XviD development team announced on Tuesday that their very first public version of XviD libraries is out.
For Joe Average this doesn't mean actually very much, since there has been various binary builds of XviD available for a very long time, such as Koepi's Windows binary, but it means that now XviD developers are confident enough about their open-source MPEG-4 encoder that they've released it out in public.
CDCovers.cc, world's largest CD cover site, announced yesterday that they have been forced to take down all of their audio CD covers.
Quote from their site:
The money hungry people at the RIAA / IFPI have made it very clear that they don't want us to host audio covers anymore. It’s all about money folks and although we are a profit free organization that runs on voluntary basis those scumbags don’t give up and want to shut us down through threatening our host.
It’s been a great adventure but we cannot afford this anymore. Therefore we have decided to take the audio section offline for good. Thank you all for your support for the past 3 years.
Please don't mail us for any covers - we've deleted all the artwork. It's gone for good.
After months of negotiations, public outcries and protests from media companies, MPEG LA finally released its licensing contract for MPEG-4 video (including Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile).
The licensing contract is pretty much the same what consortium proposed in July after modifications were made to the original proposal introduced in spring that caused Apple to delay release of its latest QuickTime player and angry protests from various other technology and media companies.
The license has set fees for software and hardware encoders and decoders and MPEG-4 Industry Forum hopes that now when the licenses are available, companies would start using the technology more widely. The general public has used the MPEG-4 for a long time now -- DivX is basically just an MPEG-4 encoder and nothing else (and XviD is an MPEG-4 encoder as well) -- but now we will probably start seeing more advanced commercial usage for the technology.
We released a new guide for converting AVI format videos, such as DivX and XviD, to VCD.
This new guide replaces our old DivX to VCD guide and has various new features added to it. Most notably, the new guide allows converting AVI files that contain Ogg Vorbis or AC3 audio into VCD format. Guide also supports encoding permanent subtitles into VCD video.
Today slightly mixed information about new Laserlock products have been published. The Laserlock website gives information about Laserlock STAR-protection scheme.
Laserlock STAR is:
- uncrackable, with no Generic Cracks
- Virtually 100% resistant agaist the latest, advanced copying software and the devices of the global market
- the most compatible copy protection system worldwide (CD-Rom and DVD-Rom drives)
- Totally transparent to replicators and end-users, no passwords, no extra devices.
- Of low cost and hight efficiency.
But the CDFreaks also publish new information, appartently an email from the general director of Laserlock. The letter talks about Laserlock MARATHON and also makes a statement that Laserlock will enter the audio protection market.
Please be informed that on the 25th of November MLS Laserlock releases its NEW VERSION for CD-Rom protection called "MARATHON".
The new version is not only the strongest and most compatible in the market, but most effective against copying software like: Clone CD, Easy CD Creator, Nero, CD-R WIN, Win on CD, Blind Read Blind Write and others… too.
Absolutely nothing to say about the software charts. Apart from a couple of changes in position, it's exactly the same as last week.
Dj Quesito stayed on top of the MP3 chart. Georgex moved up a couple of positions to sixth and Aethyr entered the chart at seventh with Nameless
Dela managed to top the forum chart - even though we excluded the DVDXCopy forums from the count. Now we're seeing more of the familiar names on the Forum chart as well. Welcome back, guys!
According to a CEO of Ritek, a blank media manufacturer, the demand of blank recordable DVD media will grow over 200% at 2003 from this year's appx. 100M units.
Ritek estimates that in 2003, there will be over 320 million blank discs sold worldwide, DVD-R being the leader with appx. 160 million units sold, while other formats; DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM; will sell appx. 40M units each.
We've just added a simple guide to VCDEasy for creating (Super)VideoCDs.
VCDEasy is a freeware frontend to the GNU VCD tools package. Using VCDEasy you can easily create standard compilant VCDs that both look good and are easy to use. This guide goes through a simple procedure of creating a Super VideoCD with a title picture and chapter points. You can easily use the process as a reference for creating other types of discs.
Anyway, it's not recommended to use --alt-preset fast presets with 3.93 release. Dibrom probably doesn't recommended this release at all, if one is gonna encode with alt-presets.- JohnV at We plan for 3.94 to include the quality and the more speed improvement. I hope Dibrom will lead the test process of the presets in 3.94. And people who are interested in and willing to help us to improve the sound quality, please test the 3.94 presets. If you are not, use Dibrom's recommended binary or 3.93 when you encounter the "calc_noise assertion failure". - Takehiro (LAME developer) Read more...
Lik Sang today announced that Lik-Sang.com will be taken over by a fresh company in order to concentrate on winning the lawsuit against Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.
