New 1.6 TB optical discs format stores information using colors

Many technologists have wondered what format of optical disc will inevitably come to replace the current generation of HD and BluRay DVDs. While there has been no shortage of new formats developed and considered, a new design has been gaining attention as a conceivable, and realistic possibility for the future.

Building on Pink Floyd's research into lasers (joke), the new format is called "5D DVD" and on these DVD-sized discs, up to 1.6 TB of data can be stored utilizing 5 dimensions.

When you hear "5 dimensions" some of you might imagine that the DVDs are altering the space-time continuum to store information in nano-pockets of blackholes or something, but the actual reality is a bit easier to comprehend. Using nanometre-scale particles of gold as an inscription medium, data is burnt on to the optical discs using lasers that burn information similiar to a regular DVD process involving the 'regular' three spatial dimensions. With 5D DVD however, the recording process doesn't stop after the 3D is done.  

Because of the "gold nanorods" color -- which is determined by electromagnetic wavelengths -- can also be used as the fourth dimension of information encoding on the 5D DVDs. The '5th D' is polarization: the surface can be altered to adjust the angle that light hits the disc, so this in turn adds a much greater capacity to the DVDs by allowing for information to be stored in all 5 of these ways.

The researchers behind this 5D project hail from Australia's Swinburne University of Technology. They believe the 5D DVD format has potential because the actual discs themselves are similar to contemporary DVDs and can be produced for only about 5 cents each. Silver nanorods might replace the current gold nanorods in use no, further dropping the production costs.

The primary drawback to the 5D DVD method right now is that the writing process takes a long time -- but the researchers seem confident that they can drop the time down somewhat as they develop the process.

Red 2 Blu

Were you an early adopter of HD-DVD? Now that Blu-ray has won the war, do you have a large collection of HD-DVD disks gathering dust? Warner Bros. is now offering a trade up program called Red2Blu, where you can trade in your old HD-DVDs for brand new copies in Blu-Ray. Of course, this only applies to WB titles.

The program limits you to 25 items per household. To participate, visit the Red2Blu program website, select the titles you want to trade up, then send in $4.95 per title + $6.95 S&H along with the original HD-DVD packaging artwork / box sleeve. The sleeve must be in good condition, or it will not be accepted. If you take full advantage of the program it will cost you roughly $130. Oh, and if you have a multi-disk series or collection you want to upgrade you'll have to send in each cover from each disk in the collection cutting into your 25 limit.

While this may sound like a great deal, item # 13 from the program terms has some people a little more than concerned, the item is as follows.

The replacement Blu-ray version of the Participating Title may have different special features and/or bonus material than contained on the HD DVD version of the Participating Title, including much less or no special features and/or bonus material, and/or the Blu-ray version may have a different aspect ratio (e.g., may be full screen instead of wide screen or vice versa) and/or the Blu-ray version may have a different rating or no rating.

 The program is available only for US residents, and requires you to be at least 18 years old. Program ends December 31, 2009 for those interested.

Circuit City subsidiary to see amalgamation

Folks may recall January's news of U.S. electronics retailer Circuit City shutting down, with us left wondering what would happen to its Canadian subsidiary The Source.

The news in this week tells us wireless, digital TV, internet and home phone provider Bell will be capitalizing on the losses, buying the chain out and "enhancing [its] growth"; it will continue to operate as an electronics shop on top of carrying all of Bell's services.

The deal is expected to be finalized by Q3 of this year; no price has been disclosed as of yet.

"(The) acquisition supports Bell's strategic imperatives to accelerate wireless and leverage momentum in services like Bell TV, Bell Internet and Bell Home Phone," said George Cope, president and CEO of Bell and BCE.

Bell shares closed down 2.54 per cent Monday at $24.20.

The Source previously ran under the monkier of Radio Shack until it was bought by Circuit City in 2005.

No buyer, no refinancing, no stores

Circuit City has had a really rough 2008. First it saw a bid from Blockbuster, then some Sony trucks turned around on them failing a delivery due to bad credit, then they closed 155 of their stores, and finally, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. There's one final note to this sad tale: the chain is now shutting down completely. In retrospect, maybe a Blockbuster acquisition would've been a good idea.

