As reported by Hollywood In Hi-Def (via PS3 Fanboy), Universal president Craig Kornblau apparently wants the format war to continue.

From all of this I gather that Universal hates to give consumers what they want. Truly. Let’s take a look at the points he specified and why they’re problematic (disclaimer: I own a PS3, and I love Blu Ray):

• Kornblau: Universal initially backed only one format, because it didn’t want a war. So let me get this straight: before, Universal backed HD-DVD exclusively because a format war is bad for consumers. Now, Universal is maintaining their support, because a format war is good for consumers? If it was bad then, it’s bad now. What this says to me is that they want the format war to continue, because the format they backed exclusively has not won.
• Kornblau: All the other studios get kickbacks for supporting hardware providers too. Quite true. However, the only studio to have exclusives with HD-DVD is Universal.
• Kornblau: Competition is forcing the price down. I don’t really agree with this at all. Blu Ray players are not dropping in price excessively fast. What’s more, Toshiba’s constant price dropping has all but killed the third party hardware support market. Toshiba has done a good job in dropping the pricing on HD-DVD players, by taking a huge loss. However, competitive pricing does not come from driving competing hardware vendors out of the market.
• Kornblau: Universal dropping their HD-DVD exclusivity would kill HD-DVD. Quite possibly true, but why is that any concern of theirs? Aside from having backed it exclusively from the start. Consumers are the ones who are making the choice in the market place.
• Kornblau: Blu Ray provides less interactive and connected features than HD-DVD. Universal hasn’t exactly been churning out the great next-gen must-have content on HD-DVD. What’s more, I’ve got a secret for you, Universal: I’m buying the movie primarily for the movie in high definition. Yes, extras are nice, but what I care about 95% of the time is just the movie. Plus, Blu Ray continues to innovate in this department.
• Kornblau: Backing HD-DVD is a long term and consumer-focused strategy. This is the most disingenous claim of them all. Backing HD-DVD is not a consumer-focused strategy. Universal is not looking at the market place. They’ve planted their flag in the sand and are stubbornly holding to it. If they were really consumer-focused, they would let the market decide the winner. To decide for the market is insulting.

All that said, here is an open letter to Universal, from yours truly:

To Whom It May Concern at Universal Studios,

I am a movie fan, and am disappointed that I cannot buy any of your content in high definition format. While I know you have movies available in HD-DVD, I can only play Blu Ray. What I don’t understand is why you steadfastly only support HD-DVD.

I am not asking you to drop support for HD-DVD. I understand you have backed them exclusively from the start, and do not want to waiver in your support. What I am suggesting is that you support Blu Ray as well. Just give it a try and see how the market reacts.

To continue to be the only major studio to exclusively back HD-DVD, while claiming this is for the good of the consumer, is a bit patronizing to your consumer base. The workings of the free market are such that market changes occur due to consumer choice. These subtle changes do not occur because you believe that they should be so.

The following is a list of movies and shows that I would have liked to have bought, had they been available in Blu Ray format (based on your release lists from July 2007 - November 2007):

- The Bourne Identity
- Hot Fuzz
- Shaun Of the Dead
- Serenity
- Heroes: Season 1
- The Bourne Supremacy
- Scarface

The problem is, you have a limited window. While it may be that I still want to buy all these movies later, I am in a buy-friendly mood right now, being that I have only gotten a Blu Ray player this year. I have to date already bought nine movies, and hope to buy more. I’m not even buying good movies, mind you. However, your continued
aversion to supporting Blu Ray means that I will not be buying any Universal movies. This saddens me, because in addition to the above, there are many Universal films that I would love to buy, including Jurassic Park, Spy Game, 12 Monkeys, The Blues Brothers, Back to the Future (trilogy), and many, many others. What’s more, my desire and
interest in buying these movies decreases as my Blu Ray collection increases.

Even though state-side Blu Ray is outselling HD-DVD 2:1 (as showcased in the recent multi-format release of 300), I know that this format war is still early. It could in fact be that the high definition video war will succumb to the direct-to-download model. However, this is still something you should leave to consumer choice.

