IanFarquhar's Weblog

"The World is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It" - Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 04 Nov 2008 05:16:51 GMT

I was sitting in my car over the weekend, waiting for my daughter to finish her ballet lessons. I was supposed to be reading some government security documentation for work, but the thought of doing so was on-par with root canal therapy on that cold morning.

So I pulled my iPod out of the glove compartment, looking for something to amuse me. I'd impulse purchased "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" from iTunes about a month ago, mainly because of the Josh Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, Serenty) connection. I'd never watched it, but hey, I had the time.

Thirty minutes later, my daughter knocked on the car window asking why I was crying and laughing at the same time. I was enthralled. I got her to watch it on the drive back home, and she's not stopped singing the tunes either.

This little piece of drama, self-funded in the "low six figures" by Josh Whedon during the writer's strike and filmed in six days, is the funniest thing I've seen in years. If you've not seen it, GO NOW. SEE IT.

You won't be disappointed.

Coming soon in DVD, where Whedon promises the first ever musical commentary track. I can't wait.

BD+ Analyzed and Hacked?

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 04 Nov 2008 05:07:06 GMT

As people who've been following my blog know, I've been very interested in both the business and technology surrounding Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. One notable intersection between the business and technology has been DRM, with the intriguing BD+ (aka. SPDC) developed by Cryptography Research Inc. and later acquired by Macrovision.

Since June, the researchers (I won't use the pejorative "h" word) have been looking into BD+, and their work has been documented in this forum post. For those who think that this is being done for nefarious purposes, their primary motivation has been to understand the technology and use that to implement Blu-Ray playback under Linux.

In fairness, I should also note that Slysoft "cracked" BD+ some time ago, although the technical details of their attack remained proprietary. Slysoft staff did, however, make some interesting if vague commentary during the early analysis.

The actual success announcement is on page 15. The whole thread is pretty heavy going, but anyone interested in what the folks are CR planned, and how it was defeated, is very interesting. It also raises the question of response: will BD+ support be withdrawn from the software players which clearly facilitated this attack?

Anyway, I look forward to comprehensive Blu-Ray support in a legal, open source player sometime in the near future.

Nero 9: First Impressions

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 09 Oct 2008 09:09:57 GMT

I must admit that I was really surprised by the appearance of Nero 9 and MoveIt. I'd missed a recent MVP call - I was somewhere in the air between Australia and New Zealand at the time it happened - so I'd not kept up with the news. NeroDude has asked me to post some first impressions, so here goes...

Firstly, Nero Burning ROM has always been the centrepiece of the suite for me, and it was nice to see some small but welcome changes. I've recently purchased a Blu-Ray writer/HD-reader, and it seems like there have been some welcome changes there. HD-DVD writing support has disappeared, although I don't think any actual HD-DVD writers ever reached the market anyway. So that's no significant loss.

The inclusion of media recovery tools is a welcome and sensible addition. Media recovery is becoming such a critical issue, with so few people backing up and protecting their digital assets. And don't forget SecurDisc, which has been around for a while now, but should see a lot more use in Nero 9.

Nero live: that's interesting. I think I've said that Vista Media Centre is the one and only good thing about Vista, but the VMC still irritates me. Why, for example, can I have only two tuners? Live can apparently have four.

I've always thought Showtime was an under-appreciated application, as it's one of the best Quicktime players around. Apple's Quicktime player is shockingly bad, and Showtime has always been an excellent replacement. I'm not yet sure that I like the new look, though. We'll see.

But... we have an AWOL feature: Blu-Ray playback. It was an option before, and doesn't seem to be in this new version. I'll see if I can find out what's going on there. On the upside, UPnP playback is a very welcome addition.

I suppose the one application I'm most curious to try is MoveIt. Back at the start of the MVP program, there was a spirited private discussion amongst us regarding Recode. The suggestion was that Recode should become the hub for transcoding my media collection onto everyone's growing collection of playback devices.

And that's exactly what Nero has given us in MoveIt. Given the timing I suspect this was already done by the time that conversation happened, but I hope that it gave the developers support. MoveIt looks very cool indeed.

So, nothing too deep here, as I've just had the time for a quick look. So far I'm seeing lots of useful things, and look forward to finding even more.

Ars Technica: 750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on privacy.

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 09 Oct 2008 01:31:19 GMT

I don't condone intellectual property theft, but just as bad are lies told by IP rights holders about the impact of this issue. They go beyond mere deception, as these statistics are typically used to justify the removal of people's legal rights.

Ars.Technica has done an interesting investigation into two of the commonest claims in the US, with some interesting results. Well worth reading:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars

There's a lot of detail here, and clearly some serious investigative work has happened.

At the very start, the article quotes Lewis Carroll: "I have said it thrice, what I tell you three times is true."

I'll add another quote, from a slightly different source: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

The person who said that knew what he was talking about, and big content clearly knows it to. The quote comes from Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist, and a man who knew a lot about selling lies.

