News written by James Delahunty (May, 2007)
Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 7:54
Apple Inc. has fixed more serious security bugs with QuickTime. This time, users tricked into visited malicious webpages could either have their privacy breached or worse, have arbitrary code executed on their computers. The patches released are for both Microsoft's Windows operating systems and the Mac platforms.
The worst of the two involved QuickTime's implementation of Java, which could allow for the manipulation of objects outside what should be allowed by the allocated heap. "By enticing a user to visit a web page containing a maliciously crafted Java applet, an attacker can trigger the issue which may lead to arbitrary code execution," Apple said in this advisory.
The second flaw deals also deals with how QuickTime works with Java, and can lead to a user's web browser information being stolen, possibly putting sensitive information at risk. Apple gave credit to John McDonald, Paul Griswold, and Tom Cross of IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force and Dyon Balding of Secunia Research for reporting the flaws.
Source:
Reg Hardware
Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 7:34
We already reported that Apple Inc.'s iTunes is now selling DRM-less versions of EMI's catalog of music (and briefly mentioned the subject at hand). However, there is a slight difference between the DRM-free downloads from iTunes and the MP3 files spread across P2P networks. Apple has decided, for security reasons (and perhaps too quietly), to embed a user's name and account email into every DRM-free download.
Of course, this was a bit of a "shocking" detail for many. However, it does serve as a reminder that the downloads are sold without restrictions so the user can do what he/she wants with it for personal use, not share it with the world through every P2P network available. This issue is still gaining a lot of attention however, as one could interpret it as an attempt to weed out file sharers quietly.
Sharing these files on a P2P network will no doubt land you with legal problems eventually, so don't do it. All in all, this doesn't take away the fact that it's a big step for the music download business and paying customers who now don't have to suffer horrible DRM restrictions.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 7:12
Warner Music Group has announced plans to launch its video archive online free to fans. The label, which is home to Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers will work with digital services provider Premium TV to develop "digital hubs" (online TV sites) that are organized by genre, label or artist. They will be funded primarily by advertising. Music companies are looking for ways to generate revenue while the demand for video content online continues to rise.
Warner said the platforms would show previously unseen footage and would eventually be available in different languages. While advertising will drive revenue, users can also download videos for an additional fee. "This major new proposition in online TV represents a key step in our continued transformation," Patrick Vien, chairman and chief executive of Warner Music International said.
He added: "These unique digital hubs will further enable us to monetize our content across the myriad of ever-developing ways that people enjoy music."
Source:
Reuters
Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 7:00
Universal Studios will stand by the HD DVD disc format according to Ken Graffeo, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE). Graffeo said Universal is committed to supporting the HD DVD format exclusively, being the only studio to do so. He said that he believes the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc is ultimately good for consumers in the long run.
"A little over a year ago, the least expensive HD-DVD player was $799. Now, with Toshiba's current rebate promotion, you can get an HD-DVD player for as little as $299....On the Blu-Ray side, the players started at $1,000 to $1,800 at the end of (2006) and this summer will be down to $599 with new models from Sony and Panasonic. It's the format war that's driving pricing down at such a dramatic, accelerated rate," Graffeo told the Philadelphia Daily News.
Many Industry officials and retailers would not agree with his views. They believe that the format war is confusing for consumers and is keeping the sales of players and HD films lower than they should be. Graffeo said that Universal supports HD DVD because it offers the, "better set of mandatory specifications", and every HD DVD player comes with an Ethernet port and has the software to support interactive features.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 6:42
RealNetworks announced on Thursday that its new version of its digital media player will allow users to save video from websites such as YouTube. A "Download this video" will hover next to videos seen on thousands of websites allowing users to save them for viewing later or even to be stored on DVD. This comes as many companies are developing solutions to bring Internet video to television screens.
Consumers can download multiple videos simultaneously, including videos in the Flash, Windows Media, and QuickTime formats. As with other companies that have offered features like this, RealNetworks will now be part of the copyright debate with regard to unauthorized uploading of videos on YouTube and similar sites.
"The technology we have enabled is for personal use, and that is within copyright laws," said RealNetworks General Manager Ben Rotholtz. "But we honor any copy protection." The company said its software is downloaded about 1.5 million times daily.
Source:
Reuters
Written by James Delahunty @ 31 May 2007 10:43
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has published today an article, titled, "Ten inconvenient truths about the music industry today". It is simply a list of 10 "truths" related to music piracy internationally with some familiar names. The title of the report is no doubt aimed at grabbing media attention, but a bad attempt at putting the damage of music piracy on the same level as the other topic "inconvenient truth" is associated with, Climate Change (if that was the aim of the IFPI).
So what are these ten truths?....
- Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
- Allofmp3.com, the well-known Russian website, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
- Organised criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
- Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
- Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
- ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
- The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth – it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
- Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle or higher income earners.
- Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
- P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
It's not at all surprising that the
Pirate Bay and
AllofMP3 made the top 2. However, there is a real
"inconvenient truth" here to deal with; both sites are still online. The reason for this is that neither service is considered illegal in either country (Sweden and Russia) and both claim that no laws are broken.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 7:54
Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have worked together again to bring videos from the mega-popular YouTube to the TV screen via Apple TV. By mid-June, thousands of the most popular videos on the service will be viewable through an Apple TV device over a wireless network. The full archive of videos on YouTube will be available later in the year, according to Apple.
Of course, this sounds alarm bells for Apple becoming involved in copyright infringement problems currently being experienced by YouTube. Viacom Inc., which is currently suing Google/YouTube for $1 billion, said it would consider licensing its content to Apple. "We're always vigilant about protecting our copyrights. But we would welcome the opportunity to license our content to Apple as we do with all distributors," a Viacom spokesman said.
Apple TV will allow users to sign into their YouTube accounts to search and save videos. Apple will also start selling a new model of its Apple TV, with a 160GB hard disk drive, advertised as capable of storing 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs or 25,000 photos. An Apple TV costs $299. The larger model will cost $399, and will be available on Thursday.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 7:34
Situations like this have arisen a few times and it's always horrible to read or write about such tragedies. The family of an Illinois child who died in a house fire has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., claiming that a faulty Xbox 360 console was responsible. According to the lawsuit, the family is blaming the wiring between the console and an electrical outlet for starting the catastrophic fire by overheating considerably.
The lawsuit says the fire was a, "direct and proximate result of the overheating of the game's power supply and wiring". Wal-Mart and unnamed power-supply maker have been named in the lawsuit. However, it does appear that a mistake has been made somewhere, as the fire took place in December 2004, while the Xbox 360 launched in 2005.
However, before clearing Microsoft products of any blame, remember that Microsoft issued a recall for 14 million Xbox power cords in February 2005, citing fire concerns. Perhaps the lawsuit simply got the console name wrong. Whatever happened, it is a terrible tragedy. Wade Kline's family is seeking 'unspecified damages' in excess of $50,000.
Source:
The Inquirer
Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 7:22
YouTube has just been unbanned by the Moroccan government after citizens were unable to access the popular video-sharing website, owned by Google, for about five days. The site reportedly was unavailable in the country from May 25th after videos were posted by the Western Saharan independence movement that showed Moroccan police beating female independence protesters.
Many videos with different political views on the country are available on YouTube, some calling for independence and others calling for continued violence against protests. The country's King is also mocked in many of the videos. Maroc Telecom, owned by the Government, claimed that the site was unavailable due to a "tecnical fault" however.
Many have been left asking how exactly a technical fault would leave just one website inaccessible for five straight days. It is fairly clear to the people that the site was banned due to the videos. Reporters San Frontieres welcomed the change of heart from the government.
Source:
The Register
Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 7:10
CBS Corp announced on Wednesday that it has bought Last.fm, a social networking site constantly growing in popularity, in a deal worth $280 million. CBS said the service has over 15 million active users in more than 200 different countries and will fit well with its aim of attracting younger viewers. As part of the deal, the Last.fm team will continue to run the service work with CBS and will apply their community-building and technology expertise to extend CBS businesses online.
Last.fm's music recommendation system has been particularly successful. The site monitors music habits of its users and automatically recommends music from users that have similar tastes. It has stuck content deals with Warner Music Group and EMI Group to use their music catalogs. The service originally launched in 2002.
"Last.fm is one of the most well-established, fastest-growing online community networks out there," Leslie Moonves, President and Chief executive of CBS said. "Their demographics play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses. Last.fm adds a terrific interactive extension to all of our properties and also is a huge step in CBS Corporation's overall strategy of expanding our reach online to transition from a content company into an audience company."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 6:59
An update has been released for TVersity, the software which allows you to share (and transcode on-the-fly if necessary) multimedia content between your PC and many home devices including a PlayStation Portable, Wii, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. The update supports the Sony PS3 firmware 1.8 update. Internet Radio now works with the PS3 and problems with green bars and distorted colours have been fixed.
For the Xbox 360, TVersity can now produce WMV7 or WMV8 or WMV9 or MSMPEG4V3 (have to edit the wmProfile variable in config.xml to one of wmv7, wmv8, wmv9, mp43). You can also now choose between transcoding to WMV using DirectShow or ffmpeg. For now, only producing WMV8 can be done with the ffmpeg option. There have also been some improvements while used with a Wii and more general bug fixes.
Here is the changelog...
- Support the Sony PS3 firmware 1.8 - From firmware 1.8 there is no need to use the Adobe Flash interface for the PS3 (it is still the only way to stream media to the Nintendo Wii). You can now access your entire audio, photo and video collection from the PS3 Dashboard, including Internet Radio/TV, RSS feeds and more. The changes from the previously released patch are:
- Internet radio now works on the PS3. First playback attempt is likely to fail with an “Access to the media server has been denied” message (or “unsupported data” message), this is because the PS3 does not wait long enough for the data to be fetched over the Internet. After this failure, wait a few seconds and try playing this same station again. Assuming a connection to that station was possible, there won’t be an error message, however the actual playback may take up to two minutes and more to start since the PS3 requires about 1 MB of data before it initiates playback.
- Internet video and transcoded content starts playing faster than it used to (saving about 5 seconds).
- Library refresh is now reflected on the PS3 and on any other device that checks the media server for updates (leaving a folder that has updates and then going back to it is required in order to see the changes).
- When moving from one Internet video to another, previously the older video was not always terminated, this is now fixed.
- Issues with green bars or distorted colors when playing via PS3 were resolved.
- The TVersity icon is now shown by the Ps3.
- Support the Xbox 360 spring update This includes hierarchical video browsing and native playback of MPEG4 (including H.264 and AAC). Changes from the previously released patch are:
- TVersity can now produce WMV7 or WMV8 or WMV9 or MSMPEG4V3 once can switch between them by seting the wmProfile variable in config.xml to one of wmv7, wmv8, wmv9, mp43.
- TVersity can now Encode to WMV in two methods, the first is via directshow (which always existed and still is the default) and the second is via ffmpeg. While for now only wmv8 can be produced via ffmpeg, it is slightly faster than directshow and hence it may prove beneficial in certain cases.
- Conversion to WMV of MJPEG with mono audio no longer fails.
- Improved Adobe flash library interface (for Nintendo Wii or any web browser with support for Flash 7 or higher)
- Solve the occasional interface locks during browsing.
- Add a download button that is more accessible and does not require any menu selection, but rather considers the currently selected profile.
- More reliably termintate previously played Internet streamed when moving to new ones.
- Stop playing current media when the GUI is minimized to the tray icon.
- Other fixes and improvements
- Reading tags from AVI files is now turned off by default. It can be turned on by setting the readAVITags variable in config.xml.
- The TVersity service is now starting more reliably during a reboot, waiting, if necessary, for the networking to finish initializing, instead of quitting if it is not already initialized when Tversity is started.
- Correctly detect some cases where transcoding is not needed, and were mistakenly transcoded in the past.
- Do not block every URL with two consecutive dot characters, but rather check if the canonical path is shared or not and based on this determine if to allow ot deny access to it. This solves some playlist related playback issues.
- The device selection menu in the settings tab of the GUI, has now a scrollbar.
