Author: Digital Digest | Latest News

From something new from pirates to something new on disc, read the news roundup for the week ending 3 January 2016

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The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 19th December 2015 are in. A trio of new releases, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and Ted 2, and Holiday sales helped Blu-ray record 2015's best results!

Read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.

Warner Bros. became the third major studio to announce their Ultra HD Blu-ray release line-up, following announcements by Sony and Fox.

Only four titles, 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' 'San Andreas,' 'The Lego Movie' and 'Pan,' will be available on UHD Blu-ray initially, but the studio expects at least 35 titles to be available on the new near-4K format by year's end. No firm release date has been given for the first batch of titles.

Warner Bros. calls Ultra HD the next step in home entertainment, and also talked up the studio's commitment to other visual enhancement, such as HDR, that will also arrive via the new Blu-ray disc format.

"We are excited to take this next technological leap which will allow us to bring our audiences the best possible home viewing experience with crystal clear images and immersive audio," said Ron Sanders, President of Warner Bros. Worldwide Home Entertainment Distribution. "4K Ultra HD with HDR is the next, and most exciting, advancement in home entertainment, and with the anticipated proliferation of Ultra HD televisions in the coming years, our 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray product offerings will truly complement the stunning capabilities of this new generation of home entertainment hardware. Warner Bros. is fully committed to releasing a wide range of Ultra HD Blu-ray titles, including both new release titles and offerings from our vast catalog."

Warner's announcement follows that from Sony, which revealed its launch titles as 'The Amazing Spiderman 2,' 'Chappie,' 'Hancock,' 'Pineapple Express,' 'Salt,' and 'The Smurfs 2'. Fox announced last September that its launch titles will be 'Exodus: Gods and Kings,' 'Fantastic Four,' 'Kingsman: The Secret Service,' 'Life of Pi,' and 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'.

Lionsgate also recently announced plans to remaster its top 100 movies for 4K Ultra HD digital release and broadcast.

From real piracy to the theoretical, read the news roundup for the week ending 27 December 2015

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A successful hacking attempt may mean that many, if not all of this holiday season's hit films are now, or will soon be available to download on piracy sites.

A torrent for the box office darling of the moment, the new Star Wars sequel by J.J. Abrams, has also been leaked online in a separate incident.

Piracy release group Hive-CM8 says they have access to more than 40 DVD screeners of recent films that they plan to upload online following the group's upload of Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight'.

Screeners are sent to industry insiders, reviewers and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences during reward season. These DVDs, also sometimes digital copies, are watermarked to allow the source of potential leaks to be traced.

An FBI investigation has been launched, and they have traced the source of the leak to Andrew Kosove, co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment. Kosove has agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI, and claims that the DVD screeners of 'The Hateful Eight' never reached him in person, suggesting that the leak possibly occurred earlier in the chain of distribution.

Hive-CM8 has also released DVD screener copies of 'The Revenant', 'Creed' and 'Legend'.

Meanwhile, pirated versions of the current box office lead and potential candidate to become the most successful movie ever, 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens', is now available to download on most piracy sites. The pirated versions are all "cam" copies, meaning they were recorded in a film theater using a digital recording devices, such as a phone or a camcorder. 

The initial leak was a very poor quality copy in Spanish, but more releases are now available complete with English intro text crawl and soundtrack, in good quality (for a cam release).

The available of pirated copies of the eagerly anticipated film seems to have had little effect on the box office fortunes of director J.J. Abrams's take on the Star Wars universe, with the film currently breaking almost all box office records in all markets around the world.

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 12th December 2015 are in. Minions and Ant-Man were the two main releases for this week, and both helped Blu-ray revenue reach a recent high.

Read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.

Former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde has built a piracy machine that promises to copy $10 million worth of pirated content per day, in an attempt to show how ludicrous and arbitrary it is to count copying as a form of piracy.

The machine, dubbed the "Kopimashin", generates 100 copies of Gnarls Barkely track "Crazy" every second, which means more than 8 million copies per day. As the music industry prices each act of copying at $1.25 per copy, this means the Kopimashin can generate $10 million worth of damages in a single day.

The machine does make digital copies of that single track, but it sends all copies to /dev/null, a location on Unix/Linux systems that instantly discards all input to it (as an easy way to discard unneeded output).

The Kopimashin is part of an art project that aims to show the true value, or the lack of it, of digital copies.

"I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy. The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it’s not a danger to any industry at all," Sunde told torrent news website TorrentFreak.

Sunde is planning to deploy at least 13 Kopimachins for exhibits, and for private sale, all endlessly copying "Crazy".

"The one running at my home is up to 120 million copies as we speak. That equals $150 million in losses to the recording industry – following their logic," says Peter, who has also applied for a Guinness Book of Records listing for the Kopimachin, as the world's most prolific piracy machine.

From DRM's defeat to 4K's victory, read the news roundup for the week ending 20 December 2015. Plus Star Wars mumbo jumbo.

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A consumer backlash has forced Philips to reverse a decision that would have added DRM (Digital Rights Management) to light bulbs used in its Hue lighting system.

Philips's Hue lighting system is the company's latest invention, an "Internet of Things" (IoT) network connected multicolor lighting system that has received some stellar reviews.

However, earlier this week, the company rolled out a firmware update which seems to disable to use of third-party light bulbs, instead, forcing consumers to buy Philips branded bulbs (or bulbs only from "approved" suppliers) to use with the system. While strictly speaking it isn't a DRM system, the implementation of the usage control, based on chips present in the light bulb, isn't too dissimilar to how DRM would be implemented for things like game consoles and movie discs. 

As expected, consumers reacted angrily at what they perceived to be Philips's heavy handed attempt to stifle price competition, especially considering that Philips's actions break the Hue system's previous conformation to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for IoT devices. The vocal angry backlash forced Philips to eventually admit their mistake and reverse the firmware update to allow third party bulbs to be used once again.

Philips said the original change was made in "good faith" in the best interest of customers.

"We recently upgraded the software for Philips Hue to ensure the best seamless connected lighting experience for our customers. This change was made in good faith," Philips said.

"However, we under-estimated the impact this would have on a small number of customers who use lights from other brands which could not be controlled by the Philips Hue software. In view of the sentiment expressed by our customers, we have decided to reverse the software upgrade so that lights from other brands continue to work as they did before with the Philips Hue system."

This isn't the first time that a company tried to add DRM into an everyday use item, and was forced to reverse its decision due to the general public's strong anti-DRM sentiment. Coffee machine maker Keurig was too embroiled in its own DRM scandal, blocking out third party "unapproved" pods, before reversing course due to public pressure.

The results and analysis for Blu-ray (and DVD) sales for the week ending 5th December 2015 are in. Cyber Monday happened during this week, read the rest of the stats and analysis to find out how Blu-ray (and DVD) did.