DVD43 4.1 shows a bubble hint when it's working reading a DVD (like AnyDVD), has a helpfile and fixes some bugs.

HDTV2MPEG 1.11.93 shows only the file name in the input listbox instead of the full path.

VirtualDub 1.8.0 can read and write VBR audio with correct synch, allows input plugins to expose VBR audio, can multiplex raw MP3 tracks, offers to select the source audio tracks when multiple tracks are present, contains built-in decoding support for u and a-law audio as well as MP2 and MP3 audio and has a bunch of other new features.

Sony has officially announced their upcoming generation of Blu-ray players. The good news - both do Profile 2.0 and audio support is getting better. The BDP-S350, due in July, will retail for $400 or less, has an USB port to add external storage space and support, decodes TrueHD and Dolby Digital+ at fully 7.1 channels and bitstreams the rest. The BDP-S550 with a list price of $500 adds 1 GB of storage space, DTS HD and MA decoding and 7.1 analog output for every codec. Now you might wonder.. BD Live requires 1 GB storage - so do you need a memory stick to go profile 2.0 on the BDP-S350? Or is the player really only a profile 1.1. player? Incidentally, it seems the lower end model will start out as profile 1.1 player only and that you'll have to upgrade the firmware to arrive at profile 2.0. Oh, and the BDP-S550 will come some time in fall. So if you've been hoping for a sub $200 full featured Blu-ray player for Christmas - it will definitely not be a Sony.

The RIAA won't be pleased - the defendant in another of their P2P lawsuits didn't even show up in court, and despite that, the court refused to rule in favor of the music industry. The reasons for the ruling: there's no proof that anybody downloaded the songs that were made available (recall that an opposite jury instruction pretty much sealed the fate of the first jury trial on P2P matters last year).

ProgDVB 5.1.3.5 is now available in 64 bit.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0 alpha 18 now demuxes MPEG audio with an extension indication what kind of MPEG audio it is and fixes a few issues.

SUPread 0.49b has BDN xml export for Scenarist during bitmap saving.

While it has been quiet on that front for quite a while, Apple has finally decided to go after the DRM strippers for their PlayFair DRM system.

Just days after Toshiba pulled the plug, a large scale retail exodus has already begun: In Japan, where HD DVD was never too popular to begin with, six major consumer electronics stores have pulled HD DVD devices from the shelves. One chain even has a trade in program so you get store credit to buy a Blu-ray player if you return your HD DVD player. In the US, Toshiba and the previously HD DVD exclusive studios are offering incentives to retailers to sell off remaining stock rather than returning it and some smaller retailers also have trade-in offers.

Microsoft has also pulled the plug on the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. Since the drive is made by Toshiba, this comes as no big surprise. If you need an HD DVD drive for your PC, I suggest the LG GGC-H20L which not only gives you HD DVD playback, but also CD/DVD writing at decent speeds and it plays Blu-ray just in case.

In Taiwan, blank media makers CMC and Ritek are stepping up their efforts to bring out blank Blu-ray media for high speed recording.

Amidst all that, we start hearing more critical voices though - I already gave a list of issues that Blu-ray has to overcome on its way to the mass market in my HD DVD farewell, and those points are increasingly taken up by the media and analysts as well. ABI research will have exponents of the blu camp foaming when pointing out that consumers really would've been better off with HD DVD. Even when talking to some colleagues at work who heard the news, while not knowing the details, they at least had an idea that Blu-ray was significantly more expensive, both in terms of players and production. Canada's globeandmail also re-raises the whole Warner payoff situation as having lead to the end.

Meanwhile, Toshiba tells techradar that they did everything right. I guess they forgot about PR, buying off more studios and getting Microsoft to swap out the DVD drive in the Xbox 360 with a HD DVD drive when HD DVD first came to the market ;)

In DVD news, Traxdata has announced a 16x DVD+R DL disc. I wonder though if they will be any bit more affordable than current dual layer offerings.

Paramount is going blu as well - days after Toshiba announced they'd drop HD DVD, the last major studio has timidly announced they'd release movies in Blu-ray again in the future. However, no further details were given, and just two days ago (and thus after Toshiba's announcement), Paramount still announced a new HD DVD title scheduled for April 8th. As with Universal, we're left wondering about a release schedule, as well as what will happen with HD DVDs that have already been announced, and in case of Paramount, if that includes Dreamworks. Also, Paramount's statement says they'll monitor consumer adoption and determine their release plans accordingly, which could mean pretty much anything from immediately starting to release titles, or wait until kingdom come.

Meanwhile, Warner, has affirmed that there'd be no change in their HD DVD lineup, so they'll stick with the 3 week delay of all titles until phasing out HD DVD on May 31st.

And with that we're turning to my final farewell to HD DVD - in continuation of the article on the format war half a year ago entitled No choice, this one's titled No Choice 2 ;) It not only wraps up what has happened, but also gives an outlook at the future and outlines my own experience with both formats from a more practical standpoint.

DVDFab Decrypter 4.0.6.5 improves compatibility with DVD Shrink, has an improved structure cleaning module as well as an improved "jump to main title" function for multiangle discs and there are the usual bugfixes.