I want very much to give you my money in exchange for high definition versions of your movies. Please consider my plea, along with the plea of many other Blu Ray player owners. If we have already bought a Blu Ray player, we are obviously quite willing to spend even more for high definition videos. (In fact, we have self-selected ourselves as
people who are willing to spend large sums of money!) Do the capitalist thing and listen to your potential customers. We would certainly be willing to pay!

Sincerely,

John

Now, for some rampant unproven speculation, which the Internet is famous for! This is why I precede all of the following bullet points with “I believe” — it means it’s an opinion, and not fact.

• I believe Universal is getting kickbacks from major corporations to continue their exclusive backing. (Microsoft? Hello?)
• I believe these kickbacks far exceed the revenue that Universal anticipates they would receive from Blu Ray sales alone.
• I believe Universal thinks that they can boost their multi-format sales, by getting people to buy into HD-DVD as much as possible now, then switching to Blu Ray when it emerges later, forcing a re-buy.
• I believe Universal is stubborn, in that they wanted to support one format from the start, and are unwilling to change their stance lest they have to admit a mistake.
• I believe Universal hates the idea of backing anything Sony-related (as Blu Ray is), as Sony has a competing movie studio.
• I believe Universal thinks that the high definition market is still too small for serious consideration.

There you go! Am I right? Horribly off? Let me know in comments. Hi HD-DVD fanboys!

I love the Internet. Did I mention I love the Internet? I do. I especially love shopping on the Internet. You go somewhere, click a few buttons, enter in your credit card and voila — a couple days later, some new shiny item.

However, one of the things that really frustrates the hell out of me are those stupid coupon code boxes. You know the ones. You’re cruising along, happy as a clam, and then suddenly:

If you’re in the know, you’re all set. However, if you’re like most people, you stare forlornly at that empty box, knowing that fabulous discounts are hidden away from you because you don’t know the secret password. It’s almost like it’s there to intentionally taunt you. Why oh why do online stores do this to you? Why can’t they just charge lower prices?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling this frustration. A friend of mine started this site with coupon codes to bring help to the masses:

The idea is simple: providing a clearing house of coupon codes for folks who need it. If you know a coupon code, enter it on the site for others. If you need one, come to the site and look it up. They even have a bookmarklet so you can look up a site with just a click.

This is exactly what’s so great about the Internet: there’s a problem many people have, so someone writes a solution to it. Everyone can benefit from this solution, for free. Awesome. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some shopping to do.

Take this quiz to find out what sort of computer user you are!

Remember Palm? They were a little company that produced this kickass product called the Treo, which combined a phone and PDA in one awesome, convergent device. They just released the Palm Foleo, to the oohs and ahhs of…well…no one. It’s a separate add-on, about the size of a laptop, that allows you to edit documents or web surf on your phone. That’s right — it’s a glorified keyboard and video screen for your phone.

Oh Palm, what happened to you? At one point, you were the de facto source for PDAs. A brief flirtation with Kyocera brought you to the phone, and culminated in the ultimate convergent device: the Treo.

Then Blackberry started eating your lunch. You had the Treo camp, and you had the Blackberry camp, with the BB camp recruiting new users daily. (Quiet you Pocket PC owners, you were never in the game.) You released the Treo 650, which was a nice upgrade. Then the Treo 700 — an incremental move. Then, the 750…then the 755p…small improvements that went quietly in the background, while Blackberry started cranking some some seriously usable devices. It was time to really strike the market, and show people that Palm was an innovative company. The next product was going to be a must-have device.