Geek Stuff: Hacking Smartcards at Flylogic.net

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 08 Oct 2008 09:13:36 GMT

This is pure geek stuff, so if you're uninterested in VLSI design or cryptography or security architecture, this isn't for you. But if those things do interest you, then check out Flylogic:

http://www.flylogic.net/blog

Flylogic is owned and run by Christopher Tarnovsky, former intelligence specialist turned VLSI consultant. Chris was the technical specialist behind the infamous "Black Sunday", when DirecTV disabled thousands of pirated smartcards. Sadly for him, ridiculous games between cable TV companies in the US saw him spend years testifying in courts which ultimately found nothing significant.

Wired has a fascinating article about Chris here, but for crypto-geeks and people interested in VLSI, I thoroughly recommend his blog.

Eight Months of Blu-Ray Supremacy... Or Not...

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 08 Oct 2008 08:59:46 GMT

Has it really been eight months since my last blog entry...?

Apparently so. My last entry was on the sudden departure of Toshiba and it's HD-DVD format, something I discovered had been done without notifying their partners in the format.

A lot has happened in that time.

So firstly, was Blu-Ray's win a phrric victory? Hard to say for sure, but it's certainly looking like Blu-Ray's win might have been a major waste of resources for all players. Online movie sales and rentals, most notably through Apple's iTunes, have grown significantly. Blu-Ray players and media sales remain lackluster.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the Blu-Ray HD sales proposition really has not been made to the average consumer. Upscaled DVD content seems to be sufficient for a significant part of the buying community, and the premium price paid for Blu-Ray players and media clearly isn't deemed sufficient. I took a straw poll at work recently, where I asked the several PS3 owners there who'd actually bought a Blu-Ray disk. Answer (excluding me): none.

Hmmm....

It's also notable that the Blu-Ray shelves I've recently seen, both in the US and in Australia, don't seem to be moving stock.

So what could they do to resolve this? This is something I've been pondering for a while, so let me propose three things which could be done.

Firstly - and it's the easiest step - would be to bring price-parity between the DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Reproduction costs are largely comparable on a per-unit basis anyway, and the increased pre-production and mastering charges aren't significant in high volumes.

Secondly, the price of Blu-Rayt Live! players need to drop below US$200. This is not an impossible goal. Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs) like Broadcom's BCM7440 bring the BoM costs of a player below the US$100 mark. Although selling a player at retail $200 (ie. $150 wholesale) with a BoM cost of $100 is tight, it is quite achievable. Initial profits might be low, or even zero, but this is a market building exercise.

Finally, the studios have to convince everyone that HD is important. They also have to sell the difference between HD from Blu-Ray and the appallingly bad so-called HD ATSC and DVB-T broadcasts that so rightly underwhelm many viewers. The studios need to educate people to recognize the artifacts that upscaling 480i and 576i DVD footage to 1080p introduces. Once people can recognize it, it's a very small step to becoming sensitive to it, and then it's pretty much guaranteed to annoy.

So, there you have it.

HD-DVD: The Biggest Temper Tantrum in History?

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 21 Feb 2008 21:45:39 GMT

I've been talking to a lot of industry people since Toshiba announced the end of the HD-DVD format.

I can definitely confirm that Nero - who is a DVD Forum member and actually has a HD-DVD product - wasn't notified of Toshiba's plans prior to the announcement.

But this is a theme I'm hearing everywhere: "we were blindsided by Toshiba', "we weren't told", "we heard about it with everyone else", "I heard it on the radio over breakfast"....

But here's the confusing thing: there simply aren't thousands of companies producing HD-DVD players. There are a total of four companies producing software players: Nero, Cyberlink, Corel and Microsoft. There are two chipset manufacturers: Broadcom and NEC, and only the later is a HD-DVD-only solution (the EMMA3 ASIC). As for hardware producers, it gets very difficult to tell with rebadging and outsourced manufacture, but there are maybe ten companies in total. Maybe.

So sixteen companies. How hard would it have been to tell sixteen companies beforehand?

Then there are the content producers, including those which Toshiba paid "promotional considerations" to. Did we see simultaneous releases of press releases stating those company's plans for high definition movies post-HD-DVD? No, we didn't. I just checked Universal, Viacom, Paramount and Dreamworks. Four days later, and still nothing.

This all begs the question: did Toshiba tell anybody? Or was this a snap decision, made without consultation, and possibly in anger? Press releases which announce major changes in direction and the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars are reviewed through every single layer of management up to and including the CEO. Theyr'e rewritten and rereviewed endlessly, and end up emotionless and bland.

But this one isn't. It's irritated. It's a little pompous. It's even a bit irritated, maybe angry. Here's the release if you want to read it for yourself.

I am going to float the possibility that this is the biggest temper tantrum in history. This is small child - Toshiba - saying "if you're not going to play MY WAY, then I'm going to take MY toys away!!!!"

Think about it. Snap decision, noone else notified, atypical press release. It's quite possible. If true, it also says something for how Toshiba views it's consumers too.

As for the poor retailers, they're the forgotten victims of this. In Australia, all Toshiba HD-DVD retailers received an urgent notice on Tuesday directing them to pull all HD-DVD players from the shelves. Toshiba hasn't yet told them what to do with them, or the rationale for pulling them.

One retailer said to me "I've got $5000 of players sitting in my loading dock losing me money, and $2000 of HD-DVD titles which I probably now can't sell." He added that had he been given forewarning of Toshiba's plan, he'd have aggressively moved the HD-DVD titles before the announcement. But now he's looking at massive losses, and isn't a happy man. His store - mortgaged against his family home - is only a few months old and can't afford too many early losses.