Toshiba's press conference on HD DVD also included some sales numbers - apparently, they sold 600'000 standalone players in the US, 100'000 in Europe and a meager 30'000 in Japan. The Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on sold 300'000 units. Considering all the PS3s out there and the 2:1 disc sales ratio that remained until Warner's announcement, I'd say Blu-ray attach ratio leaves a little to be desired and the industry will face an uphill battle to make the format more popular. Toshiba also has no plans to release a Blu-ray player, so they'll leave the battle to make Blu-ray more popular squarely in the Blu-ray camp.

Universal didn't take long to react to the news of Toshiba dropping HD DVD - they are already looking at releasing titles in Blu-ray, though there are no details as to when the first discs will appear and what will happen with the current inventory and announced titles. I expect Paramount & Dreamworks to make similar announcements in the near future. Care to take any bets as to which title will be the last to appear on HD DVD? Seeing as Universal has released a significant number of movies on HD DVD, it should take a while until all those titles are available in Blu-ray.

In somewhat better news for HD DVD fans, LG has no plans to discontinue their current dual format players.

And as if the whole Blu-ray profile mess weren't enough, here we go again down the unfinished route: Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi and Maxell have announced the first LTH BD-R discs. The LTH discs are based on an organic die, and current players and recorders cannot handle those discs, although there's hope that a firmware upgrade would do the trick. Apparently, the advantage of LTH discs is that it brings down production cost - so perhaps backing up a Blu-ray movie to a BD-R will one day be a viable option.

Last but not least, Smarthouse reports that Microsoft is readying a Blu-ray add-on for their Xbox 360 console, now that the HD DVD add-on will most certainly disappear from the market in short order.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0 alpha 16 supports audio demuxing (not via commandline though) and fixes M2TS support.

It's over folks. Toshiba, after a timid denial on Monday, pulled the plug on HD DVD today. HD DVD hardware will be phased out of the retail channel until the end of March so if you have been in the HD DVD camp, you better stock up on players right now. A formal eulogy will come later..

And if you're looking at dual format players - things may not be looking much brighter: Existing dual format standalone players have never been that great and one of the two proponents of such players - Samsung - has announced even previous to today's news that they'd focus on Blu-ray in the future. Hopefully, those dual format PC drives won't go away (I got myself a GGC-H20L for Christmas and I love it - the fan in the Xbox drive really bugged me).

Besides asking for ISP filtering and ISP cutting off their own customers, the music industry is also approaching unreasonable copyright policies in another area: they want to extend protection for music from 50 to 95 years. Clearly, somebody didn't get the memo that the optimal protection period would be merely 14 years. And I wonder how all those poor patent holders feel when their patents run out while their colleagues in the music industry keep on getting paychecks for something that's may not even be terribly innovative in the first place.

The EU is also currently looking into levies on blank media and is asking stakeholders for input. Expect the industry's position to be: we'd love a pay per use model enforced by DRM but we certainly won't give up the levies either.

The music and movie industries have been making noise about changes in copyright law in Canada for a long time, but now the other side is speaking up as well: Internet companies and ISPs have a decidedly different and more consumer friendly approach to copyright law.

Meanwhile, in the UK, ISPs are thinking ahead at what would happen if they cut off their own customers for using P2P, especially if the industry gets their facts wrong yet again (there have been plenty examples in the US where the RIAA sued the wrong people) - they want the music industry to cover any costs a wrongful disconnection could result in.

It has been an extremely bad week for HD DVD - and the hits just keep on coming. The latest major player to give HD DVD the boot is retail giant Wal-Mart. They announced to focus on Blu-ray in the future, and while not completely abandoning HD DVD just yet, the announcement makes it clear that blu is the color of the day for Wal-Mart.

And if that weren't enough, a study shows that even prior to this week's defection, salespeople in the US have already been recommending Blu-ray over HD DVD.

And that's not it, either. Japanese TV channel NHK reported (on a Saturday where the people to respond aren't in the office) that Toshiba would give up on HD DVD. The story was picked up by other sources, and Reuters added their own version citing their own sources. However, there has been no confirmation by Toshiba so far. In fact, Japan's AVWatch reported something that sounds like a denial if Google's translation is correct - and by now Toshiba's PR people in Japan should be back at the office so I'm sure we'll hear more in the coming hours.

Last but not least, even though more high definition players have sold since both format's inception than DVD players in the comparable period of the format's live, the numbers don't quite look so good when you look at the number of discs sold. However, even hardware sales aren't that impressive if you consider that the large majority of Blu-ray players out there are PS3's - and most people didn't buy the console as a movie player but as a gaming device (movies might come at some point but it would be preposterous to assume the every PS3 owner automatically starts buying Blu-ray discs at this point).

eac3to 2.21 improves MKV muxing speed, detects E-AC3 7.1 tracks properly, can extract the 5.1 core from 7.1 EAC3 tracks, supports small DTS files and uses the latest MLP/TrueHD decoder which fully decodes 7.1 TrueHD tracks and no longer throws the lossless check failed error. Version 2.22 removes the ignoreGaps parameter and has a completely changed gap/overlap logic.

