Category: Video Technology

Film studios forming online distribution alliance?

Posted by Martyn Drake – March 5, 2010

I was intrigued by this article from Ars.Technica about Apple’s potential plans to introduce “cloud” storage to the iTunes ecosystem.

As the article suggests, Apple may either allow iTunes customers to store backups of their purchased music, movies and TV shows so that they can recover them should their computers and own backups fail (after all, while the cost of storage is coming down all the time, there are few households with decent fault tolerant SANs), or to stream the content direct to the desktop, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. I’d go for the former – one can recover purchased Apps from the iTunes Store but not music, films or TV shows. This necessitates that one has a bloody good backup plan in case of failure. I myself backup to blank Blu-Ray media, external hard drives, and online backup services such as SquirrelSave (UK) and Backblaze (US).

However, the article suggests that as far back as 2008 (it may be nearly two years ago, but that’s an age in the digital era), the major film studios (NBC Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Fox) got together to flesh out something called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (or DECE for short). This is a system that intends to implement some form of universal DRM that would allow any device to play digital content such as video or audio. Thus iPhones, Android devices, Chrome OS netbooks, etc. could all play the same content across all these platforms, yet the content provider keep a tight leash over when the content is played – and by whom. The studios would be free to negotiate their own price points, terms of access, etc – something that they’re currently restricted by when using a third-party CDN such as iTunes.

I’m not certain DECE will be a success. It would require a complete industry acceptance of the system. Look what happened with HD DVD and Blu-Ray: studios such as Warner Bros., Paramount, and NBC Universal all initially supported and backed HD DVD over Blu-Ray. Fox was one of the few studios not to. Arguments over the technical details soon started to cause drifts and eventually the format lost out to Blu-Ray. The same could go the same way of DECE unless EVERYBODY agrees on how it is to work.

In short: Hollywood is unable to get together to agree on anything. It’s history of petty squabbles, fierce competition and greed has resulted in a horrible experiences for the consumer who ends up paying the price because nobody seems to be able to agree to anything. Will DECE produce something viable? Might do, but given the dominance of Apple and iTunes – it may be too little, too late.

The call of *COUGH* Hulu

Posted by Martyn Drake – February 10, 2010

Well, I had to sneak that one in.

This blog post has nothing to do with great old ones, but plenty of current great ones.  I’m currently playing with SeeSaw, an IPTV platform which was previously known as Kangaroo, the controversial video-on-demand system which was blocked by the Competition Commission back in 2009.  Kangaroo was then sold to Arqiva and has been since become SeeSaw.

Having been given a beta invitiation, I’ve had relatively short amount of time to give it a spin.  It’s not without it’s problems, but looks promising.  I’ll give a more informed opinion once I’ve had a chance to play around a bit more.

What about Hulu?  What about Canvas?  Well, at this point my head is spinning with all these different systems and I’m not one to be confused easily.  All I want is a open standard platform which I can watch what I want, when I want, and in a format of my choosing.  I don’t care how it’s done, I just want it to work without too many (if any) restrictions.  The day Murdoch and chums play nicely with the Beeb, Channel 4 and Channel 5 will be the day I’m tap dancing naked to work.

Christmas without a TV is brilliant!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 26, 2009

Jennifer and I have been a TV free household for a considerable while now.  And we’re still coping nicely, thank you.  There are, however, a few issues that prevent us from accessing everything you might see on an ordinary TV.  The four main Internet catch-up services suffer from the dreaded regional licensing issues whereby certain programmes and films cannot be streamed or downloaded through these services.  Films, unless otherwise co-financed or co-produced by the broadcaster, are often off-limits as are big popular US imports (such as Family Guy).

That said, the BBC have excelled themselves this Christmas with their iPlayer.  Firstly they have been very quick to make available programs after they have first aired.  Usually this can take many hours up until a full day before aired programmes start showing up on iPlayer.  This Christmas period they’re now being made available at a much quicker pace.  Then there are films.  iPlayer is now streaming major Hollywood films through it’s service.  The Incredibles and Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End are just two of the big films that can viewed online.  For free (to those in the UK, of course).