"Just a few days after having received High Court Orders not allowing us to sell Mod Chip products for the Playstation 2 and Flash Linker products for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, Lik Sang realized that the powers of those three multi-billion dollar corporations are simply infinite compared to the budgets and resources businesses like Lik Sang have available. Their legal actions have been hurting our customers and our business a lot in the last couple of weeks, so that we have finally decided to let somebody else take over Lik-Sang.com and solely concentrate on the lawsuit", says Alex Kampl, Director of Lik Sang International Limited. "By allowing the new international team to take over, Lik-Sang.com will remain the place you trusted before."
After Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft filed lawsuits against Lik Sang International Limited and it's Directors in the High Court of Hong Kong alleging Copyright Infringement (for selling so-called Mod Chips) by mid September, the situation is much clearer by now. Lik Sang has been working with international specialists and is about to file strong defense for a long trial. A detailed strategy will be announced in due course.
RIAA has filed a motion on this week asking the U.S. District Court to find that Madster is in comtempt of the court order which ordered Madster to filter all illegal songs from its P2P network.
RIAA hopes that court appoints a compliance officer who would effectively shut down the P2P service for good. Madster continued to advertise its $4.95 monthly membership pass despite the court order earlier this year.
The Alcohol software is entering the very competitive DVD ripping market with their new product.
The product is called Ice Alcohol, and it should be revealed within a week. Their Alcohol 120% is a very innovative piece of software in terms of ease of usage and features, so it will be interesting to what can they in the video sector.
The trial against FastTrack-based P2P operators, MusicCity's Morpheus, Grokster and Sharman Networks' Kazaa was hit with a legal dilemma on this week. Sharman Network claims that U.S. companies can't sue it in U.S. courts because it doesn't have virtually any interests in the States.
Sharman Networks is incorporated in small island just outside Australia, called Vanuatu. Company itself operates from Australia and operates all of its servers in various countries, but not in the United States. Now the judge has to decide whether U.S. entertainment industry has any powers to even sue the company. The case might prove to be a useful example on how the international laws will be applied in the future -- it is clear that if judge allows U.S. companies to sue in the U.S., that other countries will adopt the system and will start sueing American companies in their own countries as well. Now, all American porn operators, please remember that virtually all muslim countries ban nudity -- you're gonna get sued. Or New York Times and their anti-communist ideas -- welcome to People's Republic of China, you've been just sued. Or any companies allowing to distribute Nazi memorabilia or show Nazi symbols -- you can be sued in France, Germany or various other European countries. Now, judge. Are you really, really sure you want to bow and give Big Companies the power in this particular case, hm?-)
Today we post three (3) new reviews. This time we examined the newest TEAC readers (CD-552E, DV-516E) and an external USB2.0 writer from AOpen...
- TEAC CD-552E: For all those who still consider a good CD-ROM drive as a "desktop essential", Teac offers a new solution for reading at a high speed of 52X. Although the in our latest hardware reviews we had to do with high-end CD-R/RW and DVD recorders, we could not resist testing the new CD-ROM drive from Teac. The performance of the drive is compared with the already tested CD-ROM solutions from Samsung, Mitsumi and Cyberdrive.
-TEAC DV-516E: TEAC decided to enter the DVD market for PC with a new DVD-ROM proposal, the Teac DV-516E. The multifunctional drive supports 16X DVD-ROM reading among with 48X for the CD-ROM/R media. Whether TEAC decided to enter the DVD market as well or not, testing this new product is definitely interesting for all the candidate buyers and the fans of the optical storage technology.
-AOpen EHW-4048U: Many manufacturers ship external drives mostly based at USB2.0 connection interface, since it offers increased portability amongwith easy installation. The EHW-4048U is a fast drive from AOpen that includes all the features that competition offers (40X writing, 12X
re-writing, 48X reading) in a very attractive price. We compare it with other USB2.0 solutions in order to test whether the AOpen drive can standthe tough competition.
Napster's remaining assets -- namely the physical valuables -- will be auctioned off in December by an auctioning company DoveBid.
Roxio who earlier this month agreed to buy Napster, only bought the intellectual property, not the remaining assets. Now there are desktop computers, servers and obviously tons of Napster memorabilia, such as caps, shirts, etc available for interested bidders. Dovebid has handled famous dotcom bust auctions earlier as well -- its clientele includes Excite@Home and Webvan.
The MPEG-4 organization will be voting in March on whether to make AACPlus part of the evolving MPEG-4 audio standard family. AACPlus is based on technology developed by Coding TechnologiesMP3Pro.
AAC is the latest accepted portion of the MPEG-4 standard family. AACPlus aims to accomplish the same level of quality as its counterpart, but in half the size. It is especially useful in mobile devices, such as cellular phones, where bandwidth is at premium.
World's largest record label, Universal Music Group, announced today that it will start offering downloadable tracks and albums from its music catalog through 25 online retailers.
