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The 2009 release of the movie 'Star Trek' was very popular. It saw great reviews, success at the box office, though unfortunately, it also had the highest piracy rate of the entire year. Paramount are aware of this, and have since written to the FCC, asking them to take action. According to the site Trek Movie, the movie managed to rack up a whopping 11 million illegal downloads, beating out the top pirated movie of 2008 (The Dark Knight) by 4 million. The company Paramount managed to hunt down over five million IP addresses of people who downloaded one of the pirated copies, and has written to the FCC with their thoughts about the whole ordeal.
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Hey, something’s happening in China vis-à-vis piracy! The country’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has been fiddling with downloads there for the past few days, and people are complaining that they’re not about to access the content they were once able to. The new action affects BitTorrent download and has all but taken down VeryCD, which is supposedly the country’s biggest download site. (As if I know anything about China download habits.) Someone told China Daily, and English language newspaper there, that he’ll “never be able to download Hollywood movies or classical records again.” SARFT has shut down some 530 BitTorrent sites in the past few days. And if you’re looking to kill a few minutes, you may want to read this list of films that are for whatever reason banned in China. I see that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was banned. Lucky China.
Movie industry is concerned about the budget-conscious kiosks, but they should be more worried about digital downloads and streaming media.
Microsoft confirmed today that downloads of the Office 2010 beta have hit 1 million in just two weeks. Microsoft introduced the Office 2010 beta during its now annual Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles late last month. Company officials demonstrated various new features during a keynote on November 18 including social networking integration into Outlook 2010, and Office Web Applications that allow you to read, edit and save documents in the browser. Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division stated he was "very proud" of the download achievement in a message posted to his official twitter account. Earlier this week a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the software giant will be making Office 2010 available in June 2010.
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A recent survey found that many Android developers are unhappy with the volume of downloads and profits generated from apps in Google's Android Market. The statistics seem troubling, but may just be a sign of Android's relative youth.
My iPhone makes phone calls, downloads e-mail, and pulls up any Web site I ask it to. So why should the case I store this multi-tasker in content itself with...
Recently I wrote about BlueBeat, a Website that was not only selling MP3 downloads of The Beatles (something the Fab Four doesn't yet allow, although you will be...
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said recently that his company would be testing out demo downloads of certain WiiWare titles this month. It’s unclear if this test program will only be for Wii owners in Japan or if those of us here in the U.S. would be able to participate as well. Apparently the program “will cover just a few titles,” according to IGN. Nintendo is apparently looking to attract more potential WiiWare customers and this program is an attempt to gauge whether or not offering game demos will ultimately result in increased purchases. As one of those potential customers myself, I’d like to add that I can’t believe it’s taken this long. Just make demos for all WiiWare games available already, eh? Nintendo to Offer WiiWare Demos [IGN]
Retailer is partnering with CinemaNow to deliver movie downloads to TVs, PCs, media players, and phones.
The The Telegraph believes these downloads could help save libraries. Quoth some librarian dude:
Exciting development indeed. Now when are they going to clear out all those pesky “paper books” and turn libraries into huge computer clusters?
Looks like EA finally understands what we’ve been talking about for a while now: that, in just a few years’ time, we’ll look back at disc-based media (here, video games) and be all, “Man, how quaint.” Peter Moore, who’s the president of EA Sports (no minor position, that), called the disc-based distribution model a “burning platform,” and that companies are either staring in the face of “probable” death or “certain” death, depending on how they want to go about things. Moore was speaking at a digital media conference when he said what he said. And that’s what makes the PSP Go such a punch in the gut. Had Sony ponied up for a proper Wi-Fi connection (802.11g or higher) then you’d have a mean little system there. Well, a potentially mean little system, provided the software was there. (I’m not saying that it’s not there, just that it needs to keep being there. Yeah.) But maybe Sony was looking at it as just something to test the waters with, what do I know? The fact is, it’ll soon make zero sense to want to go to the store (or wait for the UPS man to bring you your Amazon order) when you can just download (or stream) all your junk. That’s the idea, of course. Who knows what forces will see to it that the distribution model fails.
