Blu-ray, DVD, HDTV, Video info and more at WesleyTech.com

RealDVD bested in MPAA match up

Two years ago, the MPAA sued RealNetworks over their RealDVD software, which allowed for backing up DVDs to a hard drive, claiming an infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Last August, the MPAA prevailed in the case against Real. The Judge in the case made a very cryptic comment in the decision stating:

Had Real’s products been manufactured differently, i.e., if what happened in Vegas really did stay in Vegas, this might have been a different case. But, it is what it is. Once the distributive nature of the copying process takes hold, like the spread of gossip after a weekend in Vegas, what’s done cannot be undone.

After months of deliberation, Real decided not to appeal the decision, and paid $4,500,000 to the MPAA for legal fee reimbursement. They also shut off their online metadata service.

From the judge’s comments, it seems this decision affects software which could lead to distribution of the content. This may favor Kaleidescape’s argument considering their closed-architecture does not allow for data on their servers to be accessed except by associated Kaleidescape players.

It also seems to target a retail software, and should be a pronouncement on personal Fair Use.

Panasonic Blu-ray/VHS combo baffles

Question: What do Demi Moore, Fred Thompson, and Panasonic’s newest Blu-ray Disc player have in common? Answer: They’ve all played a VHS tape.

The Panasonic DMP-BD70V Blu-ray Disc player also plays VHS cassette tapes. This makes as much sense as recording cable shows on a VCR (as one recent client asked to do). No, it makes less sense because this VHS player won’t even record – it only plays!

As mind-blowing as this product’s mere existence is, what’s more discombobulating is the fact that Amazon is selling it for $139 with free shipping. Pretend the VHS player isn’t attached and it’s one of the best deals I’ve ever seen on a BD player … ever.


Included on the player is an SD memory card slot; USB port; upconversion to 1080p for DVD and VHS; 7.1 channel audio decoding with bitstream output over HDMI (including DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD); and, internet video streaming from Amazon, YouTube, and more. Quite a fully-featured player, with VHS to boot.

Maybe my mother-in-law can use this…

Sony CEDIA booth tour

Home Theater Forum put together a brilliant booth tour video for Sony’s new products. Highlights include:

The new XBR10 line of BRAVIA LCD televisions with LED light engine for an ultra-thin design. It uses an outboard media box and delivers video to the display itself wireless.

A new Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-N460, which includes streaming from Netflix and other sources. It has drivers for a Linksys wireless bridge installed so if you do need wireless connectivity it’s available, although the existing BDP-S560 has WiFi built in. It will sell for $249.

Finally a 400-disc Blu-ray mega-changer is available! The BDP-CX960 and BDP-CX7000ES both have BD-Live, DVD upscaling, and decoding for all high-res audio. They will automatically pull down metadata for discs loaded in the slots from Gracenote. The interface isn’t very user-friendly, but it’s steps above the older mega-changers.

Microsoft and Tesco collaborate on virtual DVD

Digital delivery of movies have fallen short of the DVD experience due to a lack of added features. Microsoft and retail giant Tesco have teamed up to fix this disparity with what they are calling “virtual DVD.” The new delivery service is built on Microsoft Silverlight technology, adding interactive features to online video, including the bonus features included on the DVD.

Tesco, the second most profitable retailer behind Walmart, will allow customers in the United Kingdom, who purchase certain home video titles, to download a digital copy beginning in the autumn. The digital copy will feature exclusive content including online movie viewing parties with chat, MP3s, ring tones, and games.



There is no announcement for US customers, but Tesco is growing their presence Stateside, and I doubt this is a worldwide exclusive anyway so Microsoft can be working with other retailers to implement this program here.

Blockbuster downgrades service

Blockbuster Total Access online subscribers who have looked at their online queue in the past week have probably noticed a new banner notice at the top of their queue page.

Clicking on the banner will take you to this page on Blockbuster.com, which explains a new Blockbuster policy change: “any free in-store movie exchanges will count towards how many online rentals you may have out under your plan. Your next online movie will ship after the in-store movie exchange has been returned to the store you rented it from.”

