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DIGITAL DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com
DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 83
2 March, 2008

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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

My next credit card bill might well run into several pages, although
the total amount may not be too bad. The HD DVD fire sale has
started here in Australia and it may be surprising to hear, but I
feel lucky to be a HD DVD user to be able to take advantage. I know
of several Blu-ray users that have gone "purple" just to buy
Transformers 2-Disc HD DVD edition, and many other titles, for only
$8. There's really no point in waiting for the most likely identical
Blu-ray versions (might be inferior as well, lacking Profile 2.0
features) at five times the price.

Also, there might be a new competition next week on Digital Digest,
where you can win a couple of Roxio's DVD authoring, copying and
conversion products, as well as a grand prize of an iPod (Nano at
this stage, but to be confirmed). All courtesy of Roxio for
providing the prizes, and for providing review versions of the
software so I can write some eagerly needed how-to guides for them.
I'll keep you posted.

Links:
* The HD DVD Fire Sale - Part I
http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2008/02/28/the-hd-dvd-fire-sale-part-i\
/
* Roxio
http://www.roxio.com

-- DVDGuy


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2. Weekly News Roundup

The month that can never make up its mind as to how many days it
should have is finally over. Down with February. Long live March. I
love March, not just because it's the month that contains my
birthday, but this is usually the time that I start to feel like the
new year is officially here, and now in transition mode as per
January, or the confused-as-to-how-many-days-it-has mode that is
February.

The fallout from HD DVD's death continues. Analysts have finally
caught onto what I've been saying for months now, that Blu-ray's
victory owes much to the BDA's love for copy protection <1>, as it
does to any other factors like the PS3. With DRM being public enemy
number one these days, it's funny to see DRM winning a major format
war. I think Toshiba should have promoted the more consumer friendly
nature of HD DVD more to the public, in terms of both region coding
and less DRM, but I do understand why they didn't. To do so would
have opened another battlefront with DRM and region coding loving
studios like Fox. It seems Toshiba really did not like the studio's
way of doing things, and they have now officially released DVD
region-free firmware <2> for several of their HD DVD players
(including the HD-E1, EP10 and XE1) on their website (at least their
Australian website). Unfortunately, it was this pro-consumer, anti-
studio attitude that eventually lost the war for them. While as a HD
DVD supporter, Warner was not our best friend in the format war, but
at least you have to commend them for not supporting region control.
Universal and Paramount too. F*ck Fox and their region coded and BD+
discs. Speaking of region control, there is now a new software for
the Nintendo Wii that breaks region control <3> (PAL and NTSC) games
to work on your Wii. Simply insert the disc, it does its work, eject
the disc and insert your game disc. Not sure if Nintendo intend to
close this loophole with a firmware patch, or whether they even care
about enforcing region control or not.

In HD news, the fallout from HD DVD's death … wait, I've already
used this line. Anyway, the big news for HD DVD
<strike>supporters</strike> mourners this week has been Paramount's
(and Dreamwork's) rather harsh decision to pull all their upcoming
HD DVD releases <4>. Just like what they did when they pulled Blu-
ray support, with total disregard for consumers. If it wasn't for
their region-free stance, they have done nothing to help either HD
format with both low quantity and quality releases. In my last blog
entry, I talked about fire sales, and with Paramount stopping HD DVD
releases, I think their fire sale will be coming shortly. I've
started a thread in the forum to talk about HD DVD fire sales <5>,
and I will be posting news of any new fire sales there, and in the
usual places <6>. The fire sales here in Australia have attracted a
lot of buyers (some genuine, while the people who bought 350 discs
and 5 copies of each movie trying to take advantage of genuine
buyers are scum of the Earth), me included. It's surprising, but I
feel lucky that I've bought into HD DVD, as the cheap $8 discs is
something so rare, it hasn't even happened regularly to DVDs yet (at
least no in Australia). For the HD DVD movies I've bought to be
released on to Blu-ray would take months, if not years, and it would
still probably be the exact same content, but at 5 times the price.
The only risk now is having discs, but not being able to source a
player if people's current players die. But that may not be a
problem for long, as HD DVD might live on partly in another format.
The DVD Forum (the official body that controls the DVD format) is
continuing its support for the China-only CH DVD format <7>, which
is basically HD DVD with a different set of software. If CH DVD is a
success, then chances are, one will be able to source a HD DVD
player without too much problem in the future, which bodes well for
those that have dipped their feet into the HD DVD fire sales.

Moving onto Blu-ray now, those worried about price rises now that
Blu-ray has no competition will be startled to see a new Blu-ray
player being priced at nearly $17,000 <8>! Obviously this is not a
sign of things to come, but it's still funny the price some people
are willing to pay. I bet it's not even Profile 1.1. Better news for
those of us who don't earn 7 figure incomes, Sony has announced two
new Blu-ray players <9> to be released in the latter part of the
year. Both might eventually be BD-Live (Profile 2.0) compatible,
although the cheaper of the two players, the BDP-S35, might not have
enough persistent storage <10> to quality as a BD-Live compatible
player, without you adding external storage through a USB thumb key.
Not the most elegant solution, so I think the more expensive BDP-
S550 is the way to go. It even has 7.1 analogue audio output, plus
on-board decoding of all the major HD audio formats, so it looks
like a good one. The more cynical side of me thinks Sony held back
the news of these players until the format war looks to have ended,
as it did not want to upset fellow CE manufacturers in the BDA. Now
that Sony owns the one and only HD format, it looks like they won't
just sit back and let the other companies take advantage. Monopoly
time …

Netflix is also set to take advantage of the conclusion of the
format war. They will quadruple the number of Blu-ray titles
available to rent <11>, but may raise monthly subscription prices as
a result. They've been harping on about raising prices for ages now,
so don't be too surprised when it happens. And while not strictly HD
news, the people over at Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fi have
released an updated review for the PS3's video playback performance
<12>. The previous review was criticized for only testing the then
most updated firmware, which did not even include DVD upscaling. But
unfortunately, the new result based on the latest firmware did not
improve the scores by much. I've tried to explain the situation in
the link above, and I think most people feel the same way: The PS3
is an excellent Blu-ray player, a more than adequate DVD upscaling
player, but don't expect it to compete with top of the line
dedicated upscaling players as that's not what it is designed to do.

