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Engadget HD

Blu-ray Releases on July 22nd, 2008

by Ben Drawbaugh, posted Jul 22nd 2008 at 8:31AM

Mummy Returns Blu-rayThis week is finally the week, it's finally the week when Universal Studios releases its first Blu-ray Disc, and by the looks of the reviews, the big U is getting started with a bang. The biggest two titles from the new Blu studio are the first two installments of the Mummy franchise, released in preparation for the third movie due in theaters next week. We've seen over and over again this summer, that there is no better time to release a catalog title then just before the sequel is released on the big screen. But even if you aren't the biggest Brendan Fraser fan, you may want to check this out as the reviews seem to indicate that Universal didn't slouch on its first Blu-ray titles.

The specs are a good start with BD-50, VC1, and the best in audio at DTS-HD MA 48kHz/24bit; but Hi-Def Digest review sums up the picture quality with "It's as close to a reference-caliber disc as any catalog title I've seen," while the audio was "absolutely excellent -- this is a demo-worthy presentation." But even if Mummy movies are your thing, you can check out Sony's date-and-date '21,' or maybe a few older horror titles like 'Urban Legend' or 'I know What You Did Last Summer.' As big as this week is though, next is even bigger as just about every studio has something on the calendar with a total of 24 new releases in one week.

Blu-ray 669

Blu-ray

Music Industry Claims Throwing Away Free CDs is Illegal

by Tim Stevens, posted Apr 10th 2008 at 10:16AM

Music Industry Claims Throwing Away Free CDs is IllegalUniversal Music Group has filed a rather ... interesting legal brief in a case against a man accused of re-selling promotional CDs he legally purchased used at a record shop. UMG has claimed that not only was the man breaking the law by selling the albums, even the act of throwing them in the trash would have been committing music piracy.

The industry seems to be hoping to change the way you buy your music, so that if you purchase a CD you're not buying anything but a bit of plastic. The music on there isn't actually yours and, should you get tired of it, you don't have the right to resell it. This is traditionally known as the first-sale doctrine and is the reason why selling used books, CDs, and movies is legal. So is giving away those items -- for now.

Right now UMG's legal filing covers only promotional CDs, those given out for free to DJs and such, and it remains to be seen whether they'll even have any success making this argument. So, it's not the end of the used music store just yet. However, don't forget that when "buying" music files from stores like iTunes you're actually just licensing it, having sworn away your right to resell anything you download. So before you get too angry at UMG remember that you're embracing this sort of licensing elsewhere!

From TechDirt

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Amazon Gaining On iTunes' Lead In Online Music Sales

by Thomas Houston, posted Mar 27th 2008 at 10:02AM



Amazon recently moved into the number two online music retailer spot without much fanfare. Amazon's online MP3 store opened merely six months ago, and it appears to be gaining on the number one retailer -- Apple's iTunes Store, which commands 80% of online digital music sales.

The trends towards moving away from music burdened with digital rights management (DRM) software created new opportunities for Amazon. Why has DRM-free music -- which lets people play purchased tunes on any digital player or computer -- become such an important area of growth in the online music business? As Amazon's director of digital music, Pete Baltaxe, explained to USA Today: "Songs sold without DRM, at high quality, with album art, that's the best way to get people to buy music instead of stealing it," whereas DRM is a way to punish people who are buying...."

While Apple worked with record label EMI to sell DRM-free music in early 2007, the iTunes giant didn't have much luck getting other major labels immediately signed on. Instead of working with Apple -- currently offering 2 million DRM-free songs -- Warner, Sony/BMG and Universal decided to offer parts of their catalogs DRM-free on Amazon. Amazon's DRM-free library totals around 4.5 million, and is well-positioned to compete with iTunes.

Hopefully, the competition between the two retailers will result in better pricing and accessibility to music for consumers.

From USA Today

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MatchBox Twenty and Others Release Music on USB Drives

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 19th 2007 at 11:42AM

Record Industry Releasing Music on USB Drives

Shhh... you hear that? That's the sound of the record industry grasping at straws. The latest desperate attempt to lure in consumers is selling albums on USB drives. This isn't the first time artists have gone the digital drive route, but the move is getting a renewed push from the record industry.

