Sorry for the news blackout - I was at CeBIT and wasn't sure whether I'd have Internet access so I didn't take my computer. However, I have put together a small article on what I've seen at CeBIT as far as HD DVD and Blu-ray are concerned. I also looked into the DVB card situation in the light of PCI-less PCs.

DGMPGDec 1.4.9 beta 15 fixes a colometry bug and supports M2TS files found on Blu-ray discs.

The latest Nero Update - version 7.8.5 adds SecurDisc technology, aimed to provide additional redundancy against data loss and password protect your files (it takes special burners though that are about to be released), supports AVCHD and HD DVD. However, to actually play HD DVD, you need to shell out another €25 for the HD DVD plugin. With the plugin, ShowTime will play HD DVD and NeroVision will support HD DVD content as well. The plugin should be released today. NeroLinux 3 also supports HD DVD and Blu-ray burning under Linux.

Mpg2Cut2 build 7318 fixes a lot of bugs and includes a bunch of small improvements.

The latest DVDFab Decrypter beta supports HD DVD and reduces the time it takes to open a DVD.

While Blu-ray disappointed on the CeBit floor, that didn't stop Sony's spinmasters from spinning the PR wheel a whole lot: They claim that HD DVD will be dead within 3 years.

What the Blu-ray spinmasters might not like too much is that Warner's Total HD disc only offers a single layer for Blu-ray - so those THD discs will undo Blu-ray's supposed size advantage. If other studios supporting both formats also go for THD, would that end the size discussion once and for all?

And besides putting on a rather impressive HD DVD show at CeBit, the HD DVD camp called to the press and obviously had things to say that are far from what the Blu-ray camp is toting: They point out that the current surge of disc sales in part is due to Blu-ray movie vouchers that come with PS3 consoles being redeemed, and that if you look at standalone players only, HD DVD has a considerable advantage - even in the US. Toshiba also promises to undercut Blu-ray on price (more about that in my CeBit report).

France's Studio Canal is the latest studio to delay high def disc releases: according to a press release, the upcoming discs has been delayed because of upcoming changes in AACS. We all know the discs are static but we might see content / player key revocation in action for the first time. And in related news, the makers of the high def versions of Chronos have shared how much it costs a small filmmaker to incorporate AACS. And what I didn't know: on HD DVD AACS is optional, on Blu-ray it's mandatory.

While Apple's call for less DRM is likely just a marketing play, DRM is actually hurting some online music stores: Take Germany's Musicload - 75% of its support calls are DRM related. So the easiest way to cut cost in the support department would be the use of unprotected MP3 songs, which also increases the number of people you can reach as most mobile music players can handle MP3.

H264TS_Cutter 101 uses an xml config file, ensures that cutout points fall on IDR frames, has a new PCR calculation and fixes a cutpoint position bug.

ProgDVB 5.05 comes with a totally revamped CI support (currently limited to SkyStar1/Nexus and 3200 cards) and has an installer for the Elecard edition.

MyTheatre 3.38 supports Genpix and DVBTech 8PSK boards and DishPro LNBs, re-adds support for BroadLogic cards and contains some minor bugfixes.

FAVC 0.93 supports subtitles, has presents account for single core machines, allows you to specify a custom working directory and bundles the latest versions of HC, ImgBurn, Muxman and MediaInfo.

What is the MPAA doing if they can't sneak in the broadcast flag into legislation? Sneak it into digital broadcast specs. With a little help from our friends in Hollywood, the DVB consortium has devised a new scheme called "Content Protection and Copy Management" - CPCM. It's goal is simple: turn off the ability to record digital content and restrict playback of recorded content to authorized devices.

LG's latest Blu-ray burner, the GGW-H10N, not only offers 4x burning on Blu-ray discs, it also brings Blu-ray into the SATA age and it comes with an interesting twist: it also reads HD DVDs.

Apple is about to face more trouble in the EU: the Consumer Protection Commissioner is apparently not too happy about Apple's restricting the use of iTunes to their iPod line.

Finally some hard data: there were 250k Blu-ray discs sold in the US in February, versus 125k HD DVD discs - player wise, both formats sold the same amount but that's not including the PS3. Now we can put that into perspective: when DVD was launched, 2.3 million discs were shipped in the first quarter. Compare that to the number of players sold - 77'000 in the same quarter. That should tell us two things: 1) the HD formats won't be adopted as fast as DVD was, and 2) considering the massive amount of Blu-ray capable devices already out there, the # discs sold per player ratio is not only low for both formats, it's outright abysmal for Blu-ray. That just goes to show how much a ratio means if you can't put it into perspective.

