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DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 60
23 September, 2007

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TOP NEWS SUMMARY:

1. Introduction

2. Weekly News Roundup

3. Weekly Software Roundup

4. How to cancel/change your subscription email address/settings
- how to maintain the subscription to this newsletter even
if your email address has changed

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1. Introduction

I said before that I would make this newsletter a regular thing, but
once again, I've failed to live up to (at the very least, my own)
expectation. Sorry about that. But try again I will. The format of
the newsletter is slightly changed, to make it a bit easier for me
to keep on updating it. There will hopefully be an issue every week,
with a news roundup (that I will also on my new blog:
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/), and a software update
roundup. There will be less personal rants and opinions, which will
now primarily be on my blog.

Again, I apologise for the lack of updates, and hopefully (I sure
use this word a lot) the updates will be more regular again (I know
I've said that before).

-- DVDGuy

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2. Weekly News Roundup

Starting with some copyright related news, I found some funny anti-
piracy video parodies (1) on the net and posted them up - it's not
strictly news, but I thought it needed to be shared. There was news
that MediaDefender (2), a anti-piracy company, set up a fake video
sharing websites to lure people in to get their details for legal
purposes - it's ironic that their own emails and details were leaked
or stolen, and it's now available online for all to see. The MPAA is
at it again (3), and they once again have asked ISPs to help them
catch video pirates, or to filter out "inappropriate" content, and
maybe even charge users extra up front for the movies they will no
doubt steal at some point. Macrovision, the company with the
slogan "quality protection", which actually means copy protection
that ruins quality, is talking about legal DVD rips (4), albeit at a
premium. It's not a bad idea, I must admit, and it's certainly
better than introducing more and more layers of (easily bypassed and
consumer unfriendly) DRM. And to round off the copyright related
news, Germany will ban all kinds of CD and DVD copying (5), even for
personal use, starting in 2008.

Now onto some gaming news, reports say that Sony will sell its PS3
cell chip division (6) or manufacturing plant to Toshiba, Sony's
bitter rivals in the HD war. Are Sony that desperate to free up some
cash to subsidize their struggling PS3? Or is this just part of
normal business and cooperation between Japanese conglomerates,
which happens quite frequently. A Star Wars lightsaber game on the
Wii (7)? Yes please (and what took so long). Sony's long
awaited "Home" virtual community for the PS3 is going to be delayed
(8) - things are really not going well for the PS3, and comments (9)
such as the following from Sony execs aren't helping:

----
"Going aggressive only on price without being able to back it up
with content doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me"
----

In other words, no discounts for the PS3 because it doesn't have
enough games to make up for the loss in income. Yes, I'm sure the
high price and low hardware sales will encourage software publishers
to make more games for the PS3, not less. Bioshock on the PS3 anyone?

In HD news, Intel says (10) that it's next mobile chip platform,
Montevina, will support both Blu-ray and HD DVD decoding. Intel is
still a major backer of HD DVD, but because Blu-ray uses the same
set of video codecs as HD DVD, it's impossible to support one HD
format without supporting the other, unless they do something really
sneaky and anti-competitive by deliberately blocking Blu-ray
playback or acceleration. Not that Blu-ray will care even if Intel
ditches Blu-ray, because you see, they have already won will win.
Disney CEO Robert Iger is quote as saying that "victory is a forgone
conclusion" (11) during an investment meeting, which stunned other
attending studio execs. I went on a nice rant at Iger's statement,
and also this other statement: "The public can tell the difference"
statement in regards to Blu-ray being heaps better than HD DVD -
yes, there differences Mr. Iger. Blu-ray can't do the advanced
interactive stuff that HD DVD has been doing since day one, like
picture-in-picture and Internet connectivity. A lot of Blu-ray
titles also used the inferior MPEG-2 video codec, making for a
poorer picture quality compared to MPEG-4 AVC or VC-1 encoded discs.
But Blu-ray does have more copy protection and region protection (HD
DVD is region-free), so I'm sure that's exactly what consumers want.
Just what kind of company would sacrifice essential features and
quality, and yet not miss a beat when it comes to unnecessary DRM
and region control?

Okay, that's about it for this week. Stay tuned next week, same time
same place, for another roundup (hopefully).

Links:
(1) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83940
(2) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83949
(3) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83963
(4) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83969
(5) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84024
(6) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83964
(7) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83967
(8) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84008
(9) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84032
(10) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=83966
(11) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84009


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3. Weekly Software Roundup

September 23, 2007 SubMagic 0.70 (Freeware)
September 23, 2007 Movica Beta 6.2 (Freeware)
September 23, 2007 AC3ACM 1.4 (Freeware)
September 23, 2007 CDBurnerXP Pro 4.0.013.220 (Freeware)
September 22, 2007 BluffTitler 7.12 (Freeware)
September 22, 2007 MediaCoder 0.6.0 Build 3880 (Freeware)
September 22, 2007 x264 full rev. 678 (Freeware)
September 22, 2007 BSplayer Pro 2.24
September 22, 2007 BSplayer 2.24
September 21, 2007 Foto2Avi 2.0 (Freeware)
September 20, 2007 AVIsynth 2.5.8 Alpha 2 (Freeware)
September 20, 2007 DivX Codec 6.7
September 20, 2007 JFuse 4.02
September 20, 2007 XULPlayer 0.0.6.0 (Freeware)
September 20, 2007 WatchHDTV 1.961 (Freeware)
September 19, 2007 J. River Media Center 12.0.329
September 19, 2007 Videora iPod Converter 3.04 (Freeware)
September 19, 2007 Videora iPhone Converter 3.04 (Freeware)
September 19, 2007 FinalBurner Pro 1.21.0.130
September 19, 2007 FinalBurner 1.21.0.110 (Freeware)
September 18, 2007 SageTV 6.2
September 18, 2007 Alive YouTube Video Converter 1.0.8.6
September 18, 2007 SVCD2DVD 2.5.3200
September 18, 2007 Kantaris Media Player 0.2.2 (Freeware)
September 18, 2007 Elecard Converter Studio 1.2.57
September 17, 2007 MediaCodeSpeedEdit 1.1.0.7 (Freeware)
September 17, 2007 AvsP 2.0.1 (Freeware)
September 17, 2007 VirtualDub MPEG-2 1.6.19 build 24571 (Freeware)
September 17, 2007 EMDB 0.48 (Freeware)
September 17, 2007 KMPlayer 2.9.3.1373 Beta (Freeware)
September 17, 2007 DeVeDe 3.2 (Freeware)
September 16, 2007 WAV to AC3 Encoder 0.6 (Freeware)
September 16, 2007 FF Player 0.95 (Freeware)
September 16, 2007 DVB Web Scheduler 5.0.0.5 Test (Freeware)

http://www.digital-digest.com/software/lastweeksoftware.php


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4. How to cancel/change settings/email address for your subscription
to this newsletter

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