Soon, You'll Be Able to Turn Your PC into a TiVo Digital Video Recorder

Digital video recorders have become extremely popular over the past few years, as they allow users to watch their favorite shows even if they're not in front of the TV exactly when aforesaid programs are aired. And although DVRs are traditionally standalone devices,
it seems that things are about to change, since the famous TiVo and software-developer Nero have just entered a partnership that might bring the concept of digital video recordings a lot closer to our own personal computers.

Thus, according to the specific terms of this agreement, Nero will develop a software solution that will bring TiVo features to the personal computer. Capitalizing on the growing PC TV tuner market, it will answer the consumer demand for a trusted PC-based DVR experience for use with the estimated 50.8 million PC TV tuners that will be sold worldwide by 2011, according to In-Stat research report published in April 2007.

"The partnership with TiVo extends the TV experience for the connected digital home, enabling easy access anytime, anywhere to the most extensive TV content," said Richard Lesser, CEO, Nero AG. "Our core technology enables the creation of new categories in consumer electronics, changing the way that users interact with both hardware and software. Our proven technology adds media functionality to the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computing and software products."

But Nero's CEO is not the only one to highly appreciate this deal, Tom Rogers, president and CEO of TiVo, having a few things to say as well. "This agreement provides TiVo with an opportunity to deliver its interface and differentiated feature set globally via the PC, enabling TiVo to use all avenues of mass distribution – from consumer electronics, to cable and satellite boxes and soon, the PC. We are thrilled to work with Nero, a highly successful leader in software solutions for the PC who has the ability to develop a state-of-the-art program centered on the TiVo platform that will bring the same personalized entertainment experience to domestic and international consumers on their personal computers."

Of course, it remains to be seen just what the result of this new agreement will be , but taking into consideration the fact that its basis is a pretty sound one (the increase demand for digital video recording solutions), the future solution will most likely be quite a successful one.

The Apple Heaven in Turmoil

Apple product users all around the world have always been quite pleased with the standard of quality Apple has always maintained. Most probably that’s the main reason why the Apple fan-boys (and the Mac ones in particular) have appeared. But there are problems that shake even the most dedicated Apple users and, unfortunately for the Cupertino based company, these problems seem to appear these days more often than any other time in the past.

Not long ago we’ve all heard rumors about the MacBooks that got flawed hard drives and today Apple has declared they are looking into this issue affecting their products. Now the time has come for the 20 and 24-inch iMac displays to take the main role in a new saga of faulty Apple branded hardware.

According to a number of users on the Apple discussion board the two display models suffer from a gradient like defect that makes the colors on the bottom look much lighter than the ones on the top part of the desktop. While in the 20-inch model this has been observed to affect the display from top to bottom, in the 24-inch models the problem seems to go from left to right so a possible video card problem can’t be taken seriously.

As it seems (according to Scott Konradt, one of the users on the Apple forum) the cause of all these problems might be the TN film-based matrix LCDs that feature much cheaper parts than the IPS matrix based ones that one can find in the Apple Cinema Display line of products.

KRitchie, another poster on the Apple board of discussions, said that "I went to the Apple Store yesterday to look for this issue. I had to wait as every iMac had someone looking at them! I finally got on one, set the desktop to a single color and was able to observe what everyone is talking about. The top of the screen in darker than the bottom. Calibration helps the fading at the bottom but if I moved my head down the bottom would get darker but the top would get even more dark. There is a definite shift in color as you move your head around. This is just a low end screen that Apple has put into this model. I don't think most people will notice this affect but now that it's been pointed out I don't like it."

Therefore you can also test if this whole thing is true by going to the nearest Apple store and having a closer look at the iMacs put on display. If you follow KRitchie's steps you might have the same unpleasant surprise as he did.

Despite the fact that some people have declared they were satisfied with the image quality obtained on such imperfect displays after changing the color profile in the system preferences to the Adobe RGB (1998), a thing is certain: if you want to use your MacBook for anything else than browsing the web and listen to music you should be on your road to the Apple store to change it.

The bad news for you though is that the Apple stores will not recognize your display problems as something that should concern them and will charge you if you want it to be changed with a new and working properly one.

Now the question is: why would Apple, a company with a very high profit in the fourth quarter of 2007, try to avoid resolving their customers’ problems? Is this a sign that they don’t really care about their clients and choose to turn their heads the other way and leave their customers to deal with such hardware problems as they see fit? If this is the case then I have to say a lot of people around the world will change their opinion about Apple and the brand loyalty indices amongst the Apple users will fall drastically.

