I Was Wrong About HD-DVDs

I remember the good old college days in my dorm room, watching Dumb and Dumber on VHS instead of studying.

That was 2004, and I knew the decade-old VHS was on its last legs, but I had yet to switch over to the mainstream DVD world. Sure enough, the spool of film started to unravel mid-movie one night, and I was cradling the broken plastic tape much like the blind boy held his lifeless, broken-necked bird in the movie.

I looked at the crate of VHS tapes I brought to college that year and wondered in horror which one would be next. Ironically, life imitated art and my Jurassic Park tape died out next -- just like the film's dinosaur stars -- and I soon threw out my entire obtrusive and outdated VHS collection.

I learned that dying technology is similar to nature's survival of the fittest: Anything that's faster and sleeker is going to eat up all other competition. So was the case with the demise of VHS, which was wiped out by the thinner, quicker DVD. Now the DVD is the endangered species, thanks to the dawn of the high-definition Blu-ray disc.

With more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs, Blu-ray currently sits at the top of the food chain.

Blu-ray's crystal-clear images, room for added features, and decrease in price over the years have all caused more Americans to jump onboard. About 15% of all consumers used a Blu-ray player in the six months ending in March, up from 9% last year, according to market research firm NPD Group, and 22% of all disc buyers bought at least one Blu-ray title.

Most of the major movie studios, including Disney (NYSE: DIS  ) , Paramount, and Sony (NYSE: SNE  ) , salivate at the chance to show off their explosions and beautiful actors in high-def and have released titles in the Blu-ray format.

But just a few years ago, it was unclear whether Toshiba's HD-DVD or Sony's Blu-ray format would succeed.

The Blu-ray-vs.-HD-DVD format fight reminded consumers of the 1970s and 80s war waged between videotape rivals VHS and BetaMax -- and we all know who won that one.

Everyone -- including me -- was unsure whether to stick with the familiar DVD format or to invest in a high-definition disc format, along with all the accompanying hardware. The entertainment industry was just as hesitant, wanting to choose the format that would become victorious.

Game-console makers also made bets on the dueling technologies. Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) Xbox360, which could read only DVDs, banked on a separate peripheral to play HD-DVDs. Sony's PlayStation 3 was able to play both DVDs and Blu-ray discs. To satisfy the consumers who didn't want a console, a new species of standalone high-def movie players emerged.

The movie studios, which were split between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray camps, eventually sided with Blu-ray. That sealed HD-DVD's fate and Toshiba surrendered, ceasing production of HD-DVDs in 2008.

Those who purchased Microsoft's $199 HD-DVD peripheral, HD-DVD movies and HD-DVD players, watched their investment value drop to zero overnight.

Despite the complete disappearance of HD-DVD technology from store shelves, DVDs still remain popular. Until high-definition TVs become more mainstream, DVDs and Blu-ray discs will continue to co-exist. Apple has yet to release a computer with a Blu-ray drive.

Now I'm looking ahead and sense that the next technology to replace Blu-ray could be invisible. My Apple-obsessed friend is a pioneer in the movement to eliminate all physical discs, and in doing so, he has freed up a lot of cabinet space. He downloads and streams everything through an older Mac he transformed into a media server. Now he can access all his music, movies, and podcasts from his TV, using his iPhone or iPad as a remote. (Con: That method is harder for people to set up, and the quality isn't as great as Blu-ray.)‪

"I can't remember the last time I bought a DVD," he said, "and I used to buy tons of them!"

That's a fact -- just a few months ago he had a 4-inch-thick case jampacked with DVDs. He sold a few, gave a few away, and donated others.

He did hang on to some Oscar-winning discs, for good reason -- in a few decades they will be the new collectable version of today's Grammy-winning vinyl records, and antique hunters will pay up big bucks. I suppose that will make a VHS tape the equivalent of a gramophone record.

Source is
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/11/30/i-was-wrong-about-hd-dvds.aspx

Researchers Crack Blu-Ray Encryption With Cheap Hardware

How much does it cost to crack Blu-ray encryption? Not much, apparently: Researchers at the Secure Hardware Group of Germany's Ruhr University of Bochum (RUB) have cracked Intel’s encryption protocol protecting Blu-ray discs and other HD media using a $267 custom board.

When you watch a Blu-ray on your TV or computer, Intel’s High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) protocol is there to encrypt and copy-protect the HD channel. The entertainment industry has used the protocol for nearly a decade to prevent users from copying and pirating movies and games. The technology also found its way to any display that uses a DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort and other connections.

Hackers cracked the HDCP master key in September 2010; at the time, Intel wrote it off as a minor threat, as a person would have to "make a computer chip of their own" to actually use the code, according to Fox News. Well, the RUB researchers found another way.

To crack Intel’s HDCP encryption, the researchers used a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack with an inexpensive field programmable gate array (FPGA) board. The build used an ATLYS board from Digilent, a HDMI port equipped Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, and a serial RS232 port for communication. The board was able to manipulate and decode the communication between the Blu-ray player and the HDTV without being detected.

There may be legal implications to circumventing copyright protection, but the researchers' intent was never to create a pirating process, because the pirates already have figured out much simpler methods.

“Rather, our intention was to fundamentally investigate the safety of the HDCP system and to financially assess the actual cost for the complete knockout,” said Tim Güneysu, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at RUB, in a press release. “The fact that we have achieved our goal in a degree thesis and with material costs of approximately 200 Euro[s] definitely does not speak for the safety of the current HDCP system.”

Source is
http://www.pcworld.com/article/245033/researchers_crack_bluray_encryption_with_cheap_hardware.html

Millions using YouTube Editor to enhance videos after posting

YouTube in 2011 is a very different beast from its early days as a depository for funny cat videos and video blogs. Now that the site has fully committed to bringing professional-grade content to its audience with one hundred original channels, the amateur clips are starting to look out of place.

But of the many initiatives that YouTube has implemented to raise the bar for videos on its site, one of the most directly accessible is the YouTube editor, which was launched last year and allows those without access to programs like iMovie or Final Cut Pro the ability to edit videos before posting.

