July 14, 2006

Video-sharing sites raise concerns over crude clips

The explosion in online video-sharing sites, where clips of any nature can be easily uploaded for the world to see, has become the latest challenge for parents trying to protect their children and for Web sites coping with obscene submittals.

Popular Web sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo, Google and soon also Microsoft Corp.'s MSN are featuring user-generated videos that quickly have become a phenomenal form of entertainment. YouTube, the leading video site that helped catapult the genre with its public launch in December, attracted more than 20 million visitors in May. The company says it averages 50,000 new video uploads per day.

The infectiousness of the video-sharing sites -- users can quickly e-mail friends and family to alert them to favorite videos -- has created feverish sensations: The uncanny star of "The Evolution of Dance," a comedic performance of different dance styles, has amassed more than 25 million page views in two months to become the all-time most viewed video on YouTube, and the explosive backyard science experiment of mixing Mentos candies with Diet Coke has snowballed into hundreds of copycats, remixes and spin-offs.

You can view more info at CNN.

Posted by dvd software at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

The Weinstein Company Reaches an Agreement to Support HD DVD

Bob and Harvey Weinstein today announced that their newly formed studio, The Weinstein Company (TWC), has reached an agreement with Toshiba to support the HD DVD format.

The decision to support HD DVD was based on several factors, including; proven data capacity, manufacturing reliability and cost, time to market, widespread industry and retailer support, the ability to add compelling and innovative interactive bonus content, and the ability for customers to enjoy content on a number of consumer electronics devices.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein, co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company stated, "We are impressed by Toshiba's technology and very much look forward to working with them. We are pleased to be joining Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel, H-P and the other major studios supporting the HD DVD format."

Read the full article on Yahoo New.

Posted by dvd software at 03:23 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2005

DVD player filters out nudity, violence

The world's biggest retailer is offering a DVD player that slices out potentially offensive content from movies, such as nudity, violence and foul language.

The device, available at Wal-Mart for about $70, merges video-editing technology developed by ClearPlay with an RCA brand DVD player.

The DVD player works by cutting scenes or muting parts of the movie, according to guidelines from ClearPlay's staff of editors, said ClearPlay CEO Bill Aho.

"This gives you virtually unprecedented control over movies," Aho said. "You can decide what you want to see and what you don't, and the end result is something that is seamless."

Read the whole story.

Posted by dvd software at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

What’s in a codec?

Sony Pictures caused a bit of a stir in the high-def world the other day when it announced the first full-length film to be authored and encoded on a Blu-ray Disc, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, was compressed using MPEG-2, the same codec used for standard DVDs.

Moreover, in comments to reporters following the announcement, Sony officials indicated that all of the initial batch of titles at launch, from Sony as well as other studios, would also likely be encoded in MPEG-2. Although the format is designed to support two newer, more efficient codecs, Microsoft’s VC-1 and a version of MPEG-4, Sony said it is likely to rely on the tried-and-true MPEG-2 “for the foreseeable future.”

Read the complete story.

Posted by dvd software at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2005

Hitachi unveils terabyte DVD recorder

Japan's Hitachi Ltd. on Wednesday unveiled the world's first hard disk drive/DVD recorder that can store one terabyte of data, or enough to record about 128 hours of high-definition digital broadcasting.

Hitachi, Japan's largest electronics conglomerate, is still a relatively small player in the DVD recorder market, trailing industry leaders Matsushita Industrial Co. Ltd., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

But it hopes its new line-up, which also includes models able to store 160 gigabytes, 250 gigabytes and 500 gigabytes of data, will help boost its market share and turn its loss-making DVD recorder business profitable in October-March, the second half of the business year.

Read the full story.

Posted by dvd software at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

Microsoft, Toshiba High-def Allies

Microsoft and Toshiba will work even more closely on high-definition and interactive next-generation DVD formats, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in Tokyo Monday.

Gates stopped short of saying anything specific, including a commitment to use Toshiba's HD DVD format in Microsoft's next-generation Xbox videogame player, which would be a huge asset in Toshiba's fight against Sony's proposed high-def DVD format Blu-ray, which will be used in PlayStation 3.

Although Microsoft is a member of the HD DVD group, Gates reportedly said the company remains in a neutral position relative to the format war.

Rather, the announcement appears to be more of a public vote of confidence for HD DVD, since Microsoft already has been developing interactive components for HD DVD under a cross-licensing agreement signed in April by the two companies to promote the exchange of innovations developed by each company.

The companies agreed to "investigate development" of HD DVD players using Microsoft's Windows CE technology and to strengthen their collaboration on the DVD Forum's interactive format, called iHD.

"Microsoft values our strong relationship with Toshiba. … This agreement demonstrates our desire to share our innovations with other companies in ways that promote the spread of new ideas--and benefit customers by accelerating the development of exciting new products," said Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates.

Posted by dvd software at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

HD DVD SURPRISE FOR BLU-RAY

The chances of a compromise in the high-def DVD battle took a turn for the worse Tuesday.

In a surprise announcement, Toshiba, the company behind the HD DVD format that has been adopted by Paramount, Universal and Warner, revealed two significant storage capacity improvements in an effort to close the gap on Blu-ray's primary advantage.

Toshiba has devised a way to add 50% more storage capacity to its proposed HD DVD format and to provide an option to glue a standard DVD movie disc on the back of every HD DVD movie disc to overcome consumer concerns about buying a movie that won't play on all the non-HD machines they own.

The announcement, which gives the HD DVD camp a significant perceived advance in its war with the Blu-ray group, came just hours after reports from Japan early Tuesday indicated that a unified format agreement was imminent between the two sides battling over which technology to use for the next-generation high-def standard for movies on digital discs.

Toshiba, supported by Warner, Universal, Paramount and others, leads a camp that has developed one format for the next-generation of high-definition DVDs called HD DVD that had offered 30 gigabytes of storage capacity (6 to 8 hours of high-def video) on a disc that is a variation on the existing DVD technology. First, machines and movies have been announced for release in time for the holidays this year, although many are skeptical that timeline can be met. With the announcement Tuesday, Toshiba says a triple-layer HD DVD disc will increase capacity to 45 GB on a single-sided disc, or as much as 12 hours of high-def content. The double-disc "hybrid" option would offer a dual-layer 30 GB high-def disc on one side and a standard definition 8.5 GB disc on the other.

Sony and Matsushita, supported by Disney and others, have created a new but similar-looking digital disc using a proprietary technology that offers 50 GB of capacity. Launch is expected in early 2006.

Neither format is compatible with the other.

Fox and DreamWorks have yet to weigh in with their preference, and are not likely to anytime soon since a commitment at this stage by either or both studios would give none of the parties much of a strategic advantage. Fox is believed to be concerned about copy protection issues.

Both sides acknowledge that introducing two incompatible formats for the same type of product could be disastrous, causing consumer and retail confusion and therefore delaying acceptance and possibly killing chances altogether for the adoption of a new high-def disc format, especially as electronic and wireless delivery of movies is gaining popularity.

At stake is a financial cut and control of the disc on which consumers spend tens of billions of dollars each year to see movies, TV shows and play videogames. Sony is already planning to integrate Blu-ray into the Playstation 3, while Microsoft is expected to announce this week that HD DVD will be a non-exclusive component of the upcoming Xbox 360. Both next-gen gaming consoles will be used for DVD playback and home media networking.

Last month the two sides began quiet negotiations on a potential compromise standard. Both camps are scheduled to hold meetings in Tokyo starting Monday.

Just prior to Toshiba's announcement Tuesday, the company issued a statement debunking reports from the Japanese media that an agreement was at hand.

A short while later, the company made its announcement about the two revisions to its proposed HD DVD format.

Although much of the discussion about capacity is somewhat academic, since most studios have no idea what content they would use to fill so many hours of space on a single disc, it does offer options to condense the number of discs for a TV series, and Sony intends to use the increased storage space as the basis for its next-gen PlayStation videogame unit.

Sources at multiple companies in the HD DVD camp said Tuesday's announcement was aimed at swaying Disney over to the HD DVD side. Disney has no stake in underlying technology patent fees and has said its support of Blu-ray was non-exclusive in hopes that a single standard could emerge. But Disney has been vocal in its preference for the increased capacity of Blu-ray for the purposes of including more content and more interactivity, such as more sophisticated games on machines designed for families in the living room.

Officials at Disney and Sony had no official comment Tuesday, but sources within the Blu-ray camp dismissed the Toshiba announcement as rhetoric and strategic positioning on the eve of a Media Tech Expo in Las Vegas and just ahead of the meetings in Japan next week. None of the new technologies announced by Toshiba has been seen or approved by any of the parties necessary.

"We're pleased they're finally acknowledging [that] more capacity is very important, but what they're talking about is theoretical and down-the-road," said Andy Parsons, senior VP advanced products at Blu-ray backer Pioneer. "This doesn't help the chances for unification."

A spokesman for Toshiba acknowledged that the timing of the announcement was geared to Media Tech and that the technologies announced Tuesday would have to be approved by the DVD Forum, which could mean these optional components of the HD DVD might not be ready in time for the planned fourth quarter launch.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment president Craig Kornblau said he is most excited about the development of the hybrid disc, because it will be a tremendous marketing tool to use with consumers in the transition to HD, though he acknowledged that it will be beneficial only during that period. Consumer research by Universal shows that more than half of consumers who already own high-def TVs and equipment would pay a higher price for hybrid discs than HD DVD discs without the standard DVD attached, he said.

Kornblau also acknowledged that three different versions of the same movie would create a challenge for retailers and consumers.

Warner executive VP and general manager Marsha King said her studio would look at selected movies to release in both standard and high-def on the same DVD.

Ben Fritz of VB/DVDX sister publication Daily Variety and Paul Sweeting contributed to this report.

Posted by dvd software at 01:56 AM

April 25, 2005

Reading High-def Tea Leaves

Blu-ray Disc developer Sony once again signaled a willingness to compromise with the rival HD DVD camp last week, even as both sides pushed forward with their independent launch plans.

In an interview with the news agency Reuters during Sony's annual European technology showcase, Yukinori Kawauchi, general manager in charge of Blu-ray development for Sony's Video Group, said the company is "open to discussions" on a unified format.

Similar comments last month by Sony's incoming president Ryoji Chubachi, sparked hopes in many quarters that a format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD could still be avoided.

Although there has been "no visible progress" toward a compromise, Kawauchi said last week, "from the point of view to provide the best service to the consumer one format is better than two."

Later in the week, however, without waiting to see what such discussions might produce, Sony announced that the next generations of its Vaio notebook computers would include Blu-ray drives.