Label, owned by French Vivendi Universal, will use Liquid Audio as its format and users who download tracks will be able to burn the music to CDs and transfer downloaded tracks to portable media players that support Liquid Audio (very few "MP3 players" support Liquid Audio..).
Each track will cost $0.99 and full albums will cost $9.99, making the downloaded version of a CD slightly cheaper than that bought as a physical CD. Universal said it was kicking off the initiative by making the new single from Mariah Carey available online before the release of her upcoming album.
DVD6C, a consortium that owns the key patents related to the DVD Forum approved technologies, such as DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD-Audio, announced yesterday that it expects to start global licensing for its patents by 1st of January, 2003.
Patent owners in the consortium are AOL TimeWarner, Hitachi, IBM, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and JVC. DVD6C offers a one-stop licensing for companies willing to use the DVD patents owned by its member companies. Consortium also announced the licensing fees for various products.
The licensing price for DVD-R/RW/RAM media will be $0.075 per disc or 4% of the net selling price, whichever is greater. For DVD recorders -- both PC drives and stand-alone recorders -- the licensing fees will be 4% of the net selling price or $6.00, whichever is greater. The consortium also happens to hold the patents to DVD-Video and DVD-ROM discs and the licensing fees for these are $0.065 per disc.
I am sure that many of you have read articles about CD-Rs exploding at ultra-high speeds. As Maxell introduces their 48x, they also give a statement about 52x being too high - it's too risky with minimal benefits. Recently CD-R drive manufacturer Plextor gave similar opinions on the maximum CD-R speed.
With its 48X product introduction, Maxell is joining with other CD industry leaders such as Sony, Yamaha and Plextor in adopting 48X as the new high-speed standard, as opposed to the 52X benchmark, because of reliability concerns at the higher speed. Maxell engineers determined that the minimal speed advantage offered by 52X drives is outweighed by the performance and safety issues of operating CD-R media in excess of 10,000 rpm. Research has shown that naturally occurring minute defects or cracks in the CD-R hub area can quickly expand when exposed to the physical stresses of 52X operations. These small, virtually undetectable defects can easily cause discs to break apart at 52X speed, destroying not only critical data stored on the CD-R media, but potentially damaging or destroying the CD drive.
"The 48X standard offers customers outstanding performance without the risks associated with 52X speeds," said Dawn Wortman, senior marketing manager at Maxell. "Our 48X media is the latest example of Maxell's commitment to increasing customer value with continual leading-edge product enhancements for CD-R, DVD and mid-range tape applications, while maintaining the utmost in reliability."
Today we post two new hardware reviews. This time we examine the latest CD-RW drive from Plextor (PX-W4824U) and the faster AOpen recorder (CRW4850)...
- PleXWriter PX-W4824U is the external version of the latest recorder from Plextor, the PleXWriter 48/24/48A. The new PleXWriter 48/24/48U supports the 48X writing speed and the fastest available re-writing speed of 24X. The new drive offers nothing less than its internal brother and additionally gives us the chance to check the drive with a newer firmware revision installed.
- AOpen CRW4850 is the fastest AOpen recorder that is currently sold in the market. We have already (pre)-viewed the CRW5224 that will hit the market soon. The CRW4850 has been around for quite sometime and supports for the first time the CAV recording technology. We compare it with other 48X recorders using the latest firmware and the results are expected to be interesting...
With there release of Robbie Williams' new album Escapology about to hit the stores, people are turning their eyes to Peer-To-Peer networks, such as KaZaA, to get their hands on the music before it's released. The album can be found quite easily, but the contents of the tracks might not be what the listeners are looking for.
Many of the tracks found appear, infact, to be decoys. The songs start to play as you'd expect them to, but after awhile to song fades to silence. And since people often share music without listening to the tracks first, the broken songs are spread to thousands of users.
Record labels have been planting P2P networks with bogus tracks for quite some time now. They are hoping to discourage people from downloading music. According to their reasoning, if people can't download the tracks, they will buy the album.
No representative from EMI, Williams' record label, could be reached for comments.
AOL launched today its latest multimedia service, called Broadband Radio@AOL, which as its name suggests, provides high-quality net radio to AOL's broadband users.
The launch itself, which aims to boost AOL's broadband userbase, is not as important as the technology that the service uses. AOL has been in the past one of the biggest customers of RealNetworks and continues to use Real's servers to deliver its narrowband Radio@AOL service and various other multimedia products. But the new service uses technology that has been dubbed as Ultravox and has been developed by AOL's own programmers, including the humble guys of Nullsoft(developers of WinAMP and ShoutCast). According to industry rumours, the Ultravox technology offers massive increase in number of streams it can deliver from one server compared to any other commercial product.