To segue effortlessly from HD/video to gaming, this middle of the
road story about the PS3's new PlayTV <13> (turns the PS3 into a
DVR) feature will be DRM free. Good for Sony for taking a sensible
approach to DRM for once. Let's just hope people don't take
advantage of Sony's lapse and turn the PS3 into the mother of all
video piracy machines.

Segueing now to gaming completely, LucasArts will now produce games
on the PS3 and then port it over to the 360 <14>, as opposed to
doing it the other way. I don't think this is because they luuurve
the PS3 more than the 360, it just make more sense from the
developer's point of view to do this as it will mean better games
for both platforms. Developers have often complained about porting
360 games to the PS3, since the PS3 has several design bottlenecks
that is not easily solve when doing ports. It's much better to
design the game for a system that is more restrictive, and then port
it over to the less restrictive/easier environment. And finally,
Dead Rising, the game I'm still playing at the moment and the game
that I played so much that caused my 360 to RRoD, has been sued for
infringing the copyrights of the Dawn of the Dead franchise. So
let's see, Dead Rising is a game about a zombie outbreak and
survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead (both
movies) is about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a
shopping mall. Sorry, but I just don't see the connection.

Over the next week, I will be bringing you details of a new
competition that I will run on Digital Digest, prizes courtesy of
Roxio <15>, the makers of the famous Popcorn and MyDVD series. The
prize includes copies of their latest DVD production, copying and
conversion software, as well as a grand prize of an iPod. More
details when they are available.

Okay, that's it from me for this week - I'm going back to look for
more HD DVD fire sale details, credit card in hand …

Links:
<1> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86396
<2> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?postid=554786#post554786
<3> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86410
<4> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86402
<5> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86366
<6> http://www.digital-digest.com/news-60825.html
<7> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86409
<8> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86387
<9> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86378
<10> http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/Persistent_Storage
<11> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86403
<12> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86416
<13> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86391
<14> http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=86369
<15> http://www.roxio.com/


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3. Weekly Software Roundup

March 2, 2008 MKVBoxer 0.2 beta
March 2, 2008 x264 full rev. 745 (Freeware)
March 2, 2008 PSPVC 2.3 (Freeware)
March 2, 2008 Kantaris Media Player 0.3.4 (Freeware)
March 2, 2008 avi.NET 2.5.8.0 (Freeware)
March 1, 2008 ProgDVB 4.x 4.89.7 (Freeware)
March 1, 2008 ProgDVB 5.13.7 (Freeware)
March 1, 2008 MediaInfo 0.7.6.0 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 DVRMSToolbox 1.2.11 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 RipBot264 1.8.11 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 XP Codec Pack 2.3.5 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 MLC Lossless Codec 0.4 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 XviD4PSP 5.030 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 Comskip 0.79.119 (Freeware)
February 29, 2008 AVIAddXSubs 7.0 (Freeware)
February 28, 2008 Roxio Easy DVD Copy 2.0
February 28, 2008 Roxio Copy & Convert 3.0
February 28, 2008 HCbatchGUI 14.2 (Freeware)
February 28, 2008 VideoLAN 0.8.6e (Freeware)
February 28, 2008 GOTSent 0.23 beta 11 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 mkv2vob 2.0.5 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 tsMuxeR 1.3.6 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 ffdshow Rev. 1873 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 3.8.0 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 K-Lite Codec Pack 3.8.0 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 BurnAware Free Edition 1.2.8 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 FLV Extract 1.3.0 (Freeware)
February 27, 2008 Pinnacle Studio 11.1.2
February 26, 2008 DVDStyler 1.6.1 beta 2 (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 SimpleMovieX 3.6.3
February 26, 2008 dvdisaster 0.70.5 (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 HDTVtoMPEG2 1.11.94 (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 Kino 1.3.0 (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 TitleWriter 4.65 (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 VirtualDub 1.8.0 (Experimental Build 29393) (Freeware)
February 26, 2008 DVD Rebuilder Pro 1.27.2
February 26, 2008 EasyMPEG MX 3.3.4build92
February 25, 2008 Movie Library ++ 4.4.0 (Freeware)
February 25, 2008 Cole2k Media - Codec Pack 6.1.0 (Freeware)
February 25, 2008 DIKO 2.35 (Freeware)
February 25, 2008 GOM Player 2.1.9.3753 (Freeware)
February 25, 2008 Mp3tag 2.40 (Freeware)
February 25, 2008 Vista Codec Package 4.5.9 (Freeware)
February 24, 2008 K-Lite Video Conversion Pack 1.2.0 (Freeware)
February 24, 2008 Got All Media 7.0.0.2
February 24, 2008 DGAVCDec 1.0.0 alpha 18 (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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