Looks like EA finally understands what we’ve been talking about for a while now: that, in just a few years’ time, we’ll look back at disc-based media (here, video games) and be all, “Man, how quaint.” Peter Moore, who’s the president of EA Sports (no minor position, that), called the disc-based distribution model a “burning platform,” and that companies are either staring in the face of “probable” death or “certain” death, depending on how they want to go about things. Moore was speaking at a digital media conference when he said what he said. And that’s what makes the PSP Go such a punch in the gut. Had Sony ponied up for a proper Wi-Fi connection (802.11g or higher) then you’d have a mean little system there. Well, a potentially mean little system, provided the software was there. (I’m not saying that it’s not there, just that it needs to keep being there. Yeah.) But maybe Sony was looking at it as just something to test the waters with, what do I know? The fact is, it’ll soon make zero sense to want to go to the store (or wait for the UPS man to bring you your Amazon order) when you can just download (or stream) all your junk. That’s the idea, of course. Who knows what forces will see to it that the distribution model fails.
As a corollary to Biggs’ “cable companies are doomed” article from earlier today, I thought I’d demonstrate how easy it is to accomplish what he was threatening. That is, live a happy and successful life without having to pay $100+ a month to Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, or whomever. (Note: I’m neither happy nor successful, so this advice is spurious at best.) Here, I’ll teach you a pretty basic method of automatically downloading things like TV shows, and movies, and whatnot from Usenet. Yes, this breaks the first rule of Usenet; sorry.
What? Today we’ll be setting up our Usenet software to look at an RSS feed. (You can also accomplish pretty much the same thing using BitTorrent, but BitTorrent is so plebeian.) This RSS feed will carry NZB files that, magically, point your Usenet software to the actual files you’ll be viewing in VLC or MPlayer or whatever. In English, that means when you come home from work or class you’ll have the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter all ready to be watched. You’ll need: • A Usenet provider. The big ones, off the top of my head, are Giganews, Newsdemon, Astraweb, and Supernews. You’ll be spending around $10-$20 a month for access, but that gives you access to all the riches that Usenet provides. In my experience all these services are more or less the same, so feel free to shop around. I have no favorites. • Usenet software. The easiest to use for our purposes here today, once you’ve set it up, is SABnzbd+. It’s free as in freedom and free as in beer. • An NZB site that provides an RSS feed. I’ll be using Newzleech.com as my example, but pretty much every NZB site out there should do this. Maybe, I don’t know. • No qualms with any of this. Yeah, Americans can go to Hulu to watch some shows, but my overseas friends aren’t so lucky. Maybe if Hollywood got its act together we wouldn’t have to resort to this. (Incidentally, I’m right now removing the copy protection of a bunch of DVDs I bought in the UK this past week. All I want to do is see Top Gear! Is that a crime?) OK! 1. With your Usenet account in hand, go ahead and download and set up SABnzbd+. It’s not hard, but I’m not about to hold your hand here. It basically involves launching the application, putting in your Usenet account info, then pointing the application to a few folders. If you can’t figure this out then the rest is probably too much for you to handle anyway. 2. Set up the RSS feed! I’ll be using the TV show The Ultimate Fighter as an example. For newzleech.com, the RSS feed you make looks like this:
That’s your RSS feed. What that does is comb the Usenet group alt.binaries.multimedia (that’s the “g” in the URL) for the last 50 posts (that’s the “n”) containing the phrase “the ultimate fighter s10” (for season 10 episodes; that’s the “s”). The RSS feed is updated every 20 minutes.
