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DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 62
7 October, 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

Three weeks in a row where a newsletter has been sent out
regularly ... it must be a new record for me!

-- DVDGuy

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2. Weekly News Roundup

Once again, I'll go through all the news items that have gone
through the Digital Digest website and forum for the week.

Starting with copyright related news, Sony is once again in the
headlines with Sony's chief lawyer person saying (1) that copying
songs that you have already purchased, such as from the CD to your
computer, is considered stealing. This betrays the intention of
content owners such as Sony, who want you to buy a copy of the movie
for every single device that you want to use it on. So if you have a
PS3, a PSP, a Walkman video player and a Sony Vaio laptop, then
you're screwed. And just in case you are wondering what could happen
to you if content owners find you guilty of copyright infringement,
a woman found guilty of sharing 24 songs (2) has been ordered to pay
$US 220,000 to the RIAA. Although I'm still not sure whether it's a
copy protection related problem or not, but Fox's new Blu-ray movies
featuring BD+ copy protection has been found to cause problems (3)
in certain players, and requiring firmware updates to fix the
problem (and if you're lucky, the required firmware might just be
available). Later reports suggested that it was the BD-J usage in
these discs causing the problem, rather than BD+, since a disc
without BD+ from Fox also suffers from similar problems. I don't
know what's worse, playback failure due to BD+ or playback failure
due to a basic standard feature like BD-J when all the DRM layers
appear to be working. It seem the priority of the Blu-ray engineers
might have been to get the DRM working first, and then worry about
the other small features like playback.

Onto gaming news. The Halo 3 version of the Xbox 360 hardware appear
to be using a new 65 nm CPU (4), which is probably Microsoft's
solution to the overheating problem the console suffers, which is
indicated by red rings showing up on the 360's power switch
indicator. While Microsoft has been generous in extending the
warranty from the initial 90 days, to a year and now 3 years,
perhaps they can learn something from Nintendo when it comes to
dealing with design faults. The Wiimote strap was notorious for
breaking and usually smashing into people (if you're lucky) or
expensive electronics (not so lucky). A better strap was introduced,
and Nintendo offered to replace all older straps with the new ones
without cost, and this seem to solve most problems. Now, Nintendo
has gone a step further by giving all existing Wii owners up to four
non-slip jackets for Wiimotes (5) free of charge - all you need to
do is to give them a call with your details, and they will send them
out to you. All new Wiimotes will ship with the jacket from now on.
Now this is what I call commitment to service. They admitted the
problem, found a solution and offered to fix everything for free
even though it will cost them more than 17 million dollars - if only
all companies were like this (but I guess the 360's problem was more
serious, and they have already committed a billion dollars to fix
the problem). The big PS3 news of the week has been the announcement
of a €400 40 GB PS3 (6) for the EU market, set to sell for €400. The
catch is that it has no backwards compatibility with PS2 titles at
all, limited to only 2 USB ports and no Compact Flash/Memory Stick
and SD slots. I think the console will have a matte finish too, as
opposed to the glossy finish of the other versions. The bad news is
that once the fully featured models sell out, this cut down version
will be the only one available in Europe (and I assume, in Australia
too). This is the 5th version of the console to have been released
as Sony tries to make the package more attractive price wise.