Universal, Warner and EMI have all announced plans to sell music on USB Flash drives. Details are scant, and there's no word on format, bit rate, DRM-or-not... nothing. All we do know is that they'll pack the drives up with extras like videos, desktop wallpapers and icons. We also know that these drives will be more expensive than their CD counterparts. As you can see from the above picture, the drives will come in fan-friendly wristband forms, for starters.

Earlier this year, the White Stripes dropped its latest album 'Icky Thump' on overpriced, albeit cool looking, USB drives. The band was beat to market by the Barenaked Ladies by a full two years, though. Now, Matchbox Twenty is preparing to release its next album 'Exile on Mainstream' on a USB bracelet.

Willie Nelson, the estate of Bob Marley, the Rolling Stones, and UK group the Fratellis all have also jumped on the bandwagon. However we can save the labels some time by letting them in on a secret: no one buys these things.

From Engadget and USA Today

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Anti-Piracy Coalition Forming on Friday Includes CBS, Disney, Fox

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 18th 2007 at 12:13PM

Companies Join Forces to Form Anti-Piracy Coalition
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) today, several major media and technology companies are joining forces to form the Masters of Evil! Wait... sorry, they are just joining forces to form an anti-piracy ring, no plots for world domination... yet.

This coalition of super companies will be working together on copyright-related issues, including video piracy and the technology needed to stop it.

Coming together to form this super team of anti-pirates are: CBS, Dailymotion, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Fox and MySpace units of News Corp, Viacom and Disney. The coalition is due to launch Friday. Google is still in talks to join the anti-piracy ring.

From Tech Crunch

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Cell Phones to Get Universal Chargers

by Tom Conlon, posted Sep 24th 2007 at 9:09AM

Cell Phones to Get Universal ChargersWhen you lose your phone charger or accidentally leave it behind while traveling, your options are limited to either buying a new one or finding a friend who happens to have a phone made by the same manufacturer – even then, it sometimes needs to be the same exact model.

Thankfully, those days are drawing to a close now that the world's major phone manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG have agreed on a universal standard for chargers. That standard is micro-USB, the little brother to the mini-USB jack that many phone makers are already using thanks to its ability to charge from an outlet, charge from a PC and sync with a PC. Micro-USB boasts the same versatility, but in a much smaller for factor, which should be helpful going forward as our phones shrink to 'Zoolander'-like proportions.

While consumers will obviously benefit from the interoperability of phone cables, another winner is Ma Nature. Telecom analysts believe this will open the door to manufacturers offering an option to buy phones without the charging cables included, assuming you already own one. Not only would this cut down on the number of unused cables being sent to the dump, but it would also reduce the size of the packaging your new phone comes in.

If only our cell phone service providers were as easily swappable ...

From Engadget

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Wal-Mart's New Downloads Play On iPods, Zunes, Cell Phones and More

by Tom Samiljan, posted Aug 21st 2007 at 4:21PM



Wal-Mart is the latest store to jump into the DRM-free music sales game, offering the same digital-rights-management-free tracks from EMI and Universal that are sold through the iTunes Plus, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and other online music stores. (DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material -- essentially this means you can't play your purchased music on more than one kind of portable player.)

The giant retailer's latest move means that, say, tracks by Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Barrio Fino, Amy Winehouse (pictured), or Bon Jovi, among other EMI and Universal acts, will be playable on everything from iPods, iPhones and BlackBerrys to Zunes, Windows Mobile Smart Phones, and most music cell phones.

What's more, these tunes will only cost $ .94 cents a track (or $9.22 per album), a full 35 cents less than the $1.29 iTunes is charging for its DRM-free tunes. The difference is Wal-Mart's tunes will be in the MP3 format, which plays on pretty much every audio player in existence, while Apple's iTunes Plus tracks are in the AAC format, which is of slightly higher audio quality (but plays on a smaller number of players).