- Fix image browsing for the DirectTV HR20.
- Faster response time when searching the media library.
- Fixed some crashes during library refresh.
Download TVersity v0.9.10.3 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/tversity.cfm
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Written by James Delahunty @ 30 May 2007 6:46
LG Electronics has launched its first DVD writer equipped with SecurDisc technology for data protection. The Super Multi Security drive has been launched in the UK and is available (internal drive) from PC World. The SecurDisc technology is licensed for use by Nero and HL Data Storage. It allows users to add layers of security to the disc including password protection, digital signatures and protection against duplication.
Password will have a minimum length of 16 characters and hope to prevent unauthorized access to the data. Each disc is encrypted with a unique identity to assure the recipient of the authenticity and integrity of the disc. Any disc with this function enabled with be protected against copying. A viewing application is required for the data.
To protect against data loss, data is duplicated in any spare space on a disc, improving chances of recovery if the disc gets damaged. "Most companies keep sensitive personal and business information in their files and on their computers, information such as names, financial details and intellectual property, but if this data falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to fraud or identity theft", said Suan Choi, product manager for LG Electronics.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 29 May 2007 7:48
A Tokyo district court has found that a service allowing users to store their music online was infringing copyright. Image City allowed users to store their music from CDs on an off-site server, allowing them to later download them to mobile phones while on-the-go. The Japanese music copyright association (JASRAC) attacked the service and claimed it was obviously infringing copyrights.
JASRAC demanded that the service be taken offline. Image City denied any wrong doing, saying that the music stored on its servers was owned by the customer that uploaded it. The company believed that since users and the company were not copying the music for other people's use, they were essentially doing nothing wrong.
The Judge disagreed and ruled in favor of the Japanese music copyright association.
Source:
The Inquirer
Written by James Delahunty @ 29 May 2007 7:21
Right now, having a TV that is capable of 1080p is what many people are after due to its sharp and clear quality while playing back Full HD content. While most people generally don't have a HDTV, Japan's public broadcaster Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) is already developing what it hopes will serve as successor to HDTV. Super-Hi-Vision (SHV) is what the company has come up with.
Many of you have already seen details on its development (remember UHDV?). An SHV image has an astonishing resolution of 4,320 horizontal lines and 7,680 vertical lines (7680x4320). If you have an excellent working brain and have not already seen these figures, you might have noticed they are exactly 4 times that of whats considered Full HD, 1920x1080. Speaking in terms of pixels, it has 16 times the number of pixels compared to Full HD.
NHK demonstrated some important developments in its research on Friday, including a new image sensor for use in TV cameras that can shoot an entire SHV screen. NHK demonstrated capturing an entire SHV screen with a single sensor. A scene was setup about 3 meters away which included a newspaper. On a monitor displaying the image, the newspaper stories could be read easily, a task that would be very difficult with today's high definition systems.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 29 May 2007 6:58
Sony Corp. has announced it will begin offering HD Radio products in July this year. According to the HD Digital Radio Alliance, more than 1200 radio stations in the U.S. have adopted the technology, which allows them to deliver extra music content on up to four side channels that piggyback on the frequency it already uses.
For the end-user, a special radio receiver is needed to tune in. HD Radio also boasts improved sound quality. About 50 models are available already, made for home audio equipment and car stereos. "Digital terrestrial radio is the last frontier in audio," said Andrew Sivori, a senior product marketing manager at Sony's personal audio division.
He added: "And it's coming to price points that are becoming more reasonable for consumers." Sony will offer XDR-S3HD, a $200 tabletop AM/FM/HD radio, and the XT-100HD, which is a $100 tuner module for vehicles that will work with most Sony car stereo units. The first products debuted more than two years ago with price tags around $800. With significantly lower prices, the HD Digital Radio Alliance expects more than 1.5 million HD Radio devices to be sold in 2007.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 29 May 2007 6:42
Online retailer CD WOW! has been ordered to pay £41 million in damages to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the largest damages award ever made in favor of the BPI. CD WOW found trouble with the music industry long ago by importing music CDs and DVDs from outside the European Economic Area (which were licensed for sale and distribution in other territories) and had a reputation for selling products for much cheaper when compared to retail stores in the United Kingdom.
BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said...
"CD Wow has been undermining the legitimate businesses of UK retailers and record companies by continuing to import CDs and music DVDs illegally from Asia, despite having given court undertakings that it would stop doing so.
Illegal imports of this kind undermine the huge investments made by businesses here in homegrown musical talent. This ruling illustrates the lengths that the rogue retailer went to flout the law and maximize its profits at the expense of British musicians and record companies supporting them. CD Wow is no consumer champion; it is a rogue trader that now has to face the consequences of its actions.
We have an extremely competitive record industry and retail sector here in the UK, and at an average price of around £8.50, CDs are better value than ever.The vibrancy of British music depends on a fair return on the investments that allow British talent to shine. This decision is an important step in ensuring that British music has a bright future."
The BPI has already begun taking steps to enforce the damages award, having obtained a freezing order on the retailer's Hong Kong bank accounts and assets. It is recognized that enforcement of the award will be time-consuming and complex given that the company's assets are located in a number of jurisdictions.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 28 May 2007 9:33
Taiyo Yuden has introduced its new "That's Triple Guard" DVD-R series. The company has basically re-enforced the protection and durability of its blank media in three ways. Taiyo Yuden media is regarded by many as one of the best quality brands to buy (many consider it to be "the" best). The "Triple Guard" refers to....
- Scratch guard: 200x more durable to scratches than ordinary Taiyo Yuden DVD-R Prevents accidental scratches that may occur while putting the disc into and getting it out of the case or drive.
- Fingerprint protection: The stickiness on the Triple Guard surface is less than 1/7 of the stickiness on normal Taiyo Yuden DVD-R.
- Static protection: 1000x more static electric discharge, compared to normal Taiyo Yuden DVD-R.
The new, inkjet-printable Triple Guard 16x DVD-R will be released to the market on June 12 in 10 slim jewel case packs and 50 disc cakeboxes, for both (CPRM) video and data usage.
Sources:
CDFreaks
Japanese Press Release (PDF)
Written by James Delahunty @ 28 May 2007 9:25
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has urged leaders of the G8 to take bigger steps against counterfeiting and piracy. The ICC sent letters to the G8 leaders in advance of their Summit Meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany. The letter was signed by 23 CEOs and senior business executives. It included recommendations for immediate actions that could be taken by the G8 countries.
"ICC welcomes the importance the G8 has placed on this critical global issue, by keeping counterfeiting and piracy on the agenda for the past four summits and by setting up a working group on intellectual property rights," said Jean-René Fourtou, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vivendi and Co-Chair of ICC's Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) initiative.
Fourtou added: "It is now critical, however, that the words be turned to concrete actions by G8 governments to bring an end to the increasing damage being done by this illegal activity. Other government leaders watch the actions being taken by G8 countries, and we are asking the leaders of the G8 governments to take immediate steps to demonstrate their commitment to stop counterfeiting and piracy and to urgently take tougher measures that will serve as an example to the rest of the world."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 7:47
Once again, the debut of surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) television sets has been put back. Toshiba has delayed the technology, which was set for a Q4 introduction, and now it is unknown when SED sets will make it to the market. The company has blamed Canon, which is producing the panels that were set to be used in Toshiba's TVs, for the latest delays.
"The decision is based on information provided by Canon, indicating that Canon will not be able to provide SED panels to the original schedule," Toshiba said. Canon said that it is working to establish the technology it needs to mass-produce them more cheaply. SED technology can produce TVs as thin as plasma or LCD screens, but with the refresh speed of CRT along with the color intensity.
Failing to bring products to the market for so long means that SED will have even more competition to face from LCD and Plasma displays, which have seen falling prices and oversupply in recent times.
Source:
Reg Hardware
Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 7:32
Sony has developed a razor-thin display that bends like paper while continuing to show high quality full-color images. The company showed the technology off in a video which shows the 0.3 millimeter (0.01-inch)-thick display being squeezed by a hand while it shows color images of a bicyclist stuntman, a picturesque lake and others.
The display combines thin film transistor (TFT) technology with organic electroluminescent display technology. The company said commercial plans for these displays is still undecided. "In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."
"To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking," Tatsuo Mori, professor at Nagoya University's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said. "You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper."
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 7:21
European Ministers have agreed on new rules for television and Internet video-on-demand services. According to the European Commission, the new version of the 1989 "TV Without Frontiers" directive aims to make the market more competitive in the territory. Broadcasters will still be limited to 12 minutes of advertising per hour, but the limit of 3 hours per day has been scrapped in the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive.
As for product placement, it is still banned from children's or news programming and viewers will need to be informed when product placement takes place. Product placement is the act of including a sponsor's product in a TV show. The directive allows countries some flexibility to set stricter national rules and a "country-of-origin" principle means that broadcasters are governed by the rules of their home country, even if their programmes are transmitted in other states with different rules.
The directive is due to take effect by the end of the year now that it has been backed by the Commission, the European Parliament and the member states' governments. "It promises less regulation, better financing for European content and higher visibility to Europe's key values, cultural diversity and the protection of minors," EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 7:10
Looking yet again for another stream of revenue, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has set its sights on public radio. The trade group that represents the music industry in the United States, believes that radio has been given free play time for too many years. The RIAA believes that this fact is unfair.
It's not just the RIAA either who think its time for public radio to pay up, Mary Wilson, one of the original members of the Supremes, is an advocate for this cause too. "After so many years of not being compensated, it would be nice to now at this late date to at least start. They've gotten 50-some years of free play. Now maybe it's time to pay up," Wilson said.
She claims that the exemption enjoyed by public radio forced artists to continually go on tour to earn money. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) does not agree with the RIAA's position at all. "The existing system actually provides the epitome of fairness for all parties: free music for free promotion," says NAB president David Rehr. Public radio stations have warned that having a royalty "tax" would cause serious financial harm to them.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 6:59
The proposed sale of EMI to Terra Firma in a deal worth over $4 billion is unlikely to affect EMI's deal with Apple Inc.'s iTunes to sell music downloads without Digital Rights Management (DRM). Both companies announced last month that EMI's catalog would be available on iTunes without any DRM included and with a higher bitrate for 30c more than the standard 99c price per track.
Neither of the companies have commented yet on how the sale would affect DRM-free downloads, but one industry analyst expects the DRM-less tracks to be available on schedule. "EMI made its decision to side-step DRM in part to demonstrate its forward-thinking strategy, so potential purchasers would see greater value in the company," said Aram Sinnreich, founder and managing partner of Radar Research, a Los Angeles media consulting firm.
Sinnreich added: "They can't renege on the deals very easily without the value of the company plummeting." Many believe that EMI's decision to drop DRM is good for the growing market for music downloads and for consumers. It is unknown, however, if the new owners would keep EMI's current strategies and vision for the future of the industry.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 25 May 2007 6:46
Cinemas in Malaysia have had success using military-style night-vision goggles against movie pirates. The targets are individuals that attempt to copy movies using camcorders or mobile phones. Ushers have been trained by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to catch the pirates, and have managed to nab 17 people in the past two months while hits such as Spiderman 3 and the third Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been released.
"All of the cases were spotted with night-vision goggles," MPA's Malaysia manager, Nor Hayati Yahaya, said on Friday. "Its very successful." Malaysia has stepped up its efforts against piracy while it is engaged in free-trade talks with the United States. The country features on the U.S. watchlist for movie and software piracy.
The use of DVD sniffer dogs in the country has brought about much media attention. The Labradors, Lucky and Flo, have assisted in the seizures of over 1 million discs and lead to a counterfeit DVD ring being smashed. It is believed that Malaysian pirates have put a bounty on the dogs in response to their success.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 9:57
The very popular AC3Filter software has been updated to v1.35b. AC3Filter is an open source AC3 decoding filter that allows you to watch videos with AC3-encoded surround audio. After you install the filter, all video players, including Microsoft's Windows Media Player, that use DirectShow, should be able to play AC3 audio correctly. Filter also supports ProLogicII audio as well. This item has been downloaded 757,425 times from AfterDawn.