On the other hand, the commercial catch-up services are beginning to suffer.  Firstly I’ve noticed that unlike the BBC, the quality of the video stream is considerably poorer than that their non-commercial, TV license funded competitor.  ITV is particular appalling.  When made full screen, compression artefacts make everything look horrendously blocky.  During the X-Factor programs, the constant changing of lights during the live performances turned everybody into lego men (and women) because ITV must have limited bandwidth or resources required to encode these shows in a more sensible format.  Torrents of ITV shows would, I imagine, offer better video quality to that offered by the broadcaster themselves.

The quality of these commercial streams probably lies with the (lack of) advertisers who pay to advertise their goods on them.  Judging by the same adverts repeated over and over in the same advert block, multiple times in a single program, must mean that there are very few companies choosing to advertise this way.  For example, on many ITV programs over this Christmas period we’ve seen the same Tic Tacs advert appear up to EIGHT times in a single hour’s worth of programming – repeated TWICE in each advert block.

Channel 4’s 4oD isn’t much better.  Slightly better encoding, but they too suffer from the same problem with the same old repetitive advertisers coming up again and again.  It gets to the point whereby you don’t want to buy their product or use their service because it’s far too repetitive to see the same thing.  It’s far worse than sitting through adverts on the over-to-air TV services.

Speaking of advertising on the commercial catch-up services, I’ve also noticed that the “controversial” Waitrose Christmas advert which featured a solider coming home for Christmas that was subsequently edited to remove that part, took at least two weeks to be updated on 4oD whereas from what proper TV I’ve seen during the day (whether it be at a takeaway, etc.) clearly had that part removed as soon as it was announced.  So it seems that it’s a slower process to get (or update) your advert on these services.

I had a look at Sky Player over the past day or so to see if they might offer Neil Gaiman’s short film, Statuesque, to rent.  Sky Player allows non-subscribers to watch Sky TV for either a monthly fee (identical to that of those WITH proper TV’s and satellite dishes) or a one-off fee for certain programs or films.  Sadly, Sky Player does not offer any of the Ten Minute Tales at all.  And Murdoch wants to charge you the same price for using their catch-up service as regular TV subscribers?  What a fecking liberty.  To rub salt into the wound, they don’t support the Google Chrome web browser – unlike all the other catch-up services which happily work with it.

So this Christmas, it’s been great watching the programs I do want to watch – for the most part – when I want, and for free .  I’m annoyed that Murdoch and chums have not considered opening up all of their programming to individual rental – especially when you consider the Ten Minute Tales were an original Sky Productions commission – for non-Sky subscribers.  Murdoch has long been bemoaning that the BBC makes it difficult for them to compete  in the marketplace for certain services, but yet Murdoch & chums are not making it easy for people to get their content how they want it.  Which is precisely what the BBC is doing, and doing a far better job of it to boot.

What’s also great about ditching the TV is that one doesn’t sit in front of the TV and flick channels.  It takes time to plan and choose what wants to be watched and you watch it when you want to watch it.  And to be quite frank, the lack of original ideas in the broadcasting industry these days makes it very easy for us in terms of what we choose to watch.

Milking a film for all it’s worth..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 7, 2009

Okay, this is my lunch time rant, and it’s rather a long one.

I’m getting a little fed up over the number of times I have to buy or rent THE SAME film because somebody thought it would be good idea to produce a trillion special editions, with new features and a multitude of different edits,  just so that the people behind them can rake in even more money in royalties.  No harm in that, though.  People make films to be both artistic and to money and they’re not charities after all.  Capitalism at work.  No problems there.  Fine.  But it is  getting to the point that films are being released and re-released so frequently I’m beginning to lose track as to which version I’ve got,  what I’ve watched, and what I need to watch!

I was having a wander around HMV first thing this morning before heading into work.  I went in to buy Jennifer an early Christmas present and ended up taking a look at what else they had on offer.  As I have a rather extensive collection of DVDs, I found found that I couldn’t remember particular titles I own have special features or not.  So I’m looking at the Princess Bride (an excellent film, although the book is even better!) on offer for £5 and I’m thinking, “I have this – but do I have the audio commentaries?”.

