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.
]]>With the help of its popular Windows Media Player and MSN music service, Microsoft is very likely to gain a relative share in a short time.
Until now, Microsoft has stayed out of the digital music player market while licensing its Windows Media Player technology to Creative Technology Ltd., iRiver Inc., Samsung and other device manufacturers.
But those companies have struggled to compete with Apple Computer Inc.'s line of iPods, which have dominated the market partly because of their seamless integration with the iTunes Music Store.
IPods account for roughly 80 percent of the portable music player market, while iTunes has sold more than a billion tracks since it launched three years ago.
"The combination of the independent manufacturers trying to use the Microsoft technology to integrate with independent vendors such as Napster, Yahoo Music and Rhapsody ... has resulted in an experience for the consumer that simply does not measure up to the experience of the iPod and iTunes," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media.
The stakes for Microsoft extend beyond the online music market, Leigh said.
"It's becoming increasingly evident that video is migrating to the Internet, and Apple is getting a lead there as well," Leigh said. "That is a lead that Microsoft cannot afford to let them build upon and maintain."
More deep analysis is available at CNN.
]]>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.
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."
]]>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.”
]]>Clearly, this is disgusting, cheating and illegal. But the company still exists now..almost one year since they spam webmasters.
There are many blogs about this company:
1. On Law blog: Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH
2. Heise online (the largest IT website in Germany).
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
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.
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.
]]>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.
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.
]]>