Here is the changelog for v1.35b...
- Fixed a bug in AC3 decoder (decoding of 4.1 and 3.1 AC3 files was affected). Thanks to Dietmar Kleiner for reporting and testing!
- Fixed a bug with fast playback of mono files in WMP
- Delay units works correctly in offline config utility
- SPDIF page added, all SPDIF-related options are moved there
- AC3Config utility supports themes
- Invert levels option to fix a bug with levels display in 3rd-party themes
- Default output format changed to stereo (Much of people with stereo setup cannot hear center channel with default multichannel output)
Download AC3Filter v1.35b from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ac3filter.cfm
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Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 9:48
BitComet v0.88 (latest stable) has been released, providing a whole host of GUI improvements and bugfixes. BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely free. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more. AfterDawn users have downloaded this item 1,530,555 times.
Here is the changelog...
- GUI Improved: add an option to verify login password at program startup in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add default task related info pane option in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add an option to set Bitcomet as default IE download tool in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add an option to enable torrent share in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: open BCTP link dialog replaced by open BC link dialog, which can create HTTP/FTP/BT task from BC link
- GUI Improved: add "copy BC link to clipboard" command to task list context menu, with hotkey Ctrl+C
- GUI Improved: add snapshot number column in task list
- GUI Improved: add tooltip to display detail task status info when mouse hover on task icon in task list
- GUI Improved: add tooltip to display upload rate, left time, health when mouse hover on download rate, progress, seed number
- GUI Improved: upload rate, left time, health will not display in task list by default (can be shown in View menu)
- GUI Improved: when task stopped, task can be renamed even if task is not completed
- GUI Improved: double click to download torrent file in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add popular column in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: new icon and tooltip to designate whether the torrent has been downloaded or shared by me in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add auto-refresh checkbox in toolbar of peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add share-all checkbox in toolbar of my shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: improve statistic pane display effect
- GUI Improved: add save file already exist check when open torrent file to create new BT task
- GUI Improved: able to save files to UNC path of shared folder in network during HTTP/BT downloading
- GUI Improved: add warning prompt if save file large than 4GB to non-NTFS volume when create HTTP/BT task
- GUI Improved: add balloon prompt on disk full error during HTTP/BT downloading
- GUI Improved: add prompt dialog to close program and send error report when program is not responding
- GUI Improved: add context menu to WAN IP detect light in status bar of main window
- GUI Improved: remove some infrequent options in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: floating window remember its postion and size automatically
- GUI Bugfix: unfinished tasks will not auto-start at program startup if BitComet is not closed normally before shut down computer
- GUI Bugfix: average download rate in task summary pane is cleared after BT task stopped
- GUI Bugfix: comment number and snapshot number in shared torrent list is not refreshed in time
- GUI Bugfix: operation to torrent will be misplaced after sort shared torrent list
- GUI Bugfix: text in toolbar of shared torrent list and passport pane is displayed incorrectly after switch display resolution
- GUI Bugfix: refresh of peer shared torrents list lead to high CPU usage
- Core Bugfix: program crash in some condition
Download BitComet v0.88 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/p2p_software/p2p_applications/bitcomet.cfm
Read more...
Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 7:39
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Hitachi Ltd. have decided to join forces against competition in the flat-panel TV market. Both companies will add each others' plasma display panels (PDP) to their product line-ups. Matsushita (Panasonic brand) will supply Hitachi with 103-inch panels in the current business year to March 2008, and Hitachi will Matsushita with 85-inch panels in the next business year.
Plasma makers took a hit when manufacturers of liquid-crystal display (LCD) TVs started rolling out larger screens at lower prices. Plasma TVs once dominated the 40-inch-and-larger market, but now plasma makers are being urged to keep closer ties to compete with LCD. Global LCD TV sales grew 54% from a year ago to $13.6 billion in the latest quarter, while plasma TV sales fell 9% to $3.6 billion.
Matsushita said that it is currently unclear how much annual revenues the new deal with Hitachi could generate. The move by both companies follows LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s formation of an alliance to enhance competitiveness.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 7:25
Sony has revealed that a version of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) console with an 80GB hard disk drive will go on sale in South Korea on June 16th. The model will come with a price tag of 518,000 won ($556). Two other versions of the PS3 have been sold, one with a 20GB HDD and one with a 60GB HDD. In Europe, only the 60GB model is available and Sony will discontinue sales of 20GB models in North America.
The PlayStation 3 is Sony's weapon in the console war with Nintendo (Wii) and Microsoft (Xbox 360). The three companies are battling for dominance in the $30 billion global video game industry and all have touted their strengths but can't keep their weaknesses off the blogs.
Sony has also said that it will release the 80GB version of the console in other territories if there is sufficient demand for it. The extra storage capacity is offered in South Korea due to high interest in online games in the country.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 7:10
According to research from Italy's Luigi Einaudi Foundation, file sharing of music and movies cuts into consumers' purchasing of physical products like CDs and DVDs. The research shows that nearly a third of file-sharers (30%) have cut back on the amount of physical music products they buy. Only 6% of those surveyed said that file-sharing increased their propensity to buy CDs, while 64% of respondents said their habit did not change their music buying habits.
77% of all those who said they download music have used P2P networks to obtain music, while only 23 per cent have used an authorized online service. The research showed that 31% of those questioned had downloaded music or video from the internet in the last month. Nine-in-ten of the tracks downloaded were singles (91%), predominantly current chart hits. The most popular device for playing this material was a music player (84%), followed by hi-fis and MP3 players (39%).
The most popular P2P software among those asked was eMule (51%), followed by WinMX (25%) and Kazaa (13%). Three in five of those interviewed (61%) said the bought less than one CD a month and more than 30% of this group buy no physical copies of recorded music at all. Researchers interviewed wide cross-section of Italians, with 50 per cent of respondents aged between 15 and 34 years old, 25 per cent between 35 and 44 years old and 25 per cent between 44 and 54 years old.
Read more...
Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 7:02
Apple Inc. has set its sights on high street adult retailer Ann Summers over a sex toy that is intended to be used with iPods and other MP3 players. The iGasm connects to an MP3 player and gives the user erotic vibrations in sync with the beat. Apple is furious, but not exactly at the toy itself, more-so how it is advertised.
According to the News of the World, Apple is demanding that all posters for the gadget be taken down, under threat of legal action. The neon-pink posters depict an underwear-clad female silhouette holding an oval white device with two cables, one which is connected to a pair of white headphones, the other is heading towards.... well, you get the idea!
The sales pitch encourages users to, "Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum 'n' bass track or chill with an ambient classic." Apple's problem is with the these advertisements, claiming they are an abuse of the silhouette-based images it uses in its own advertising for its music products.
Source:
Macworld
Written by James Delahunty @ 24 May 2007 6:48
Former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the EMI Group, Jim Fifield, is reported to be still working on a deal to buy the record company despite losing financial backer, Corvus Capital. The private equity group had considered making a bid for EMI for some time, but in the end decided against the idea. The New York Post reported on Thursday that Fifield had received financial commitments from members of the Qatari royal family.
It said Fifield wanted to run EMI's recorded music division and sell its publishing assets to record executive Charles Koppelman and private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner. EMI's board recommended 265 pence a share offer (over $4 billion) from private equity group, Terra Firma Capital Partners, on Monday. The deal would spare EMI the regulatory uncertainty that would come with another music company buying it.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 7:48
Samsung does not seem convinced that Sony will be able to deliver on a promise it made to begin selling Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays to consumers this year. Sony had promised to begin selling 11-inch OLED monitors before the end of the year. That announced spurred its rivals to begin accelerating their OLED display development tasks.
OLED technology can allow resolution displays to be created using ultra-thin panels, and since OLED screens are self-illuminating, the lack of a need for an LCD-like backlight cuts down the power consumption even further.
"I hope Sony will really do it, but considering circumstances, I doubt they will be able to start selling it this year. Maybe it would be possible for them to make a hundred or a thousand units as artifacts, but no more than that." Yoo Eui-jin, vice president and chief of Samsung SDI's OLED team, said.
Samsung recently announced plans to introduce AM (Active Matrix) OLED screens to markets for portable devices such as mobile phones. The company claims its 2.2-inch AM-OLED is the world's thinnest, measuring just 0.53 millimeters thick.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 7:34
According to reports on Tuesday, Royal Philips Electronics NV is currently in talks to sell its stake (33%) in flat-panel display maker LG.Philips. The move could bring the company €3.7 billion (US$5 billion) in proceeds. The company has faced oversupply in the market for LCD and is also being investigated by U.S. and Asian regulators for anticompetitive practices.
Gerard Kleisterlee, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Philips was quoted as saying the company was in talks with "LG.Philips and other parties," on the disposal. Philips' lockup period on its stake ends in July, and the company has revealed plans to sell in the past. LG.Philips has a market capitalization of roughly €11 billion (US$15 billion).
LG.Philips posted a first quarter net loss of US$180 million (€133 million), tightening from a loss of US$185 million a year earlier.
Source:
Expatica
Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 7:21
We reported yesterday that SoundExchange, the group backed by the record industry to collects Internet music royalties from Webcasters and satellite radio, offered to defer new copyright-payment rates for small Webcasters who claim the new payments would bankrupt them. The US Copyright Royalties Board (CRB) will implement higher charges for online radio music licenses from 15th July. Many companies say it will put them out of business.
SoundExchange offered smaller webcasters a deal that would allow them to keep paying the current royalties, but larger stations would have to pay the new amounts. SaveNetRadio, a group representing Internet radio stations, rejected the plan and said it is designed to stifle the growth of Internet radio services.
"The proposal made by SoundExchange would throw 'large webcasters' under the bus and end any 'small' webcaster's hopes of one day becoming big," SaveNetRadio spokesperson Jake Ward said. "Under Government-set revenue caps, webcasters will invest less, innovate less and promote less. Under this proposal, internet radio would become a lousy long-term business, unable to compete effectively against big broadcast and big satellite radio – artists, webcasters, and listeners be damned."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 7:12
Cyberlink Corp. has announced that its HD playback software, PowerDVD Ultra, now supports AMD UVD Unified Video Decoder technology on the newly released ATI Radeon HD 2400 series and ATI Radeon 2600 series graphics cards. PowerDVD Ultra supports playback of Blu-ray Discs, HD DVDs, and DVDs, and now offers support for AMD UVD Technology ensuring a high-quality playback experience with minimal power consumption on both Windows XP and Vista operating systems.
With support for AMD UVD features like VC-1, MPEG-4 H.264 CABAC (Context-based Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding), Motion Compensation and iDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform), both desktop PC and notebook users will be able to enjoy enhanced video quality with incredibly low CPU consumption.
"CyberLink is delighted to work with AMD to deliver the best high-quality video playback possible with PowerDVD Ultra optimized for the latest ATI Radeon HD2000 series graphics cards," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp. "This is indeed a great success for both AMD and CyberLink to satisfy the growing demand for high-definition video performance within the mainstream PC market."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 7:06
Details of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) 1.80 firmware update, which will be available tomorrow, show that the console will get an excellent improvement in its quest to be your home entertainment hub. The most interesting added functionality is, of course, the ability to upscale PlayStation 1 (PS1) and PlayStation 2 (PS2) games, as well as DVD-Video, to 1080p (Full HD) through HDMI on a HD display.
The update also brings support for Remote Play for the PSP, meaning a user can access their PS3 from anywhere in the world where an Internet connection is available. This feature will need both 1.80 firmware on the PS3 and also PSP firmware version 3.50, which will be available at the end of the month. The update also allows users on a home network to view and play media content stored on DLNA3-enabled devices.
Another notable addition to the PS3's list of features is the ability to print photos stored on the console's hard drive or storage media using some models of Epson printers through a USB cable.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 23 May 2007 6:47
Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's antitrust subcommittee, urged regulators on Wednesday to block a proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Kohl sent letters to the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging them to oppose the deal as it would cause "substantial harm to competition and consumers."