That was consistent with Sony's earlier announcement that its next-generation PlayStation game console would also be based on Blu-ray technology.

The conflicting signals were emblematic of the highly fluid state of play at the moment in the entire high-def effort.

While Sony was making headlines in Europe last week, HD DVD backers met with studios in Los Angeles to try to persuade Hollywood that the format's planned copy-protection system was close enough to being ready to go ahead with a launch this year.

Even as the eight members of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) consortium continue to work to refine the format's technical specifications, some HD DVD supporters argue that the remaining outstanding issues will have no bearing on the security of prerecorded software.

Many of those issues concern the implementation of AACS on networked devices, where movies could pass from one device in the house to another.

However, as the first generation of set-top HD DVD players will not be network-capable, the format's supporters argue, those issues should not come into play.

Some studios remain deeply skeptical of the idea of going ahead with a launch without a complete system of copy-protection.

"We'd have to be idiots to do that," one executive familiar with the discussions said. "Unfortunately, maybe some of us are."

Talk of a possible compromise with Blu-ray has further muddied the discussions, according to sources close to the debate. To some HD DVD backers, a compromise remains a long-shot, and the best strategy is to move quickly toward launch to exert maximum pressure on the Blu-ray side to back down.

To others, the chance to avoid a format war before it starts is worth waiting for.

Those opposing views tend to color different companies' perspectives on how close AACS is to being ready.

Further complicating matters is that the AACS consortium is made up of companies with conflicting interests in whether Blu-ray or HD DVD comes out on top.

Among the eight AACS founders are three Blu-ray backers--Sony, Panasonic and Disney--and two HD DVD supporters--Toshiba and Time Warner. Rounding out the group are Intel, IBM and Microsoft, all of whom are officially neutral.

Although the Blu-ray Group has indicated it also will adopt AACS as the main copy-protection system for its format, it has not yet committed to it.

Despite the hopes of some HD DVD backers, last week's meetings do not appear to have resolved the disputes.

Posted by dvd software at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2005

Hope Rrekindled for High-def Truce

Talks for unified format possible

Signs of a recent thaw between leaders of the rival high-definition hardware camps are rekindling hopes in Hollywood that a single, unified disc standard could still emerge and avert a full-scale format war in the marketplace.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, recent changes in the senior executive suites of Sony and Toshiba have changed the political dynamic between the companies and led to a softening of the brinksmanship that has kept the industry bitterly divided over choosing a successor to the DVD. Although no formal talks have taken place yet between the companies, studio executives who have followed the situation closely say they are hopeful discussions could get under way by summer.

The new developments come at a critical time for the industry and for the rival camps.

Toshiba announced in January that it will introduce HD DVD players in the U.S. by the fourth quarter of this year, and three studios, Warner Home Video, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment, said they would begin releasing movies in the format to support the launch.

That would virtually guarantee a format war given the commitment of Sony, Panasonic and other leading hardware makers to the rival Blu-ray Disc format. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Buena Vista Home Entertainment have said they will release movies in Blu-ray as soon as that hardware reaches market, probably by the second quarter of 2006.

Doubts have recently been raised about HD DVD's fourth-quarter timetable, however. The six member companies of the Advanced Access Content System consortium had expected to complete work on the technical specifications and licensing scheme for the format's copy-protection system by the end of March.

Work has been slower than expected, however, and sources who have followed the progress say it could be well into the summer before final specs are ready.

Without final specs, hardware makers cannot start building machines and replicators cannot start stamping out discs. Unless the copy-protection system is ready in the next couple months, manufacturers will be hard-pressed to get product into the market by Christmas.

Although the prospect of a delay might have made the HD DVD camp more open to talking with its rival, recent comments from a high-ranking Sony executive also have sparked hope in Hollywood.

Speaking to reporters in Japan on March 23, Sony's incoming president Ryoji Chubachi said, "Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing, and we haven't totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise," according to the IDG News Service.

Chubachi's pending promotion to president of Sony, replacing Kunitake Ando, comes as Sir Howard Stringer takes over as chairman and CEO of the Japanese conglomerate, replacing Noboyuki Idei.

Although the changes are not thought to be directly related to the high-def format battle, sources say the new management is less personally invested in the long-running contest with Toshiba and its allies and more sensitive to Hollywood's keen interest in having a single format.

As part of the reshuffling at Sony, executive deputy president Ken Kutaragi was stripped of his board seat and had his executive portfolio narrowed to concentrate on Sony's PlayStation business. That took him out of any direct role in the format battle.

"Idei, Ando and Kutaragi were the three guys who were most dug in on Blu-ray," said one source who has followed the situation closely.
A spokesman for Sony in New York cautioned against reading too much into Chubachi's remarks.

"There may have been some misunderstanding of his comments," the spokesman said. "He was speaking to the need to be focused on the customer, and in that context, he said a single format would be better for the customer."

Toshiba also has undergone a change at the top.

In February, the company named Atsutoshi Nishida to succeed Tadashi Okamura as president and CEO, effective in June.

"I think it's great that you've got two new heads at these companies," said a source hoping for a unified format. "Hopefully they won't be so arrogant."

It's too early to tell if the new tone will lead to a substantive breakthrough, but the recent movement carries a striking echo of the struggle over the current DVD standard.

Idei took over as chairman of Sony in April 1995, when the electronics company was still pushing its Multimedia CD format as the replacement for videocassettes.

At the same time, Toshiba and Time Warner were promoting the format that eventually became the DVD.

Although it looked initially as if the too were headed for a format war, Idei's elevation helped change the political dynamic, as he was able to tap his previous relationship with then Warner Home Video president Warren Lieberfarb to broker a compromise.

Idei had previously headed Sony's optical media unit, where he had worked on the earlier generation of videodisc with Warner and other studios.

Studios on both sides of the current format divide are encouraged by the recent signs, but no one has gone so far as to change their plans.

Warner, Universal and Paramount all say they plan to push ahead toward the planned fourth-quarter launch of HD DVD.

Any backing away at this point, in fact, could prove embarrassing to the studios, adding another political wrinkle to any unification talks.

The HD DVD studios are on record proclaiming that the sooner the industry moves to a high-def standard the better, although some of those comments were probably meant as much for the Blu-ray camp as for public consumption.

Any serious unification effort could push a plausible launch date back by as much as two years.

Still, the studios might accept a delay if it meant avoiding a format war.

Posted by dvd software at 06:37 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2005

Sony May Unite Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD

Top exec says the two competing formats may come together.

After more than a year of touting Blu-ray Disc as the best technology to replace DVD for storing high-definition video, a top executive at Sony, one of Blu-ray's major backers, has opened the door to the possibility of unifying the format with its arch rival, HD-DVD.

"Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing and we haven't totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise," Ryoji Chubachi, Sony's president-elect, said at a news conference Thursday in which he discussed the company's performance and future strategy.

The statement may surprise backers of the rival camps, who have assembled consortiums of major electronics companies, disc makers, and Hollywood studios to promote the formats in a battle that echoes one fought a quarter of a century ago between Betamax and VHS.

HD-DVD backers, which include NEC and Toshiba, say HD-DVDs can be produced for about the same price as DVDs and are backward-compatible with DVDs and CDs, making the format more convenient for both consumers and the industry. HD-DVD movie titles, PC drives, and players are all due out by the end of the year.

Sony has steadfastly promoted Blu-ray as a technology that has greater capacity, saying this makes the format more useful because more content can be stored on a disc. The technology also has wider support in the technology industry, although release dates for movie titles have not yet been announced.

Reaching a Compromise

Chubachi's comments mark the second time that a Sony executive has signaled the possibility of a compromise between the two camps. In January, Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president of Sony, said a format war was not in the public interest and that Sony had not ruled out the possibility of uniting the formats.

As Sony's future president, Chubachi's remarks Thursday may carry more weight. Currently head of Sony's electronic components and manufacturing businesses, he will replace Kunitake Ando as Sony president on June 22 following the recent shake-up of Sony's top management. That shake-up saw Kutaragi step down from Sony's board, although he still heads its important gaming business.

Kutaragi also admitted in January that Sony, by supporting its proprietary audio encoding system and not the widely-supported MP3 format, had lost ground to competitors such as Apple Computer in the portable music player market, which Sony had once dominated with the Walkman.

While Sony's technological and engineering base is sound, the company must ensure that its products are aligned with the wants of consumers, Chubachi said. Sony's engineers have traditionally been regarded within the company as heroes and the creators of new markets, but recently their ideas have not always led to products that matched consumers' needs, he said.

Posted by dvd software at 04:01 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

Cosby, Different World to Disc

TV's top-rated program for five seasons in the '80s--The Cosby Show--is coming to DVD on Aug. 2.

Just three weeks after striking a deal with Anchor Bay Entertainment to release Roseanne and 3rd Rock From the Sun on DVD, Carsey-Werner has signed a multi-year deal with a different indie DVD distributor--Ventura Entertainment--to handle the biggest sitcom yet to be scheduled for release on DVD, as well as its spin-off A Different World.

The deal gives Ventura rights to all eight seasons of Cosby and all six of A Different World, the latter of which will debut on DVD in January.

Both series will be released under the Ventura label UrbanWorks Entertainment, a division appealing to urban markets--was a factor in the decision of Carsey-Werner. Carsey-Werner spokesman James Anderson said the company has always looked for the right fit for all its programming, whether it was broadcast networks or syndication.

DVD rights to the company's That '70s Show went to Fox. Other Carsey-Werner series yet to be released on DVD, such as Cybill and Grace Under Fire, could go to any of those three distributors or another one.

Shopping the series around results in stronger ideas for the DVD and ensures that the distributor is on the same page as Carsey-Werner relative to how the DVD will be marketed, he said.

The Emmy-winning Cosby Show and A Different World were the first two hits for C-W, which made it even more important that Carsey-Werner chose the right company to distribute and market the DVDs, co-president and chief operating officer Robert Dubelko said.

Details of plans for bonus features on the series have yet to be determined but Bill Cosby has already provided his input, according to Anderson.

The Cosby Show ran on NBC 1984-92. A Different World, initially starring Cosby co-star Lisa Bonet in 1987 before she left World and returned to Cosby in 1989, starred Jasmine Guy through the end of its run in 1993.

"This agreement highlights Ventura's ongoing commitment to develop key relationships with premiere content partners," said Eric Doctorow, chief operating officer of Ventura Entertainment Enterprises.

UrbanWorks is one of several labels at the 12-year-old Ventura, which provides sales, distribution, marketing and financing services for independent producers and studios in the home entertainment marketplace. Others include youth-oriented extreme programming division StudioWorks Entertainment; Studio Latino; and the cult, specialty film label Ventura Select.

