News written by Matti Robinson (January, 2009)

Digital Rights Management (DRM) has nowadays a widely spread reputation to break things and make things more complicated. Another nail in this coffin was struck when gamers realized that they're copy of the Gears of War for Windows didn't start up after January 27th.

The problem was that the game developer Epic had added a digital certificate that expired Jan 28th. When the system date hit this day the game wouldn't start up anymore. It could be said that Epic and its Games for Windows partner Microsoft unintentionally promoted pirated version of the game which is not affected by the certificate.

The unhappy gamers quickly found out a way around the problem. By setting the Windows date back in time before Jan 28th you'll have a functioning game again.

Epic is currently trying to find out a way to find a solution to the problem. The company hasn't yet told if the certificate was added by accident or if the game should have been updated before the date.

After being forced out of service last year, Muxtape is now building up from the ground up again. Muxtape was shut down after puzzling licensing deal jungle and pressure from the RIAA in September. Now one the most noted mixtape sites is back with legit content from 12 artists.

"Welcome to a preview of the new Muxtape, a minimalist platform for bands to promote their music and listeners to create mixes. We’ve invited 12 of our favorite artists to help test, and in the coming weeks we'll begin allowing bands to sign up themselves for free," states the site.

The mixtape scene has skyrocketed from the initial launch of Muxtape -- and the fall of it and Mixwit. In addition to the new Muxtape there's something for everyone: Mixaloo, Mixtube, 8tracks, Tumbltape and Favtape.

Swedish file sharers have enjoyed quite a bit of protective privacy against the police. In Sweden a file sharer is usually safe from police action as the crimes do not generally carry a prison sentence. This might change now that the police will deliver Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask with a report that recommends authority for police action even in minor file sharing cases previously punishable only by a fine. According to Dagbladet, the Minister for Justice will receive the proposition this Friday.

The legislation is based on the controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and would allow police to find out email and phone call details as well as request permission for home search.

Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge opposed the whole IPRED law in an interview with TorrentFreak saying, "These laws are written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility. They have no idea how much damage they’re causing, because they lack today’s literacy: an understanding of how the Internet is reshaping the power structures at their core."

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Introduction

During the past couple of years the possibilities of video cards have increased to help in more than just 3D modelling and video games. Nowadays video cards can be used in for example breaking password protections, medical research and calculations, as well as video processing.

The processing power of video cards cannot be used automatically in generic software. In order to use the additional power provided by GPU the program needs to include code and support for the appropriate interface. The most popular of these interfaces is NVIDIA's CUDA, which is officially supported by the company's video cards. Other alternatives include ATI's Stream, OpenCL which recently introduces version 1.0 and Compute Shader provided by Microsoft's DirectX 11.

Software

We decided to get familiar with CUDA and its improvements to video processing because CUDA is now supported out of the box by TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress and PowerDirector.

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Laserdisc, the format from 1978, is now at the end of the road. The Philips developed disc format was originally marketed as Discvision but changed its name to Laserdisc in mid-80s when Pioneer bought majority of its shares.

LD was the choice for many home theatre enthusiasts because of its better quality over VHS and Betamax. However, LD didn't get popular amongst the general public and quickly became obsolete when DVD hit the markets.

According to Akihabara News, Pioneer has ended the production of its all three Laserdisc players. It sold over 3,6 million LD players in Japan between 1981 and 2002.

As some of you may know Mac OS X operating system does not actually require an Apple computer. Even though Apple tries to protect its precious OS from spreading to generic PCs, we've seen couple of how-tos and tutorials on bypassing the price tag of an Apple-branded computer.

To make it a more commonly known fact, Wired released a video tutorial on installing Mac OS X on a netbook in December. Not as a surprise to those who have heard about Apple's confrontations against a company called Psystar, Wired didn't get to spread the word for long. Apple requested the removal of the video from Wired's Gadget Lab yesterday.

The video -- and text -- tutorial features step-by-step instructions on how to download a copy of OS X Leopard from The Pirate Bay and install it into your MSI Wind netbook.

Apple didn't file a lawsuit and apparently they didn't want to do anything else about it either because Wired still hosts the text version of the hack -- including the link to TPB for OS X download. Obviously the video wasn't removed from the Internet either and you can still watch it on Gizmodo.

An Israeli company, High Definition Israel or HDi, has introduced couple of interesting Blu-ray players. In addition to playing Blu-ray movies, the players support MKV and DivX files as well as BitTorrent downloads.

HDi has two product families, Dune HD Center and Dune BD Prime, both with four models for different network connection and external hard drive setups. With Dune BD Prime you can choose between the base model, one with WiFi 802.11n, one with Gigabit ethernet, and one with two eSATA ports. In addition to the same upgrade options the more expensive Dune HD Centers feature a rack for internal SATA drives as well.