I can't prove Toshiba didn't tell anyone. It's all circumstantial, but it's starting to look like a strong case.

As for Nero, it is currently evaluating the future direction of HD playback support following Toshiba's announcement. I'll post more news as I get it.

It's Official: HD-DVD is Dead

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 19 Feb 2008 21:36:04 GMT

As anticipated, Toshiba today announced the discontinuation of the HD-DVD format:

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

At the time of writing this entry, neither Viacom nor Universal seem to have acknowledged this in their releases, nor has the other big HD-DVD backer, Microsoft.

NeroDude is making enquiries with Nero product management to determine whether and how this will affect the future of the Nero suite, which current supports HD-DVD playback under Nero 8 with an optional plug-in.

Toshiba does not seem to be planning to producing Blu-Ray devices at the current moment, just noting their continued commitment to the SD DVD format.

Playing Around with CGI in Vue 6 Esprit

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 17 Feb 2008 23:06:50 GMT

Over the weekend I purchased Vue 6 Esprit from e-On Software. Vue is a landscape and environmental rendering program, which has been used in projects as diverse as Disney's Pirates of the Carribean II, or the infamous "UFO over Haiti" Youtube video.

I haven't used Vue since version 2, back when it was called Vue de Esprit. Even then it could do some amazing stuff, and I've barely had time to scratch the surface of version 6. However, I thought it would be interesting to run some of the sample renders and benchmark just how fast each image took. I'm posting the results here.

For reference purposes, here's the relevant specs of the render-node PC: Athlon X2 6000+ on a NFORCE 4-SLI motherboard, 4GB of DDR-2 RAM, running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Bear in mind that these are entirely software rendered, so it's the system performance which improves render time, and the graphics card is largely irrelevant for end-product rendering. These are entirely artificial images, with no real-world compositing or post-production. Render size was 640 pixels wide, leaving the image height to be determined by the aspect ratio. Render settings were set to "ultra" in all cases, but otherwise unadjusted.

Title: Cerro Verde, render time 22'25".

Title: Radiosity Room, render time 21'50".

Title: Night Flight, render time 10'52".

Title: Snowy3, render time 7'24".

Reuters: Toshiba Pulls Plug On HD-DVD

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 17 Feb 2008 21:49:30 GMT

Reuters is reporting that following Wal-Mart's decision on Friday to cease stocking HD-DVD players or movies, that Toshiba has decided to cease production and support for HD-DVD. This will free the few remaining HD-DVD studios to commence production of Blu-Ray.

When contacted, Toshiba did not respond to Reuter's. Toshiba's website does not seem to reflect this decision, either.

If true - and I believe that it is almost certainly true - then it's V-day for Blu-Ray (B-day?) The HD war is over, and now Blu-Ray faces it's most formidable opponent yet: upscaled DVD. That's a much tougher one to win.

Update (1:45PM AEDT): I emailed contacts in Toshiba, and they replied that there is no "official word on ceasing HD DVD production", and that it's "business as usual" with "no comments on the current reports".

One can't help but notice the language in which this reply is couched, which really says nothing more than Toshiba isn't publicly announcing anything yet.

More news as I get it.

Update 19th February 2008: ArsTechnica has some good analysis here. They claim Toshiba was planning a slow withdrawal from the market, trying to avoid a firesale of now obsolete HD-DVD player stock.

However the retailers (rightly!) weren't interested in such a plan, with Wal-Mart pulling earlier than Toshiba expected. Toshiba is now trying to minimize their losses during the now-inevitable firesale.

One comment which was made to me over Christmas is that the HD-DVD studios should come to the party for consumers here. Having followed their own self-interest in backing the losing format - you'll all recall the "promotional considerations" paid by Toshiba to secure Viacom's "exclusive" status - it was suggested that maybe the studios need to implement a free or well-below-retail-cost HD-DVD to Blu-Ray trade in program for people who backed the wrong side.

It's an interesting concept. If the studios had the consumer keep the packaging and simply swapped Blu-Ray disks for the existing HD-DVD disks, the cost should be the price of the media (a dollar or so) plus post and handling (a few bucks). The title shouldn't need to be relicensed, as the customer already has paid for a HD license.

This would be an act of good faith from a group of companies who've not acted in the consumer's best interests to date.

No, I'm not holding my breath either.

Update 12:05AM: Engadget claims that Toshiba is planning to announce the inviability of the HD-DVD tomorrow (Tuesday, US time).

They also claim Toshiba will be pulling the systems off store shelves, which was a surprise to me.

Back in December, the MVP team had an internal discussion where the internals of the HD-A2 (aka. HD-E1) were analysed. It's basically a Celeron-based PC inside, with an Intel embedded chipset, SHARC DSP for audio, and NEC decoders for VC-1/AVC/MPEG-2.

I think it's unlikely, but it's not completely impossible that Toshiba might pull the HD-DVD drives out and repurpose these as ethernet-connected settop boxes in a new case.

At least this would defray some of the billion-plus dollars their support for HD-DVD has cost so far.

