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DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 73
23 December, 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've devoted most of my time this week to writing the Blu-ray and HD
DVD Buyer's Guide. It's coming along nicely, already 7 pages long,
with lots of information that I think people will find useful. In
fact, there might just be too much information because HD adds so
much that is new, particularly in the sound department. The guide
will be finished early next week, and at that time, you can see what
I mean when you study the 5 new HD audio formats and the 3 ways each
format can be outputted from the HD player. The format war will then
seem like trivial stuff.

And seasons greetings from everyone at Digital Digest. I will save
the New Years best wishes for next week :)

Links:
* Blu-ray, HD DVD Buyer's Guide - Coming Soon
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/12/20/blu-ray-hd-dvd-buyers-guide\
-coming-soon//

-- DVDGuy


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2. Weekly News Roundup

Welcome to the penultimate WNR of 2007. I love the word penultimate,
I once thought that it was just a short way of saying the
phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". I think I know what the
word means now. It's been a relatively quiet week, mainly because I
haven't been paying much attention as I've been writing my
penultimate buyer's guide for Blu-ray and HD DVD.

First up in copyright news is a legal analysis of the Sony BMG
rootkit scandal (1), a look at why a company would try and do
something so stupid and harmful to themselves. Speaking of doing
harm to yourselves, TorrentSpy has lost their case against the MPAA
(2) because they were found to have destroyed evidence. If only they
had been upfront about it, it might have made a more interesting and
penultimately more successful legal battle. As someone who has
personally being involved in a legal battle, I can honestly say that
being truthful is your best weapon, especially if you truly believe
you were correct in doing whatever you did to get you into trouble.
Once you start destroying evidence and being evasive, it becomes a
reflection of your guilt and the lawyers on the other side, as well
as judges, can see it as clear as day.

Next up is HD news. Digital Playground is releasing their first ever
Blu-ray adult title (3) after having released about a dozen ones on
HD DVD. Ironically (or not), the movie "Pirates" is a spoof the
popular Blu-ray hit "Pirates of the Caribbean". Digital Playground
was initial format neutral before giving up Blu-ray due to
resistance within the US to adult Blu-ray disc pressing. They have
now gone back to Blu-ray due to user demand, and Sony's less harsh
views towards pornography. The PS3 has been upgraded to Profile 1.1
(4) as expected (so all those who took my advice about buying the
PS3 for profile upgradability will be happy to read this news). The
same update, also as I had predicted (in a forum post somewhere),
also included DivX/XviD support, although initial tests show that
it's a bit disappointing compared to the 360's support (no GMC/QPel
support, which makes it equivalent to a standalone player from about
2 years ago). Meanwhile, hackers have redirected the Blu-ray website
(5) to point to the HD DVD one. Will Blu-ray supporting hackers
retaliate? Are there any Blu-ray supporting hackers? I would think
not many due to Blu-ray's love for DRM, but you never know. And it's
been a bad week or two for Warner Brothers, as no less than three of
their new Blu-ray releases contain glitches (6) that will require
disc replacement. I wonder how they managed to produce Blu-ray discs
that were actually HD DVDs (don't they use different manufacturing
presses?), and how duplicated discs managed to get past quality
assurance. Putting my Michael Bay Tin Foil Hat® on for a second,
could this be a signal of Warner's decision to go format exclusive
early in the new year? Perhaps they just don't care for Blu-ray as
much as they do for HD DVD. Maybe the extra manufacturing cost and
lower yields for Blu-ray discs means less money and time for QA? Or
perhaps the Blu-ray manufacturing plant has had one hell of a
Christmas party a few weeks ago that people are still being affected
by it. Who knows. It is curious that they have not managed to stuff
up any HD DVD discs, which have had the same number of releases as
Blu-ray ones from Warner. HD DVD had glitches with the first batch
of combo discs, but that was understandable since it was a new type
of disc. Blu-ray's recent glitches also include Disney's "Pirates:
Curse of the Black Pearl", which had framing problems, and a
replacement program (7) is available for the disc.

