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DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 67
11 November, 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

After a quiet week on the copyright front, DRMs and law suits make a
comeback. The HD world is still recovering from the $98 HD DVD
player sale, and I wrote a blog about how this will affect
Toshiba/HD DVD's fortunes and what effects this has on the HD war. I
also took time to update my High Definition DVD FAQ - it was the
first update in over 10 months (I know, I've been lazy), so there
were lots of changes.

Links:
* Sub $100 HD DVD Players - what is Toshiba's plan?
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/11/07/sub-100-hd-dvd-players-what\
-is-toshibas-plan/
* The High Definition DVD FAQ
http://www.digital-digest.com/highdefdvd/faq.html

-- DVDGuy


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2. Weekly News Roundup

Once again, it's time for the weekly news roundup on Remembrance
Day, a day where we not only remember those who sacrificed
themselves to preserve our way of life, but also to remember the
futility and wastefulness of war. War is something that should be
avoided whenever possible because it comes with a price that is far
too high.

Starting with copyright news. A lot of news items this week after a
relatively quite last week. A study has found that not only does
music piracy not hurt the music industry, it might actually help
because illegal music sharing leads to higher music sales (1). Of
course, record industry groups around the world has chosen to ignore
or discredit the report. I've always believed that if you do not
distribute content in a way people prefer, they will seek their own
way of obtaining the content, legal or otherwise. And speaking of
bad distribution methods, Macrovision's DRM for games has been found
to have a bug that allows computers to be exploited and hacked (2).
It's bad enough for DRM to make life harder for legitimate
customers, but at the very least, people who make them should ensure
it does no other damage. But as the case with Sony's rootkit
scandal, companies that deploy DRM have absolutely no regards for
their customers anyway, and this is why things like this keep
happening. These companies regard people who crack their DRMs as the
most evilest of all people, because DRM licensing is big money and
other companies are not going to pay if a lone hacker working in his
bedroom can break their multi-million dollar encryption scheme.
Sometimes it's not just lone hackers though. Slysoft has announced
that they have "by-passed" BD+ copy protection (3) for Blu-ray (4)
discs, but it might only be a temporary solution until the loophole
which allows this exploit is fixed. As Doom9 opinioned (5) on his
website in regards to this news:

------------------------------------
Either way, at this point I wouldn't bet much money on this
workaround being permanent, so you should heed Slysoft's advice
about buying HD media and buy HD DVD over Blu-ray - it is the more
consumer friendly format (not to be confused with a consumer
friendly format) and the risk you incur of not being able to
exercise your fair use rights in the future are greatly reduces if
Blu-ray becomes the prevailing format.
------------------------------------

And when DRM is not cracked, then consumers might be the one who
suffers as in the case of US Major League Baseball selling DRM'd
videos to people, then changing the DRM and making all those paid
for videos unplayable (6). That's the real danger of DRM though,
because at any moment, the content owner could decide to do
something like this and you end up having to buy the content all
over again.

Prince is set to sue The Pirate Bay (7) for copyright infringement.
Not sure that's a wise move though, as I'm sure the TBB has a lot
more loyal fans now than Prince ever had in his entire career. And
it appears Demonoid, the popular Bittorrent tracker, is down (8).
Don't know if it's permanent or just a temporary thing, but you can
definitely see a trend now what with the demise of OiNK still fresh
in people's memories.

On to HD news, I wrote a blog (9) in mid-week about the effects of
the $98 Toshiba HD DVD (10) player, so I won't go into it further
except to say I'm extremely jealous and bitter at all the people who
managed to get themselves one of these players. I checked my local
electronics store yesterday and the Australian version of this super-
cheap player was retailing for $AUD 596 (it does have a $100
cashback, which makes it $496 and comes with 3 free HD DVD movies) -
that's $USD 450, which is actually $150 more than the Toshiba retail
pricing (which nobody sells them at), and comes with two less free
movies as well. Cnet Asia wrote an article about Blu-ray 1.1.
profile players and whether it makes you existing BD 1.0 players
obsolete - it's worth a read (11). It's not just consumers that are
a bit confused by all these profiles, even the Blu-ray manufacturers
seems confused (12) about what they should be doing. Sony's CEO has
conceded that the HD war is a stalemate (13) at the moment - it's
certainly a change from the usual "we've won" messages that the Blu-
ray group likes to send out. I've always thought that the eventual
result of this stupid war was going to be a stalemate - even if one
format has 80% of the market, 20% is still quite a lot to just "give
up", not when so much money has been invested already. But the first
casualty of the HD war might not be Toshiba or Sony, but the AV
Science forum, which has closed its Blu-ray/HD DVD section due to
increasing hostility between forum members. My little rant about
fanbois (14) a couple of weeks ago might be relevant here, even
though it was about those of the PS3/Xbox 360 variety.

