Category: Physical Formats

Any format you can hold

Windows Media 9 Continues to Make Progress

Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 platform is going from strength to strength – it’s being adopted by more broadcasters, it’s being incorporated in more players and MS are making more refinements to the platform codecs for High Definition media.

Microsoft are watching the platform’s popularity in the film and television world and are building on this by partnering with media companies to develop its range of functions. Work with Adobe, CineForm and BOXX Technologies has demonstrated WM9’s multi-stream High Definition capabilities, and companies like USDTV have adopted 9 as their broadcast format.

It’s not just all broadcast work either — Sonic solutions are introducing DVD Producer WMV HD Edition for producing High Definition DVDs later this year.

Microsoft is also submitting an update to its WM9 compression codec to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

Tandberg Television are currently demonstrating their EN5920 encoding platform – the only hardware encoding solution for WM9 available. Companies like NTL Broadcast and Swisscom’s Bluewin are trialling the EN5920 to provide real-time encoding and decoding of WM9 streams to domestic digital TV customers.

Windows Media Home

Two Arrested Under Anti-Piracy Camcorder Law

California’s camcorder law, which came into effect on 1st January 2004, has netted its first brace of criminals.

One Mr Ruben Centero Moreno was caught taping “The Alamo” by a projectionist wearing night vision goggles (there – now you know who buys them), whilst Min Jae Joun was collared in a slightly more straight forward way: the record light on his camcorder attracted attention whilst attempting to pirate “The Passion of the Christ”.

We can only imagine that the later offender will be forgiven.

However, Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA told the Hollywood Reporter: that it would “send a clear signal such crimes will not be tolerated. In both cases, the LAPD’s fine work would not have occurred without the swift actions of the employees of Pacific Theatres.” Indeed, the MPAA has set up a telephone hotline so that cinema staff can report violations of the law.

We applaud the new law, but feel it will have a limited impact on preventing film piracy. Although it tackles the source technique of piracy, it will continue to be rife for one very tricky reason: Whilst it’s true that most pirated DVDs bought in pubs and street markets are from source material captured in a cinema using a camcorder, most of the capture work is not done in LA where this new law is in force. No, most of the capture work is done in the Far East, where there is no such law, and often the camera work is done with the knowledge of, and a kickback too, the cinema owner, who obviously isn’t going to turn his buddies in to the local law enforcement group.

Digital Lifestyles has noticed that police in the UK are taking a more informed and tougher stance on pirates selling illegal DVDs on the streets, and this will be more effective in removing the market, though not catching the criminals at the source.

The Hollywood Reporter

The Alamo – 6.1 stars, and that’s on IMDB, so subtract at least 5

The Passion of the Christ – 7.4

Sony Launches Hard Drive for PlayStation2 in US

Sony have finally launched the PlayStation2 hard drive in the US, some might say a little late into the console’s life cycle. The drive is identical to the one that has been shipped with the Linux kit for the last 18 months – but then the drive in the Linux kit wasn’t compatible with game saves or downloading content.

So why now? The hard drive is needed to play Final Fantasy XI, the first online iteration of the baffling (hey, only if you don’t play it) role-playing game, and sales of the FF series more than justify marketing a $99 peripheral that was already in production. The drive comes with FFXI pre-installed, and players will be able to sample the game free for 30 days – but will have to cough up $12.95 a month as a subscription to keep going.

But that’s just one game – there will be a huge range of downloadable content and media available for subscribers: new levels, music, perhaps even full-length films. Given that the average game save is about 200kb and you could fit roughly 200,000 of those on the new disk. Sony obviously have a lot planned – and if the peripheral takes off, suddenly Sony has a potential installed base of more than 70 million broadband-enabled, game playing media hubs in living rooms and bedrooms around the world.

We’ve been quite looking forward to the hard drive, the endless fiddling about with memory cards is annoying: one card for RPGs, one card for all our EyeToy pictures, and Bahamut help me if I lost Sesame’s card with her Grand Theft Auto and Silent Hill saves on it.

Sony’s press release

“But your chocobo just squashed my level 76 Beastmaster!”