In gaming news, most gaming sites now have results up for
their "games of the year". Halo 3 is on almost everybody's list, as
is Bioshock. Super Mario Galaxy is a sure thing as well. Mass Effect
has received lots of awards and critical acclaim, and I'm not
surprised at all after discovering the developer's previous effort,
Knights of the Old Republic II, a year or two ago. You can submit
your vote for the game of the year on Digital Digest here (8). And
having just tried the Call of Duty 4 demo on my 3 year old PC, I was
surprised to find that it ran quite smoothly (9) even though I was
barely able to get Call of Duty 2 running in 640×480 on the same
computer a year ago. And it looked quite good too, unlike most new
games that I play on my aging system. And in something I will talk
about more next week, there are a few new GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA
that improves 3D performance and HD video acceleration - will they
take the crown away from the 8800 GT (10), my currently recommended
GPU? Find out next week.

See you next week.

Links:
(1) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85366
(2) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85382
(3) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85416
(4) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85362
(5) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85424
(6) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85417
(7)
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Disney/Technical_Glitches/Black_Pearl_\
Blu-ray_Disc_Exchange_Details_Revealed/1284
(8) http://www.digital-digest.com/poll.php?pollid=24
(9) http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=85443
(10)
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/10/31/geforce-8800-gt-the-card-ev\
eryones-been-waiting-for/


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3. Weekly Software Roundup

December 23, 2007 HCbatchGUI 13.5 (Freeware)
December 23, 2007 K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 3.6.2 (Freeware)
December 23, 2007 K-Lite Codec Pack 3.6.2 (Freeware)
December 23, 2007 AviDemux 2.4 (Freeware)
December 23, 2007 Real Alternative 1.75 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 Burn4Free 3.9.0.0 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 VSO PhotoDVD 2.6.0
December 22, 2007 3ivx Filter Suite 5.0.2 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 FinalBurner 1.26.0.119 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 FinalBurner Pro 1.26.0.143
December 22, 2007 Vista Codec Package 4.5.5 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 BurnAware Free Edition 1.0 (Freeware)
December 22, 2007 IsoBuster 2.3
December 22, 2007 eac3to 2.11 (Freeware)
December 21, 2007 x264 full rev. 714 (Freeware)
December 21, 2007 ffdshow Rev. 1711 (Freeware)
December 21, 2007 J. River Media Center 12.0.399
December 21, 2007 MediaCoder 0.6.0 Build 3998 (Freeware)
December 20, 2007 Videora iPod Converter 3.07 (Freeware)
December 20, 2007 Videora iPhone Converter 3.07 (Freeware)
December 20, 2007 Nero Burning ROM 8.2.8.0
December 19, 2007 EAC3toGUI 1.49 (Freeware)
December 19, 2007 DIKO Gold 2.34
December 19, 2007 DIKO 2.34 (Freeware)
December 19, 2007 Plato Video Joiner 4.66
December 19, 2007 Plato Video Converter 5.71
December 19, 2007 Wondershare Photo Story Platinum 2.6.5
December 19, 2007 h264tsto 1.5 (Freeware)
December 19, 2007 TMPGEnc XPress 4.4.1.237
December 19, 2007 Cuttermaran 1.69a (Freeware)
December 19, 2007 MemoriesOnTV Pro 4.0.1
December 19, 2007 MemoriesOnTV Home 4.0.1
December 18, 2007 QT Lite 2.2.0 (Freeware)
December 18, 2007 FAVC 1.05 (Freeware)
December 18, 2007 AVI to AC3 1.0.4.8 (Freeware)
December 18, 2007 DvdReMake Pro 3.6.3
December 18, 2007 DvdReMake 3.6.3
December 17, 2007 DVB Dream 1.4g (Freeware)
December 17, 2007 KMPlayer 2.9.3.1428 Beta (Freeware)
December 17, 2007 DVD slideshow GUI 0.78 (Freeware)
December 17, 2007 DVBcut 0.5.4 Rev. 110 (Freeware)
December 17, 2007 Comskip 0.79.113 (Freeware)
December 16, 2007 Dr. DivX 2.0.1 Beta 5 (Freeware)

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


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