They announced today they will be liquidating their remaining 567 U.S. stores after failing to find a buyer or figure out a refinancing deal. At the time CC filed for bankruptcy protection, they held 5-10% of the US video game sector. Circuit City was the nation's second biggest electronics retailer.

There doesn't seem to be any specific liquidation sale on their website, as one might expect, though its Canadian subsidiary The Source has an up to 70% off event.

Pioneer makes projections

The IT Month fair in Taipei, Taiwan has brought some neat news for technology lovers: Pioneer Corporation, a multinational that specializes in all things digital, is set to beat its own record yet again. In other words, I'll see your 500GB Blu-ray disc, William Henning, and raise you 1TB.

The corporation's super multi-layer technology is read-only (ROM) at the moment, but in 2010 they will launch rewritable discs, and in 2013, a 1TB (1,000GB) version. The 500GB disc is evidently backward compatible with current Blu-ray players -- whether or not the TB disc will be can be presumed, assuming Blu-ray is still around by then!

The Falcon Northwest Mach V makes your gaming beast look like an infant

I remember back last summer I reported on a military supercomputer called 'Roadrunner'. The machine had reached a new milestone in computing history, surpassing a speed of over 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second, attaining the petaflop measurement. Reader 'bigjdubb' amusingly commented, "But will it run Crysis???" It was a great joke, and while obviously an exaggeration on the game's requirements, it certainly wasn't unfounded.

For instance, CNet has just reported the Falcon Northwest Mach V, the fastest all-around desktop they've ever tested, is now the first machine to run Crysis at a full 60 frames per second (fps) in high resolution. Here are the specs:

	Falcon Northwest Mach V
Price	$8,028
Motherboard chipset	Intel X58
CPU	3.79GHz Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition (overclocked)
Memory	12GB 1,066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics	(2) 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
Hard drives	1TB 7,200rpm Hitachi hard drive; 80GB Intel X-25M solid state drive
Optical drive	20x dual-layer DVD burner with LightScribe; 4x dual-layer Blu-ray burner
Operating system	Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit

Eight grand is actually a fair bit less than I expected. But yeah, you could buy about 40 Xbox 360s, 20 PS3s, 27 Wiis or 130 games for that price. Demanding, much?

Copy protection strikes again?

There are reports that the James Bond movies recently released on Blu-Ray won't play on many players.

Presumably this is due to the Blu-Ray updatable "copy protection" scheme, as reportedly new firmware is becoming available to fix the affected players. Unfortunately this is just a symptom of a larger problem - that of what is essentially intentional player obsolescence.

What if the player manufacturers stop supporting older player models? What if a player manufacturer goes out of business? Sure, buying a newer player would fix this, but one is forced to wonder if some manufacturer will not eventually use this as a strategy for forcing its customers to buy newer players to play the latest titles... and what is stopping them from having the new players not play the old titles to force the re-purchase of teh software?

More powerful Blu-Ray laser means 100GB

How does 12x Blu-Ray writing strike you?

How about four layers?

Yep, Sanyo is working on a 100GB, four layer, 12x Blu-Ray burner... now that will hold a bit of 1080p goodness :-)

I know I'd like some drives like that...

20 layers * 25GB/layer = 500GB

Pioneer beat its own record by announcing a 500GB Blu-Ray disk with 20 layers, beating its own 16 layer 400GB disc.

Now in case you are wondering what such a monstrous disc could be used for, there are a number of potential applications:

• HD backup - if reasonably priced per disc, a great backup medium
• HD collections - all the 007 movies in HD on one disc
• archival media for raw data from sensors

The prototypes apparently solved the "crosstalk" problem - where data from different layers interfered with the data from the selected layer.

Lotsa storage

Pioneer has developed a Blu-Ray read only disk that stores 400GB on sixteen 25GB layers.

The laminated sixteen layer disk is especially impressive as it required new techniques to reduce the "cross-talk" (interference from other layers) so that the data at each of the sixteen layers can be recovered reliably.

Each layer retains compatibility with the Blu-Ray standard, however it is unlikely that existing Blu-Ray readers would be able to read these disks.

PS3's functionality as a Blu-ray player may be catching on with the public, but will the buzz last?

