The Digital Home

Ars Technica has an interesting story up today detailing the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy's analysis of P2P traffic of illegal movie downloads in France between November 2007 and June 2008, which found that more people than ever are illegally downloading some of the top domestic and foreign films.

The organization found that 90 percent of all P2P downloads came from the most popular films in theaters and that a "daily average of 450,000 downloads (in December, it was 536,000 per day), and a monthly average of over 14 million downloads" was witnessed.

Allegedly stunned by the gall of all those awful pirates, the organization felt it was necessary to send one of its hacks out to make a statement detailing how appalled it was at the information it obtained. But no one saw this one coming.

"We are facing a major phenomenon that can endanger the film industry and audiovisual industries. We did not expect such figures," ALPA director Frederic Delacroix said in a statement to the AFP.

Wow. Hold your horses for a minute here. This piracy problem can "endanger the film industry?" This should probably be filed under the "dumbest things I've heard all month heading."

If piracy kills the film industry and suddenly theaters from across the globe are closing up shop, I'll be the first to laugh, and I'll bet I won't even be laughing the loudest.

In this episode, I make the case for DRM-free music and engage in some shameless self-promotion of my podcast.

And as always, drop me a line or follow me on Twitter!

eWeek has an interesting article up today detailing the difference in price currently being witnessed in the computing space, according to NPD. Based on the research firm's analysis, it estimates that the average Windows desktop is selling for about $550, compared to Apple's average desktop selling price of $1,543. The average Windows laptop in June was selling for $700, while Apple's laptops were going for a hefty $1,515.

After comparing comparably-equipped HP laptops with Mac notebooks, it became abundantly clear to me that Apple, although working hard to reduce prices on its computers, still has considerable work to do.

Right now, you can head over to HP's website and buy yourself a Pavilion dv7t sporting Windows Vista Home Premium, a 2.26Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS to display video on your 17-inch screen for just $1,217.99.

But if you chose the Mac, you'd be paying $2,799 for a MacBook Pro sporting a 2.5Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card, and a 250GB hard drive.

The list goes on. Mac Pros are substantially more expensive than comparably-equipped Dell machines, and aside from iMacs, which are far more competitively priced, you're not getting a bargain on any Apple product.

Check out the latest Digital Home video where I ask a simple question: is killing avatars OK?

As I was thinking of something to discuss today, I peered beneath my HDTV and saw my Wii sitting next to my Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. And as soon as I looked at all three, it had me thinking: the Wii is a wildly successful platform, but the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are still limping along in the hope that they'll compete with Nintendo's platform at some time in the future.

But when we objectively consider the state of the industry, it becomes blatantly clear that Sony and Microsoft simply don't have what it takes right now to compete and more consumers are more excited about Nintendo's platform than anything Sony or Microsoft can dole out.

Realizing that, why wouldn't Microsoft acquire Sony's gaming division and consolidate its power and influence in the gaming space? I know, it may sound radical and at first glance you would think that Sony would never agree to such a deal, but keep an open mind for a minute and hear me out.

Sony's gaming division is quickly becoming a drain on its financial stability and shareholder confidence, while Microsoft is chugging along at a pretty good clip even though it has little influence in Asia. And although neither company can beat Nintendo alone, don't you think it's entirely possible that Microsoft and Sony could become a powerhouse in the industry if the former acquires the latter, thus making it a valuable idea?

The sound quality is better in this episode, but the show is still very much a work in progress.

Today, I tackle the console war and wonder if Nintendo is really a competitor of Microsoft and Sony.

What do you think?

Sorry, but I refuse to believe that video games can be the scapegoat for all of our problems. Call me a video game apologist or just another gamer hack, but it's true. Why should the video game industry be blamed for the problems all of humanity faces?

According to reports, Thailand has halted the sale of Grand Theft Auto 4 after a teenage boy confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver in an attempt to recreate a scene from the game.

"We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games," Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters.

Always one to jump on the bandwagon, Reuters found an anti-video game hack to tell us all that it's only going to get worse, but we also should watch out for those GTAIV-wannabes.

"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry's Cultural Surveillance Centre, told Reuters. "Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."

So this is the first "proof of concept" video here in a new series I've so affectionately called, The Digital Home Video.

Each day, I'll be opining on something newsworthy in video that you won't find in the column nor the podcast.

As I said in the video, this is very much a "rough draft" and is just the first salvo in what I hope will be a great and fun video series where you'll hear me opine on all kinds of tech topics.

If you have some comments, suggestions, ideas, please send them in the comments section below. I'm open to all ideas!

Oh, and sorry about the audio -- it's awful. I'll have that fixed as soon as I get some wireless mics.

Thanks for watching and I hope to start upping the ante with these videos soon.

-Don