music files without paying for them.

According to BigChampagne, more than 1 billion songs are traded for free monthly, setting file sharing way ahead of the legal market. The RIAA and global record industry has blamed this statistic for a rapid decline in physical CD sales since 2000.