According to HD Beat, hackers have discovered the “processing key used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc films”.
What this means in layman terms is that pretty soon, your favorite torrent tracker will feature movies in all their HD glory, be them Blu-ray or HD DVD.
Everyone (and their grandma) is predicting a demise for Blu-ray and hence Sony and even the Playstation 3. It’s been just over two months since Blu-ray’s premiere and these “format” wars are not decided in a day. If wars were decided in a day (or a month), Hitler would’ve taken both Russia and the UK (extrapolating his early successes).
HD DVD experienced a surge around Christmas when studios supporting it released more titles than the Blu-ray camp. The situation has changed a bit. While Universal is silent about upcoming HD DVD titles, the Blu-ray camp churns new titles.
Looking at the release lists, Blu-ray studios are going to release MORE movies in February than HD DVD released in 2006. I’m not eager to announce them winners just yet. These guys should’ve settled their difference a long time ago anyway. Sometimes it’s the consumer who’s the best judge of a format but the HD media doesn’t come particularly cheap as to allow open experimentation.
Or is it? The North American HD DVD Promotional Group took advantage of CES to get out the following:
As of January 5th, the group estimates there were more than 175,000 HD DVD players sold in America, with an annualized attach rate of 28 movies per player. The group projects sales will reach 2.5 million players by the end of this year and more than $600 million worth of movie revenues. HD DVD buyers can look forward to more HDi enhanced titles, now featuring internet features that were demoed at the event, as well as more players hitting the market from manufacturers like Lite-On, Alco, Alpine, Meridian and Onkyo. Look for the trend of combo releases to continue, as the format’s backers see it as a viable way of introducing current DVD owners to the format and building a library prior to upgrading.
Numbers usually don’t lie. And the numbers here (at least in terms of players) are very much skewed in favor of the Blu-ray camp. The reason? One million Playstation 3 have been purchased and I bet this is just the beginning.
Blu-Ray is piggy-backing on Playstation 3 recent launch.
So far HD DVD leads the way with 130 titles released. Blu-ray is closely behind with 116. The titles to be released any moment are:
The Architect (Magnolia)
Bulletproof Monk (Fox)
A Christmas Story (Warner)
Flight of the Phoenix (Fox)
From Hell (Fox)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Warner)
Rising Sun (Fox)
Rocky (Fox)
I’m a big SONY fan so I hope Blu-ray doesn’t turn out to be the new Beta Max.
It usually takes a while for some industries to warm up to new distribution methods. It comes as no surprise that Hollywood has finally realized that “if you can’t beat them, join them” holds true.
Warner Brothers sat on the negotiating table – opposite of Bram Cohen, who created BitTorrent. It’s certainly ironic that that bittorent was credited as being the single most important vehicle for pirated movies to go around the globe in hours, if not minutes. BW says:
Under the deal, announced May 9, Warner Brothers will distribute and sell over 200 Warner Brothers movies and TV programs through the file-sharing program BitTorrent. Titles range from new movie releases Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to hoary TV chestnuts like Dukes of Hazzard and Babylon 5. While final pricing and timing is yet to be decided, the programs are expected to go on sale this summer, and TV shows could cost as little as $1 per download. BitTorrent “has such a huge audience that we frankly need to convert over to legitimate buyers of our products. We felt we have to do things like this…so that consumers [have] the ability to buy and use our products the way they want to,” says Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.
The genie is out of the bottle, if you ask me. With so many alternative torrent clients and a myriad of trackers, I doubt a lot of people will choose the paid version of a program. It will all come down to ease of use, quality, and naturally, price (DRM could be a big part of the equation too).
You’ve all heard of Bittorrent which is by far the most popular tool for downloading (il)legal content online. The programmer behind it, Bram “Stoker” Cohen, just struck a deal with the MPAA, effectively refusing all links to illegal content.
OH MY GOD! Can he do this? Of cours, he can. He’s the programmer that wrote Bittorent (and gave us everything we’ve came to associate with it, like Miss Canada).
Would that have any impact on torrent users downloading illegal content? No way. There are many torrent clients now. I recently reviewed µTorrent – a lightweight torrent client. There are thousands of torrent trackers too…
Another blogger likened this to Bram Cohen going to the MPAA and selling them the Brooklyn bridge. Hope they paid him a pretty penny because I never donated to Bittorent and I feel guilty as hell.
If you’ve into HD video production and have been hanging at DVX forums, you’re probably sick of all the speculation about Panasonic new HD cam, the HVX200. Btw, I finally got the specs – check out this review of Panasonic HVX200.
Back to the forum wars… Panasonic got sick too (I guess) as there are even formal protest issued from posters about the lack of information about the new camera. So they launched a new blog site: defperception.com.
A bit of background: the camera sports a new standard, DVCPRO HD, which is NOT compatible with HDV. So you’ll need not only a camera but also a deck and most probably an add-on for your favorite editing program (Avid, right!). Unlike HDV, DVCPRO HD is frame independent (i.e. no interframe compression) and it also supports a 4:2:2 color space. HDV is 25Mbps while DVCPRO HD’s stream is 100Mbps.
The camera records its signal to tiny P2 cards which only hold about 4-10 minutes of video (4GB and 8GB versions will be available). The plan is to add support for Firewire drives but Panasonic insists P2 cards are superior. If one shoots 10-second takes and money is no object, I guess they are right.
The small capacity of the P2 cards undermines one of the advantages of utilizing a video production’s flow: almost limitless running time. If you have to change something every 10 minutes, you’re straight back to a conventional film production. Someone always ends up carrying the reels around.
There’s probably a lot more info coming along so you might want to subscribe to the feed. I did.
I still haven’t tried podcasting and the latest fad walks right in. VODcasting is a term coined recently to describe a video-on-demand (broad)cast. In essence, you start posting videos instead of posts consisting mainly of words and photos.
