Cheap HD DVD player coming…

The format war far from over, but HD DVD is on roll — at least as far as PR is concerned. Last week the big news was both Paramount and DreamWorks becoming HD DVD-exclusive studios, and now Venturer Electronics has announced it will release a budget HD DVD player–the SHD7000–by the 2007 holiday season. There have been several reports indicating that cheaper, off-brand HD DVD players were on their way, but Venturer is the first company to make a formal announcement.

Details are a little slim at the moment, but here’s what we know. The SHD7000 has an HDMI port capable of outputting video at 1080i. That’s comparable to Toshiba’s HD-A2, and as long as your HDTV has decent 1080i deinterlacing, you should still get very good image quality with a 1080i signal (assuming it is of comparable quality to the HD-A2).

According to the press release, the SHD7000 also has onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding. The HD DVD spec only requires players to be able to decode two channels of Dolby TrueHD, so we don’t know for sure if the SHD7000 will be able to decode multichannel Dolby TrueHD soundtracks (to date, all HD DVD players have handled 5.1 TrueHD decoding.) Like all other HD DVD players, the SHD7000 also has an Ethernet port, so it should be capable of playing networked enabled special features, as seen on titles like Blood Diamond. The press release also states that it will be able to upconvert regular DVDs and play standard audio CDs.

Microsoft Closes Popular Third-Party Windows Update App

Microsoft forced a popular alternative to Windows Update off the Internet today, sending the maker of AutoPatcher cease-and-desist e-mail. The free utility has been removed from its download site.

Microsoft did not give a reason for the move, which came more than four years after AutoPatcher debuted.

“Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history,” said Antonis Kaladis, the 20-year-old Greek college student and author of the program. “As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down.”

AutoPatcher, which was in version 5.6, let users collect Windows hotfixes and security patches from Microsoft’s update services, then package them so they could be applied to multiple machines, or reused multiple times on a single PC. It was especially popular among people who frequently reformatted drives or those who did informal tech support for friends and family, or in a small business.

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Nokia launches music, games download service on mobiles

World’s largest mobile handset manufacturer Nokia today introduced a new web platform — Ovi, which will enable its consumers to download music, games and other content directly to their phones.

In a direct competition to Apple’s itunes, the company also launched Nokia Music Store, which would be available from the fourth quarter this year. It would also offer N-Gage, which would allow users to buy games directly from a compatible Nokia device.

For music store, individual tracks would cost one euro while full albums would come for 10 euros, with a monthly subscription for PC starting from 10 euros.

Nokia has tied up with Universal music, Warner, EMI and Sony for its music store and various gaming companies for providing N-Gage. Games would cost 6-10 euros.

“Ovi is the gateway to Nokia’s internet services, including Nokia Music Store, Nokia Mapas and N-Gage games. It will also be an open door to web communities, enabling people to access their content and communities from a single place either directly from a compatible Nokia device or from a PC,” Nokia Senior Vice-President (Multimedia Experiences) told reporters here.

The company also launched two new express music models — Nokia 5310 and Nokia 5610, which would be available in India by the end of this year.

Nokia sold about 200 million music phones across the world last year, in which India contributed a significant part, Nokia Vice President (Sales and Channel Management, Multimedia in Asia Pacific) Jose-Luis Martinez told reporters here.

Google Phone Rumors: OS And Hardware

Whether this suggests that “Google is making a real push to launch something early next year and is no longer trying to keep everyone quiet” as TechCrunch posits or merely a change of direction for the normal rumor-mongers is something I’m not willing to put money on.

However, the rumors are logical, and it’s expected that Google will do something with mobiles beyond simply putting its services on there individually.

Engadget notes that Google bought mobile software company Android in 2005, and the team from there “has developed a Linux-based mobile device OS (no surprise) which they’re currently shopping around to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, customizable system—with really great Google integration, of course”.

This indicates that Google is looking to supply a platform, which would see it compete with Symbian and Windows Mobile.

CrunchGear reports (based on an insider tip) that HTC is working with Google to launch a Google Phone in the first quarter of 2008.

“Google is currently assessing over twenty HTC models and refining its final handset design and will create a special version of Google Maps, compatible with built-in GPS, and compatibility with Gmail and the calendar app. There is also some talk that Samsung will be releasing gPhone handsets as well, but that has not been confirmed…One extremely interesting point? Google Talk will become a part of the phone, adding VoIP capability to the hardware.”

This last bit isn’t very surprising—I’m betting on any Google handset to have WiFi access, and/or to work on any spectrum that Google may win in the upcoming auction in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Rizzn has reported (based on an anonymous Google insider) that “the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone…This is my analysis based on what he told me: It’ll probably be sold at a loss or sold as a loss leader to increase ad-monetized content viewing. Just a guess though”.

It does raise the point of the tension between operators, content providers and platform providers over who will get the lion’s share of ad/content revenue.

Sony’s USB Rootkit vs Sony’s Music Rootkit

Sony’s software installs a driver that creates a hidden folder using rootkit techniques.

This raises the question – while the techniques employed are similar – is this case as bad as the Sony BMG XCP DRM case
(i.e. the music rootkit)?

In a nutshell, the USB case is not as bad as the XCP DRM case. Why? Because…

The user understands that he is installing software, it’s on the included CD, and has a standard method of uninstalling that software.