Ahead Software has released it's plans to include AAC encoder to the upcoming Nero revisions. Ahead Software has shown interest to new formats before - long time ago they were the first (and the only one?) major software label to support the not-so-good VQF encoding.
But where is the OGG Vorbis support, as they could freely implement it?
GLENDALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2002--Ahead Software, creators of the world-renowned CD/DVD recording software Nero, have announced plans to integrate full MPEG-4 audio support (AAC -- Advanced Audio Coding) within Nero Burning ROM.
Available soon as a downloadable plug-in, the Nero AAC encoder is the result of extensive in-house development work by Ahead in MPEG-4 technology.
The Nero AAC encoder will be capable of more than 10X real time encoding, therefore allowing a user to rip and encode a complete CD in around 7 minutes. Optimized for the latest CPU's including the Intel P4, MMX, SSE, and SSE2 -- Nero AAC is fully compliant with both MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC, and features 16-448 Kbits/s bit rate, constant and variable, with a special fit-to-size option.
DVD Decrypter, probably the best DVD ripper at the moment, has been updated. The new version is v3.1.4.0 and the changelog is once again helluva long..
The changelog since DVD Decrypter v3.1.3.0 is here:
Improved support for DVD+RW/+R drives
Improved support for DVDRAM drives
Improved error reporting
Improved device / disc information given in ISO modes
Improved detection of currently inserted media
Improved IFO/BUP file region patching code
Improved the Erase Disc code to show the % done in the taskbar
Added 'RCE Protection' (Yes / No) to the main screen in IFO mode
Added the ability to force the program to think the disc is CSS protected
Added the ability to force the program to think the disc is dvd media
Added the ability to automatically Remove Region Protection, RCE Protection and PUOs from IFO/BUP files copied in IFO and File modes
Added the ability to change the transfer length used for device I/O - Setting it to 32KB should solve the 'The Parameter is Incorrect' problem
Added more options as to when the disc should be ejected from the drive
Added more options as to when the disc should be locked in the tray
Added 'Format' to the drive context menu - Used for DVD+RW discs
Added 'Close -> Track' to the drive context menu
Added 'Close -> Session' to the drive context menu
Added 'Close -> Disc' to the drive context menu
Added 'Manufacturer ID' to the (also new) 'Pre-recording Information' in ISO modes
Changed the format of the CCE chapter information file
Changed the naming of the DVDMaestro chapter information file
Changed the layout of the Settings to make navigation easier
Updated the ElbyCDIO Interface code so that it works with the new version of CloneCD - Note: Old version wont work anymore
Fixed a bug in the manual Region Patching code that caused a dialog box error on some machines
Fixed a bug with setting the destination folder to a network share
Last week's software chart saw TMPGEnc climbing to third spot after the release of version 2.59.47.155. Besides a couple of other changes in the positions from the previous charts, the top ten is pretty much what we're used to seeing it to be.
On the MP3 charts Dj Quesito grabed #1 spot again with 2CoXX climbing from sixth to third. Again, besides that, the chart is quite similar to that of the previous week.
rhmoore was again the most active poster in the discussion forums. Dela climbed all the way from eight to second - quite impressive. Actually most of the people in the top ten forum users chart are new from last week.
There has been alot of discussion and speculation on the future of both magnetic and optical storage media in the recent years. Researchers are continuosly looking for new ways to store more data in smaller space. One of the most promising concepts has been so called 3D optical storage. Dual layer DVDs are sort of a 3D storage medium already - you can access two different data from one point on the disc by adjusting the focus of the laser beam. Imagine how much more data you could store, if you could had, say, 20 layers on one DVD.
Researchers at Boston College's Eugene F. Merkert Chemistry Center have done just that. They have developed a material on which they have been able to write several layers of data by modifying the intensity of the laser beam used for reading and writing. Using this method they have managed to create a CD-sized disk capable of storing 87 gigabytes of data - that's nineteen times more than a regular DVD-R holds (4.7GB).
"This all began when we were trying to do something completely different with the materials," said John Fourkas, a chemistry professor who led the research at Boston College's Eugene F. Merkert Chemistry Center. "It was by accident."
Roxio, the company behind Easy CD Creator, announced today that it will buy all Napster's assets for appx. $5.3M. Company will pay $5M in cash and appx. $350,000 in stock for Napster's assets that include Napster's domain name and trademarks.
Deal is still subject to U.S. bankruptcy court's approval which may delay the deal, but Roxio's reps said that both parties have agreed on price, so there shouldn't be any nasty surprises left. Roxio will buy all the assets, but is not assuming any of Napster's liabilities, including pending litigation.
Roxio's motivations are still slightly unclear, but the company has taken various steps towards media distribution during the last year or so. One such example is the fact that Roxio is one of the resellers of Pressplay, an online music subscription service. So, wild guess would be that Roxio will use Napster's name and domain to create a legal media distribution site based on its partners' media offerings.
