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Please note that some, if not many of the links on this page may be broken. This is just an archived copy of the news for this month. We cannot guarantee that the links will work because we remove old versions as we update. For the newest software releases please always refer to the main news and software pages. If you really need a file then please contact us and we'll do our best to help.

Date News
7/31 I doubt they're going to act on this, but Dutch anti piracy organization BREIN has won a ruling against the Pirate Bay which orders them to cease operations in the Netherlands. Now where exactly are those guys operating the site from again and why should they care what a court in another country finds? Some times I feel like this is the ONION.
7/29 Not quite content that the Pirate Bay is still up and running despite the guilty verdict, the movie industry has teamed up in an attempt to sink the ship once and for all.
7/28

VirtualDub 1.9.4 fixes a bunch of bugs.

VLC 1.0.1 adds extra caching for files on network shares, supports Apple remotes and media keys on Mac OS X and fixes a bunch of bugs.

Those are the numbers the RIAA doesn't like to hear - according to the Chief Economist of PRS Music, a UK royalty collecting group, the total music revenue in the UK has gone up 4.7% since 2007. While record sales are down, sale of concert tickets have increased considerably and make up for the loss in revenue. So much for doom and gloom, eh?

Not that it matters much for the rest of the world, but China's own version of HD DVD seems to be doing rather well despite Warner being the only Hollywood studio to support the format (the rest stand behind Blu-ray).

7/26 Champagne is flowing in the offices of the RIAA's Irish subsidiary as the country's largest ISP, Eircom, is set to begin with three strikes measures: You get a warning first, then they'll throttle your connection so that you'll wish you'd still had your analog modem (I actually experienced that once when my ISP thought I was using too much traffic - your link becomes useless) and finally they'll cut you off altogether. And to cement the complete capitulation, the accused can basically bend over and take it since there seems to be no recourse.
7/25 SMPlayer 0.6.8 supports watching TV, has a new option to enable global volume, support VDAPU on Linux, can take consecutive screenshots, allows sobmenus to be added to toolbars, improves .TS support and has an option to disable the screensaver.
7/24

ProgDVB 6.11.2 has a new dialog to adjust subtitles and contains engine API and OSD optimizations.

Champagne all around for the copyright industry in Korea as the new copyright law which includes three strikes measures goes into effect today.

7/21 Back before HD DVD fell, I used to think that Blu-ray would've won once you could get Shrek, The Bourne Trilogy and Transformers on Blu-ray and if you could play them on a Toshiba Blu-ray drive. Well, Shrek and Transformers followed suit rather quickly after HD DVD's demise, The Bourne Trilogy came early this year and now rumor has it that Toshiba will start making Blu-ray players.
7/20

ProgDVB 6.11.1 supports the DVBWorld BDA card and contains many fixes for other devices.

In yet another example why DRM is a really bad idea - Amazon wiped bought and paid for ebooks from Kindles (their ebook reader) after it found out that the seller didn't have the rights to sell the book. Imagine you'd buy a book from a reputable store, and the book turned out to be illegitimate and now somebody from the store would enter your home without your permission and take the book back and give you a refund - unthinkable. Yet in the wonderful world of DRM, it takes one click and the content is gone, even though Amazon's terms of service say the books are yours forever.

7/16

ProgDVB 6.11.0 has a GUI OSD for blank windows and improvements in the channel list.

Looking for a cheap Blu-ray drive for your PC? Lite-on's $59 drive might just fit the bill.

7/15 Three Strikes is back on New Zealand's agenda - after shelving the idea introduced as part of latest revision of NZ copyright law, the government has come back with a modified idea: There'll be an independent "Copyright Tribunal" where the industry can lodge complaints (after sending warning notices to the ISP which are to be forwarded to the end user) and then the alleged infringer would be able to present their story and the tribunal should mediate the issue. If mediation fails, the tribunal would be able to decide on a range of penalties ranging from fines to disconnection.
7/12

BDSup2Sub 3.9.6 has a close option in the file menu and allows horizontal moving of subtitles.