I’m not trying to put down Apple here but merely asking myself if the Cupertino employees and management are traversing a state of denial regarding the hardware problems the Apple products have been experiencing in the past two months or so.

If they do, they better jump out of it and get back to the Apple users with suitable solutions and, maybe, an apology instead of another fee to replace a product that has been flawed from start.

YouTube Closes Down Anti-Torture Activist’s Account

Google earlier admitted to giving up the IP of a blogger accused of defamation after revealing some info about a corruption and tax fraud case in which three councilmen were involved. YouTube seems to be trying to fill it’s papa’s shoes and closes down an account of an Egyptian resident that posted videos of brutal behavior by local police officers, voting irregularities and anti-government
demonstrations.

Wael Abbas’ channel currently reads "This account is suspended" and he confessed to Reuters that the Google-owned YouTube sent him an email announcing its action to come and based it on the fact that "there were lots of complaints about the content, especially the content of torture." Why would someone rather report such a fact instead of filing an official complaint? YouTube’s guidelines stating that "Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it" might be a starting point to understanding the Mountain View based company’s video sharing service’s decision but I sincerely doubt it.

It’s just that Google is supposedly on a mission to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible" and that gives me a hard time to understand what’s with the privacy issues it has. The images and video clips that Abbas had posted were interesting to organizations across the globe in a high degree and thus it needed to be there and be available until the end of time if need be and if the anti-torture activist’s voice would not be heard otherwise.

There are some sites available to those that have such images that depict abusive action by authorities or other human rights violations, like hub.witness.org but they don’t have nearly the amount of publicity or the reach that YouTube has. The great Google is not as open as it should be, apparently. Or at least as it says it is.

ASUS WL-160N – The Wireless Card for You

No one can deny that wireless networking is becoming increasingly popular over the older wired technologies and while most computer manufacturing companies are still lagging behind in adopting it as a default solution for connectivity, Asustek through its Asus brand takes the lead once more and introduces the WL-160N wireless card that is designed and manufactured with users satisfaction in mind.

The Asus WL-160N wireless card comes as a little marvel in its own right as it is currently the smallest mass manufactured piece of widely available computer hardware that is fully compatible with the new wireless networking standard, 802.11n. While supporting the cutting edge of wireless technology, this new card from Asus is also integrating support for
older protocols like 802.11b and 802.11g, making it valuable even for users that are not inclined to upgrade their network infrastructure to the latest available standard.

Coming in a slim and small overall package the Asus WL-160N wireless card is aimed at both desktop and mobile computer users and the latter will surely appreciate the handy and out-of-the-way design as well as the easy connectivity feature that makes the most of the "plug and play" features of the USB 2.0 standard. Thanks to its small form factor this new wireless card from Asus is easily fitted even in crammed spaces and as it integrates MIMO technology it is also able to send and receive signals over great distances while keeping the network throughput at over 100Mbps. This speed is exceeding even most wired networking solutions widely available and thanks to the great signal quality, the Asus WL-160N wireless card helps reduce deadspots while increasing the overall networking coverage when compared with the previous G standard.

As the Asus WL-160N wireless card is USB 2.0 and "plug and play" compatible it can work just as well on Microsoft Windows Vista( both the 32 and 64 bits editions) as it works on more exotic operating systems like Mac OS( versions 10.3 and 10.4 supported). As Windows XP is still one of the most popular operating systems around the world, this network card also offers integrated support for it and it natively works with a broad spectrum of WLAN functions like Zeroconfig or Media Sense.

The wireless card and its docking station



On the software side this new Asus networking card comes bundled with an easy to use wizard that will make the driver installation a snap and it will also help the novice computer user setup his network. Among the software utilities that can be found on the CD bundled with the Asus WL-160N wireless card there is the Mobile Control Center, which is a system wide tools integration utility, the Wireless Setting wizard that helps diagnose and configure a wireless network, the Mobile Manager tool which supports network profiling, as well as the Site Survey application. This last software application lets users quickly and easily browse the topology of their respective wireless network and collect different information about its nodes.

As a wireless network offers a more lax environment that a wired one, the new Asus card also provides native support for both ad-hoc networking as well as an infrastructure network mode that is more common in enterprise applications.

Following the general industry trend of increasing communications security, Asus integrates a number of advanced security features that are mandatory for any 802.11n compliant wireless networking device. Among these security features there are WEP, WPA, WPA2, TKIP, AES, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK and for those users that feel that the default 64-bit encryption is not enough, the new Asus card also offers a higher 128-bits security feature.

