Sony has introduced a DVR for the Playstation 3 costing about $140. It’s called the PlayTV and it hooks up between your PS3 and television and allows the console to record one channel while you watch another. You can even export videos to your PS3’s XMB menu in MPEG-2 video format, then watch it however you see fit.

Could it be that Sony released a DVR without DRM? I can’t believe my eyes.  No, it can’t be. I’m sure they’ll issue an update that’ll cripple the functionality with restrictions a month or two from now. There’s no word on U.S. availability and pricing at the moment, but no DRM? That’s just plain cool.

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Remember how Yahoo fucked you out of all your music by shutting down its DRM server and not giving you any reimbursements? Well, it has rightfully decided to reimburse its paying customers. Turns out Yahoo feels bad for screwing customers over. Nice of Yahoo! Music to consider the folks who keep its workers from going hungry.

Yahoo, in return for shutting down their music service, is promising either refunds or a replacement DRM-free version of tracks that you downloaded via its service. All current users will automatically migrate to Real’s Rhapsody service. Gone are the days that the recording industry makes money off of forcing folks to rebuy all their music every time there’s a format change. Trent Reznor makes his music free, why can’t everyone else?

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Yahoo announced that it’s shutting down its DRM servers as of September 30, 2008. Anyone whose turned over hard cash towards Yahoo Music will lose the ability to recover it or transfer it to a new PC. Further proving DRM’s worthlessness, Yahoo even had the nerve to tell its customers to burn CDs and re-rip the tracks they bought, before the chance is over. Haven’t we learned anything from old DRM techniques?

Shame on you, Yahoo. I purchase music that I rightfully own and you’re not going to make it available to me? There’s a word for that: theft. Isn’t DRM supposed to be beneficial? It’s like Communism, it sounds great on paper, then it’s executed poorly. DRM only makes things harder for legal users. Legal users are the most important users of all, and Yahoo just fucked them in the ass. What’s it going to take to have proper DRM that benefits the user? A CD that self-destructs after it is copied.

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TorrentFreak has a great article up on the history of one of the stupidest forms of DRM ever: The Lenslok. A small plastic device with multiple prism-like lenses, you’d hold the device up to the TV when a game prompted you to enter a secret message. Here’s an example of how this piece of shit was used:
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Good day, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to read this article with a close eye, because one day, you could be dealing with self-destructive DVDs. A German company has designed a new type of DVD, called an Einmal (German for “once”.)

These new DVD’s can only be watched for 48 hours, before a special chemical coating on the discs makes viewing impossible. There doesn’t seem to be a DRM method on these discs, so if you’re super speedy, you can manhandle yourself a copy, but after the 48 hours are up, so is your DVD viewing window. This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Good luck. — Andrew Dobrow

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Deutsche Grammophon, one of the world’s most prominent classical music labels, and a subsidiary of Universal, has decided the wave of the future is high-bit DRM-free MP3 files. Deutsche Grammophon have launched their own web store, featuring 320 kbps MP3 files for its entire classical music catalog. Universal (as well as the U.K.’s EMI has also been experimenting with their own DRM-free downloads.

Since many pieces of classical music can go on for lengths of 20+ minutes,  Deutsche Grammophon has developed a pricing system based on time, with increased price for pieces over 7 minutes long, and all shorter tracks selling for €1.29 a piece. DRM might be in the dying stage of its career, but what does this mean for iTunes? — Andrew Dobrow

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EMI and Radiohead are showing that you don’t need a powerhouse like iTunes to get yourself some attention. Always a band known to fight the power, Radiohead is planning on releasing a DRM-free boxset featuring all of their full length albums from 1993-2007, available for CD and digital download, as well as a special USB wave file edition, all of which are 320 bit CD quality.

While Radiohead still maintains that their music is best listened to on an album basis, these DRM-free sets are sure to put a light on each individual track in the long run. All of their long time fans alreay own all of these LP’s anyway. The boxset will be available on December 10. — Andrew Dobrow

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After the rumors running wild for about 24 hours now, EMI and Apple finally announced officially that EMI will now be offering DRM-free music to be sold on iTunes, and a higer audio quality than was offered before. This announcement spurs memories of Steve Jobs and his rant on DRM on the official Apple blog. Now that EMI has decided to release its music with the dreaded anti-piracy protection lifted, will other companies follow in its footsteps?

The new DRM-free music will be available at an audio quality of 26 kbps AAC format, twice the quality currently offered in the iTunes catalog. The new agreement also raises the price of these songs to $1.29 each, though Apple says they will still sell DRM enabled music for the $0.99 price tag. The DRM-free catalog will be available in May. No news on whether The Beatles will ever make it to iTunes. That subject was conveniently not announced. — Andrew Dobrow

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Microsoft is doing an amazing job and confusing us right now in terms of where they stand with their own DRM technology. Remember PlaysForSure? And how the Zune completely snubbed that idea, and how we thought that PlaysForSure was “for sure” going to get phased out? Not happenning yet.

Microsoft has announced that they have another DRM technology that is completmentary to PlaysForSure called PlayReady. PlayReady is meant for devices like cellphones and smartphones (Zune phone, anyone?). The major network providers such as Verizon and Cingular are expected to support it in their music stores. With Steve Jobs’ recent blog post still looming over our heads, DRM is looking worse everyday. Intrusion is something that consumers cannot live with (or pay for) forever. –Nik Gomez

Microsoft brings PlaysForSure to mobiles with PlayReady [via Gadgetell]

Today on the official Apple news blog, Steve Jobs writes about Apple’s involvement with DRM on songs sold from iTunes. Jobs says that Apple would jump at the chance for DRM-free music, but won’t for one major reason.

Steve Jobs expresses how if Apple were to remove the DRM liscensing, the four major music companies would pull their music from the iTunes market, removing a considerable amount of the iTunes catalog, and most, if not all, of the best sellers. Jobs goes on to say that since Apple does not own any music themselves, they have to follow the guidance of the industry.

Jobs goes pretty in depth about the alternatives of DRM, giving three major alternative choices. Including one to totally abolish DRM. Jobs explains that the reason that the four big companies would even allow DRM-free music to be sold would be because of its inability to get past hackers and actually maintaining any protection.

“Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.”

Which is Steve’s way of saying, “It’s up to you guys, not me.” — Andrew Dobrow

Thoughts on Music [Apple via Between The Lines]