As YouTube has evolved, so has the YouTube editor: Nine weeks ago, the Edit Video feature was launched, allowing users to modify already-posted videos without having to re-upload their videos or change the URL. It’s a game-changer for any frequent YouTube user — and since this feature has been enabled, four million videos have been enhanced by two million unique users, according to YouTube product manager Jason Toff.


The YouTube editor is deliberately designed to make it easy for users lacking editing experience to improve their videos — in fact, features were stripped out during user testing to to keep things from being too confusing, Toff told us. “There are a handful of tools everyone uses — as you add more buttons, people found it to be less easy to use,” Toff said via phone.

Central to the Edit Video feature is the Google-y named “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which when activated identifies and adjusts stabilization, brightness and color correction issues within a video. While it’s possible to make these fixes manually within the Edit Video feature, those changes apply across an entire clip. “I’m Feeling Lucky,” meanwhile, can make dynamic adjustments within the clip, so if a clip starts off too bright and then gets too dark, both issues would be addressed.
Like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google home page, this feature isn’t infallible, especially on footage filmed in dark rooms. But according to Toff, “if it works, it works amazingly well” — and if it doesn’t work, it can be deactivated with one click.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button was not the brainchild of a Google employee, but was instead a project developed by YouTube summer intern Timothy Wong, a computer science student at Stanford University. The challenge he was given, according to Toff, was to “find a way to make videos better just by pressing a button.” Wong completed the challenge in less than two months, with the feature launching just as his internship reached an end.

While YouTube software engineer Rushabh Doshi said that this isn’t the first user-facing feature developed by a Google intern, “the scale of Timmy’s impact is really huge.”

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/millions-using-youtube-editor-to-enhance-videos-after-posting/

What Fox effect? Hulu sees little downside from authentication

When Fox announced that it would require TV Everywhere-type logins to stream a new TV episode the day after it aired, there was some concern that Hulu would see some of its audience disappear. But if comScore numbers are to be believed, Hulu’s audience over the first few months of the new TV season has remained largely intact, and was actually up in October.

According to comScore’s most recent video rankings report, Hulu had 29.2 million unique viewers in October, who watched 791.4 million videos during that time. Viewers watched about 202 minutes, or just short of 3.5 hours each, on average. And Hulu served up 1.36 billion video ads, or an average of 46.5 per viewer. All of those metrics are up significantly from September, when Hulu had 27 million viewers who watched 642 million videos for an average of 180 minutes each.

And it means Hulu’s audience pretty much picked up where it left off after the end of the Spring TV season in May. During that month — the last before the major networks take a summer break from most new, original programming — Hulu had 28.5 million viewers who tuned in for 217 minutes each, according to comScore. And Hulu was able to serve up 1.32 billion ads, or 47.6 per viewer.

But Hulu’s October audience numbers come as one of its major content partners has placed restrictions on online viewership. In August, Fox announced that it would require online viewers to prove they subscribed to satellite TV for next-day access to its TV episodes on Hulu and Fox.com.

That Hulu’s audience has remained strong despite seeing some of its most popular programming — like Family Guy, New Girl and Glee — on the shelf for eight days is a little surprising. After all, Hulu is the place where viewers tune in online to “catch up” on shows they might have missed on live TV, or forgot to DVR. And the authentication plan today is limited only to Dish Network subscribers, which means that even about 90 percent of all those who pay for TV are still unable to watch episodes the day after they air.

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/fox-hulu-authentication-effect/

Blu-ray software sales finally start accelerating

Despite the growing number of streaming options available to consumers for new movies, Blu-ray is slowing starting to grow and become a popular choice among consumers.

According to a report released by the Digital Entertainment Group, Blu-ray sales are up 58 percent during the third quarter of 2011 compared to the previous year. In fact, the amount of money that consumers spend on home entertainment has seen the first increase since the U.S. recession began in early 2008. With a five percent increase over the previous year, a portion of that was driven by Blu-ray sales as well as a 13 percent increase in electronic sell-through. The refers to the amount of digital downloads consumers have made to devices such as gaming consoles, set-top boxes, tablets and smartphones.

The amount of Blu-ray players in U.S. homes has risen to 33.5 million. This constitutes a 52 percent increase over the previous year and includes Sony’s PlayStation 3, set-top Blu-ray players and home theater-in-a-box systems with Blu-ray capability. When compared to DVD, Blu-ray sales have started to outpace DVD during the first week, but only on major-box office hits like Captain America: The First Avenger, Bridesmaids or X-Men: First Class. Catalog Blu-ray sales have also seen a large spike with a 60 percent increase compared to the previous year. This improvement is mainly attributed to titles such as Star Wars, The Big Lebowski, Citizen Kane and Scarface.

In addition to Blu-ray players, over 5 million high definition televisions were sold in the third quarter. This brings HDTV penetration to nearly 70 million U.S. households. The DEG data also points to the rapid demise of brick and mortar rental chains like Blockbuster. Renting titles from those establishments has dropped by nearly 30 percent while kiosk rentals, like Redbox, has seen an increase of about 23 percent. Subscription services like Netflix have increased by about five percent over the previous year and video-on-demand purchased have also increased by five percent. DVD sales seem to be on a downward spiral and are pulling down the sell-thru percentage on physical software.

Source is
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/blu-ray-software-sales-finally-start-accelerating/

How Does Standard DVD Upscaling Compare to Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

NOTICE: HD-DVD is now officially discontinued. However, information on HD-DVD, and its comparison to Blu-ray, is still contained in this article for historical purposes, as well as the fact that there are still many HD-DVD player owners, and HD-DVD players and discs will continue to be sold and traded on the secondary market for some time.

Answer: With the advent of high definition television, the development of components to match the resolution capabilities of HDTV are becoming more important. As a solution, more and more DVD players are equipped with "upscaling" capability to better match the performance of the DVD player with the capabilities of the today's HDTV's.