And speaking of high definition discs, aacskeys is a program that lists all the AACS keys used to decrypt a particular disc.

RipIt4Me 1.7.0.1 shows if a DVD contains additional protection, launches DVD Decrypter directly if no ArCCoS & Co is detected, terminates AnyDVD properly and there are a couple of bugfixes.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0 alpha 3 allows you to enable info and warnings encountered when parsing a stream, can decode the stream using the JVT reference decoder, can turn off deblocking, shows the frame type field in the DGA file and fixes some bugs.

H264TS_Cutter can cut HDTV broadcasts containing MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) content.

Haali's latest splitter release contains an improved gdsmux, support S_TEST/ASCII subtitles in the muxer, supports MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG program streams, improves support for Dolby Digital + in MPEG program streams, has a bitrate graph in the OSD, supports PCM and ulaw audio in QuickTime files, automatically links VOB files and fixes a few bugs.

Burning dual layer DVDs just got faster again: RICOH has announced the first 16x DVD+R DL discs. And those discs may sell well according to a recent survey, which found that the increased amount of HD content would increase demand for dual layer DVD blanks by 122%.

Would Blu-ray even stand a chance without Sony's massive subsidization? Blu-ray has been available in Europe for a while, but two weeks before the PS3 launches, HD DVD currently makes up for 85% of the next generation format market in Europe. It almost makes me wish that Microsoft would step up their HD DVD commitment and start selling Xboxes with a built-in HD DVD drive, just to even the odds.

It's been a few weeks since Steve Jobs went out to bash DRM in what many consider to be just a PR move. Join the Free Software Foundation in asking him to pay more than lip service and start by getting rid of DRM on all the songs where labels don't explicitly ask for it.

As I'm about to travel abroad again in the next weeks, and seeing the push towards passports that store biometric data and contain RFID chips - this should give you some food for thought: Those "secure" passports can be read out by unauthorized parties with little effort. Now didn't they claim things would get better?

ProgDVB 5.04 allows you to select the default language in the options and contains updated client and server modules.

DumpHD is the third HD DVD decrypter. The number of programs and the development in this area should give you a hint which format is better for you if you care about removing DRM.

Macrovision, which graced the world with corrupt video signals, non playable CDs and DVDs, and the demise of DVD Decrypter, is now corrupting your video downloads from Netflix, BitTorrent, Movielink and Instant Media.

If Blu-ray had already won the format war - why is Dreamworks entering the HD market on both sides of the fence with the release of Dreamgirls on May 1st, followed by Flags of our Fathers on May 22nd? Could it be that in the "giving discs away with PS3 purchases" and 50% off sales frenzy (and let's not forget that the Blu-ray is the most heavily subsidized CE format to launch since as far as I was interested in consumer electronics - PS3 anyone?) Sony went just a tad bit overboard?

One little detail that I forgot yesterday regarding the recent DVD Forum steering committee meeting: it also approved a logo for self-destructing DVDs. The format is called DVD Time Limited.

The Broadcast Treaty (TV broadcasters attempt to obtain copyright on stuff they don't even have a copyright on right now), is coming under fire from an unlikely source: the US Senate. It's refreshing that some senators still can see right through the smoke.

A Chinese company has been found guilty of producing and distributed pirated DVDs from Disney, Warner and New Line. Nothing terribly exciting, unless you look at the damages awarded to the plaintiff: for distributing blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings, the studios were awarded a little over $3000. That puts the whole RIAA P2P lawsuits into perspective, doesn't it?

EVOdemux 0.623 displays AVC video stream info and fixes a few bugs.