"Such a result should be unacceptable under antitrust law and as a matter of communication policy," Kohl wrote to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and the Justice Department's antitrust chief, Thomas Barnett. The proposed deal would see Sirius buying XM in an all-stock deal worth $4 billion, effectively combining the only two satellite radio providers in the U.S.
The Justice Department and the FCC are currently reviewing the deal. Back in 1997, the FCC issued both companies licenses on the condition they would never merge. Sirius Chief Executive Mel Karmazin has promised that the combined company would not raise prices for customers. He believes the deal is not anti-competitive because traditional radio and even MP3 players could be considered competition for the services.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 8:59
Among the daily software updates on AfterDawn.com and Filepedia.com servers are the five popular items, FFDShow, uTorrent, BitComet, K-lite Codec Packs and SmitFraudFix. FFDShow has long been in our top 5 downloads with 4,749,105 downloads to date. The popular BitTorrent clients BitComet and uTorrent are downloaded quite often, accounting for 1,529,303 and 85,085 downloads respectively at time of writing.
The K-Lite Codec Packs have proven to be a hit and have been updated on our servers today (5 separate updates) and account for about 455,645 overall downloads at time of writing. SmitFraudFix is an excellent anti-malware tool that is constantly updated on Filepedia.com and has been mentioned in this article since it recently flew passed 100,000 downloads (100,733 currently). So here are the download links and changelogs (if applicable)...
FFDSHOW rev. 1193 (20070522)
Download FFDShow from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm
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Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 7:53
After being hit with a lawsuit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The man who claims to have created "The Electric Slide" has agreed to call off his online video takedown campaign and to stop threatening people using the popular line dance for non-commercial purposes. The EFF filed a lawsuit against Richard Silver on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis.
Silver sent a takedown demand to YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), requesting that a video uploaded by Machulis to the service be taken down. The video contained concert footage that included a ten-second segment of audience members attempting to do the Electric Slide. Silver claimed he owned the copyright to the Electric Slide and that the video infringed his rights and of course, the video was removed.
"Mr. Silver's misuse of the DMCA interfered with our client's free speech rights," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "New technologies have opened multiple avenues for artists and their audiences to create, share and comment on new works. We cannot let absurd copyright claims squash this extraordinary growth."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 7:42
Joost has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed a year ago over the technology upon which Skype and Joost are based. Last year, StreamCast Networks accused Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the pair that developed the technology behind the companies Kazaa and Skype, of breaking an agreement to give StreamCast the first right to purchase their FastTrack P2P protocol.
FastTrack was formerly the network which Morpheus' file-sharing application operated on and is also the technology foundation of Skype's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. StreamCast claims that the entrepreneurs breached contract by improperly transferring technology rights away from StreamCast.
Source:
News.com
Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 7:31
SoundExchange, the group backed by the record industry to collects Internet music royalties from Webcasters and satellite radio, said on Tuesday it would defer new copyright-payment rates for small Webcasters who claim the new payments would bankrupt them. The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) introduced sharply higher royalty rates for these companies on May 1, 2007.
SoundExchange said its new offer applies to webcasters with revenues of $1.25 million or less, adding that it was addressing "alleged weaknesses in the small Webcasters' businesses." The move follows pressure from Congress, where legislators are attacking the royalty rate increase saying it threatens the fledgling industry.
"Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there's a sense in the music community and in Congress that small Webcasters need more time to develop their businesses," said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange. However, Jake Ward of the SaveNetRadio Coalition believes the offer falls short.
"A proposal like this would doom small Webcasters and kill large Webcasters," Ward said. He believes that deeming a webcaster large and therefore subject to higher rates ignores the fact that many of these "larger" sites are still small and struggling companies. "It would also force small companies to stay small," he said. "There's no question that Webcasters with government-set revenue caps would invest less, innovate less and promote less."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 7:23
Subscribers of XM Satellite Radio may have noticed problems yesterday acquiring a usable signal, mostly across the Eastern United States and Canada. "Some customers are not receiving a signal. We don't know the exact number, but some," Chance Patterson, XM's vice president of corporate affairs said earlier. XM Satellite radio has about eight million subscribers in total.
The company explained that the problems, which reportedly started on Monday around noon (ET), were the result of a software glitch. "The problem occurred during the loading of software to a critical component of our satellite broadcast system, which resulted in a loss of signal from one of our satellites. We expect normal service to resume midday [Tuesday]," a statement posted on the company's website reads.
Services are now reportedly back to normal. "XM Satellite Radio has resumed normal levels of service for customers who experienced outages or significantly degraded service starting yesterday," the company wrote on its site. "After you turn on your XM radio, please allow five to ten minutes to reacquire the XM signal." XM's program lineup includes Oprah Winfrey and Major League Baseball.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 22 May 2007 6:57
Taiwanese optical disc producer, Ritek, has announced it has received the certification for both HD DVD-R (recordable, write once) and HD DVD-RW (rewritable) formats. The company indicated that the technological barrier for HD DVD-R is quite high and that for HD DVD-RW is higher. Volume production of the discs is expected to begin in the second half of this year at the earliest.
CMC Magnetics recently received certification for Blu-ray Disc (BD)-R production and may be ready to begin volume production as early as next quarter. Support from the Taiwan's manufacturing capabilities will be a key promotion tool for the BD and HD DVD platforms.
Ritek's manufacturing capability for DVD+R/-R DL (single-sided double-layer) discs was helpful in obtaining the certification, according to the company.
Source:
DigiTimes
Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 8:34
The popular burning/multimedia suite Nero Burning ROM has been updated today to version 7.9.6.0. Nero Burning ROM is probably the best all-in-one CDR/DVDR application on the market and is certainly one of the most popular available. Nero combines huge amounts of features in a compact and easy to use package. It handles disc duplicating and pre-mastering with ease, supported by a cover designer and even an audio file editor.
Nero 7 Premium Reloaded, the all-in-one solution that is Certified for Windows Vista brings you AVCHD, BD-AV, and HD DVD support, as well as innovative iPod and Xbox 360 features. Nero 7 Premium Reloaded has everything you need to manage your digital lifestyle.
- Opening an audio file could lead Nero Burning ROM to stop working properly
- In specific cases no output file format could be selected while creating an image file
- Problem was encountered while Burning very long slideshows (2000 pictures)
- Adding non video files to VCD/SVCD compilations was not possible anymore
Download
Nero Burning ROM v7.9.6.0 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_applications/nero.cfm
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Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 7:49
Offering special editions of games for a higher price is already being done frequently with next-gen consoles. For example, the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 will sell for a whopping $129.99. Many hardcore gamers will definitely pay the extra price for the more expensive Halo editions and you could argue that the following for the Grand Theft Auto brand would do exactly the same - even Rockstar thinks so.
A special edition of Grand Theft Auto IV will cost $89.99, $30 more than the regular edition at $59.99. For the extra fee, customers will get extra goodies which include a limited edition Rockstar duffel bag and book which contains production artwork from the game, and also a soundtrack CD. All of the goodies will come inside another goodie... a fully lockable metal safety deposit box.
The bundle will contain a special keychain to access the lockbox. Both versions of the highly-anticipated game will go on sale in North America on October 16th and then in Europe three days later. It is set in during the present day and Rockstar has promised the soundtrack will contain "new material from top artists available only on this release."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 7:37
Fujitsu Limited has announced a new large-scaled integrated (LSI) chip capable of compressing and decompressing Full High-Definition (HD) video (1920 x 1080) content in the H.264 format. The new chip, the MB86H51, is the industry's first one-chip LSI for full HD H.264 High Profile video processing with embedded memory.
This new chip enables high image quality recording, playback, and transmission of full high-definition video over a wide range of fields from consumer to industrial applications, such as for digital video cameras (camcorders), hard disk digital video recorders (DVRs), home network devices, security cameras, and broadcasting equipment.
H.264 format is rapidly becoming widespread as a technology for compression and decompression of large volumes of high-definition video data, as H.264 features higher compression performance compared to previous formats such as MPEG-2.
Sample shipments will start from July 1, 2007.
Source:
Press Release
Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 7:24
EMI Group PLC has accepted an offer of £2.4 billion (GBP) or $4.7 billion (USD) from private equity group, Terra Firma Capital Partners. The label accepted the 265 pence ($5.23) per share takeover bid on Monday but the deal has raised speculation of an upcoming bidding war for the music company. Analysts have said that the offer could flush out a higher offer from Warner Music.
Shares of EMI finished 8.5 percent higher at 269 pence ($5.30) after the offer was made just before the closing bell on the London Stock Exchange. "The global music industry is undergoing significant change and, whilst EMI is confident in its ability to deliver its recently announced restructuring plans, significant uncertainty exists as to the timing and extent of future market developments," said EMI Chairman John Gildersleeve.
He added: "Terra Firma’s offer is the most attractive proposal received and delivers cash now, without regulatory uncertainty and with the minimum of operational risk to the company." EMI reported a net loss of 288.5 million pounds in its most recent earnings release, following a profit of 86.1 million pounds in 2006. EMI is home to artists such as the Beatles and Coldplay.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 7:07
LG Electronics has announced it is producing its smallest plasma display panel (PDP) for the Chinese TV market. The South Korean company, which is the world's #2 manufacturer of plasma display panels (PDP), said it will supply 32-inch plasma panels for unspecified Chinese TV set makers. LG recently moved to cut its output and restructure its PDP business amid falling panel prices and growing losses.
"We will begin the mass production from June, at our module plant in Nanjing," a company spokesman said. "China's 30-inch grade TV market is set to grow quickly ahead of next year's Beijing Olympics." He added that LG will offer the 32-inch PDP screens at a lower price than smaller sized LCD panels but declined to set a price or the planned production volume.
On Friday, LG halted production of plasma display panels at its smallest of its three domestic plasma panel lines before the end of June. The company trails behind Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. in the plasma business, but is ahead of the another South Korean giant, Samsung SDI Co.
Source:
Reuters
Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 6:56
TiVo has learned how to ensure its widespread adoption continues by once again bringing out its mail-in rebate program, this time for Series 3 high definition TiVo box. Customers who go out and purchase a TiVo series 3 box will be entitled to a $200 mail-in rebate. The price of the Series 3 TiVo box has stayed at $800 MSRP, meaning the new offer brings the final retail price to about $600 overall.
Some retailers have already pushed the price down to $600, meaning it is possible, if you look around, to push it down to a $400 price overall. The Series 3 still has its initial $800 price tag, but TiVo did announce earlier this year that it plans to drop that price by a couple of hundred dollars by the end of 2007.
The new rebate program is set to kick off on May 27th and is valid for purchases that are made through June 16th.
Source:
TG Daily
Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 6:46
In the ongoing effort by the music industry to squash Russian MP3 download site, AllofMP3.com, Police have raided and shut down an online voucher system used by the site. The action follows a pan-European investigation, conducted by the global recording industry body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and UK record companies' association, BPI, which led to the arrest of a 25-year-old male in Bow, London.
The individual was allegedly the UK-based European agent for AllofMP3.com, facilitating the sale of digital downloads by advertising and selling vouchers through auction sites such as eBay and the website allofmp3vouchers.co.uk. That website has now been taken offline. The vouchers contained a code that allowed UK and European consumers to access and download music from AllofMP3.
The vouchers cost about £10 each, which would buy you more tracks than you would think. The Russian site sells MP3 downloads for far less than iTunes and other authorized sellers. The IFPI and record companies around the world maintain that AllofMP3 is an illegal site, even though it claims it complies with copyright law in Russia. The company lost the ability to be paid via PayPal, Visa, Mastercard etc. last year, and the record industry is now looking at how it can block the site's revenue even more.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 21 May 2007 9:33
BitComet 20070519 Beta has been released, providing a whole host of GUI improvements and bugfixes. BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely free. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more. AfterDawn users have downloaded this item over 1.5 million times.
Here is the changelog...