While Blu-ray video sales are supposedly not yet at the level required to make up for a lagging North American home video market in general, a survey commissioned by Warner Home Video nevertheless suggests that Blu-ray media still stands to pick up steam... from PlayStation 3 owners. Backed by this survey, Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders explains at Screen Digest's PEVE Digital Entertainment conference that the percentage of total console usage by PS3 owners spent watching Blu-ray video content increased to 23 percent during the first two months of 2008, up from 15 percent back in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Sanders cited Sony's marketing of the PS3's Blu-ray features as a factor behind the increase in Blu-ray movie viewership. Indeed, Sanders believes the number of PS3 owners actually using the PS3 as a Blu-ray media player on the side increased from 53 percent last September to 80 percent in early 2008. Such figures could help play down concerns that the PS3 itself is holding back Blu-ray growth, due to the public's ignorance/apathy over the hardware's built-in Blu-ray functionality.

Screen Digest meanwhile looks to temper what it fears is premature enthusiasm, especially considering how the timeframe covered in the survey just so happens to be the typically busy Holiday season. How will things look down the road for Blu-ray movies on PS3? Good thing the PS3 can still rely on retail Blu-ray games!

The timing of the Warner research, which was carried out in late 2007 and early 2008, means it is impossible to quantify how much the usual Christmas gift-giving season (and subsequent increase in new BD homes) would have increased consumer spending on BDs without the promotions - or, indeed, whether the uplift is sustainable. Furthermore, the relative lack of strong games titles for the PS3 over this period is also likely to have contributed to the console's use as a BD player. Nonetheless, the sheer size of the PS3 installed base means that even a minimal increase in average per household BD buy rates could have a substantial impact on total hi-def software sales, a fact which played a major role in Warner's decision to abandon Toshiba's HD DVD format in favour of Blu-ray earlier this year

Next-gen home video can't rest on its laurels just yet, even with the fading of HD-DVD as competitor

Sony's Blu-ray is already gaining serious traction since Toshiba exited the next-gen optical disc format battleground through abandoning HD-DVD development. According to analyst groups cited by Reuters, 3.8 million of the 4.9 million high-def ("next-gen") DVDs sold during the first quarter of 2008 were Blu-ray format. While this further cements Blu-ray as the next-gen media of choice for movies, such figures are still not enough to make up lagging sales of "standard" DVD movies, sales of which may have peaked two years ago.

In other words, declining DVD revenue is keeping the North American home video market down, and Blu-ray sales haven't yet reached the level needed to turn the tide. Analysts feel consumers are still holding out on making the big jump to Blu-ray in general, being plenty comfortable with the current DVD format as it is. Another part of the issue is the prevalence of the PlayStation 3 as the Blu-ray player of choice. This means studios distributing movies on Blu-ray will be largely looking at the PS3 install base for sales and it's still a relatively small one, despite the lower pricing of the console compared to standalone Blu-ray players.

In fact, said analysts believe Blu-ray as a medium will only really start picking up once the standalone Blu-ray players themselves start getting some serious price cuts. It's interesting to see that for all the benefits the PS3 has with built-in Blu-ray capabilities (complete with upgradable firmware via PSN!), analysts feel the general public still regards the console as a "games" machine. Well, that certainly isn't going to make anyone who got a PS3 primarily for Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV flinch!

...since the vast majority of Blu-ray players are in homes because Sony has embedded them into the PlayStation 3 video game consoles, many consumers don't seem to care that they even have a Blu-ray player.

Until stand-alone Blu-ray players -- the cheapest is about $370 -- fall to below $200, Americans en masse won't adopt the new technology, experts predict. [Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson] predicts in a recent 27-page report that that won't happen until the end of 2009.

PS3 to become Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0 (BD-Live) player later this month

PlayStation 3 fans will know that one biggest advantages their console has as a Blu-ray player is its ability to be updated into the newer player "profiles" via firmware thanks to the PS3's own system software updates.  The upcoming PS3 System software update 2.20, currently scheduled for release "late March", will include the next biggest Blu-ray player profile update: Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0.

Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, perhaps better known as "BD-Live", enables support for additional features on Blu-ray discs during playback - provided distributors created any which users can access.  Exclusive BD-Live content generally falls into the realm of interactive features which may or may not "web-enhanced", though it also promises cleaner high-definition transfers in general; more pertitent to PS3 gamers, BD-Live potentially opens the door to "advanced gaming options".  Be warned that the BD-Live update will be the biggest yet, requiring about 1GB worth of free space on the PS3 hard drive.  Maybe it's time for some spring cleaning if you've been going to town with trailer and demo downloads over the PlayStation Network lately.

Outside of Blu-ray, system software update 2.20 also expands Remote Play on the PS3.  This will allow the PS3 to support the PlayStation Portable as a remote control during playback for music stored on the PS3 hard drive.  Meanwhile, the PS3 itself will get the ability to resume playback of Blu-ray discs and DVDs from the point where they were paused, as well as playback support for DivX and WMV video files which are larger than 2GB in filesize.

A quick rundown of PS3 firmware update v2.20 features:

• The ability to copy PS3 Music and Photo playlists to a PSP system. We introduced the ability to create Music and Photo playlists on the PS3 in firmware update v2.0. Now you can easily export your playlists to your PSP.
• You can now play DivX and WMV format files that are over 2 GB. In addition, you can now display subtitles when viewing DivX files.
• Resume Play - begin playing a DVD or BD disc from the point where you previously stopped it, even if you eject the disc and insert a different movie or game.
• Use your PSP as a remote control to play back your music files on your PS3 without turning on your TV.
• The Internet browser now displays some web pages faster. In addition [Save Target] has been added as an option under file. This option lets you save a file that is linked to a web page to your PS3 hard drive or storage media.

Latest SlySoft AnyDVD (HD) strips BD+ from discs

Seems that the wheels keep turning for HD burning companies, with the format war settled and AACS cracked there was only one real thing left to tackle in the market, that of course being BD+

The latest version of AnyDVD (6.4.0.0) manages to not really crack the VM system but instead to just remove the security as a whole from the disc so that people can have DRM free HD discs to run on any system or to pull off for personal use on storage devices. It's certainly a workable approach, if the system is said to not really be crackable for at least 10 years then why bother with it and instead why not just tell it to stay behind when pulling the data off.

The full detail list of 6.4.0.0 comes down to this:

6.4.0.0 2008 03 19
- New (Blu-ray): Removes the BD+ protection from Blu-ray discs!
(for increased compatibility with titles released by Twentieth
Century Fox :-) )
- New (Blu-ray): Added option to enable / disable BD+ removal
- New (DVD): AnyDVD ripper no longer uses the Windows filesystem, it
has now its own UDF parser / reader.
Discs which cannot be read by Windows can now be copied with the
AnyDVD ripper.
- Fix (Blu-ray): Black display with some BD discs, e.g., "Layer Cake",
second release, "The Fugitive", "Wild Things" (all Region B)
- Fix (DVD): Small bugfix in "repairing defective disc structure"
function of AnyDVD ripper
- Fix (DVD): Problems with some Arccos protected titles, e.g.
"The Grudge", R1, US
- Some minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages

Seems like the consumers are getting that leash around their neck loosened by the community at large, nice to see that the investments made on DRM paid off for the media companies.

Or at least MGS4 the way he REALLY wanted it

Kojima Productions' assistant producer Ryan Payton already created a stir last week when he confirmed that Metal Gear Solid 4 would not feature dual audio tracks for language, citing the lack of space to put both English and Japanese language options in full, even on Blu-ray disc. Now a more telling grievance over Blu-ray's potential storage capacity comes from the driving force behind Metal Gear himself, series creator Hideo Kojima. In an interview with Famitsu magazine, Kojima laments how his team was held back in certain regards during MGS4 development as a result of simply not being able to fit everything they wanted onto Blu-ray:

"For us, we're not still not satisfied with the quality we can do. You know, there's not capacity space... We always talked about where to cut and what to compress."

A single-layer Blu-ray disc already boasts up to 25GB of storage (and dual-layer is naturally double that at 50GB), and Sony Computer Entertainment has continually championed the optical format as the next logical medium for next-gen games due to increasing file sizes for the final code. Yet how much storage will be enough for perfectionists (and nutters) like Kojima if they are given free reign? MGS4 certainly sounds jam-packed at this point! On the other hand, missing out on Akio Ohtsuka's SEXY vocal work as Snake in the Japanese version the fourth time around in the series will probably have some MGS fanatics feeling left out in the cold.

