Posted August 11, 2007 
Comments(0) Erik Deppe has released a new version of his famous disc analysis and benchmarking tool Nero CD-DVD Speed. The most interesting change in this new version is the support for Blu-ray disc quality testing for drives that are based on Mediatek chipset. Also included is preliminary support HD DVD-RW SL/DL.
Posted August 7, 2007 Comments(0) The console war is constantly heating up as Microsoft announced their response to Sony’s recent price cut of the PlayStation 3. Starting this week the different editions of Xbox 360 are now $50 cheaper than before. Microsoft however denies that the price adjustment had nothing to do with Sony’s offering, and said that it is due to the upcoming releases of big titles like Halo 3 and Madden NFL 08.
Posted July 31, 2007 Comments(0) Despite the efforts of the RIAA and the huge success of iTunes (and similar), illegar music sharing on the Internet is still going strong. According to a recent research, a 43% of people questioned are using P2P to download music from the Internet. One of the key reasons must be that BitTorrent and sites like The Pirate Bay have made music downloading a very simple task, helping it to become a mainstream phenomena, like Napster did years ago. Another notable detail is that DRM technologies applied to music CDs seem to have about zero effect on reducing online music sharing, which is not a surprise as the DRM protections are a piece of cake to bypass.
Posted July 30, 2007 Comments(1) Adult entertainment, or porn, has historically played a significant role in media publishing market. Adult entertainment was among the first industries to be profitable on the Internet, and it has also been speculated that porn was one of the key factors affecting the ancient Beta vs. VHS video tape war which turned into the favor of VHS format. So one more slap to the face of HD DVD camp is that Japan’s porn producer have chosen to support Blu-ray format in their high definition productions. According to the source, Sony is even providing technical assitanse to the adult film studios of Japan.
Posted July 26, 2007 Comments(0) As Blu-ray seems to have an edge on the emerging high definition market, Microsoft has announced today price reductions and promotions of their Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive. Indeed, priced now at $179 it seems like a very affordable solution for HD video, although it requires the Xbox or a PC for playback. In addition Microsoft is bundling the package with five free HD DVDs, so the offer really seems like a bargain.
Posted July 25, 2007 Comments(0) All major game consoles are showing off impressive sales growth figures. King of the hill is still Nintendo Wii, followed by Microsoft Xbox360 and Sony Playstation 3. But perhaps most substantial change is the figures is the recent sales boost of PS3. According to the source the $100 price cut is showing immediate impact and has resulted in 135% sales growth of PS3 in the last two weeks. The figures might suggest that many potential PS3 buyers were waiting and expecting the first price drop before making the purchasing decicion. However, Sony still has a lot of catching up to do in order to reach the 2nd or 1st position
Posted July 23, 2007 Comments(0) Sony will be releasing an updated firmware version for the PlayStation 3 console tomorrow, the 24th of July. The update will bring a bunch of technical and usability improvements, fixes to bugs and even new features. There will be animated avatars in the chat, new functionality to rearrange games in the dashboard, ability to change settings for PS1 and PS2 games, additional outfut formats, and so on.
Posted July 18, 2007 Comments(0) Apple managed to create major fuzz about their iPhone, which is again a neatly designed but technically less than impressive device by the fruit company. Apparently they have left in a severe security issue while working on the web browsing features of the phone. The Safari web browser of the iPhone has the ability to utilize device telephony features, but the trick is that it could be exploited to force the device to make calls to expensive service numbers, potentially causing plenty of expenses to the users.
Posted July 16, 2007 Comments(1) Whoops, we are a bit late with this one but the finest freeware audio CD ripper always deserves some attention. EAC, or Exact Audio Copy, has been recently updated to a version 0.99pb1. Although it is labeled as a pre-beta release, the quality of public EAC releases has usually been extremely good - better that many software advertised as “1.00 stable”. The new version comes with a nice pack of improvements, perhaps most notable being the inclusion of the FLAC, Free Lossless Audio Codec, which provides native support for audio compression at 100% CD quality. Check out the full list of changes and download!
Posted July 11, 2007 Comments(0) Sony made an annoucement recently that the price of PlayStation 3 will be slashed -100$, but some people speculate whether hundreds bucks is enough to raise interest. Has Sony made a mistake by creating a console with a high end philosophy? The source shows some interesting historical facts about console sales vs. price, and if the history repeats itself Sony may be in some trouble. A high end console, or a media center, is a rather new product concept and perhaps the Joe Average is just not ready for it? On the other hand Sony has been able to sustain very long product life cycles in the past with PlayStations, so perhaps they can repeat the trick and be a winner eventually? The key element might also be the high definition video - oddly the HD televisions are selling like pancakes, but the HD video players are not. People are watching low resolution content with the high definition TVs, but that must eventually change.