Posted by dvd software at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2005

DVD+RW Will Hit Higher Speeds

New drives, discs, and recorders should be hitting stores later this year.

Consumers can look forward to a new range of high-speed rewritable and double-layer discs, recorders, and drives hitting stores in the second quarter of the year, members of the DVD+RW Alliance said at a news conference during the CeBIT trade show here this week.

DVD+RW (DVD+Rewritable) 8X products will be able to copy a full DVD in under eight minutes, while double layer DVD+R (DVD+Recordable) 8X products will be able to copy an 8.5GB double-layer DVD in about 15 minutes, says Frank Simonis, strategic marketing director of Philips Optical Storage, which is part of Koninklijke Philips Electronics.

The DVD+RW Alliance is a group of more than 70 vendors promoting compatibility for optical disc storage technologies. Among the vendors, Philips is expecting to introduce DVD+R into the market in May, he says.

The new DVD+RW speed is twice that of the previous generation, which was introduced in 2003. The previous speed for double layer DVD+R was 2.4X, and media and drives first went on sale in May last year, according to Andreas Kuesters, marketing manager at Ricoh Europe.

Challenges Ahead

The venerable DVD format may face challenges later in the decade from next-generation disc formats such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, both of which offer much higher storage capacities for recording high-definition content. But DVD will remain the mainstream technology for storage for at least the next two to three years, given that some people are still in the process of switching from VHS to DVD, Simonis says.

A near-complete version of the double layer DVD+R specification was finalized in February, and version 1.0, considered the version that vendors can start to build products with, will be ready by the end of April, Simonis says.

Despite being a relative newcomer to the market in 2001, DVD+RW is included in all PC drives and in 55 percent of consumer recorders, Ricoh's Kuesters says.

Posted by dvd software at 03:28 AM | Comments (0)

Apple Joins Blu-ray Assn. Board

The Blu-ray Disc Assn. has added Apple Computer to its board, indicating growing support among PC makers for the high-definition disc format.

Two other leading computer makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, also are board members.

"Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Assn., the next-generation optical disc for storing high-definition movies, photos and other digital content," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. "Consumers are already creating stunning high-def content with Apple's leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high-def DVDs."

Apple said its next release of QuickTime, its digital media player, will support the MPEG-developed H.264/AVC video codec also adopted by Blu-ray.

No word on whether Jobs' Pixar animation studio will throw its lot in with Blu-ray. Disney, which now distributes movies for Pixar films, supports Blu-ray.

Posted by dvd software at 03:24 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2005

New Disc Format Offers Bigger Capacity

Built for storage, but developers also looking at Hollywood.

Holograms are making the leap from science fiction to practical application with a new disc format. Holographic Versatile Disc is now being developed by Fuji and Optware.

Each HVD disc will be able to hold more than a terabyte of data, or 200 times as much information as a standard DVD.

HVD's developers are targeting the storage market, but Optware business development and marketing manager Hide Kageyama said execs are keeping an eye on the consumer entertainment market for potential future applications.

"Holographic optical disc has another advantage," Kageyama said. "Since the data on HVD are interference patterns of laser light, it's almost impossible to make a pirate copy of an HVD."

HVD achieves its high capacity by etching discs using two lasers in a single beam--the two interfere with each other, creating holograms composed of data. A prototype drive will be built this year.

Posted by dvd software at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)

DVD Screeners Still a Problem

The awards-season fight against piracy is making progress, but at what price?

Thanks to the coding on screeners, the FBI and the Motion Picture Assn. of America have been tracking down the sources of some pic piracy. But awards voters are complaining of an inordinate number of faulty discs this year, attributed by many to the fact that many screeners are on discs made in the DVD-R format.

When studios manufacture discs for public consumption, they use standard DVDs. When manufacturing just a few thousand, as happens with screeners, they use the cheaper DVD-R--and, as awards voters are discovering, DVD-Rs often don't work with DVD players more than a couple of years old.

Kudos voters, most of whom aren't techies and who weren't sent any explanations, just assume they have a faulty disc. While this confusion is a hassle, it raises bigger implications: Will the tech woes affect the outcome of the balloting?

In a shortened awards season, many voters have complained they don't have the time or patience to find an alternate version of the film, so the nominated pic goes unseen and loses votes. Talking to Daily Variety, several voters rattled off the names of nominated films they did not watch because of the disc problems.

Even before watermarking, 1%-2% of screeners were faulty. But the DVD-R factor is creating apparent glitches on more of them.

Another factor is making some screeners go unwatched: The anti-piracy strategy of asking awards voters to sign for delivery of their screeners. Several Acad voters say they have missed contenders this year because they weren't home to sign for FedEx delivery.

With dozens of films to wade through in a short campaign season, one Acad member sighs that he has a full-time job and gets annoyed with the notice that screeners are waiting to be claimed at the FedEx office: "I don't have time for this."

Watermarking is pricey: It can cost $7-$12 a disc, and the studios send out 8,000-9,000 copies of a title to members of various awards-voting organizations. Studios consider it a wise investment, though, when it helps to nab pirates.

The FBI last week acknowledged that watermarking has helped the org connect pirated copies of Million Dollar Baby to the screeners. No charges have yet been filed, but the title has been traced to a guild member. Other pirated titles traced to awards screeners are said to include Spanglish and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Studio trackers go online to find the source of pirated films, then pass the evidence to the FBI to jumpstart a criminal investigation. The vast majority of this year's Oscar-nominated films are available online.

The presence of copies from watermarked screeners clearly indicate the studios have yet to fully contain the screener piracy problem.

Voters are discovering that even troublesome DVD-R copies play fine on the free machines they got from anti-piracy company Cinea. The machines originally were intended to be used for specially encrypted discs--but the players also work with DVD-R, meaning kudos voters could find the Cinea machines useful while they wait to find out whether studios decide to encrypt their discs to work only on those players next awards season.

One Academy member pointed out an alternate solution to all of the problems: "Voters should be seeing these movies on the big screen anyway."

Ben Fritz and Timothy M. Gray are reporters with VB sister publication Daily Variety.

Posted by dvd software at 03:31 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2005

TV Legends Tops Sales on Amazon

Carson sets sell well postmortem

For days following the Jan. 23 death of Johnny Carson, several of the Top 10 slots on Amazon's DVD and VHS lists were occupied by Carson titles The Ultimate Carson Collection and Heeere's Johnny! The Special Collector's Edition.

"It's a testament to his status as a TV legend, and the fact he was such a part of so many people's lives, that these collections are selling such great numbers," Brant Berry, VP of Carson label R2 Entertainment, said last week.

"We're shipping 100,000 units of The Ultimate Collection this week. Prior to Johnny's death, we had sold 300,000 copies of the set, but we expect that number to double in a very short time."

The Special Collector's Edition boxes are available exclusively through Amazon and R2's johnnycarson.com.

Posted by dvd software at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

HD DVD Unveils Launch Lineup

Blu-ray counters with added hardware manufacturers

The feared high-definition format war drew its first real blood here last week when the group of studios backing the HD DVD standard unveiled the first 80 or so titles slated for release in the format this year.

At an elaborate presentation here during the Consumer Electronics Show, Paramount Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video, along with Warner's affiliated labels New Line Home Entertainment and HBO Video, showcased a mix of new releases and catalog titles that will accompany the first HD DVD players when they're introduced in the fourth quarter.

In other technology news at CES, TiVo shares climbed last week on the news that the digital video recorder maker would join Microsoft in producing new features for its service, such as recording TV shows onto DVDs. Share prices promptly dropped again the next day, however, after DirecTV announced it would be dissolving its deal with TiVo.

Among the titles to make their HD DVD bow this year are the upcoming Warner theatrical releases Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale; Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves; and the Tim Burton-directed Charley and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp.

The three new releases will lead a slate of 50 titles from the studios, which also includes The Polar Express and The Phantom of the Opera along with HBO's The Sopranos and New Line's Rush Hour and Final Destination.

Paramount will contribute the upcoming Cameron Crowe film Elizabethtown and the recent Manchurian Candidate as part of a 20 title slate.

Universal will offer Van Helsing, The Bourne Supremacy and The Chronicles of Riddick.

The announcements gave the HD DVD camp a public relations victory in its battle against the competing Blu-ray Disc standard championed by Sony, Panasonic and others.

With Blu-ray players unlikely to reach market in the U.S. until sometime in 2006, Sony and its allies had nothing comparable to HD DVD's slate of titles with which to grab headlines at CES.

That didn't stop Blu-ray from giving as good as it got, however.

At their own packed event for the press, Blu-ray supporters showed no signs of backing down from the fight and insisted that their format's greater storage capacity and advanced features would ultimately trump HD DVD.

"The reality is we have a year until any product is on the market, and I'd like to think that between now and then the massive lineup of companies supporting Blu-ray would be a pretty good argument that Blu-ray is the way to go for the industry," Pioneer senior VP Andy Parsons said.

In addition to the format's 14-member "Founders Group," the Blu-ray Disc Assn. now boasts 100 members, including an impressive line up of consumer electronics, high-tech and videogame manufacturers.

New members unveiled at CES include Electronic Arts, Vivendi/Universal Games, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.

In addition to set-top players, the Blu-ray camp is counting on PC-based Blu-ray ROM drives and Sony's planned PlayStation 3 to help build the hardware base for the format.

While HD DVD is currently ahead of Blu-ray in terms of studio support, the roster of hardware makers committed to building HD DVD players remains limited to the format's principle developers Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo. France's Thomson (RCA in the U.S.) has said it will sell both HD DVD and Blu-ray machines.

The Blu-ray camp was able to showcase one major studio commitment at its event, receiving a strong endorsement from Buena Vista Home Entertainment president Bob Chapek.

"It's important not to go half way, but instead truly launch a format that is clearly a major advancement forward," Chapek said. "By doing this, we stand the best chance of meeting and exceeding consumer expectations the way that DVD did in its early years."

Later that same evening, however, Chapek made a plea to both camps to continue to seek ways to unify the two formats and avoid a potentially destructive battle in the marketplace.

Speaking at the annual gathering of the Digital Entertainment Group, for which Chapek serves as president, the Disney home video chief said, "For the last several years, I, as well as my colleagues, have warned against the dangers of a format war. Those dangers are no less severe today than they were six months or a year ago.

"I think it's safe to say that nobody really wants a format war," Chapek continued. "It's just a question of what the respective parties are willing to concede in order to make such a war a moot point before it gets started."

In an interview, Chapek said Disney was floating "a number" of technical and strategic proposals to both sides at CES that the studio hopes will encourage unification talks.

