Thursday, April 10th, 2008
by Chris
Well, it seems this one flew in just under my radar…
New Zealand has passed an amendment to the Copyright Bill to include “New Technologies”, which refers to the digital medium.
Most alarming in this bill is the inclusion of the DMCA-like offence of owning “Digital lockpicks” to free the data which you already own. The new clause makes it illegal to circumvent a copyright protection, even for personal use such as format-shifting (although there are limited format-shifting provisions in the bill). Since I can’t seem to find a copy of the actual text, it’s unknown how this will affect products such as region-free DVD players and the like.
Considering I have personally circumvented copyright protection using a black marker, a shift key and a line out in the past we shall see if this law is as “effective” as the USA’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. At the same time, I’m happy they didn’t take some of the more draconian provisions from the DMCA such as the infamous “takedown notice”.
Hopefully I can get a look at it shortly.
Update: It’s worse than I thought, Notice & Takedown provisions are there in full force. Herald.
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
by Chris
Like the look of the new MacBook Air? Pondering buying the new MacBook Pro’s that are rumored to be released at Apple’s event coming up late Feb? Or are you just looking to make the switch like everyone else?
We all know Apple’s products come at a price premium, so here are a few tips to make the most of your hard earned money
- Don’t pay the “Mac Black Tax”
If you’re buying a MacBook, the difference between the mid-range and the top-of-the-line model is +40gb HDD space, a black finish and about $300. Considering Apple will upgrade your HDD to 160gb on the mid-level model for a mere $125, $175 is a lot of cash to pay for a colour!
- Don’t pay Apple for RAM upgrades
Most people want to upgrade their RAM. MacOS X loves RAM and RAM is cheap – unless you buy it from Apple that is. Upgrading from 1GB of RAM to 4GB of RAM on the vanilla MacBook will cost you $1420 from Apple. If you buy RAM from almost anywhere else, you’ll pay about $80 per DIMM (of which you’ll need 2 for the MacBook) for a saving of still over $1000. Note: You can install RAM by yourself, quite a simple procedure, without voiding your factory warranty or AppleCare. If you send it off for repair they’ll take it out and ship it back to you when they return the system.
- Don’t pay Apple for HDD upgrades
A few systems allow for user-upgradable HDD’s. You can easily save $100-200 by upgrading your own system with store-bought parts instead of paying Apple’s premium.
- Buy AppleCare for laptops
Worth every penny for laptops with very few user-serviceable parts in it. And you’ll bet that trying to get your Mac repaired out of warrenty will cost you a bundle with Apple’s proprietary hardware! This is a fairly decent rule for all Laptops – not just Apple since you’d be out of luck trying to get a lot of the components replace 3rd party – especially in NZ!
- Don’t buy anything straight before a refresh
Although Apple don’t usually let on when they’re about to refresh a product line with updated hardware, it’s usually fairly easy to predict. MacRumors Buyers Guide can help with the timing and have hints on when it’s a good time to buy.
Any more tips, leave ‘em in the comments!
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
by Chris
After numerous, debilitating blows to HD-DVD and it’s backers, the final blow has come in the form of it’s biggest stakeholder pulling the plug on production of the High Definition format players. After this announcement, Microsoft is the only big player still behind this technology. HD-DVD still have two fairly large studios behind them – Universal and Paramount – but with both companies on a timed exclusivity contract, or with Get Out Of Jail Free cards built in that allow them to jump a sinking ship, it’s only a matter of time.
This leads the way for Blu-ray to plug the gap in consumer-level High Definition format and finally bring some composure to the industry.
A lot of people are worried that lack of format competition will cause prices to jack up and stay up. All though all the “Buy one get one free†deals happening on both sides of the divide recently may add evidence to this theory I don’t believe this will cause inflated prices for the remaining Blu-ray format. On the contrary, I predict that many of the fence-sitters (that is, end-users, studios and hardware developers) will feel much more inclined to pursue a HD strategy going forward now that there appears to be a clear winner. This will cause production to ramp up and as everyone knows cheaper production costs lead to cheaper consumer costs. Anyway, most price competition will come from the studios battling each other – not the group that controls the format as they are only entitled to a minimal licensing fee per-unit.
Don’t worry, Sony & Co. still has a big chance to mess this up – although they are only part of a board the governs direction of the Blu-ray format. Should they continue to pursue heavy DRM, nixing backwards compatibility between Profiles and other anti-consumer practices that is definitely a way to turn end-users off to this still budding format.
A big downside of Blu-ray compared to HD-DVD is the studios absolute, pig-headed insistence that removable media be restricted by region! As a lot of people have found out, region-locking is a big problem over here in New Zealand. With more retailers selling Region 1 & 2 DVD’s (JB Hi-Fi is one culprit) alongside with Region 4 to which NZ belongs – people are getting bitten when they take their new purchases home to find out they can’t watch them without either applying warranty-voiding hacks to their players/computers or buying an entire new machine.
Having seen one or two Hi-def movies in my time of both formats I can’t wait for this technology to become more commonplace. In the meantime, goodbye HD-DVD and a warm welcome to Blu-ray. But unless Sony and the other stakeholders stop pandering to the greedy studios who would happily sell you the same content 3-4 times could they get away with it, consumers will quickly get tired of having restrictions on the content they payed a premium to own.
