News written by Rich Fiscus (March, 2008)

Earlier this year I was forced to find a replacement for Windows Media Center in order to use the latest version of Windows Media Player to support the Netflix Streaming service's DRM. After some searching I settled on SageTV as the best choice.

Besides offering most of the same media center and DVR functionality in Windows Media Center, it also supports the MCE remote I already have. After working with SageTV for a couple of months I've written both a review and an installation guide. I consider SageTV to be a significant upgrade to Windows Media Center.

Being built around cross-platform support (there are also OS X and Linux versions), it works well with formats like FLAC and containers like Matroska (MKV files). With a little work I was even able to get DRM protected content from SpiralFrog to play (via WMP).

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Today we have another new guide, this time on installing and configuring AC3Filter. Like most of the tools I've been writing about recently, AC3Filter is free and yet full featured and quite competitive with commercial alternatives.

In addition to decoding AC-3 (Dolby Digital) audio as the name suggests, it also supports a variety of other sources including DTS and MPEG Audio.

As promised earlier this week we have a new guide for ffdshow which covers basic installation and configuration of video and audio decoders.

If you're not familiar with ffdshow, it uses open source libraries (DLL files) to build a DirectShow interface, adding support for all common video and audio formats to most Windows playing, editing, and encoding software. It's particularly popular for the included MPEG-4 AVC support, which rivals any commercial competitor.

As part of our continuing effort to keep up with current technology, we're pleased to announce the addition of two new guides. The first is an introduction to Haali Media Splitter. If you're not familiar with this program, it's used to add support for the MP4, MKV, Ogg, and TS containers (file types) to Windows.

The second is a followup to our recent Video Capture guides for processing MPEG-2 TV captures. This guide explains how to Encode MPEG-2 captures to AVC video, either in a MP4 Container with AAC audio or in a Matroska (MKV) container with the original AC-3 (Dolby Digital) sound.

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This week has been another light one for Glossary updates as I've been working on guides instead. Our latest guide is an Introduction to Super.

It covers installation and basic operation of the Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer, or SUPER. SUPER is somewhat unique because if offers an extremely simplified interface to a number of very powerful tools. This makes it possible to Encode with the ease generally associated with consumer tools, but with the quality you expect from the best free and open source encoders available.

In addition to adding content, we're also working on improving how it's presented. If you've read my recent guides you may have noticed some layout changes, including additional information on related guides and terms at the bottom of the first and last page of each guide. There are also footnotes which will give you some advanced information related to various subjects.

We'd love to hear your opinions on any changes we make so we can provide the most useful guides possible.

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At a panel discussion called 'Mobility, Ubiquity and Monetizing Music,' which will be held tomorrow at the SXSW (South By Southwest) Music And Media Conference in Austin Texas, the focus is expected to be a proposal by one panel member for adding a small monthly surcharge on braodband internet service to pay royalties for music currently being downloaded (illegally) for free. Jim Griffin's plan would see the money divided up among labels, publishers, artists, and songwriters according to download statistics from P2P networks.

Griffiin was responsible for the first commercial release of a song online while head of technology at Geffen Records. Since leaving Geffen he's spent his time working on issues related to digital delivery of various types of media. He'll be joined on the panel by Peter Jenner, manager and former manager of a number of successful recording artits, who describes Griffin's plan as "monetizing the anarchy."

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In its competition with cable companies for subscribers DirecTV has had a number of successes, often due to the geographical size of their customer base, compared to no more than a regional presence for even the largest cable companies. One area that they haven't been a leader, for obvious reasons, is video on demand offerings. While DirecTV's lack of infrastructure (cabling) allows them to expand pretty much anywhre instantaneously, the cable companies' infrastructure makes it possible to offer an interactive on demand service, where viewers can choose from hundreds, or even thousands of (mostly free) TV shows and movies to watch whenever they want.

DirecTV now has their own on demand offering in beta testing, open to all current subscribers with DirecTV's HD DVRs, which will use a combination of content automatically downloaded from the standard satellite signal and customer-supplied broadband to provide around 2,000 on demand offerings. The titles delivered automatically to DVRs will include some of the most popular on demand programming, while additional movies and TV shows can be downloaded across the customers' broadband internet connection (connected directly to the DVR).