Hollywood Reporter Claims Toshiba Readying to Dump HD-DVD

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 15 Feb 2008 04:49:04 GMT

Engadget quotes the Hollywood Reporter claiming that unnamed sources within Toshiba are preparing to "drop" the HD-DVD format "in the coming weeks".

This will presumably involve declaring the format unviable, which reportedly releases the few remaining HD-DVD studios from any prohibitions against releasing on Blu-Ray.

As always, remember that this is just a rumor justified on the word of "sources", not confirmed fact.

I'm fairly glad that Toshiba will be releasing the GPL source code to my HD-E1 HD-DVD player (see here). It's not a very good upscaling DVD player, so I'll definitely be looking for another task to perform with this box shortly. It would make a cool little Linux appliance, or set-top box.

Update: Hollywood Reporter's source article is here. Microsoft's HD-DVD Evangelist not returning calls is very interesting, as is the rumor that Microsoft have dropped a planned XBOX360 with an in-built HD-DVD drive.

Wojtek the Soldier Bear

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 12 Feb 2008 02:44:17 GMT

I usually limit these posts to technical issues, but the story below captured my attention over Christmas, and I've been fascinated by it ever since. It first came to my attention as a story in the "offbeat" section of the ABC's 3G news feed, and I almost dismissed it as a bad Disney movie plot. But it's not.

Here's the quick version: in 1942 Polish soldiers in Persia (now Iran) purchased a bear cub from a local boy, who was carrying it around in a sack. The bear, who they named Wojtek, was raised by the soldiers, and eventually conscripted as a private into the Polish Army as a soldier, where he served with distinction at the battle of Monte Cassino in 1944. The bear was happy to carry heavy loads under enemy bombardment, and could lift significantly more than a human soldier. He could even stand on his hind legs and load boxes into trucks, and his fellow soldiers claimed he never once dropped a box.

It sounds like a fairy tale, but all of the above is historically confirmed.

After the war the poor bear ended up in Edinburgh Zoo, where it lived out it's days until 1963. It was a melancholy existence for Wojtek, although he was occasionally cheered by a visit from one of his old war-time compatriots, who'd talk to him in Polish, and throw cigarettes over the wall. Those, along with beer, were his favorite treat.

Anyway, there's now a movement for the life of this bear to the commemorated by a statue in Holroyd, Edinburgh. There are already memorials for Wojtek in the War Museum in London and Ottawa. I couldn't think of anything more appropriate.

More details, including pictures, here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7208505.stm

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2008/01/voytek_the_soldier_bear_of_pol_1.html

http://beatroot.blogspot.com/2008/01/wojtek-bear-polish-war-hero.html

http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/news/artykul74842.html

http://www.wojtekthebear.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voytek

Let's just hope Disney doesn't turn this into a movie.

MIT Releases H.264 Open Source Hardware Decoder

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 11 Feb 2008 06:51:06 GMT

MIT has released three open source hardware designs under their MIT (aka. X11) license. One of them is a H.264 baseline profile decoder:

http://csg.csail.mit.edu.nyud.net/oshd/index.html

Although most people won't be in a position to compile this Verilog source code down to a FPGA, or produce their own custom chip, there are many other people who could make good use of this source code.

Aside from the decoder, the two other projects released so far are a OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexer) core and a 802.11a transmitter design.

If you find these sorts of projects useful, another essential resource is OpenCores:

http://www.opencores.org/

Data Loss: Losing the Reflective Layers on CD-R's Stored in CD Wallets/Folders

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 11 Feb 2008 01:32:01 GMT

One of my first posts to my.nero (here) warned about the risks of using certain CD-R[W] media which, over time, can bond with the wallet plastic and destroy the reflective layer of the CD.

I found another of these disks, so I thought I'd document my unsuccessful attempt to remove it from the wallet. In doing so, I thought it would highlight the risk of this issue, so that others can be aware of the danger to their data.

Figure 1 - The "before" shot. Note that the disk is quite smooth, and unmarked.

If you look very closely at the top left, you'll see lines in the reflective surface just below the plastic edge of the wallet. This is where the CD's reflective surface has adhered to the wallet, and is already lifting away from the dye (data) layer. You can see this more clearly in figure 2 below.

Figure 2 - A close-up of the affected area. This disk is already severely damaged, but let's see if I can save it from total destruction. If the damage was limited to a hairline less than a millimeter wide, it may be salvagable.

Figure 3 - Lifting the wallet plastic. No matter how carefully you move the plastic, the CD's reflective surface is stuck firmly to the CD wallet's plastic sleeve.

Figure 4 - A little tug, and... ouch. You can clearly see the blue cyanine data layer beneath the now-detached aluminium reflective layer.

Figure 5 - removing the disk - no matter how carefully - peels off most of the reflective layer.

Figure 6 - the final shot. The removed CD sits to the left of the pocket, which has retained most of the reflective layer from the thoroughly destroyed CD-R.

So why did this happen?

This CD was probably written between 1998 and 2000. It has no human-readable branding (aside from an uninstructive serial number printed in the clamping zone), and the ATIP manufacturer information has been destroyed with the rest of the data on the disk. It would have been a name-brand, however, as I've never used generic or suspect media for long-term data storage. It is also clearly a first-generation "printable" blank - and this might be the issue.