"We haven't given up hope of a single, unified format," Chapek said.

Disney's own allies in the Blu-ray camp, however, showed little interest in unification.

"Blu-ray is radically different from the other proposal in terms of the vision behind it and the value it will deliver to the end user," Panasonic senior VP Richard Doherty said. "Those principles are simply too valuable to be compromised."

Disney also is angling to have some of its technical proposals--particularly in the area of interactive features--incorporated into the formal specifications of any eventual unified format. That could give the studio a piece of the potentially lucrative revenue stream derived from patent and technology licensing fees.

"We could end up as part of the patent pool," Chapek said. "We've made our proposal regarding an applications (i.e. interactive) layer to both sides, and if it becomes a part of either format, or of a unified format, we could well end up owning intellectual property in that layer."

Chapek's efforts at peacemaking aren't without controversy, however.

Executives at several other studios privately expressed frustration over what they see as an attempt by Disney to force its way into the patent pool without regard to the best interests of the industry.

"There's nothing new in what they're proposing," one senior executive at another studio said. "They're just trying to keep the issue [of interactivity] alive so they can get a piece of the patent pool. So now they're saying interactivity will bring unification."

Chapek's dual roles as Blu-ray champion and DEG president also has created friction with other studios.

At the DEG board meeting scheduled for Friday, Jan.7, one or more studios were expected to demand that Chapek step down as president of the organization.

"Blu-ray isn't going to be on the market until sometime in 2006. I'm going to be on the market this year," one high-ranking executive at an HD DVD studio said. "So I'm supposed to have a Blu-ray guy heading up efforts to promote the launch of HD DVD? He can't have it both ways."

Posted by dvd software at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2004

Screeners Struggle with Compatibility

By David S. Cohen
Academy voters find some DVD-R discs won't play

In contrast with last year's furor, it has been mostly quiet on the screener front this year, but the calm has been broken by complaints from some Academy members that their officially sanctioned discs don't work.

Some won't play at all, according to affected members, while others report discs that play normally at first, only to fail in mid-movie.

The problem, it turns out, comes as no surprise to the studios--and it's a problem with the players, not the discs.

When the encoded Cinea format proved a nonstarter for this year's award season, the studios adopted a digital watermarking technology from Thomson Technicolor for this year's DVD screeners. The screeners look like normal DVDs, but each disc is individually recorded and tagged with the recipient's name. The recording technology uses the DVD-R format, which some older DVD players can't play at all.

The DVD-R format is one of three competing standards for DVD recorders, all of which are different from the disc format used for distributing movies on DVD. Since most standalone DVD players will play DVD-R discs, and DVD recorders have been slow to catch on, most consumers don't know whether their machines will play DVD-R.

Even among players that claim to support DVD-R, there are compatibility problems with about 1% of machines, according to Tom Bracken, Thomson Technicolor's VP marketing and communications. The compatibility problems usually affect older players, he said, but some "substandard" newer players are involved as well.

"The studios recognized the player compatibility problem with this format and decided it was no big deal, as long as there was a backup system in place and a way to get a replacement out," Bracken said.

Technicolor, which duplicated about half of this year's screeners, included information with its discs referring members who have problems to a 24-hour helpline: 800.99.FILMS. "We will air-ship a replacement DVD-R or a VHS tape for any disc that doesn't play. We have found that on occasion one DVD-R will play and another won't," Bracken said.

Other companies duplicating screeners this year include Deluxe and Ascent Media, which have made their own provisions for replacing discs, so members encountering problems should check the letters that came with their screeners.

The bottom line, Bracken maintained, is that "we quality-check 100% of the discs, so we know it's not a problem with the discs."

David S. Cohen is a reporter with VB sister publication Daily Variety

Posted by dvd software at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2004

Disney Backs Blu-ray

Blu-ray received a major boost

Film giant Disney says it will produce its future DVDs using Sony's Blu-ray Disc technology, but has not ruled out a rival format developed by Toshiba.

The two competing DVD formats, Blu-ray developed by Sony and others, and Toshiba's HD-DVD, have been courting top film studios for several months.

The next generation of DVDs promises very high quality pictures and sound, as well as a lot of data.

Both technologies use a blue laser to write information. It has a shorter wavelength so more data can be stored.

Disney is the latest studio to announce which technology it is backing in a format battle which mirrors the 1980s Betamax versus VHS war. Sony lost out to JVC in that fight.

- BBC News

Posted by dvd software at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

4 studios back new DVD format

A new high-definition DVD format aimed at replacing current DVDs got a huge boost Monday when NBC Universal and three other heavyweight Hollywood studios endorsed electronics giant Toshiba's new HD DVD.
The new discs — due out next fall — promise superior picture and audio quality and greater storage capacity, enabling longer movies to be stored on a single disc.

The commitment to release movies in HD DVD by Paramount, NBC Universal, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema is a blow for Sony's competing Blu-ray DVD format.

Blu-ray has the commitment of many computer and consumer electronics manufacturers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung, but no studio beyond Sony's Columbia TriStar Group. Sony is in the process of acquiring MGM.

- USA Today

Posted by dvd software at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)

First Blood in the New DVD War

The Toshiba-backed high-definition format may soon get support from three major Hollywood studios. That could put Sony's team in a tight spot.

For months, rival electronics giants Toshiba and Sony (SNE ) have been battling over the next generation of DVD. Now, in what amounts to the first major victory in that standards war, three Hollywood studios are expected to announce within the next week that they'll release some of their movies on the high-definition DVD format that Toshiba is promoting. That could turn out to be a severe blow to the future of the Blu-ray standard, which Sony has been pushing with a coalition that includes most of the industry's largest computer and consumer-electronic makers.

An announcement by Warner Bros. (TWX ), Universal (GE ), and Paramount about their adoption of this format by the end of 2005 is in the works, BusinessWeek Online has learned. Disney (DIS ) is also said to be in talks with Toshiba, although Eisner & Co. aren't close to a deal. Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney declined comment, and a Paramount spokesman didn't return phone calls.

Toshiba acknowledged that it has "been receiving a positive response from several studios" but that it "is not in a position to comment on behalf of the studios."

SLOWER GROWTH AHEAD. The movie makers are still negotiating final points in any agreement, and the announcement could still be delayed or scrapped, says one Hollywood insider. And in any event, the studios intend to make the deal nonexclusive, meaning they could still put their films out on Sony's Blu-ray format as well. But the expected agreement clearly would give a leg up to Toshiba's format, which it has developed with Japanese computer maker NEC, for a market that both Hollywood and consumer-electronic makers see as crucial as sales of standard, current-format DVDs start to slow down.

This year consumers are expected to spend $29.1 billion buying and renting DVDs, according to investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson. But after growing at a compound annual rate of more than 100% for the last five years, standard DVD sales are expected to grow by an average of 17% over the next five years and will grow by only 10% in 2008, Veronis says in its annual media forecast.

BIG-NAME BACKERS. Hollywood movies are seen as crucial to get consumers to buy DVD players using the technology, especially as they begin latching onto high-definition TV sets in greater numbers and want high-def DVDs to show on them. By next year, as many as 20 million U.S. homes are expected to have digital or HDTV sets, according to figures by Kagan World Media that the Blu-ray group made available. By 2007, as much as half the market could have the higher-quality TV sets, according to the Kagan figures.

Sony, which declined to comment for this story, has been building up its own momentum to head off Toshiba. Its Blu-ray format, developed with fellow electronics giant Matsushita (MC ), is being pushed by a consortium that includes more than 20 companies such major consumer-electronics makers as Pioneer, Philips (PHLKFM ), Samsung, Sony, and Thomson (TMS ), and computer makers Dell (DELL ) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ). Sony is expected to make movies from its Columbia and other studios available on Blu-ray as well as those from MGM (MGM ), which a Sony-led group agreed to buy in mid-September.

Both formats provide far sharper pictures as well as vastly increased storage space, which the studios intend to use to provide interactive capabilities that will allow viewers to buy merchandise, play games, and call up bonus material even while the movie is being shown. The Sony-backed Blu-ray disk can hold about six times the capacity of existing DVDs, while the Toshiba's HD DVD can hold about four times as much as standard DVDs.

DUAL-FORMAT PLAYERS. Studios are said to be concerned about the cost of producing the new HD disks. The big drawback for Blu-ray is that it requires a new plant and equipment to produce, and would be more expensive at the outset to produce than standard DVDs. The Toshiba disk, by contrast, is based in large part on existing DVD technology and is projected to be cheaper to produce than the Blu-ray.

Toshiba says it can make HD DVDs disks for approximately the same price as current DVDs and that HD DVD players will be introduced in the U.S. later next year. Moreover, players of disks based on Toshiba's HD DVD technology would be able to play current DVDs as well as those in high-definition, Jodi Sally, director of marketing for Toshiba, told a Los Angeles conference on Oct. 26. That should make it an easier sell to DVD users, who own an average of 25 disks apiece, she says. Sony has said it intends to get its production price down, and that its format would also be "backward-compatible."

Warner was widely expected to be the first of the major movie makers to join Toshiba. The studio was part of the consortium (which included Toshiba) that developed the current DVD and holds several patents for which it collects royalties on DVDs sold. The Toshiba-backed HD DVD is said to use many of the same patents in which Warner holds a stake. Moreover, Toshiba is already producing HD DVDs at a plant in Japan, while the more complicated Blu-ray process has yet to enter commercial production.

BETA REPLAY? Sony has been fighting for nearly 30 years to take the lead in the lucrative home-entertainment wars. In the early 1980s, its Betamax videotape format lost out to the rival VHS standard. Then in the mid-'90s, it lost out in the DVD battle to Toshiba, which enlisted Warner and other studios. Sony technology was incorporated into a merged DVD format.

Sony may be buying a pair of studios, and it will no doubt get commitment from them for Blu-ray, but that probably won't help it win the hearts and minds of the rest of Hollywood -- or consumers.

Posted by dvd software at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2004

Titanic Battle Over New DVD Format

It could be VHS v Betamax all over again in the next technology clash.

It is being billed as the next VHS versus Betamax, the seminal TV technology culture clash that left millions of pieces of domestic equipment obsolete almost as soon as they had been built.
This time the battle is over the next generation of DVDs. Manufacturers are preparing a high-stakes fight over high-definition television and DVDs, with much improved picture quality and bigger memories. Image definition becomes particularly important as sets become bigger and better; without better pictures, these super screens are only bigger.

The high-definition DVD rivals are Blu-ray and the imaginatively titled HD-DVD. The former is backed by Sony, JVC and Philips, with NEC and Toshiba behind the rival technology.

