So the mystery product that got chipset maker ESS dragged to court is the Aspire Digital AD-8000, a DVD recorder with a secondary disc drive to record your DVDs directly to (S)VCD format, as well as record TV programming and anything else you can connect to the device via analogue connection. I still don't get what the chipset maker has to do with all this.. could they just be a scapegoat because the MPAA and DVD CCA could not sue the actual manufacturer?

How long should copyright protection last? Forever if you ask the entertainment industry, so they can charge us again and again and again. However, not all countries go to such great lengths to fulfill the industry's dreams (like the US where copyright protection has been greatly extended). In good old Europe, copyright protection runs out after 50 years. Now, the British music biz has launched a campaign for an extension, as some of their still profitable material would suddenly become public domain. Starting January 1st 2005, some of Elvis' greatest hits would suddenly no longer pour any money into the music industry's lap.

And then there's an interesting potential DMCA case: Since RealNetwork released their Harmony Technology that allows iPod owners to make the iPod compatible with Real's DRMed music offerings, Apple has accused Real of "adopting the tactics and ethics of a hacker", and they're looking into a possible DMCA lawsuit. They're also openly threatening to change their own DRM system to lock out Real again.

PgcEdit 0.3.2 can create a play all title containing all VOB/Cell IDs of the current VTS sets, displays the time or menu duration in the PGC selector and contains a bunch of bugfixes.

AVI-Mux GUI 1.16.7 has better handling for AVI files with VBR MP3 audio and can join AAC, AC3 and DTS files.

QuEnc 0.51 D2 fixes aspect ratio problems the D1 release had and contains some improvements in reduction of bitrate peaks.

That's an interesting one: you may not sell DVD decoding chips to a company that manufactures devices capable of copying DVDs. Now granted, that nameless company (if you have any idea which company and device this is about let me know) might be in licensing violation - but since when are you not allowed to do business with a company that has done something wrong? I mean, by the same token no company in the EU should be buying Microsoft software anymore since MS has been found guilty of abusing their market situation - and that's just one (prominent) example. Basically any company that ever got into any litigation would be blacklisted by the logic of Maureen Duffy-Lewis - and that would pretty much mean the end of the capitalist economy as we know it.

HD DVD has got some prominent backing: The next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, is supposed to be HD DVD compatible (whatever that means). After all, you can use all three "regular" DVD formats in Windows. Of course, Longhorn won't matter if Ms. Duffy-Lewis gets her way ;)

Last but not least, I found a good piece on the Induce Act over at streamingmedia.com. It's even written by an entertainment lawyer - you'd figure they'd all be for such nonsense legislation. On the last page, you'll find a list of bill sponsors, so if you live in any of those states, let your senator know what you think.

Cuttermaran 1.58 has an improved AC3 stream end detection, can save projects while closing down, can use external tools for multiplexing and MPEG-2 encoding (support for mplex and TMPG is already built-in), there are context menus in the cut- and audio list, a delay can be specified for each audio file separately and the size of the output files will be calculated prior to cutting.

ProgDVB 4.41.1 uses a new format for DVB-C/-T transponder list and has a changed installer.

ScenAid 0.27's new BOV creation routine can be enabled/disabled, subs can be made white or yellow, the software now integrates with Windows Explorer right click menus, the subtitle color assignment has been improved and a couple of bugs have been eliminated.

There is also a new test version of QuEnc around. Version 0.51 D1 has an improved rate control to prevent bitrate spikes, a new custom quantization that no longer generates artifacts when used with trellis quantization, and different settings for varied frame size/bitrate (whatever that may be).

Who is this lady working for? As register of copyrights of the US copyright office, she should be working for the good of the US people, should she not? But actually, Marybeth Peters has all but sold out to big business. In the course of the congressional hearings on the Induce Act (also sometimes known as the technology advancement prevention ;), she's now testifying before congress in favor of the legislation that has consumer rights groups and major electronics companies up in arms, and she has some bold statements to make: She's in favor of abolishing the Sony vs. Universal decision, notably a US supreme court decision, and one of the most important landmark cases for anyone who cares about their rights with respect to copyrighted content.

