RealNetworks has announced that they have settled their outstanding lawsuits with the major Hollywood studios over their Real DVD ripping software, effectively killing the product off after making just 2700 sales.
Additionally, Real will pay $4.5 million to pay off the legal costs of the litigation.
“We are pleased to put this litigation behind us,” adds Bob Kimball, president and acting CEO for Real. “This is another step toward fulfilling our commitment to simplify our company and focus on our core businesses. Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood. With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood’s great work to consumers.”
The settlement also terms a permanent injunction that will block RealDVD and similar technologies forever from sale in the US or abroad.
The $30 USD software application allowed users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs, allowing for, what Real thought, were legal backups. Clearly, Hollywood did not agree, despite the fact that Real’s backups also included DRM to stop sharing of the backups.
Result for: DVD
A look at the minimum system requirements for the upcoming blockbuster Just Cause 2 shows that the title won’t work on installations of Windows XP. This would represent one of the first high profile releases not to be supported by the still-popular Microsoft operating system. The requirements specifies that an operating system newer than XP is required, and provides a hint why.
The game requires at least DirectX 10. Windows XP can only officially go as far as DirectX 9, meaning that gamers would need to be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play the game. A recent hardware/software survey from Steam showed that 42.15 percent of its users were in fact still running the Windows XP operating system, although Windows 7 was becoming popular very fast.
Of course, there have been several methods used to install DirectX 10 on Windows XP since it was launched, none of which are supported by Microsoft and several of which have no support from their original authors either. So maybe it is “technically” possible to run it on Windows XP, but it is a shame that users should have to install a hacked DirectX 10 package and probably patch the game files themselves to play it on Windows XP.
Amazon.com incorrectly lists XP as supported in search results.
Minimum System Requirements
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
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Result for: DVD
Redbox will begin adding Blu-ray titles to its 22,000 kiosks starting in the Q2 2010, says parent company Coinstar CEO Paul Davis.
So far, the company has been only testing Blu-ray releases in its kiosks.
“[Blu-ray] strengthens our position to meet consumer demand,” adds Davis, although he concedes that they will not cost $1.00 like DVD releases do. When asked about the price, he said they have not determined a price, but they will “for sure be higher than our standard DVDs.”
