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<strong>Veritas</strong> <strong>et</strong> <strong>Visus</strong> <strong>Display</strong> <strong>Standard</strong> February 2009<br />
Plasma TVs face being banned in Europe<br />
The EU is contemplating a plan to kill off plasma televisions across Europe because they burn too much power.<br />
According to reports in the Italian press, the EU might make a ruling on the technology in the spring.<br />
Commissioners are about to release new guidelines on the consumption of television screens. While LCD screens<br />
scrape through the new requirements, the plasma screens use too much energy. A 42-inch plasma TV consumes 822<br />
watts of electricity in comparison with 350 watts of a flat screen LCD and 322 watts of a cathode ray tube. Among<br />
the plans is to put a system of labels on televisions so that punters will know how much they are going to consume.<br />
This has been done for some time with fridges and other appliances, but not for TVs.<br />
Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM and sell pirated HD discs<br />
Movie pirates have moved on to selling high-definition discs. The HD discs are not genuine Blu-ray discs and don’t<br />
have as high resolution as Blu-ray does, but can fool. Law enforcement in Shenzhen, China, raided a warehouse<br />
that contained HD copies of a number of popular movies. There were over 800 discs that were packaged in false<br />
Blu-ray boxes, compl<strong>et</strong>e with holograms to make them appear legitimate. According to the Motion Picture<br />
Association International, this is the first ever seizure of these types of discs in China. The pirates are apparently<br />
ripping high-def movies (cracking Blu-ray's AACS and BD+ encryption in the process) and re-encoding them using<br />
AVCHD, which offers a 720p picture. Because of the reduction in resolution, file sizes are smaller and can be<br />
burned to regular DVDs instead of the more costly Blu-ray discs.<br />
Pony/Canyon releases Blu-ray/DVD hybrid<br />
Software maker Pony/Canyon will release the first Blu-ray/DVD movie hybrid in Japan in February 2009, in an<br />
attempt to accelerate consumer transition from the DVD format to Blu-ray. The disc uses an efficient encoding<br />
algorithm (based on the MPEG-4 AVC H.264), because the available Blu-ray capacity (25GB) on it was not<br />
enough. Full HD of 1920x1080 pixel resolution is compressed, as well as 24p/60i down to 12-24Mbps. That is the<br />
opposite of what Blu-ray is supposed to do, which is expand the viewing capacity to such a degree that it doesn’t<br />
need compression. The concept (originally created by JVC) is as an optical sandwich: there’s a single blue laser<br />
layer (at 25GB capacity), lying on top of two more layers of DVD (at 8.5 GB). In b<strong>et</strong>ween, there is a thin film that<br />
reflects the blue light needed for the Blu-ray playback, while also allowing the DVDs red light to filter through (see<br />
illustration). Pony/Canyon claims the hybrid disk is compatible with 99% of all current DVD and Blu-ray players,<br />
including some of the early Blu players like the PS3. So far, it hasn't released a comprehensive list of all of the<br />
players the disk will work on, or the few it will not. http://www.ponycanyon.co.jp<br />
SNL Kagan study says Blu-ray s<strong>et</strong>s will drive home video growth<br />
Blu-ray will drive the growth of the home video mark<strong>et</strong> during the next decade, despite its relatively minor impact<br />
at the moment, according to a new study. “The State of Home Video” from SNL Kagan says that Blu-ray will reach<br />
59.7% mark<strong>et</strong> share and $13.1 billion in revenue in 2014, hitting 73.8% and $15.6 billion by 2017. But Blu-ray’s<br />
reign may be short lived, according to the study, which expects video-on-demand to increasingly impact highdefinition<br />
DVD. The study expects the number of high-definition DVD homes to be at 115.2 million by 2017, with<br />
98.8 million homes capable of video-on-demand via high-speed Intern<strong>et</strong>.<br />
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