However, the introduction of Blu-ray and HD-DVD has confused the issue regarding the difference between the upscaling of standard DVD and the true high definition capability of Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

For an explanation of DVD video upscaling and how it relates to true high definition video, such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, keep on reading...

Standard DVD Resolution

A standard DVD player, without upscaling, can output video resolution at 720x480 (480i). A progressive scan DVD player, without upscaling, can output 720x480 (480p - progressive scan) video signals.

480i represents 720 pixels displayed across a screen horizontally and 480 pixels down a screen vertically. This arrangement yields 480 horizontal lines, which are, in turn, displayed alternately. In other words, all the odd lines are displayed, followed by all the even lines.

480p represents 720 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 480 pixels down the screen vertically. This arrangement yields 480 horizontal lines on the screen, which are, in turn, displayed progressively, or each line displayed following another.

The Upscaling Process

Upscaling is a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV, which is typically 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080i - and, in many cases, 1080p).

720p represents 1,280 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 720 pixels down the screen vertically. This arrangement yields 720 horizontal lines on the screen, which are, in turn, displayed progressively, or each line displayed following another.

1080i represents 1,920 pixels displayed across a screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down a screen vertically. This arrangement yields 1,080 horizontal lines, which are, in turn, displayed alternately. In other words, all the odd lines are displayed, followed by all the even lines.

1080p, on the other hand, represents 1,080 horizontal lines displayed sequentially. This means all lines are displayed during the same pass. 1080p is the highest quality HD display format.

The Practical Effect Of DVD Upscaling

Visually, there is very little difference to the eye of the average consumer between 720p and 1080i. However, 720p can deliver a slightly smoother-looking image, due to the fact that lines and pixels are displayed in a consecutive pattern, rather than in an alternate pattern.

The upscaling process does a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a DVD player to the native pixel display resolution of an HDTV capable television, resulting in better detail and color consistency.

However, upscaling, as it is currently implemented, cannot convert standard DVD images into true high-definition images. In fact, although upscaling works well with fixed pixel displays, such as Plasma and LCD televisions, results are not always consistent on CRT-based high definition televisions.

Source is
http://hometheater.about.com/od/blurayandhddvd/f/blurayhddvd2.htm

YouTube Snags Hundreds of Disney Movie Rentals

Move over Rebecca Black, YouTube Movies is about to make room for “hundreds” of Disney movie rentals.

YouTube’s less than one-year-old service, which offers web-based movies and TV show rentals for as little as 99 cents, now adds thousands of Walt Disney Studio films to its already substantial library. YouTube is also adding movies from Disney-Pixar and DreamWorks Studios.

This official announcement comes just weeks after a report that Disney and YouTube were working on a deal to deliver original video content on the video sharing service. While, according to the YouTube statement, only a handful of Disney films are available now, the service will soon fill with hundreds more, including classics like Alice in Wonderland and Pixar’s Cars, as well as some non-classics like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. In addition to the movies, Disney will offer behind-the-scenes clips and interviews for the films in YouTube’s Movie Extras area.

Disney has recently made deals–though mostly for television shows–with streaming rivals like Netflix and Amazon.The latter also offers Disney films to rent. Netflix currently only offers a online streaming option, though you can rent Disney DVDs through the service.

The new Walt Disney Studio rentals will, for now, only be available to YouTube and Google TV users in the U.S. and Canada.

Source is
http://mashable.com/2011/11/23/youtube-disney-rentals/

Advanced Micro Peripherals offers H.264 encoder designed for time-critical applications

Advanced Micro Peripherals (AMP) has introduced the H264-ULL-PMC: an ultra-low latency H.264 encoder that can capture and compress up to two analogue video inputs at up to 1080p HD resolution to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) standard.

According to AMP, this dual-channel encoder on a PMC Mezzanine form factor board is ideal for time-critical applications, as it offers ultra-low latency encoding of below 40ms across the entire capture resolution range.

The H264-ULL-PMC supports dual H.264 encodes at resolutions up to 1080p30, or a single encode at 1080p60, and this encoding can flexibly configured to suit a range of bandwidth and storage requirements.

It utilises two analogue HD video input channels, each of which can be independently configured for analogue YPbPr HD, analogue RGsB (Sync on Green) or analogue VGA (separate HSync, VSync).

GOG: DRM is Counter-Productive, And Steam Is Steamrolling Its Competitors

Good Old Games, purveyors of DRM-free classic games via digital distribution, and also belonging to the same company that develops the Witcher franchise, has warned of the dangers of DRM, and also revealed the overwhelming popularity of Steam compared to other digital distributions services.

Speaking at the London Game Conferance, GOG's managing director Guillaume Rambourg warned publishers not to embrace DRM, as "customers hate DRM".

"The reality is DRM does not protect your content. Every game is pirated within a few hours of release or more often before it's released. DRM is not protecting your product or your sales, it's going to harm your sales in the long run," Rambourg added.

And as DRM doesn't protect publishers from piracy, and that pirated copies already have the DRM removed, the only gamers it affects are the actual legitimate buyers. "By putting DRM in your games you are working against your consumers, you are harming those you should cherish. It's only hurting your loyal consumers, which is counter-productive," warned Rambourg.

Interestingly, Rambourg also used the talk to reveal the dominance of Steam in the digital gaming arena. Referring to sales figures for Witcher 2, Rambourg revealed that GOG, the official distribution platform of the game, sold 40,000 copies of the game. Other digital distribution platforms sold a combined 10,000 copies, but Steam single-handedly managed to sell 200,000 copies.

Steam was hacked last week in which the user accounts of 35 million users were accessed, including encrypted credit card details.

Source is
http://www.digital-digest.com/news-63192-OG-DRM-is-Counter-Productive-And-Steam-Is-Steamrolling-Its-Competitors.html

Flixster hands out iTunes codes to unhappy UltraViolet users

How bad are things for Hollywood’s UltraViolet initiative right now? So bad that Warner Bros., the studio behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, is giving away coupon codes for the movie to Apple’s iTunes store to placate unhappy customers.

