News written by Rich Fiscus (March, 2007)

We have a new XviD encoding guide. This one shows how to Encode DVDs to XviD using MeGUI. MeGUI is a front end for a variety of command line tools that can be used together to create AVI,MP4, or MKV files containing MPEG-4 video and MP3, AC3, or AAC audio.

Besides being one of the successors to GK and Auto GK, MeGUI is also an excellent tool for people thinking about transitioning from XviD to x264 since you can encode video with either.

Encode DVDs to XviD with MeGUI
https://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/me_gui_convert_to_xvid.cfm

CD-WOW!, the second largest online music retailer in Britain, may have to pay millions of pounds for importing CDs from Asia. Besides the damages, which could be around £4 per CD or DVD, CD-WOW! was also ordered to pay legal costs for the British Phonographic Institute (the British equivalent of the RIAA) and the other claimants in the case.

Justice Evans-Lombe said there was "strong evidence that CDWOW! was committing widespread breach of the undertakings", referring to an agreement CD-WOW! reached with the BPI in January of 2004. The agreement settled a similar complaint at that time. The company's founder, Henrik Wesslen said afterwards that the breaches of the agreement were "not intentional."

Wesslen told reporters "We knew the verdict was always going to be a negative one because we held our hands up to a number of incidents," but called it "a harsher verdict than we would have hoped for." He went on to say "At a time when the record industry is losing vast revenue to piracy, it seems ludicrous that they can set out to destroy a section of the market that is actually making them money."

According to a 2006 study by the China National Children's Center, there are around 2.3 million internet addicts in China. Chinese health authorities consider internet addiction to be as serious as alcoholism and drug addiction. The government blames the condition for juvenile crime, several suicides, and deaths caused by exhaustion because players were unable to tear themselves away from games. The Internet Addiction Treatment Center (IATC) near Beijing, which has had 1,500 patients since 2004, uses a combination of therapy and military style discipline and boasts a 70% success rate.

There is little agreement in Western countries about what constitutes internet addiction, or if such a thing actually exists. However, a Stanford University of Medicine telephone-based study found that one in eight Americans, exhibit one or more symptoms of "problematic internet use", which shares features with impulse control disorders.

In 2006, China experienced a 23.4 percent increase in internet users. Xu Leiting, a psychologist at the IATC said "The main cause of Internet addiction is that parents' expectations for their children are too high." He said "they escape to the virtual world to seek achievements, importance and satisfaction, or a sense of belonging."

According to recently released court documents, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and CEO Paul Otellini, as well as other Intel employees are thought to have deleted emails related to rival chip manufacturer AMD's anti-trust suit. Intel's document retention policy regarding documents relevant to the lawsuit involved individual employees archiving them on a hard drive. Intel has already admitted that some employees didn't follow this procedure. According to Intel, CEO Otellini was under the impression that IT was automatically backing up his email.

Intel is currently working on an automatic backup system to help avoid problems like this. They're also looking through email files hoping to find duplicates of the messages and planning to review a backup made last year. Intel also failed to send notices about document retention to employees identified in 2006.

Intel set up a special email server after the suit was filed in 2005, but not all of the employees whose email was supposed to be kept were moved to the new server, and some of the weekly backup tapes from that server have apparently been re-used since then.


Sources:
The Register
News.com

In a bid to replace JPEG as the standard for digital photos, Microsoft plans to submit their HD Photo image Compression format to the International Organization for Standardization. According to Microsoft, HD Photo, formerly known as Windows Media Photo, causes less damage to photos than JPEG, while creating a files that are half the size. Like JPEG, HD Photo also supports Lossless Compression.

In order for HD Photo to become the de facto standard for digital photography Microsoft will have to get support from printer, camera, and application vendors. It's already supported in Windows Vistaand can be similarly supported in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 through a free download. Adobe Photoshop plugins are expected in the next two months. Microsoft also has an HD Photo Device Porting Kit to help hardware manufacturers.


Sources:
Computerworld
Microsoft

Samsung Electronics Co. announced today that it has begun shipping its first hybrid hard-disk drives that mix conventional magnetic storage with flash memory. The new laptop hard drives are designed to work with the ReadyDrive feature in Windows Vista, using the flash memory as a cache to limit the amount of time the hard drive spends spinning. Samsung claims this will mean 70% - 90% less power consumption. Currently only Windows Vista supports ReadyDrive, so it won't improve performance under any other OS.

The first 3 models from Samsung are 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB, and are available with either 128MB or 256MB of flash memory. They also have a prototype with 4GB of flash memory. Later this year Intel is expected to start selling their own competing solution which puts the flash memory on the motherboard.

Source:
Computerworld

Microsoft's Live OneCare was the only one of 17 anti-virus programs to fail a test carried out quarterly by AV Comparatives of Austria. It managed to identify only 82.4% of 500,000 viruses used in the test, which included macro and script viruses, worms, backdoors and trojans. According to Andreas Clementi, senior tester at AV Comparatives, "Microsoft OneCare performed very low in the test, and did not reach the minimum requirements for participation." Out of the other programs tested, 14 got an advanced pass or better, while two got a standard rating.

According to a Microsoft spokesman they're "looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests."

Source:
BBC News

Starting March 6, the first ever high definition episode of the Comedy Central series South Park will be available as a free download for 2 weeks, exclusively on Xbox Live Marketplace. From March 20 through April 3 Best Buy will offer the episode on a free HD-DVD with the purchase of any Xbox 360 console or its add-on HD-DVD player.

Future new South Park episodes will be offered for sale from Xbox Marketplace the week after they air.

Source:
Wired

On Friday, March 2, the US Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for webcasters. Under the new rates, originally proposed by SoundExchange - a former division of the RIAA, webcasters will be required to pay $0.0011 per listener, per song this year. The rates will be retroactive, meaning webcasters will also be responsible for paying the new 2006 rate of $0.0008 for webcasts from last year.

The rate proposal was accepted over the objections of the International Webcasting Association and individual webcasters. They have the right to appeal for a re-hearing within 15 days of the decision.

According to Kurt Hanson, a webcasting industry analyst for the web publication RAIN, the cost to webcasters "for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! - is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues." Hanson's analysis can be found on the RAIN website.

Sources:
Wired
RAIN

DVD Suite 5 is a new product aimed at Windows Vista users from CyberLink, the maker of PowerDVD and other DVD related programs.

According to a company press release issued today, "CyberLink DVD Suite 5 now allows our complete range of DVD applications to be enjoyed on Windows Vista," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "Vista users can continue to enjoy the advanced features and technologies related to DVD creation offered by this powerful and easy-to-use software suite."

Two versions of the suite are available. DVD Suite 5 Standard includes PowerDVD 7, PowerProducer 4, MediaShow 3, Power2Go 5.5 without MP3 and Dolby, PowerBackup 2.5 Express, InstantBurn 5, PowerDVD Copy, LabelPrint 2, and iTunes 7. DVD Suite 5 Pro adds PowerDirector 5, Dolby audio output for PowerProducer 4 and Power2Go 5.5, unlimited MP3 ripping for Power2Go 5.5, and additional archiving features for PowerBackup 2.5.

Source:
CyberLink