All of the players have BD Live support, 1GB of internal flash memory, BD/DVD/CD playback, three USB ports for external USB drives, support for NFS and Samba file sharing as well as support for IPTV and Internet radio.

HDi's players have also extensive file support, including support for AVI, MKV (Matroska), M2TS, TS, MOV, MP4 and WMV files.

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In six weeks, February 17th, the US is scheduled to switch to digital TV transmissions. However, it might as well not happen if the suggestions of President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team are followed. The co-chairman of Obama's transition team John Podesta addressed the switch program and requested a delay. According to The New York Times blog TV Decoder Podesta said that funding of the transition has been "inadequate".

In addition to consumers, major television companies are ready to back up or consider the delay. NBC and ABC support the delay as well as PBS which is afraid that due to insufficient coupons some of the children would no longer have access to free educational shows such as their Sesame Street. CBS has informed that they are willing to consider the suggestion.

In December Nielsen Media Research released a report which estimated that 7.8 million US over-the-air households haven't upgraded for digital television. The converter coupon program has run out of coupons and the waiting list is getting longer. Podesta estimates that the waiting list, with currently over one million requests, could grow by hundreds of thousands every day. According to NY Times, Obama's economic recovery package would include additional funds to digital TV transition.

Pioneer has introduced a set of new Blu-ray players at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The trio includes players from various price groups to attract wider range of customers. The cheapest is the BDP-120 at under $300 and the priciest the BDP-23FD which will retail for approximately $600.

The budget model Pioneer BDP-120 features HDMI 1.3a and Profile 2.0 with BD Live but unlike the two, more expensive models it doesn't have internal flash memory. However, it will come with a 1GB thumb drive which will enable the BD Live features without additional cost from peripherals.

BDP-320 has 1GB of internal flash memory and supports 7.1 analog audio, 48-bit Deep Color and KURO Link as an addition to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio supported also by BDP-120. BDP-320 also comes with better picture control settings than the budget model. It is estimated to sell for under $400.

The top of the range model costing around $600 is the BDP-23FD. This BD player is directed at the home theater enthusiasts / custom install market and adds a RS-232C port and KURO Link with a "New Synergy Feature" to already pretty impressive feature list of BDP-320. The synergy feature allows the player to receive information from other Pioneer products and change setups according to them. That way the player can for example optimize the video output for certain AV setup.

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The new Swedish book entitled Piraterna (The Pirates) has revealed a familiar looking front cover. The cover picture with a pirate ship logo has lead the publisher and The Pirate Bay admins to some arguments. The publisher has claimed that TPB admins are furious for stealing their logo. TPB quickly responded to the double standards accusations.

According to TPB the thing they've complained about was that the publisher was claiming the book to be a biography, even though it is about Swedish pirate movement as a whole.

"There are people selling inofficial TPB clothing. And we all love that! The case about the book is that we where upset that they claim to be our own biography and nothing else. We even told them that they of course could use our logo, but we would hope they changed it in order to not deceive people", says the blog post on TPB website.

TPB did approve when they were asked if the logo could be borrowed but hope that it would be changed so that it wouldn't "deceive people".

The new book which is going to be released in late January or early February will hit the stores in time for the TPB trial in February.

JVC announced their first Blu-ray player at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The JVC XV-BP1 features BD Live compatibility and AVCHD playback. It will become available during March 2009.

XV-BP1 supports AVCHD, JPEG, MP3, WMA, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, DTS and DTS HD formats and includes USB Host, component, composite, LAN, and HDMI 1.3 connectors as well as analog, optical and coaxial audio outputs.

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The world's largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia has ended the production of its only WiMax device. It's another nail in the coffin for WiMax in the battle against the more widely adopted Long-Term Evolution (LTE).

"We have ramped down the N810 WiMax Edition tablet. It has reached the end of its lifecycle," said a Nokia spokesperson. It is unusual for a product to have a lifecycle as short as N810 Wimax had. Even the trendiest of models tend to be on the market at least a year.

Canadian Nortel Networks Corp has estimated that approximately 80 percent of the mobile phone providers will shift towards LTE and the rest will go for WiMax.

According to Reuters Nokia has not ruled out future WiMax models. "We will continue to follow the technology and its evolution," the Nokia representative said.

With only one new product revelation, a rather unattractive $2,799 MacBook, this year's Macworld keynote was nothing like we have been used to. It could only have been described as a disappointment until Philip Schiller, who replaced Steve Jobs, revealed DRM-free iTunes. According to Schiller iTunes will be entirely DRM-free with over 10 million songs at the end of the first quarter of 2009.

The iTunes Plus section should already feature 8 million songs DRM-free. The pricing of the songs has also gone through some changes. iTunes has now three price points for songs - 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. 69 cents is for older releases and $1.29 for new hit songs.

Most of the albums will still be priced at $9.99.

iTunes Plus allows users to upgrade their songs to new higher quality DRM-free versions for 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price for the whole album. iTunes Plus uses 256kbps AAC audio format.