As the Asus WL-160N wireless card is particularly well suited for use in a mobile operating environment on laptops or notebooks that lack integrated wireless networking cards the power consumption levels are important, and the manufacturing company is providing a piece of computer hardware that is especially kind to a mobile device's battery as it only needs 450 mA in Tx (transmission) mode and 300 mA in Rx (receiving) mode. Like any other wireless networking device this new Asus card also needs an antenna for sending and receiving data but unlike most other devices out there it comes with two antennas, both integrated into the PCB of the card itself in order to provide a smooth external appearance and minimize the risk of damage from rough handling.

For users' convenience, a LED is embedded into the new ASUS WL-160N wireless networking card and it shows the device's state like "acquired link" and activity. Also, the presence of a docking station is yet another good point for this new device as it helps both mobile and desktop computer users place the card in a good spot.

Leopard Ready Intel Software Tools

Intel, the world leader semiconductor company, has announced today the upgrade of their software tools for Apple’s latest operating system, the Mac OS X Leopard and the Xcode 3.0 development environment. The tools that have been optimized are the Intel Fortran compiler, the Intel C++ Compiler, the Intel Math Kernel Libraries, the Intel Performance Primitives and the Intel threading Building Blocks.

As Bertrand Serlet, the Apple Senior Vice President of software engineering declared "Leopard, Xcode and Intel's compilers give developers powerful new tools to squeeze even more performance out of the latest Intel processors. Intel's software works well in our Xcode environment, and the Intel engineering team does a great job supporting our Apple engineers and Mac OS X developers."

Although this might not seem to be something astonishing for the usual Joe, the geeks living amongst the ordinary people already have wet dreams about Intel compiler’s auto-parallelizing capabilities and the way they can take full advantage of Intel’s multi-core processors in multithreaded and more responsive applications.

They wouldn’t be the only ones that experience Nirvana-like states of mind because, as a number of other software development companies officials have declared, the Mac development community is praising Intel dedication in offering support to the Mac OS X software developers by continuously maintaining up to date the dedicated software tools.

Kevin Tureski, director of product development for Autodesk Media & Entertainment, declared that "One of the unique advantages of Autodesk Maya is that it runs on multiple platforms. Creative professionals have long had an affinity for Apple products, and the Maya software's availability on Apple's Mac OS X allows them to use their platform of choice. With Apple's switch to Intel processors and with multi-core Mac Pro machines becoming commonplace, we need compilers that allow us to multithread Maya. We rely on the Intel C++ compiler for our threading work because of its support for OpenMP and performance-critical sections of code."

Also, the vice president of Dynamic Media for Adobe, Bill Hensler, has said that "The Intel C++ Compiler has been a critical tool in the delivery of the industry's most complete cross-platform suite of professional video tools - Adobe Production Premium. Intel has done a great job delivering a set of software tools that allows Adobe engineers to create outstanding products that revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information."

The conclusion of all this software related mumbo-jumbo that most of us prefer to ignore? Very soon the Intel-based Leopard Macs are going to feature higher performance applications, with better multi-core management capabilities. And that translates into a faster and more responsive operating system for the Intel Mac users and an overall increase in performance.

Can Too Much Windows Vista Cache Be a Bad Thing?

Too much Windows Vista cache, a bad ting? Well, apparently yes, through Excessive Cached Write I/O and Excessive Cached Read I/O. As you probably know by now, cache is connected with boosting the performance of data accessing processes that target sluggish storage media. In an ideal scenario, the data or the code pages would be completely located within the system memory. The speed at which data is accessed, in the physical RAM, exceeds by far that of similar processes that involve a hard disk, by approximately 1 million times. But, because
of the usually limited amount of RAM, the operating system will have to deal with system cache.

"Too much cache is a bad thing; the memory manager works on a demand based algorithm. Physical pages are given to where the current demand is. If the demand isn't satisfied, the memory manager will start pulling pages from other areas, scrub them and send them to help meet the growing demand. Just like any process, the system file cache can consume physical memory if there is sufficient demand. Having a lot of cache is generally not a bad thing, but if it is at the expense of other processes it can be detrimental to system performance. There are two different ways this can occur - read and write I/O," revealed a member of the NTDebugging team.

