Sorry for the little time-out.. I've been racking up more hours than I care to count at work and I gotta catch some sleep some time.

eac3to was taken up to version 3.11 in the meantime which now supports various text subs in MKV files, lists Blu-ray chapter information and fixes various issue.

Then we have PgcEdit 9.2 which has improved icons and delete uncalled PGC functionality and there are various bugfixes as well.

Then we have the next version of the nVidia tools from neuron2: DGVC1DecodeNV 1.05 fixes various issues, and the same goes for DGAVCDecodeNV 1.0.12. Hopefully, one day we'll see the unification of the three NV decoders into a single tool, thus ridding you from choosing the proper tool for each high def video source.

And the Mc RIAA copyright extension passed the EU's legal affairs committee.

Finally, I've had this bookmarked for a while but somehow managed to overlook it until now - AnandTech has a preview of nVidia's Ion platform and it looks good as a surf/email/high def video station. Get rid of the fan, add the latest dual core Atom and I might just bite.

DGMPGDec 1.5.4 has a file close menu, can copy a video frame to the clipboard, shows the progressive_sequence flag in the info dialog and fixes a problem that could lead to frames lost at the beginning of a stream.

Today, the legal committee of the EU is voting on the RIAA initiative (in the spirit of calling things by their name let's not call it the McCreevy initiative) to extend copyright law by a whopping 45 years to 90 years total. Blatantly ignoring the fact that the ideal duration of protection is 15 years, backers argue that those poor artists won't have an income at 70 if they wrote their biggest hits at 20. Munich's Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, tax and competition law does a good job at deconstructing all the arguments from the music industry (unfortunately the document is German) and since I don't have time translating it all but here's a few golden nuggets: the solution is hypocritical, "the conclusions of the commission show an alarming lack of understanding" and the solution is "economically senseless". Or try to see it from another perspective: if you develop a cure for cancer tomorrow, your patents won't last 50 let alone 95 years. And you could've been doing great work for your employer for years and sit on the street today because some people with high 6 or even 7 figure (or 8) incomes thought their place of business was the Strip in Vegas and gambled away so much of (not their own) money that the world economy is tanking. Nobody should be worth a lifetime of guaranteed income, period!

DGMPGDecNV 1.0.0 is the first release of the nVidia hardware assisted decoding tools for MPEG2 videos.

Avidemux 2.4.4 contains improvements in handling AVC video in various containers as well as handling various image formats, supports AAC audio in the commandline interface and fixes a bunch of bugs.

Also, a reader pointed out that the weekly Blu-ray market share numbers I've been reporting on from time to time were actually too high since they only reflect the top 20 sellers. Thus, what we can go on is the amount of money spent, which for the last week I've reported about is 12.5%, and in terms of titles it would be even lower since Blu-ray discs cost more than DVDs. And for last week that makes slightly over 8% in total spending.

eac3to 3.07 contains various improvements in MKV input handling, shows a warning when bitstream parsing failed as well as when demuxing a video track that has gaps or overlaps and there are a bunch of fixes as well.

DGAVCDecNV 1.0.11 now supports MKV input.

ProgDVB 6.04.01 has a context menu for switching sound streams and subtitles as well as some other fixes and improvements.

The MPAA is giving it another shot - but their arguments are as flawed as before: they want to disable various outputs on your TV equipment whenever they like. They argue that in doing so consumers would get an expanded set of choices. So, it's the same old "we'd like to do more business but we're so afraid of piracy" self serving argument. If you want additional streams of revenue, you gotta take a chance here and there - go crying to Uncle Sam to cover your ass smells of desperation. Next thing they're going to ask for a bailout..

While the ACTA negotiations are still shrouded in a cloud of secrecy, bits and pieces always leak and despite the government claiming the trust us card, the fact that all draft documents are available to cleared corporate lobbyists (with the RIAA, MPAA and Co paying their salaries) and corporate lawyers but not the general public should always make you suspicious. While latest drafts do not contain any three strikes provisions or ISP filtering, there's still a good chance that P2P filesharing would be criminalized and you never know if they're not going to take your iPod away at the next border crossing because somebody claims you have a pirated piece of music on it (plus they can keep the device for one year without due process).

eac3to 3.06 adds MKV reading/parsing support including demuxing of all kinds of audio tracks, doesn't list empty tracks in (M2)TS files, displays a warning when dealing with 24.000 fps audio tracks, uses timestamp derived FPS instead of the video stream FPS for gap checking and there are some bugfixes as well.

DGVC1DecNV 1.0.4 now support MKV input.

The RIAA's relentless push to have you disconnected from the Internet for alleged filesharing has come to another fruitful result: Ireland's largest ISP Eircom has settled out of court in a lawsuit in which the labels tried to force the ISP to install network monitoring equipment and the settlement involves the "graduated response" AKA strike strikes and you're out (or better put: be accused three times and you're out regardless of whether the evidence has any standing).

Finally, if that keeps up, Blu-ray is going to outgrow niche status soon: We're up to 17% market share in the US right now.

Older news can be found here.