Pressplay became the second online subscription service to have licensing deals with all five major record labels when it signed a licensing contract with Warner Music today.
First such service to get all five labels under its wraps was Listen.com's Rhapsody. Now the other major record label-owned subscription service, MusicNet, is losing the ground in the licensing competition -- it is missing licensing deals with two major labels (Pressplay's owners, Sony and Vivendi Universal..). Also, the second independent subscription service, FullAudio, is still missing one major record label.
Smaller and less known brands are now pushing DivX to out livingrooms. Earlier we saw the KiSS Techology's announcement of a such player, and now there is another one by a small start-up.
The device, dubbed Maestro DVX-1201, will operate like a standard home entertainment DVD player, except that it can also play computer file formats such as DivX and MPEG-4 for movies, MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) for music and JPEG for images.
It will be the first product from start-up Neuston, a Singapore-based firm, and will be among the first DivX/MPEG-4-compatible players available anywhere. It is expected to be launched in January for under $350, said its marketing director
TMPGEnc, probably the best MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder in the world, in terms of price/quality, has been updated. The new version, TMPGEnc v2.59, has tons of updates as usual and one of the biggest new features is probablý the support for Intel's Hyper Threading technology.
The changelog since TMPGEnc v2.58:
-Corresponded to Hyper Threading Technology.
-Improved the system of template by project wizard. Basically, it can be chosen by a combination of CBR/VBR and audio format.
-It can be played by setting screen of all image filter except 24fps filter. It starts to play by pressing space bar in condition of making slider bar active.
-"Set up forced picture type" and "Detect scene change" in MPEG setting can be used together.
-Chained files can be managed as one animation. This tool can be switched ON by environmental setting.
-Changed "external tool" tab in environmental setting to "audio engine" tab.
-Included sampling wavelength transform engine with high quality. However, it is necessary to set up by "audio engine" tab in the environmental setting in order to use since it is set as not using in default.
-Included the project which currently encodes in "remained job number" indicated in the status bar of main window by batch encode.
-Modified not to have memory access violation error upon moving track bar or clicking stop button right after pressing a play button by audio processing dialog.
-The latest setting is saved to the utmost by saving environmental setting or batch list into HDD upon job completion of batch encoding.
-Message is indicated when audio file cannot be opened by the setting window of source range.
-Audio corresponded to separating MPEG-2 file of linear PCM by MPEG tools. Multiplex of linear PCM cannot be supported.
-Only elementary stream format can be output with WAV format by specifying linear PCM format to audio format in MPEG setting dialog.
-In case "Interpolate YUV data from 4:1:1 to 4:4:4" is ON in environmental setting, "Specify color space conversion formula" is also handled as ON automatically.
-Modified that TMPGEnc.vfp, which is VFAPI plug-in of TMPGEnc did not read TMPGEnc body setting.
-Modified that the index after 4GB was broken when data rate output AVI file with high format (for example, uncompressed high resolution) by AVI output.
We received interesting news directly from 321 Studios today. One of the best-known figures in the DVD ripping world, "Derrow", the author of the IFOEdit application, has agreed to join the development team of 321 Studios, authors of DVD X Copy, and will be physically relocating to their Headquarters in St Louis, Missouri, when his U.S. visa is granted.
According to 321 Studios, Derrow has already taken a look at present problems with DVD X Copy and is quite confident that current issues are only minor glitches that can be resolved very quickly. Until such time as his visa is granted, Derrow's work for 321 Studios will be in the capacity of Lead Engineer and will be performed from a remote location.
MusicMatch, company which is a developer of a well-known media player software of same name, has plans to launch an online music subscription service in December that would rival Pressplay, Rhapsody and MusicNet.
MusicMatch announced today that it has signed licensing deals with four (out of five) major record labels in order to use their material in its upcoming subscription service, dubbed as Artist On Demand. Company signed deals with BMG, TimeWarner, EMI and Vivendi Universal and is now only missing a deal with Sony.
The service will work -- at least in its initial phase -- only as a streaming service, with no option for downloads. The cost of the service will be $6.95 a month or $59.40 annually.
TDK announced that it will start shipping its new dual-format DVD writer, TDK Indi AID+040212, in December. Drive will be capable of burning both, DVD+R/W and DVD-R/W discs.
Drive will record DVD+R discs at 4x speed, DVD-R and DVD-RW discs at 2X speed and DVD+RW discs at 2.4X speed. Estimated retail price will be $349. Drive will compete against similiar products from Sony and NEC.
This latest CD-RW.ORG/Afterdawn.com article guest stars Chris Myden - a long time promoter of high quality MP3s. We have the pleasure to publish his Exact Audio Copy and LAME encoder for guide to all of our readers.