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If you've been looking forward to seeing Hulu, the online video site from NBC Universal and News Corp, but haven't been able to get an invitation to the private beta you're in luck. After several hours offline, preparing for the big launch, Hulu is out of beta and available to all U.S. residents.

Hulu has been in private beta since October of last year, and has received very positive reviews from nearly everyone. You can find my new review of the service .

In addition to offering ad-supported Streaming of both current and past TV shows, Hulu allows members to share video clips with friends in a number of ways. They can be embedded in web pages, added to social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, or submitted to Digg.

If you'd like to try out Hulu for yourself you can sign up at their website. For more information read the new review in our Guides section.

Although nothing official has been decided, while speaking at a the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society last week FCC chairman Kevin Martin indicated he's troubled by Comcast's decision to manage their network by targetting a particular application (BitTorrent), and particularly by their clear attempts to hide what they were doing.

He said "A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly."

However, some are questioning whether the FCC has any actual authority over the matter. While both sides have cited the agency's official Net Neutrality priniciples, the fact is the language in the document being referenced are fairly vague, and make no mention of any consequences for violating the principles listed. In fact, the document ends by stating " we are not adopting rules in this policy statement. The principles we adopt are subject to reasonable network management."

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Hoping to jump start the move to convert U.S. movie theaters to digital technology, the major Hollywood studios appear close to a deal that would help subsidize the estimated $70,000 - $75,000 cost of converting a single theater from traditional film to a digital screen. The deal would require studios to pay a "virtual print fee" each time one of their movies plays in a theater owned by Regal Entertainment, Cinemark Holdings, or AMC Entertainment.

So far fewer than 5,000 screens around the country have been converted to digital. The largest theater chains, including the three that would be covered by this agreement, have been unwilling, and they say unable, to pay for the conversion themselves.

Once the arrangement is finalized, the three chains intend to begin a process that will result in all their screens being digital in about three years, for which Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (a company jointly owned by the three chains) intends to finance with a $1.1 billion line of credit. Studio fees would be used to help with payments.

Starting on Friday, March 14, Microsoft will reportedly be cutting the price of the 20GB Xbox 360 in Europe to 270 euros. This represents a drop of 80 euros. Meanwhile, in the UK the price of the entry level model (with no hard drive) will be slashed £40 to £159.99.

Microsoft says the UK price was chosen based on the fact that it's "the price point where a console's audience begins to expand." Many industry analysts have been predicting this move for some time due to increased competition from the PS3, which has been steadily gaining market share for the last few months.

Both Sony and Microsoft have tried to position their consoles as home entertainment machines rather than simply game platforms. Microsoft, with their Xbox Live Marketplace, has been far and away more successful to date.

However, with the end of the Blu-ray / HD DVD format war, the inclusion of Blu-ray playback on PS3s and Sony's access to their own content, through Sony BMG's music and the movies owned by Sony Pictures, puts them in a position to be nearly instantly competitive when they get an online service in place to take advantage of it.

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In February DivX Inc., developers of the best known MPEG-4 ASP video encoder in the world, decided to shut down their highly popular Stage6 video sharing site. Stage6 was initially established in 2006 as a way to show off their successful codec's potential. In only a few months it had attracted millions of users, and plans began taking shape to spin the service off as a separate company.

According to the official explanation given to Stage6 users by a DivX employee, it was being shut down because there wasn't any interest outside the company in either buying it or providing venture capital to fund it. The message stated that "the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that."

According to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch that explanation is just plain false. He says that a number of sources involved in the defunct service have outlined a chain of events that took Stage6 from a promising commercial service to being shut down just a few months later. The story begins with DivX co-founder and CEO Jordan Greenhall resigning from DivX, along with a number of other key employees, to establish Stage6 as a distinct brand. Arrington claims that although there was little interest among existing tech companies to buy Stage6, more than a $25 million in venture capital was lined up to spin it off as a separate entity. Under the proposal developed by Greenhall and his Stage6 team DivX Inc. would have retained 20% ownership in the company, and would also receive the bulk of the company's revenue for 2008, which would primarily come from visitors downloading the DivX bundle and installing the included Yahoo Toolbar. Some estimate the potential revenue for 2008 alone at $10 million.

