Category: Digital media

More on the single-play DVD

Earlier this week, I posted an item debunking a story that claimed Microsoft is on the verge of introducing a “cheap, disposable” single-play DVD.

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff, in his loose wire blog, says he doesn’t know what to believe:

I contacted the author, business editor Tony Glover, who says the online publication “stand[s] by the story 100% and will be running a follow-up on Sunday naming sources”.

Well, that should be interesting. Glover’s original story appeared in The Business and its online edition, under the headline Microsoft invents a one-play only DVD to combat Hollywood piracy. (And his by-line lists him as Technology Editor, not business editor.)

The story is unsourced and lacks any details that would allow an independent reader to do any further investigation. It also makes a bold assertion that is thoroughly contradicted by known facts:

Computer software giant Microsoft has developed a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once. … The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them.”

Break it down:

Microsoft has developed a new DVD disc? That’s just plain wrong on its face. Microsoft doesn’t develop optical disc formats. Anyone who follows digital technology knows there are two next-generation optical drive formats due out next year. One is the Blu-Ray Disc, from a Sony-led consortium, and the other is the HD DVD format, from a consortium led by Toshiba. Both formats have been under development for some time and are due to be introduced next year. Microsoft didn’t develop either format, although they recently threw their support behind the HD DVD, which was approved by the DVD Forum in December 2003.

Disposable discs that can be played one time only? This is almost certainly a reference to digital rights management features in Windows Media. If a content provider chooses to use the DRM features in the Windows Media format, they have all sorts of options, including the ability to specify an expiration date for a media file, or to specify how many times it can be played, or to require a subscription. Again, there’s nothing new here; the DRM-enabled Windows Media video format has been around for more than two years. (See the Digital Media Timeline here, and note that WMV HD was added in January 2003. For details on what content providers can do with Windows Media DRM, see “Enabling DRM on Windows Media High Definition Video DVD ROM Discs,” available in Word format here, for more details.)

The rest of the story was a complete mishmash, jumping from discussions of downloadable content to the fortunes of Netflix without ever making much of a point. It’s exactly what one might expect from a business writer who is trying to write about a complex technology he doesn’t really understand. (That’s why I avoid stories about the business side of Microsoft or its stock price. I’m not an expert.)

Wagstaff says my story was “intemperate”:

When a writer finds a story they believe to be untrue, they should try to contact the author for comment when publishing their ‘knock-down’ story. At the very least, they must show they have authoritative sources who contest the story’s accuracy or veracity (not the same thing) and make this clear. They might also choose careful language which allows for the possibility of gray between the black and the white — “source X said he knew of no such meeting/product/agreement”, or “company X denied the story and said on the contrary it had no plans for xxxx”. Saying something is a hoax/has no truth to it/is bogus without enclosing the comment in quotes is not only a tad extreme, it’s not good journalistic practice. Imagine if someone did it to you.

Contact the author? Please. When a journalist publishes a story, it stands on its own. If the story is wrong, the story is wrong. This sensational story was picked up by dozens of sites, none of whom bothered to contact the author or Microsoft before amplifying it. The story took on a life of its own and it should be judged on its own merits, which are sorely lacking.

I will agree that “hoax” was a poorly chosen word. That implies deception on the part of the author, and the more likely explanation was that the author simply jumped to unwarranted conclusions based on an inadequate understanding of the technology. It’s also possible that he was deliberately “spun” by a source. But without giving any details of where the story came from in the first place, all we can do is guess.

I’ll publish a link to the follow-up story when I see it posted.

Update: Tony Glover posted his reply a day early. Here’s the follow-up.

Single-play DVDs? It’s a hoax

On the Internet, a hoax can spread just as fast as a genuine news story. That’s the lesson from the bogus story published in an obscure UK business magazine yesterday that claimed Microsoft is about to unleash a new single-play DVD format.

Paul Thurrott reprinted the story without giving credit to the original source. Bink.nu picked up the story from Paul and reprinted it verbatim.

Techdirt commented on the original story, with attribution but without any fact-checking. So did John Walkenbach.

The funny part? There’s no truth to the story. None whatsoever. In fact, the original story sparked a flurry of e-mails around Microsoft as people in different groups tried to figure out where on earth this story came from. After the head-scratching stopped, a spokesmen told me, they concluded that the story was not true. “It appears to be confusing an existing feature within Windows Media DRM that allows for single-play of promotional digital material. This has been an option for content owners to use for some time for the Windows Media format – it does not apply to MPEG2 content found on DVDs.”

Downloaded content in the Windows Media format can be DRM-protected, and if the content owner wants to limit it to a specific number of plays, or to set an expiration date for the content, that’s an option, just as it is with subscription-based music services. But it’s only one of many options, and it has nothing to do with DVDs.

So, case closed. The single-play DVD format can go back to the 1990s, where it rightfully belongs.