But, back in good old Europe, things aren't really better. In Germany, lawfirms hired by the music industry are sending out cease and desist letters to webmasters that link to the website of SlySoft - maker of AnyDVD, a software to descramble DVDs on the fly. The software also claims to aid in copying of copy protected CDs, but that part I've never been able to verify, since I'm more of a DVD buying person. Anyway, the letters are being sent out by the boatload, and it boldly claims that those websites were aiding in the distribution of software forbidden by copyright law. DMCA aspects set aside, how is a link to the mainpage of SlySoft distribution of the software in question? And why do webmasters that link to the DVD2SVCD site (which obviously has nothing to do with copying audio CDs), also get C&D letters claiming DVD2SVCD helps to copy copy-protected audio CDs?

Meanwhile, the sad story continues in the UK, where Sony has just won a case against a retailer selling modchips for the PS2. Sure, modchips can allow you to play pirated games, but they also remove the artificial regioning restrictions Sony has placed upon their console - something which is in violation of WTO regulations, but neither in this case, nor when it comes to DVD regioning, which is just as much in violation, has any court ever done anything about it. I guess if we paying customers had as much money to hire lawyers and buy off politicians the situation would be a tad bit different ;)

PgcEdit 0.3.1 is a bugfix release.

VobBlanker development has been steadily ongoing since my last mention of the program. Version 1.3.0.3 has CLI support, logs messages to a log window or file instead of displaying message boxes, can process audio attributes and extract cells, shows VOB and Cell IDs in the cell list dialogue and interleaved cells can be converted to non interleaved ones.

ProgDVB 4.40.5 fixes some small bugs and contains yet another attempt to improve synchronization.

Zoom Player 4.01 RC2 automatically selects the best filters in customized media mode and contains some bugfixes.

RadLight 4.0 beta1 is out. The changelog is so extensive that I won't even begin to try and break it down, but follow the link and you get the full brunt of it.

16x DVD media are getting closer. Taiwanese manufacturers CMC and Ritek have already started shipping small quantities of 16x DVD+R discs and will shift their production focus from 8x discs to 16x ones around September. Verbatim has also announced the availability of their 16x media for September.

BSPlayer 1.0 final is out. It mainly fixes bugs from the release candidates, for instance in playing Matroska, DV Type 1 and VOB with LPCM audio files.

You may have noted it - double layer DVD blanks are very expensive. PC World has an interview with the product manager for DVD media at Verbatim, who does not see the price of dual layer discs come down to reasonable levels within a short amount of time. Yet, it is a long time goal of Verbatim to bring the price of dual layer media down to less than twice the price for a single layer disc. But in 2004, you won't even be able to pick up a spindle of double layer discs yet.

How long will DVD be around until it will be replaced by something better? According to either proponents of the Blu-Ray camp or the HD DVD proponents, the new HD disc systems will be ready as early as 2005. Bill Gates gives DVD, and all disc formats for that matter 10 more years to become obsolete (that would include any future HD DVD format). I'm sure Bill wants us to buy Microsoft DRM protected WMVx (where x is a number above 9;) that are streamed to your MS media center 2010 PC. Well Bill, I like my discs, I'm able to handle them without scratching them, and I don't need to pay you and the MPAA each time I watch a movie. How about that?

Obviously, DivXNetworks would rather like us to use their DRM system, and their own codec. They've just released DivX 5.2, which is now available in multiple languages, has a new high speed mode that is about as good as the standard mode but much faster, includes a bitrate calculator in the codec configuration (now where have I seen that before?), is optimized for SSE3 enabled CPUs and can decode MPEG-4 compliant streams more properly. DivX 5.2 Pro adds multiple b-frames (also a feature we've seen in a bunch of other codecs before) and MPEG quantization. The one click DivX encoding app, Dr. DivX has also been updated, as well as the DivX player. Last but not least, there's no longer an adware/spyware release. DivX Pro will run for 6 months. After that, you might get you can either buy it or get creative ;)

Last but not least, completely unrelated to DVD except for the name of this site, id software has released Doom3 to manufacturing. Get it at your favorite store starting August 3rd. I guess it's time to order a new GFX card now.

