Movie pirates are distributing fake Blu-ray movie titles in China, which are essentially ordinary DVDs passed off as Blu-rays.
According to a WSJ report, the counterfeit Blu-ray discs are ordinary DVDs that hold the same movie content as the original Blu-ray but it is encoded in the AVCHD format. AVCHD is based on the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video format, enabling recording of high-definition 1080i and 720p video onto cheap DVD discs.
"We are concerned and are assigning priority to this issue," said Mike Ellis, the Asia-Pacific managing director for the MPA.
The issue came into the surface last month when authorities raided a big stash of the new pirated discs in China, which is often at the leading edge of piracy trends.
The MPA estimates that within the next six months the high-definition discs could account for 10% of $224 million that its m... More »
What's the point? SecuROM is there to make sure that you own the original CD for whatever it is protecting, but to put it in free trials downloaded off the Internet.. really what's the point?
Especially when you don't include that in the EULA. Read more at Slashdot and GamesPolitics.
Though many previously bundled applets now will ship separately to Windows 7, Windows Media Player remains part of the core OS. Windows 7 will ship with Windows Media Player 12, which includes some surprising new features.
The UI itself is brighter and lighter than WMP11. Some buttons and toolbar items have been moved around, but the experience should be pretty familiar to users of version 11. What does represent a big change is the removal of the Now Playing button, which in WMP11 switches to a view showing the current playlist.
This is because WMP12 completely separates library management from what's currently playing, with two distinct player modes; Now Playing view, and Library view. Library view contains all the library manipulation features that should be familiar from WMP11. Now Playing view contains the current playlist, visualizations, and videos.
There's also a new taskbar miniviewer that works with the new Windows 7 taskbar, and WMP... More »
Like many, we're wondering if Sony's response to the song "Tapha Niang," included in the LittleBigPlanet soundtrack is a little harsh.
Toumani Diabaté and the Symmetric Orchestra is known for combining the traditional music of Mali with other internation styles, like jazz, blues and flamenco.
His MySpace page has the entire song available to listen to, and Amazon.com has a DRM-free version available to purchase. It's surprising that a song, which has been available for over two years, is only now receiving controversial attention for its inclusion in Sony's blockbuster PS3 game.
Perhaps if Sony didn't delay this game, this matter wouldn't have exploded to such incredible proportions?
After all, the international sound would be a... More »
The eagerly anticipated Fallout 3 is nearly upon us, yet a full three weeks before its release rapacious pigs cracked the game and offered it via various torrent sites.
This is the third AAA title that has been hacked and cracked in as many months, leaving publishers frothing at the mouth as they consider even more draconian digital rights management.
To the casual observer this may seem like an overzealous response to retain the vast sea of greenbacks the industry seems to float upon. And that certainly is a concern, after all Electronic Arts is not motivated from a position of altruism. This is about control of their product, control of their intellectual property, and control of the consumer.
Flinchingly I have read DRM proponents scathing insinuation that, and I’m paraphrasing, that “nothing is safe! Nothing is sacred! We must protect ourselves at any cost!” Yet the price of that protectionism is at the expense of the consumer. Pirates ... More »
Just when you thought it was safe to convert to Windows Vista, Microsoft changes its mind, again. This soap opera is getting to be a little old.
In early October, Microsoft admitted that it didn't discontinue XP in June after all, and would continue selling via system builders through January 2009. This is accomplished via "downgrade" rights: Dell, for example, will sell you a system with Windows XP Professional installed, but it also includes the latest version of Vista.
Meanwhile, you can still buy boxed XP at Amazon, among other places. The June deadline in itself was an extension, and there's some suggestion that, for corporate customers at least, Microsoft may extend the extension of the extension.
Looking a little further down the line, Microsoft may make Vista irrelevant with the release of Windows 7, which could come as early as 2010. Does anyone seriously expect MIS departments to invest in conversion costs and new hardware, a Vista requ... More »
It appears a global class action law suit is going to hit EA over the DRM used in Spore. The 36-page PDF document is available for viewing all the details.
The suit attacks the DRM used in Spore, citing that consumers are not told fully about it before purchase that it is a separate and stand-alone program which will download, install and operate on their computers.
Even if the game is deleted, the SecuROM DRM remains a permanent fixture on the consumers hard drive until it is formatted.
This law suit asserts it is going to fight that EA purposely never told consumers that the Spore game disk never had this second hidden program (DRM) which is secretly installed on computers.
The Sony Video Store on the PlayStation Network is filled with a good selection of movies, and you can't beat the convenience of renting or even buying movies from your couch and watching them on your big screen with your PlayStation 3.
Renting movies is a joy on the system, although it would be nice to have longer than 24 hours to watch the content, but what happens when you buy a movie? As one Ars reader found out, and Sony confirmed for us, you have to be careful about what happens to your system once it's filled with video content: you have one download, one redownload, and that's it.
Noise, a forum-goer, sent out a warning after he deleted some video content to make room on his hard drive and then found he couldn't redownload the content. The PlayStation 3 support page is perfectly clear on this matter. "Purchased content can be downloaded to ... More »
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