TsRemux 0.20 can extract the DTS core track from a DTS HD track and fixes a few issues.

ProgDVB 5.1.3.4 fixes a major issue when dealing with AVC channels.

Plextor has recently announced their latest generation of high definition capable drives - the PX-B300SA is your regular 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 4x DVD±R DL DVD Burner with 40x/24x CD burning and it is capable of reading but Blu-ray (6x) and HD-DVD (3x) discs. The PX-B920SA adds Blu-ray writing to the mix (4x für BD-R and 2x for BD-RE).

This hasn't been a good week for HD DVD so far - leaked sales numbers (care to venture a guess which company in the Blu-ray camp is responsible for the constant leaks;) show that HD DVD still hasn't managed to get to parity in standalone player sales (and I'm sure we'll see the same in terms of discs sold.. seeing as the first serious HD DVD release in 2008 is only due next week), and now we have Netflix - the popular online rental company - dumping HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray, and Best-Buy, the largest US consumer electronics chain, recommending Blu-ray over HD DVD.

It's the same story every year - the Intellectual Property Cartel (well, Alliance really but that's just the sugar coating) - slams countries for not bending over and adapting copyright law that favors big content and screws paying consumers over. Once again, Canada gets a honorary mention.

And so the idea has made its way across the Channel - no doubt sponsored and lobbied for by the infamous consumer hating copyright associations of this world, the UK government is considering legislation that would have ISPs cut you off for filesharing.

DVDFab HD Decrypter 4.0.6.2 doesn't appear to offer any notable changes over the 4.0.6.0 beta - I guess it's just what they consider a non beta version.

Remember Kaleidoscope - the company that has given the DVD CCA some major headaches as the hardware rips your DVDs. Now they're planning a Blu-ray capable device - I wonder if they bank on BD+ being cracked by then since this is the major obstacle to being able to use Blu-ray discs in a matter you, and not the studios, see fit.

While AT&T is leading the charge towards filtering their subscriber's content (I guess when you're already siphoning all phone calls and Internet traffic into the NSA you have most of the infrastructure needed to filter already in place), Verizon is not going to follow.

It is commonly believed - at least amongst Blu-ray friendly circles - that high def prices can only go down if HD DVD folds. The opposing side is usually quick to ask what happens with production cost once Sony's massive subsidies run out, and that this, along with less two for one sales would actually lead to the average disc price going up and be even further away from what DVDs cost today. Now Netflix is weighing in - and their bottom line is pretty much the same: if the format war ends, rental prices could go up.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0. Alpha 15 has a CLI interface - and the alpha 14 that I skipped added transport stream support, has a menu option to loop playback, has a save project and demux video option in the file menu as well as an option to control the creation of a logfile and the manual links have been corrected.

The RIAA - <sarcasm>savior of all starving artists</sarcasm> - is once again showing their true colors: even though songwriters and publishers get next to nothing per unit of music (songs, albums), but the RIAA wants those royalties to go even lower. And then blame it all on P2P, eh?

Resistance to drastically increased statutory (that's compensation for losses the industry hasn't to prove they have incurred) damages to copyright infringement is finally forming. It remains to be seen if the consumer electronics and computing industry can buy enough influence on the Hill to beat big content.

And while the MPAA is decrying P2P, the Cinequest Film Festival has taken a completely different roads - they use P2P download stats along with online voting to select films to add to the festival's lineup.

Last but not least, a new law passed in Italy could potentially legalize P2P music sharing, as long as the copies shared are "degraded". Even if your 192kbit/s VBR MP3 can be considered lossless, there's an additional roadblock: the law only applies to educational and scientific use.

tsMuxer 1.2.9 fixes the MKV parsing module.

The Blu-ray profile 1.1 comes to PCs: Cyberlink has just released an updated PowerDVD version which supports the new profile and improves BD-J compatibility as well (sorry I cannot resist - did we ever need an iHD update 1.5 years after HD DVD was launched?)

Who'd have thought we see the day when the RIAA is being beaten at their own game (asking for more and more laws to screw over their own customers)? While the RIAA obviously loves the idea of ISP side filtering - they don't seem to think it should be mandated (or could they just be afraid that perhaps those pesky consumer advocates might try to sneak in a few more fair use provisions into any DMCA revision?) And in other news, the RIAA once more set their targets on the wrong person - but want to sneak out of paying the legal fees of the person they wrongfully sued before the defendant even tries to get that money back.

And in other RIAA news, they finally got the Swedish authorities to drag the operators of the infamous Bittorrent search engine - The Pirate Bay - to court.

And here's the useless patent of the day: Amazon's custom 404 pages - the idea has been around and quite frankly this is so far from the line of obviousness that you can't even see the line anymore.

CDFreaks is currently collecting questions to be answered by the Blu-ray Disc Association. I already sent them a bunch of questions that'll make them cringe ;)

Last but not least, the forum server is currently unreachable and since the admin is currently on a plan (or will soon be), we'll have to wait a bit for things to get back to normal. Sorry :(

Last month's news can be found here.