Someone has a clue

After a ’short’ break we’re back with an update on a previous post.

Back in September I wrote the lovingly titled Do Music Labels have a clue ? which questioned some of the ideas coming out of the likes of Sony and Universal. Well, Brokep from The Pirate Bay has written a great explanation of why the flatrate compensation scheme for the labels (where all users pay a fixed fee on top of their ISP bill) is retarded not very good.

The idea of “compensating” an industry is very short-sighted. What the record industry wants us to do is to give them money since their business model is not working anymore.

» There’s no way to say who transfered what song to whom on the Internet. It’s totally impossible both online and offline. So how would we monitor who would get the money?
» The tax is currently only for music.. but what happens when the movie industry wants the same? Movies are more expensive and they would not be satisified by $10 a month. It would be an additional $50 maybe? Or more? Do people even spend that much today in general on media?

Do the labels not realise this stuff ? Or do they just hope no-one will spot it ?

Read the full article here.

Introducing my new buddy, ted

There are two ways to watch TV using torrents.

The easiest is to download an entire season in one go, the other is to download episodes individually as they air in the U.S.

Downloading a season is perfect for shows you’re way behind on, or missed completely. However, what invariably happens is that you end up overtaking your local TV network, leaving you with a choice – either wait for another season to finish or download the individual shows as they are broadcast in the U.S.

The show-by-show method of using torrents is substantially more hassle since you have to be keeping track of the shows which are currently airing and checking for those torrents. This is where ted comes in.

Once you install it you choose the shows from the predefined list that you want to watch (there are about 150 of the top shows listed, and you can add custom ones). It then automatically monitors for new episodes, and loads them into your Bittorrent client which downloads them for you. This is incredibly useful if you have numerous shows to keep up with since you don’t have to either check for new torrents for each one every week, or even keep track of when the new season of a show is due to start. It’s all done for you.

Click the thumbnail at the top for a typical configuration. Yes, it’s mine. Cease & Desist me, I dare you. Anyway, you’ll notice that 24 has episode 25 selected – this is not a ’secret’ episode, it’s just the way of telling it to start downloading when a new season begins. You can download ted here.

Bittorrent Guide

In response to a number of requests, here’s everything you need to know to get started with downloading using Bittorrent.

A lot of people get put off using torrents because they think it’s too complicated, but the fact is you can get going with fairly limited knowledge. As you build up a greater understanding you’ll be in a position to play with certain software settings, but this certainly isn’t necessary early on.

Starting off
The first thing to do is to read the Beginners Guide to Bittorrents article over at Lifehacker. A few points to add to this :

• Software : The Opera browser has Bittorrent support built in meaning you can click a Bittorrent link and treat it just like a regular download. As a result, using Opera is by far the easiest way to get started. If you choose to go down the dedicated software route, personally I use Azureus even on a Windows platform, but uTorrent is easier to use when you’re just starting out.
• Torrent Sites : Mininova is the best overall site with 2.6 Billion torrent downloads to date. Just select category from the dropdown at the top and away you go. Isohunt is good for searching for files you can’t find on Mininova.
• Selecting a torrent : A lot of files will be listed more than once. The best bet is to go with the one with the most seeds and peers. Have a quick read of any comments to help avoid incomplete or mislabeled files. As you use torrents more frequently you’ll also start to recognise words in the torrent name which represent who published it, like LOL and axxo.
• Routers : If you use a router you may find that the port used for torrents is blocked. Read the router manual for instruction on unblocking and check the torrent software guide.
• How long does it take to download? A lot depends on how ‘current’ the content is. The more popular it is, the faster it will download. Be patient though, downloads tend to start slow and speed up.
• Is it legal ? It depends what you’re downloading, and what the laws are in the country you’re in. Whilst getting a Cease & Desist order from a federal judge would do wonders for this blog’s notoriety, it probably isn’t much fun. So I should point out that downloading things like Prison Break Season 1 or Season 2 is naughty.
• Is it safe ? It’s no more or less safe than downloading anything on the Internet. It’s just a method for doing it. So the same rules apply – don’t download .exe files if you’re not confident they’re legitimate etc.

There will be at least one followup article, on the additional software to improve your experience, but this covers all the basics you need to get downloading.

Do Music Labels have a clue ?

Within a couple of days of each other, Sony BMG and Universal Music have made announcements which makes you wonder if they actually understand this whole Interwebthingy.

Both companies will be releasing the very cleverly named ‘Ringle’ CD which will retail at $6 in the US. UK pricing is unconfirmed, but recent examples suggest that companies refuse to see the Internet as a good reason to standardise pricing globally. Anyway, for this you get your single, a remix, and a ringtone.
Will it work ? Well, to get the ringtone on your phone you’ll presumably need to use your PC. That’s the same PC which can download the song for free and then turn it into a ringtone, also for free. So there might be a problem there. And someone should probably point out that iTunes has just released its Ringtones store. Oh, and that ringtone sales are in decline. And that the market’s saturated.

Universal are also considering moving ahead with their ‘TotalMusic’ plan. The idea behind this is basically to charge every one of an ISP’s (and mobile carrier’s) customers a flat monthly fee to exchange files using P2P programs. Whether they actually do it or not. So, for example, your £25/month bill becomes £35/month, but your P2P sharing becomes ‘legal’.
Whilst a scheme like this would generate revenue for the labels, the likelyhood of it happening are slim to none. It’s based on the principle you can force users to pay for something they can either buy elsewhere when they want it or get for free – and whether they share music files or not. And that’s before even thinking about the headache of negotiating deals between all the ISPs and all the record labels.