So what the hell is the Foleo? Here’s what I don’t understand:

• Going away from convergence. Palm really put convergent devices on the map with the Treo. An all-in-one device that was small enough to take everywhere — this was great. Everyone rushed to follow suit, because the consumers really wanted this. People want a device they can use on the go. They don’t want separate devices. So why does Palm suddenly think people want a separate device? No one else thinks this, and as the voice of one consumer, I can tell you: I do not want this.
• Sizing is not portable. This thing is a beast. If it’s a mobile device, it has to be small. This thing is not — it’s the size of a laptop, which brings us to the next item…
• It competes with a laptop. Most business users have a laptop. I have three of them. Am I really going to want to add this thing beside my other laptops? What’s the point? If I’m going to be viewing documents or surfing the web, then of course I’m going to prefer my laptop. However, rather than focus on making the Palm work better with the laptop, Palm is creating a laptop replacement.
• It’s priced competitively with a laptop. So, this thing is not a laptop. It lacks a hard drive, it’s underpowered, and doesn’t give much in terms of choice of operating systems or software. Yet, it costs $600. Sure, you get a $100 rebate, but it still will cost me $600 out of pocket. I can get laptops for that amount. Full-blown, fully functional with hard drive laptops.

I want to know what the management at Palm was thinking. Who thought this would be the end all, be all? If this were released near the beginning of April, I would think this must be some kind of April Fool’s Day joke. Oh, what has become of the almighty Palm? Are they just trying to make themselves an easier acquisition target?

Ever wanted to add a quiz to your site? Do you just like taking random quizzes? Quibblo.com is for you.

We’ve all been pretty excited about actually launching this thing, and it’s finally live! From a poll on how you’ll vote in 2008 to a quiz on what kind of cat you are, it has a broad range of topics. Plus, people can actually create their own quizzes too.

Some other good ones on site:

• Family Guy Trivia
• Match the song to the artist
• How healthy is your relationship?
• Arrested Development Quiz

Quiz sites aren’t exactly new, but this one is pretty slick. Check it out!

There’s been a lot of buzz regarding Microsoft’s stepped up Windows Activation scheme. An Infoworld article noted headaches some customers have been experiencing around the activation. This includes Dell customers who had issues, contacted Microsoft, who told them to contact Dell, who foisted them back on Microsoft, with no real resolution. There’s nothing more frustrating than having your office network shut down, especially when you’re a legitimate corporate customer. I had previously thought that there was no way Microsoft would tinker with burning their corporate customers, but apparently, I was wrong. This just seems like playing with fire — but then again, if you have a monopolistic hold on the business world, you can burn a few folks.

Microsoft claims this problem is overblown, and that it affects a very small percentage. Did they ever consider that a small percentage of a large number of users is still a rather significant number? Or that any false positives might be considered unacceptable? Businesses rely on their computers, and shutting them down creates a huge burden, especially for the small business. (Although, large business would arguably have an even greater problem.) The reason I can’t quite accept their reasoning is that I’ve actually experienced the false positive problem.

One of the users at my office noted that his machine was asking to be re-activated, which I found odd. I checked, and lo and behold, he was right. I ended up having to call Microsoft to work through the re-activation, which did not work. After putting in a bit of time trying to get things re-activated in this “proper” method, I ended up just re-ghosting the machine. Lost time trying to get the activation going, reghosting the machine, and user setup, all for something that has added no value. Thanks, Microsoft.

Now, of course, I have the joy of waiting in suspense for the machines to start having activation issues, one by one throughout the office. Isn’t it great being a Microsoft customer? That Linux stuff is looking better every day. At least there customers aren’t treated like criminals.

YouTube has been drawing a lot of heat due to its questionable copyright stance. With a user-uploaded content base, it’s pretty much unavoidable that they will have copyright issues. It’s arguable whether or not YouTube’s financial success hinges on this — on the one hand, the copyrighted content is one of YouTube’s biggest draws, and it couldn’t have established such a user base without it; on the other, YouTube is a fantastic place to find original user-generated content. Also, as sites struggle with traffic in their video hosting, it’s nice to have YouTube as a mirror to supplement that load.

The latest in the debacle is a lawsuit from Robert Tur, over the upload of the video of Reginald Denny getting beaten during the LA riots in 1992. This lawsuit is asinine, and I’ll tell you why.