- GUI Improved: add search for eDonkey download source option in BT task properties dialog
- GUI Improved: add ED download plugin configuration page in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add an option to verify login password at program startup in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add default task related info pane option in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add an option to set Bitcomet as default IE download tool in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: add an option to enable torrent share in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: open BCTP link dialog replaced by open BC link dialog, which can create HTTP/FTP/BT task from BC link
- GUI Improved: add "copy BC link to clipboard" command to task list context menu, with hotkey Ctrl+C
- GUI Improved: add snapshot number column in task list
- GUI Improved: add tooltip to display detail task status info when mouse hover on task icon in task list
- GUI Improved: add tooltip to display upload rate, left time, health when mouse hover on download rate, progress, seed number
- GUI Improved: upload rate, left time, health will not display in task list by default (can be shown in View menu)
- GUI Improved: when task stopped, task can be renamed even if task is not completed
- GUI Improved: double click to download torrent file in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add popular column in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: new icon and tooltip to designate whether the torrent has been downloaded or shared by me in peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add auto-refresh checkbox in toolbar of peer shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: add share-all checkbox in toolbar of my shared torrent list
- GUI Improved: improve statistic pane display effect
- GUI Improved: add save file already exist check when open torrent file to create new BT task
- GUI Improved: able to save files to UNC path of shared folder in network during HTTP/BT downloading
- GUI Improved: add warning prompt if save file large than 4GB to non-NTFS volume when create HTTP/BT task
- GUI Improved: add balloon prompt on disk full error during HTTP/BT downloading
- GUI Improved: add prompt dialog to close program and send error report when program is not responding
- GUI Improved: add context menu to WAN IP detect light in status bar of main window
- GUI Improved: remove some infrequent options in perferences dialog
- GUI Improved: display download rate from HTTP/FTP sources and ED sources in BT task summary pane
- GUI Improved: floating window remember its postion and size automatically
- GUI Bugfix: unfinished tasks will not auto-start at program startup if BitComet is not closed normally before shut down computer
- GUI Bugfix: average download rate in task summary pane is cleared after BT task stopped
- GUI Bugfix: comment number and snapshot number in shared torrent list is not refreshed in time
- GUI Bugfix: operation to torrent will be misplaced after sort shared torrent list
- GUI Bugfix: text in toolbar of shared torrent list and passport pane is displayed incorrectly after switch display resolution
- Core Improved: BT task support downloading from eDonkey network (ED plugin for BitComet is required)
Download BitComet 20070519 Beta (or latest stable release) from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/p2p_software/p2p_applications/bitcomet.cfm
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Written by James Delahunty @ 20 May 2007 7:20
Satellite provider, DirecTV, has filed a lawsuit against Comcast for alleged misrepresentation in an advertisement where Comcast claims its picture quality to be superior. DirecTV only had its own advertisements pulled back in February which also claimed that its broadcasting was superior in quality to what cable companies offered. Time Warner Cable had sued DirecTV for the claims.
Now, its DirecTV's turn to fire shots as the spat between Satellite and Cable in attracting the growing interest for HDTV programming continues. The most recent advertisement in question from Comcast (March 2007) cites a survey from Frank N. Magid Associates which showed Comcast was preferred over DirecTV with regard to picture quality.
"The Magid survey upon which Comcast relies does not provide or sufficiently substantiate the propositions for which Comcast cites the survey. Comcast's advertising and promotional claims, including the aforementioned, are literally false," DirecTV's lawsuit alleges. DirecTV is seeking monetary damages and expects retracting statements be made by Comcast.
Source:
TG Daily
Written by James Delahunty @ 20 May 2007 7:06
Motorola and Modulus Video have announced the signing of a merger agreement that will see Motorola acquiring the video compression company. Modulus Video provides MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) compression systems for delivery of video content in the IPTV, cable, broadcast and satellite marketplace. The two companies have been working together on encoding solutions for over two years.
"Motorola is committed to offering an integrated, end-to-end video portfolio designed to meet the current and next-generation requirements of operators," said Dan Moloney, President, Home and Networks Mobility business, Motorola. "As consumers demand more high-definition (HD) video and interactive services, the need for advanced compression technology is increasingly important. As part of its advanced real-time video encoding products, Modulus Video has a powerful architecture and product development framework that is well suited for continued technological advancement."
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Source:
DigiTimes
Written by James Delahunty @ 20 May 2007 6:59
Computer dealers in Gujarat, India, have reportedly staged a one-day strike in protest over recent Microsoft anti-piracy efforts. The Redmond-based software giant recently sent notices to about 6 PC dealers in Gujarat accusing them of selling pirated copies of Windows. The company demands a payment of 200,000 Rupee ($4,955) and a fine of 1,600,000 Rupee ($39,638) if the vendors continued to sell pirated copies of the OS.
Microsoft conducted its investigation by sending a dummy customer into the stores asking for a copy of Windows be installed on their PC. "We are not against piracy but against the way Microsoft is working to stop it," South Gujarat Information Technologists Association (SITA) president Bharat Randheri told itVARnews. "Moreover, if they want to do business in India then they should change their prices and policies according to the Indian market. We are the one who are promoting their products in the market and if they will behave in such a rash manner with us then we will stop business with them."
One retailer claimed that they are actually helping Microsoft by installing the software on customers PCs. "Since we are are not charging anything extra for installing the software, it means that we are actually not trading in pirated software. For us this is just a sewa (selfless act) that we are offering to our customers. Besides, the pricing of their operating systems is way too high for the Indian markets," he said.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 20 May 2007 6:28
According to a leading expert on Climate Change issues, Governments around the world should explore possibilities of placing taxes on Plasma TVs and other power-hungry devices to promote more energy efficient designs. Plasma screens are much bigger than cathode-ray tube TVs and consume about four times the power on average. Professor Paul Ekins, who studies the economics of climate change, said placing a tax on these screens would reflect their "greater climate change burden."
A CRT TV costs about £25 (GBP) per year to run and causes 100kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on average, compared to plasma's running costs of £100 (GBP) per year, accounting for 400kg of C02 emissions on average. Obviously, there is no easy comparison because of the size difference between plasma displays and others.
"At the very least you might think that government would provide some differential incentives to accelerate the development of more energy-efficient diode screens and encourage their take-up," said Professor Ekins, co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). "Once plasma screens are bought, they are likely to be there for five years at a minimum - perhaps 10 years, perhaps longer."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 19 May 2007 6:54
Samsung Electronics and LG.Philips may have boosted the goal of creating thinner mobile phones and other portable devices with the development of new active-matrix OLEDs (AMOLED). Samsung is calling its 2.2-inch display the "world's thinnest" at just 0.52mm but LG.Philips has developed a 4.0-inch display just 0.15mm thick which is also flexible. Both display at a resolution of up to 320x240.
Samsung outdoes LG.Philips in terms of color display, supporting 262 million colors compared to LG.Philips' display of 16.7 million colors. Samsung is also reportedly ready to mass-produce its display for various mobile devices while LG.Philips' offering has only been announced.
LG.Philips' claims that its display is "barely thicker than a human hair" and it is also the first AMOLED display to use amorphous silicon technology allowing it to bend and roll without causing damage. "This display capitalizes on the strengths of OLED technology and its image quality is really something to behold," said LG.Philips VP Hyunhe Ha in a statement.
Hyunhe Ha continued: "Although we are still in the initial stages with this technology, we expect to make some exciting advances in the near future. LG.Philips LCD is focused on customer-centered technology development to introduce products that customers want."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 19 May 2007 6:36
LG Electronics Inc. has announced it will close a manufacturing plant that produces over 840,000 42-inch plasma panels per year (about 70,000 per month) used in flat-panel television sets. The South Korean firm is making the move to cut costs and rejuvenate its business. The plant is located in Gumi, 260km southeast of Seoul, according to LG spokeswoman Judy Pae. She said the shut down of the plant is scheduled to happen in the first half of this year, so very soon.
"This move is to increase operational efficiency and to reduce costs totaling US$22 million to US$32 million annually," LG Electronics said in a statement issued later. "This is a part of LG's ongoing efforts to improve the performance of its plasma display panel business as a whole." LG's total 42-inch plasma display module production capacity will decline to 360,000 units per month, or 4.32 million a year, with the loss of the "A1" plant.
The company lost 123 billion won (US$132.1 million) in the three months ended March 31 after it had recorded net profit of 150.8 billion won a year earlier. The market for flat panel TV sets, including liquid-crystal display (LCD) and plasma sets, has suffered from oversupply and falling prices. LG competes with many other huge plasma makers including Samsung Electronics and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 19 May 2007 6:23
A new Copyright Alliance launched yesterday in Washington D.C. with a self-described goal of "promoting the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs, and growth." While promoting the value of copyright it aims to strengthen existing copyright protection laws. The group has the backing of many organizations including MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP and the NBA.
Several members of congress also back the new Copyright Alliance, including Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and "Hollywood" Howard Berman (D-CA). The group is headed by Patrick Ross, formerly of the Progress & Freedom Foundation who has written about Intellectual Property (IP) issues for years. The Alliance is dedicated to "strengthening copyright law" using "bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements to protect creators" and advancing educational programs "that teach the value of strong copyright."
In several papers published on the organizations website, the group repeats the claim that piracy is responsible for the loss of billions of dollars of sales of software, movies and music and argues that most "fair use" claims made today are misleading.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 19 May 2007 6:08
In a nice reminder from the entertainment industry that a lot more than just a motion picture itself is subject to copyright, German and Polish police have arrested several administrators and translators for a popular Polish site that offers user-generated subtitles. Napisy.org was the target of the Police raid and several computers were seized as part of the investigation.
The administrators have been charged with copyright infringement, even though apparently it was the site's users that did the translations. Under Polish law, translators need permission from content providers before working on copyright material. The head of napisy.org claims that "the idea of the service is noncommercial" and may fall under some fair use rights.
There is good reason for Polish subtitles to be translated and offered like this; many official Polish translations don't become available until months after a major film has been released and some users simply don't want to have to wait that long. The downloaded subtitles can be played back when paired with a DVDRip which can of course come from a legitimate source but the movie industry will probably not acknowledge that fact.
The claim will soon be tested in court.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 9:59
New NPD figures show that Nintendo has once again performed exceptionally well in both hardware and software sales during the month of April. The Nintendo DS handheld outsold all other gaming hardware, moving an impressive 471,000 units while the Wii console followed with 360,000 units. Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2) console was ahead of Microsoft's Xbox 360 with 194,000 units and 174,000 units sold respectively.
Sony's PlayStation Potable (PSP) also had a good month, moving 183,000 units. Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console slipped to 82,000 units, outsold by the aging Game Boy Advance (GBA) by just 2,000 units. GameCube managed to scrape up 13,000 unit sales in the month. Nintendo also performed very well with software sales, scoring the top four best-selling games for April.
Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl for the DS sold 1.045 million and 712,000 units respectively. Super Paper Mario followed with 352,000 sales and then Wii Play recorded 249,000 sales during the month. Guitar Hero II sold 197,000 units for the Xbox 360, platform and also 142,000 units for the PS2 platform. Other notable figures were God of War II for PS2 selling 101,000 copies SpiderMan 3 selling 117,000 copies for Xbox 360 platform and 105,000 for PS2.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 9:44
Nero has announced that its Nero 7 package is to be the first multimedia suite to be certified for both the Authoring and playback of the Advanced Video Codec High Definition (AVCHD) standard. AVCHD is a new recording format introduced by Sony and Panasonic that uses an MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video codec to allow for greater compression efficiency as well as higher quality audio and video capturing.
In gaining this certification, Nero 7 has successfully passed the stringent quality standards and guidelines as outlined by Sony and Panasonic to ensure the best user experience for AVCHD. AVCHD authoring in Nero 7 empowers users to take their own HD content from AVCHD camcorders or other sources, and add menus, create chapters, edit, and encode into AVCHD. Nero 7's certified authoring capability ensures that content can be played on consumer devices such as PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray Disc players.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 7:57
Cyberlink Corp. has announced that its PowerDVD Ultra software, the only retail software to support playback of Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and DVD media now has support for NVIDIA's second generation PureVideo® HD (VP2) architecture on NVIDIA's latest GeForce 8500/8600 series graphics cards.