UltraViolet was meant to improve the user experience for movie buyers, by allowing them to purchase a title once and watch it on multiple devices afterward. But the initial implementation of UltraViolet, which relies on Warner Bros.’ Flixster app to stream and download movies online that consumers bought in Blu-ray or DVD format, has been getting panned in customer reviews.

We’ve already covered customer dissatisfaction with the Flixster app in the first two UltraViolet releases, Horrible Bosses and The Green Lantern, and that dissatisfaction continues with the latest Harry Potter title. Of the more than 400 reviews for the Blu-ray version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 on Amazon, more than half are 1-star reviews, and most of those are focused on the poor user experience for UltraViolet. That’s bad news for Warner Bros., which was hoping that a major franchise like Harry Potter could help introduce even more new users to the UltraViolet digital format.

It’s such bad news, in fact, that Flixster has sought to appease unhappy users by offering them the ability to download the movie for free from Apple’s iTunes instead. As pointed out by BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, Flixster has begun issuing iTunes coupon codes to users who issue complaints at support.ultraviolet.flixster.com. Multiple reviewers claim to have gotten access to the iTunes version of the Harry Potter film, and Greenfield even got Flixster to comp him a copy without providing an actual UltraViolet code to prove he had purchased the film.

Before the launch of UltraViolet, iTunes was a popular way for some studios to offer a digital copy of a film to consumers when they purchased a physical copy of the disc. But since Flixster is the first application to officially support UltraViolet, that’s where the studios are placing their bets. To some, UltraViolet was even seen as an alternative to iTunes, which today holds about half of all digital movie sales online.

To further complicate matters, Apple and iTunes are not part of the DECE UltraViolet consortium. In fact, Apple and partner Disney are putting their efforts behind an alternative to UltraViolet called KeyChest.

For those reasons, it seems unlikely that sending dissatisfied is a long-term solution to UltraViolet’s ills. And for studios looking to tout the advantages of their new digital movie format, pushing users to iTunes seems ill-advised. Then again, if you can’t beat ‘em…

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/flixster-itunes-ultraviolet/

Microsoft Expression Encoder 4.0 SP1

Microsoft's Expression Encoder is a versatile video production tool with several applications: it can carry out basic video editing, convert videos into formats ready for mobile devices or the web, capture activity on your PC desktop and save it to a movie, broadcast live video across a network, and more.

The program is highly configurable. When converting videos to VC-1 or WMA formats, say, you're able to set your encoding mode, buffer window, frame rate, key frame interval, bit rate, file metadata, frame size and aspect ratio. There are options to crop the video, adjust its volume or add an overlay. And if you want to, say, deinterlace your source video then you don't just get a checkbox: the program offers no less than 8 deinterlacing options.

Obviously all this power does make for a degree of complexity, but fortunately you don't have to delve into every single setting (not unless you're really interested, anyway). When converting videos Expression Encoder also offers a "Presets" pane; if you browse to and select the preset you want, perhaps a WMV VC-1 Xbox 260 HD 1080p, then the program will automatically configure everything else to match.

Please note, if you don't enter a licence key during installation then Expression Encoder runs in its basic, free form. Purchasing a licence to obtain Expression Encoder 4 Pro will gain you extras like Silverlight DRM, GPU acceleration when carrying out H.264 encoding, and support for more input formats (AVCHD and Dolby Digital), amongst other items. The price for Encoder Pro alone is $199, and you can find out more at the Microsoft site.

Source is
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/3250020/microsoft-expression-encoder-40-sp1/

One-Blue Announces Dell to Join Licensing Program for Blu-ray Disc

One-Blue today announced that Dell Inc. has joined the One-Blue product licensing program as a licensor. Dell brings important patents essential to the Blu-ray Disc™ standard and joins current licensors Cyberlink, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, JVC Kenwood, Panasonic, Philips and Sony.

"We are pleased to announce that Dell has joined our licensing program as a licensor and is now making available their essential patents via the One-Blue program," says Roel Kramer, CEO of One-Blue.

"As one of the original developers of Blu-ray Disc™, Dell is pleased to be joining the One-Blue patent pool where we will continue to provide ongoing support for the Blu-ray Disc™ format," said Brian Zucker, Principal Engineer, Office of the CTO, Dell.  "Through our involvement in this program we can share the benefits of this unique technology with a vast ecosystem of licensors and licensees."

One-Blue administers the licensing program for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc™ products and is the joint licensing agent of its licensors. For hardware and software products, the product license covers Blu-ray Disc™, DVD and CD essential patents; for disc products, the product license covers Blu-ray Disc™ essential patents. One-Blue is an innovative patent pool that levels the playing field, reduces costs, and fosters fair use of the patent system in the entire optical disc sector.

Any holder of patents essential to optical formats used in Blu-ray Disc™ products is invited to submit patents for evaluation and join the licensing program as a new licensor. Any company interested in obtaining licenses for one or more Blu-ray Disc™ products under the One-Blue product licensing program is requested to contact One-Blue at the e-mail address listed below.

Source is
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/16/4058648/one-blue-announces-dell-to-join.html

Native JavaScript H.264 decoder offers compelling demo of JS performance

Mozilla developer Michael Bebenita has released a JavaScript-based H.264 decoder that is intended to run natively in Web browsers. The decoder, which can display video at 30 frames per second on conventional hardware, is yet another compelling demonstration of JavaScript’s performance potential.

JavaScript creator Brendan Eich included a demonstration of the H.264 decoder—codenamed Broadway—during a presentation at the ACM’s annual OOPSLA conference. The demonstration attracted some attention, prompting the developers to publish the source code.

Broadway is based on the open source H.264 decoder that Google uses in Android. The Mozilla developers simplified the Android H.264 decoder—which is written in the C programming language—and converted it to JavaScript. They used Emscripten, a compiler that translates LLVM bitcode into JavaScript. In addition to the Emscripten-generated H.264 decoder, the Broadway developers are also working on a separate implementation that is coded by hand.