The fundamental problem with this is that the reflective layer is quite smooth, and in the 8-9 years this CD has been sitting in the wallet, that surface has bonded so well with the plastic that it has peeled the foil from the CD. Most CD's have a protective lacquer layer above the reflector, but this disk seems to lack that feature, possibly because it was 1st-gen printable.

My strong advice is to be aware of the issue of surface adhesion with CD-R[W] media when stored in wallets, especially those which seem to lack a protective laquer layer.

On the upside, I found this disk while checking 250 or so CD-R disks written between 1997 and 2003. This is the only disk from which data could not be recovered.

I also recently had to pull some data from a CD-R written in 1993, and was able to do so successfully and without error.

So at least the predictions of decade-long data retention for CD-R media seem to be confirmed by this testing. Whether the data will be readable in 100 years time, as some tests seem to claim, remains an open question.

Important: Writable DVD media has the data and reflective layers printed deep inside the plastic, and would likely not have been damaged by this adhesion. This problem will only be experienced by CD-R or CD-RW media.

Update 12th February 2008: I have managed to find one of these disks in it's original jewel case, so I can now identify the vendor.

The disks were manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, and sold as 650M/74min "Unbranded Printable Surface" disks. The packaging is printed in Japanese first and English second.

The ATIP data recognizes them as Verbatims. These blanks predated the practice of branding disks by speed, although the extended information claims 4x through 24x support. These would have been purchased from a specialist CD supplier, and are almost certainly genuine and not fakes.

Note: Verbatim is owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation.

Multimedia Mike and the Multimedia WIKI

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 25 Jan 2008 01:59:47 GMT

Multimedia Mike, aka. Mike Melanson, is one of the unsung wonders of the Internet.

For years now Mike and a small group of enthusiasts have been reverse engineering proprietary multimedia codecs, and reimplementing them in open source code which is incorporated into various player suites and frameworks, most notably FFmpeg. If you don't know what FFmpeg is, then have a look at this list of projects which use this program.

And before anyone asks, yes, this work is totally legal. Typically, it falls under the interoperability exemption in most jurisdictions.

Anyway, Mike runs a Wiki which contains technical documentation for literally hundreds of multimedia video, audio and container file formats:

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Main_Page

This includes well-known codecs like VC-1 or H.264, but also delves into uncommon things like DOSbox capture video and Eidos ESCAPE. He's always looking out for new formats, which is why he haunts the bargain software bins and analyzes any new multimedia files he discovered in doing so.

Mike's blog is here, called "Breaking Eggs and Making Omlettes":

http://multimedia.cx/eggs/

For anyone interested in codec technology, Mike's blog and Wiki are essential reading.

Reverse Engineering USB Combo WiFi Finder/Adapters

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 24 Jan 2008 21:45:31 GMT

This guy is reverse engineering those 802.11bg combined client/WiFi finder USB keys. His eventual aim is to produce custom firmware which allows him to use it as a X10 remote control, or tiny email reader. You can find his page here:

http://wifi.openschemes.com/

Very cool stuff.

His link to the generic FCC ID search database is particularly useful if you've got a device and you're trying to figure out who designed it.

Toshiba HD-E1 HD-DVD Player: No Nero/DiVX/XviD Support, but GPLv2 Licence Violation Included at No Extra Cost!

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 22 Jan 2008 08:10:52 GMT

In a marketplace where even $20 DVD players will play any MPEG-4 content thrown at them (Nero, DiVX and XviD all included), I didn't even think to check whether the HD-E1 would do the same.

Well, I was wrong. The only supported disk formats are HD-DVD, DVD, DVD-VR, and CD-Audio. No DiVX/XviD/Nero, no VideoCD, no SVCD, no HDCD, no SACD. If any of those are important, this might not be the player for you. The fact that the HD-DVD specification requires two AVC decoders makes this functionality gap even more surprising.

Just as disappointingly, this unit is locked to zone 4. In Australia DVD zoning is a dubious legal practice, as one of the more interesting side effects of the Sony v Stevens appeal to the High Court (which Sony lost). Few DVD players sold here obey the zone bits, including ones from major CE manufacturers. It is therefore disappointing that the HD-E1 is zone locked.

The final surprise came when I went to check the specifications at the rear of the user's manual, and found a copy of the GPLv2 and LGPL nicely typeset and printed out. Yes, the HD-E1 runs Linux and includes busybox, OpenSSL, glibc and freetype. I'm especially surprised, as I'd rather expected this unit to run Windows CE.

However, the the end of the license section contains a nasty little claim:

Reverse engineering, disassembling, decompiling, dismantling or otherwise attempting to analyze or modify the software included in this product is prohibited.

Um... sorry, Toshiba. Once you include software covered by the GPL, and deliver it as a firmware blob, you can't remove those rights from the user. If you try, you're in violation of the license (GPL section 6).

I do hope I'm wrong, and I plan to give their GPL phone number a call in the morning to discuss this. On the face of it, this looks like a classic case of a company not understanding the GPLv2, and violating it as a consequence.

If you wish to see an example of a company which uses GPL code and fully complies with it, see the Sony GPL source code repository here. Toshiba also attempts to disclaim any responsibility for the open source contained within it, something I suspect would fall afoul of the Trade Practices Act here in Australia . Imagine if Ford sold a car, but tried to use a contract to disclaim responsibility for the engine because they bought it from someone else. This is no different.