 

CeBIT: DVD Burners Maturing, New Products on the Way

More manufacturers are producing multi-format DVD burners than ever before and prices for the hardware are falling rapidly. Some of the uncertainty has been taken out of the format as Sony and Pioneer make drives that support both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW disk creation and reading.

However, 16x drives (rotating at 10,800 revolutions per second!) are near the maximum speed possible for DVD, so since we can spin the disk much faster, the next battle is to fit more on the disk. Storing data more densely on the layer will allow faster read times (the laser doesn’t have to travel so far) and higher capacities (smaller pits mean more data in the same area).

Double-sided, double-layer disks are possible (DVD-18) but are currently expensive to produce – though DVD mastering techniques (both home burning and commercial production, though these use completely different techniques) are improving all the time. Dual-layer disks used to be much more expensive to produce than they are now – remember the first DVDs you bought where you had to flip the disk over half way through the film? Cheaper mastering techniques were so that Warner Brothers could sell yo that disk for £25 and still make a profit – never mind you had to get out of your seat half way through Goodfellas.

The next format up will be Blu-ray, from the Blu-ray Disk Founders (BDF – including Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG, Philips, Pioneer and Sony amongst others). As the name suggests, Blu-ray uses a blue laser to read data. Blue light has a shorter wavelength, so can read smaller pits – and tha means denser data: a dual-layer disk will store 50gb. As the data pattern is s intricate, this makes them more vulnerable to data destroying scratches. The format is currently available in Japan and the USA, but the disks are cartridge based – the next iteration of the format will not use a cartridge as it will have a coating supplied by TDK.

Naturally, the step to the next level will not be that simple: NEC and Toshiba are promoting HD DVD at CeBIT. This new format uses the same optical head as a conventional DVD player, and a dual-layer disk will store 30gb. Look forward to seeing HD DVD burners on the market in 2005.

We hope that backwards compatibility is high on each one of these manufacturers’ lists.

Sony’s domestic Blu-ray recorder

DVD Demystified on the five (no, six! Isn’t it seven?) proposed for high density disks

CeBIT: PSX Will Make its European Debut at CEBIT 2004

The specifications are expected to have changed from the version launched in Japan a few months ago, but Sony are expected to unveil the European version of its exciting PSX media centre.

The Japanese PSX shipped with a few of the key features missing (namely MP3 playback and the ability to play some image formats), but they were later addressed in a firmware upgrade and it is hoped that the European PSX will hit the market with all of the proposed features enabled. We’ll have to wait and see if the box that Sony show at CeBIT is the proper European version, of if they will simply demo a Japanese unit – the later would be deeply disappointing.

The Register

New Sony Products Shown at Open House

Sony’s Open House event this year covered all the key consumer devices – from HDTV recorders, and new Handycams to extremely desirable PDAs with more bells and whistles than a bus load of Morris dancers crashing into a flute factory.

Sony are going for integration even more than usual – HDTVs have integrated card readers for cable users, Clié PDAs and VAIO notebooks feature even sharper cameras and better wireless access than before, and MP3 support filters into products where there was previously only ATRAC.

More details from DVD Format

DVD-Jon Officially in the Clear

Norwegian computer programmer, Jon Lech Johansen will be relieved to hear that his countries state prosecutor that handles computer crime, ØKOKRIM, today that they will not appeal the court ruling clearing him of wrong doing on 22.Dec.03.

His alleged crime was that he circumvented the copy protection scheme on his film DVD. His plea was that he wanted to play his legally purchased DVD on his Linux computer, and as there was no software that enabled him to do this, we wrote deCSS that removed the protection enabling him to play it. This is not normally something the general public would hear about, but DVD-Jon, as he became known as, uploaded the software to the Internet enabling others to use it.

In January 2000, he was awarded the Karoline Prize, a prestigious national prize in Norway, given annually to a high school student for academic excellence and making a significant contribution to society outside of school for deCSS.

When he turned 18, ØKOKRIM Chief Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde indicted Johansen for violating Norwegian Criminal Code section 145(2), which outlaws breaking into another person’s locked property to gain access to data that one is not entitled to access. The US MPAA gave considerable support to ØKOKRIM.