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This week has been a little slow for Glossary updates as I've been concentrating on some MPEG-2 editing guides. However there are two notable additions for the VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format and accompanying HD VMD High Definition standalone player format. Although most experts don't consider HD VMD a threat to Blu-ray for a number of reasons outlined in a recent Afterdawn news article, New Media Enterprises, the company behind VMD, are confident it can be a viable competitor in the home theater market.

Cuttermaran Guides

We also have a pair of new Guides for using the free (and Frame accurate) Cuttermaran MPEG-2 editor. If you have MPEG-2 TV captures, either analog or digital, that you want to remove commercials from without re-encoding you can use Cutterman, in combination with QuEnc, to edit with a minimal amount of encoding at the beginning and end of each cut.

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On Thursday Steve Jobs officially unveiled the SDK (Software Development Kit) that will be released for writing software to work with Apple's iPhone and various iPod Touch models. During his presentation at the company's Cupertino, California headquarters he demonstrated a number of programs written by developers who were given advance copies of the SDK.

Despite the underlying OS X operating system powering both the iPhone and iPod Touch, until now Apple has insisted that developers concentrate on web applications, using the built in Safari browser as an interface. Installing software on the devices currently requires a process called Jailbreaking be performed, which takes advantage of a security hole to add a third party application installer which is then used to install additional software. With the availability of the SDK many developers will be able to write iPhone applications.

The SDK includes support for corporate products from Salesforce.com and Cisco, and even integration with Microsoft's Exchange Server, which Apple is touting as superior to the way Blackberrys (from competitor Research In Motion) connect.

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Despite speculation by some that we may see a $200 Blu-ray player before year's end, no such product appears to be in sight. In fact, the Chinese companies responsible for the boom in low priced DVD players a few short years ago don't even seem to have a chance to be licensed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA).

Sony Electronics CEO Stan Glasgow told Gizmodo "I don't think $200 is going to happen this year. Next year $200 could happen. We'll be at a $300 rate this year. $299 will happen this year." He apparently intimated that no Chinese manufacturer was even close to getting a license, which many have suggested is the key to low priced players of any type.

What Sony is apparently hoping to accomplish this year is establishing a presence in the video download market. Rival console maker Microsoft has been able to build a successful service with the Xbox Live store, which includes a number of SD and HD titles. Meanwhile Sony, owner of a great deal of their own content, has somehow failed to establish a similar marketplace for PS3 owners, despite the console being billed as a home entertainment device rather than simply a game console.

In January, when Steve Jobs announced details of a new and improved Apple service he said the company would have 1,000 movies available by the end of Februrary. Now that Februrary has come and gone some people are wondering why the actual number appears to be somewhere below 500.

Apparently Steve Jobs is blaming Hollywood, or at least that's what he reportedly told shareholders at the company's annual meeting. According to the Associated Press he said at that meeting that he's "not happy" with the speed at which studios have arranged for all required parties to sign off on distribution rights.

The good news for Apple is they're much closer to their HD goal. Jobs' January prediction was for 100 HD movies to be available for Apple TV. The actual number appears to be 98. That's certainly within a reasonable margin of error by almost anyone's standards.

The 2008 edition of the Digital Entertainment Survey, published annually by Entertainment Media Research, shows an interesting trend among the more than 1,600 U.K. residents surveyed. An overwhelming majority (70%) indicated that they have no problems with ads before streamed on-demand video, even if the ads can't be skipped. The caveat is that the purpose of the ads must be to make the content free.

Interestingly though, when asked about TV commercials, which essentially exist exactly for that purpose, nearly half said they skip all commercials, with another third saying they skip most. Less than 10% of respondents said they rarely or never skip commercials.