Previously, Blockbuster would ship you the next movie from your online queue as soon as you exchanged a movie instore. Now they will not ship you another movie from your online queue until you return the instore rental back to the store.

Is Blockbuster actively trying to lose subscribers and push people over to Netflix? It certainly seems like it. This service downgrade causes Blockbuster to lose any advantage that it once had over Netflix. Other Blockbuster subscribers on DVDRentalForums are also upset over the change and are headed to Netflix.

Instead of trying to continually improve their service, Blockbuster continually makes it worse. Bye bye Blockbuster! I’m ditching them and going with Netflix.

Verbatim PhotoSave DVD-R Review

Verbatim USA recently sent us some samples of their new PhotoSave DVD-R’s to test out. So what exactly are “PhotoSave DVD’s”?

The Verbatim website describes the product with “Verbatim’s PhotoSave DVD allows you to quickly backup and archive up to 2,000* photos stored on your PC or digital camera. This recordable DVD searches and stores over 80 different types of photo and video files, protecting your valuable photo memories from hard drive crashes.”

In this article we test out the product to see if it delivers on its promise.

The sample we received was a 3 pack of slim jewel cases, pictured below.

These PhotoSave discs come with a prerecorded zone, which contains the software that performs the automated backup of photo files. If you flip the disc over to look at the recordable side, you will notice that there is a darker ring on the very inner circle of the disc. This dark ring is the prerecorded information on the disc. The photo below highlights this prerecorded area with a red circle.

We inserted the PhotoSave DVD-R into our recordable DVD drive and the software launched automatically. If you have auto-play disabled, you will need to launch the software from the disc yourself.

We used additional software to determine that our PhotoSave DVD-R’s had a Manufacturer ID (MID) of MCC 02RG20. This MID tells us that these discs are genuine 8x DVD-R’s manufactured using Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation technology. This comes as no surprise to us, as we already know that Mitsubishi Chemicals is the parent company of Verbatim.

The PhotoSave software can automatically detect and backup all JPEG photos on your PC, or you can manually select what files to backup.

Below is the welcome screen that will appear when the software is launched. For this test, we chose the “Auto Copy from: My Pictures” option, which is the default choice. This option states “Automatically scan for photos on your computer, record to this disc and close disc for archiving/viewing/ Note: only jpeg photo files will be recorded.”

As you can see in the screenshot below, the PhotoSave software detected 691 jpeg photos on my test computer, totaling 1.67GB worth of data.

We clicked the Record button to get the process started. The process starts with the Verbatim PhotoSave software adding the photo files that it found to the burning compilation as shown in the screenshot below.

After the PhotoSave software is done adding all files to the burning compilation, the burning process will start. The total length of the burning process will depend upon the total size of the photos that you are backing up and the speed of your DVD burner.

Once the burning process has finished, you will see the completion screen shown below. Clicking on Finish will close out the PhotoSave software.

Summary and Conclusion

Positives:
High Quality 8x MCC DVD-R discs
No software to install
Automated detection of JPEG photos
Simple and easy to use
Backs up all JPEG photos as advertised
Manual option for backing up other file-types
Multi-session options
Backup directly from a digital camera

Negatives:
No option for automatically detecting & backing up non-JPEG file types
Some DVD drives may have trouble reading multi-zone DVD-R discs

All in all, we found that the PhotoSave DVD’s delivered on Verbatims’ promise of providing an easy, hassle free method for backing up photos on a PC. We would not hesitate to recommend this product, especially for less technically inclined users that might need assistance with operating DVD burning and backup software.

You can pick up a 5 pack of the Verbatim PhotoSave DVD-R for $16.37 here.

Optimize PS3 for Blu-ray Video playback

I stumbled across this helpful video by IGN on how to properly setup your Playstation 3 for optimal Blu-ray Disc playback. If you have a PS3, I would recommend watching this.