This article guides you in configuring EAC and LAME for maximum quality, and includes downloadable pre-configured EAC configuration files to make the process easy - even for the newbies.
My name is Chris Myden and for the past 5 years or so I have operated a website called Elite DAE which is a community dedicated to helping people create high quality audio extractions. Our experience with extracting audio from CDs and audio compression techniques led us to creating a high quality MP3 guide. We wanted the guide to be easy to understand, even for newbies, so we could help rid the world of low quality MP3s
In a rather surprising move, DVD Forum(the authority which controls the development of the DVD standards), has chosen a technology by NEC and Toshiba to work as a blueprint for next generation blue-laser DVDs.
This is big setback for a Blu-Ray Consortium, a group of nine big consumer electronic companies, who launched their blue-laser specs earlier this year hoping that by uniting their forces they could avoid current situation where markets have two competing red-laser technologies, the "minus" and the "plus" formats. But now it seems that this will be exactly the same story with blue-laser recordable standards as well.
NEC-Toshiba model users 0.6mm cover layer disk system, similiar to those used currently in red-laser DVD discs, while Blu-Ray uses 0.1mm cover layer. Blu-Ray can store upto 27GB of data per side, but the NEC-Toshiba disc can hold only appx. 20GB per side.
Okay, here are last week's charts. On the software chart DVD2AVI bounced up one spot after the release of a new version. Nero Burning ROM jumped all the way from tenth to fifth while Alcohol 120% slipped out of top ten again.
Ty Jordan managed to grab first position on the MP3 chart this week -- probably thanks to the name of the band and last week's high placing. Besides that, the chart looks pretty much the same as last week.
Well one can tell that DVDXCopy has spurred alot of discussion. rhmoore from 321Studios was #1 last week with other DVDXCopy forum posters close behind.
Much delayed and anticipated launch of first commercial major movie studio-backed online movie service, Movielink, was finally launched today. Service offers pay-per-view type of movie rentals for U.S. broadband users who are willing to download the movie and watch it using their PCs.
Currently the service is really restricted to U.S. customers only, their website just gives an annoying apology if you access outside U.S. stating "Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but it is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States."
Obviously the geographical limitation was relatively easy to circumvent by using anonymous proxies inside U.S. Next step what the site does is that it checks for user's configuration and tries to find either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player v7.1 or higher -- if this fails, site gives an error and offers download links for players. Service is also limited to Windows operating systems and requires IE5.0 or later as a webbrowser.
One movie rental costs between $2.99 and $4.99, depends on the movie and currently the site features appx. 200 movies, including some relatively big hits such as Resident Evil and Collateral Damage, but the big blockbusters that are being released on DVD right now, are still missing. Once the movie is downloaded (yes, it is not a streaming service), users have 30 days time to decide when they want to watch the movie. But once user decides to hit the play button, the timelimit shrinks to 24h window during which time they're allowed to watch the movie as many times as they want to.
Our contact at Yamaha informed us that they will be joining the DVD+RW alliance in the near future. According to our source Yamaha is about to introduce their DVD+RW drive in the next CeBIT, or atleast they hope to do so. The technical specifications of the drive have not been released yet.
Cactus Data Shield is one of the protections used on audio CDs. It's quite tough actually, but can be worked around. This is how.
My friend called me and was he pissed or what! He had just bought a Phil Collins’ Testify album, but the album failed to play in his car player (A factory player in an Opel van). When he inserted the disc the player started from track 3 and when he pressed NEXT the player jumped to track 1. So he called me to get rid of the copy protection. It turned out to be slightly complicated.
NewScientist has an article, which makes us all video and DVD freaks cry because of its misuse of technical terms, but it has some interesting details about Macrovision usage in new DVD discs.
Several movie studios seem to push new DVD series out, dubbed as SuperBit, which seems to be rather ridiculous marketing method. Basically these discs are regular DVDs, just without all the goodies, such as extras, etc. Instead of the extras, discs were encoded using slightly higher bitrate, generally ranging between 4 and 8 MBit/sec (maximum videostream bitrate allowed on DVD specs is around 9.8MBit/sec). And how does this differ from regular DVD releases that generally speaking have average bitrate of 5-6MBit/sec? I have absolutely no idea.
But anyway, the point in here is the fact that these "SuperBit" discs don't have Macrovision copy protection. Macrovision is basically a dummy analog copy-protection that prevents VCR recording of the movie. All discs still contain all the other copy-protection methods, including the CSS (and those other copy-protection methods cannot be copied by normal humans, but they do require hackers -- according to the article ;-)).
CDRInfo.com has a review of Pioneer's latest DVD writer, Pioneer A05.
Their review findings weren't very surprising, only real cons in the drive were in copy-protected audio extraction and replication, which shouldn't be a big deal for most of the users anyway.