And on that note, we move onto gaming. Yet another developer has
come out to say what everyone seems to know already, that the PS3 is
not a million times more powerful that the year older Xbox 360 (15),
at least not according to developers. The general feeling seems to
indicate that while the PS3 has a more powerful processor, it's
memory handling is not as good as the Xbox 360 and is harder to
programme for, so in the end, it all evens out. The long awaited PS3
2.00 firmware has been released (16) and it adds a couple of
interesting features, but for Blu-ray fans waiting for Profile 1.1.
compatibility, it was a bit of a disappointment. Not that there are
any movies to take advantage of Profile 1.1 anyway. Is your PS3
sitting in a place where it gathers a lot of dust? If so, you might
want to move it somewhere else because apparently someone was told
by PS3 customer support the excessive dust voids the warranty (17).
Depends upon what "excessive" means though, I guess. And to end on a
more positive note, the changes in the PS3 2.00 firmware (18) and
comments from the DivX Inc CEO (19) seem to suggest that DivX (20)
playback might be coming to a PS3/Xbox 360 near you. I certainly
hope it happens because my Xbox 360 is already quite a nice media
extender devices, and if DivX/XviD (21) support is added, then it
makes playing back these files on my TV a lot easier.

And so this concludes another episode of Weekly News Roundup. What
zany adventures will the MPAA/RIAA get up to next week? Just how
many more forums will be closed "When Fanbois Attack"? And will
scientist finally figure out just how many shades of awesomeness the
PS3 is compared to the Xbox 360? Tune in next week to find out!


Links:
(1) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84727
(2) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84726
(3) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84783
(4) http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/Blu-ray
(5) http://www.doom9.org/
(6) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84772
(7) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84798
(8) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84819
(9)
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/11/07/sub-100-hd-dvd-players-what\
-is-toshibas-plan/
(10) http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/HD_DVD
(11) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84747
(12) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84782
(13) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84797
(14)
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/10/27/ps3-doesnt-suck-as-much-as-\
fanbois/
(15) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84743
(16) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84770
(17) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84818
(18) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84785
(19) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=84799
(20) http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/DivX
(21) http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/XviD


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3. Weekly Software Roundup

November 11, 2007 InfraRecorder 0.44 (Freeware)
November 11, 2007 GB-PVR 1.1.5 (Freeware)
November 11, 2007 AviDemux 2.4 Preview 3 (Freeware)
November 11, 2007 CodecInstaller 2.8.0
November 11, 2007 NeroLINUX 3.0.2.1
November 10, 2007 ffdshow Rev. 1596 (Freeware)
November 10, 2007 DGMPGDec 1.5.0 Beta 12 (Freeware)
November 10, 2007 Collectorz.com Movie Collector For Mac OS X 2.0.8
November 10, 2007 ProgDVB 5.11.9 (Freeware)
November 10, 2007 MediaInfo 0.7.5.5 (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 Movica Beta 6.4 (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 Plato DVD Creator 3.76
November 9, 2007 Plato Video To Zune 3.68
November 9, 2007 Plato Video To iPod PSP 3GP 3.68
November 9, 2007 QuickTime Alternative (QT7) 1.95 (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 Kiss DajeVu Encoder 2008.R01.4 (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 AutoMKV 0.91c (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus Power Pack
November 9, 2007 MeGUI 0.2.6.1036 (Freeware)
November 9, 2007 Movie Library ++ 3.2.1 (Freeware)
November 8, 2007 XULPlayer 0.2.1.1 (Freeware)
November 8, 2007 XviD4PSP 5.025 Beta (Freeware)
November 8, 2007 MediaCoder 0.6.0.3945 (Freeware)
November 8, 2007 GOTSent 0.23 beta 4 (Freeware)
November 7, 2007 pyTivo Build 206 (Freeware)
November 7, 2007 Submerge 1.2.2
November 7, 2007 ImTOO Video Splitter 1.0.22.1025
November 6, 2007 RAD Video Tools 1.9a (Freeware)
November 6, 2007 Miro 0.9.9.9.1 (Freeware)
November 6, 2007 SolveigMM Video Splitter 2.0.711.1 Beta
November 6, 2007 J. River Media Center 12.0.363
November 6, 2007 AVI to AC3 1.0.4.4 (Freeware)
November 6, 2007 Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD October 2007 Update
November 6, 2007 Womble MPEG Video Wizard October 2007 Update
November 6, 2007 ImTOO Video Joiner 1.0.22.1025
November 5, 2007 Net Transport 2.50
November 5, 2007 KMPlayer 2.9.3.1402 Beta (Freeware)
November 5, 2007 DVBcut 0.5.4 Rev. 100 (Freeware)
November 5, 2007 ImTOO Video Cutter 1.0.22.1025
November 4, 2007 Txt2Sup 42.5 (Freeware)

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


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