In HD news, Acer is to launch what it claims to be the first PC with
a combo drive (7), capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD
movies. As a supporter for format neutrality, I hope it turns out to
be the first of many. Back to the Fox Blu-ray playback problems
mentioned earlier - it turns out that the problem was related to the
BD-Java usage of these discs, rather than a BD+ issue, at least with
the "Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer" disc. This once again
highlights how Blu-ray is playing the catch up game when it comes to
interactivity, with HD DVD's equivalent HDi being used from day one
to great effect (albeit not without it's own compatibility problems
at the start). When HD DVD are already starting to toy around with
interactive online shopping via HD DVD movies (8), Blu-ray is still
struggling (9) with basic interactive content like Picture-in-
Picture. And when Blu-ray profile 1.1, 2.0 are rolled out, expect
more problems as discs requiring 1.1 or 2.0 players might simply
fail on 1.0 players (most of which lack the secondary video/audio
decode and persistent storage required to upgrade to 1.1). But the
good news for Blu-ray is that the new layer of DRM, BD+, appears to
be working. Meanwhile, a Japanese HD DVD presentation appear to show
several Spielberg directed or produced films that will be released
on HD DVD (10), at least in Japan. Films like Jaws, E.T, Back to the
Future and Jurassic Park were shown. Spielberg has been quoted to be
a Blu-ray supporter (I suspect he has been fed some non truths by
Blu-ray supporter friends of his, such as how Blu-ray has better
quality or how HD DVD is doomed). His movies were left out of
Paramount's HD DVD exclusive deal, for example, so it suggests that
at the very least, he doesn't want HD DVD exclusivity for his
movies. The only one of his films scheduled to be released on HD has
been Close Encounters on Blu-ray. But with many of his
films "belonging" to HD DVD friendly studios, namely Paramount and
Universal, it all depends on who has control over the release of his
movies. Spielberg has always been slow to get on the next-gen video
train, if you can recall how long it took his movies to come out on
DVD.
See you next week.

Links:
(1) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84200
(2) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84206
(3) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84197
(4) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84160
(5) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84238
(6) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84223
(7) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84169
(8) http://tinyurl.com/ynuqhx
(9) http://www.guidetohometheater.com/features/907bdint/
(10) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84222


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3. Weekly Software Roundup

October 7, 2007 AutoGK 2.47 Beta
October 7, 2007 XULPlayer 0.1.0.0 (Freeware)
October 7, 2007 MeGUI 0.2.6.1023 (Freeware)
October 6, 2007 Movie Library ++ 3.0
October 6, 2007 MediaCoder 0.6.0 Build 3902 (Freeware)
October 6, 2007 FinalBurner Pro 1.22.0.132
October 6, 2007 FinalBurner 1.22.0.111 (Freeware)
October 6, 2007 ffdshow Rev. 1508 (Freeware)
October 6, 2007 ProgDVB 5.11.2 (Freeware)
October 5, 2007 DivX Codec 6.7.0.18
October 5, 2007 DVBcut 0.5.4 (Freeware)
October 5, 2007 DGMPGDec 1.5.0 Beta 4 (Freeware)
October 5, 2007 Miro 0.9.9.1a Public Preview 2 (Freeware)
October 5, 2007 RipBot264 1.6.5 (Freeware)
October 4, 2007 Cam Video Tool 4 DVD Flick 1.1 (Freeware)
October 4, 2007 Cut Assistant 0.9.12.1 (Freeware)
October 4, 2007 DVDINFOPro 4.6.3.1
October 4, 2007 DVBViewer Pro 3.9.0.0
October 4, 2007 DVBViewer Technisat Edition 3.9.0.0 (Freeware)
October 4, 2007 Comskip 0.79.103 (Freeware)
October 3, 2007 BluffTitler 7.14 (Freeware)
October 3, 2007 Video DVD Maker Pro 2.4.0.36
October 3, 2007 Video DVD Maker 2.12.0.75 (Freeware)
October 3, 2007 DVB Web Scheduler 5.0.0.11 (Freeware)
October 2, 2007 MPEG StreamClip for Windows 1.2b2 (Freeware)
October 2, 2007 Kantaris Media Player 0.2.4 (Freeware)
October 2, 2007 MovieGate 2.64
October 2, 2007 My Movie Collection 2.6.1
October 2, 2007 Nero Vision 5.0
October 2, 2007 Nero Burning ROM 8.1.1.0
October 2, 2007 Nero Suite 8.0
October 1, 2007 KMPlayer 2.9.3.1378 Beta (Freeware)
October 1, 2007 Joost 1.0 Beta (Freeware)
September 30, 2007 Burn4Free 3.5.0.0 (Freeware)
September 30, 2007 XP Codec Pack 2.2.0 (Freeware)
September 30, 2007 VirtualDub 1.7.5 (Build 28225) (Freeware)
September 30, 2007 DVR-Studio Pro 1.70
September 30, 2007 DVR-Studio 1.70


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


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