COMPUTER CURRENTS
The content on HD discs sold here may have been copied from standard DVDs
JAMES HEIN
I was walking through one of the usual places recently and something caught my eye. After a quick double take I backed up and was looking at a shop that had a large table in the middle of it covered with what looked like Blu-ray titles with a few HD DVDs mixed in.
As it happens, I own an HD DVD player, and to date I have not found any titles in Thailand. The titles looked to be those released in the media and then I asked the price, 180 baht. Unlike many pirated disks these looked professionally made, with an outer sleeve and a nice looking box. I almost bought one to try but decided to do some checking first.
I have an acquaintance in the industry who knows the ins and outs of the pirate trade, so I called him.
He told me that the titles I had seen would indeed play in HD DVD or and Blu-ray machines in the respective formats, but that they had been copied from standard DVDs, not the original HD masters.
There are a few things to keep in mind with this little tale.
First, it is apparently easy to master to the formats that were supposed to be well protected and that this can be accomplished for a fairly low cost. HD DVD is, of course, no longer with us, but this does bode well for Asian buyers looking for titles in the future. In places such as the United Kingdom, a single title can set you back 40 or more and the same or more.
As predicted, eBay in Australia has backed away from its trial to switch to PayPal-only transactions. PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay, and while such a scheme would greatly benefit eBay it was going to restrict options for the sellers. I have read some horror stories from sellers in some places taking a long time to get their money from PayPal.
In this case it was the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission that stepped in - eBay has been criticised for removing listings which show preference for non-PayPal payment methods, and while eBay requires that no payment option be pushed over any other, at the same time it is mandatory to include PayPal and the paragraph on "PayPal protection" that some have described as "phoney". It will be interesting to see how this now plays out in the UK and the US.
Industry news
Pioneer has a process that can essentially put 16 layers on a single HD disk giving a read-only capacity of 400GB. Each layer has the same capacity as a current series Blu-ray disk, i.e. 25GB, and Pioneer is hinting that it is Blu-ray compatible. If you are wondering how much storage that is, think multiple seasons of a TV series on a single disk. I do not see this technology in homes any time soon however.
Optical drives in general have not had a very good history. The early ones were bypassed until finally people made the jump from the floppy to the thumb drive. They should be popular because they can hold lots of data, but the biggest problem is speed. They are slow. You know how long it takes to read from your CD or DVD drives compared to magnetic media like hard drives. When compared to tape for archiving they should be the clear winner. They are smaller and tape is also slow. Tape, however, is still the favourite archiving medium.
Tapes do hold more, up to 800GB, and they come in a nice protected cartridge. Optical media come as a platter that can be scratched.
The big one is that each version of the optical media comes with its own standard - consider Blu-ray as an example. It is Sony proprietary technology all the way. There is no enterprise optical standard that anyone follows, and proprietary technology is typically shunned by any tech-savvy firm. So until the optical world comes out with a standard, high capacity, fast, reliable and affordable drive and media, the tape will stay as the de facto standard for backing up enterprise data.
Dreamworks is switching to Intel and away from AMD for its next round of workstation purchases. Its server farms are getting a bit old and right now the fastest CPUs are from Intel. This could change in a month, but since the time is now, Intel is the winner. That is about 2,500 new machines and they will be working on rendering a new 3D movie.
I remember watching stereo movies in the 70's and a few times since then, but the technology has never really caught on because you have to wear those glasses that help your eyes see the images. I'm not convinced this is going to work but Journey to the Center of the Earth is showing soon in Thailand in 3D so we can get some idea of how this generation of 3D is coming along.
XP SP3 is nearly here and by the time you read this it may even be out because the release date has been definitively described as available "shortly". The last two automatic web releases were delayed, but MS claims that the third time is a charm for the auto-release. The official word goes like this: "Microsoft is committed to providing quality products to customers. As part of this commitment, we would like to remind you that Windows XP Service Pack 3 will be released to Automatic Updates shortly."
You may remember that the release was supposed to happen in April but MS had to pull it due to dynamic RMS issues.
A second attempt followed, but users faced the endless reboot problem (blamed on OEMs) and so it was back to the drawing board. You can of course get the real SP3 from the usual places and those that have managed to get it loaded tell me it seems to work well.
It is somewhat ironic that the release announcement comes a week after Microsoft stopped retail sales of the operating system and has barred computer vendors from installing it on most new PCs. This has not stopped vendors from offering a backwards step option because the majority still want XP despite what MS wants.
Running out of space on that drive? 1TB just not enough anymore? Seagate is pushing 1.6TB drives out of the door in August. The Barracuda 7200.11 is an 11th generation drive that represents the largest jump in capacity for 50 years. It spins at 7,200rpm and comes with a 3Gbps SATA interface giving a sustained data rate of up to 120MBps. I'm not sure of pricing but I do expect the 1TB models to drop in price.
iPhone users now have access to officially sanctioned 3rd party products. The feedback on the first 500 apps has been less than glowing however as iPhone users try to find something useful in the list. Of course you need to have iTunes installed so that Apple can check on what you are loading. The restriction on emulators means no Java Virtual Machine, or an StyleTap's Palm emulator. Can you spell "monopoly".
Email: jclhein@gmail.com.
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