Alright, it is the time of the year when I try to wrap up all the major events in digital video and technology that happened during the past year and also to take a quick look at what happened at AfterDawn.com as well.
Blu-ray and the death of the HD DVD
For the good portion of this decade, people following our niche have been anticipating the “next DVD format” to come. That finally happened in 2006, but the eve of the high definition optical video format was partly crippled by a format war. That format war finally ended earlier this year, when Toshiba gave up with its HD DVD format, marking Sony-backed Blu-ray the winner of the war. However, the prolonged development of the Blu-ray and the following format war delayed the potential adoption of the format so much that it remains a mystery whether the format will ever be able to replicate DVD’s success story.
Various net-based video services, such as Hulu have made significant gains in the United States during the 2008. As more and more studios, TV production companies and broadcast channels adopt net as one of their more significant distribution channels, such services pose a real threat to Blu-ray’s future in the U.S. It should be noted that due distribution contracts, smaller market areas and various localization issues, such services are rarity in most markets and in those markets, Blu-ray is often the only reasonable option for high definition video material. As a good example, here in Finland, the most HD channels you can get from any pay TV operator, is currently 10 and none of the major broadcasting channels provide HD material whatsoever. And of course Google is taking major steps into net video as well, specially after the introduction of HD material to Youtube earlier this year.
Result for: finland
Google’s Android team has announced that they will begin selling the unlocked Android Dev Phone 1 for $399 USD. The mobile phone will be the first Android-based phone to be both SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked and available to the public.
Google created the Linux-based OS to compete against other mobile operating systems such as Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian, Apple’s iPhone and RIM.
The move should prompt extra sales to consumers who do not want to buy the T-Mobile-locked G1.
The unit will be available in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary and will work with any GSM carrier.
Result for: finland
In an effort to fight back against the recent Danish ISP Block of its site, The Pirate Bay has launched jesperbay.org as a countermeasure.
The new site, named after the boss of the Danish IFPI, gives Danish users detailed instructions on how to get around the block and gain access again to The Pirate Bay.
One of the admins of TPB, Brokep, had this to say about the new domain name. “We’ll associate his name with something positive instead of his negative IFPI vibe.”
The admin team over at TPB has also asked other torrent site admins to help by redirecting all customers from the blocked ISP Tele2 to the Jesper Bay. The team even wrote a piece of code that can redirect all Tele2 users to the Jesper Bay so they can change their DNS.
The ruling which has caused the block was released last night and ruled that Tele2 “assists in copyright infringement” simply because they give their customers access to TPB. The ruling should result in more ISP blocks, and the IFPI has already announced that they will start similar cases in Norway and Finland.
Sebastian Gjerding, a spokesperson for the Danish pro-piracy lobby Piratgruppen, made an interesting quote after the ruling was read. “It’s very frightening that the IFPI can get through the courts with something like this. In Turkey and China its the state that decides what information the people can access and what should be censored. In Denmark its apparently the record industry.”