You have to assume that companies of this size have departments dedicated to combating the loss of revenue due to ‘Internet-related’ activity. Is this really what they come up with ?

ET Quake Wars Demo

Download the demo from one of the following locations :

File Front
4Players.de
ActionTrip
Fileshack
Nvidia
Gamers Hell
i3d.net
Turkey Files
Official .torrent

Important note for ATI users: You must download and install this hotfix in order to be able to run the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars demo. The next revision of the ATI drivers is going to include the hotfix.

ET : Quake Wars Demo Released

On Monday 10th September the Enemy Territory:Quake Wars Demo, which contains one finished map, is set for release.

This is good news. When the demo for ET (ET:QW’s predecessor) came out it also contained one map, Fuel Dump, which gave players a chance to adapt to the gameplay without being confused by changing objectives and spawn points. The demo map, Valley, is similar in a number of respects and should be a safe bet to start with.

Also announced are the minimum PC specs for the game. If your PC is below these then I assume you bought it in the 90s. They’re fairly low, and there’s no Vista-only restriction.

Next TV announced

Yet another IPTV application was announced yesterday with the HP/DAVE Networks offering, NEXT TV.

If you think you’ve heard all this before, you probably have :

NEXT.TV Press Release (Sept 5th, 2007)
NEXT.TV brings together advertisers, content owners and viewers in an easy to use entertainment driven environment.
NEXT.TV can be accessed with a wired or wireless broadband Internet connection and offers broadcast-quality content to viewers for free.
Joost Press Release (May 1st, 2007)
Joost [brings] together advertisers, content owners and viewers in an interactive, community-driven environment.
Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and offers broadcast-quality content to viewers for free.

You’d think HP could be bothered to write their own stuff…

Anyway, how is it different ? Well, apart from managing to crowbar the word ‘Erotic’ into their intro clip, which is sure to get a few extra users, it’s different primarily because it will only be available on HP laptops. Which is a bit strange given that it uses P2P technology to transfer the content around and therefore replies on other people to be uploading the content. So the service will be limited by the fact that you can only download from HP users. And on top of that, laptop users who aren’t even connected half the time, and when they are often at much slower speeds than broadband.

On the plus side it’s free and, even better, it’s apparently great at allowing you to watch TV on your laptop in the park. Which is huge if that’s your preferred location for watching TV. There’s not much else to say about this offering at the moment since you have to apply for beta and, presumably, have an HP laptop.

Silverlight Released

Microsoft Silverlight, widely touted as the ‘Flash-Killer’ was officially released today.

There has been talk about this for a number of months, along with some impressive case studies, and in a Press Release today the ‘cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering richer user experiences on the Web’ was launched.

A full comparison between Silverlight and Flash is lengthy (and slightly boring), but suffice to say that Silverlight is a more structured, capable platform. On the flip side it’s more complicated for programmers to use, although that’s hardly surprising since Flash is known for it’s easy-to-use programming interface.

The biggest thing in favour of Flash is it’s incredible level of penetration. Silverlight will take a while to get to that level, but when you ship with the OS of 90% of machines sold worldwide, you have a bit of an advantage when it comes to adoption rates.

Click the image below to see Silverlight in action.

New iPods announced

3 new iPods were announced today. The iPod nano, the iPod classic and the iPod touch.

Let’s start off with a table to summarise the technical specs :

The Zen is in there for comparison. Which I’ll come to later.

In the meantime, as you may imagine, initial feedback is very mixed. The decision to release an iPhone-style ‘video’ model but at the same time to drop the capacity is strange to say the least – the high GB models to date have encouraged vast collections of music which now may not even fit on the new device, let alone leave room for substantial video content which, after all, is what it was designed for. Plus, despite its high price point, it’s not able to compete with the portable video devices from the likes of Archos either in terms of screen size or quality, let alone storage.

nano is nano, and the new fat boy is a valid improvement, as is the increased capacity of the classic. Although anyone who has 160GB of music/video probably needs to question exactly how portable it needs to be. Or think about buying somewhere to live.

Which brings us to the Zen. From the table above it’s clear that it more than holds its own when it comes to the stats. However, whilst iPod really haven’t changed anything fundamental on their core models, here’s a few areas where the Creative is in a different league :

DivX/XviD and WMV support
SD Card slot with SDHC support.
97dB SNR Audio Quality. (5G iPod = 83dB, 2G nano = 82.6dB)
16.7 million colour screen

If this means nothing to you, go buy an iPod since it’ll do a great job of what you want it for. Otherwise, you might just agree that for the first time in a while there’s a genuine contender on the scene.

Zen > iPod

There’s been a lot of talk about ‘iPod-killers’ but the whole thing is a bit pointless since there are way too many Apple fanboys out there.

Let’s instead talk about a device which is clearly superior, the Creative Zen (click for video demo). This device has only just been announced and won’t be available until the 29th September so there aren’t a huge number of reviews right now, but there’s a preview over at Trusted Reviews worth reading.

There are 3 things you need to know :

1. Codec support is unreal. (MP3, WMA, PlaysForSure, AAC, Audible, WMV, DivX, Xvid, etc.)
2. It has an SD Card slot.
3. It looks pro.

These points are huge.
Zen are releasing 4GB, 8GB and 16GB models at $150, $200 and $300 respectively, and they’re available for preorder on Play.com.

(See Full Spec)