I then went looking for the Time Bandits DVD and Blu-Ray.  I seem to recall that ages ago I rented a copy and found it had an audio commentary from Terry Gilliam.  Fantastic.  Except the version now on sale does not seem to offer an audio commentary, nor does the Blu-Ray.  Where is this fabled version?  I managed to find a 25th Anniversary edition online, and that’s probably the one that I rented.  God knows what’s happened to the retail copies of this film.

While I was looking out for Time Bandits, I eyed up the £34 Harry Potter 1-6 Blu-Ray set (which is a bargin!).  Very little in the way of special features.  I recalled that Warner Bros. are due to release special editions of all the movies at some point (reviews are going up already) and I can’t remember when they’re due out.  That said, one advantage of  having been involved with a company who has worked on all the HP shows during my time working there is – do I really need or want these special features?  I’ve seen stuff they’ll never include on any special edition.  So perhaps I should go for that box set and not bother with the SE when they become available.   No.  I tell you what I’ll do – I’ll RENT both sets of films in the series, and I’ll save my money.

It is, of course, quite common for studios to take advantage of film fans and make them empty out their pockets.  Remember when the Lord of the Rings trilogy first came out on DVDs?  They contained the movie and a few special features included on a second disc.  New Line then released the 4 disc Special Editions which contained lots and lots and lots of special features, but not those from the original 2 disc release.  So you would have to buy both the non-special edition AND the Special Edition to get ALL the special features.  They released both editions within a very short space of each other too.  And guess what, folks?  They’re going to release the Blu-Ray editions of these films.  So one has to triple dip if you’re really into this thing.  I’d imagine the kind of people who buy ALL the Lord of the Rings DVDs and Blu-Rays have the standees, the movie companions, the bookends, the Sideshow Weta collectibles, the costumes for COSplaying, a cat called Gollum, etc.

This is the reason why I hardly ever buy DVDs and Blu-Rays these days.  Blu-Rays are still very expensive in comparison to their DVD counterparts despite the ever expanding library of Blu-Ray titles increasingly weekly, and with the prices of Blu-Ray players finally coming down to sensible prices.

These are the only a few titles on Blu-Ray I want to buy (at some point, wife permitting, etc.) – Slumdog Millionaire, Star Trek, Transformers 1 & 2, Cinema Paradiso, Amelie, Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (£129.99 – ouch!), and that’s about it.  Everything else I’m renting.  Even though I loved Stardust, unless Paramount pull out the stops to include the features from the US DVD release and keeping the UK audio commentary from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, then that’ll be a rental too.

And what I’m really hating at the moment are Director’s Cuts.  When they announced the Blu-Ray edition of Watchmen, I was under the impression that the release would be the Director’s Cut and that it would feature the extra material that was being talked about (something along the lines of a good extra hour’s worth of material or something).  No.  That’s being released independently on Blu-Ray and DVD fairly soon.  What gets me about Director’s Cuts is if  a director doesn’t originally release the version of his film that he is satisfied with, why the hell should I, as a film fan, pay either him or the studio MORE money because somebody couldn’t make up their bloody mind during the edit in the first place?  Fairly understandable if the studio has insisted on cuts – this is out of the director’s control – but when a director changes his or her mind later on.  Arggh!

I can see that all this double, triple and quadruple dipping is going to get so out of control that the right-to-buy a copy of a film will eventually dimish and consumers turning to the rental market – or video on demand with content updates.  Mind you, all this dipping is resulting in a profitable second hand market for old DVDs and, to a lesser extent, Blu-Rays.  We’ve picked up some bargins because people have either bought the special edition, or have gone to the Blu-Ray edition of their favourite film.

Amazon.co.uk search FAIL: Kodak Zi8 != Adolf Hitler

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 3, 2009

Was looking into the possibility of getting a Zi8 this Christmas now that it does 1080p and image stabilisation.  Apparently Amazon.co.uk has other ideas (larger version here):

Capture-HDHitlerCam

The future’s bright, the future is non-scheduled broadcasting (aka Video on Demand)

Posted by Martyn Drake – September 21, 2009

When I read about Simon Cowell getting all upset about pitting X-Factor against Strictly Come Dancing, my thought was "how old fashioned".  In this day and age, more of us are watching television on Sky Plus boxes, on the various online "catch-up" services such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4oD.