3. Go to SABnzbd+’s settings (Config:RSS) and input that URL. Then set the RSS checking interval (Config:RSS checking interval) to something reasonable, like once every 60 minutes. Under no circumstances should you set it for anything more frequent than every 20 minutes, since that’s considered uncouth, and your IP address is likely to be banned by Newzleech. You don’t want that. That’s pretty much it. Now what you’d do, I guess, is launch SABnzbd+ Wednesday morning before you leave your house. If it’s set up like we set it up here, SABnzbd+ will check alt.binaries.multimedia for news posts containing the phrase “the ultimate fighter s10” via the Newzleech RSS feed. When SABnzbd+ finds the new posts, it’ll download the appropriate NZB file, then start doing its magic. In other words, as soon as the latest episode hits Usenet, it’ll automatically be downloaded to your computer, Internet connection speed notwithstanding. Of course, you can add as many RSS feeds as you want, with whatever parameters you want. Maybe you like 30 Rock, or want to see Louis CK on Parks and Recreation? Or maybe you like Curb Your Enthusiasm? To quote that Nas song, the world is yours. The purpose of this here article was strictly educational blah blah. Now I’m off to rip the copy protection off a DVD I BOUGHT FROM HMV WITH MY OWN MONEY! What a pain.
Microsoft reports 1.5 million downloads of its free software in the first week it was available.
The Pirate Bay just can’t catch a break these days. I won’t bore you with the past, but today’s juicy gossip is: Google has removed The Pirate Bay from its search index because of a DMCA complaint! A search for “the pirate bay” now brings up, in the first two results, the site’s Wikipedia entry, and a link to piratebay.com, a weaselly little site that promises “unlimited downloads” for “no extra fee.” Stay far away from that, friends. Oh, also, the DMCA complaint isn’t online yet (as of 1:30pm ET), so we have no idea who made it.
The first reaction most have to these Sony megachangers hasn’t changed over the years. Just insert the name of the appropriate physical media. But yes, some people do own that many discs and so these changers make sense for them. Plus, while digital downloads are great and the future of the average consumer, there are still some folk that demand the absolute best picture and sound which only Blu-ray can provide. Electronic house had a chance to sit down with the ES Blu-ray changer and sent it through the paces. We won’t ruin all the surprises, but they found the audio and video to be up to the ES standard. But they also came to the same conclusion as a lot of us when the BDP-CX7000ES launched: why the hell isn’t there built-in memory for BD-Live and DLNA support even though less expensive models offer both? Plus, the lack of WiFi is strange for a $1,900 Blu-ray player. It couldn’t cost more than $15 per player to build the right stuff in. But then we would find something else to complain about, so Sony probably can’t ever win. Ah well.
I'm not sure if the term "B-Side" means much to the kids today in this, the era of digital downloads and online music services, when even the idea of a record...
There’s a new study that suggests that teens are moving away from illegally downloading music. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that teens are turning to iTunes (or whatever) en masse, but rather is a reflection of the way the Web works in 2009. Music blogs, streaming sites like Imeem and YouTube (note: not all streaming on YouTube is 100 percent legal), applications like Spotify, etc. are increasingly the destination for teens today. The numbers, put together by Music Alley, say that only 26 percent of 14-to-18 year olds have admitted to illegally downloading music in the past year. That number was 42 percent the previous year. Of course, it’s one thing to “admit” to downloading music, and another thing to actually download music, but you’d have to assume that the study had all those question marks built into it. Here’s what some music fan told the Guardian, who conveniently lies outside the age range of the above quoted number:
Yes dear, “the government” is going to smash into your house, smack your mother around, etc. etc. Well at least the RIAA’s tactics are working. I guess it’s good news, though. I still insist that What.cd is better than anything else out there, and it’s not just the music available. The community will be really hard to replicate elsewhere, I think. As I write this, I’m listening to The Raveonettes (that’s them up there) on Spotify. The more you know, right?
There is no doubt about the fact that Apple are doing well with their online application store, over a billion downloads in under a year is a pretty impressive figure. However, it seems now that other companies have seen this success and want a slice of the action. Just looking at the popularity of the app store, I can't really blame them for having a touch of the green-eyed monster. This piece of news courtesy of Bloomberg.com reports that Research in Motion Ltd have recently doubled the amount of applications available for their BlackBerry handsets in an attempt to lure the spotlight away from Apple's success in this matter.