Code generated by the Emscripten compiler typically runs about 3-4 times slower than the equivalent binary that you would get by compiling the same C code with the -O3 flag in GCC. But some recent JavaScript performance optimizations in Firefox further improve performance.

The Broadway developers caution that the H.264 decoder will only perform as expected in recent Firefox nightly builds, which incorporate the latest JavaScript performance improvements—particularly a new type inference mechanism that gives JavaScript execution speed a considerable boost.

The Broadway project offers useful insight into JavaScript performance characteristics, but its not really intended for real-world usage. Mozilla’s objections to H.264 on the basis of patent encumbrances still stand and make it unlikely that users will see the video codec supported out of the box in Firefox.

Broadway is also highly CPU-intensive, which makes it impractical to use. That could change in the future, however. Hardware acceleration could be achieved via WebGL, reducing the decoder’s load on the CPU. The initial Broadway implementation didn’t include any special optimizations, aside from the ones applied by Emscripten. The developers were able to crank its performance up by 40 percent this week with some tweaking. Bebenita says that there is still plenty of room for further speedups.

When Bebenita was tasked with creating the JavaScript decoder, he was skeptical and not convinced that it could be done at all. The project’s success surprised him and apparently exceeded his expectations.

“Recently I joined Mozilla, it’s a fantastic place! My first task was to look into pure software H.264 decoding in JavaScript! I must admit, at first I thought it was a little bit crazy, and that it couldn’t be done. Turns out that, luckily, I was very wrong,” he wrote in a blog entry. “The result is quite remarkable, we can reach a rate of nearly 30 fps decoding video purely in JavaScript.”

Mike Shaver, former Mozilla vice president of technical strategy, highlighted Broadway in a blog post that he wrote last week about JavaScript performance. He compared various approaches that have been proposed to improve client-side performance on the Web and emphasizes the advantages of Mozilla’s JavaScript-centric approach.

“We’ve repeatedly seen that JS can be improved to do what is claimed as impossible in terms of performance, and there are still many opportunities to make JS faster still. This benefits not only new applications, but also existing libraries and apps that are on the web today, and the people who use them,” he wrote. “Video decoding is a very computationally-intensive process, which is one reason that phones often provide specialized hardware implementations. Being able to decode at 30 frames a second [in JavaScript] on laptop hardware is a Big Deal, and points to a new target for JS performance: comparable to tightly-written C code.”

The Broadway source code is available for download on GitHub. To test it, you will want to use the latest Firefox nightly build. The Emscripten compiler is also available on GitHub.

Source is
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/10/native-javascript-h264-decoder-offers-compelling-demo-of-js-performance.ars

Fox Bows Virtual Disc Store in the U.K.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Nov. 14 launched the first-ever virtual disc store in the United Kingdom — capable of selling new-release Blu-ray Disc and DVD movies via a smartphone.

Using a free smartphone app created by HMV — a well-known music and entertainment retail chain in the U.K. and Ireland — consumers scan the QR code of a chosen Blu-ray or DVD title. The phone will automatically launch hmv.com and the selected product page. Users then click to add the Blu-ray or DVD to their basket and check out.

Fox titles available at launch include: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Blu-ray/DVD); X-Men First Class (Blu-ray/DVD); Rio (DVD); Mr. Popper’s Penguins (DVD); Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Blu-ray); Home Alone: The Complete Collection (DVD); Alien Anthology (Blu-ray); Glee: Season Two (DVD); Family Guy: Season 11 (DVD); and 24: The Complete Series (DVD).

“It’s a convenient and easy experience for shoppers, and by leveraging HMV’s user-friendly mobile site, Fox is able to present its holiday offerings in a fast, yet cost effective manner,” said Robert Price, managing director of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Best Buy Offers Free Blu-Ray Player with Purchase of Sprint Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch

It looks like Best Buy is determined to match Radio Shack's Black Friday promo that offers AT&T's Samsung Galaxy S II for just $49.99 (37 EUR) with a new two-year agreement.

In this regard, the retailer announced it will offer a Samsung BD-D5100 Blu-ray player valued at $89.99 (66 EUR) for free, with purchase of Sprint's Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch.

The promotional offer is available beginning today, through Saturday, November 19, and allows customers who purchase Sprint's Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch smartphone for $199.99 (147 EUR), with a 2-year activation, to receive a Samsung Blu-ray player at no additional cost.

According to Best Buy, all customers who purchase the Android smartphone will receive the Blu-ray player beginning the week of December 5.

“This is a great holiday offer for our customers and something that they just can't find anywhere else. Through our partnership with Samsung and Sprint, we're able to bring the best of the smartphone and home theater categories together into one great deal,” said Scott Anderson, head of merchandising for Best Buy Mobile.

Those unfamiliar with the key features of the Samsung BD-D5100 Blu-ray player should know that the device supports a wide range of playable formats, including Blu-ray, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, DivX HD, WMV, WMA, MP3 and JPEG.

In addition, users will be able to turn the Epic 4G Touch into smart remote for the Blu-ray player, or user the AllShare feature to send photos and videos from the smartphone wirelessly to a TV via Blu-ray player over a home network.

The Blu-ray player packs built-in 256MB flash memory, HDMI port, as well as Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital TrueHD decoders.

It provides access to video content from Best Buy CinemaNow Netflix and YouTube, which can be enhanced via the HDMI interface.

Source is
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Best-Buy-Offers-Free-Blu-Ray-Player-with-Purchase-of-Sprint-Galaxy-S-II-Epic-4G-Touch-234228.shtml

WeVideo: The next big thing?

WeVideo is basically a Final Cut Pro clone in the cloud. You don't have to install or buy anything to use it (the basic free account), and it performs in real time, with very little waiting for rendering.

Obviously, WeVideo's use of the cloud is a huge convenience that helps free up your hard drive. But more importantly, it enables what is perhaps WeVideo's biggest selling point: collaboration. Like a marriage between Final Cut Pro and Google Docs, WeVideo makes it possible for teams to remotely hack away at projects and even track changes as they go. From what I've seen so far, it works well, and I think it has the potential to be something big.