The first example revolves around excessive cached write I/O. In this scenario, the operating system has to deal with a large volume of applications and services throwing write I/O files at the system file cache. However, the platform is prepared for such cases. Write I/O will be buffered and the working set of the system cache will expand. Ultimately, system threads will be dumped to the hard disk, and this is where the problem will occur, because of the differences in speed management between the disk's speed and that of the I/O write. The exception typically occurs when the cache manager, because of a faulty application or service, will be unable to handle throttling I/O. But at the same time, excessive cached read I/O will also present problems.

"While the SystemCacheDirtyPageThreshold registry value can tune the number of write/dirty pages in physical memory, it does not affect the number of read pages in the system cache. If an application or driver opens many files and actively reads from them continuously through the cache manager, then the memory manger will move more physical pages to the cache manager. If this demand continues to grow, the cache manager can grow to consume physical memory and other process (with less memory demand) will get paged out to disk. The system cache's working set limit can and typically does exceed how much memory is installed in the system," explained the member of the Microsoft NTDebugging team.

AMD, Kicked Out of the Top

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have entered the chip manufacturers elite immediately after the fusion with graphical chip maker ATI. There are signs that AMD won't be able to keep up with the ranking because of low revenue.

AMD is ranked as number eight in the largest chip manufacturers top, with revenues that jumped up from $3.9 billion in 2005
to $7.5 billion in 2006 – an increase of more than 90 percent during a single year. Market trends, however, are wearing gray colors for the company, as their sales are estimated to take a full-blown hit and drop from 22.8% to $5.8 billion, which would surely cast AMD away on a shameful #11. The Intel competition is estimated to recover from the market share loss that has occurred back in 2006 and will gain about 7.7% that would reflect in sales going from $31.5 billion to 34.0 billion – a huge leap for the chip powerhog.

"Throughout most of the year, Intel successfully defended much of the market share that it won from AMD in the first quarter in the PC microprocessor segment due to the success of its lines of dual- and quad-core chips," said Dale Ford, vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli. "This represents a major reversal of fortune compared to 2006, when AMD had the advantage with its popular dual-core microprocessors, allowing it to gain share from Intel."

Apart from AMD, Texas Instruments (TI) is the only top 10 manufacturer to face sales loss, which is very likely to show the company off the top, too. Texas Instruments is fueled in proportion of more that 45 percent by its wireless communications chips business. The chipmaker is likely to suffer this year a 3.4% decline in global semiconductor revenue, as Nokia moved to other chip manufacturers, such as Infineon.

"Nokia, the world’s largest seller of mobile phones, historically has used Texas Instruments as its near-exclusive supplier of wireless baseband suppliers. However, the company has engaged in a strategic initiative to add other baseband suppliers to reduce its dependency on Texas Instruments. This has benefited other companies such as Infineon, but has cut into Texas Instruments’ sales", concluded Ford.

MSN Video Jumps as High as It Can But Still Doesn't Even Come Close to YouTube

In the larger and multi-faceted face-off between Google and Microsoft, the Redmond and Mountain View giants compete on various fronts. And with MSN Video and YouTube, Microsoft and Google are in the race for the largest share of the online video market. So far, Google has positioned itself as an indisputable leader, after having dropped some $1.6 billion on YouTube at the end of 2006. While Microsoft has an equal opportunity to acquire YouTube, the Redmond company said pass and, instead, focused its efforts on pushing MSN Video
and the prodigal son project, Soapbox on MSN Video.

At the end of September 2007, the prodigal son returned home and was completely swallowed and integrated into MSN Video. In terms of audience, the stand-alone website Soapbox was far from being a success; but, after it has migrated under MSN Video's umbrella, things seem to have turned around for Microsoft. According to the latest data published by Compete, the traffic of MSN Video climbed significantly in October.

Top 10 video competitors

"Extraordinary gains were realized by the Microsoft family of video sites, which includes MSN Video and Live Search Video, catapulting the Redmond rival into 2nd place, three spots ahead of its rank in September. MSN/Live Video grew 25.3% to 35M visits on the strength of 21M visitors. Meanwhile, major losses struck Yahoo! Video, MySpaceTV and Heavy.com. MySpace’s decline is particularly troublesome given that it’s the 3rd straight month of double-digit losses for the social networking giant. Since July 2007, MySpace has seen its online video market share halved to 7.6%," revealed Compete's Alex Patriquin.

An excess of 21 million unique visitors went to MSN Video and Live Search Video in October, generating over 35 million visits for 8.9% of the market. With this percentage Microsoft is now runner up on the online video market, behind Google, whose YouTube owns a share of 53.8%. "YouTube continued to outperform the market, growing 1% in October to 213M visits on nearly 52M unique visitors," Patriquin added.