Sony's Blu-ray is in better shape than ever to take the home video market, but DVD is still around too

With Sony scoring victory after victory on the optical disc format front with Blu-ray, word on the street concerning rival format HD-DVD has not kind over the past few days. One of the primary developer of HD-DVD technologies, Toshiba, tried to quell fears over its disc format earlier this week, but it appears to be of little use. Today Toshiba itself has confirmed that it is officially pulling the plug on HD-DVD business and development, at least for movies. Toshiba intends to support its allies who are still aboard the HD-DVD ship including Paramount and Microsoft.  Former HD-DVD backer Universal Studios meanwhile will be turning to Blu-ray.

The HD-DVD format entered the consumer market just a few months before Sony's competing Blu-ray standard did back in early 2006; according to Toshiba, it had sold approximately 1 million dedicated HD-DVD players as of January 2008. Close to 400 movie titles have been distributed on HD-DVD thus far in North America alone. However, Sony gained major traction with Blu-ray over the past few weeks, and struck gold when Warner Bros. confirmed it would back Sony's format exclusively starting this May. The hits just kept coming with major retailers like Wal-mart and Best Buy opting to decrease support for HD-DVD titles, if not dropping it altogether.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

"It was a heartbreaking decision, but we considered the impact of continuing the business on our earnings, the next-generation DVD market and consumers."

Since 2005, Microsoft backed Toshiba in HD-DVD development. Just one example of the fruits of their partnership can be seen in the support for HD-DVD (versus Blu-ray) on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console through an external peripheral player. Microsoft would make clear that it did not intend to make a fuss over next-gen optical disc formats for its video game console business, though the company claims its HD-DVD player would be one of the best-selling accessories for the Xbox 360.

Perhaps Microsoft already had the inside scoop on Toshiba's plans for scapping HD-DVD, as the software/console giant began slashing prices on Xbox 360 HD-DVD players earlier this month. Nevertheless the company remains adamant that the Xbox 360's future planning will not be greatly affected by Toshiba's announcement. Indeed, despite support for HD-DVD the Xbox 360 never used the format for its actual game software.

As for Toshiba itself, the company could still support HD-DVD outside of movies as both HD-DVD and Blu-ray also exist as (very expensive) data storage mediums for the home and business computing markets.

General consensus is that HD DVDs last days are on the horizon

We were all bracing for a years-long war between the infamous Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, but when Warner announced it was dropping HD DVD in favour of becoming exclusively Blu-ray, it became clear that the war would be over before it could really unfold into something monstrous.

Now, thanks to Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits, we have a pretty pie chart of the devastation Warner's announcement has had on the suddenly eerily-quiet battlefield. The second chart represents hardware sales of Blu-ray and HD DVD (not including PS3/XBOX360 add-on drives) during the first week after the market had a chance to respond, and that small wedge could turn into a tiny sliver if the trend continues.

The obvious conclusion one can make is that HD DVD will not survive much longer, but keep in mind that there are still some very large corporations backing HD DVD, including Toshiba, which just recently cut prices on its HD DVD players shortly after the date the NPD Group data shows here. Presumably, this will raise the sales of HD DVD -- at least until mass consumers start hearing talk of HD DVD's void in studio support, if they haven't already.

I suppose the Best Buys of the world may need to staff up their Returns & Exchanges departments, not to mention get used to fielding angry phone calls from irate (though unfortunately ignorant) customers. My personal opinion is that buying HD DVD hardware now is just begging for a swift kick of obsolescence in the coming 6 months.

In one fell swoop, the next-gen optical disc format battles just got a lot hotter

Time Warner made the surprising announcement late last week to drop support for HD-DVD in order to exclusively release its titles on Blu-ray beginning May this year. Until then the studio will continue to deliver HD-DVD releases, after the "standard" DVD and Blu-ray editions of course.

The HD-DVD format scored some exclusive partners back in August 2007 with Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation, inspiring director Michael Bay's eyebrow-raising rant against what he deemed was Microsoft's conspiracy to undermine next-gen optical disc format market altogether. Admittedly, Bay was a proponent of Blu-ray from the start.