It's unclear exactly what's at the root of the seemingly contradictory positions, although I have to admit I'd fall in the majority who skip TV commercials, but aren't bothered by unskippable ads to watch reasonably high quality TV shows streamed online. Perhaps consumers have a better sense of online distribution costs because of what they pay for their own broadband connections.

7Digital.com is the first online music retailer to offer customers in the U.K., Ireland, Spain, France, and Germany DRM-free songs from Warner Music. Previously Warner's only deal for the DRM-free releases was Amazon.com, which hasn't exported their MP3 store beyond U.S. borders yet. Such an expansion is expected some time this year.

7Digital.com already offered (DRM-free) music from EMI, and is reportedly working on deals with the other two major labels; Sony BMG and Universal Music.

James Bates of research firm Deloitte said "Today's announcement may be a tipping point in the general move to DRM-free data."

Trent Reznor, who last year was involved in an experiment to distribute an album he produced for Saul Williams by giving downloaders the option to either pay nothing for MP3s or $5 for CD quality tracks, has started experimenting with his own music. After his disappointment at the small number of people willing to pay for Williams' work he's opted not to offer the new 36 Track Nine Inch Nails (NIN) release, Ghosts I-IV, completely free. Instead, the first disc (Ghosts I) is available for free via BitTorrent. An accompanying 40 page PDF file containing 40 pages of photographs can even be requested from the official NIN website.

If you're interested in getting Ghosts II-IV you'll have to pay at least a little. In fact you can get all four volumes from Amazon.com's (DRM free) MP3 service for a mere $5. Other options include both physical (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray) versions, with accompanying digital downloads.

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The RIAA is trying to convince the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which is responsible for setting the mechanical (automatic) royalty rates paid for music publication, that the flat rate calculations ($0.91 per song) used to pay songwriters should be changed to a percentage of the label's revenue. It was about the same time last year that the CRB made headlines by adopting a controversial proposal by SoundExchange, who collect royalties for a number of labels including every RIAA member, setting a flat royalty rate for webcasters.

In the wake of last year's CRB decision a number of webcasters have indicated that the royalties would quickly exceed revenue, resulting in the near demise of the entire industry in the U.S. This argument fell on deaf ears in the CRB, as they chose to adopt the SoundExchange proposal without amendment.

Ironically this mirrors the RIAA's argument. They claim that due to a failing CD industry, and lower revenues from online distribution, they should only be charged based on what they earn. Of course, as the artists who are waiting for their cut of the hundreds of millions of dollars collected last year when various online services settled copyright infringement lawsuits can tell you, in the entertainment industry every project officially loses money until the artists' lawyers and accountants prove otherwise.

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The High Definition optical disc format war is over. You've read it here and elsewhere, and while some are upset that Blu-ray won, the overwhelming consensus is that a single format is best for everyone. So why does New Medium Enterprises (NME) want to start it up again? Probably because they believe their Versatile VMD format is capable of being a viable alternative to Blu-ray.

Rather than take the approach of both the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps in developing a HD optical format, NME designed VMD around a red laser, similar to those used for standard DVD players. They've simply increased the number of layers, and also the amount of data throughput.

The company's website describes the VMD platform as "meant for 1920X1080i/p High Definition up to 40 Mbps bit rate playback using its 20 GB-40 GB Red Laser optical discs."

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While there are some people opposed to RIAA royalty collection tactics and others who take the labels' side, one thing both sides generally agree on is the importance of paying artists. That is, of course, unless you count the labels themselves as representing their own side.

Last year RIAA member companies successfully negotiated deals with a number of websites whose operators had been accused of copyright infringement, giving them a windfall in royalties for use of their music. The problem is they apparently haven't bothered to share their newfound revenue with the artists whose music they're supposedly collecting royalties for.

"Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for," said lawyer John Branca, who has represented Korn, Don Henley, and The Rolling Stones, among others. "Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don't get paid soon."

Of course the labels say that the money was all but exhausted paying lawyers. On the other hand it's well known that all music label and movie studio deals have a net profit of $0 as a standard way to avoid paying percentages of the real profits to anyone.

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