Updates:

An “unlikely” defense of the one-play DVD story

More on the single-play DVD

[Cross-posted at Ed Bott’s Media Central]

The secret of perfect CD ripping

In today’s Washington Post, Michael Tedeschi has a column on lossless audio formats. While it has some good information, it starts with a crucial error:

You may not have realized that the song playing through the earbuds of your MP3 player is actually a lower-quality, digitally compressed version of the original recording.

But try playing that same MP3 file on a high-end home stereo system and you’ll likely hear some hisses and snaps and pops in the music — even if you bought it from a download service such as iTunes or ripped it from your own copy of the original CD.

Sorry, but that’s not correct. A compressed audio file sounds worse than the original because big chunks of bandwidth have been chopped off. The highs and lows have been removed to save space. Update: As Dan notes in the comments, there’s more to the story than my original explanation would suggest: “Mp3s sound bad because frequency data has been altered and removed throughout the entire audible spectrum. The cleverer versions of the algorithm will alter the critical midrange, where one’s hearing is most acute, less than the extremes of the spectrum, but, in general, chunks of highs and lows aren’t just getting “chopped off.” The entire spectrum is being simplified (gutted, if you will).”

Clicks and pops can occur even if you use a lossless format like FLAC or Shorten or Windows Media Lossless or Apple Lossless. That usually happens during the ripping process. If there’s a scratch or other flaw on the CD, or if your CD drive is less than perfect, or if your CPU can’t keep up with the data being extracted, the result is a digital copy filled with errors.

In fact, every time you rip a CD using a consumer-grade tool, you’re probably getting less-than-perfect copies. If you’re just making copies for your portable music player, this might be no big deal, but if you’re an audiophile exchanging copies of live performances, it’s hugely important.

The solution? Try Exact Audio Copy. This postcard-ware program is an audiophile’s dream. Used in secure mode, it makes copies that are as close to perfect as you can get.

Highly recommended.

Why does hi-def equal high price?

Through a random series of links, I read about a new service called MusicGiants, which recently opened its “high definition” digital music service. The online store offers tracks in Windows Media Lossless format (450 – 1100 kbps) instead of selling compressed MP3, WMA, or AAC tracks, as other music services do.

Good idea. On audiophile-quality equipment (including a Windows Media Center PC), I can hear the noticeable difference between a 128K MP3 and an original CD or a track ripped in lossless format. Those lossy files are fine on a portable player, but not in my living room.

And I really wanted to like MusicGiants. But after reviewing the terms of the deal, I give it a big thumbs down. What’s not to like? Plenty:

  • The software only runs on Windows XP or Windows 2000. Not a deal-breaker for me, but still, not a user-friendly approach.
  • There’s a $50 annual fee. The fee’s waived if you buy $250 worth of music per year, and you get a credit equal to the value of the fee for the first year, but still…
  • Each track costs $1.29. An entire album costs $15.29. By contrast, I just paid $10.99 for the new Neil Young album, Prairie Wind, from Amazon.com. I regularly buy used CDs from Half.com for much less. Charging this price is ridiculous. Especially when …
  • The tracks are “protected” with Windows Digital Rights Management. In exchange for accepting the restrictions on my right to listen to the music I’ve purchased, I should get a hefty discount, not pay a premium.

In fairness to the company, they’re probably not setting the price. Since they have deals with the big record labels, they’re not going to get a deal that’s any better than Steve Jobs got.

But then I read this profile of the company in Business Week:-Is This Digital Music’s Future? And I think the company may be truly clueless:

That’s why MusicGiants plans to sell a $9,500, 400-gigabyte device called the SoundVault that would sit in the stereo cabinet, just like a CD-player or receiver. (The package includes hardware, a high-end sound processing card, and networking gear.) That way, MusicGiants’ customers could bypass their PCs and load songs directly into their living room stereo. “It’s hard to sell gas, if no one has a car,” says [founder and CEO Scott] Bahneman, who hopes to get out of the hardware business as soon as other gear starts to appear.

$9500? And then another $6000 to fill it up? Please send me a bag of whatever this guy’s smoking, because it must be truly mind-bending shit. If anyone out there is willing to pay 15 grand for this product, I’m in the wrong business. I can build a super high-end Media Center system and fill it with perfectly legal lossless music for … oh, let’s say about $5000-6000. And it would also replace the TiVo and the DVD player and do digital photography too. If I can sell one or two of these babies per month for the price that these guys want to charge, I can make a pretty fabulous living.

Anyone want to take bets on how long this company lasts?

[Cross-posted at Ed Bott’s Media Central.]

Windows Explorer, Media Player, and big libraries

Thomas Hawk ranted about Media Center the other day. Charlie Owen and Matt Goyer of Microsoft’s Media Center team responded (Matt on his own blog and in comments on Thomas’s blog), and the upshot is that Thomas’s complaints are being taken very seriously.

I’ll have more to say about the MCE part of this post over on Ed Bott’s Media Central, although probably not till next week. But I want to address one of Thomas’s specific complaints here, because it’s more related to Windows in general.

Some background: Thomas has a very, very large digital music library. Last December, when he and I first exchanged details of this problem, Thomas’s library contained 141,000 files. I’m sure it’s larger now.