Only real annoyance is the fact that is happening secretly around the world nowadays -- virtually all new DVD drives, manufactured in 2002, are capped so that the DVD ripping can be done only at max 2x speed. Thanks to MPAA.. This holds true for virtually all major brand drives built in this year -- so, if you go and buy a DVD writer, don't throw your good olde DVD-ROM out of the window just yet, if you don't want to spend half an hour ripping a movie. But the drive itself seems to be rather nice, supporting 4x DVD-R burning (that's around 15mins per full DVD-R disc for you, who don't know anything about DVD writing speeds) and 2x DVD-RW burning.
The price of the retail package should be around €349 in Europe. The retail package includes one blank 4X DVD-R disc, one blank 2x DVD-RW disc, Sonic MyDVD, CinePlayer, VOB Instant CD/DVD v6.5, manuals and cables. The OEM price will be slightly lower (==just the drive).
Consumer privacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center(EPIC), has attacked against RIAA's and MPAA's intentions to force colleges and universities to monitor P2P usage.
Both, MPAA and RIAA, have sent letters out to American universities during the last couple of months, warning about illegal file trading of their students and demanding universities to monitor and block P2P use in their networks.
EPIC has sent its own letter to major universities warning about the monitoring, saying that monitoring students will chill the critical thinking and exploration.
According to EPIC, copyright owners' plans would "shift the burden to colleges and universities to devote scarce resources to monitoring online communications and to identifying and 'prosecuting' individuals suspected of using P2P networks to commit copyright violations."
With the release of DVDXCopy right around the corner, we decided to take a look at the product and see how it works in action.
Our enthusiastic test lab put the product to a challenge by throwing it into the mouth of Jaws, the most horrendous beast ever to swim across the silver screen. As it turns out, it was Jaws who ended up in the grinder after all.
"Even though the product is still in very early stages of development, DVDXCopy shows great promise, and will surely be de facto for backing up your DVDs in near future. There are some rough edges to smoothen, and for now only NTSC movies are supported officially (although I have also tried it with PAL movies successfully), but nevertheless I'm impressed. There's no arguing that DVDXCopy is infinitely easier to use than any other DVD backup product on the market today."
I just made couple of minor bug fixes to our DVD to XviD guide and fixed bunch of typos as well.
Major changes since the original version are in audio interleaving and also one major bug with 1st pass log saving has been fixed. Big thanks to our user, jukkaam, for his excellent feedback. Guide is available in this address:
"The Most Important P2P Software Release Ever". That's what Shareaza labeled the latest release of their peer-to-peer application - Shareaza v1.7.
Shareaza is based on the Gnutella Network. Gnutella has had a tough time contending with the P2P applications such as Kazaa, which based on the commercial FastTrack Network, and eDonkey. With the release of version 1.7 Shareaza introduced Gnutella2 or G2 - a more open and flexible protocol designed from ground up to better suit future needs for peer-to-peer file sharing. To the end user the new protocol will appear as faster search times with better results. G2 also causes much less strain on hubs.
The full specification of the G2 protocol will be made available after the final release of version 1.7. An overview of the protocol can be viewed at g2.trillinux.org.
Faced with adverse publicity to copy protection on CDs, a year ago Bertelsmann Music Group bravely gave in and promised to replace a clutch of Natalie Imbruglia CDs which were protected by Midbar's Cactus Data Shield. But a year is a long time, BMG is at it again, this time apparently set on applying copy protection to all its music products.
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This is a clear commitment to 100 per cent copy protection, and once implemented will no doubt ease the workload of the various 'corrupt CD' identification sites considerably. Ah, but what if you have a problem playing the CD? "If you can't play the BMG product on your player please contact your dealer or the responsible person at BMG under (email address of the responsible person)."
We're sure it makes more sense in German. If you fill in the form and send it off to who knows where, this is what you get from the BMG Kopierschutz Team (typos left in):
"we are sorry you have troubles with our copy protection technology. The copy protection reacts on the special new technology that is build in in burners. Unfortunately htis technics was built in many new CD players, even if they can't copy a cd.
The copy protection yet does not recognize wheather that burner technics is build in a cd player or in a burner. That's why the cd playern might not play a copy protected CD. Since burner technics are also built in car radios, this may be the reason, why you can't listen to a copyprotected cd in your car.
Philips continues its efforts to make the "plus" format the dominant recordable DVD format over the "minus" camp (which is currently doing well with Pioneer's almost-legendary A03, A04 and A05 models).
Company has released reference design for PC DVD+RW drives that allows third party manufacturers to license the technology and -- if they wish -- basically just to copy the reference drive and put their own branding on it.
Philips released similiar reference player for home stand-alone DVD recorders in last month. Drive manufacturers are locked in a bitter fight over standards, where Philips, HP and Dell are supporting the "plus" drives (DVD+R and DVD+RW) and Pioneer, Apple and the official DVD Forum are supporting the "minus" standard (DVD-R and DVD-RW).