According to CEO Jostein Svendsen, WeVideo was a spin-off of an educational tool initially developed for children in Europe. Thus, it's no surprise that the interface is as simple as it is. It lets you drag and drop media, and manipulate the canvas with your mouse. Yet at the same time, WeVideo's creators have managed to pack this simple interface with a lot of the features and power that even serious video editors are used to. And that is what separates WeVideo from some of the other Web-based video editors on the market.

It's important to note that a free WeVideo account is only capable of editing 360p video, which means only projects destined for YouTube and similar sites would be a good idea. Paid account tiers start at $6.99 per month, but they unlock higher resolutions, more storage, more collaborator invites, access to licensed content, and much more.

If you're still not convinced that WeVideo is the next big thing, then perhaps one if its partners can help sway your confidence. Only a month after launching, WeVideo partnered up with YouTube and became an official plug-in available to the video giant's users. What's more, Svendsen assured us that WeVideo is also being adopted by hordes of prosumers and being courted by a number of (unnamed) companies to be their editing platform of choice.

Source is
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-57322646-12/wevideo-the-next-big-thing/

Music Industry: Copyright Laws Don't Go Far Enough

Facing a public backlash against the music industry (and Hollywood's) latest attempt to force lawmakers to intervene on their behalf, the RIAA has come out attacking existing laws for being "wrongly interpreted", and says that the newly proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) won't "kill the Internet" as critics have warned.

First up, at the New York Entertainment and Technology Law Conference, RIAA senior VP of litigation Jennifer Pariser attacked the current DMCA legislation as good legislation being "interpreted wrongly" by courts.

Specifically referring to the "Safe Harbor" provision, which gives protection to ISPs and websites such as YouTube against the actions made by its users, Pariser says that too much protection has been given to Internet service providers, and that service providers, and websites, have not acted independently enough to remove infringing content, so called "red flags", and the courts have been complicit in allowing the situation to get out of hand.

Service providers are typically resistant to independently act on possible cases of copyright infringement, as these private companies don't feel they have the legal standing to judge the legal and illegal status of content, especially without the copyright holders providing clues as to just what content belongs to them. In the Viacom vs YouTube trial, YouTube showed examples where Viacom employees uploaded copyrighted content anonymously to promote Viacom content, and Google, YouTube's parent company, argued that without rights holders pointing out acts of infringement, they would have trouble identifying just what should be allowed and what rights holders may allow for promotional purposes (for example, Susan Boyle's original Britain's Got Talent audition video, which may have been uploaded without authorisation, but has ended up benefiting the rights holder tremendously).

But consumer rights critics would argue exactly the opposite, with several high profile cases where the DMCA has been abused to silence opposition and dissenting opinions, to the point where Google at one point revealed that a third of all DMCA complaints sent to the company were invalid, and more than half were cases of companies targeting their competitors.

In a separate op-ed piece on CNET.com, the RIAA's chief Cary Sherman also defended recent efforts by the copyright lobby to enact even harsher copyright laws, specifically SOPA.

SOPA has been criticized for being over-reaching, and being a corporate backed Internet censorship program, whereby the government will be given the rights to seize domain names and websites of any website deemed to be engaged in acts of piracy. Rights holders would be allowed to force financial providers, such as PayPal or ad networks, to cease support for websites that it merely alleges is engaged in infringement activity, even if there is only a single link that may be linking to infringing content on the entire website, or even if the only "evidence" is just a suspicion (the legislation states that if the website is seen as doing things to "avoid confirming a high probability" of piracy, that is if, without real evidence of infringement, a website can still get into trouble if it's acting suspiciously).

Rights holders can also issue infringement notices to financial service providers to, in effect, kill off a website without the need to present court tested proof of infringement, and by bypassing the courts, the "defendants" are not afforded their due process rights. This effectively kills the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA, solving the one problem the RIAA has been at pains to point out.

But the RIAA's argue Sherman says that all of these are necessary, and critics have been using too much "hyperbole" to get their point across. Responding to concerns regarding the focus on a single infringing link, Sherman says that this is deliberate, and that by focussing on a single link or page, as opposed to the entire website, it allows for the "Cutting off funding or access to only the illegal part of the site while leaving the rest of the site intact promotes legitimate expression."

And as for charges that the bill will kill off tech innovation, Sherman concludes by saying that "aspiring songwriters" also need to be protected, just as tech innovators are by "litigious defenders" of patents such as Apple. But the RIAA, the board of which is mainly represented the four major labels, has also been accused of ripping off the very artists that they say they're defending with bills like SOPA, with pitiful royalty rates for real artists, while the labels keep most for themselves.

Source is
http://www.digital-digest.com/news-63187-Music-Industry-Copyright-Laws-Dont-Go-Far-Enough.html

'Insatiable' Brits gobble Blu-Ray, deserve reward

Britain's appetite for buying movies makes it a lively laboratory for Hollywood's marketing experiments. One of these is the "triple play" bundling of a Blu-Ray disc, regular DVD and digital file in the same package - a practice now standard here. Unfortunately, however, we won't be at the forefront of UltraViolet just yet, billed as the second generation of triple play.

20th Century Fox says Blu-Ray sales rose 49 per cent in Q3 over the previous quarter, and Vincent Marcais, Senior Vice President of International Marketing, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, says he expects Blu-Ray viewing to overtake DVD in 2013.

"The UK has the biggest per capita proportion of buyers in the world, the demand of British movie buyers is insatiable. Ninety per cent of UK consumers who are actively involved with video choose to buy. That's really striking, compared to US where people are renting."

As for UltraViolet, the cloud locker scheme devised by cross-industry consortium DECE, it would seem we'll have to wait for that too. But Marcais thinks we in the UK deserve a little something for our open-walletedness.

"Where you get a lot of people who buy content, I think we should reward that," he says. "The notion for consumers is safety - buy once and play everywhere."

"Personally, I'm convinced that Blu-Ray will be the gateway to the UltraViolet file, so if you buy a Blu-Ray disc that has an UltraViolet copy on it, you have the safety of an HD disc - but it's also in the locker for you on all your other devices. In the beginning that's going to be the environment."