Cyberlink can put the champagne away again - their player is leaking keys, too. Or perhaps I should rephrase: it gives keys to those that need it. I just recently got a HD DVD drive myself and quite frankly, what you are being put through playback wise is a major pain in the butt: I have yet to find the section in the AACS 0.91 specs that mandate a HDCP protected video path in case the playback device is fed via digital input. Yet, it appears both WinDVD 8 and PowerDVD 7.1 simply downscale content to 960x540 on my machine. On top of that, the ICT flag that studios can use to enforce downscaling over unprotected connections, is not being used right now (I haven't found a title that uses it but feel free to point me in the proper direction) - so there really is no reason to force downscaling. To make matters even better, the lucky owners of 30" XHD screens (2560x1600) resolution, are left out to "enjoy" downscaled content even if their display path is HDCP capable - HDCP simply cannot handle dual link DVI. To make matters even better, even if you play a movie without encryption (tried so far with discs ripped to HD and discs decrypted on the fly by AnyDVD HD), you get the downscaling. In a few days I should have a a movie without AACS where Intervideo and Cyberlink can definitely not hide behind the AACS LA anymore to justify unjustifiable downscaling. Only the older PowerDVD 6.5 plays movies at their native resolution - but it's rather picky and doesn't play about half the discs I have. And what's common to all players: they flat out refuse to play anything encrypted. And to add insult to injury, after being forced to remove copy protection to enable basic playback, I'm now a terrorist. Feel free to share your HD playback stories in the forum.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0 alpha 2 fixes various decoding issues that have been reported in the first release.

DivFix 0.28 supports DIV3 stream indexes, multiple languages, MaxOS X and contains a lot of improvements.

DVDx 2.7 now uses a Windows XP style file explorer for selecting the DVD root, displays MPEG/VOB file names without path in the scanning process window and it comes bundled with nLame 3.97.

HD DVD burning has just gotten faster: At the latest steering committee meeting, 2x burning for HD DVD-R/W has been approved, along with the specs for HD content on regular DVD discs, and the CSS for download standard. There also appears to be a physically separate HD DVD standard for China. Now you might just wonder where those recorders are. I have yet to see one in the wild. On the other hand, the only way to play back Blu-ray on a PC appears to be a Blu-ray burner, making it a very pricey affair. So I guess both formats leave a lot to be desired still.

You might recall that I mentioned a while back that the defense of one of the people that got into the RIAA's crosshairs for P2P filesharing asked for community input for a deposition of the RIAA's witness. The transcript of that deposition is now available.

In the latest push by US copyright cartels to bring DMCA style legislation across the northern border, the industry has teamed up with US senators and the US ambassador.

Last but not least, if you're interested in getting into HD DVD authoring, here's an interesting blog on the subject.

AnyDVD HD 6.1.2.9 removes the region code from Blu-ray discs.

CSS for downloadable content has been finalized and approved by the DVD Forum. The thing is, there are no plans to make the hardware and disks widely available but rather restrict them to burning portals in stores. So much for downloading a movie and burning it on a DVD at home. I guess you'll have to keep to the "download, remove DRM, convert to MPEG-2, then burn" way.

Is the music industry trying to kill off smaller online radio stations? The current review of royalties by the Copyright Royalty Board will result in a significant increase in royalty rates - which in cases of smaller stations equals an increase by more than a 100 times.

ProgDVB 5.03 supports IPTV.

DVDFab Decrypter 3.0.8.6 contains updated language files.

AnyDVD HD 6.1.2.8 supports Blu-ray, does I/O on 64 bit operating systems in kernel mode, contains an updated ElbyCDIO layer which is more CPU efficient, and it works properly with HD DVDs that have no iHD menus.

DVDSubEdit 1.38 contains some improvements related to DCSQT updates (yes, I admit I have no clue what that is;)

While the Blu-ray camp is busy slapping themselves on the shoulder, their "superior" hardware support is cracking. First it was LG's dual format player, now Samsung has announced a notebook with an integrated HD DVD drive.

It was the AACS LA: the licensing authority is sending out bogus DMCA takedown notices to sites hosting BackupHDDVD. Why bogus? BackupHDDVD is a textbook implementation of the HD DVD AACS decryption subsystem, and the specs are out for everybody to see. It is not a circumvention tool in the sense of the DMCA because it simply cannot circumvent the encryption - it needs the legitimate decryption key to work.

The RIAA is getting friskier by the day: Not content with taking cases to court that hardly stand up to even legal scrutiny (let alone common sense..), their latest gamble comes in the form of a website where you can settle your case online without ever having to consult a lawyer. So here is how it works: A P2P tracking company in the RIAA's service takes screenshots that contain an IP address and a file name, the RIAA gets the subscriber with that IP address at the given time, sends you a letter that makes you quiver in your boots (especially those that may not be terribly familiar with the law and have no idea about the shaky ground those lawsuits stand on), and being scared people might decide to pay up right away instead of talking to a lawyer first (not that I'm a fan of lawyers but if you have one that understands technology, your chances of taking matters to court aren't too shabby and the RIAA already had to award a defendant's lawyer fees after the case was thrown out of court). I cannot help but feel this is an extortion scheme that rival's SCO's attack on Linux - now where are the feds with a RICO investigation if you need them?

