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HD DVD player sales in the US during a week from Jan 6 to 12, 2008, declined 88% to 1,758 units compared with the previous week, Tech-On! is reporting citing research company NPD Group.

Tech-On! further reports, “The period measured was immediately after US movie studio Warner Bros Entertainment had announced that it had shifted its support from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc Jan 4, 2008.

Meanwhile, BD player sales grew 42% compared with the preceding week to 21,770 units, NPD said. An NPD analyst said Warner’s announcement might have impacted HD DVD player sales.

HD DVD supporter Toshiba Corp announced price reductions for its HD DVD players targeting the North American market following Warner’s announcement.” More at Tech-On!

Related:

HD DVD is ‘Missing the Boat’ in Australia

In the Battle of Formats Blu-ray Outsells HD-DVD in Europe

Jan 01, ` 08 — Australia is planning tough new rules to protect children from online pornography and violence, BBC News reported.

The new Labor government wants internet service providers to filter content to ensure households and schools do not receive “inappropriate” material.

Civil libertarians have condemned the plan as unnecessary, and say it will erode the freedom of the internet. But telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy said more needed to be done to protect children.

The Australian government’s aim is to ensure that children only have access to family-friendly websites. Service providers will be expected to stop the flow of pornography and other X-rated or violent content.

The government is set to compile a list of unsuitable sites, although at this stage it is unclear what will be deemed unsuitable. Australians wanting unfettered access to the web will have to contact their supplier to opt out of the new regime.

Concerns have also been raised that the government’s filters could slow down access to the net, in a country where connection speeds are often below international standards. More at BBC News.

Seoul — Dec 13, `07 –Korea Newswire– Samsung Electronics announced today the development of a new digital TV receiver chip (S5H1432) using 65nm process technology for terrestrial digital video broadcasting (DVB-T), the digital broadcasting standard in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

Samsung’s new DVB-T receiver chip is designed for use in digital TVs, set-top boxes, TV receiver cards for PCs, USB interfaced plug-and play dongle or boxes, and DVD recorders.

Fabricated using Samsung’s advanced 65nm process technology on 300mm wafers, this new DVB-T receiver chip fully supports Europe’s NorDig unified standard for digital broadcasting. The power consumption level for this chip is at an industry low of 80mW, less than one third of the conventional 250mW average power consumption of existing solutions on the market.

By using a proprietary processing algorithm, Samsung’s new DVB-T receiver chip enables high performance even in single frequency network environments, reducing the channel scanning interval by half, to less than 0.1-second, from the conventional 0.2-second.

The new DVB-T receiver chip is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2008. This DVB-T receiver chip, together with other Samsung logic devices and solutions, will be on display at CES 2008.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, `07 — Rupert Murdoch won control on Thursday of a long-coveted prize, The Wall Street Journal, as Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co. gave final approval Thursday to a $5 billion bid from Murdoch’s News Corp to acquire the media company, the final step needed before one of the world’s most influential newspapers, The WSJ, changes hands.

The controlling shareholders of Dow Jones, the far-flung Bancroft family, had initially rebuffed Murdoch’s approach this spring, but eventually enough of them agreed to accept his rich offer of $60 a share to ensure his bid would succeed.

Dow Jones held the shareholder vote in a hotel in the financial district of lower Manhattan, near its headquarters. The formal closing of the deal is expected to occur either later Thursday or Friday. The vote was 60.27 percent in favor.

Murdoch’s bid of $60 per share represented a massive premium of 65 percent over the price Dow Jones shares had been trading at before his offer became public.

With annual revenue of about $2 billion, Dow Jones is relatively small in an age of conglomerates. But it is one of the most influential forces in American media, especially in financial news, where Mr. Murdoch has placed some very big bets of late. The company includes The Journal, whose daily domestic circulation of more than 2 million ranks second only to USA Today, and Dow Jones Newswires, the Dow Jones indexes, the Factiva information and archive service, Marketwatch.com, and other properties.

Last week Murdoch named a longtime News Corp publishing executive Les Hinton to be CEO of Dow Jones, replacing Rich Zannino, who is leaving the company.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch is poised to fulfill his dream of taking over The Wall Street Journal as a hard-fought takeover of Dow Jones & Co is expected to be completed Thursday.

Dow Jones shareholders are scheduled to vote later today on Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp takeover offer and the acquisition “is expected to be completed shortly thereafter,” both companies said in a statement last week.

Dow Jones & Co shareholders holding more than 50 percent of the voting power of the company approved its $5.6 billion sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the Wall Street Journal Web site said on Wednesday.

A count of the proxy votes ahead of a Thursday shareholder meeting showed shareholders owning more than half of the company’s voting power threw their support behind the deal, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Dow Jones’s board approved the deal in July after members of its controlling family, the Bancrofts, said they would support the sale.

Ahead of the deal’s closing, Murdoch appointed News Corp veteran Les Hinton as Dow Jones chief executive and named Times of London editor Robert Thomson as the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

As Murdoch, 76, closed in on his long-sought prize, The Wall Street Journal, he gave his son, James, an expanded role in the media empire, naming him to a position apparently aimed at grooming him to head the conglomerate.

News Corp announced Friday that James Murdoch, 34, the youngest of Murdoch’s four children, will be the boss of News Corp in Europe and Asia, effective immediately.

