Mark Fleischmann

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Congress Mulls Analog-TV Warning
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 26, 2007
Analog TVs are obsolete. Yet, shockingly, most major retailers still carry them. Some folks in Congress would like to see archaic displays labeled this way: "This TV has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after Feb. 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts." If that seems reasonable, then you're in agreement with Reps. Joe Barton (R-TX), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), and Fred Upton (R-MI), who are brewing up legislation to require the warning. I would add something along the lines of "Aren't you a little embarrassed even to be looking at this thing?" but hey, I'm not an elected official. According to TV Week: "Besides the warning, the legislation would require cable and satellite service providers include information in bills notifying customers about the upcoming digital transition, would require broadcasters to file regular reports detailing their consumer education efforts and would require the Federal Communications Commission to create a consumer outreach effort and also file regular updates about how many consumers had redeemed coupons for converter boxes."
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Gizmodo Scoops LG Combi
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 25, 2007
The first review of LG's BH100 Blu-ray and HD DVD combi player is in--from Gizmodo. They paid for the thing! That's not fair! Highlights: The interactive menus on HD DVDs didn't work (as rumored). The interactive video features worked only with difficulty. Load times were 30-40 seconds, better than some, and editor/reviewer Brian Lam loved the chassis though he felt "weird" about saying it out loud. Really, that's perfectly OK. I wish someone would say the same about my chassis. More here. I'm a big Gizmodo fan, read it twice a day.
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Download Secret Revealed
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 24, 2007
How much of your download dollar goes to the record companies? They have finally been forced to reveal this "trade secret" to a federal court. And it was their own ongoing litigation against consumers that triggered the confession. The Recording Industry Antichrist of America sued Marie Lindor, as it has done with hundreds of other people, based on information seized via another lawsuit from her Internet access provider. The RIAA demanded $750 per song, but Lindor's attorney argued that damages should be capped lower, and linked to the wholesale price per song. RIAA lawyers begged the judge not to make them divulge the magic number--but finally were forced to admit that the rumored 70 cents per track was "in the correct range." The information will no doubt prove useful to other attorneys, like the ones defending other RIAA-lawsuit victims, not to mention those representing recording artists.
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Digital Music Music Sales Double
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 23, 2007
In any other industry, news that sales doubled the previous year would cause dusty bottles of fine champagne to be summoned and quaffed. Not so in the music industry, whose digital download sales doubled in 2006, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. For one thing, the doubling of downloads in 2006 is not as good as the tripling of them 2006. And the growth does not keep pace with the decline in CD sales, at three percent in 2006. Even so, in major markets such as the U.S., U.K., and Japan, legal downloads are just starting to equal the damage done by P2P, piracy, and competition from new media. Driving much of the growth is mobile downloading, which already dominates download sales in Japan, South Korea, India, Italy, and Spain.
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Netflix Pushes Streaming Video
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 22, 2007
YouTube's success has nudged Netflix into video streaming. Install the Windows-only software, browse, hit add, and play. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Initial movie and TV titles from several major studios number only 1000, compared to the 70,000 in Netflix's conventional rental inventory. Subscribers with the most common plan get 18 hours of free viewing per month. Those with cheaper/costlier plans will get less/more. The service will roll out over the next six months.
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Joost Pushes Broadband Video P2P
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 19, 2007
Coming soon to a computer monitor near you is Joost. Formerly known as the Venice Project, this new mode of video delivery was invented by the founders of Skype and Kazaa. No, it's not a video download service. Nor is it a file-sharing application. Instead, it delivers video in the form of P2P streaming. Among the components of the system are powerful data compression, a global index to coordinate the flow of data, and 40TB of server capacity to augment users' hard-drive cacheing, making this what the inventors describe as a "hybrid" system. Thousands of beta users in several countries are already having fun with it and the service will launch officially in June. The Joosties seem willing to make nice with content producers, with Warner Music in the fold, and you'll even see ads for T-Mobile and Wrigley chewing gum. Eventually the service may move from the Internet to set-top boxes. Official site, Wired feature.
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HD DVD Pirated
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 18, 2007
The first pirated material from an HD DVD has been posted on BitTorrent. This latest battle in the digital rights management war began a month ago when a blogger told the world he'd hacked AACS, the DRM that protects both HD DVD and Blu-ray, as a means of getting the player to work with his DVI-in TV. Because AACS involves both firmware in the player and an encryption key in each disc, his BackupHDDVD utility was worthless without the keys. But now people are posting the encryption keys on the net and HD DVD is officially insecure. Blu-ray is not as badly affected, because it adds a second layer of protection called BD+. The news overshadows other recent HD DVD gains, including its first triple-layer 51GB disc and its embrace by the adult video industry.
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Broadcast Flag Hoisted Again
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 17, 2007
The battle over the broadcast flag resumes, with the reintroduction of S.256 (the Perform Act) by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Last year it died in committee. Apparently, however, this is going to be an annual occurrence until the entertainment industry and its proxies in Congress get their way. The ostensible aim is to prevent cherrypick recording of satellite, cable, or Internet broadcasts. You could still record by time slot or station, but the bill is widely viewed as a Trojan horse for digital rights management and more draconian future restrictions. As before, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Consumer Electronics Association are leading the loyal opposition. Also up in arms is Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) who has introduced legislation of his own to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from hoisting the flag without even a figleaf of legislation.
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Oh Yes, We Want This
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 16, 2007
"You want this ... don't you?" asked Geoff in our fab CES coverage. Of course you want LG's BH100 Blu-ray and HD DVD combi player--unless you've already bought into one format or the other, you poor sap. Even at $1199, who wouldn't want it after reading this description on the Best Buy site: "With the ability to play both Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs, in addition to upconverting standard DVDs, this versatile system delivers crisp and clear images with rich layers of sound that will leave you on the edge of your seat." The site says the unit is sold out and mumbles something about in-store pickup though actually the product is not available yet. But judging from the detailed spec list and photos, it looks as though the product development process was well along before news started to leak out just prior to CES.
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Meet Codec of the Future: MP3
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 15, 2007
Are you a fan of Norah Jones? If so, you may be looking to download "Thinking About You," her new single. Best place to go is Yahoo, where you can buy it in the latest, coolest codec ever: MP3! Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can buy the track from iTunes. But if you do, it will be wrapped in FairPlay, Apple's brand of digital rights management (yuck, tooey). Wouldn't you rather pay the same to Yahoo, and enjoy the following advantages of DRM-free downloads, so helpfully enumerated by Yahoo? Oooh, talk DRM-less to me:
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