Industry majors Intel, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and studios Disney and Warner Bros have come up with a new DRM system for future home cinema systems: Advanced Access Content System (AACS) focuses on home entertainment networks and mobile audio and video players. It allows to set limitations on where high definition content can be transferred. BBC has a sketchy report that seems to indicate that AACS would be used to allow legal copying of DVDs, Germany's heise online disagrees. Personally, I have an extremely hard time imagining Hollywood agreeing to giving us customers rights to do what they're so desperately trying to prevent with CSS, DRM and the DMCA.

In the battle for the future high definition DVD, Sony is close to start production of Blu-Ray ROM discs to adapt the manufacturing process to requirements and specifications of movie studios. The new production line in the US should be able to turn out a BluRay disc in 4 seconds and costing only 10% more than today's DVDs.

The music industry has come up with a new page for teachers, outlining what they may do with music in the classroom. However, it seems the creators of this site have quietly disregarded the most important passage in the US copyright act: the Fair Use exemption. Compare the FAQ from the abovementioned page with the actual legislation.. I guess it's all about which passages of the law you take into account and which you don't ;)

Last but not least: The announced 4x DVD+R DL burner(s) might not be the end of the line. BenQ already has an 8x DVD+R DL model on their roadmap, but that won't be released until 2005.

We haven't heard from Pioneer in a bit but now they're back: the A08 burner, scheduled to ship later this month in Japan, offer 16x DVD±R burning, and 4x DVD+R DL burning, making it the fastest burner for DVD-R and DVD+R DL discs. DVD±RW can be written at the usual 4x (which makes me wonder about 8x capabilities other manufacturers have announced - could this be a strategic move as Pioneer is a DVD- backer?), and CD-R/W burning speed is still lacking behind the competition with 32x/24x (unless you compare the drive to NEC's offering which is also not quite up-to-date on CD burning speeds).

Do terrorists sell bootleg DVDs to fund their operations? That's at least what the UK's anti piracy group FACT would like us to believe. Regardless of whether it's actually true or not, it makes for good propaganda. But I'm sure we'd all be more likely to buy into it with some independent confirmation by a neutral entity...

And here's something for Nebula DVB-T card owners: the latest DigiTV application enables you to use the card to record video from the analogue input to MPEG-1/2 format, and there is an impressive list of fixes and improvements.

DVD2One 1.5.0 has a new compression engine that allows you to set a bias for the important parts of an image.

ffmpeg, mother of all encoding applications (no other supports that many output format) is now available in v.0.4.9-pre1. The changelog is impressive, there is a bunch of new encoders and decoders, any many additional features for existing codecs have been added.

The opposition against the Induce Act is still forming: a group of 42 tech companies has signed a letter denouncing the proposed legislation last Friday.

Last but not least, the list of manufacturers with 16x DVD burners is getting longer. Nu-Techs latest model, the DDW-162, can write DVD+R/W at 16x/8x, DVD-R/W at 8x/4x and DVD+R DL at 2.4x, which makes it a quite complete solution.

Auto Gordian Knot 1.48 fixes a handful of bugs.

LiteOn joins the rank of 16x DVD burner makers. The largest Taiwanese manufacturer of optical drives will start volume production of 16x burners at the end of this month. The drives will have a retail price of about $179 initially.