Scheduled broadcasting is so 20th Century.  Our lives are getting increasingly busier and we often do not have the time or inclination to rush home to stick the television on and sit glued to the TV watching X-Factor.  And there are those that like both X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing but obviously can't watch both at the same time.  PVR (personal video recorders) and VoD (video on demand) services are becoming increasingly popular ways to record and watch television programming at the viewer's leisure rather than at the convenience of the broadcaster. 

Additionally, BitTorrent has shown that there is a huge demand for episodic drama from around the world – feeding people's needs for programs either before they've aired in their own country, or for those desperate to catch-up without waiting for it to become a re-run on come out on DVD.  Unfortunately using BiTorrent in this way is completely illegal.

Additional benefits of (legitimate) video on demand include greater statistics and tracking of viewing habits, including audience ratings, etc.  Advertisers can get interactive with the audience by inserting links directly to web sites for those viewing on a computer or set-up box which connects to the Internet.

So is linear/scheduled broadcasting dead?  Not quite.  Some genres suit themselves nicely for this type of broadcasting.  Live sport, for instance, and home shopping.  In fact, any live event at all. 

TV is changing, and I don't think that Simon Cowell has much to fear from broadcasters airing popular programs live at the same time.  Not unless he's into the sports or home shopping markets.

iTunes 9 & iTunes Extras: Users short changed – Apple/film studios double dips

Posted by Martyn Drake – September 11, 2009

I'm sure my regular readers (all one of you – ha!) will know by now that I am very much an advocate for video on demand and content delivery systems.  I have been following (and using) iTunes for a good many years.  Similarly I have been using Apple products (iBooks, MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac Minis, iPods, etc.) for equally as long.  I've come to see Apple as a company which tries very hard to provide the consumer with good value for money and fights to give consumers what they want.

With iTunes, we can rip our CD collections and organise our music.  We can now purchase DRM free music on demand (when iTunes started it was all DRMed to the hilt, but it brought convenience for the user of buying music on demand despite the inconvenience of locking everything down to a single portable platform and licensing system).  We can now rent and buy movies and TV shows.  We can even buy TV shows in HD (and I'm sure movies will soon follow).  iTunes is a media centre par excellence.

The downside to buying movies from an online store versus buying it on DVD or Blu-Ray is that you don't get the extras like audio commentaries, documentaries, etc. that come along with the physical disc purchase.  With the release of iTunes 9, this changes things – consumers can now buy movies such as Wall-E, Iron Man, Quantum of Solace to name a few, with extra features alongside the main film.

But what about consumers who have already bought these movies through iTunes?  Do they get to download these extras now that they've installed iTunes 9?  The answer is a big fat no. 

I've attempted to contact iTunes Store support to find out just what can be done about that, but so far I've had absolutely no straight answers from them.  All they've said is that they can't re-authorise the download of any films and that, when I got back to them to say that it doesn't answer my original question, they simply gave me 5 song credits to shut me up and once again avoided answering me directly.

I can only assume that if you have already purchased the movie via iTunes earlier than version 9 and want the extras, you're going to have to pay for the film again.  A neat way of making Apple (although to be fair, I doubt they see much of that cash you pay them – most of that goes to the studios) and their clients, the film studios, more money from the same content (you'll be paying for and downloading the film twice).

Given my previous post about how my boss, Kate Craig-Wood, has quantified the carbon emissions from producing CDs versus music downloads, I applaud Apple and the film studios for making video on demand more attractive.  But unless they either allow existing purchasers to buy the extras separately, or give them the ability to download them for free now, then I must question how well this system is going to work (one issue is that you can't resell these downloads unlike a physical CD or DVD).

Adobe Creative Premium Production suite? £1,400. Activation goes wrong.