In what is definitely a sign of the music industry's desperation, these easy-to-copy-and-pirate tunes are being virtually given away. The idea is this -- people who are nice law-abiding citizens or who just don't feel like dealing with the Wild West of illegal-file-sharing sites will flock to these attractively-priced, unshackled tracks.

For a full explanation on how DRM-free tunes work and where you can find and purchase these tunes, check out USA Today's newsy primer on the subject.

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The New Weapon Against Online Music Theft?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 20th 2007 at 10:29AM

Universal Testing Audio Watermarking System for Digital SongsRecord labels looking to keep their property off of illegal file-sharing networks have begun experimenting with a technology called 'watermarking' as the successor to DRM, or digital right management. DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material.

Customers dislike these restrictions and hackers have easily broken the protection, making DRM more of a nuisance than an effective anti-piracy tool. With a little extra work, DRM can be easily circumvented by non-hackers as well, thanks to the so-called analog gap. Simply burn your purchased track to a CD, then re-rip in your preferred format and the DRM copy protection is gone. For these reasons, labels and online stores have been abandoning DRM en masse over the past few months. EMI, Universal and Sony are all joining the DRM-free bandwagon, as have countless indies on the completely DRM-free eMusic site.

Universal is now planning to place supposedly inaudible watermarks into the audio itself. Watermark audio is comprised of slight oscillations at frequencies that the human ear cannot detect, but that a decoding device easily can. Because the watermark is placed in the track as audio, simply burning and ripping will no longer work as a means of erasing the extra info slipped in there by the record label. Though watermarks could be used to track individual songs back to pirates and file-sharers, they will not be used for that purpose at first. Instead, Universal will be using the watermarks simply to identify that a track began as a legal download to see if stripping a song of DRM has an impact on piracy.

Activated Content, the company licensing the technology to Universal has posted a 'Third Party Audibility Test,' which says there is no objective evidence that watermark is audible in two test tracks ('Beautiful Women' by Boyz II Men and 'English Roundabout' by XTC). However, a similar watermarking system was tried with the DVD Audio format (music on DVDs) and many audiophiles -- about the only people who bought DVD-A discs -- complained that the watermark was often easy to hear. Whether the audio is inaudible to humans ears or not, the truth is that the original music as it was intended to be heard by the artist has been altered.

But, labels will always want to track and try to dissuade the theft of their content, so for now watermarking seems like the obvious next step after the failure of DRM. Whether or not we'll see a massive backlash or an easy way to break the protection remains to be seen.

From Slashdot and Cnet

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Universal and Google to Sell Unprotected Music

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 13th 2007 at 11:01AM

Universal Goes DRM Free... With Google?Universal Music Group, one of the 'Big Three,' has made the leap to DRM-free tunes (tracks you can play on any MP3 player since they don't have digital rights management, or, DRM). Oddly enough, though, Universal has left the largest online music retailer, iTunes, out in the cold. Universal will be selling the unprotected MP3s through the online stores of Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Rhapsody, and Google.

The service, called gBox, will display advertisements for artists on Google search pages. Clicking the link will take you to a page to purchase the DRM-free tracks for 99 cents using the Google Check Out system. Universal will also offer tracks with DRM for the same price... but we're not sure who would buy them. gBox is a start up and is not part of the Google family (not yet anyway). Google says the relationship is purely an advertising relationship.

GBox could be a legitimate competitor, given that it undercuts iTunes' DRM-less songs by 30 cents and has the ubiquitous Google as a partner. At launch, the service will only work on Windows PCs, though tracks can be played on any computer or MP3 player.

From Forbes and BetaNews

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Eminem Suing Apple... Again

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 2nd 2007 at 4:51PM

Eminem Sues AppleWith his quick descent into complete irrelevance, Eminem has taken to stirring up controversy and attention any way he can. His latest tactic -- suing Apple... again.