Asus Xonar U1: High Definition Audio Trapped in an UFO

The first impression when meeting Asus' new USB sound card is that you have just seen a UFO. Its unusual design, made of two overlapping cone halves, hides the UA100 audio processor with a Xear 3D audio engine
that supports DirectSound 3D, EAX 2.0, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Virtual Speaker, Dolby Pro-Logic IIx, and Dolby Digital Live technologies. The upper cone has been inteligently transformed into a rotational volume knob.

The sound card is primarily to be used with laptops, but desktop systems are supported as well, as long as they are able to provide a USB 2.0 port. The total output power varies around a signal-to-noise ratio of 100 dB. The sound unit comes in six colors, ranging from blue to gunmetal. The metal-like case not only that gives it an interesting UFO-like look, but also shields the inner components from the electromagnetic interference generated by the computer's activity.

The two audio ports located at the base of the Xonar U1 are designed for the microphone and speakers / headphones connectivity. The stereo-array microphone shipped with the sound card is designed especially for voice-over-ip services, as it has the ability to suppress the ambient noise up to 15 dB.

The audio output emulates the surround sound even with a pair of common speakers or with the common stereo headphones. The only problem for the audio passionate is that the soundcard does not provide the necessary connectivity for using 5.1 analog audio equipment, as this requires a minimum of three inputs, while the soundcard only provides two of them.

The audio system is shipped with its special mixer utility – the Audio Center. It controls the way the digital signal is processed. The user can easily modify the way the sound is delivered, but for the common tasks, there are four DSP modes they can choose from: Music, Hi-Fi, Game and Movie.

Getting Ready for Foxhollow: GPU-in-CPU

There's about one year waiting time until the next-generation Nehalem processor are due to appear, but Intel is going to deliver the creme de la creme no sooner than the first half of 2009. Intel readies a new desktop and mobile CPU series to integrate graphics cores.

The gaming sector will enjoy the first Nehalem processors at the end of next year. There are a few specifications that leaked out, but much more question marks. One thing is for sure,
that the Bloomfields (the codename for Nehalem) is going to be wrapped around the 45-nanometer technology, just like the recent Core 2 Extreme 'Penryn' processors.

We do not know what to expect from Bloomfields in terms of speeds, but the CPU is supposed to use a new, 1366-pin interconnect, that is the foundry for the QuickPath bus to link all the four cores. As if it was not enough, each core will feature an older Intel technology, HyperThreading (HT), available since the Prescott era. This way, the four cores would rather act like eight.

The first half of 2009 will bring another nifty creation from Intel: Lynnfield, that is alleged to adopt PCI Express as the chip-to-chip bus while the interconnect is going to be cut down to 1160 LGA pins. It will also be a quad-core featuring HyperThreading and 8MB of L2 cache, but will support DDR3 in dual-channel mode only. The CPU will incorporate a PCI Express controller that would allow it to link directly to a x16 graphics card.

Intel is going to release a mobile chip too, that would bear the 'Auburndale' codename and will inherit the Cleaksfield/Clarksfield architecture. However, Auburndale is going to be a dual-core product, that will feature an integrated GPU, as well as a directly connected video memory buffer.

Hacker Attacks Apple Fan Blogs

Apple is one of the companies which were often avoided by hacks and viruses because most of the infections were focused on Microsoft's Windows and not on Mac OS X
or Apple technologies. But the Cupertino company is now affected by a series of hacks targeting the Apple fan blogs that are accused of "fanboyism" as the attacker said in the messages posted on the affected websites. "This website has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been take down for 24 hours. This is a message to the rest of the Mac community, so listen up. Ever heard of hubris? Tone it down, and you will not be attacked. Everyone else is open game," the message signed by malcor reads.

The hacker even created a blog to mention and describe the attacks. However, it seems like Malcor's blog is down at the time of writing this article. However, the folks at The Register managed to access it before it was shut down and published some snippets posted by Malcor.

"And make no mistake, I don't mean to imply that I'm the worlds [sic] greatest hacker and can work my magic on any site," Malcor wrote on the blog according to the source mentioned above. Moreover, it seems like the hacker has some enthusiastic plans to attack famous websites with millions of visitors. "The #1 site I'd love to take down for all its Apple fanboism is digg.com but I doubt I'll be able to find any exploit holes on a site so big."

The attacks are not so dangerous because the only thing the hacker did was to post a picture and a message on the affected websites. However, this is another proof that the blogs need improved security as many of them can be hacked in no time.