All in all, the HD-E1 is a very disappointing unit. It's slow to boot from standby, taking over 40 seconds before it even responds to the eject button! One suspects that this has generated a few support calls, as the package included a sheet warning users of this behavior.

Once booted, the setup menu was so glacially slow that it was painful to use. Physically, the unit itself is very large and quite clunky, basically because it's a Celeron-based PC with an Intel embedded chipset. Even so, the sheer size of the unit will make housing it a problem for many people.

Frankly, I have very little positive to say about this unit. This might be the low-end of Toshiba's HD-DVD range, but I'd expect far better for the $349 RRP (after rebate) which this unit sells for.

Overall rating: 1.5 stars out of 5. Extremely unimpressive.

Note: the HD-E1 is the same hardware as the HD-A2 in the US and Canada.

Update 23rd January 2008: I called the number listed in the manual for GPL compliance and was told that they don't support Toshiba! The number was their support outsource partner, who did things like supplying spare parts and directing customers to service centers.

I was referred to Toshiba's head office, so I explained the GPL to the support rep. He checked his support database, but had no information about the availability of source code. However, to give him credit, at least he listened and referred the issue onto the product manager, who'd call me back within 48 hours.

The rep did, however, require a serial number for this process to proceed, which as Toshiba are applying section 3(b) of the license, is also questionable. That section requires the source code to be available to "any third party", not just customers. Again, this leaves the feeling of a company who doesn't understand the license they agreed to by shipping this code.

So in summary, Toshiba are clearly in violation of the GPL in at least three seperate ways that I can see (for more info on why, check here). I'll give them 48 hours to respond, before logging a complaint with the GNU GPL violation folks, who investigate misuse of Linux source code by commercial entities.

Linux is free, but it's not public domain. So many companies equate "free" with "do what you like", but that's wrong. The thousands of engineers who developed the open source code Toshiba is profiting from did so on the understanding that their source code and any subsequent modifications were to be made available by anyone who used it. Other companies (including Toshiba) demand payment for their code, folks who develop GPL code demand code freedom, which they codified in the GPL. Toshiba's attempt to avoid these obligations here, even if it is by passively not putting into place the procedures needed to comply with the GPL, is quite literally software piracy.

2nd Update for 23rd January 2008: Toshiba called back, and have requested an email from me "justifying" my need to access the GPL source code.

Riiiggghhhttt....

3rd Update for 23rd January 2008: They called again, giving me the address to send the email to. This time they clarified and asked that I explain the situation in writing, so here's what I sent them:

I am writing to you at the request of your customer service department.

I have recently purchased a Toshiba HD-E1 HD-DVD player. Upon reading the user's manual, I noted on pages p61 that this product contains open source code licensed under the GNU Public License version 2(GPLv2), which is itself included and printed on pages 61 through 63. The two major pieces of software which Toshiba has used in the HD-E1 firmware are the Linux kernel and Busybox.

Shipping software which contains GPL-licensed code without strictly complying with the terms of that license exposes Toshiba to legal action, as I explained to your customer service representative this morning. I believe that Toshiba fails to comply with the GPLv2 in at least two ways:

1. Section 3 of the GPL requires that Toshiba makes available all GPL-covered source code used in the HD-E1, including modifications which Toshiba has made. As there was no included source in the box, section 3(a) is inapplicable. Section 3(c) only applies to non-commercial use, and is therefore inapplicable.

This leaves section 3(b), which requires that you include a written offer to provide the source code to "any third party", and are only allowed to leverage an optional charge of no more than the "cost of physically performing source distribution". This offer seems to be contained in paragraph three of page 61, where it advises that users should call (03) 9495 2888 to "check the software components subject to such EULA requirements".

Upon calling this number today, I was informed that the company who owned it no longer provided support for Toshiba, and I was given your head office number. Upon contacting your head office, no official process of providing the source seemed to exist. Your CSR did a thorough search, and did escalate the issue, but no procedure was found.Consequently, Toshiba is in violation of section 3 of the GPL.

2. The very last paragraph of page 67 contains the sentence: "Reverse engineering, disassembling, decompiling, dismantling, or otherwise attempting to analyse or modify the software included in this product is prohibited.

"As your product contains GPL-licensed code, this legal claim violates section 6 of the GPL.I have already provided the Free Software Foundation's FAQ on the GPL, but for completeness it can be found here:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Note that many of your competitors use GPL-licensed code without violating the license. For example, here is Sony's source code distribution site:

http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

I have been unable to locate any Toshiba GPL source code repository, which is the most sensible way companies bring themselves into compliance.Finally, I would also like to draw your attention to these two pages:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Open-source-legal-body-sues-over-GPL-violation/0,130061733,339282502,00.htm

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/37434,german-court-raps-dlink-over-gpl-violation.aspx

In closing, I would ask a point of comparison: would Toshiba ever ship a laptop containing an unlicensed version of Microsoft Windows? Of course you wouldn't: Microsoft would initiate legal action against Toshiba for a violation of contract. But using GPL-licensed code without complying with the GPL is exactly the same.

I would have expected better from Toshiba, and I formally request that this situation is resolved quickly.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email.

More news as it happens....