As chairman and chief executive of the company’s businesses in Europe and Asia, James Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, the British newspapers The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

News Corporation is the umbrella company for an empire that also includes the Fox News Channel, the New York Post newspaper, the Fox Hollywood film studios and television network and the rapidly growing Internet social networking site MySpace.

Dec 07, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch installed his own leadership team at Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. on Friday, a week before his acquisition of the company is expected to close. He also tapped his son James as heir apparent to his media empire News Corp.

Les Hinton, who has spent his career at News Corp.’s newspapers, will become CEO of Dow Jones next week, following a vote of the company’s shareholders on Dec 13. Hinton currently oversees News Corp’s papers in the United Kingdom, including The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sun, and News of the World.

Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, will become publisher of the Journal. Dow Jones also owns Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s and a news database business called Factiva.

James Murdoch was named boss of News Corporation in Europe and Asia on Friday in a move seen as putting him in line to succeed father and media mogul Rupert Murdoch as head of the sprawling empire.

The promotion of James Murdoch, the youngest of four children, marks a remarkable rise through the boardroom ranks for the only family heir inside News Corp, the US conglomerate chaired by his Australian-born father.

The younger Murdoch, who assumes his London-based post with immediate effect, is in charge of assets including News International UK, Sky Italia, the Asian-based Star TV and News Corporation Europe, the group said in a statement.

As chairman and chief executive of Europe and Asia, Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

The 34-year-old leaves his post as chief executive of British satellite television broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp is the leading shareholder, but will assume his father’s role as BSkyB non-executive chairman.

The reshuffle, which confirms what a source earlier told Reuters, appears to address the long-term speculation of who will eventually take over the media and communications conglomerate from the 76-year-old media mogul.

Rupert Murdoch’s older son, Lachlan, 36, had initially been seen as the leading contender during his time at News Corp but he left the group in 2005 to start a new venture.

Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, 39, has also been viewed as a dark horse candidate over the years. The former managing director of Sky Networks struck out on her own in 2000 and launched her own TV production company.

“This is grooming James for a larger role longer term at News Corp,” Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said. “He has proved himself beyond a doubt over the last several years at BSkyB.”

James Murdoch joined Sky in November 2003 and has expanded the company from its pay-TV roots to add broadband and telephony services. News Corp owns 39 percent of the company.

But like his father, he has proved to be a risk taker. He has also drawn the attention of regulators, leaving the group engaged in three separate investigations and a law suit with fierce rival Virgin Media.

His most audacious move came in November 2006, when he purchased a 17.9 percent stake in Britain’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV.

Murdoch said the purchase was a long-term investment but its rivals accused him of trying to prevent ITV from being bought by NTL — now renamed Virgin Media — and the deal is still being investigated by the UK Competition Commission.

Dec 05, ‘07 — Video Ezy and Blockbuster have thrown their support behind Blu-ray, saying HD DVD was “missing the boat” and not taking the Australian market seriously enough, Sydney Morning Herald reports.

SMH further writes, “Paul Uniacke, managing director of the Franchise Entertainment Group, which owns Video Ezy and Blockbuster in Australia, said the local roll-out of HD DVD had been too slow as its supporters did not see Australia as an important market compared with the US and Europe.

According to market-watcher GfK, 2241 stand-alone Blu-ray players have been sold in Australia to date, compared with 609 HD DVD players.

But Sony has moved more than 100,000 units of the PS3, which has a built-in Blu-ray player. Only 2461 add-on HD DVD players for the Xbox 360, which cost $249.95, have been sold so far.

The trend in player sales is consistent with sales of HD movies. More than 102,000 Blu-ray movies have been sold to date, as against just under 18,000 HD DVD movies.

Blockbuster in the US has supported Blu-ray exclusively for months and, locally, its head of product, John McKay, said Blockbuster would buy only Blu-ray titles “for the foreseeable future”.” More at SMH.

Sydney, Australia — Nov 16, ‘07 – The hearing to decide the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s misleading conduct case against Google will commence in the Federal Court on June 23.

Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on alleged “misleading and deceptive conduct by Trading Post and Google case” by ACCC.

“In court today, Justice James Allsop said he expected the hearing would take a few days and there would be little need for expert evidence or for Google to provide the ACCC with extensive documents.

The regulator claims Google does not clearly distinguish between regular, “organic” search results and ads on the same page, which Google calls “Sponsored Links”.

Google was therefore misleading customers because it claimed to rank search results based on relevance, not the money it received from advertisers.

Google has refuted the claims, saying the wording “Sponsored Links” and the fact Google used coloured shading when presenting the links clearly indicated they were ads. The ACCC said the shading was “very subtle” and depended on the angle of the screen.

Separately, the ACCC claimed Sensis subsidiary Trading Post used the names of two competitors to trigger sponsored search results advertising its own website. However, in court the regulator said it expected to settle its case against Trading Post soon, owing to “fruitful” discussions.

Between now and the hearing the parties will trade documents so the ACCC can gather its evidence and Google can prepare its defence. There will be another directions hearing on March 28.

Justice Allsop said it was a simple case and questioned whether documents from Google would help the ACCC’s case. The regulator said it would need documents showing “considerations by Google as to the layout of the web pages”, which the regulator said could indicate “deliberate more subtle shading” of sponsored links.

Justice Allsop said on March 28 both parties must tell the court, having already conveyed to the other side, the “nature and extent of any proposed expert evidence”.” More at SMH.