PowerDVD Ultra uses the PureVideo hardware engine to power superior H.264 decoding technology, providing owners of NVIDIA GeForce 8500/8600 series graphics cards the benefit of dramatically reducing CPU utilization when executing high-definition video decoding and playback.
"With our ongoing collaboration with NVIDIA to drive high-definition video technology, CyberLink is now able to provide both PowerDVD Ultra and NVIDIA GeForce 8500/8600 series graphics cards users with an exceptionally smooth high-definition video decoding and playback experience," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp.
"We are ecstatic that Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra supports the new PureVideo HD processing engine on NVIDIA GeForce 8600 and GeForce 8500 graphics cards," said Scott Vouri, NVIDIA General Manager of Multimedia. "Now even users with mainstream PCs will be able to experience the beauty and detail of Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD movies."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 7:46
It has been a few months since Microsoft unleashed its new Windows Vista operating system to the public, and during the time while it has sold millions of legitimate copies, crackers have been trying to get around its anti-piracy measures which Microsoft claims to have significantly improved over XP. There has been a variety of options to pirates, including workarounds to delay activation indefinitely and the OEM BIOS cracks that have floated around.
However, pirates do show that they complain even about stuff they get for free, and many find even the BIOS hacks too hard to follow. Warez group, NoPe, recently gave these lazy gits a surprise with a release of Windows Vista that works straight from installation, no serial input necessary and no activation to crack or get around.
Amusingly, it would appear that this "release" needs even less manual labor than the copies of Windows XP that are distributed with key generators and cracks and feedback in all the regular places shows some users find it works properly whatever the case, others claim it will only work as promised on a Dell machine.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 7:34
Hitachi hopes to boost Blu-ray in the market in 2009 by offering a 200GB Blu-ray optical disc. The capacity, which is 4 times what today's largest available Blu-ray discs offer, is achieved by packing eight layers onto a single side of the platter. Blu-ray already has an advantage over its rival, HD DVD, in terms of capacity, offering 25GB per layer compared to HD DVD's 15GB per layer.
A triple layer HD DVD disc has been produced, packing 17GB into each layer for a total of 51GB storage capacity. While it would push HD DVD's capacity over that of the currently available Blu-ray media, the development from Hitachi shows that it might not be too hard at all for Blu-ray to go over the top again,... far over.
A triple layer HD DVD disc also would surely have compatibility problems with today's available hardware anyway (as surely an eight layer Blu-ray disc would also) and that's not even to mention the cost of producing either format's discs with more than 2 layers anytime soon.
Source:
Inquirer
Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 7:20
The creators of the infamous video sharing website, YouTube.com, have challenged the Pentagon and the U.S. Military over the assertion that soldiers overseas were using too much bandwidth on the military's network by watching online videos. The Defense Department recently imposed a ban on several websites including YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Studip Videos, IFilm, MTV and Photobucket.
"They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don't know what the problem is," laughed YouTube Chief Executive Chad Hurley, saying that the company is trying to work with the Pentagon to reverse its course or at least partially lift the ban which affects many soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We'd like to explore what's at issue here and talk about what we can do to sort out what's the issue here," YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan said. Company officials were confused mostly because the block comes just days after the Military launched its own channel on YouTube which it describes as a "boots-on-the-ground" perspective of scenes of combat.
YouTube has always removed videos that contain footage of extreme violence which have included attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. To make this whole situation even more interesting, a new policy implemented in Iraq by the government aims to block news photographers and camera operators from filming bombing scenes, which raises many questions about censorship and the people's right to know what's really going on on the ground.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 7:09
The first person to be convicted for uploading movies (or technically chunks of movie files) using BitTorrent software has lost an appeal against a jail sentence in Hong Kong. Chan Nai-ming was sentenced to three months in prison in 2005 for uploading Daredevil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet using P2P software. It was "distributing" and not "downloading" that got him a jail sentence.
Chan used the screen name "Big Crook", which probably didn't help his case and is presumably why he was such a good candidate to pursue as an example. The lawyer for the 38 year old said that he uploaded the movies but did not distribute them. The five-member Court of Final Appeal did not agree with that claim and handed down its unanimous verdict.
"He plainly succeeded in distributing... copies of the films in question and was correctly convicted," said Justice Robert Ribeiro. An earlier appeal had also been rejected. Chan Nai-ming will now have to serve the three-month prison term.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 18 May 2007 6:57
Among the daily software updates today to AfterDawn.com and Filepedia.com servers were the popular items, FFDShow, Azureus and µTorrent. FFDShow has long been in our top 5 downloads, standing at about 4,734,881 downloads at time of writing. µTorrent is a popular BitTorrent client and has been downloaded 83,145 times from AfterDawn. Another BitTorrent client, Azureus, has been more popular overall with 270,875 downloads.
FFDSHOW rev. 1177 (20070517)
Download FFDShow from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm
Azureus Java BitTorrent client v3.0.1.3 Beta 13 (update)
Download Azureus from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/p2p_software/p2p_applications/azureus_bittorrent_client.cfm
µTorrent v1.7 Beta Build 1875
Download µTorrent from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/p2p_software/p2p_applications/utorrent.cfm
Written by James Delahunty @ 17 May 2007 9:52
After tech-gadget site Engadget reported that Apple is facing more delays, this time with the iPhone and Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, Apple stock immediately fell 2.2%. Engadget posted its story at 11:49am ET on Wednesday morning. It read, "This one doesn't bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to... October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January."
Shorty after the item was published, Engadget updated the article to say that it had heard back from Apple PR that there was no delay. The source of the inaccurate report was an internal memo that was sent to Engadget saying that the company issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January.
After about an hour and a half, Apple itself issued an email update saying the first mail was a fake and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed. Engadget then updated its article, with the headline, "False alarm: iPhone delayed until October, Leopard delayed again until January." There are some unhappy shareholders out there now after Apple's stock was still down slightly in afternoon trading.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 17 May 2007 9:34
LG.Philips LCD Co. Ltd. has revealed it expects prices of its TV panels to fall at a much slower rate this year on stronger demand and limited output growth. The industry has suffered from tumbling prices and oversupply of LCD TVs since last year but is finally expecting to see a cyclical upturn in the second half as low price tags encourage consumers to buy larger TVs.
"TV panel prices in March-April were likely the lowest throughout the year," Champ Shin, vice president in charge of TV panel sales, said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit. He expects the decline for the entire of 2007 to be no worse than 15%, compared with 30% last year.
"The prices will likely be stable for the time being. In the strong season, there's even some chance for a (price) rise," said Shin. reported its fourth consecutive quarterly loss in the January-March quarter but expects that in the current quarter it will turn around to a profit. "We are confident of a monthly break-even in the second quarter," Shin said.
LCD is increasing its share in the market for 40-inch-and-larger TV sets in a price war with plasma display panels (PDP). Plasma makers still have an advantage in the 50-inch-and-bigger category however, where few LCD makers supply.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 17 May 2007 9:19
Napster has closed its fourth quarter with subscribers to its music rental service being at an all time high but with a widened loss during the quarter due to the impact of a one-time gain in the same quarter of the previous year. The company reported that its net loss was $8.5 million, about 20 cents per share in the period that ended March 31, compared to $4.4 million, or 10 cents per share in the same period a year before.
Revenue rose 9 percent to $29.1 million, compared with $26.8 million in the same quarter last year. The company's shares fell 15 cents, or 3.7 percent, in extended trading after they rose 9 cents to $4.07 in regular trading Wednesday. Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog said that the company was in its strongest position since launching.
"As we head into fiscal 2008, we are acquiring customers cheaper and keeping them longer. We are growing revenues while reducing expenses. We are attracting more world-class partners than we ever have before," Gorog said. Napster closed the quarter of a subscriber base of 830,000 which includes 225,000 former AOL Music Now users and University users.
The number of paid Napster subscribers rose 37 percent from the same quarter of the previous year. For the fiscal year, the company reported a net loss of $36.8 million, or 85 cents per share, compared with a loss of $54.9 million, or $1.28 per share, during the previous year while total net revenue increased 17 percent to $111.1 million from $94.7 million in fiscal 2006.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 17 May 2007 8:58
Sanford University has responded to being fingered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as one of the worst 25 schools for piracy by enforcing reconnection fees for students caught up in DMCA complaints. To cover the costs involved with keeping up with the number of file sharing complaints received, Stanford will disconnect students who receive DMCA complaints or pre-litigation letters and charge a fee to be reconnected.
Stanford claims that the money spent on copyright enforcement related activities is "an irresponsible waste of Stanford's resources." Upon the first complaint against a student, the Information Security Office (ISO) will forward a copy to the student and request that infringing material be removed. If the student does not respond or remove the material within 48 hours, he/she will be disconnected from the school network and charged a $100 reconnection fee.
Any further offense will lead to an immediate disconnection from the network. For a student caught twice, a $500 reconnection fee will be charged. Upon the third instance, a student will have to indemnify the university against any further copyright violations and pay a $1,000 fee for a new account on the school network to regain access and will be referred to Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 9:29
A pledge from the Australian federal government to provide $12.4 million over two years to to tackle the problem of
intellectual property (IP) crime has been welcomed by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) Australia Committee and the ARIA's Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI). Dr Jim Macnamara, spokesperson for the BSA Australia Committee commented that IP crime is not a victimless crime as often thought.
"Piracy hurts local software developers and resellers, confuses and misleads consumers, and also impacts on international software companies selling their products in Australia," Macnamara said. "We have to recognize that Australia is part of a global economy and thus address IP issues in an internationally consistent way, in concert with our trading partners. We believe the IP initiatives announced by the Attorney General last week are particularly relevant, certainly needed and overall a very good step forward for Australia."
Sabiene Heindl, the General Manager of MIPI supported the promise made by the federal government. "Music piracy adversely affects a range of people in the music industry – from up-and-coming artists, songwriters, sound technicians, graphic designers to music retailers. Ultimately consumers pay the price with less Australian music because less money in the industry necessarily translates to less investment in discovering and nurturing new Australian talent," Heindl said.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:58
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the trade group that oversees the global record industry, has backed the recommendation by the UK's Parliamentary Culture, Media and Sports Committee that copyright term for recording artists should be extended and that ISPs and search-based businesses should do more to discourage piracy.
The report concludes that the Government, "should press the European Commission to bring forward proposals for an extension of copyright term for sound recordings to at least 70 years, to provide reasonable certainty that an artist will be able to derive benefit from a recording through his or her lifetime."
It disagrees with the outcome of the review of copyright term by Andrew Gowers last year, saying it focuses only on economic analysis rather than the moral rights of creators. "The Select Committee has given a ringing endorsement for fair treatment of the UK music industry. It has backed two simple principles – that UK performers must get a term of copyright protection comparable to composers, and that Britain must not be left with weaker copyright protection than its international partners," said IFPI CEO and Chairman John Kennedy.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:49
Google Inc.'s YouTube service has been hit with yet another copyright infringement lawsuit, this time from David "Dawg" Grisman, who once recorded with The Grateful Dead. He filed a complaint on May 10th seeking an unspecified amount of damages for the illegal posting of his videos. Grisman and his business partner, Craig Miller, claim the legal action is aimed at "helping independent musicians whose music is distributed without authorization by YouTube's owner, Google Inc".
The lawsuit filed specifically accuses that Google "deliberately refuse to take meaningful steps to deter the rampant infringing activity readily apparent on YouTube". "We are looking out for ourselves and all the other people like us - musicians and independent publishers," Grisman told the Associated Press.
The Grateful Dead is noted to have always had a relaxed attitude toward bootleg tapes of its shows but Miller claims there is "a difference between fan bootlegs and the global distribution of Google".