An MPAA founded study conducted in 8 countries is meant to show that 24% of Internet users are downloading movies. Hey, wait a tick, it's all about creative interpretation of the numbers. First of all we have 80% of the sample (3600 people) are broadband users. The large majority of Internet users still uses 56k modems, which pretty much rules out movie downloads. Then, broadband can mean a lot. Some people consider 2mbit/s and upwards to be broadband, others would say a 256kbit/s (with 64 kbit/s upload) is broadband. Needless to say that the latter is rather unsuited for large downloads. From the 24% to admit to movie downloading, 26% would seldomly buy a movie, and 17% would not go to the movie theater at all. Assuming the two groups don't intersect, that's 10% of the global sample. And last but not least those people could've downloaded only Fahrenheit 9/11 where the director doesn't mind the downloading ;)

Gordian Knot 0.32 has predefined output sizes for single and double layer DVDs and fixes a couple of bugs.

And check out this PC World article on copyright law. It deals with the question why industry friendly laws fast track through congress while consumer friendly legislation has a hard time even getting a hearing.

Now it's the BSA (Business Software Alliance - think RIAA/MPAA for software)'s turn to attack P2P. They claim that they lost double the amount of money in 2003 as the year before, and that this loss is mostly due to piracy on P2P networks. Not having used any P2P software since the days of Napster I might be a little out of date, but I wouldn't know anyone using P2P networks for software. Downloading a whole CD worth of software (or multiple CDs in case of games and recently also a lot of business software), is rather cumbersome even with a broadband connection, thus the selection is probably not as wide as when it comes to music. And while you can't get any trojans or viruses from MP3s, the same thing cannot be said from software you get from shady sources. And what was that about the movie industry losing money to the game industry?

DVD Decrypter 3.2.3.0 can save the log on exit, can cycle the drive try before verifying a burned disc, supports drag & drop operations, can write chapter files for DVD Lab, works even with corrupt IFO files and there's a bunch of other new and changed stuff.

ImgTool Classic 0.91.4 allows settings of the write speed and checks the DVD Decrypter version to (de)activate features that require a certain DVD Decrypter build.

Zoom Player 4.01 RC1 is a bugfix release.

mp4UI 1.0 RC2 has an improved AVI import and some minor improvements and fixes as well as a logging function.

Auto Gordian Knot 1.47 uses the latest BeSweet version and fixes bugs in NTSC preview, preserving the no audio/subs option and using the sharp matrix regardless of comp test results.

ProgDVB 4.40.2 fixes problems with widescreen displays and some additional bugs.

Macrovision, one of the pains in the butt of any legit customer who just wants to make a copy of an audio CD or DVD they legally bought, has some new tricks up their sleeve: They claim to release a new software that allows you to make a number of copies of audio CDs, but those CDs are themselves also protected against copying. This could be interesting. Right now audio CD copy protection system rely on screwing with the audio CD specs: you get a piece of plastic that does not comply with the audio CD specs and thus may not legally carry the audio CD logo. Stereos are less vulnerable to such screwed up discs than PCs, but also CD players for your car and DVD players often fail to read such discs. Copy protection relying purely on software, has so far been rather easy to circumvent, while non compliant discs actually require certain hardware to be copied. It'll be interesting to see if Macrovision has somehow managed to make your burner write screwed up CDs or if it's just another software that tries to autoload on your PC.

Auto Gordian Knot 1.45 supports multi program transport stream, the status of the combobox for language/subtitle selection is preserved after loading a new job, hovering with the mouse over a job shows its settings and the documentation of the hidden options has been updated.

BeSweet 1.5b29 comes with bsn 0.24 that supports commandline configuration, has new options to stretch audio and using the abr mode for MP3 output will trigger the alt-preset abr engine.

If you've been looking for double sided DVD+R discs, they're finally here: Kano Technologies' seems the first to ship such discs but I have yet to see them in stores.

Is the music industry finally waking up? BMG will introduce a 3 tier system of audio CDs starting next month (German article), with prices ranging from €9.99 for a simple no frills version to €17.99 for a collectors edition. It might not be enough to stop the downward trend (which is as we've seen mostly due to using the right numbers to make up some stats, which results in massive losses despite more units being sold in stores), but it's a step in the right direction.

