The silliness of the claim is such that without even hiring a lawyer, he forced it to drop its case.

"I defended myself in federal court against a company who solicited the services of two separate law firms," Stottlemire said. "And in my opinion, I kicked their ass."

As the case was dropped, the question remains as to whether or not changing a URL or other code, to find or generate "unauthorized" results, amounts to circumvention of a digital lock.

Coupon Hacker Defeats DMCA Suit [Wired: Threat Level]

The display, which wraps around the three most visible sides of 1 Times Square, is capable of playing contiguous video using all of its surfaces at once. Made up of a mix of 13 60in plasma TVs and over 12 million individual LEDs arranged in diagonal panels, the screen is purported to display a resolution of "20 times the resolution of standard HDTV," though it's not completely clear what that's supposed to mean. As far as the back-end goes, to play just 30 seconds of video calls for 150GB of data sent from 30 computers, all of which, I hope, one day conspire to make the greatest BSOD of all time. The sign was flipped on officially last night, though the trial run, featuring the awesome test pattern picture in this article, took place on Wednesday. Check out the local news report below for some more background and neat little renderings to put the whole thing into perspective. [NYT, image from Gothamist]

Designer: Hemlock Design

Spreading the word:

I’ve mentioned this company before. It’s a small Irvine firm that has occasional sales. Its back-up products have been around for years. 

Software products include NTI Backup, NTI Shadow 4, NTI Backup Now 5, NTI Media Maker 8 and for Mac users, NTI Dragon Suite. More are listed on this page: www.ntius.com/products.asp.

Just use the coupon code HOL50.

More deals news:

• Whoa! Another reason buy electronics at Costco
• My own list of free tech stuff online
• T-Mobile offering free airline tickets
• When AT&T, Guitar Hero and O.C. mix
• AT&T adds McDonald’s to its Wi-Fi hotspot arsenal
• Contest alert: Canon looking for pop stars. Know any?
• RadioShack offers gift cards for your old electronics
• Free Wi-Fi for iPhone users is back, really!

Post from: Alt+Save with the Gadgetress

NTI software having a 50% off sale

Blu-ray
Glasgow didn't drop specific numbers, but he did mention that Blu-ray sales weren't meeting their original expectations, thanks to the economy. So you might expect Sony to cut the price on its entry level BDP-S350 below its current $299 MSRP. But they're not—Glasgow says they're holding firm on that price as their low-end through the holiday season, though he said you can expect $249 before too long, which jibes with what he told me in the Spring. I couldn't get him to commit to $199 next year. (BTW, You actually can pick up the S350 for $249 right now at Amazon, but going below $299 is entirely a retailer's prerogative.) All that said, Sony is optimistic for Blu-ray overall because it's the kind of "family gift" people buy in a recession when they're staying home more—besides, they fully expect (as we've seen) players below $200, even under $150 from lower end manufacturers. They don't see the adoption timeline slowed down either, as long as prices fall with their projections.

Why Sony Won't Go Cheap
President of Sony Electronics Consumer Sales Jay Vandenbree said that Sony has never really played in the low end (in HDTVs or otherwise), and they won't now. Why? Because, he says, during a recession, people stay home and actually trade up to better quality stuff since they're holed up, which Sony thinks puts them in a great spot. Question for you guys: Is this true? Are you skipping vacation and getting a TV instead? To that end, Sony's actually enforcing prices on some of its premium products like XBR7 and XBR8 HDTVs and its Alpha DSLRs, so that they're same price at every single retailer—it's not just a minimum advertised price, retailers cannot actually sell these items for cheaper than Sony says. It's an interesting bit of psychology to maintain the premiumness of the brand during the recession, to say the least.

Circuit City
How bad is the Circuit City situation? Glasgow put it this way: No one in their industry has ever survived a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, especially not on that scale. He's hopeful they'll bounce back, and thinks they could, but it's going to be "hard."

Sony Knows
Lastly, an interesting bit of trivia: Sony knew the economy was going to hell back in February. How? Camcorder sales fell like a rock. Camcorders are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, plunging before everything else. (All of their vast historical data over the last few recessions back this up.) It's because, Vandenbree says, there's "nothing more discretionary than camcorders," so it's the first to go when consumers feel a crunch, making it an early warning sign.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that'll ring the opposite direction, when everything's about to get better. Everything gets better at once. So we'll know life's good again when it actually it is.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Vizio intros 55-inch 1080p XVT HDTV, soundbar, more goodies originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Storage

Samsung's awe-inspiring 256GB SSD now available, still unpriced originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.