It's interesting to note it was not until Time Warner made an exclusivity announcement of its own that analysts both professional and armchair alike began to foresee any sort of outcome in the next-gen optical disc format "war", saying much of the studio's clout:

"We expect HD DVD to 'die' a quick death, versus a prolonged format war," Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield told investors in a note.

"I have not seen anyone give up in this fight. Every time one shoe drops and you think 'Oh, it's over,' the other side comes up with something else," said Stephanie Prange, Home Media Magazine editor in chief.

The battle has confused consumers, she confirmed, but many people don't see the need for high-definition anyway, she added.

The studio's decision certainly caught the HD-DVD consortium off guard, as the format's group of backers suddenly canceled any meetings and press conferences previously scheduled for this weekend's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Meanwhile, HD-DVD developer Toshiba stands firm behind its format. Though it was as surprised as anybody with Time Warner's decision, the company reminds supporters and naysayers that its solution still has majority (year-to-date) market share:

"We were very disappointed with Warner Brothers' announcement," [Toshiba America Consumer Products president Akiyo Ozaka] said. "Sales of HD DVD were very good last year, especially in October to December."

"It's difficult for me to believe when all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead," [Toshiba marketing executive Jodi Sally] said. "Clearly, the events of the last few days have led many of you to that conclusion. We have been declared dead before. The reality is we ended 2007 with a majority of the year-to-date market share."

Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and the horrible conspiracy behind it all

Michael Bay is a film director. He has made some big flicks, with explosions and gunfights, such as Transformers. But not only does he direct movies, but he also generates conspiracy theories regarding Microsoft, in his spare time.

Recently on his "Ask Michael Bay" sub-forum from his personal website, a fan asked Mr. Bay about the general unavailability of Bay's films in the Blu-ray format. Michael Bay had this to say on the matter: 

"What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth."

Are the format wars just a big diversion from the development of digital downloads? Does Microsoft have some sort of agenda? Are the Free Masons involved... or the Lizard People! Only time will tell, according to Michael Bay.

Plays down importance of next-gen optical disc format rivalry, believing "prestige" is the only reward for a potential victor

Though the 40GB PS3 ditches PS2 compatibility for the sake of streamlining and efficiency, apparently it is already earning its keep since its official debut.  Sony Corp. CEO Sir Howard Stringer claims the PS3 is now selling "twice as fast" as it was before in the U.S. and "three times as fast" in Europe.  Assuming this momentum can be maintained, Stringer believes Sony just might have a shot at hitting its global shipment target of 10 million PS3s before the end of its fiscal year.

Stringer also notes that the battle between next-gen optical disc formats Blu-ray and HD-DVD are now at a "stalemate".  Though he downplays Blu-ray's importance in the great scheme of Sony, seeing the battle between the two formats as really nothing more than a rivalry for prestige, Stringer does feel Blu-ray was initially enjoying a good head start through its own merits.  Paramount's earth-shattering decision to back HD-DVD exclusively for its releases, however, pretty much threw a spanner in their works.

Thus the battle between the two formats is set to rage on with no clear "winner" for quite some time.  It's all enough to make Stringer allow himself to get wistful for a moment in wishing that he was there in the not-so-distant-past to somehow unite the two opposing camps before their rivalry as formats started.

Xbox Disc Replacement Program still covers damaged Halo 3 Limited Edition discs

First reported in the NeoGAF discussion boards and now confirmed by other news outlets, an unknown number of Halo 3 Limited Edition and Essential Edition (not to be confused with the hefty Legendary Edition) game discs suffer varying degrees of scratches. In some cases the scratches could render the discs unreadable by Xbox 360 consoles.

The damage stems from poorly-designed packaging. Specifically, the disc tabs which are supposed to hold the game in place are not the standard seen in typical DVD cases, and in fact allow the DVD to become loose and toss about inside the case during shipping. The issue is currently limited to, well, the Limited and Essential Edition releases of Halo 3; both the "regular" and Legendary Editions had the good sense to utilize stardard DVD cases for game storage.

In a not-so-subtle gesture, Microsoft reminds all affected gamers that their Xbox Disc Replacement Program is applicable for damaged Halo 3 Limited/Essential Edition game discs:

If, for any reason, you have a damaged Microsoft Xbox 360 disc and like to replace it, please review the information below:

NOTE: This program covers the Halo 3 Limited Edition Game Disc and Essentials Disc at no charge through 12/31/07.

