DISH Network has announced that following the launch of the EchoStar XI broadcast satellite, it plans to launch more HD video channels in an effort to compete with its strongest competitor, the DirecTV Group.
The rollout of new channels was intended for March but “a satellite launch by SES Americom failed to reach its intended orbit.” The satellite launch was funded by EchoStar.
DISH now has 100 total HD channels, compared to 150 for DirecTV. Most cable or fiber providers offer between 30 and 60 channels in HD.
“Offering a wide variety of HD channels is important among pay-TV providers and is really important in today’s market,” said Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan. “DISH would have been at a disadvantage to its competitors if this satellite did not launch successfully.”
Result for: flv
The games developer Ubisoft recently released the latest PC patch for its hit game Rainbow Six Vegas 2 but with the release came problems for all users who had purchased the game via “Direct 2 Drive”. The patch works fine for users with a physical copy of the game, but those who downloaded it legally from D2D could not load up the game.
The Ubi forums were hit with thread after thread with gamers asking for a fix for the issue and many threads noted correctly that an illegal No-CD crack created by the scene group RELOADED would fix the problem. Ubisoft moderators however, made sure to warn anyone who posted such suggestions that No-CD cracks/fixed .exe are unofficial and illegal and would not be tolerated in the forums.
Later in the day, Ubisoft released its own patch to solve the problem and it it. However, some users ran the patch through a Hex editor and found that Ubisoft’s “official” patch was in fact the RELOADED No-CD crack, just renamed.
Now, this would not be so big of an issue if not for Ubisoft’s own terms of use. Their licenses state specifically that cracks are illegal in the United States and that users using them will violate their license. That is also not to mention that forum users had been punished just a day before.
There has been no official statement yet from Ubisoft, but a community manager has locked threads on the official Ubi forums and added this statement.
“We’re looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source. There’d be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executeable.
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The US’ latest box office hit, Warner Bros’ masterpiece The Dark Knight has already broken two records and is well on its way to shatter more, according to figures released today.
A press release from Warner Bros. reads that “Just past the stroke of midnight, Warner Bros. Pictures’ The Dark Knight broke the record for a 12:01 a.m. film opening, earning an unprecedented $18,489,000 at the box office… That total does not include the grosses from the subsequent 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. showings.”
One record down.
Later in the day, the studio, as well as such reputable sites as Box Office Mojo revealed that The Dark Knight had broken the record for sales on opening day, bringing in about $66.4 million USD. The previous record was the $59.8 million USD brought in by Spider-Man 3 last year.
The next record in TDK’s path is that of all-time opening weekend, which is currently held by Spider-Man 3 with a gigantic $151.1 million. Judging by the first day sales as well as the huge amount of pre-orders, analysts, as well as the studio, expect the Batman sequel to top the record and bring in almost $160 million USD.
I believe these numbers once again prove that movie studios have the solution for piracy in their possession but hardly ever use it. Make a great movie and make sure that it is worth watching on a 50 feet screen and not a 50 inch LCD. Piracy problem solved?