Source is
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/07/bluray_up_uv_wait/

DEG Charts Major Q3 Blu-ray Disc Growth

The Digital Entertainment Group’s (DEG) latest study showed an impressive rise in the sale of Blu-ray Disc hardware and software.

In total, the “Third Quarter 2011 Home Entertainment Report” charted a 5 percent increase in third-quarter home entertainment spending from the same period a year ago. The overall home entertainment sales rise was said to be the first since the first quarter of 2008 when the current Great Recession began to surface.

During the period the number of Blu-ray homes jumped 52 percent from a year earlier, to 33.5 million, according to DEG estimates.

“The third-quarter 2011 results mark the continued stabilization of the industry, underscored by significant gains in Blu-ray Disc and solid increases in electronic sell-through spending,” the group said in a statement on the findings. “This growth reflects an encouraging shift in the marketplace as we head into the all-important fourth quarter.”

Blu-ray Disc sell-through rose 58 percent in the period as electronic sell-through rose almost 13 percent compared with a year ago.

Nearly 50 percent of the home releases of major box-office-winning films were on Blu-ray Disc, while Blu-ray Disc releases of catalog titles rose more than 60 percent, led by popular classics including “Star Wars,” “Citizen Kane,” “Scarface” and “The Big Lebowski,” among others.

The number of Blu-ray homes continues to climb, soaring 52 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier (including BD set-tops, Play- Station3s and HTiBs.) Total household penetration of all Blu-ray-compatible devices now stands at more than 33.5 million U.S. homes.

Positive indicators for further growth include 5.5 million HDTVs sold to U.S. consumers in the third quarter 2011, bringing the penetration rate of HDTVs to more than 69.5 million U.S. households to date.

For the fourth quarter, the DEG said it is optimistic the growth trends will also be helped by planned new title releases including: “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Cars 2,” “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Hangover 2,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “The Help,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “The Smurfs” and “Water for Elephants.”

Source is
http://www.twice.com/article/476291-DEG_Charts_Major_Q3_Blu_ray_Disc_Growth.php

How to Rip a DVD With HandBrake

Addicted to movies? You can watch video on your tablet, smartphone, or portable media player, of course--but since none of those gadgets have optical drives, you can't put any of your DVDs into them. Although new disc releases with Digital Copy come with one free digital version of the movie, you need some outside help for dealing with DVDs that were released before Digital Copy became mainstream. Here's how to use the HandBrake application to rip copies of your DVDs into whatever format you like, so you can play the movies wherever and however you want.

Disclaimer: To rip encrypted DVDs, you'll need the DVD43 plug-in, which circumvents the publisher's digital rights management technology. Such procedures currently occupy something of a legal gray area. You probably won't face any legal consequences if you simply rip your legally purchased movie collection for your own use, but we're just going to present the instructions and let you decide for yourself whether to follow the steps. PCWorld is not responsible for any damages that result from this how-to.

1. Download and install HandBrake. This open-source video transcoder is free, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

2. If you are looking to rip an encrypted DVD, grab a DVD decrypter such as DVD43 to circumvent the built-in disc restrictions.

3. When you launch the HandBrake program, click the Source button and select the DVD from the drop-down menu. HandBrake will then scan the disc for titles to copy. This step can take some time, depending on how much data is on your disc.

4. When HandBrake has finished its scan, click the Title drop-down menu to choose the section to copy. This step can involve a bit of trial and error; generally speaking, though, if you want to rip the main movie, select the title with the longest run time. Otherwise, you might end up with a rip of the previews or the menu screen, but not the actual movie.

5. Next, look at HandBrake’s preset menu on the right side. It has a list of preset outputs for a slew of Apple devices (which tend to be finicky about the kinds of movie files they'll play). If you don't intend to use any of the game consoles or iOS devices included in the presets, you can manually arrange your own settings by choosing Normal or High Profile.

6. The Video tab lets you fine-tune your project, and has some options that will allow you to adjust the final quality of your movie. Just remember that the higher the quality, the larger the file size. If your device is short on storage space, try the Target Size option to have HandBrake rip to your storage requirements.

7. You can tweak the audio quality under the Audio tab. Here you can select different bit rates and Dolby processing, but the default settings are often good enough.

8. If you are ripping more than one title, click Add to Queue; otherwise, click Start, and watch the magic begin.

9. But Handbrake do not support merge videos into one, edit the videos and convert it to 3D. You need get a much more powerful tool to enjoy those advanced functions. We recommend you Leawo DVD Ripper.

Source is
http://www.pcworld.com/article/242876/how_to_rip_a_dvd_with_handbrake.html

Another DRM Bites The Dust: Convert Your Rhapsody DRM'd Files Or Lose Them Forever

The dangers of DRM has been highlighted against as Rhapsody/RealNetworks announces they will shut off support for the DRM system used in RAX music files, and if users don't take action now, they will lose all of their legally purchased music forever.

Rhapsody has sent a message too all of its customers urging them to convert their RAX music files purchased before July 2008 to audio CD, or face the prospect of not being able to play them ever again after November 7th, the switch off date for the RAX DRM.

Rhapsody killed off its DRM music service in July 2008 to follow the industry trend of moving away from DRM, after public protests by users.

But for the unlucky Rhapsody users with DRM music, they need to burn the music to audio CD and then rip them again in order to get a DRM free digital copy, as Rhapsody will not be providing replacement, DRM-free MP3s. Rhapsody describes this potentially arduous process as a "small step".

"Once you take this small step, you can continue to play these tracks on your audio CD or rip them to any format you desire and play them on your PC," read Rhapsody's message to customers.

While the DRM server will be shut off, the DRM'd songs may still continue to work, as long as users don't "change to a new computer or substantially update your current computer".