The lawsuit notes that the video in question has been viewed over 1,000 times. Here’s the asinine part: “Tur is asking the court for $150,000 per violation and an injunction barring any further use of his material.” The injunction is fine. Asking for $150,000 per violation is ridiculous. So, for someone uploading a video, and 1,000 people watching it, Tur expects $150,000,000? Let’s look at the comparative revenue lost. Let’s say Tur had produced a DVD for release of this clip. The clip itself is pretty short, so it’d be a pretty empty DVD, but let’s say he filled it out with extras such as interviews with the cameraman. Let’s also say that somehow, he gets DVDs produced for free. Most DVDs come in at under $20 (some way cheaper), but let’s say he sells it for $20. (That’d be way better than the measly $10 he might pull from theatre showings, provided the theatres gave him all the proceeds and kept nothing.) Let’s also presume, as unlikely as it is, that all 1,000 people who watched the clip were absolutely going to buy it, but after watching the clip, suddenly were not due to the fact that watching a grainy low resolution YouTube clip was all they needed to sate their appetite. Total lost revenue in this best case scenario: $20 x 1,000 incidents = $20,000. What justifies this 7,500x increase to $150,000,000? Let’s say YouTube’s advertising was absolutely fantastic and able to do the impossible, generating a whopping $1 for every user that came to their page. Gross lost profit plus earned advertising revenue = $21,000. Still just a bit short of that $150 million mark. It’s not even like Tur is losing syndicated revenue from use of the clip in more traditional means — no documentary or news show is going to go to YouTube, download the video, and show it to circumvent Tur. In fact, any producer worth his or her salt would be extremely leary of using anything on YouTube, without making damned sure that the ownership of the clip was well worked out.

YouTube seems to understand copyright law pretty well, so they will most likely come out in the clear. YouTube staff didn’t upload the clip; end users did. In that sense, they might be classified as a common carrier. Internet newsgroups went through this debacle years ago, so it’s not like this is new. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that the most YouTube has to do is provide a means to report copyrighted content, and take it down if requested. They have done so. But Tur didn’t even ask YouTube to take down the work — he went straight to suing. In that sense, I side with YouTube on this.

Whether or not YouTube is right is arguable: one could successfully argue that a significant amount of their revenue comes from copyrighted material. One could also argue that it’s users, not YouTube, who are behaving badly. One could even argue that YouTube should monitor all content that gets posted. (That last one is a bit implausible, however: given the number of users, the number of posts, and the difficulty of recognizing copyrighted content without false positives and false negatives, it’s just unlikely that it could be done well.) Suing them over it is probably not going to get a huge result. Unless laws change, they appear to be in good standing. This isn’t a lawsuit about copyright infringement: it’s a lawsuit about seeing dollar signs. After all, with a $150,000,000 lawsuit, would you consider settling for, oh, I don’t know, $500,000? Possibly. However, if YouTube is smart, they won’t. Or every content producer is going to come after YouTube with their hand held out, asking for their cut. YouTube has great word-of-mouth power: as a content producer, you should be leveraging that for greater reach, not killing it! If I see a low-res clip on YouTube and like it, then I may buy the DVD. Even NBC has come around to this point of view. Tur should take note, because we’re all anxiously awaiting his DVD.

When it first came out, I lamented the PSP’s use of UMD format. After all, it was a proprietary format, tightly controlled by Sony, and seeing how well both minidiscs and memory sticks worked out, I didn’t see it as entirely viable. Now, I read everywhere about how the UMD format is officially dead. It was doomed as a platform on which movie studios could release films; why in the world would anyone want to pay full price for a movie that 1) was lower quality than a DVD, and 2) could only play on a PSP handheld? There was no way Sony could leverage itself into the portable multimedia market to such a saturation as to make it a viable platform in that regard, when working with proprietary formats. Even viewing video clips on the PSP is difficult — you have to convert them to the right aspect ratio and format before they’ll even work. What about a tie-in with Apple or other online music sources? There were so many holes in that plan that yes, it was doomed to fail. (I like the PSP as a gaming platform, mind you. The other extras are nice, but definitely not user-friendly.)