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PSP Go integration? New PS One games? PS3 Blu-ray downloads? PS Home avatar integration? Sony Director of Network Operations Eric Lempel answers all, in our exclusive interview.
Seriously, we're just as surprised as you are. Not only is Kazaa somehow still in business, they're also trying anything they can to set themselves apart from all the other digital music retailers you'd rather use instead of them. Now the property of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Kazaa is setting its sights on bringing HD movie downloads to the masses (well, the masses that use Kazaa), and the Pre is where they've decided to make their stand.
With Firefox 3.5 being recently released, and hitting five million downloads in 24 hours, Firefox appears to be gaining more market share, and Internet Explorer's market share is slipping according to Favbrowser, and a graph by statcounter shown below. Internet Explorer fell from 62.09% to 59.49%, while Firefox rose from 28.75% to 30.33%. But Firefox isn't the only browser that's gaining market share. Opera, recently released the beta version of version 10 of its browser, rose from 3.23% to 3.36%, Safari, recently released version 4 of its browser and hitting 11 million downloads in three days, rose from 2.65% to 2.93%, and Chrome rose from 2.42% to 2.82%.
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Apple reported on Monday that it had sold more than a million iPhone 3GS models in the opening weekend and played host to over six million downloads of the 3.0...
One of those highly paid analyst types from Wedbush has gone on record saying that the only thing holding back a true-to-life Xbox 360 game download service, à la Steam, is hard drive capacity. Right now, you can buy a 120GB hard drive for $140 on Amazon, which is ridiculous given the low, low prices of standard hard drives these days. (A recent CrunchDeal spotted a 1TB hard drive for $77.) So if Microsoft is serious about launching such a service, it needs to do something about bringing large capacity hard drives at normal prices. There’s no reason that a 120GB hard disk drive should cost $140 in the year 2009. Similarly, that same analyst, a Mr. Michael Pachter, said that retailers had better get used to the idea of a day-and-date download service. Generally speaking, publishers don’t give a damn which way games are sold so long as they get their cut of the action. (They’ll also bitch about piracy, but that won’t be nearly as big a problem on the Xbox 360 as it is on the PC.) Retailers may not like getting squeezed out, especially if the downloadable version is cheaper than the retail copy (and why wouldn’t it be?), but that’s not our problem. UPDATE Whoops, compared the wrong type of drive. The Xbox 360 uses a 2.5-inch drive, not a 3.5-inch drive. A quick search on Newegg pulls up a 500GB 2.5-inch drive for $90. It’s only 5400RPM, but the point remains: the price of the Xbox 360 HDD really ought to be lowered if Microsoft wants the download service to be any type of success.
Microsoft will limit the number of downloads for the beta of Windows Security Essentials, its new free antivirus software.