Posted by Martyn Drake – June 14, 2009

Recently my employers purchased £1,400 worth of software – the Adobe Creative Premium Production suite – for me to produce videos and to work on various video related projects on the new Dell XPS system that I have here at home.
Got it home, installed it, started to work on said video project. 

Hard drive issues with the Dell meant that I would have to do a re-install of the software at a later date.  So, closer to the time that I was going to swap out the hard drives, I deactivated the software.  Having experienced the wonders of online activation when hard drives fail without having deactivated first, this seemed the sensible option.

Dell came and fixed the hard drive issues and got home to do a big 6 hour re-install of the OS and applications.  Installed the Adobe stuff and activated it.  So far so good. Until I needed to install the software on a laptop in the office to do some of the work in the office for a week (which is permissible under the Adobe license – provided that both machines are not running the software at the same time, and there was no chance of that).  When the Premium Production suite was activated on the laptop at work, it deactivated the software at home.  This seems to go against what Adobe allows in their license.  And I'm especially annoyed that I properly deactivated the software prior to re-installing the software on the XPS machine.

In order to try and resolve this issue, I call the activation "hot-line" and am put through to an automated system which asks for the original serial number and an installation number.  What installation number?  The activation system does not helpfully provide it – only the serial number!  The phone system eventually (having to wait for three failed stabs at entering the installation number) puts you in a queue to speak to an operator, but no indication as to how long or where you are in the queue.
Heck, even Microsoft of all companies do this much better than Adobe.

Now, you could say I could have simply used the CDs to install a trial version of the Production suite on the office laptop, but the license says you can use two activations at a time, and maybe I might want to use it from time to time afterwards on the laptop and after 30 days.
Sigh.
Another thing.  I sent Adobe Customer Service a query the other day via the Adobe web site, and never heard a dicky bird from them until a message telling me that they felt my issue was resolved.  Replying to the email to tell them that it was certainly not resulted in an email bounce back telling me that it was an unmanned address – something not mentioned in the email I had just received from them!

Adobe Soundbooth is wonderful..

Posted by Martyn Drake – May 25, 2009

Today I am working on editing and improving some videos for a work-related project and I'm now using the full version of Adobe Creative Production Premium which comes with most of the major Adobe products.  One such product is Soundbooth which has worked miracles on reducing extremely annoying sound noise which was recorded with the microphone on overgain (hence lots of static, etc) – something I've done myself and am only too aware of.

The Dell XPS continues to impress, but am now a little bit concerned over the secondary hard drive which  is making minor beeping noises whenever it seems to be working a little too hard.  Western Digital haven't exactly been the most helpful (first they say it's normal, now they say it isn't and won't actually say what the beeping is supposed to mean). 

I'm thinking that I should get Dell to replace the other hard drive and hope that'll be the end of the mess.  In the mean time, I'm going to have to use something like Acronis TrueImage to back up the hard drive(s) for an easy restore – Dell do not provide 64-bit driver CD-ROM for this machine which requires a 3G dongle to get Internet access to download them.
Have managed to break the chain of my electric pushbike, so will need to go into work by bus all next week until I can get it fixed.  Hopefully the part is still under warranty.

Pirate Bay operators to be jailed; Studios walk away scott free

Posted by Martyn Drake – April 17, 2009

Now, I'm all for respecting copyright (but damn it – we need clearer fair-use rights here in the UK).  But one thing that drives me around the bend and smacks of distrust is the major film and record labels use of DRM in their products (DVD, Blu-Ray, etc).  Nothing says "We don't trust you" more than DRM.

Now, it's a GOOD thing that record labels are moving away from propritary DRM on services such as iTunes, but the movie companies are still clearly nervous about it.  DRM has prevented film producers themselves watching their own movies on certain services because they're Mac users, and the content has been protected with Windows Media.
I'm about to enter the world of Blu-Ray thanks to a work laptop. 

From what I've been reading, there have been many changes to firmware, specifications and such to thwart pirates.  The inconvenience comes to the consumer who has to keep applying the updates, the software and everything else to please the film studios just so that you can watch a film.  Quite frankly, it's bloody outrageous.