The electronics industry is already promoting high-definition television as the next big thing, that picture quality will become a must-have for consumers. BSkyB is planning to start broadcasting some channels in high definition, with next year believed to be the target.

"The technology is too good to ignore," says Hisashi Yamada, Toshiba vice-president and one of the masterminds behind HD-DVD.

Richard Doherty, managing director of Blu-ray, offers further hyperbole: "With the unstoppable adoption of high-definition TV, Blu-ray's high-capacity optical disc technology is essential to delivering the very best quality high-definition movie experience to the consumer. In addition to providing a revolution in video and audio quality, Blu-ray disc similarly provides a revolution in interactivity and internet connectivity, providing entertainment that goes well beyond anything ever delivered to the consumer."

To receive the benefit from high definition broadcasts, consumers will clearly need to buy high-definition TVs, which are not cheap now, but will get less expensive as they become more widespread. The development of new technologies allows the electronics industry to make its money. From radio to television, from black and white to colour, from video to DVD, and now from "ordinary" TV to high definition, constant reinvention means consumers constantly need to buy new equipment. Some people, of course, stick with the same television until it breaks, but they are not going to keep far eastern electronics manufacturers in profits.

Video created a revolution in how people watched TV when it was launched in the late 1970s. For the first time, viewers in their own homes could choose when to watch a programme, rather than what the TV schedulers had chosen for them.

Then came DVD, which grabbed the public imagination (and purse) much more quickly than video. Partially this was due to the lessons learned from video's launch. Most importantly, the electronics companies elected to develop a joint standard to avoid the rivalry created by VHS versus Beta. However, despite the technological advances, those lessons appear to have been forgotten again and the propaganda war has started.

It boils down to a fight between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Both sides agree that high definition DVD will offer outstanding picture quality through its use of blue laser technology rather than the red lasers currently used in DVDs. More importantly, the new DVD has more memory and can thus store more content. High-definition broadcasts require more storage capacity. As DVD recorders, rather than just players, become common, the ability to store more content will become more important. As a rough guide, one high-definition DVD can hold 24 movies compared with one, as at present. For the consumer, the key will be that HD-DVD discs and Blu-ray discs will be incompatible with the rival format players.

Timing is critical in a format war and the race is on to be the first to launch around the globe. Another key element is signing up key content providers. In the VHS/Beta battle, one deciding factor was which movies were available on which format. Beta lost because the best and newest were available on VHS. Representatives of both high-definition DVD consortia are said to be spending a lot of time in Hollywood wooing the studios.

Twentieth Century Fox, producer of movies such as Star Wars and Titanic, recently agreed to join the board of the Blu-ray Disc Association, although it was careful to leave its options open: Michael O'Neill, special adviser to the Fox Technology Group, said: "We are also exploring the HD format, as we have been for a year, and are going to evaluate both formats in a positive, collaborative fashion."

Sony - which backed Betamax and does not want to be beaten again - has already secured itself a powerful base in the battle for content. Its recent deal to buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was about much more than a faded US film studio; it gave the Japanese corporation a huge library of classic movies for its chosen format. Allied to the back catalogue of Columbia Tri-Star, this gives Blu-ray a ready-made 17% share of the movie pie. With it is guaranteed first bite at choice launches through Blockbuster and the other rental outlets.

It is also a game of inches in the launch stakes. Although the prototype Blu-ray machines on view at technology fairs such as Ceatec in Japan appear cumbersome, they aim to be on sale in the US and Europe next year. HD-DVD meanwhile is aiming to launch in Japan next year and the UK in 2006, according to Keisuke Ohmori, media relations manager of Toshiba. He adds: "We do not believe they will launch Blu-ray before HD-DVD."

Both formats claim to be backwards compatible, meaning that the high-definition machines will be able to play current generation DVDs.

While the rival camps jostle for allies, content and shop space, the final result will lie in the hands of the consumer. As with VHS/Beta, the desire not to be left holding a piece of obsolete technology may make many wary of buying into the new technology, particularly as high-definition TV is still not so much a reality as a promise. And viewers are already faced with a multitude of decisions. HD-DVD/Blu-ray may remain a battle for the hearts and minds of early adopters for a while yet.

From cathode rays to DVDs

1900 The Russian Constantin Perskyi makes first known use of the word "television" at the 1st Congress of Electricity at Paris World's Fair.

1925 The Scottish inventor John Logie Baird holds first public display of television at Selfridges in London.

1930 The BBC begins regular television transmissions.

1934 Legal battle over patent for television between RCA and Philo Farnsworth, one of the men who could claim to be television's inventor. Farnsworth lost and, in later life, became disillusioned with TV. His wife, Elma, recalled: "One day, Phil was at home, and he noticed that Kent [their son] had been watching television for a couple of hours. He turned it off and said, 'There is not going to be any TV-itis in our house.' That was the word he used for couch potato."

1940 Peter Goldmark invents a 343-line resolution colour television.

1948 Cable television introduced in Pennsylvania to bring television to rural areas in the US.

1956 Robert Adler invents the first practical remote control - the Zenith Space Commander.

1962 AT&T launches Telstar, the first satellite to carry television broadcasts.

1976 Sony introduces Betamax, the first home video cassette recorder.

1977 JVC releases the VHS format.

1982 Sony and Philips throw in the Betamax towel.

1984 LaserDisc launched, but stumbles on high cost of films on disc and players.

1994 Sony and Philips announce plan to develop successor to the VHS tape. Time-Warner and Toshiba say they too are working on a follow-up. Computer manufacturers, including Apple and IBM, say they don't want to adapt their computers for two different formats. All four developers decide on a uniform standard.

1998 Launch of DVD player.

2002 Sales of DVD players overtake those of VHS recorders. Some 100m video recorders have been sold in Britain while 3m DVD players have been sold.

2004 Dixons announces it will no longer sell video recorders.

From The Guardian

Posted by dvd software at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2004

DVD Fast Forwarding to Be Banned

TiVo will add banner advertising when users do fast forwarding, this has brought lots of dispute recently, since it's one of main features of TiVo - users can skip any commercials when recording TV shows, just like what TiVo's slogan said: "TV your way."

But this news could change the situation.
The US Congress is considering making fast forwarding through video advertisements a crime. Lawmakers in the land of the free have decided that it is costing their chums in the movie industry far too much money and want video fast-forwarders placed in the same league as pirates.

Forum post about TiVo popup ads.

Posted by dvd software at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2004

Disposable DVDs

The Christmas-themed movie Noel most likely won't be coming to a theater near you — but if you miss it on cable, there's always the self-destructing DVD.

Disposable DVDs look and play like normal DVDs, except that their playable surface is dark red.

Each disc contains a chemical time-bomb that begins ticking once it's exposed to air. Typically, after 48 hours, the disc turns darker, becoming so opaque that a DVD player's laser can no longer can read it. (Discs can live as little as one hour or as long as 60 hours.)
- From Disposable DVDs: Watch, then throw away

A forum discussion about disposable DVDs

Posted by dvd software at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2004

HP Joined Blu-ray

As a major player, HP's decision would be a big hit on the hard format war.
- news.com reports

Intersil has achieved its first design wins for the new generation of optical storage devices which will be based on the DVD successor technology BluRay.
- Intersil gains BluRay design wins

Posted by dvd software at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2004

High-Definition Format War Analysis on CNN

The electronics and entertainment industries are shaping up for the biggest format battle since the "video wars" between VHS and Betamax to decide the future of DVD.

Two rival "next generation" DVD formats look set to be launched onto the marketplace next year.

Both are backed by powerful and well-known Japanese manufacturers, with each staking their claim to an industry worth billions of dollars.

And with the DVD market unlikely to support parallel formats, the loser faces the prospect of squandering millions spent on research, development and marketing costs.

Both "Blu-ray", principally backed by Sony, and "HD DVD", which has been developed by Toshiba, are based on the same basic technology.

- CNN News: DVD developers set for format war

Posted by dvd software at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2004

First Blood in the New DVD War

In the next-gen High-Definition DVD format war, what Toshiba needs is support from Hollywood studios, now they seems to get the boost:
First Blood in the New DVD War
- Business Week News

Posted by dvd software at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2004

High-Def Battle Could Harm Format Future

Studios urged to pick one standard soon

Further tussles between proponents of the competing HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats could damage a market primed for high-definition content, argued Bob Chapek, president of Buena Vista Home Entertainment and the Digital Entertainment Group at last week's North American DVD Forum Conference here.

A total of 30 million homes are expected to be high-def ready by 2006, said Chapek. The figure will rise to more than 55 million homes with high-def TVs by 2008, according to In-Stat/MDR senior analyst Michelle Abraham.

With high-def creeping up at such a rapid pace, the industry must serve a consumer populace that is confused, "information-starved and hungry" to buy high-def DVD players, Chapek said. Only a small portion of these people are tech-savvy early adopters who have the willingness to sift through information on the competing standards, and the rest might become discouraged and turn to other mediums such as cable and satellite for their high-def needs, he said.

"We can't have two groups screaming disparate messages to consumers--this could make for a disappointing launch where neither side dominates," Chapek said. "Maybe we should be asking ourselves not how big our piece of the pie will be, but how big the pie will be."

DVD consultant and former Warner Home Video chief Warren Lieberfarb, a supporter of the arguably more market-ready HD DVD format, stressed the urgency of a quick decision. "Time marches by very fast in the digital world," he said. "Companies are missing opportunities and creating disasters for themselves.

"Waiting to make a decision until 2005 means that product is not in the market at a mass price point until 2007," and by then the industry could be facing flat standard-definition DVD sales, widespread piracy with methods like file-swapping and houses full of big-screen HD TV sets that make standard DVDs look bad, Lieberfarb said. To head off such a scenario, he believes that mass market price points must be achieved by 2006.

He might not have to wait long. Shortly before Halloween, Warner, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment were close to announcing plans to begin releasing movies on HD DVD by the end of 2005, according to sources, although by press time no final agreement had been reached.

Draft press releases have been circulating through Hollywood for weeks, but last minute details or disagreements have kept all but Warner from signing on.

The agreements to release product on HD DVD would not be exclusive, however, leaving the studios free to also release movies on Blu-ray if that format is successful.

Posted by dvd software at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2004

NEC to Market DVD Burners

Company's ND-3500A drive is not just for OEMs anymore.

NEC Solutions is taking an unusual step in today's modern age of CD and DVD burners: The company has begun marketing and shipping a DVD burner under its own brand.

NEC joins a crowded market, but the company believes there's room for one more player--especially given the super-low $100 price of its ND-3500A model.