The fingerprint driver does not hide its folder as “deeply” as does the XCP DRM folder. The MicroVault software probably wouldn’t hide malware as effectively from (some) real-time antivirus scanners.

The Microvault software does not hide processes or registry keys. XCP DRM did.

It’s also trickier to run executables from the hidden directory than with XCP. However, it can be done.

And lastly, there seems to be a use-case: The cloaking is most likely used to protect fingerprint authentication from tampering. Sony is attempting to protect the user’s own data. In the DRM case, Sony was attempting to restrict you – the user – from accessing the music on the CD you bought. So their intent was more beneficial to the consumer in this case.

However – this new rootkit (which can still be downloaded from sony.net) can be used by any malware author to hide any folder. We didn’t want to go into the details about this in our public postings, but we suppose the cat’s out of the bag now that our friends at McAfee blogged about this yesterday. If you simply extract one executable from the package and include it with malware, it will hide that malware’s folder, no questions asked.

We still haven’t received any kind of response from Sony International. Sony Sweden did however confirm in a public IDG story that the rootkit is indeed part of their software.

Amazon Pushes Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD With Promotions

Both the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD camps have launched their own campaigns to help entice consumers to join their respective sides of the high-definition format war. TThe Blu-ray side is currently offering five free movies with the purchase of any player. Toshiba and Microsoft are also offering a similar deal for the purchase of an HD DVD player, including the Xbox 360 add-on drive.

Amazon.com is going another step further by offering even more free movies with the purchase of a high-definition player. Customers buying a standalone Toshiba HD DVD player or a PlayStation 3 may choose an additional three movies, which stacks on top of the five-free-movies offers for a total of eight free movies with the purchase of a new player.

Xbox 360 owners wishing to ‘jump in’ to high-definition with the purchase of the HD DVD drive will receive two free movies from Amazon.com, which when accounting for the free King Kong movie included by Microsoft and the current five-free-movies promotion, also equals a total of eight movies.

Existing owners of high-definition players need not feel left out, however, as Amazon.com is also running a “buy three movies for the price of two” promotion without any requirement of a hardware purchase. See Amazon.com’s promotional splash page for the full details.

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Next Ubuntu, ‘Hardy Heron,’ to get full support

The first version of Ubuntu scheduled for next year will be called Hardy Heron and will be the second of Canonical’s Linux products to feature long-term support.

Ubuntu Developer Jono Bacon posted news of the new version on a mailing list and his blog on Wednesday.

He invited interested people to submit feature requests for the release at its Launchpad site. Canonical will hold an Ubuntu Developer Summit in October 2007 in Cambridge, Mass., to hash out details and implementation plans, he added.

Ubuntu’s next update, Gutsy Gibbon, is due in October and will sport the version number 7.10, a reference to the year and month of its release. Following the six-month release cycle, Hardy Heron, or 8.04, is scheduled for release in April 2008.

College campuses prepare for Microsoft Vista challenges

For some IT staffers at Northeastern University in Boston, Microsoft Vista’s enhanced security features mean trouble in an environment where students and professors crave open access to the network and scowl at any roadblocks in their way.

But the IT shop has no choice but to embrace the latest Windows operating system and prepare for mass deployments, because the campus will be flooded with new Vista machines this fall whether they’re ready or not.

Northeastern IT security manager Glenn Hill finds Vista’s security tools useful, including the enhanced encryption and user access controls. But he says students and faculty will surely have trouble navigating the new controls. The problems could result in an increase in calls to the information services department, he said.

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Symantec Rolls Out Internet Security 2008

The growing problem of identity theft is a key focus of the 2008 versions of Symantec’s Norton Internet Security and Antivirus programs, released on Tuesday. The Cupertino, California-based company said that the packages, designed for Windows XP and Windows Vista, feature enhanced protection against identity theft and other online security threats.

A new Norton feature, Identity Safe, allows users to control what information is shared with a Web site. It stores and encrypts passwords and other confidential data until needed, and automatically fills in passwords and Web forms. This feature is designed to protect against keystroke loggers — hidden malware that secretly captures keystrokes, then transmits the data to a remote attacker.

Identity Safe embodies some of the ideas in Symantec’s Identity Initiative. First announced in January, the Initiative is an attempt by Symantec to address what Forrester analyst Natalie Lambert called the “huge problem” of identity theft. According to Symantec, 53 percent of Internet users no longer give personal information to Web sites because of identity theft fears, and 14 percent have stopped paying bills online.

Google is working on a mobile OS, and it’s due out shortly

Can it be true? Is the Googlephone nigh at hand? Not that we haven’t been hearing this time after time (after time after time, etc.), but we’ve actually got some hot news from a number of very trustworthy sources about Google’s plans for the mobile space. Namely, Google’s mobile device platform is well on its way, and will be announced in the very near future.

We understand that the “Gphone OS” (our name for it, not theirs) began development after Google’s very quiet 2005 acquisition of mobile software company Android, started by Danger cofounder and former-prez / CEO Andy Rubin. At Google, Andy’s team has developed a Linux-based mobile device OS (no surprise) which they’re currently shopping around to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, customizable system — with really great Google integration, of course.

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