Update for 24th January 2008: Toshiba has acknowledged receipt of my email, and says that the matter has been referred to both their legal department and product management.

Update for 25th January 2008: I asked whether they could provide me with an expected timeframe for the response. They indicated that this was the first request they - meaning the outsourced support partner apparently - had received. They could not provide me with a timeframe, but assured me that they were taking the issue very seriously and would get back to me as soon as possible.

Update for 8th February 2008: I got this email from Toshiba, after I pinged them for a status update:

Dear Mr. Ian,

I apologize for not getting back to you earlier. In regards to your request for the software information, Toshiba Australia understands and accepts the need to comply with the GPL agreement and is taking measures to resolve the issue in the earliest possible time frame.

The latest information that I have received is that the source code has been prepared by our escalation contacts at Toshiba Japan and Toshiba Singapore and they are waiting for their legal department to check through it. Once checked and given the clearance and as soon as we receive it, we would be able to send you the information that you requested in compliance with the GPL agreement.

At the moment I do not have an ETA to provide but I will keep you updated as and when any progress is made.

Thank you for your patience.

Update 3rd March 2008: I've just received a CD from Toshiba, which they tell me includes all GPL source code for the HD-E1. The biggest contribution is a ~1MB patch file for CElinux, apparently authored by NEC (supplier of the EMMA3 ASIC which does most of the work in this player).

I've not had time yet to check if this is complete. I will do so shortly, but kudos to Toshiba for getting this out in less than 5 weeks. That's pretty good considering the work involved, and they deserve credit for that.

I asked Toshiba if they were planning to make this source code available on their website. Their response indicated that they would be providing the source only upon request. Note that this is compliant with the requirements of the GPL.

Original SimCity Source Code Released

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 22 Jan 2008 03:23:28 GMT

Anyone who played games in the 90's will remember Will Wright's seminal Simcity game, first released in 1989 on the Commodore 64. It's been through several iterations since, the most recent being SimCity Societies.

Although it's been released on many consumer PC and console platforms, few people will recall that it was originally also released on various versions of Unix too. The source code for the Unix version has now been released under the GPL:

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/

For trademark reasons, it's called Micropolis, but it is the genuine Simcity source code for Unix. Micropolis was the development name for Simcity in the late 1980's, and doesn't "dilute" the Simcity trademark as a result. The source code release has been motivated by the project to port this code to the One Laptop Per Child program, to facilitate better understanding of urban design in the third world.

I actually remember SimCity on Irix (SGI Unix). It had a hideous licensing scheme, and despite numerous attempts, I never managed to get a serial number which would allow it to run. I suspect that this challenge, and the fact that a SGI workstation cost tens of thousands of dollars at the time, probably contributed to Simcity's failure on that platform.

HD Disk Wars: the Post-CES Battlefield

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 22 Jan 2008 03:08:47 GMT

My blog has been closely following the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray " war" for a few months now (see my previous posts here, here, here, here, here, and here). This is a battle being played out between industry giants being doors which are closed to both consumers and the press. However, as many people here are playing both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media on their PCs, I thought it timely to report on some of the recent industry developments.

To begin with, let's look at the aftermath of CES. The last-minute cancellation of the HD-DVD association's press conference at CES was a surprising and unexpected development. This blog entry at Gizmodo makes interesting reading, as it purports to explain the politics behind that cancellation:

http://gizmodo.com/346783/the-truth-about-the-format-war-and-hd-dvds-demise

Just remember that this is mostly based on unsubstantiated rumor, and should be treated as such. At the same time, it should also be remembered that the official press releases from industry players have regularly been disingenuous, with Viacom's HD-DVD announcement being the most egregious example. So far.

I also previously wrote about lackluster HD-DVD player sales in Australia, and reported that Toshiba was planning to drop their ridiculously high player prices after Christmas.

That price reduction has occurred, although the discount comes via a $200 redemption, pushing the final price of the low-end 720p/1080i-only HD-E1 down to AUD$349 (about USD$280). I was able to bargain mine down to AUD$300 (after redemption). Interestingly, discount by redemption is not common in the consumer electronic marketplace in Australia, and this feels like a program being pushed out of the US headquarters.

After the purchase had gone through, the salesperson confided that HD-DVD player sales over Christmas had been very low, and that the redemption deal had not significantly improved that.

In Blu-Ray news, public understanding of Blu-Ray "profiles" has picked up (originally noted in my blog back in November). This is likely to be a big problem for the Blu-Ray camp, as disks are released with features which older players do not fully support. It is also a weakness that HD-DVD consortium never properly exploited, being too obsessed with meaningless sloganeering like "the look and sound of perfect".

There are basically three Blu-Ray profiles at the present time:

1.0 - (aka. "BD-Video" or "Grace Period Profile") the base profile supported by all current players. The only local storage capability which is mandated is 64K of "persistent" local store (flash or battery-backed-up SRAM). Further local storage and virtual file system support is optional.

1.1 - (aka. "Bonus View" or "Final Standard Profile") a secondary audio and video decoder is required, to support Picture-in-Picture. 256MB of local storage supporting the virtual file system becomes a requirement. Only a subset of current players support 1.1, most notably the PS3 running v2.1 firmware or later. The 64K persistent storage requirement remains unchanged.