Thomas says he encounters disk errors when he tries to copy or back up those files:

Windows Explorer sucks. With a large digital library I simply cannot effectively copy files or back files up without having disc errors. Large batch copy jobs are super difficult as one little error aborts the whole job.

Let’s break this down. As Charlie Owen noted in his response, and I can attest, this is not normal behavior. I have 19 hard disks, internal and external, distributed among seven computers in my office. Collectively they represent well over 3 terabytes of storage. I move large numbers of files between computers constantly. I routinely copy the 16,000 files in my music library over network connections between external hard disks, and I don’t get disk errors. Now, if I try to copy a group of files, one of which is in use and locked by a running process, then Windows Explorer will stop. That is a weakness in Windows Explorer that is (1) being fixed in Windows Vista and (2) easily avoided by using third-party file-management tools. (It’s also what I was referring to when I said Thomas had a “legitimate complaint.”) But aside from that known issue, I’ve never encountered the problems Thomas describes. Nor should any properly configured Windows system, Media Center or otherwise.

So why is this happening to Thomas? I’ve read his complaints on this issue and we’ve exchanged some e-mail messages on this topic in the past. Thomas has told me that MP3 files are being randomly corrupted at frequent intervals. This is not normal behavior. It is not caused by Windows or Windows Media Player. There is no reason why any Windows user should get even a single corrupted file. If this happens, it indicates either a hardware problem (such as a buggy USB controller), a bad configuration (like cached writes being lost during copies), or data being damaged by software.

If I were Thomas, I would do the following things:

First, I would run a thorough diagnostic tool (like Ontrack’s Data Advisor) on all of the hard drives that were giving me problems.

Second, I would convince one of my buddies at Microsoft to put me in touch with an engineer who could verify that all drivers in my storage subsystem were working properly. If necessary, I would have that engineer hook up a remote debugger and then start the copy process until it fails, so that the exact error could be captured.

Third, I would find an MP3 diagnostic utility and check all of my MP3 files to see if any of them have damaged tags. The MP3 file format is flaky, especially in files that use the older ID3v1 format. If the file format is damaged, it could be causing problems during copies. I suspect that the WMP option to save star ratings to music files might be at least partially to blame for this problem. (In fact, I would recommend that Thomas use a batch MP3-editing program to translate all ID3v1 tags to ID3v2 and then rewrite all tags. This would be time-consuming but would have long-term benefits.)

Fourth, I would temporarily disable all features in WMP 10 that update or change music file metadata, especially those that affect star ratings. (This would not have any impact on currently stored ratings.) I would also disable folder monitoring temporarily.

Somewhere in that process, I’m sure the real cause of this problem would become apparent. Is this a lot of work? Well, yes, but this is also an absolutely certain way to fix the problem once and for all.

This week’s not-so-random 20 songs

The usual rules are to shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 20 tracks, no matter what. This week’s list is a little different, in honor of recent events. It’s formatted as song title, artist, and album (in italics):

  1. New Orleans Wins the War, Randy Newman, Land of Dreams
  2. New Orleans, Dr. John the Night Tripper, Dr. John: The Essential Recordings
  3. Down South in New Orleans, The Band, The Last Waltz
  4. Tipitina, Professor Longhair, Louisiana Spice
  5. Sunrise on the Mississippi, Bruce Cockburn, Dart to the Heart
  6. Delta Queen, Leftover Salmon, Live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2003
  7. High Water (for Charley Patton), Bob Dylan, Love and Theft
  8. So Many Rivers to Cross, Maria Muldaur, Louisiana Love Call
  9. Down in the Flood, Bob Dylan, Masked and Anonymous (soundtrack)
  10. How Can I Help But Love You, Aaron Neville, Treacherous: A History of the Neville Brothers
  11. Help the Poor, B. B. King, Riding with the King
  12. I Cried, The Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama, The Sermon
  13. Christmas in Washington, Steve Earle, Live at Newport 2004
  14. Some Humans Ain’t Human, John Prine, Fair & Square
  15. Big Hat, No Cattle, Randy Newman, Bad Love
  16. Real Situation, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Songs of Freedom
  17. Dawn in a New World, Ottmar Liebert, Solo Para Ti
  18. Land of Hope and Dreams, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Live in New York City
  19. After the Rain Has Fallen, Sting, Brand New Day
  20. Dry Spell, The Meters, Look-ka Py Py

Back to random songs next week.

Would you like some ads with your iPod?

Dwight Silverman has exactly the right reaction to this story. Would you download a ‘pod mercial’?

As a tech columnist, I get bombarded with news releases. Every now and then, I get one that totally confuses me. Should I laugh out loud? Weep? Be frightened that these folks might actually be serious?

The one I got today from Diskeeper Corp. — formerly Executive Software — belongs in this category.

They’re offering “Pod Mercials” — commercials for their products you download and listen to on your portable music player.

That’s right. You got it. Annoying commercials you download by choice.

What is completely baffling to me is that 16,500 people downloaded this thing.