If you're a technology company that makes flawed products, shouldn't you tell your customers? Well, by now there are plenty of arms to force any critic into submission and stall the release of unflattering information: the DMCA is the favorite "shut people up" tool - but there's also patent law, which is being used to prevent a presentation on how RFID chips can be cloned at a security conference. Now you might ask yourselves how this concerns you: Chances are your credit card already contains an RFID chip, new passports contain RFID chips - those are just two examples where you'd like the data on the RFID chip to be safe no matter what.

And speaking of patents, here's one online petition the UK government is looking favorably upon: the petition to make software patents unenforceable. While the big software houses that have entire patent minefields to "protect them" (the proper term would be to have the marketplace in their stranglehold) against competition, this certainly comes as good news to smaller software houses.

Last but not least - while the intrusive activation procedure hasn't been done away yet, it is now possible to generate your own Windows Vista keys before activation. What's even funnier: chances that you'll accidentally generate a key that matches a legitimate one are not too shabby which will result in angry calls by legitimate buyers if they no longer can activate their Windows. Then again, only widespread customer backlash will result in a chance to rethink the whole activation idea. - And a little update: it appears the tool has a success ratio that makes the whole thing extremely unpractical.

Oh, and I almost forgot: I entered the HD age yesterday and things aren't so pretty: I already had AnyDVD HD installed and it was able to rip the first disc I put in the drive right out of the box. To play discs in regular players, I needed the UDF 2.5 drivers though. And that's about where the good news ended: if I deactivate AnyDVD HD, WinDVD 8 freezes upon startup. PowerDVD 7.2 aborts before the main menu citing some hardware issue (and PowerDVD is really bitchy about your hardware). With AnyDVD HD active, WinDVD throws a hissy fit in the menu of European Universal titles, PowerDVD works just fine - and both only play content at 960x540 despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge none of the 14 titles I have contains the ICT (at least Universal and Paramount are on record as not using ICT and I didn't find the ICT logo anywhere on any disc) - and that even when playing a ripped HD DVD. WinDVD also got confused with the audio on Tokyo Drift and actually played 2 audio streams simultaneously. Either way, there are plenty of hoops to jump through for prospective HD owners. I'll be doing some more experiments as soon as possible, see how things work if I remove AnyDVD for a change, etc.

RipIt4Me 1.70 no longer needs FixVTS installed, contains some changes that should result in less players balking at the removal of small cells, offers to switch back to full movie mode if an episodic disc is detected and the mode has been set to movie only and there are some other minor improvements and bugfixes.

ProgDVB 5.02 should contain all the dialogs and functions from the 4.x tree.

DVD2One 2.1.2 doesn't convert the disc name to an ISO compliant mode anymore, automatically ejects discs in batch mode when processing is done and there are a couple of bugfixes as well.

Haali's latest media splitter support MPEG Program Streams, supports VC-1 in transport and program streams and LPCM audio in transport streams, features improved seeking in transport streams and contains a few fixes.

This may come as a surprise to TV stations, but it really makes perfect sense: especially in English speaking countries, the arbitrary delays between an episode airing in the US and other countries drives people to download episodes from P2P networks. Now don't bring out the "you can't compete with free" excuse, because it's just about day and date releases.

A first look at the Bittorrent movie store shows the usual sad picture: DRM, and all the related difficulties in getting your legitimately purchased content to work. Well, if they'd be selling DRM free AVI or MP4 files, all it would take the buyer is installing ffdshow (and Haali's splitter unless MPC or VLC is used), and off you go.

The FAIR USE act recently introduced in Congress aims to add some DMCA exemptions but doesn't live up to the expectations: forget about finally writing out that you have the right to copy your own DVDs and CDs. Despite being a watered down version of the DMCRA (now that's the one that would benefit everybody but the MPAA/RIAA) - the RIAA is already screaming bloody murder (and when will the RIAA learn to put up press releases on their webpage in a timely fashion?).

Last month's news can be found here.