Apple has secretly included a copy protection scheme called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in the external display ports on the latest models of it MacBooks, released in the middle of October.

Apple has not disclosed the new anti-copying mechanism, and now increasing numbers of customers are discovering that they cannot play movies bought from the iTunes online store on many external monitors, TVs or projectors. 

"I tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes Store with the same result," said "Maxyourmacs," who complained about the issue on Apple's support forums. "None of them will play on anything but the MacBook's small 13-inch screen. This is crazy unacceptable."

Released by Intel in 2001, HDCP is designed to prevent digital pirates from outputting movies to copying devices, such as digital video recorders. In industry parlance, the technology plugs the "analog hole" -- the security hole created by analog devices like TVs and monitors.

By definition, the technology also prevents movies from playing on non-compliant devices like older computer monitors or flat-screen TVs, which many Apple customers are just now discovering. Even TVs a couple of years old may not be HDCP compliant.

The issue is complicated by obsessive secrecy surrounding the technology. HDCP has been added to many models of Blu-Ray players and other entertainment devices, and several laptops from a range of PC manufacturers. However, it is unclear how many devices are HDCP-compliant: Manufacturers don't explicitly label which products are and aren't. Even industry analysts don't know how widely the technology has been adopted.

Intel declined to comment, and Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

However, the surging popularity of Apple's laptops and its iTunes online store is bringing the issue to the fore.

The copyright mechanism is posing problems for some customers, who are complaining in Apple's support forum that they had no idea their viewing devices were not compliant with the HDCP standard, forcing them to watch movies purchased from the iTunes Store on their small laptop screens.

"You really shouldn't be expected to know whether your video devices are compliant," said James McQuivey, a technology and media analyst at Forrester Research. "It's not your job. To require that burden on them is an unfair thing to do."

Apple's new MacBooks (including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air) are the first Macs to include HDCP. McQuivey said Apple is clearly giving in to pressure from its studio partners.

McQuivey said studios are reluctant to deal with iTunes since its movie-purchasing model involves downloading content straight to a hard drive, where it is vulnerable to copying. Movies are easily copied and shared with friends on DVDs or thumbdrives (as long as the sharer also provides their password).

Movies from services like Vudu and Netflix, on the other hand, which stream movies over the internet, are much more difficult to copy and easier to police, he said.

McQuivey noted that iTunes' movie offerings (about 1,500 movies) pale in comparison to Vudu (5,000 movies) and Netflix (15,000 movies) because studios are distrustful of customers downloading movies to their hard drives.

Michael Cai, director of digital media at Parks Associates, a digital market research firm, said the headaches caused by HDCP is largely a result of poor communication between manufacturers.

"The industry hasn't done a very good job in coordinating with each other to make sure their devices are compatible with each other so you won't feel this issue," Cai said. "And they haven't done a very good job in terms of educating consumers with these issues."

Cai, himself, experienced the pains of HDCP. He recently tried to plug his Blu-ray equipped Sony VAIO laptop into his Sharp high-definition TV, and the image wouldn't show up.

McQuivey added that the HDCP restriction might be counterproductive for both Apple and movie studios: It could encourage MacBook owners to resort to illegal means of downloading, such as BitTorrent.

In the Apple support forums, this already seems to be the case.

"Apple will be out of luck, because we will, as of today, buy no more movies from the iTunes Store," writes a new MacBook Pro customer, who said he couldn't play an iTunes-purchased copy of Terminator 2 on his TV. "If this starts hitting the TV shows and the music videos, too, then we'll stop buying them from the iTunes Store as well."

Intel declined to comment. Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

If you're still with us, Pocket Jockey will run you 99 cents in the App Store. [Pocket Jockey (iTunes Link)]

Working closely with Intel, Samsung has been driving development of its most advanced DRAM technologies and production processes to enable significant improvements in system performance, while meeting fast time-to-market demands. According to market research firm IDC, DDR3 is expected to account for 29 percent of the total DRAM market in units sold in 2009, and attain a 72 percent DRAM market share by 2011.