Parity Violation

Just a tip to the fine folks at HBO – just because HD signals are in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio doesn’t let you off the hook from using letterbox if the movie was, in fact, shot in a wider aspect ratio than that.

I just caught the last bit of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and while it looks lovely in HD, I see that now that the credits are rolling and all that’s to see is white text on a black background, they’ve chosen to letterbox. So, for the entire movie I’ve been missing some fraction of the movie as HBO decided to crop the movie to conform to my television.

HBO, trust me, your HD-buying customers probably are the same sort that want to see the movie in the same aspect ratio as it was shot and shown in theaters and on DVD, not cropped.

Some googling shows that I’m not the only one who feels this way. That home theater blog link also includes some illustrative screen caps.

Some might point out that the standard-def HBO channels don’t bother to letterbox either. One reason I’d say these “premium” stations are kind of weak. Even AMC and SciFi and plenty of other stations have the sense to show movies in letterbox now and then.

For the record, I have HBO (and Showtime) because of some Comcastic promotion for a year – soon they’ll either cost me an arm and a leg or I’ll have to drop them.

It’s a double whammy coming to NBC – reality TV and the pseudoscientific fraud of Uri Geller come together in a new show Phenomenon.

Geller is nothing more than a third-rate magician who, unlike most magicians, claims he has some sort of actual powers. His fraudulent act was exposed on the Tonight Show, and it’s a thing of beauty:

Amazon.com MP3 Downloads: Popular music, classical music, new releases and more, in MP3 format. With more DRM-free tracks than iTunes, good Mac-iPod-iTunes integration and lower prices – this looks like the place to shop for digital music first. It looks like they have EMI and some Universal tracks, along with some indie labels previously available (as far as I know) only on eMusic. Hopefully this will spur Apple to get independents on board “iTunes Plus” or something similar. (Why the independents who sell DRM-free on eMusic still have DRM on iTunes is beyond me.)

With the cheaper prices one wonders – is Amazon getting a better deal from the record labels or are they making less money per song? If it’s the latter, then it begs the question – can Amazon make money selling music online? Apple probably doesn’t – but it created the iTunes store to help sell iPods, which they do make a few bucks on it would seem.

Fortunately since this is DRM-free mp3 music, there won’t be any problems if the Amazon experiment should come to and end, unlike the Virgin Music store. That store’s subscription-service based music will go poof and no one seems to know what will happen to purchased tracks.

I’d like to see DRM-free music become the norm, and without the 30% markup we’re seeing with EMI and Apple via iTunes Plus. Hopefully Amazon will help push that possibility forward.

Update – Wired attributes this DRM-free Amazon store to the desire of record companies to create an iTunes competitor even if that means no DRM. Why? Because the music needs to work on the iPod and the iPods won’t do any non-Fairplay DRM. So, some irony – because Apple only uses their own “proprietary” DRM (no more proprietary than Windows-Media DRM, which doesn’t work on Macs at all) – that forces the music industry to ditch DRM just so people can play music from other stores on iPods.

MTV, RealNetworks challenge Apple music – Yahoo! News. Doosey of an article. An excerpt:

RealNetworks also began testing the sale of songs from Universal Music Group’s catalog without copy-protection restrictions Tuesday, joining several other retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. That would allow such songs to play on the market-leading iPod. Rob Glaser, RealNetworks’ chief executive officer, said music free of such restrictions should go mainstream in 2008.

That fits with the companies’ un-Apple-like strategy of running a music store that can connect with any number of different devices. Apple’s copy-protection technology generally limits songs bought on iTunes to its own iPods and iPhones.

Apple sells music without DRM that’ll work on any device that can play AAC. It’s called iTunes Plus and it’s been around for a few months. Alas, at the moment it’s only music from EMI. However, selling music without DRM is actually Apple-like, not un-Apple-like.

As far as this new service, it’ll flounder, as have all the others. The notion that iTunes is successful because of lock-down to the iPod is silly. It’s successful because it’s … an easy-to-use music buying experience. As far as the DRM-free songs from Universal being sold elsewhere, Apple doesn’t care where you buy your music – so long as you buy an iPod. So, I seriously doubt they’re batting an eye. iTunes doesn’t make much money for Apple – it just makes the iPod look that much more attractive. And the money is in the iPod.

I don’t understand how someone can write an article about music stores and DRM and not mention the EMI/Apple iTunes Plus deal.

Ok, count me as one of those people who think is is a non-story. Apple has always put your AppleID and name in music bought on iTunes – and it continues to do so in the new “iTunes Plus” songs that don’t contain DRM.

Frankly, getting a DRM free song doesn’t mean you have the right to put it on the internet or give it away to anyone you want – it just means you don’t have to deal with backwards technological restrictions.

The only people who have to fear this are people who want to … I don’t know what. But, it’s not like it’s your credit card number in there.

And the “oh what if my iPod is stolen” – yeah if someone steals your iPod or your laptop you have a lot more to worry about that people getting your name and AppleID. Like, how about the fact they have all your contacts. Besides, your name and AppleID are in all your DRM’ed music too.

Macintouch readers are the voice of reason here – realizing this is a complete non-story and that iTunes songs have always had your name and AppleID in them and why should DRM free files be any different.

So, Apple and EMI announced a short while ago, that they’d sell EMI’s entire catalog on iTunesmost of EMI’s catalog without DRM, and at twice the bitrate of previous iTunes tracks, starting in May. The DRM-free part, I predicted, but I was not expecting the a) higher price ($1.29 per song), or b) the higher file size / quality.