So how is this helping filmmakers? Let’s look at Peter Jackson’s production diary for King Kong. Instead of HTML pages linking to videos, he could’ve uploaded the videos to a server, saved an XML file, and asked you to sign-up for his vodcasts. Once you’re subscribed to his production diary vodcast, iTunes will start downloading videos as they become available.
Most vodcasts will probably be low-rez, mainly for bandwidth reasons. You should be able to view them just fine on your new video iPod while driving to work… Wait a minute! I meant while riding the Tube to work.
There’s a simplistic, yet useful step-by-step guide to vodcasting published at Playlist’s site.
Update: You can read my tips on producing video for iPod.
The next generation of HD formats has been split in two for years. There has been some famous switching of sides (Microsoft leaving Blu-ray and joining HD-DVD).
A bit of background: HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and NEC; Blu-ray is SONY response to a common format. SONY has a proven track record in creating their own versions of just about everything: from Betamax (vs. VHS) to memory sticks (vs. Compact Flash).
The conflict will be resolved by consumers and right now the HD-DVD seems to be in a better position to win popular support. HD-DVD has the backing of Time Warner (that’s Warner Bros. and New Line), Paramount, and Universal. The studios have committed to releasing almost 100 titles on HD-DVD by the year’s end.
Blu-ray is backed by SONY and its two studios, Columbia Tri-Star and MGM. Microsoft pulled out of the Blu-ray camp when they said the XBOX 2 will NOT use Blu-ray. This was turned around when Disney said they’ll release titles on Blu-ray. Apple has also joined the Blu-ray camp recently and one major player, 20th Century Fox, still haven’t made up their minds.
Although tech specs have little to do with who wins the race, here they are: HD-DVD holds 30 GB, Blu-ray holds 50 GB. Another difference could be in the region encoding. There are rumors that the HD-DVD will not support region codes.
SONY seems a bit behind right now. At the same time, they’ve recently announced their TOTAL commitment to Blu-ray as their default high-definition format. MGM’s film library of over 6,000 titles will be made available in the new HD format. The question remains when. The HD-DVD camp will start releasing their titles for the Christmas season when you can already record your HD video to a Blu-Ray DVD!
Looking at the new iPod, I start wondering why Apple claims it plays everything… but movies. Apparently, Apple made Hollywood a proposal they couldn’t resist, yet somehow Hollywood did resist it. I wonder why.
For starters, let’s look at the tech specs: it sports a 2.5-inch LCD display (320 x 240 pixels) that supports 260,000 colors. That’s good enough for downloadable porn but I don’t think it cuts it for movies. It’s not widescreen (being 4:3 instead of 16:9) and there’s limit on the resolution of the movies that can be imported (480×480).
Just consider that Sidney Pollack brought a lawsuit against a Danish TV station for the use of its pan-and-scan (4:3) showing of his film “Three days of the Condor”. The court ruled that the pan-and-scan was a “mutilation” of his work and a violation of Pollacks ‘Driot Moral’, his legal right as an artist to maintain his reputation by protecting the integrity of his work.
As an even more extreme example, imagine you somehow get “Lawrence of Arabia” on your new iPod. How long would you wait until you see the black speck that Omar Sharif is in the famous scene? It takes a while to spot it even on the DVD edition.
Despite its shortcomings, the new iPod sets a trend that might eventually lead to an alternative means for distributing “pocket” movies. This could enable indie producers to distribute their movies cheaply and easily. Even now you can find plenty of sites that have torrents for iPod.
The Zen Vision from Creative Labs already sports a 640×480 LCD. I’m hopeful SONY will have the last word on this one. I love the LCD on my SONY VX2000, I’m sure I’ll be able to find Omar Sharif in under a minute if I manage to play it there.
Update: You can read my tips on producing video for iPod. A must-see for your video iPod is Steve Ballmer’s Developers video.
In a report from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA announced that space tourist Gregory Olsen filmed a TV commercial on the space station. He brought a Sony HVR-Z1J (the more professional version of the Sony HDR-FX1) on board so he could shoot a noodles commercial for a Japanese noodle company. Here’s the “transcript” from the ISS report:
“In a special demo/commercial called SCN (Space Cup Noodles) for Japanese industry, the “taxi” visitor heated two packs of noodles in the water heater, then ate the ball-shaped noodles before the backdrop of the Service Module (SM) starboard crew cabin window. The carefully scripted scenes were filmed by CDR Krikalev with the Japanese Sony HVR-Z1J high-definition camcorder, after a rehearsal of the script.”
As to video productions in space, I know which camera I’m taking with me next time a script calls for a space scene shot on location!
ARRI has finally debuted the ARRIFLEX D-20 camera. ARRI execs promise the camera will be available in November.
The new ARRI camera uses a single CMOS sensor the size of a 35mm negative frame. The 35mm frame means you can use the same lenses on the camera and get the same FOV and DOF as you would on a “regular” 35mm ARRI film camera.
In Video Mode, the data coming from the D-20 sensor is processed live in the camera. Color reconstruction is performed simultaneously as the 2880 x 1620 pixel grid is converted to 1920 x 1080 resolution. A sophisticated on-board color management system has been implemented to optimize the camera’s performance for different lighting situations including blue and green screen work. In Video Mode, the D-20 can supply a variety of standard HD video signals for different recording formats, including HDCAM SR, thus allowing the D-20 to integrate seamlessly into existing HD infrastructures.
This puts the new ARRI in same league as SONY’s CineAlta in terms of output (1920x108o HDCAM). In terms of renting this beast for your next video production, you’ll need to drive a hard bargain. The price tag is still unknown but if the CineAlta serves as base, the price will be in the $100,000+ range.