The drive, which has been shipping for several months as part of OEM packages (and sold as a "bare" OEM drive online), can write at up to 16X for DVD-R and DVD+R; 4X for DVD-RW and DVD+RW; and 4X for DVD+R Double Layer.

Not New to Retail
As Glenn Brower, NEC's director of storage products, points out, it's not as if NEC has never marketed a drive before. "We've been making optical products for 15 years. We did retail kits 10 years ago, with CD-ROM drives," he says. "But we've been focusing on OEM since then."

So why is the company jumping into the fray now?

"We believe there's an opportunity to provide a great product kit--16X is the top write-once speed for DVD--with software," Brower says.

With this drive, he says, "we hope to spark volume and demand for the DVD category. The pricing has come down on these drives, but some vendors are still charging a bit too much. We've tried to price this in a way that, between the speed, the software, and the price, we'll have a triple benefit for consumers."

With certain 8X media, such as Verbatim discs, Brower says, the drive can write at 16X. "The reflectivity of the media has to be good enough to allow the drive to write at that speed," notes Brower.

The ability to write at fast speeds to slower media is handy given the low availability of 16X media at this time. Of competing 16X models, currently only Pioneer says its DVR-A08 can perform this hat trick.

Forging Ahead to Retail
In this first phase, NEC is marketing the drive through "tier one distributors, mail order, and catalog," says Brower. "In our second phase, it's possible we'll go into retail."

The drive's price (technically, it's $99.99) is $20 to $30 more than what the OEM version will cost you, according to PC World's Product Finder listing for the OEM drive. But that's still a bargain for consumers, for whom a drive with comparable software might cost more like $130 or $150 at retail. For the extra bucks, you get Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 3.5 Suite Deluxe and NovaStor Backup, as well as tech support through NEC for the drive (30 days through Ulead for the primary burning software).

More important, you also get the promise of firmware upgrades--which are critical given the ever-changing landscape of media. Firmware upgrades can broaden a drive's support for different media types.

Posted by dvd software at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

HD-DVD Drives Find a Place in the PC

NEC, Toshiba will put the next-generation DVD technology in desktops and laptops next year.

NEC plans to start selling desktop PCs equipped with HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD) drives at the end of 2005, the company says. Slimmed-down versions of the drives will be added to the company's line of notebook PCs in 2006, it says.

NEC did not announce which PC models would be sold with HD-DVD drives or how much PCs equipped with the drives will cost.

In addition to selling PCs equipped with HD-DVD drives, NEC will start selling the drives separately at the end of next year. The company will initially sell HD-DVD drives designed for desktop PCs and will later offer the slim-type drives for notebooks, says Yoshibumi Yashiro, an NEC spokesperson.

Toshiba's Plans
NEC is not the first company to announce plans to sell PCs equipped with HD-DVD drives. Earlier this week, Toshiba announced plans to start selling notebook PCs equipped with HD-DVD drives in December 2005.

Initially, Toshiba's high-end notebook models will be equipped with slim-type HD-DVD drives, according to Keisuke Ohmori, a company spokesperson. "We'll start with the high end, and release more [HD-DVD-equipped] models in 2006," he says.

These first HD-DVD-equipped notebooks from Toshiba will be priced between $1855 and $2793, Ohmori says. Toshiba hopes to sell about 1 million notebooks equipped with the HD-DVD drives during the first year following the launch, he says.

The NEC and Toshiba announcements underline the determination of companies that support the HD-DVD format to get products into shops next year.

Gaining Support
HD-DVD technology was mainly developed by Toshiba and NEC. In August, another of Japan's major consumer electronics products makers, Sanyo Electric, announced support for the standard. Both Sanyo and Toshiba unveiled prototype HD-DVD players earlier this month at Japan's premier electronics show, Ceatec Japan 2004.

Sample HD-DVD discs made by Memory-Tech, Ritek, Prodisc Technology, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, Hitachi Maxell, Imation, Cinram International, and Advanced Media were also shown at the exhibition.

Competing with HD-DVD is the Blu-ray Disc format backed by a group of companies led by Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial. Matsushita recently launched its first Blu-ray Disc player, while Sony put its first Blu-ray Disc on sale last year.

Paul Kallender, IDG News Service

Posted by dvd software at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2004

TiVo CEO Interview

Engadget's correspondent J.D. Lasica interviewed Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo, at the Web 2.0 conference. Lasica asked many interesting questions including their planned TiVoToGo service.

TiVo Discussion

Posted by dvd software at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2004

JVC Sides With Blu-ray Disc

JVC has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, the company and association say in a statement issued this week.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is the group responsible for promoting the Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, which is being positioned as a successor to current DVD discs for high-definition video content. In this area it faces competition from a rival format called HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD).

While its membership is new, JVC's support for Blu-ray Disc has been known for a long time. It was among the first Japanese companies to show a prototype Blu-ray Disc player in 2002 and has continued to show prototypes based on the system at Japanese trade shows since then.

"We're really excited to have them join, they are clearly a major brand and one of the last major ones that have not committed," says Andy Parsons, senior vice president of advanced product development at Pioneer Electronics (USA) and a representative of the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Its membership comes a week after another big-name company, Twentieth Century Fox Film, also joined the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Content is Key

The support of content providers, like Fox, is seen as vital to the success of both Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD because, without commercial content, the formats are unlikely to appeal to a wide customer base.

"I think the content providers [like Fox] are an essential part of the overall equation," says Parsons. "It's also very important to have a number of companies to release products to play back that content."

To this end, the Blu-ray Disc Association is talking "on an almost daily basis" to content providers, says Parsons. The recent inclusion of the MPEG4 and VC1 video codecs to the read-only BD-ROM specification was as a direct result of these conversations and the requests of content providers, he says.

Standardization work on the BD-ROM format is currently underway. Version 1.0 of the physical format has been set and the Blu-ray Disc Association is aiming to complete the first version of the application format and navigation format by the end of 2004, says Parsons.

Fox also took a seat on the board of the Blu-ray Disc Association and will play a part in discussing and setting the Blu-ray Disc format. There are 13 other companies on the board: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK, and Thomson Multimedia.

The competing HD-DVD is supported by the DVD Forum and backed by NEC, Toshiba, Sanyo Electric, and optical disc maker Memory-Tech.

Posted by dvd software at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2004

Fox Splits High-Definition DVDs Bet

Twentieth Century Fox's decision to join the Blu-ray Disc Assn. represents a calculated gamble by the studio that it can influence critical decisions about the next generation of DVD without fueling a ruinous format war, studio officials said last week.

"This is Fox's opportunity to influence the development of these formats, and we're going to take it," Fox Home Entertainment senior VP Danny Kaye said. "But it's true that it carries certain risks."

In addition to joining the Blu-ray Assn., Fox was given a seat on the group's board, where it will join 13 other companies that formed the original Blu-ray Disc Founders Group. The association, which officially bowed Oct. 4, boasts 73 member companies from the electronics, IT, media and software industries.

Fox officials noted the studio also recently joined the DVD Forum, the worldwide standards-setting body that is backing rival high-definition format HD DVD. But Fox had sought to gain a seat on the Forum's policy-making steering committee and was turned down (VB, 1-19).

Also on the Blu-ray board are representatives of the format's primary developers--Sony, Matsushita and Philips--with the panel serving as final arbiters of the format's technical specs.

By joining the board, Fox thus assures itself that its concerns about copy protection, licensing compliance and other aspects of the format will be heard. But it also risks being construed as an endorsement of Blu-ray at a time when Hollywood is trying to husband its leverage carefully to try to avoid a format war between Blu-ray and its rival technology, HD DVD.

Developed largely by Sony's engineers, Blu-ray can already count on Sony-owned Columbia TriStar in the race to line up studio support for the competing formats.

Last month, Sony added MGM to the Blu-ray column by agreeing to acquire the Lion.

As the first non-affiliated studio to join the group's letterhead, Fox handed the Blu-ray camp at least a minor public-relations victory. To date, no studio has committed to releasing titles in HD DVD.

But in making the announcement, Fox emphasized that its involvement with the group did not represent an endorsement or a commitment to publish titles in Blu-ray.

Still, the move further roiled Hollywood's already heated high-def politics.

Although none would speak for attribution, executives at some other studios sharply criticized Fox's decision.

By appearing to line-up with Blu-ray, Fox's critics said, the studio would only encourage Sony, et al., to forge ahead with their launch plans for the format on their own timetable and diminish chances of reaching a compromise that could avert a format war.

It's also likely to turn up the pressure on the other studios to take sides, as both the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps move closer to launch.

"It was totally unnecessary," one major studio home video chief said. "All it does is foster the sense that we don't need to get to one format."

While acknowledging the danger, Fox officials said there was more to be gained by trying to influence the development of the formats directly rather than waiting on events.

"Some of the companies that are saying those things have already had an opportunity to have an influence," Kaye noted.

Both Warner and Disney sit on the DVD Forum's steering committee, where they're able to vote on technical proposals.

Disney, in fact, came close to signing up with Blu-ray as well earlier this year, but backed off after word of the plan leaked and the studio feared its move would be construed as an endorsement.

Time Warner, meanwhile, is a key patent holder in the current DVD standard, and would benefit from the success of HD DVD, which is based on similar technology.

Last month, sources at several studios said Warner sought to encourage a general industry move toward HD DVD by circulating a draft press release announcing plans to release product in the format. A Warner spokeswoman last week denied the studio had drafted such a release but declined to discuss the matter further.

Posted by dvd software at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2004

Pioneer, Sharp Let Blu-ray Play

Prototype products include the first such drive for use in a PC.

Two companies supporting the Blu-ray Disc optical disc format unveiled prototype players at the Ceatec 2004 exhibition, taking place here this week.

Among the prototypes was the first Blu-ray Disc drive intended for personal computer use.

The drive is from Pioneer and uses a recently developed system that combines a signal processor and control circuitry for a blue laser and red laser in a single chip. The blue laser is used for Blu-ray Disc and the red laser is used in DVDs, meaning the new drive supports both disc formats. Until now most prototypes made use of multiple chips to accomplish the same task.

Formats supported by the drive include read-only BD-ROM discs, write-once BD-R discs, and dual-layer rewritable BD-RW discs, all at 2x speed, and a host of DVD formats. These include DVD-ROM at 12x, read-only support for DVD-RAM at 2x, DVD+/-R at 8x, DVD+/-RW at 4x, DVD-R dual layer at 2x, and DVD+R dual layer at 2.4x.

Pioneer also showed a larger prototype Blu-ray Disc player intended to be used with a television.

Release dates and target prices for the prototypes were not available.