I actually listened to the press conference, but no one really asked the questions I have. But anyway, here are some random thoughts/questions that occur to me now.

• Who’s idea was it to leave the DRM on the $0.99 cent tracks? Was this to give people some pricing incentive to stay “locked” to the iPod as some believe is Apple’s plan? Or, was this something EMI came up with to entice people to pay a bit more for the DRM-free version. (EMI finally got a price increase, something they’ve wanted for a while, but all artists/tracks are still the same price, so not exactly what they had in mind.)

• What about other, independent labels, that don’t require DRM – such as all the ones on eMusic? Will they be able to sell their music on iTunes DRM free? At what price? At what bitrate?

• What about iTunes give-aways. Like, if you win some code or something for a free song. Is it a DRM free song or the old DRMed version?

• Did EMI use this DRM-free hook to finally get Apple to budge on pricing? I’m really curious how much of this new paradigm was EMI’s idea and how much was Apple’s.

• They left the album price the same, even in the new “premium” download version, so this looks like another attempt to make album sales more popular.

• How many music players play unprotected AAC files? The only one that comes to mind is the Zune, but I suppose without DRM it’s easy to transcode to mp3 or any other format anyone likes.

• Jobs predicted half the tracks on iTunes will be DRM-free by the end of the year. Which other labels are going to follow suit? Is everyone going to follow this twice-the-size, no DRM, $0.30 more plan? And again, what about independent labels.

• All Apple wants is to sell iPods. Does this help? Is doubling the size some way to make us buy… larger capacity iPods or to upgrade our iPods?

• Can we just choose on a per-track-basis to buy the “premium” tracks? It sounds like there will be some iTunes store preference to automagically buy the premium tracks if available. But for me, I’d rather pick and choose. I can see added value for classical music, but for the random other songs I buy… eh, I’d rather save the money then get a bigger file and no DRM. I’m not going to buy something other than an iPod any time soon anyway.

• How does this impact “complete my album?” If I bought a DRM’ed EMI track a while back, and now I want to “complete” the album at a reduced price… do I get the non-DRMed version or the DRM’ed… or will it ask me if I also want to upgrade the DRM’ed track to “premium?”

• Non-DRM music videos seem to have value (they’re still $1.99.) It should be easy to extract the audio for iPod listening (I expect freeware/shareware tools to do this automatically will pop up very soon) and they’re price is the same as the old DRMed videos. Of coures is the audio bitrate 256 or 128 on these new DRM-free videos

Ok, so those are my initial reactions. As you can see, it introduces some complexity to the whole iTunes simplicity. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s implemented in May.

I suppose those who said Apple was just lying about an interest in selling DRM music have to eat their words now. I don’t think this solution is going to please everyone because a) they cost more, and b) DRM remains on the cheaper tracks. But, it’s a step in the right direction.

Hmm, I have no idea how many songs I own from iTunes are from EMI, but the $0.30 per track upgrade feature is somewhat interesting to me. Again, mainly on classical music.

UPDATE In his famous open letter on this whole matter jobs said:

If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Clearly, they’re not selling “only” DRM free music. It’s still unclear whether keeping the old, DRMed, $0.99, 128 kbps tracks was Apple’s idea, or EMI’s.

Speculation seems to be that this EMI event will involve the Beatles catalog, such is the speculation in this Variety article for instance.

No one seems to be speculating that perhaps they’re going to agree to sell music DRM-free. EMI’s chief has mulled this idea in the recent past.

So, my guess it’s one of these things. Maybe both! We’ll know tomorrow.

UPDATE: Whoops, I missed this Reuters story which says it won’t be about the Beatles but indeed, may involve removing DRM.

UPDATE II: Indeed, no DRM on EMI iTunes Music starting next month. The downside … they cost more per track ($1.29), but they’re at 256 kbps so twice the quality (and twice the size). Not as cool as just removing the DRM and keeping the price the same… but still pretty good.

I think EMI used this DRM-free initiative to raise prices… which the industry has wanted for a while. So, they’re doing so with the lure of DRM-free. My guess is, this is more what EMI wanted (the press release mentions EMI raising wholesale prices) than what Apple wanted (since Apple doesn’t make money on iTunes anyway, they just want to sell iPods).

Of course why the DRM-enabled tracks remain at all (on the older, $.99 tracks) is a good question.

Well, people are having no trouble hacking the AppleTV just days after its release. Bigger hard drives, extra codec support, etc.

I would love an AppleTV, but it’s not in the budget any time soon. I had an old iBook G3 acting as my iTunes-machine but it’s hard drive died. Oh, and then its AC adapter died. So, I may just sell it as a fixer-upper and get an AppleTV someday.

More Discovery Channel stuff, the BBC series “Planet Earth” on Discovery HD Theater looks amazing, as is fascinating. They used some sophisticated cameras and techniques to get some never-before-seen shots. Wired has a story on it that’s worth checking out.

It’s interesting that on Discovery HD there are far fewer commercial breaks… to the point that in between each hour tonight, HD viewers got to see little snippets on the making of the show – whereas low-def viewers did not. Not exactly sure why Discovery HD Theater sells less ads than the standard def Discovery channel, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not sure what was cooler, the artificial intelligence driven robotic probes that explored the surface of the hypothetical Alien Planet on Discovery and Discovery HD Theater or the strange Myst/Riven like planetscapes and the weird scenes and life forms. A pretty cool show.