Sony Announces Two High-End, Extremely Expensive Large-Venue Digital Projectors

Although most people associate projectors with either home entertainment systems or business presentations nowadays, the truth of the matter is that they have a far wider range of purposes, including here large-venue projections. And that's exactly the particular market segment Sony's latest announcement refers to, as the company has just informed us of the release of two high-end large venue projectors, which deliver some pretty interesting features, although at very hefty price tags.

The new VPL-FW300L (7,000 lumens) and the VPL-FH300L (6,000 lumens) projector models are designed to deliver high-quality images while in the same room as the audience, which makes them a good solution for smaller auditoriums, large classrooms and meeting rooms, museum exhibits, event centers,
ballrooms and movie theaters.

The VPL-FW300L projector has a WXGA+ resolution of 1366 x 800, while the VPL-FH300L unit delivers resolution of 2048 x 1080. Both models are housed in the same chassis and share the same type of lenses, lamps and filters as well as the same connections and network functions. The projectors also feature Sony’s BrightEra imaging technology, which is based on an inorganic substrate and alignment layer to produce a stronger bonding of molecules. This makes the panel more resistant to damage from UV energy while allowing for an increased aperture ratio.

The Sony VPL-FH300L projector - mounted on the ceiling

The projectors’ innovative round design also includes large-diameter fans and high-flow cooling air ductwork that lets the projector run cool while fan noise is decreased. Moreover, users have a choice of five different standard lenses for excellent placement flexibility, and both models have a locking bayonet mount mechanism for easy lens changes.

Both models use dual 275W lamps, while their opposing design configuration allows for projector tilting for mirror or other uses. The lamps have an expected life of 1500 (high) or 2500 (standard) hours. This use of low wattage lamps saves energy and running costs, which in turn helps the projector run cooler and quieter when compared with other offerings. Moreover, the projectors’ control panels are located on the sides for easy installation and maintenance. Cable management is simpler, with routing channels carrying cabling to the mounting point. Both projectors are also compatible with cable-hiding mounting systems.

"There’s no ‘one size fits all’ option for large-venue projection needs," said John Kaloukian, director of Sony Electronics’ professional display group. "For example, museums are featuring more full HD content in their exhibits and need HD capable projectors that show this footage quietly and effectively. Conversely, more movie theaters are incorporating pre-show content, including local advertisements and regional promotions, and they’re turning to LCD projectors that offer the necessary brightness, color accuracy and widescreen capabilities to fill a multiplex screen."

The Sony VPL-FH300L projector

The new VPL-FW300L and VPL-FH300L large-venue projectors from Sony will retail for around $27,000 and $40,000, respectively, which are some pretty consistent price tags, but we must not forget the fact that these projectors are targeting mostly customers for whom these sums are not that extraordinary.

Blu-ray and HD DVD Beat the Crap Out of Each Other...Again

As we're reporting live from the battlefield of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war, news are rather...confusing, to say the least. Thus, if we are to believe the statements issued by the two sides, their favored next-gen DVD format is the winner. However, the truth of the matter is that each of the two sides has recorded some victories over the other,
but only in specific sales areas, the overall picture of this whole "conflict" still being that of a stalemate.

But let's see what each of the two sides is boasting about. First of all, after claiming dominance over the Japanese recorders' market, the Blu-ray side has just announced that they've sold over 1 million discs in Europe, which means that over 73 percent of all HD movies ever sold were Blu-rays. Pretty impressive, no? However, we must not forget that all of these sales are mostly due to the PlayStation 3 gaming console (by the way, over 20 million Blu-ray discs containing games were also sold).

This announcement comes after a study carried out by Home Media Research revealed that Blu-ray Disc DVD titles had outsold rival HD-DVD by almost two-to-one in the first nine months of the year in the United States, which means that things look pretty gloomy for HD DVD. Or don't they?

Well, it seems that even if they don't sell too many discs, HD DVD backers sell a whole lot of players. Thus, the HD DVD camp claims that it has sold no less than 750,000 dedicated players in the US, with European sales picking up as well, mostly due to the aggressive low pricing policy.

It's still not quite clear who's dominating this market (meaning, there's no clear victor in this war), and it will be quite some time before one side is really able to claim, based on honest, openly-accepted figures that it's won the next-generation DVD race. Up until then we'll just have to settle for the usual media crap, more or less true figures, accusations and all sorts of more or less shadowy marketing tactics.