I doubt it'll manage to change the MPAA's collective minds on P2P technology, but researchers in Norway managed to stream a full 2K resolution film directly into the movie theater.

7/11 Years after the SDMI fiasco, the RIAA is having another go at watermarking with the Watermarking Payload Specification. Wanna take bets what they'll do once security researchers figure a way to get rid of it this time?
7/8

VLC 1.0 has finally been released. Here's a list of all the features it has.

So the RIAA wants everybody to believe that if music is available for free nobody will pay for it. Then how come the first track of Moby's latest album is Moby's best selling single on iTunes even though you can download the song for free from Moby's website? People paying for what they could have for free? Could it be that those people are more about the artists than the RIAA will ever be?

And more bad news for the industry in Spain - not only is three strikes not on the menu, but course have repeatedly found that non profit file sharing is not against the law - so it will be tough for the industry to go after P2P sites like they intended when they didn't get their three strikes wishes.

7/6

ZoomPlayer 7.0 RC1 is out and it has a massive changelog.

VirtualDub 1.9.3 has options to only display one of the panes and to autosize them, supports 3D hardware accelerations in filters (right now for invert, warp sharp, blur, blur more, brightness/contract, deinterlace and resize filters).

7/4

Sorry for the long news blackout - my offline life kept me pretty busy, but of course I have a news rundown for you.

Software wise we've had a new release of BDSup2Sub which disabled fixing invisible subtitles by default, changes the cli for parameters you can turn on/off and adds the default background color handling to the min time textfield.

ProgDVB has been updated twice, with the latest version 6.10.2 bringing fixes in the media server, XMLTV, recording and other unspecified functions and the previous release also only bringing bugfixes.

DVD43 4.1.1 is better at handling DVDs with bogus files.

MKVToolnix 2.9.7 allows you to configure the list of common languages, splits the preferences dialog into several tabs and fixes a number of bugs.

BD Rebuilder 0.24.02 fixes a bunch of bugs.

Avidemux 2.5.0 now uses plugins for audio codecs, audio devices and video filters as well as the x264 and XviD encoders, uses scripted wizards which should make make them easier to expand, uses an updated ffmpeg library and there are various fixes and enhancements as well.

DivXFix++ 0.32 has also been released - it supports a few more codecs.

Then the usual shenanigans from the copyright industry: Three strikes is currently off the table in Spain as the government wouldn't endorse the endeavor. Instead, the copyright industry is focusing on going after Bittorrent sites for now.

Three strikes is still on the table in France, where the government is feverishly trying to get around the constitutional roadblocks - expect a vote on an amended text by July 20th.

Then some news on the Pirate Bay trial: First of all, there won't be a retrial due to the judge's membership in pro copyright groups. Then comes the news that the site has been sold to a Swedish software company called Global Gaming Factory X. What they really intend to do with the site remains somewhat of a mystery - statements by all parties still leave a lot open to debate, but I suppose it's safe to say that the site will undergo some interesting changes as the new owners will try to recoup their investment somehow, and as a publicly traded company, they'll try to reduce their exposure to lawsuits. And hot on the heels of these news come allegations of insider trading by the buyer.

Then some news on the retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset: Her lawyers wows to appeal, and one the artists whose work she was convicted of sharing issued a strong statement against the greedy actions of the major labels.

Now here's one interesting tidbit: if you want to buy ads that air during a TV show, those that run online will cost you more. A sign of things to come?

If only they'd have come to their senses 10 years ago: Former RIAA boss Hilary Rosen isn't the only one to have come to the realization that they blew it with Napster - the current head of the British equivalent - the BPI - is now agreeing with her.

Finally, the AACS LA has significantly lowering licensing fees for Blu-ray discs to encourage smaller productions make their way to Blu-ray, and Big Cable in the US is starting experiments with paid content delivery over the Internet.

6/31

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