This program only applies to games where Microsoft is the publisher, and is subject to availability. To check and see if your game is available for replacement, please review which Microsoft products currently fall under this program here.

At least this time you can't blame the Xbox 360 console for scratching game discs. :\

(Image source: Shacknews)

External PCIe GPU for laptops gets closer

The PCI-SIG defined a standard for external PCIe in February this year, but not much has been heard about it since - until now.

MSI showed its "Notebook Station" external PCIe 16x solution back at CES; it will allow you to connect a dual-slot width graphics card (but NOT two graphics cards, although it is probably only a matter of time before someone makes a dual 8x slot external PCIe graphics bay).

The interesting part was that the external PCIe box was connected with an "ExpressCard" adapter - basically a faster PCMCIA card. MSI claimed that it provided plenty of bandwidth.

Now a bit of googling has revealed that an ExpressCard slot has 2.5GBits of bandwidth, implemented as a PCIe 1x lane - which is a far cry from even a 4x slot; however given how pathetic the 3D performance of most mobile chipsets is for gaming, it is not hard to imagine that an external video card hooked up to a 1x slot will be faster than the on-board GPU.

If you sell mod chips in the States, you might want to watch out

US Customs went on a blitzkrieg of justice today, and their target was mod-chip sellers. 

Across 16 states, US storm troopers raided 30 homes and businesses, busting sellers of mod-chips. These arrests today follow a 12 month investigation launched by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose goal was to ferret out and hunt down these horrendous and nefarious mod chips, which assist in console piracy, and mitigate profit margins. 

"Illict devices like the ones targeted today are created with one purpose in mind: subverting copyright protections," said the assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "These crimes cost legitimate businesses billions of dollars annually and facilitate multiple other layers of criminality, such as smuggling, software piracy and money laundering," she went on to say. 

To protect us the from the terrors of mod-chipery, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has worked with Nintendo to sieze over 61,000 mod-chips since April, 2007.   

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office was setup in 2003, and is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.  

Holographic optical drives not too far off

Squeezing massive quantites of data onto optical media with holographic technology is not new, but recently, researchers found a method of doing this with regular HD DVDs.

The good news came from the University of Berlin, where smart-folk developed a new microholographic recording method that can put nanostructures into the entire volume of a DVD, not just on the surface, in order to store data. This research effort has been named the "Microholas project." The project was started about 3 years ago, and it appears that it is a total success: the prototype can microholographinize 500 gigs onto a disc, and the researchers believe that reaching the 1 TB mark is very much possible.

I wonder if this will cut down video piracy?

A new anti-piracy system has been been developed by BD+ Technologies for Blu-Ray discs. It is called BD+, and it is coming to a movie rental new you.

The BD+ system works by creating a small virtual machine in the decoder's memory, and in this sense, it is similar to StarForce copy-protection software.  The virtual machine will be compiled using instructions from a new code interpreter that will be included in Blu-Ray optical drives, and from retrieving additional code from the Blu-Ray disc. The code interpreter is fairly small: only a 100 lines of code utilizing 60 different instructions. The code interpreter can do the one of the three things: it can transform data, being able to rearrange the video data on a Blu-Ray disc and insert watermarks; it can also self-examine itself, to see if it has been tampered with; and also, the code interpreter can run numerous advanced counter-measures on the Blu-Ray player during the use. These advanced counter-measures could eventually even be things such as time-limited playback for titles.

The Blu-Ray Disc Association is claiming that this protection scheme will be very difficult to break, because for each title the specific decoding keys have to be extracted, and each virtual machine has to be reverse-engineered. “BD+ will be the proverbial thorn in the side of Blu-ray movie rippers,” optical storage analyst Wesley Novack was quoted as saying. “With AACS and BD+ switching up encryption keys and methods routinely (BD+), it might become too much work to determine how to rip every Blu-ray Disc title out there.”

Some of the big movie studios have been waiting for better content-protection systems to be implemented before releasing big high-definition titles. This move by Blu-Ray to include BD+ might put them further ahead of HD DVD in the disc wars, as more studios chose to release only in Blu-Ray format, instead of HD DVD.