Source:
The Register
Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:36
TiVo has announced a new search feature for its line of DVR set-top boxes, Universal Swivel Search, which the company is describing as he first "TV-centric on-screen search tool." Universal Swivel Search not only allows users to search for broadcast TV and cable TV listings, but also expands the device to Internet videos. A search for a popular TV show may bring up a broadcast TV or cable listing, but might also offer on-demand episodes from Amazon's Unbox service.
It also allows users to search for a subject matter both online and offline, like "football" or "healthcare tips". The feature also suggests video content to the user based on the users preferences and other users favorites. "The [TiVo] search tools have always been task-based; you could only search for titles you already know by using specific keywords," says Bob Poniatowski, TiVo's product marketing manager for core DVR. "This [Swivel] is less about knowing exactly what you want, and more about finding things similar to things you already enjoy."
Obviously, bringing more online video to the TV set is a great improvement, but for now TiVo's online search functionality is limited to Amazon's Unbox and a few websites including the New York Times and Cnet. TiVo is currently updating Series2 and Series3 TiVo boxes with the new search service.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:24
One of the world's four major record companies, Warner Music Group Corp. has filed a lawsuit against Imeem Inc., a music-based social networking site. The record company accuses Imeem of infringing the copyright of its artists including Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day. Warner accuses the site of building up its 16 million members through "illegal use of 'free music.'" The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.
Imeem does warn users that attempt to upload MP3 tracks about copyright issues and does not condone or allow uploading of work that the user does not own. However, Warner does not believe that Imeem is the innocent party in this case. "Imeem is no innocent infringer. It invites Imeem's millions of users to flock to its website to copy, adapt, distribute and perform unlicensed sound recordings and music videos," the Warner lawsuit reads.
Warner is claiming damages of up to $150,000 for each infringement and as evidence, the complaint includes an exhibit that shows thousands of "play counts" for its artists' works on the popular site. Imeem is considered the fourth most popular site of its kind in the U.S., behind YouTube, Google Video and MySpace.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:12
Sony Corp. reported widening losses for Q4 today blaming both the costs associated with the launches of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and reduced sales of the previous generation's king, PlayStation 2 (PS2). The consumer electronics giant reported operating losses of 113.4 billion yen (€695 million) compared with a loss of 51.9 billion yen (€318 million) in the same quarter of the previous year.
The operating profit for the financial year ending March 31st was 71.75 billion yen (€440 million) while revenue was up about 10% to 8.3 trillion yen (€51 billion). The company predicts operating profits of 440 billion yen (€2.7 billion) for the coming year. The company will work on reducing the production costs of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and also produce cheaper LCD displays.
Source:
The Register
Written by James Delahunty @ 16 May 2007 7:01
Microsoft Corp. has revealed when the third Halo game will be available to purchase for the Xbox 360 console. The highly anticipated title will hit store shelves on September 25 and Microsoft hopes that the launch will be even more successful than that of Halo 2, which brought in $125 million in sales in its first day. Microsoft also expects Halo 3 to spur more sales of the Xbox 360 console.
The first Halo game launched back in November 2001 when Microsoft was a newcomer to the video games industry. The title helped Microsoft to gain a foothold in the market. After Halo 2 was launched, it sold incredibly well, cementing its place among the world's most popular games and ensuring the growth and success of the Xbox Live online service.
"This is going to be a critical holiday for us versus Sony, especially on the console generation side, and they don't really have an answer for 'Halo 3'," Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Game Studios, said. "Given that, I suspect 'Halo 3' to drive a lot of Xbox 360 sales and Xbox Live memberships, I think at those midnight (launch) events, there are going to be a lot of people walking out with an Xbox 360 along with their copies of 'Halo 3'."
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Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 7:12
Walt Disney Co.'s Disney-ABC Television Group is set to begin offering high definition (HD) video content available on its website starting this summer. Beginning with a beta test in July, episodes of popular shows such as Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty will be available on a HD broadband channel on the ABC website. An expanded line-up will be available when the new season begins in September.
Later on, in the fall, ABC plans to showcase national news and local content using its full-episode player. To fund the content, ABC will use local ads and other individualized marketing. ABC's portal currently offers viewing of more than a dozen television shows free-of-charge to users the day after the episodes originally air on TV.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 7:04
Samsung Electronics has announced that sales of defective flat-panel Liquid-crystal display (LCD) and PDP (Plasma Display Panel) television sets have been suspended, according to Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN). The affected models are found to have defective digital tuners and Samsung has promised to help solve issues with those already sold to customers.
The affected LCD models are LA40M81, LA46M81, LA32R81 AND LA40R81 (sizes from 32, 40 to 46 inches) and affected PDP models include the PS42Q91 and PS50Q91 (42 and 50 inches), according to EDN. Samsung has notified retailers to immediately stop selling the models set up special services for consumers having purchased the models, according to the newspaper report.
Source:
DigiTimes
Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 6:56
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has revealed that its crackdown on online piracy has reached its 50th felony conviction. Operation FastLink is an on-going investigation that targets warez groups responsible for bringing pirated movies, music, software and games to the Internet often before their official release. Christopher E. Eaves, 31, of Iowa Park, Texas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement for his involvement in "Apocalypse Crew" (aPC).
According to the DOJ, APC thrived to bring music to the Internet before it release date. Eaves is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 10. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The conviction "represents a milestone never before achieved in any online piracy prosecution," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general in the DOJ's criminal division, said in a statement.
Operation Fastlink has resulted in more than 120 search warrants executed across 12 countries, confiscation of hundreds of computers and other equipment and the removal of approximately $50 million worth of pirated games, software, music and movies from distribution channels.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 6:48
Finnish mobile phone giant, Nokia, hopes that Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhone will help to boost consumer interest in more expensive models with advanced features. Smartphones can be multimedia gadgets, can surf the web, take excellent photos and play games but since many cost more than $400 before subsidies by mobile carriers, the average consumer may not look twice.
"The (U.S.) consumer ... hasn't had a lot of choice to go out and purchase these kind of higher-end, feature-rich multimedia devices. If that can help that market grow, I think that gives us an opportunity," Nokia Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Rick Simonson said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs has set a goal of selling 1 million iPhones in Calendar 2008. "Don't get me wrong, they will bring some things to the table that we have to be responsive to, but we have been investing in this area or some time," Simonson said. "We are leading in multimedia convergence."
Simonson pointed out Nokia's N73 and N95 best-selling handsets as examples of multimedia feature-rich handssets already on the market from the company. "It (the N95) is already out there, doing many of the things that people are talking about the iPhone doing. The iPhone is interesting. It's very much a validation of what we've been doing, in terms of saying there is a multimedia device out there that people will pay for," he said.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 6:38
News Corp.'s social networking giant, MySpace, is to begin offering online television channels through deals with news and entertainment networks including National Geographic, Reuters and The New York Times Co. The new channels will also include programming from "lifestyle" media companies that will offer animation, night life, video game shows and music. MySpace has lately been attempting to re-assure content providers by increasing anti-piracy features across the site.
The market for online video content is getting noticeably bigger and a giant like MySpace cannot afford to fall behind the competition, which includes YouTube, Joost and many more. Advertising revenue is seen by content providers as a new source of revenue for video content, but so far, sites like YouTube have been filled up with unauthorized clips by users, making them a less attractive option for content providers.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 6:27
Virgin Media has denies that it has begin blocking the controversial Russian MP3 site, AllofMP3.com. The site, which is second most popular paid download site in the United Kingdom behind iTunes, sells tracks for only a fraction of the price of other "authorized" stores. The website has been highly criticized by the record industry and and US trade officials but insists it complies fully with Russian IP laws.
Virgin subscribers noticed recently that there were problems accessing AllofMP3 and jumped to the conclusion that Virgin had blocked the site. However, the company denied such a policy change. "One of our networks team tested this out for me and indeed we do seem to have a problem here - but we don't block the site, this looks like a fault. The technical support team are raising this now," said Alex Brown, the firm's broadband product manager.
No other ISPs in the UK appear to have a problem with AllofMP3. Russian president Vladamir Putin promised action against AllofMP3 parent company, Mediaservices, but the site still remains available and working (and cheap) to this day. U.S. trade officials have said that AllofMP3 is acting as an obstruction to Russia joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 6:54
A study presented by a 17 year old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday showed proof that Apple Inc.'s iPod player can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart. Many other types of MP3 players or portable devices could also have the same effect, but this study only covered iPods.
One hundred patients, whose mean age was 77, were tested as part of the study. Results showed that electrical interference was detected half of the time when the device was held about 2 inches away from the patient's chest for a duration of just 5 to 10 seconds. In some cases, interference was detected at distances up to 18 inches.
Such interference causes the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether. The study was held at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University and the results were presented at the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting in Denver.
Jay Thaker, lead author of the study, concluded that the interference can lead to physicians misdiagnosing actual heart function. Thaker was put in touch with Dr. Krit (Jongnarangsin), after asking his father, who is an electrophysiologist, about a potential interaction between pacemakers and iPods.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 6:41
The speculation about what carrier will provide Apple Inc.'s iPhone in the European territory is ongoing. According to rumors circulating the industry now, Vodafone may in fact be second place to T-Mobile to offer Apple's first mobile phone to the European market. Previously, Vodafone had been thought of as the front runner by most until unnamed sources claimed T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, is at the top of Apple's shortlist.
How much sense does it actually make to choose just one carrier for the European market though? Gartner research director, Martin Gutberlet, believes that Apple could be making a big mistake by looking for one partner for the iPhone. "It would be in Apple's best interests to get more than one operator to distribute the phone," he said, adding that Apple may realize its mistake soon after and rush to find more distributors.
As an example of how this is a problem for the European market, T-Mobile, the alleged front runner, doesn't have a prominent presence in Italy, Spain, or France. The consumer interest for the iPhone in the U.S. is growing rapidly, with AT&T claiming to have received requests for iPhone information from 1 million consumers.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 6:29
Social networking giant MySpace has taken more steps to protect copyright as its users continue to upload unauthorized videos. While sites like MySpace and YouTube have systems in place to allow content owners to identify and request items get taken down, users have a nasty habit of simply uploading the same content again as soon as possible. MySpace's new Take Down Stay Down feature tackles this issue.
Take Down Stay Down prevents video content from being uploaded again once it has been taken down at an owners request, though its method to identify the content is unclear (whether or not slightly altering a file will bypass it for example). MySpace has other features in place too, such as an audio filtering feature that tackles uploading of bootleg music and a video filtering feature that does the same for video content.
To have a chance of dealing with the big media companies, sites like MySpace need to show that they take copyright protection seriously and sit on the same side of the copyright debate itself as the content providers. YouTube, the world's largest video sharing site, is the target of a billion dollar lawsuit brought by Viacom Inc., the outcome of which will have a dramatic effect on the operation of these services in future.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 6:16
As the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) continues its war against Internet piracy, more and more college students have been targeted and the trade group plans to target even more. Hundreds of students have again been sent e-mails threatening lawsuits if they do not settle out of court. Sarah Barg of University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) was accused of illegally downloading and sharing 381 tracks using the Ares client.
She initially thought the e-mail was spam, as it offered her the chance to make a settlement or face tough legal action. However, student legal services confirmed to her that the e-mail was in fact real and that she faced an expensive decision. "Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it," Barg said.
Her parents coughed up the $3,000 settlement fee to avoid a lawsuit. "I don't know what I would have done. I'm only 20 years old," Sarah said. UNL freshman Andrew Johnson also settled for $3,000. "They're targeting the worst people," he said. "Legally, it probably makes sense, because we don't have the money to fight." He was forced to pay the settlement from his college fund and now has to work three jobs to get back the money. However, the RIAA firmly believes that these legal threats are an educational tool.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 6:00
Microsoft Corp. is looking forward to the launch of Halo 3 and is confident that its success will surpass that of the Halo 2 launch. The third installment of the mega-popular Halo franchise is also expected to spur sales of the Xbox 360 console and strengthen Microsoft's fight against Nintendo and Sony in the console war. "There's a significant number of people just waiting for that one game," Craig Davison, Microsoft's director of marketing said, "and this is the game."