Posted by dvd software at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2004

Fox Joined Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA)

Blu-ray format got a big boost from Twentieth Century Fox Film. Hollywood movie studios is one of the most important player in the High-Definition DVD format war, together with Sony Pictures, Blu-ray seems to have the overwhelming advantage in the movie industry.

IDG News - Fox Film Trots Towards Blu-ray
Twentieth Century Fox Film has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), but the Hollywood film studio has stopped short of committing to releasing its movies on the Blu-ray Disc format, the company says.

"We are not ready at this time to commit any of our content to this format," says Michael O'Neill, special advisor at the company's Fox Technology Group. He spoke at a press event before the inaugural meeting of the association that began in Tokyo on Monday.

Fox has become a member of the association to study the format and develop copyright protection technologies to prevent illegal copying of Blu-ray discs, he says.

"The only agreement is to collaborate with work to help develop the format. We are very positive about the possibilities down the road," O'Neill says.

The move lends significant support to the Blu-ray Disc format against the HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD) version as both camps seek to build alliances with manufacturers and major studios, according to Sony senior vice president Kiyoshi Nishitani.

Posted by dvd software at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

Sanyo Shows HD-DVD Player

Sanyo Electric unveiled a prototype player supporting the next-generation optical disc format HD-DVD at the Ceatec 2004 show here this week.

The company's HD-DVD player was on show alongside a prototype from Toshiba, which has been seen at other events. No additional details of either machine were available, although the presence of a Sanyo player at the show points toward a start to HD-DVD development at Sanyo before the company announced its support for the format on August 31.

HD-DVD was developed under the auspices of the DVD Forum and draws heavily on technology from both Toshiba and NEC. Major Japanese optical disc-maker Memory-Tech has also been involved in disc production technology. The format uses a blue laser to enable storage of several times more data than a conventional DVD on an equivalent size disc.

A group of other companies, led by Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), has proposed and developed a rival format called Blu-ray Disc.

On Display
The new Sanyo player and Toshiba prototype were on show in a joint HD-DVD promotion booth that also had on display several sample discs made by a number of companies, including Memory-Tech, Ritek, Prodisc Technology, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, Hitachi Maxell, Imation, Cinram International, and Advanced Media.

The discs included single-sided and double-sided ROM discs, or 15GB and 30GB capacity, and single-layer HD-DVD-R discs of 20GB capacity. All of the discs were genuine samples, as opposed to other optical discs with HD-DVD labels, and all the companies were preparing for mass production, a Toshiba spokesperson says.

Toshiba and NEC have promised to commercialize HD-DVD during 2005. The first commercial Blu-ray Disc machines are already on the market in Japan, although sales have been limited by a high price tag and an inability to play back prerecorded content.

- Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

Posted by dvd software at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2004

DVD Recorder Getting Cheaper

Reuters reports: DVD recorders are getting cheaper and easier to use (expected to hit $150 sometime later this year), but that may not be enough to spark demand for the sluggish selling devices.

Part of the problem is that customers have not yet been convinced of the value of the devices in relation to products like digital video recorders or even their home computers.

But you may not need a standalone DVD recorder. If you want to copy DVDs you’d need to buy a PC anyway, if you want to record TV shows you’re way better off with a proper digital video recorder.

Posted by dvd software at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2004

Most Ridiculous Software Patent

This has to be the most ridiculous patent I have ever heard: Kodak wins Java lawsuit. If a program "asks for help" from other application, then it pilfered the patent, if this can be a valid patent, I'm afraid most software companies have to pay Kodak.
How could I have bought two digital cameras from this shameless company?

A deep analysis of this case.

Posted by dvd software at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

HD-DVD Standard Earns Approval

Rewriteable version of the next-gen DVD format moves closer to mass production.

The DVD Forum has approved the physical disc specifications for the rewritable version of HD-DVDs (High Definition/High Density-DVDs), taking the format an important step nearer to mass production.

At a meeting in Taiwan on September 22, the association approved version 1.0 of the HD-DVD-RW physical specification, which covers a single-layer disc with a capacity of 20GB, Junko Furuta, a Toshiba spokesperson says.

Version 1.0 is the key specification that allows manufacturers to consider mass production of a product involving new technologies.

The association also approved version 0.9 physical specifications for the HD-DVD-R (recordable) disc at the same meeting. The HD-DVD-R discs will be single-layer 15GB capacity discs, Furuta says. Version 1.0 is expected to be approved by the association in February 2005, Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba Digital Media Network Company, said at a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.

The organization approved version 1.0 of the physical specifications for HD-DVD-ROM discs in June this year. HD-DVD-ROMs will be single-layer, 15GB discs or dual-layer, 30GB discs.

The physical specification defines the physical properties of the disc such as the number of layers and capacity. The application specifications, which define how data signals are written into the structure of the discs, will be decided before the end of February 2005, Furuta says.

Format Battle Brewing

The approval is the latest step between two major formats which are battling to replace DVDs with optical discs that store much more data.

Opposing the HD-DVD format, the Blu-ray Disc format is backed by Sony, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, TDK, and Thomson Multimedia.

Toshiba, along with Memory-Tech, NEC, and Sanyo Electric said earlier this month they were forming an association to promote the HD-DVD format.

Sanyo announced in August that it will produce components and players for HD-DVDs. Sanyo cited the HD-DVD format's ease of manufacturing compared to the Blu-ray. The company became the third major Japanese consumer electronics company to opt for HD-DVD, joining NEC and Toshiba. Memory-Tech is a DVD disc maker.

Last week, Sony Computer Entertainment said its upcoming PlayStation 3 games console will be compatible with the Blu-ray Disc format.

Toshiba expects to start commercial sales of HD-DVD players and recorders in the final three months of 2005, with players to cost under $1000, according to Furuta.

The DVD Forum is an association of over 220 consumer electronics, entertainment, software, and related companies that determines DVD disc specifications. At the meeting in Taiwan it also approved four audio codecs for HD-DVD, Furuta says.

Posted by dvd software at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2004

Ahead Pushes Nero Digital Format for DVDs

Deal with ESS Technology will add support for Ahead's variant of the MPEG-4 video format on DVD players.

Ahead Software and ESS Technology announced a major development this week for Ahead's Nero Digital video format. ESS will incorporate Nero Digital support into the next version of its Vibratto chip. ESS chips power the digital video processing in many consumer electronics DVD players. Players featuring the new chip will begin appearing later this year.

The Nero Digital format combines the MPEG-4 video standard with MPEG-4 AAC audio. The resulting file size is greatly reduced compared with the standard MPEG-2 DVD-Video used in DVDs today--up to 10 hours of Nero Digital video can fit on a single-layer DVD, as opposed to just 2 hours of standard MPEG-2 video.

Until now, Nero Digital worked only on a PC. If you encoded a compilation disc of your favorite over-the-air TV show recordings in Nero Digital, you couldn't watch them on your TV using your DVD player.

Smaller File, More Content
As noted, the benefit of Nero Digital is the ability to compress more video onto a single DVD--up to 5 two-hour movies on one DVD. In addition, unlike competing MPEG-4 video options, Nero Digital supports features consumers now consider standard on DVD videos (which use MPEG-2)--including chaptering, subtitles, and multilingual soundtracks.

Ahead is the maker of Nero 6 Ultra Edition, a PC World Best Buy pick earlier this year in our roundup of DVD/CD burning suites. The update of Nero 6 Ultra Edition due in October will let you encode video (using ReCode) and transcode video (using NeroVision) to Nero Digital format. (Ahead codeveloped Nero Digital with Ateme, a French company with expertise in video and signal processing.) "Nero Digital is not just for now and today. For next-generation DVD, we need H.264--and we will have support for that format in the next few weeks in Nero 6 Ultra Edition," says Udo Eberlein, president of Ahead. H.264 is the next evolution of MPEG-4; Eberlein notes it uses a better quality encoder than H.263. Nero Digital currently employs H.263; when the new version of Nero Digital comes out, it will continue to support the older format, and add support H.264 as well.

H.264 has gained much momentum lately, with companies that support either HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc announcing support for the codec. HD-DVD and Blu-ray are the two blue-laser optical formats competing to succeed DVD.

Improved Compatibility
Chips that support Nero Digital can read any video content encoded using one of the many variants of the MPEG-4 standard. Unlike earlier video compression standards, the MPEG-4 standard has a fundamental "container," or core set of programming instructions, that defines it. This allows programmers to make improvements to the standard while retaining backward compatibility with earlier iterations.

However, audio playback support will vary. Take the example of DivX, a competing MPEG-4 variant that uses MP3 audio. Since Nero Digital supports AAC, and not the lower-quality MP3 audio, a DivX-encoded disc would be able to play back audio only if the DVD player had its own support for MP3 audio. (Many DVD players use chip sets like the Vibratto II, which supports MP3 playback.)

Eventually, MPEG-4 playback support will be more prevalent in DVD players. But for now, support is limited--and often limited just to DivX. "We're trying to get a new solution out that's better than old ones, but that doesn't entirely neglect what the old ones are doing," Eberlein says.

Part of the compatibility problem arises from the variations between MPEG-4 encoders. "There are different flavors of MPEG-4. We're trying to clean up this mess with Nero Digital, to ensure maximum compatibility," says Eberlein. "In terms of competing with DivX, they've had a lot of trouble with their compatibility between versions. The burden [of knowing] is ultimately on the consumer's back."

Nero Digital will support all standards of MPEG-4; according to Eberlein, the company is the first to market with a codec that can handle any MPEG-4 file. "At the end of the day, we're not confining the user to just Nero Digital," he says.

By partnering with ESS, he adds, "we think we'll be able to reach a large number of CE devices by providing a bridge between the CE manufacturers and Nero."

Posted by dvd software at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Sony Gains in Fight for New DVD Standard

The New York Times reported: "The purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by a group led by Sony will not only give the company an enormous film library but also considerable power in its fight to set the format for the next generation of digital video discs.

The transition to the new discs, which are not expected to be widely available until next year at the earliest, could generate billions of dollars in royalties to the developers of the technology that runs them. Sony, as part of the Blue-ray Disc Association, a consortium of major electronics makers, is at the forefront of efforts to develop the new technological standard."

As a major consumer electronics company, Sony could also reap the benefits of selling the new generation of disc players the new format would require. Sony's success in the standards battle is far from certain, though, because the rival HD DVD group, led by Toshiba and NEC, is championing its own format.

By buying MGM's studio and its library of movies, industry experts say, Sony is trying to tilt the long fight over the new DVD format in its direction.

Both consortiums say their new discs will hold four to five times more digital video and audio data than the DVD currently on the market, enough to store the high-definition programs and films that are slowly making their way to the consumer market.

