News written by Matti Robinson (March, 2008)

After what the IFPI calls a successful operation to Block The Pirate Bay in Denmark, they've decided to try to do the same in Sweden. The IFPI has decided to force Swedish Internet Service Providers to block TPB and other related sites using their landmark "Tele2"-method which is widely considered to be against the EU law. Amongst the ones that received the letter was the largest ISP in Sweden, TeliaSonera, which has over 100 million subscribers across Europe.

TeliaSonera however has extensive experience on Blocking and filtering implementations, and unlike the IFPI they have very strict relationship with what says in the EU law. “The rules say that we as Internet carriers are not allowed to listen in on what our customers are sending to each other or are talking with each other about. That’s something police and prosecutors are allowed to do after a decision has been made about it in court,” said Patrik Hiselius from TeliaSonera.

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TorrentSpy, formerly one of the most popular BitTorrent sites on the Internet, has been permanently shut down. After two years of court room drama, TorrentSpy lost the case against MPAA in last December. This however, was not the reason for shutdown. According to TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell, the decision was made by the site's administration to ensure the anonymity and privacy of former users.

TorrentSpy was found guilty without evidence that the court claimed were destroyed on purpose. TorrentSpy was defending theirselves, to no avail, by saying the actions were made to secure user privacy.

The greeting at torrentspy.com says, "Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown."

TorrentSpy is certainly not alone with legal issues. Amongst the ones in the line of fire is The Pirate Bay which is currently waiting for court hearing. "Today all big torrent sites are pressured somehow," said TPB admin Brokep. Brokep told TorrentFreak that TorrentSpy was closed because of the economical reasons of an admin, nothing more. He also convinces that this will not be the case with TPB.

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Last week we reported that Nikkei Business Daily had estimated that Toshiba lost nearly billion dollars (100 billion yen) developing and promoting their high-definition format. Now Toshiba has announced its revised business forecast for the fiscal year 2007 and loss of $656 million (65 billion yen) mainly because of the HD DVD.

Toshiba seems to have gotten away with quite a bit smaller HD DVD loss than expected, but the consolidated forecast also sees lowered profit for the whole company. The loss comes from lower net sales than expected in the previous forecast, which the company says is a reflection of "discontinuation of the HD DVD business and the decline in sales prices of NAND flash memories." The net income was half the amount that the forecast from Octobet 29, 2007 expected.

According to Financial Times Apple is in talks with big music companies to use a completely new business model for iTunes. The kind of "all you can eat" model would give premium iPod or iPhone owners free access to the whole iTunes music library.

The plan would be that customers pay for the music library access when they buy their iPod or iPhone, the same kind of model that Nokia has branded with the new Comes with Music service. The first Nokia Comes with Music device will arrive in the second half of the year.

Even though Apple representatives did not comment on the business model, sources said that they were negotiating over the price that Apple would pay to their music industry partners for every sold device. Nokia was said to pay almost $80 while Apple hasn't offered more than $20.

According to an executive, a research has shown that a consumer would pay up to $100 for an unlimited access to music and $7-8 for a monthly subscription. The monthly subscription would work with iPhones because customers have a monthly billing Period and the "comes with music" or "all you can eat" model would work on both iPhones and iPods.

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Last week we reported that Panasonic announced two new DivX Certified Blu-ray players, DMP-BD30EG and DMP-BD30EE. Now DivX, Inc. announced in a press release that they have granted DivX Certificates to six new stand-alone Blu-ray players.

The newly certified six include Panasonic DMP-BD30EE, Philips BDP7200 and Denon's DVD-2500BTC1B, DVD-3800BDC1B, DVD-3800BDSP and DVD-2500BTSP. All of the players are capable of playing Blu-ray discs, DVDs and DivX video. At least none of the Philips' or Denon's models can play DivX files from Blu-ray discs, but all of them support several subtitle file formats, including .SRT, .sub and .SSA. All of the players also support DivX VOD-technology, which allows the playback of some DivX video with DRM protection.

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Toshiba's high-definition format HD DVD, which was put to sleep three weeks ago, cost the company a whopping one billion dollars, reports Japanese source. After huge marketing campaigns, handful of price drops and lost partners HD DVD was officially buried. According to Nikkei Business Daily the war cost Toshiba approximately 100 billion yen, or $986 million.

Nikkei claims that as much as $500 million comes from the shutdown of HD DVD production lines, the rest can be explained by the extensive advertisement campaigns and poor product sales. In comparison, the 30-second Super Bowl advertisement cost Toshiba almost $3 million alone.

Toshiba did not comment the Nikkei's figures, but according to a Toshiba representative the company is currently estimating the losses.

After the obvious abandoning of HD DVD, Microsoft was said to be in talks with Sony to get a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360. As we reported last week, Sony boss Stan Glasgow said in an interview with Financial Times that they were negotiating about a Blu-ray drive with Microsoft. At the same time Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gave Blu-ray the green light, but that was only for Windows, not Xbox 360.

However, according to Microsoft's group product manager for Xbox 360 Aaron Greenberg, their console is not ready to go Blu, "Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," he said. In the near future Microsoft will be building their Xbox Live as an entertainment Channel rather than adopting the Blu-ray technology.

In the same article Greenberg said that Xbox 360 trailing PS3 in sales for the second month straight was not a surprise, but the supply problems are expected to be a thing of the past by April -- just in time for GTA IV.

A decade has passed since the world's first MP3 player hit the shop shelves. Saehan Information Systems' MPMan F10, a Korean wonder at the time, was the first music player that was capable of playing MP3 files. It had a inch-or-so wide LCD and a whopping 32MB of Flash storage that could hold around eight songs. F10, measuring 91x70x165,5mm, was announced at CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany as a prototype but soon was put to mass production for both European and US market. One could get their hands on the first ever MP3 player for a mere $250.

Following MPMan F10 came the F20, but that wasn't the success story most of us remember. Half a year after the F10, Diamond Multimedia release the device often considered to be the first commercial MP3 player, Rio PMP300. Even though it had the same parallel port connection and 32MB Flash memory as the previous F10, the one features that made all the difference was the Smart Media slot which allowed users to increase the storage capacity of their precious Rio. It also had a larger LCD and a much improved UI.

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While Sony and Toshiba were competing for attention for their one another cheaper high-def players, a company was developing a quality Upscaling DVD player. OPPO Digital has recently announced its new and hot DVD player capable of up-converting DVD quality video into Full HD glory.

OPPO DV-983H is not necessarily for the masses. While Toshiba HD DVD paperweights are pretty much cheaper than standard DVD player year or two ago, DV-983H has a not so tempting price tag of $399. For DVD enthusiasts however, the player is definetly a fit. The player boasts an impressive list of features, such as Anchor Bay VRS video processing, 7.1-channel audio, USB 2.0 interface for external drives and HDMI-output for the 1080p upscaling.

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