The company gave a sneak peak at Halo 3 on Friday to mixed reviews. "The graphics can use some work ... They're not much different than the previous Halo," said Nicholas Puleo, editor of gaming news Web site Evilavatar.com. "They've got five, six months until release, so they'll add some polish ... When I compare it to other things in the platform, it's not standout."
Microsoft staged previews in New York City and San Francisco on Friday, ahead of the beta of Halo 3 which goes live on Wednesday. Bungie Studios has tried to improve realism in the game by implementing the laws of real world physics more thoroughly. A grenade thrown against snow will stick in place while the same grenade will bounce and roll off a hard surface, bullets ricochet off walls and players can get maimed by the shrapnel effect when standing too close to an exploding grenade.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 13 May 2007 5:46
Qpixel Technology has announced today the availability of the Qpixel QL202B, the third member of its low-power Main Profile (MP) H.264 Codec family. It integrates a 10/100 Ethernet MAC and an external flash memory interface for stand-alone operation, reducing cost and component count in devices such as digital video recorders and security cameras. With the new QL202B, consumers will be able to store and transmit video with the same quality as today's MPEG-4-based systems, using as low as half the bandwidth and storage space.
Unlike its predecessor the QL201B, which was designed to run as a companion chip, the QL202B is ideal for stand-alone operation in a variety of networked and storage-based consumer appliances. Using the software development kit, customers can quickly and easily develop a product with the QL202B, since the SOC design handles all processing for capture, compression, transmission and storage of audio and video content.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 10 May 2007 3:45
Microsoft Corp. has a final patch available to fix an issue with Windows Vista that could leave a user's iPod corrupt and in need of a restore once it is disconnected. The problem was with the "Safely Eject Hardware" (ironic?) feature in Windows Vista. If a user chose the Safely Eject Hardware or the Eject command in Windows Explorer, the iPod device could be corrupted and would need iTunes' restore features.
Several compatibly bugs and issues arose between Apple's iTunes and iPods and the Windows Vista operating system. Apple was unable to fix the iPod bug or several graphics problems with iTunes when the iTunes 7.1 update was released, and so warned its users against using Vista with either.
Get the update here or wait for it to be delivered via Automatic Updates on Tuesday, May 22nd.
Source:
PC World
Written by James Delahunty @ 10 May 2007 3:33
The first man to be convicted of distributing movies illegally over the Internet using BitTorrent software, has appeared in Hong Kong's highest court on Wednesday to appeal the verdict. Chan Nai-ming was sentenced to three months in prison in 2005 for uploading Daredevil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet using P2P software. It was "distributing" and not "downloading" that got him a jail sentence.
Chan used the screen name "Big Crook", which probably didn't help his case and is presumably why he was such a good candidate to pursue as an example. The lawyer for the 38 year old said that he uploaded the movies but did not distribute them. Interestingly, his lawyer seems hopeful that the court will determine whether the uploading done by Chan can really be considered as distribution.
He said that if any distribution took place at all, it was the downloaders who initiated the process. Since sharing of files on BitTorrent is done in chunks, users may have downloaded only very small amounts of any movie from Chan. An earlier appeal from Chan was rejected.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 10 May 2007 3:22
We've seen all sorts of attempts to protect movies on DVD discs from "digital theft" but now technology is being pitched at studios to tackle physical theft from retailers. A chip, smaller than the head of a pin, would be placed literally onto a DVD disc along with a thin coating placed to stop DVD players from reading critical information from the disc. However, at a checkout a simple scan will activate the chip, sending out an electrical pulse making the thin coating transparent.
The radio frequency identification chip is made by NXP Semiconductors, based in the Netherlands, and the Radio Frequency Activation technology comes from Kestrel Wireless Inc., based in Emeryville. They expect to announce deals with Hollywood studios during the summer and said the technology could be used with other products like ink jet cartridges, flash memory drives and even flat-screen TVs.
The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) estimates that theft of entertainment products, including video games, adds up to $400 million in losses every year.
Source:
Yahoo
Written by James Delahunty @ 10 May 2007 3:07
A patch has been released for the media sharing software TVersity that fixes a problem which surfaced after the latest Xbox 360 update. The Xbox 360 update added support for viewing shared media files in a folder hierarchy instead of just one long list as before, and so applying the patch will make this possible. The TVersity patch is needed to stream video content to the console but is not needed for picture and audio sharing.
Download the patch at: https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/tversity.cfm
Important
- Make sure you have version 0.9.10.2 installed, otherwise install it. Please note that this patch cannot be applied on top of older versions and is designed for 0.9.10.2 ONLY.
- Stop media sharing (via the advanced menu or the tray icon)
- Unzip the patch file and copy its content over to the TVersity installation folder (by default it is Program FilesTVersityMedia Server)
- Sart sharing and try accessing video from the 360
Download TVersity v0.9.10.2 at:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/tversity.cfm/v0_9_10_2
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Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 3:52
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has met with heads of the international recording industry in Berlin to hear their concerns and suggestions regarding music piracy in Germany. The leaders of the recording industry urged the Chancellor to ensure that the industry had the tools it needed to combat piracy, the "epidemic" of CD-R burning be tackled and ISPs be engaged in the fight against Internet piracy.
German music sales have dropped a massive 50% since 2000. The industry blames this huge drop mostly on CD-R burning and Internet piracy. "The international recording industry has now taken its concerns about the state of the German music market to the highest political level in Europe. We left the meeting appreciative of the fact that the Chancellor understood the nature of the problems we are facing and is willing to play a role in seeking a solution to them," IFPI Chairman and CEO, John Kennedy, said.
He added: "If the German government acts now, we are confident that the German music industry could reverse the decline and be viable again in three to five years." Another great reason to meet with Chancellor Merkel however is the fact that she also is the President of the European Council and the G8. This extra political advantage is seen in what the recording industry suggests Merkel call the German government to do:
- Introduce an obligation on ISPs to terminate service to subscribers abusing the service to make infringing content available
- Permit CD burning only from own legally purchased original and prohibiting copying by third parties
- Improve the German draft law implementing the EU Enforcement Directive to ensure proper tools to fight piracy
- Ensure that the EU plays an active role in the WTO case against China on Intellectual Property enforcement and market access
- Urge the Czech government to clean up the huge pirate markets on the Czech-German border
- Support an improvement in the length of the EU term of protection on sound recordings to match the level of protection provided in the U.S.
Not really sure what the China WTO case or the copyright terms for sound recordings have to do with German music sales.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 3:32
Canon U.S.A., Inc. unveiled the new HR10 High Definition Camcorder earlier this week, which the company says will help users help users effortlessly create and share high definition movies on convenient DVD discs. The Canon HR10 HD Camcorder offers the benefits of top-notch broadcast quality lenses and photographic heritage by providing users with a Genuine Canon 10x optical zoom lens, a Full HD 1920 x 1080 CMOS image sensor and the AVCHD video format.
The Canon HR10 HD Camcorder features the ability to
Capture three megapixel still images, the new
Multi-Angle Vivid LCD and the look and feel of film with the 24p Cine Mode. Through the use of the ultra-efficient
Advanced Video Codec High Definition (AVCHD), the Canon HR10 High Definition Camcorder records 1080 HD video to conventional 3-inch (8cm) DVD discs. The AVCHD codec allows HD video to be captured in a variety of
Compression rates, using less storage space, and recorded to DVD discs, including high-capacity dual-layer discs for longer recording time. This allows consumers to play back their footage on many AVCHD compatible DVD players, including most
Blu-Ray disc players.
"Research shows that consumers are looking for the convenience of DVD, as well as high-quality HD video when choosing a camcorder. With the introduction of the Canon HR10 High Definition Camcorder, we provide consumers with a better way to record and preserve their memories in High Definition," said
Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager of the Consumer Imaging Group, Canon U.S.A., Inc.
"The Canon HR10 HD Camcorder enhances our offerings to the home theater aficionado, who demands nothing but the best in image quality, expands our product portfolio and strengthens our market leadership."
Canon's Full HD CMOS Sensor features on-chip
Noise reduction technology, to help ensure the signals from each pixel are as pure as possible, with minimal
"noise" or other image distortion even in dimly lit scenes. What's more, the CMOS sensor incorporates an RGB Primary Color
Filter with a Bayer placement to help deliver sharp, High Definition images in true vibrant, accurate color.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 3:17
It appears that owners of Series3 high-definition TiVos will be able to drive up their storage a bit after a simple hack was revealed over the weekend. Using the method, TiVo users can expand the amount of storage available to the digital video recorder by using an external Serial ATA hard drive. The method allow the use of the SATA pots included with the TiVo hardware.
Normally the devices store an advertised 30 hours of high-definition programming. So far using the method, which includes pressing pause and 62 on the device remote control, is reported to work with hard drives with capacities up to 750GB.
For more information: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5123441&&#post5123441
Source:
Betanews
Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 12:19
Joost, the latest craze in the online video revolution has been given a boost with a deal that will see Warner Bros. Television Group content being made available through the service. This makes Warner Bros. the latest entertainment company to join the move to Internet video, both companies said on Monday after the deal was announced. No financial terms were disclosed.
Through the deal with Warner Bros., part of Time Warner Inc., Joost will now get a science fiction and celebrity channel this month. Joost has already signed up with Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Television and Hasbro Inc. for high quality full-length content.
Joost differs from services like YouTube, which host generally low quality short clips and favor amateur video (though are still loaded with unauthorized clips). It was created by the entrepreneurs behind the original Kazaa and of course, Skype. It is currently in public Beta phase.
Source:
Reuters
Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 12:07
Anti-piracy experts have worked closely with Mexican authorities in executive several search warrants against a freight forwarding company that was a distribution point for pirated music and film product to various cities across Mexico. An investigation was underway for a number of weeks after a seizure of 37,000 pirate CD-Rs in the company's dispatch terminal.
The latest operation, which involved over 300 police officers and prosecutors from the Attorney General's office (PGR), turned up 416,000 recorded CD-Rs, eight million covers, and 133 CD/DVD burners. Mexican authorities stated that the raids had dealt a serious blow to major organised criminal activity in Mexico City's Tepito market. The freight forwarding company had a legitimate operating license but authorities had suspected it of having links to organised criminal syndicates in Tepito.
"The smashing of this criminal syndicate is great news and an excellent example of partnership between the Mexican authorities and private sector anti-piracy experts. Other criminal gangs involved in counterfeiting music in Mexico should be put on notice that we could be coming for them next," said Iain Grant, head of enforcement at International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
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Written by James Delahunty @ 09 May 2007 11:53
Major movie studios are already facing a tough uphill battle against attacks on copy protected retail HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc releases. Hackers have found keys and posted them on web forums, which spread to huge user-driven sites like Digg.com and then exploded across the web. The keys could be used with the proper software to decrypt AACS content protection and extract unencrypted content from HD discs.
Of course, the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Authority (AACS LA) tried to battle the spread of a 32-bit hexadecimal key and in doing so, motivated frustrated web users enough to spread it to thousands more web pages and use it for music lyrics and t-shirt designs - obviously the opposite effect the group intended to have by invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against several web services and search engines.
"It's sort of a violation without a satisfying remedy from the standpoint of the companies and the consortium ... because how are they going to sue every blogger and everyone who has access to the code?" said Richard Neff, an intellectual property attorney at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles. Michael Ayers, chairman of the AACS group, said that newer movie titles cannot be decrypted using the key.
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Written by James Delahunty @ 03 May 2007 2:52
The group responsible for the licensing of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) copy protection present on Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD movies, AACS LA, has literally attempted to banish a string of letters and numbers from the Internet. The sequence of letters and numbers that is the headline can be allegedly used as a "processing key" to decrypt several HD DVD movie titles.
Recently this 32-hexadecimal digit code got a lot of attention, particularly on Digg.com, and it seems that AACS LA got angry about it and decided to test the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Attorneys for the group issued letters to multiple Web sites and services, including search engines, demanding the removal of the "key".
"It is our understanding that you are providing to the public the above-identified tools and services at the above referenced URL," reads one letter sent to Google, "and are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
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