Last time Eminem took the company to court Apple still had 'Computers' at the end of its name. That case was over the use of the mega-hit 'Lose Yourself' in an iPod ad. Now Eminem is claiming that Apple is selling his music through its iTunes online music store without his permission.

Eminem's music, while published by Eight Mile Style LLC and Martin Affiliated LLC, is distributed through Universal. iTunes sells the rapper's albums as part of its arrangement with Universal, but Eminem claims that express permission must received via Eight Mile Style and Martin.

This is part of a larger shift in sentiment that publishers -- not the labels -- should have the final say in whether or not music is distributed online.

From Beta News

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Apple Not Losing Universal?

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 5th 2007 at 9:56AM

Apple Not Losing Universal?

Earlier this week we got wind of a major blow to Apple and iTunes: the potential loss of Universal Music Group. The rift was unconfirmed but seemed genuine given its source, 'The New York Times.' Now, Apple is issuing a bit of denial according to Engadget, stating that negotiations with Universal are still ongoing and any talk of the publisher leaving the service are premature at best.

It's also unclear what exactly the source of the rift is. Some have speculated that Universal isn't pleased with Apple's anti-DRM stance, while others see this simply as Universal broadening its horizons a bit, doing away with the exclusive iTunes offerings. Regardless, it'll be at least a few more days if not weeks until we really know what's up here.

But one thing is for sure: With heavy hitters like U2 and Amy Winehouse in its coffers, Apple's not going to let Universal go without a fight.

From Engadget

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Universal Severing Ties With iTunes?

by Tom Conlon, posted Jul 2nd 2007 at 10:21AM

Universal Ending Relationship With iTunes?

Universal Music Group has pulled out of iTunes. That's according to The New York Times, which, citing anonymous sources close to the negotiations, is reporting that the world's biggest music company has opted not to renew its contract with Apple to carry its artists on iTunes -- artists that include U2, Akon and Amy Winehouse.

The move by Universal is an attempt to coax Apple chief Steve Jobs into spreading the wealth that's been raked in thanks to the successes of iTunes and the iPod. Jobs currently has the music industry eating out of his hand: More than 100 million iPods have been sold worldwide since its invention, and yet the only copy-protected digital music service that works with it is iTunes. iTunes, for its part, accounts for 76 percent of all online music sales -- the only sector of the music industry currently experiencing any growth. Of course, the iPod is the only player that works with tracks purchased on iTunes.

Universal is such a massive player in the music business that its artists are responsible for one out of every three new music releases in the U.S. Losing Universal will be a blow to iTunes, though the reverse is also true: In the first quarter of 2007, iTunes accounted for 15 percent of Universal's worldwide revenue.

For now, it appears Universal will offer its music on iTunes without a contract, meaning it can remove its artists completely at any time with no advanced notice if it's not happy. That day may come sooner than later, since Steve Jobs has repeatedly refused to even entertain the notions Universal and other music companies are asking of Apple. They include allowing the iPod to be used with other services, allowing iTunes to work with other players and putting an end to flat rates for music files. The music industry wants the right to sell more popular songs at a premium and sell less popular songs at a discount.

For now, it's a stalemate between Apple and Universal and it'll be interesting to see who cries 'Uncle' first. Of course, it doesn't hurt Steve Jobs that he's a pro at twisting arms.

From The New York Times

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Attack of the Clones

by Tom Conlon, posted May 20th 2007 at 6:06PM

Attack of the ClonesAOpen Pandora
Whenever a cool new Adidas sneaker comes out, it's immediately given a fourth stripe by some hack out there and sold under a different brand name. Well, Apple is kind of like the Adidas of the tech-world. But it's not just Apple's phone and music players that get the Payless treatment. The Mac Mini, for example, found a fan in Taiwanese computer maker AOpen, who in 2005 released the Pandora. To its credit, AOpen was up front about its source of inspiration. That said, the Pandora is still a pretty shameless 'tribute' to the Mac Mini. On the outside, the only difference seems to be the power button and the lack of an Apple logo. On the inside, of course, the difference is a choice of Linux or Windows instead of OS X.

Spotted at CNET


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