Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In an attempt to be more proactive rather than simply reactive, the MPAA has recently approved the DreamStream system and its 2048-bit “military strength” anti-piracy encryption technology to protect content streamed to viewers online.

First introduced to the MPAA in March of 2008 by Laura Tunberg, MGM’s former vice president of intellectual property enforcement, it was since reviewed by the MPAA and found it to be a viable means for securing digital content. Chief development officer for DreamStream, Ulf Diebel, is excited by this acknowledgment of their product.

“We are very excited to have the MPAA stand behind our technology.”

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Mozilla is growing, and it seems that in addition to the recent world record, which was set for the software downloads in a 24 hour time period, they have also risen to 19.03% of the market share. Mozilla saw an increase from 18.41% up to 19.03% from the end of May to the end of June.

Of course, Firefox may be seeing an increase, which is at least partially due to the recent release of Firefox 3, but Internet Explorer still remains on top with a whopping 73.01%.

On the other hand, some are saying that because of the auto-update features within Firefox, that those users are amongst the most users with up to date versions of their browser installed. Firefox was noted as having 83% of their users with an up to date software version, as compared to just 63.3% of Safari users, 56.1% of Opera users and IE having just 47.6% of users with the latest and most stable version.

Read [Yahoo! News]

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy.  The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.” Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

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The Blu-ray format is getting a new supporter in legendary musician Neil Young, as the singer has recently announced that he will be releasing his entire music archive on Blu-ray. Mr. Young, who was surprisingly among those who spoke during the Java Conference in San Francisco, will release the first installment of his music archives covering his hits from 1963 to 1972 in a ten disc Blu-ray set through Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.

Mr. Young is set to maximize the full capacity potential of Blu-ray discs with the release of his music archives. These BDs will contain not only his popular songs, but previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other memorabilia as well. Of course, this is just one part of Blu-ray’s goodness, as releasing his collection in this format would also give out better picture and sound quality. This is aside from the fact that Blu-ray discs can hold more content.

Although this is not the first time that the Blu-ray discs were utilized for such purposes, most of those who released their own BDs have just released their concert videos and were not as comprehensive as Mr. Young’s plan of releasing his full archive.

Read [Associated Press]

Although Apple started offering customers movie rentals through iTunes back in January, some customers have found the service less than appealing because most of the movie titles, both from major film studios and independently produced titles, took much longer to be released as compared to DVD’s. Normally these new titles are released in iTunes 30-days after their DVD release. But Apple is pretty determined to get a sizeable share of the movie download market and possibly do what it was able to do with music downloads. Thus, it has officially announced that new movie releases can now be downloaded from iTunes on the same day that their DVD counterpart.

So, now we are talking. With the new service, iTunes customers would have access to new releases and catalog titles from major film studios including 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount and more. Customers can purchase new releases for $14.99 and most catalog titles for $9.99.

To kick off this service, iTunes has announced some new titles available for purchase this week, coming from its collection of around 1,500 high-quality films. These new titles include recently released in DVD formats - Juno, Cloverfield, I Am Legend and more.

Read [Apple]

Just four and half years after its launch, eMusic is reporting that it has already sold around 200 million digital songs through web downloads. What makes it even sweeter for eMusic is that it has achieved the feat without too much tie-up with the major record labels. eMusic managed to sustain sales growth through its cooperation with independent digital music content providers.

eMusic is also attributing the growth of its web-based music service to the launch of rival Amazon MP3 which said to have led to the increased in awareness of eMusic. Amazon MP3 contributed to around 40 million of eMusic’s download statistics. Since Amazon MP3’s launch in September 2007, eMusic has sold around 7 million tracks monthly.

eMusic’s success can also be attributed to the increasing popularity of DRM-free music online. eMusic was among the first online music store which offered DRM free songs. It has been Amazon’s secret and has catapulted it to being the second online music store next to Apple’s iTunes despite higher per-song cost. eMusic would have had higher figures if it had established tie ups with major labels as well.

Via [electronista]

The long running rumor about The Beatles music coming to iTunes had recently resurfaced, and once again was quickly proven untrue, so now it only makes sense that we should see the unlimited download plan stories start to resurface. The Financial Times is reporting that Apple is again talking with the “major music companies to offer customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPods and iPhones.”

According to the story the negotiations are stalled over just how much Apple is willing to pay up, Apple of course had not made any statement confirming or denying the story. We here would tend to believe this one is not true, but hey stranger things have happened.

Read [Reuters]

Helio has finally realized that Opera Mini is the favored browser among its users so they’ve made it official. An improved Opera Mini browser (perhaps optimized for Helio) is now available for download direct from Helio. If you’re checking out their web site and don’t see anything, don’t fret. Helio hasn’t made an official announcement about this yet but the Opera Mini client really is available for download. HelioCity is reporting about this and they’ve included instructions on how to download Opera Mini as well.

How to get it:
1. From the idle screen, type the jumpcode “67372” (OPERA).
2. Hit the flamekey
3. Download, and enjoy!

This makes Helio the first carrier to officially support Opera Mini as an alternative to their very own native browser, and for good cause.

Via [HelioCity]

Blackberry users will have something to look forward to next month. Puretracks, a Toronto-based digital music company is bringing DRM-free music to blackberry devices via its online music store. The online music store for Blackberry devices was announced during the SWSX meet a couple of days ago.

Although this is something that Blackberry users should be happy about, there are some limitations however to the digital music tracks that Puretracks will be offering starting April 1. First, the Blackberry music store will only be available for RIM’s Pearl, Curve and 8800 series handsets. Second, the Blackberry music store will only be available for the US market, although Puretracks promises to bring it to Canada and other markets soon. 

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It seems the movie download business was just not for Wal-Mart. They have closed the service effective December 21, 2007, having it up and running for less than one year. According to a Wal-Mart spokesperson the movie download service was shut down because Hewlett Packard had discontinued the technology that was behind it. Wal-Mart does not currently have any plans to find another partner to power the service, due in part to the service not performing as well “as expected.”

Wal-Mart has not offered any refunds for movies that were currently downloaded. The movies are able to be played on Windows Media Player or the Wal-Mart Video Download Manager, but are not able to be transfered to another computer. Wal-Mart had support of all the major Hollywood movie studios and TV networks however I think they were lacking one important item; flexibility.

Read [Yahoo! News]