Blu-ray was declared the winning format last year when HD DVD threw in the towel. This victory came after major studios left the HD DVD camp and joined up with Blu-ray. But just because a victory was celebrated, that doesn’t mean the format is successful. In fact, a recent Harris Interactive poll shows that many purchased an HD DVD player last year and most don’t plan on buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon. This poll’s results might be shocking to some outside the tech community, but it clearly shows that consumers are ready to move past physical media and onto the digital downloads. In fact, secondary polls were conducted as well and found that an overwhelming number of people are “not at all likely” to purchase a Blu-ray device within the next year and many will buy fewer DVDs within six months. This Harris Interactive poll (PDF) found that 11% of Americans own an HD DVD player despite the format being officially dead. Plus another 3% have the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. This is up over 2008’s findings of 6% and 1%, respectively. Blu-ray’s penetration also rose, albeit not as much, from 4% in 2008 to 7% in 2009. The same goes for the PS3 with 7% of Americans now owning Sony’s gaming system. But you thought HD DVD was dead? Well, it is. That doesn’t mean that consumers didn’t take advantage of the fire sales shortly after Blu-ray was declared the victor. Clearly consumers either aren’t aware of the benefits that Blu-ray provides, or they just aren’t interested in another physical media. Think about it: 20 years ago, VHS was introduced. People rushed out to buy up all their favorite movies on that format. Then DVD was introduced. That format touted superior picture quality and discs loaded with extra features. So then consumers bought up their must-have movies a second time and continued to grow their collections with new releases. But then another format was introduced: HD DVD. This time around, consumers heard the same marketing pitch: an even better picture and more extra features. Alright, some bought into that while Blu-ray slowly rolled out and crushed the first high-def optical media type. Many consumers sat on the sidelines as these two fought it out while a third player slowly crept onto the market: digital downloads. Comcast doesn’t get much love around these parts. We’ve all had major problems with the provider, but Comcast has made one of the biggest pushes for the digital download movement. Its On Demand is built-into all of its cable boxes and has shown to the general consumer that they don’t need physical media. Why do they need to run down to Best Buy on Tuesday to buy the latest releases, when the same titles are available via On Demand on the same day for a fraction of the price? Or, why worry about returning a movie to Blockbuster when they can watch it at their convenience? The second poll that Harris Interactive conducted found that 93% of consumers in 2009 are “somewhat/not at all likely” to buy a Blu-ray player. Last year, 91% of people said that. Plus, a third poll conducted found that consumers are only planning on buying 3.4 DVDs over the next six months versus the 6.2 that they purchased over the last six months. The economy cannot be blamed for this. Blu-ray players are now at the $100 mark, and DVD discs are cheap. Consumers are likely finding that physical media isn’t the future; digital downloads are. Even the video game industry is moving this way. 2009’s E3 featured two major players announcing their support for downloading games. The Xbox 360 is gaining this ability shortly via Xbox Live and the new PSP Go! doesn’t support physical media at all. All of its titles can be downloaded directly onto the device. Currently there isn’t a standard way of downloading or streaming movies. There are too many providers spanning too many devices. But things are slowly starting to change. Netflix made its way onto many devices last year and Vudu, one of our favorites, is starting to embed its software into set-top boxes. The music industry suffered a long, agonizing death because of its inability to change. Hopefully Hollywood took notes.
Don’t get too used to paying next to nothing (well…) for your Kindle books, friends. A clever analysis by a Berstein duo suggests that Amazon currently only makes a 61-cent profit for each $9.99 Kindle book it sells. Meanwhile, a $24.95 hardcover book nets Amazon a cool $4.25 in profit. So it stands to reason that, if Amazon wants to replace that lost profit, it’ll have to raise the price of Kindle downloads. Thankfully, though, not by much. If Amazon were to raise the price of Kindle downloads to $12.50, profits would jump quite a bit: from 6 percent to 20 percent per book. Of course, on the other hand, since it costs Amazon a heck of a lot less to send you a Kindle book via Whispernet than it does to UPS all those books to your door. So while Amazon may not make as much money for each Kindle book sold, it’s not costing them as much to send it out to you. And I’ll consider buying a Kindle once gets closer to $200. Till then, I’ll continue to suffer with regular ol’ books.
So here’s a tough one. Some kids posted a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook 2 on Scribd.com and it was viewed more than 4,000 times and potentially downloaded about 2,600 times. They also found that a nice Polish boy, Krysztof, who posted copies of some modules. The defendants are based in Florida, the Philipines, and Polska. Interestingly, 4,200 downloads is a pittance. Six million people around the world play D&D at present and 20 million have played it in the past. Clearly someone is buying the Monster Manual out there and the 20-sided-die industry isn’t failing. Why get litigious? What think you?
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Libraries, the places where homeless people, famously, shave and go BM, are seeing an uptick in subscribers thanks to their embrace of ebooks. Our own Brooklyn system has had downloadable ebooks for a few years now and the system is fairly simple: you check out a book to read on your device and then “check it back in” when you’re done. This frees up the download for the next person. The book deletes itself automatically past the due date.
