This week, both Home Theater Blog and Ultimate AV ran the PS3 through its paces to see how well it behaved as a Blu-ray Disc player. The results were mostly positive, citing such advantages as fast disc loading times and great picture and sound quality.

Read Home Theater Blog's review
Read Ultimate AV's review

Digital Rights Management systems, or DRMs, are well known and loved in the marketplace for making things difficult for average users trying to get full use out of their paid-for content, while still allowing pirates to make illegal copies. As the schemes get exponentially more complicated, the hackers keep pace.

The latest technology, intended to protect HD DVD and Blu-ray discs from unauthorized copying, is called AACS (Advanced Access Content System) and has purportedly been cracked. This time, though, the news was released via a mildly entertaining video on YouTube. Apropos.

Some of the features of AACS are so powerful, however, that one questions if they will ever be used for fear of eroding consumer confidence. For example, the ability to disable specific titles or player models from playing back. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

More here.

• For the first time, Mobile WiMAX TV will be delivered to client devices with content secured by NDS’s VideoGuard® Conditional Access and Digital Rights Management solution
• NDS VideoGuard server and client-side Conditional Access technology is integrated with MobiTV’s mobile WiMAX TV solution
• Secure technology means that WiMax operators can offer premium mobile content to their subscribers

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NDS, the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, announced today that it has partnered with MobiTV to demonstrate the first-ever secure delivery of Mobile WiMAX TV to Ultra Mobile PCs. The integration of NDS VideoGuard with the MobiTV® service enables Mobile WiMAX operators to offer premium mobile television over a two-way IEEE 802.16e network while maintaining content rights and protecting service revenues. The new technology will be demonstrated at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show.

The solution integrates the NDS VideoGuard DRM and Conditional Access (CA) Server with MobiTV’s backend system to support the encryption of content and management of subscribers. On the client side, the two companies have integrated the NDS VideoGuard DRM and CA client into MobiTV’s mobile TV client which runs on an Ultra Mobile PC. An Ultra Mobile PC is a new category of mobile devices optimized for specific usage such as Internet-to-go, Entertainment-to-go, and Education-to-go, while providing full PC capability and versatility.

The MobiTV client connects to the video sent over the WiMAX network and displays it only after verifying subscriber rights for the service. This type of integration enables operators to protect the revenues generated from the MobiTV service, ensuring that only paying subscribers can gain access to the available channels.

The integration of the MobiTV service with NDS VideoGuard demonstrates an end-to-end pay-TV platform for WiMAX service providers. The service includes an efficient delivery mechanism for video, an electronic service guide (ESG) with channel and program information, and a TV client application. The integrated DRM offering allows operators to enforce content rights and to apply various business models to the content that is being delivered, including subscription, pay-per-view, pay-per-time, and others, appealing to different subscriber profiles.

“MobiTV offers the leading platform for delivery of TV to mobile devices and PCs. Our demonstration at CES shows how Mobile WiMAX operators can generate revenues from mobile video by supporting multiple business models and protecting their content at the same time,” said Joseph Deutsch, Vice President of Product Marketing for NDS.

Kay Johansson, CTO for MobiTV remarked: “Video and television delivery will obviously be one of the key applications for Mobile WiMAX, and a well thought out, mobile television solution providing multicast and unicast streaming is crucial for WiMAX operators trying to maximize ARPU. By integrating our solution with a key DRM player like NDS, we are showcasing how such an offering works and could be implemented with ease.”

Sonic annouced the launch of Qflix yesterday, a program and platform for consumers, enterprise and businesses to enable DVD on Demand burning of movies and other protected content.

"The Qflix technology and intellectual property program empowers for the first time factory, in-store, and in-home systems for on-demand, electronic sell-through of movies and video programs that can be recorded to DVD..."

The possibilities are tremendous. On-demand kiosks, mini-production warehouses, DVD anywhere!

Joost the ticket for Skype TV service
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a yet-to-be-released product codenamed The Venice Project. It now has a real name, Joost, and should be available late spring or early summer.

Netflix to Deliver Movies to the PC
Netflix is also getting into the movie download business. This is a good article for putting into perspective how nascent the market is.

No doubt there's more readers there than here at the moment, but we want to point out this useful blog to any Labs blog suscribers. It's chock full of good digital media Q&A. For example, here's an article on burning DVR-MS files from Media Center to DVD. We're glad to have Roxio MyDVD highlighted there.

http://www.jakeludington.com

Watch the MediaTicker demo & instructional video below. MediaTicker is so easy you don't need a manual, but who can resist watching an Englishman talk about software.?

I found this story on livejournal... Just when we thought we'd seen every kind of computer error known to man, we discover one that really takes the cake (geddit??)

Wegmans is a chain of grocery stores originating out of Rochester, NY. It seems that you can email cake orders to the company and include a message for the recipient as part of the email. The email is parsed by a computer in the bakery and the message is printed on the cake using some kind of food-grade inkjet printer.

The message sent to the bakery was a mixture of English and Italian, and apparently included some HTML tags that the automatic printer didn't like.

Enjoy!

U.S District Court Judge Deborah A. Batts has ruled that the recent suit initiated by the RIAA against satellite radio giants XFM has merit and can go to trial. The RIAA alleges that by allowing listeners to record their broadcasts, XFM directly infringes on the distribution rights of recording companies such as Atlantic, BMG and Capitol.

XFM have stated that they are protected under the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act, which says that making recordings of over-the-air radio broadcasts for private use is a legitimate practice. The Judge disagreed, drawing the distinction between recording "free" radio and recording "subscription" radio.

This is an interesting decision. It basically states that it's OK to record "free" radio, but not radio that users pay for via subscription. With several tools now available for recording internet radio on a PC and saving it as an MP3 file, this trial could have consequences beyond the satellite radio companies...

Full story here.

Thanks to our friends at Webuser Magazine - the UK's best selling internet magazine - for running a super informative and detailed piece on using Roxio MediaTicker. The article appears in the latest issue of Webuser Magazine (Issue 153, out Thursday 18 January 2007). A sneak peek is shown below, but be sure to check out the latest issue for tons of great internet and PC related stories, advice and reviews!

If you were lucky enough to receive a new portable player or cell phone this holiday season, chances are it has video capability. So just how do you transfer movies, TV shows and home video clips to it?

With Creator 9, of course! Creator 9 includes a universal video converter that translates between all standard formats, including MPEG1 (Video CD), MPEG2 (DVD), MPEG4 (Video iPod), MPEG HD, MPEG Transport Streams, 3GP (cell phone), DivX, WMV, MOV (QuickTime), TiVo, and Media Center PC TV recordings. So you can convert pretty much anything to the portable format used by your device. Presets for popular players like the iPod and PSP take the guesswork out of format settings. You can even batch convert a whole folder full of video files at once.

To start, click the Video tab in the main Creator window, and choose Convert Video to open the DVD Copy and Conversion module. Click the Add Movies button to make a list of all the video files you'd like to convert, then choose the appropriate output format (such as 3GP for your cell phone) and location. You can send video directly to supported portable devices if they’re attached. Be sure to save your export options as a template, so you can use it every time you send video to your device.

Hot Tip: Want to put a YouTube video on your iPod? You can’t download videos directly from YouTube or most other streaming sites, but some cool free software is out there to help. Just drop a link into KeepVid.com or Javimoya.com, and they will record it for you, or install the Firefox extension.

Learn more