2.0 - (aka. "BD-Live") the local storage requirement rises to 1GB, and an Internet connection is now required.

As an aside, for those who think a mandatory Internet connection is always a good idea, I'd caution them to think about the issue more deeply.

An Internet connection may facilitate consumer-friendly features, but it also gives Hollywood the power to "update" your player at their whim. You know: those same Hollywood types who've been paying each other millions of dollars in "promotional considerations" and pushing obnoxious DRM schemes like BD+. Do you like the idea of them being forced to "update" your firmware, with the penalty of revoking your device if you don't comply? An Internet connection is the key enabling technology for such an unpleasant scheme.

For more detail on this issue, see the third-from-bottom comment in my blog entry here.

It also should be noted that an "Internet connection" and "ethernet" are not the same thing. I would anticipate most CE devices favoring 802.11g (or better), which is significantly more convenient to deploy for most households. The "Bill of Materials" cost required to add wireless LAN functionality is now in the single digits, and dropping yearly. One industry source claims that by 2010 the cost will be USD$1.

Anyway, it's being widely reported that the only current player which has the hardware to support the 2.0 profile is the Playstation 3. ArsTechnica has an excellent overview:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html

Note: ArsTechnica implies that 2.0 profile requires two secondary decoders. I believe this is incorrect, and that they intended to state that two decoders are required, not three as their inclusion of the word "secondary" implies (ie. primary + two secondaries).

Frankly, having purchased a PS3 over Christmas, I think that playing Blu-Ray disks and contributing to Folding@Home is all the device is good for. I've never such an uninteresting line-up of games for any previous console.

I'd also expressed surprise that so few SoC's (Systems-On-a-Chip) had appeared to support HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray, as I'd previously only found a single available chip. Now it seems that Sigma Designs also has a SoC solution for Blu-Ray: the SMP8630. Like the competing Broadcom BCM7440 SoC, the primary CPU seems to be based on the MIPS architecture.

The MIPS architecture powers between 70% and 76% of shipped DVD recorders and TV set-top boxes, and it looks like this trend is continuing in Blu-Ray players too. DVD player SoCs weren't so homogenous, being based on a grab-bag of instruction set architectures from Zoran's x86-like Vaddis ISA to ARM in MediaTek and MIPS-X (an old MIPS variant) for ESS. Only SunPlus used MIPS, and then very quietly.

Both the BCM7440 and the SMP8630 support BD profile 2.0, with dual-decoders and network-supporting I/O in both cases. Neither Broadcom nor Sigma Designs were big players in the general DVD player SoC marketplace, although SD did hold a significant share of the very high-end player SoC market.

Finally, it's hard to resist commenting on the motives of the industry players here. One of the mortifying aspects of this war has been the near total exclusion of consumer considerations, which are subsumed by the commercial machinations and undisclosed payments between industry alliances and both CE and content producers. Indeed, one has to wonder whether some of these deals cross the ill-defined boundaries of anti-trust legislation.

It seems to me that as consumers, we are the least important part of this industry war. To me, that does not sound like the working of a functional marketplace.

23rd January 2008 Update:

Engadget has US HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player sales data from the second week of January, following the Warner decision to go Blu-Ray:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/22/blu-ray-players-grab-93-percent-of-market-after-warner-went-blu/

HD-DVD's 48.83% of sales in week 1 fell to 7.47% of sales in week 2.

Ouch.

27th January 2008 Update:

The NPD group, from which the reported sales figures originated, is cautioning that there were a number of significant factors in these statistics which have gone unreported:

http://www.dailygame.net/news/archives/007137.php

My personal feeling is one I've made before: perceptions governs all. The perception that Blu-Ray has won is so widely spread, that I doubt the HD-DVD camp can turn it around.

And it doesn't help that Toshiba's low-end "affordable" player is so very awful.

30th January 2008 Update:

Industry-analyst Gartner believes that the format war will end in 2008, with a Blu-Ray victory. It concludes that Toshiba's rebates and price cuts may prolong this process, but they won't be effective. Here's ArsTechnica's report on this announcement:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080129-consumers-analysts-retailers-give-hd-dvd-the-cold-shoulder.html

Of course, the trials aren't over for Blu-Ray at this point, because there's still a formidable and well-entrenched opponent to beat: DVD.

Leaving aside the fact that significant parts of the population don't have HD-capable screens, the reality is that most people aren't yet sold on the benefits of native 1080p vs. 480i/576i upscaled to 1080p. In my observation, few people spot the difference without prompting.

This will be Blu-Ray's next hurdle: killing what is probably CE's most successful format ever.

5th February 2008 Update:

The tsunami of "Blu-Ray will win" news on the net is getting a little dull, especially as most seem to think the only market which exists is the US one. Here's a report out of Europe with some numbers and analysis:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/02/04/blu_ray_hd_dvd_europe/

Interesting stuff.

Piracy as a Response to Market Failure?

MyNeroUserWithNicknameIanFarquhar@nero.com (IanFarquhar) — 10 Jan 2008 06:38:44 GMT

It doesn't matter if you think intellectual property "piracy" is right or wrong, this essay by the author of the book “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism” makes very interesting reading:

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirates-dilemma-080108/

His basic thesis seems to be that piracy is a response to market failure.