On 22 December 2003 the Norwegian courts came to the decision that DVD-Jon could not be held accountable or punished for others’ use of his program and that “DVD is so vulnerable to damage that the purchaser must be entitled to make a copy, for example of a movie he is particularly interested in preserving”. Today ØKOKRIM confirmed that they would not be appealing the decision to a higher court.

Hollywood will not be pleased with the outcome of this. It will be seen as a now legal “leak” for their DVD content in Europe.

Aftenposten report

ØKOKRIM

PSX Spec Downgraded but Still Sells Out

Following the recent launch of Sony’s PSX, which combines the functions of a PlayStation 2, PVR and DVD burner (full details), there have been a number of dissenting voices over the reduced specification of the released product. Despite this, the first shipment to shops is reported to have nearly sold out on launch day, with long queues on the day of its release. The size of the initial shipment has not been disclosed. A spokesperson for Sony added that they plan to ship one million PSX systems by the end of 2004.

Quite a number of what would appear to be vital functions and features of the PSX have been downgraded or removed, which Sony say is to time pressures in hitting an xmas released date. The most surprising omission is of a functioning Ethernet port, clearly vital for accessing online content and sharing content between rooms in a household.

A number of formats will not initially be supported. MP3 playback will be missing, but Sony’s copy-protected ATRAC will be and TIFF and GIF graphics formats, although JPEG will continue to be supported. Two disk formats, CD-R and DVD+RW have also been dropped. The speed of the DVD recording has been halved from x24 to x12 which should have too much of an impact.

Financial analysts have been damning in their views of the changes with Kazumasa Kubota of Okasan Securities has described the PSX as a “publicity stunt”, while Kazuya Yamamoto of UFJ Tsubasa has claimed that “lowering the specifications of the PSX hurt Sony’s image”.

We feel the removals have been more about anti-piracy than a need to “rush” the release and are probably victims of the long-running struggle between Sony’s content and CE division.

Sony PSX site

Sony’s PSX – Full Details and Pricing Revealed

After a number of months of speculation, Sony have released the full details the PSX. Combining the ability to play PlayStation games with a television tuner, PVR, ATRAC3/MP3 playback and a DVD player/recorder, the box will also be equipped with a 100Mb Ethernet port – opening the door to the delivery of digital media.

The visually arresting box (312x88x323mm, weighing 5.6kg) will be launching in two guises; the DESR-5000 with a 160GB hard drive (79,800 yen, ~$730, ~£440) and the DESR-7000 with 250GB (~$900); arriving in Japan by the end of year and in Europe and then US in 2004.

Labelled as PlayStation 2.5 by some, it has already received very positive press reaction, mostly for its styling and features, as they have not had extended use of it. In addition of an Ethernet port, interfaces include USB1.1, Memory Stick slot, digital S/PDIF, PlayStation 2 peripheral connectors, composite AV-in/out.

Nearly all reaction to the price has been surprise at how expensive it is, but we feel this is a misguided as they are viewing it in the context of the currently low cost games console – which is just part of it. Just adding up the constituent parts; PS2 (~£100), TiVo (second hand eBay UK price ~£200); DVD burner (~£150) – it appears about right – especially as the PSX is one sleek box rather that three bulky boxes the separate approach would give you.

We feel the Trojan horse feature of the PSX is the combination of a device that connects to the family TV, the Ethernet port and Sony’s significant music and film empires. This would give them total vertical integration enabling the sale of media content direct to the public.

Emuzed supply PVR hardware for Microsoft Media Center OEMs

Following the announcement of Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 (MCE) , Emuzed, who supply video capture and encoding cards, have signed deals with a number of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that are using MCE.

Their two products Maui-III PCI PVR and Bali-II USB PVR Beanbag have the ability to encode to MPEG 2 on-board from PAL or NTSC signals, write out the recorded content out to CD or DVD and support an optional FM tuner. The Bali-II connects via USB 1.1 or 2.0

Two deals that they’ve announced recently are the Samsung MagicStation Q Media Center PC, HP’s new 17-inch widescreen Media Center zd7000 notebook PC which uses the USB version and most recently, the ViewSonic Media Center PC – the M2100.

A relative new comer, they look like they are taking trade from the previous default supplier, Hauppauge, which is based in Europe.

Emuzed

HP zd7000 notebook

ViewSonic Media Center PC – the M2100

Hauppauge