DVD Rebuilder 0.55b fixes problems on W98 (don't know what that is needed ;), improves one pass VBR size accuracy, subtitles no longer disappear when converting from 4:3 to 16:9 mode and there are some more bugfixes.

Gspot 2.5 b3 can parse VOB and MP4 files and there's a bunch of bugfixes.

Ahead's latest Nero pack includes an updated Recode2, which in term contains an updated version of their MPEG-4 codec NeroDigital. The codec has a new extra quality mode, it supports custom quantization matrices and the muxer filter can now split MP4 files and write MP4 files with chapters More about the update can be found in the forum.

With the broadcast flag on digital television looming closer (it's what should stop you from making any high quality recording, and in complete opposition of the Universal vs. Sony ruling), why not join the Digital Television Liberation Front and try to do something about it, before you'll find your rights to record TV stripped away for good.

You'd guess most filmmakers are strictly against their film being available on P2P networks. That is unless you're Michael Moore, probably the most famous documentary filmmaker ever. While most of the majors and the MPAA are still gunning for filesharers and decrying losses, Mr. Moore has openly welcomed the distribution of his latest film, Fahrenheit 9/11 for free, as long as there is no commercial motive involved.

Yet another proprietary disc format for movies has been launched. Though this one will never become widespread. In fear and terror of the possibility of screeners leaking on the Internet, the MPAA will give each member of the Academy a special DVD player to play specially encoded screener DVDs in the future.

If you thought your emails were private, think again. According to the latest ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the first Circuit, an ISP reading your email is not violating any laws, even without your consent.

Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA has stepped down. The man at the forefront in the fight against consumer rights when it comes to home video, the man who once told congress that VCRs were to the film industry what the Boston mangler was to women, passes on the torch to Dan Glickman, of whom we can expect no less than the same consumer unfriendly and hostile attitude towards us. If you actually read that press release, note the spin they put on Jack's statement on VCRs, that doesn't quite agree with what he's gone on record with.

How far will DVD blank prices fall? Digitimes reports that the major Taiwanese manufacturers think that DVD±R prices will bottom out in the 4th quarter of 2004. I guess by that time they'll then shift their attention to dual layer discs, as 16x blanks are as fast as DVD burning is likely to get, whereas there is still potential left in dual layer burning (4x is expected by the end of the year).

The ARIA, Australia's RIAA has officially responded to the levy for copying idea. Obviously, their answer is no, but they claim they don't mind a certain amount of private copying, if it can be controlled. Of course, they wisely did not go into further detail, so I guess they are thinking of a DRM system to allow 3 analogue copies ;) Personally I doubt that DRM systems tied to your PC will ever work. With computerized devices become more and more common, licenses tied to your hardware just aren't gonna work out. And who'd want their legally purchased material deleted by a DRM system as in the Napster example I reported about earlier?

How much is a dual layer DVD+R? Verbatim blanks currently seem to retail around $15, or a little less if you're willing to buy an entire 10 pack that contains mostly 8x DVD+Rs and a 4x DVD+RW. Assuming that those are $2 and $4 a piece, that still makes $10 per disc. I guess many people will keep on using one click DVD transcoders for some time to come..

If you live in the US and do not agree with the Induce Act, that potentially renders every techno gadget we use on a daily basis illegal, here's a sample letter that you could send to your senator. Or, you could sign the "Save the iPod" petition.

While BenQ has just announced two new 16x DVD burner models with DVD+R DL capabilities (one single format and one dual format (only for single layer discs)), Panasonic released the first commercially available BluRay dual layer recorder in Japan.

While I messed up yesterday (the Canadian elections actually were on Monday, sorry guys), I hope I'll get it right this time: The Canadian Supreme court has ruled against the music industry once again. The music industry wanted ISPs to pay royalties for music their subscribers download.

Last but not least, wmansir has been kind enough to update the DVD-Rebuilder guide to correspond to the latest DVD-RB version.

Last month's news can be found here.