The HD DVD group, which is showing off its technology to Hollywood studios this week, contends that its new discs are cheaper to make and more compatible with existing DVD technology. The Blu-ray group, which includes Panasonic, Philips and Samsung, however, says that its discs have the advantage because they offer superior images, among other benefits.

The key to resolving the tug of war between the two groups, experts say, will depend on the Hollywood studios because they provide most of the content that will go on the discs. The studios also have a huge stake in the change to the new technology because they now make more money from DVD sales than from box office sales. They also lose millions of dollars a year from pirated DVDs.

But with the exception of Sony's own movie division that includes the Columbia and TriStar studios that naturally back the Blu-ray format, the movie studios have so far avoided backing one standard despite intense lobbying by both the Blu-ray and HD DVD groups. By buying MGM, Sony will be adding another studio to the list of Blu-ray backers, and a catalog of 4,000 movies that could be issued exclusively in the Blu-ray format.

"It further tips scales that were already tipped toward Blu-ray," said Ross Rubin, a consumer electronics analyst at the NPD Group.

Executives close to Sony said that bolstering its position in the battle of DVD formats was one of several important factors in its decision to pursue MGM. Indeed, the management of Sony of America helped sell the idea of bidding for MGM to its Japanese parent in some early internal meetings by promoting "the Blu-ray angle," the executives said.

Still, the executives noted that the Blu-ray format was "only one reason" for pursuing a bid for MGM. The executives cited a litany of other financial and strategic reasons for the deal, including being able to exploit MGM's films on Sony's other platforms like its PlayStation game consoles and even its cell phones, which it makes through a joint venture with Ericsson.

A spokeswoman for Sony declined to comment.

Sony, though, faces several risks in buying MGM. By building a large film library, which makes up an estimated 17 percent of available film titles, Sony could end up threatening the same studios it is trying to win over to the Blu-ray group. Sony, intentionally or not, may give the appearance that it is willing to start producing Blu-ray discs on its own, regardless of what the HD DVD group does, or what the studios want.

The studios and retailers do not want two formats because that would confuse consumers, and may mean having to produce two sets of DVDs for each film release.

Sony "can pose a more credible threat to launch on their own," said Tom Adams, the president of Adams Media Research in Carmel, California. "On the other hand, Sony of all companies has been badly burned by having new technologies launched in two formats." Sony was the big loser in the battle over the video cassette format, with VHS becoming the dominant format over Sony's Betamax.

Indeed, if the studios sense that Sony and the Blu-ray group is pushing its format too hard, it may benefit the HD DVD group.

The other studios could try to counter what they see as Sony's growing influence by backing the opposing format, industry analysts say.

Posted by dvd software at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2004

Future of Music Technology

IEEE Spectrum magazine is running a feature article on the state of music and current digital formats. They point to an interesting phenomenon in the digital music world that Steve Jobs emphasized as well: for the first time in music history, the next big format was not about better quality (SACD and such) but about better portability (MP3). 'It was only five years ago that the music industry was facing a civil war over the next-generation disc-based music format -- the successor to the wildly successful CD. At that time, hardly anybody doubted that the music would be encoded optically on a round plastic disc the size of a CD.'

Posted by dvd software at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

Video Anti-Piracy Technology

NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson announced on Friday they will develop new encryption technology to foil video piracy, a $3.5 billion problem for broadcasters and movie studios.

The anti-piracy technology, known as the secure video processor (SVP) platform, is designed for media companies to protect their content from unauthorized copying and redistribution.

Posted by dvd software at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2004

HD-DVD: One Format Only Campaign

I have post a few entries about next-gen DVD format - High-Definition DVD, the main two competitors are blu-ray and HD-DVD. High-Definition DVD products will come out early next year, if the format war continues, the silly thing could happen: you have a blu-ray DVD player, but you can't enjoy your favorite DVD because it's HD-DVD format.

Here is a website dedicated to one format campaign, "The purpose of the HD-DVD: One Format Only! Campaign is to convey what we believe is a very important message, on behalf of DVD consumers everywhere, to the Hollywood movie studios, the consumer electronics manufacturers and all the members of the DVD Forum. That message is simple:

We believe that in order for any high-definition video disc format to be successful, all of the various parties involved MUST agree upon a SINGLE, unified format before making any such format available to consumers."

Posted by dvd software at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2004

Blu-ray Disc To Support MPEG-4, VC-1

Blue-laser disc format's standard adopts new video codecs.

The Blu-ray Disc Association has added the MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 video codecs to its specification for prerecorded Blu-ray Disc media, it says this week.

Blu-ray Disc is one of two High-Definition DVD formats vying to become the de facto optical disc standard for high-definition video.

As a result, the two codecs will form part of version 1.0 of the BD-ROM logical format, which is expected to be finalized later this year, says Richard Doherty, Panasonic Hollywood Labs' managing director of Blu-ray and professional A/V (audio/visual). The logical format specifies the way in which content is stored on the disc. The physical format, which concerns technical specifications for the disc itself, was already approved in July this year.

VC-1, the proposed Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers standard, is based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9 codec, and was previously called VC9, says Doherty. MPEG-4 AVC is based on the H.264 codec.

Greater Flexibility

Greater Flexibility
All Blu-ray players will be required to support playback of MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1, in addition to MPEG-2. The main advantage of requiring two codecs to the specification is it allows greater flexibility to content providers to pack more content on a disc. This is because the newer codecs are more efficient at compressing data than the MPEG-2 codec that's used with the rewritable Blu-ray Disc format and so allow more video to be stored in the same amount of space.

In the case of a 25GB single-layer Blu-ray Disc, about two hours of video encoded in MPEG-2 at a data rate of between 23 megabits per second and 25 mbps can be stored, Doherty says. MPEG-2 is used in DVD-Video and the first generation of the rewritable version of the Blu-ray Disc format. In contrast, the two new codecs can achieve an equivalent quality of video at about half the data rate and so expand the 25GB disc's capacity to up to 4 hours, he says.

"There are other advantages to having two compression techniques," Doherty says. "Moving forward, the technologies can have competition to help drive down licensing fees and improve picture quality."

HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD), the main competitor to Blu-ray Disc, has already made the two codecs part of its standard for prerecorded discs. In June companies supporting HD-DVD trumpeted this as one of its advantages over Blu-ray Disc.

"With this adoption, all that [advantage] is gone," says Doherty.

Adoption of the advanced codecs in future versions of the BD-RE rewritable format depends as much on technology as standardization talks, says Doherty. High-definition broadcasting in Japan and the U.S. uses the MPEG2 format, and current recorders put this broadcast data stream directly onto the disc. Using one of the two new codecs would mean real-time hardware transcoding, and that's too difficult to do in a consumer-level machine at present, he says.

Blu-ray Disc comes from a group of 13 companies led by Sony and also including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, TDK, and Thomson Multimedia.

Posted by dvd software at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2004

Windows Media Player 10 Review

Paul Thorrott reviewed Windows Media Player 10: "...Windows Media Player 10 is a huge improvement over previous Windows Media Player versions, though it still falls short of the competition in a few key areas... Windows Media Player 10 is free and requires Windows XP (any edition), but not any other Windows versions..."

Another review by Thomas Hawk: "I wrote my Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Review today the first day the software was released and one of the first reviews on the product. I basically give it good marks but there are definiately some things that they can still improve upon."

You can download Windows Media Player 10 on microsoft's website, but again it's for Windows XP only.

Related DVD FAQ: How do I get the Microsoft Windows DVD player application to run?

Posted by dvd software at 11:27 PM | Comments (2)

September 01, 2004

High-Definition DVD Discussion

There is a discussion running on Slashdot.org about High-Definition DVD, it started from a news - Microsoft Codec Required For Blu-Ray Players, the more interesting thing is it got many informative comments about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Maybe later I will compile some comments into an article.

"According to ExtremeTech, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (which consists of many big names, like Sony, Philips, and Pioneer) has decided to mandate Microsoft's VC-1 video codec. With HD-DVD incorporating Microsoft's patented video codecs as well, what will happen to the state of media players on Open Source?"

Posted by dvd software at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2004

DVD XCopy Maker Shuts Doors

This past Monday, 321 Studios shut its doors. Maker of the once popular DVD copying applications, DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus, the St. Charles, Missouri company has brought an end to nearly two years of legal battles with the leading Hollywood Studios, which felt the software was in violation of federal law. In February, the company was barred from selling its DVD copying engine, and it could no longer afford to carry on.

321's legal battles began in early 2002, when CEO Robert Moore read a news article wherein a spokesperson for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)—the organization that represents film, home video, and television companies—accused the company of selling piracy software in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and threatened legal action.

The company soon filed a declaratory relief action, a way of preempting a lawsuit, asking a court to rule that DVD Copy Plus is not in violation of the DMCA. The action named nine different movie studios as defendants: Columbia Pictures Industry, Disney Enterprises, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Pixar, The Saul Zaentz Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner Entertainment, TriStar Pictures, and Universal City Studios. In December of that year, seven of those nine filed a counter suit, seeking not only to re-move the tools from the market but also to recover damages from 321 Studios.

When the ruling was announced this February, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered 321 Studios to stop selling DVD X Copy, deciding the application was indeed illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prevents the sale of software designed to break the copy-protection schemes used by digital media.

321 had claimed that the DMCA allows individuals to make copies of DVDs for their own personal use, but, according to Evan R. Cox, an intellectual property attorney and a partner in the San Francisco office of the international law firm Covington & Burling, this is not the case. "This was a pretty unsurprising result," Cox told PC Magazine in February. "The judge really couldn't come out any other way without standing the statute on its head and, basically, rendering it meaningless."

The company did file an appeal, but, unable to sell anything but severely crippled versions of DVD X Copy, it didn't have the money to continue fighting. 321 has posted a notice to its Web site, saying that it has ceased to sell, support, or promote its products, but that existing customers could continue to use the technical support "knowledge base" and FAQs on the site until August 1, 2005.

Posted by dvd software at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2004

Wireless LAN go-go boots

We’ll spare you the “these boots were made for walking” line, but the Seven Mile Boots are designed to stroll around in and out of open wireless networks, and they are kind of Sinatra-style hot (that’s Nancy not Frank). The boots have a wireless network, a microprocessor, sensors, amps and a speaker, and enable the user to listen to chat rooms with audio by automatically logging-in with the name “sevenmileboots”. The boots are going to be on exhibit at the Austrian Ars Electronica Festival next week.

These boots have to be for super nerds :-)

Posted by dvd software at 10:27 PM | Com