Two leading copy-protection technology companies announced Tuesday that they are merging, in a deal that could help speed the move of controversial copy-proof music CDs to market.
Macrovision, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, said it will acquire Israeli company Midbar Tech, with the intention of joining the rival anti-copying technologies from the two companies. Both companies' products have met resistance from consumers and record labels, and together they hope to overcome market skepticism, they say.
Analysts said the deal would likely help smooth some of the bumps in the path toward general acceptance of anti-piracy technology for music CDs, although the consolidation fell far short of a guarantee of success for the industry sector.
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Over the last two years, at least four companies--Macrovision, Midbar Tech, Sony and start-up SunnComm--have tried to persuade record labels to add various flavors of anti-copying technology onto ordinary CDs. But after an initial flurry of excitement, consumer backlash and stories of technological incompatibilities with some CD players and computers have kept sightings of copy-protected discs few and far between.
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Macrovision and Midbar say the merger will help address those worries. By melding the two companies' products, they hope to be able to improve compatibility with computers. The companies also promise that by next year CDs using their joint copy-protection technology will include two versions of songs--one for ordinary CD players, and one that can be loaded onto computer hard drives in much the same way that MP3s can be "ripped" or copied onto computers today. Listeners will not be able to make unrestricted copies of these alternate digital files, but the songs will be able to be transferred to mobile devices such as MP3 players and even burned onto CDs in a limited way, company executives said.
Listen.com signed a licensing agreement with German Bertelsmann Music Group today that allows Listen.com-owned Rhapsody's users to burn their downloaded tracks to CDRs.
The licensing agreement extends Rhapsody's number of tracks that users can burn to CDRs. Unfortunately the burning is not included in Rhapsody's monthly fees, but costs $0.99 a track making it only slightly cheaper than buying an actual CD.
A look at last week's charts again. Top six remained the same, but in the duel of burners it seems that Alcohol provided the most heat. It managed to toast CDRWin out of top ten altogether!
Dj Quesito/Gettopoet managed to hold on to first place, but Ty Jordan featuring Michael Jackson managed to squeeze in at second. Kone ja Ruuvi pushed Pohja out of top ten with their track Sähkökeskus.
Again at the top of the forum charts we find Dela. VCDJunkie jumped back on charts at #4 after slipping from top ten last week. Glad to see you back! Klingon Agent held his fifth spot from last week while rhmoore from 321Studios fell from the charts. However other regular posters from the DVDXCopy-thread, like Achilles and -LD entered the charts.
The major Hollywood movie studios are finally getting serious about delivering movies over the Internet, but their performances still could end up on the cutting-room floor.Read more about movies online
Movielink--a joint venture among MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.--last week announced technology partnerships with Microsoft and RealNetworks to help power its movie-rental service on the Net, set to launch by December. The deals represent crucial final edits to a venture long overdue, and they lend credence to promises that the movie studios will open film vaults to widespread Internet distribution.
By offering a legal service, Movielink could also thwart online piracy of movies and help Hollywood evade "Napsterization"--that is, tumult like that which file-swapping site Napster let loose in the music business.
Definitely positive about this is that the movie industry seems to have learned something from the struggles in the music industry. Interesting though is that movie industry is avoiding napsterization even though swapping movies has been the next big thing for quite some time. Well, not in the extent of Napster, but that is due to bandwith limitations more than anything else.
The eagerly awaited DVDXCopy, the software that can make perfect backup copies of DVD movies, from 321Studios is nearing it's release to pre-order customers. The latest, and possibly final beta was released yesterday for betatesters. The official release date for the final product is now Friday, November 8, 2002.
During the past couple of weeks the AfterDawn.com community has been helping 321Studios in beta-testing the product. The progress has been amazingly rapid, and at the current state of development DVDXCopy is compatible with the majority of DVD-R and DVD+R drives on the market and capable of backing up most of the movies out there.
We have now opened the official DVDXCopy support forum at:
DVDXCopy.afterdawn.com All future discuscussion regarding DVDXCopy should be directed there.
Read more about DVDXCopy and pre-order your copy today to get a $20 discount before the product is released at DVDXCopy.com.
According a study published by Business Software Alliance, Mississippi has the worst record of American states in software piracy in business. Nearly half (48.7 percent) of all business software used in the state is pirated.
New York tops the charts by being the "cleanest" state, BSA estimates that 11.9 percent of business software is pirated in there. BSA claims (and we all know that these claims are slightly boosted, whether it is software, movies or music) that pirated business software -- 25 percent of all business software used in the U.S. -- costs American economy $1.8 billion in retail sales and costs more than 100,000 jobs.