Source is
http://forum.digital-digest.com/f145/another-drm-bites-dust-convert-your-rhapsody-drmd-files-lose-them-forever-95331.html

Blu-ray: Still Alive as Disc Sales Soar

So Blu-ray is on life support? A terminal case, soon to be replaced by streaming services such as Netflix? Not so fast, says the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), a studio-funded trade group based in Los Angeles.


In fact, Blu-ray disc sales in the U.S. soared 58 percent in the third quarter of 2011 compared to the same period last year, according to DEG's newly released Home Entertainment Report.

The home entertainment business also appears to be rising out of its Great Recession slump, albeit slowly.

Consumer spending on home entertainment in Q3 rose nearly 5 percent compared to a year earlier, the first increase since the first quarter of 2008 when the recession got underway, the DEG study says.

Bye-Bye Blockbuster 
 
Blockbuster's demise is evident in the DEG data as well. Brick-and-mortar disc rentals in Q3 plummeted nearly 29 percent year over year.

Kiosk rentals, meanwhile, showed a dramatic 23 percent rise in Q3 year over year, a strong indication that disc rental machines from Redbox and other providers are a big hit with consumers.

The number of U.S. homes with Blu-ray players, including Sony PS3s, home theater-in-a-box systems (HTiBs), and BD set-tops, now stands at 33.5 million--a year-over-year increase of 52 percent. Plummeting prices of Blu-ray players, which now sell for under $100, played a role here, no doubt.


Overall, the DEG report shows impressive gains for Blu-ray, which nevertheless will lose the format war to streaming services over time. For now, however, there's some life left in the business of delivering video entertainment on shiny discs.

Source is
http://www.pcworld.com/article/242893/bluray_still_alive_as_disc_sales_soar.html

How to Rip a Blu-ray Disc With MakeMKV

If you are looking to make digital backups of your favorite Blu-ray movies, you can find few better tools than MakeMKV, a freeware video transcoder that is quick and easy to use. Like HandBrake, MakeMKV is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, unlike HandBrake, it includes its own set of decryption tools. Here’s how it works.

Disclaimer: In order to let you make copies of your Blu-ray movies, MakeMKV uses built-in decryption tools that circumvent digital rights management technology. Such procedures currently occupy something of a legal gray area. You probably won't face any legal consequences if you rip your legally purchased Blu-ray movie collection for your own use, but we're just going to present the instructions and let you decide for yourself whether to follow these steps. PCWorld is not responsible for any damages that result from this how-to.

1. Download and install MakeMKV. The program is completely free during the beta-testing phase, but that may change when the final release is available, so get the software while you can.

2. Put a Blu-ray movie into your PC’s Blu-ray drive, and click the Blu-ray button in the middle of the screen.

3. MakeMKV will scan the disc to identify the titles to rip.

4. When the software is done, select the location for your movie in the Output Folder menu box, click Make MKV, and wait. Expect an average Blu-ray disc to take at least 30 minutes to rip to your hard drive.

That's pretty much it! MakeMKV undoubtedly offers one of the easiest ways to rip a Blu-ray disc, and it's a great tool for beginners who may be new to Blu-ray video transcoders.

However, be aware that the output file is in the MKV (Matroska) file format, and it won’t play just anywhere. This compact file format is about 40 percent smaller than a traditional Blu-ray data disc, but playback demands a media player that is capable of handling MKV files. Try Videolan’s VLC Player if you don’t already have it installed.

MakeMKV does not come with a lot of video or audio options to allow you to tweak the quality or file size of your finished movie; for a free video converter, though, it does the job well. If you want to burn the resulting MKV backup to a DVD or Blu-ray disc so that it will play on a DVD player, you need a tool such as Leawo DVD Creator to convert the MKV file to a smaller, DVD-friendly format.

Source is
http://www.pcworld.com/article/242878/how_to_rip_a_bluray_disc_with_makemkv.html

Consumers Finally Choosing Blu-ray Over DVD, Study Implies

Consumers are tending to favor Blu-ray over DVD when buying copies of top hits for home use, a nonprofit analyst group that tracks Hollywood reported Monday.

Overall consumer spending on home entertainment jumped nearly five percent from the same period a year ago, the Digital Entertainment Group reported, the first time consumer spending increased since 2008.

The DEG didn't explicitly say that a crossover between DVD and Blu-ray sales is occurring. But "for major box-office hits, sales of packaged goods often surpass 50 percent on Bluray in their first week of release," DEG said. In all, Blu-ray, electronic sell-through, and digital movie streaming all saw revenue growth.

Catalog sales of Blu-ray discs are also increasing, the DEG said, with year-to-date increases of more than 60 percent, led by Star Wars, Citizen Kane, Scarface and The Big Lebowski. Total household penetration of all Blu-ray compatible devices now stands at more than 33.5 million U.S. homes, DEG said, up 52 percent from a year ago.

The DEG did not break out the actual numbers for its results, however; typically, the group's end-of-year results are the most comprehensive. At the end of last year, however, DVD media still held a commanding lead over Blu-ray, $14.0 billion to $2.3 billion. And digital also outstripped Blu-ray as well, with year-end sales of $2.5 billion. Media sales have declined steadily since 2004, when a total of $21.8 billion worth of digital media was sold.

The rise in consumer spending marks the "continued stabilization" of the industry, however, the DEG said, heading into the fourth quarter. During that period, sales of summer blockbusters will begin hitting store shelves, including Captain America: The First Avenger, Cars 2, Cowboys & Aliens, Hangover 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Help, Kung Fu Panda 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Smurfs, and Water for Elephants.

About 5.5 million HDTVs were sold to U.S. consumers in the third quarter, DEG reported, bringing HDTV penetration to date at more than 69.5 million U.S. households.

One word that didn't appear: 3D. Although many consumer electronics companies have promoted the technology, especially at the 2011 CES show in Las Vegas and the recent IFA show in Berlin. For example, the broadcast of the Masters golf tournament in 3D proved interesting, but disappointing.

"We are definitely still supportive of 3D, but just don't have data tracking its sales to report at this juncture," Lyndsey Schafer, director of the DEG, said in an email.

Source is
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395613,00.asp#fbid=wNQVae1fKOE