Why does UMD have to just die? The bigger question is why Sony is abandoning this format altogether. It’s not hopeless. Some quick ideas off the top of my head:

• Release a UMD reader / writer. This opens up the PC market, and possibly the home theater market. If you’re going to have a proprietary format, you might as well make it easy for people to actually use it. (They’ll never do this because they worry about piracy of UMD media, such as PSP games.)
• Use UMD as a value-added addition to DVD releases. Why would I want to buy a movie in UMD format, only to buy it again in DVD format? Give it to me for free when I buy the movie, or for a nominal, additional fee. I can see myself buying a UMD if it was for, say, a dollar or two more above a DVD’s purchase price.
• Build a promotional base and use UMDs for promotional materials. They’re already trying to build distribution points for PSP media; why not build a customer postal mailing list, and provide promotions through the mail on UMD?

Of all these suggestions, the first has the most power, and yet, is the one they’re least likely to do. Oh well, at least it’ll be a lesson to Sony, which they never seem to learn: stop cramming proprietary formats down the throats of your customers!

Uh oh, it looks like the geocaching may be getting into dangerous territory with the authorities. For those not in the know, geocaching is a GPS game, where a person hides a “cache”, typically in a tupperware container or old ammo box, and provides the coordinates online. Other folks then use the coordinates and hints provided on a web site to locate the cache. This is a game that’s been around for a few years, and is played all around the world — as of this writing there are 236, 596 registered caches in 220 countries. Chances are good that if you live near a major metropolitan area and are in a nearby park that there’s a cache there. There in almost every recreational park I’ve visited in New England. It’s played by a lot of people and is very kid-friendly — this is frequently a Boy Scout activity. Since I like to hike, it gives me a little extra something to do, aside from just hiking a trail.

Unfortunately, as reported by The Morning Call, a geocacher was mistaken for a possible terrorist. I can’t say this is entirely a surprise, especially post 9/11. I mean, what would you think if you never heard of geocaching, then see some guy with a device for tracking global positioning wandering around secluded areas? Lt. Joe Chernaskey commented, ”From the bomb squad side of it, it’s something we really frown upon, because all these calls could cause havoc throughout the city. In this day and age, with people worried about terrorists, this isn’t the smartest thing to do.” That definitely typefies the muggle reaction. (A geomuggle is a non-geocacher, a reference to muggles in Harry Potter.) It’s a game, and a rather broad reaching game, yet many people still don’t know of its existence.

Also from the article: “Bethlehem will absorb the cost of Tuesday’s response, said Fire Commissioner George Barkanic, but if calls about suspicious packages continue to come in, the costs of investigating them will be paid by the people who hid the caches.” (Emphasis added.) Keep in mind these are caches that are hidden with permission from the proper authorities to hide caches on the land. If such policies were enacted, you would probably see a quick removal of many caches, due to liability — no one is going to want to have to risk footing that emergency service bill.

I understand the alternative view point: we’re in a state of heightened security, so things like geocaching seem, well, risky. However, one has to wonder where to draw that line. We can’t just keep hiding our heads in the sand. Should we live in fear of constant attack, staying inside and locking our doors; or should we go out and enjoy the world as it is? In which case do the terrorists win?

South Korea has been in a lot of hot water lately over the human cloning scandal, where the almost legendary and revered Dr. Hwang Woo Suk fabricated his research to put South Korea at the forefront of biotechnology. According to this New York Times article, all his success in human cloning was completely faked, which means that South Korea is no closer to that technology than anyone else. This is unfortunate for the field of biotech. However, what’s even more unfortunate are the people who continue to laud their support on this faker. In the field of research, the one thing you cannot do is lie. That defeats the purpose of the research itself, and makes it a political game. That’s not to say research shouldn’t be political, but the research itself should be based on fact. To do otherwise is to forever tarnish your scientific reputation.

I’m a little annoyed by Xeni Jardin’s Boing Boing headline, “Snuppy the cloned Korean dog: Faked?” From the article, the cloned dog appears to be the one point of legitimacy in Hwang’s research, which means that Xeni’s headline is completely wrong. It’s in fact, the exact opposite. It’s in the article you linked, Xeni! The reason this annoys me so much is that I know that Snuppy’s cloning itself is under scrutiny, which implied to me an update. Such was not forthcoming.