Ron Harris

With music fans clamoring to listen to their illegally copied MP3 files on mobile devices, makers of the Rio, Nomad Jukebox and other digital music players weren’t about to let the market slip by.

“This was the RIAA’s attempt to reverse physics,” says Jonathan Potter, director of the Digital Media Association, which represents some online media and technology companies. “And it was an attempt to use the cloak of technology development to really try to impose rules on the Internet and content owners.”

For three years, SDMI members met in the U.S. and abroad, sharing ideas about how to digitally watermark audio files to make them hackerproof or cloak them in another piece of computer code that only SDMI compliant CD players would recognize.

But the market for MP3s and digital music overtook them.

As Napster foundered in court, Gnutella, Morpheus and a host of other file-sharing applications took its place. Tens of millions of people downloaded the programs, sharing MP3s to listen to at home and on the road.

SDMI wasn’t even close to ready as millions of consumers took advantage of these “killer apps,” says Talal Shamoon, who had a front row seat for SDMI’s downfall.

A vice president of business development at InterTrust Technologies, a digital rights management company and early SDMI member, Shamoon said “SDMI may have been the wrong medicine for anything.”

“I think the market really moved under people’s feet,” he said.

SDMI’s final public embarrassment came in September 2000 when the group issued a “Hack SDMI” challenge to computer programmers around the globe. SDMI encoded and digitally watermarked some audio content and dared programmers to hack it.

Princeton professor Edward Felten and a few colleagues met the SDMI challenge in three weeks and were about to present a paper on how they did it when the Recording Industry Association of America threatened to sue.

The RIAA eventually backed off, with the association’s general counsel later calling the letter a mistake. But the damage was done.

All five major music labels continue to work on copy protection of course. But competing digital rights management schemes are multiplying, and don’t play well with each other.

Music downloads from the labels’ online service pressplay don’t work with software downloaded with RealNetwork’s Musicnet subscription, and none of those downloads play in a Rio Player, Nomad Jukebox or iPod.

Many manufacturers say they plan to upgrade the software in their devices so the music players will recognize the protected content format — as soon as someone invents one that consumers care to buy.

But such advances may make the players incompatible with today’s digital music, leaving listeners with thousands of MP3s and no device to hear them on.

“Purely from a technological perspective and from a consumer electronics standpoint, it’s very important to have a format that everybody can eat,” Shamoon said.

For up-and-coming MP3 player companies like Bantam Interactive, deciding whether to support digital rights management may mean life or death in terms of consumer acceptance.

“I do not want to make any player which allows only to play copy-protected music,” said Santosh Patel, Bantam’s president.

He never joined SDMI, which was already on its last legs when Bantam was coming to market with its two players 1 1/2 years ago.

Patel wants his products to evolve to support future copy-protected music formats, while retaining the ability to play older unprotected MP3s.

“That way you support the technology, you support the security and eventually you phase out the unprotected material,” Patel said.

Another organization appears poised to pick up where SDMI left off.

The newly formed Digital Media Device Association intends to develop specifications for digital entertainment on portable devices. The group has about 40 members who have been meeting monthly since January, but little else is known about the effort and its director, Tom White, refused to offer details.

Some in government appear to be losing patience with the lack of a solution to securing digital content.

Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-South Carolina, has proposed a bill to require any “interactive digital device” sold in the United States to prevent users from making unauthorized copies of copyright material.

If the private sector doesn’t agree on copy-protection methods within two years, the government would determine the standard.

The Digital Media Association’s Potter opposes Hollings bill.

“We don’t think the government has engineers that rival the private sector’s,” Potter said. “Nor do we think it’s possible to confine consumers. You need to win consumers in the marketplace.”

The package also comes with a USB device that plugs into the Xbox and communicates wirelessly with the controller mouse.

Finally, there’s an analog controller stick, dubbed a FragChuck, that is held in the non-mousing hand. The FragChuck has three triggers, various buttons and a thumbstick to walk or run the player’s character through the game, while the mouse handles the aiming, shooting and other tasks.

The FragChuck also sports an up-down-left-right directional pad that can quickly toggle the player through an array of weapons in shooter games. The directional pad can be programmed to handle other tasks as well by adjusting the settings from in-game options menus.

This rethinking of the controller changes the gaming experience much more than the add-ons I’ve tried, such as small extenders for the thumbsticks that give gamers a new feel and range of motion.

One thing to note is that the configuration is not completely wireless. I discovered that when I tried the Shark 360 out for the first time.

The USB device that I plugged into the front of my Xbox 360 had to be connected to a standard wired Xbox 360 controller as well. The Shark 360 won’t function without that. I had to dig through more than a dozen boxes in my attic to find one because wireless controllers have been the norm for some time now.

The rest of the operation is wireless, however, and you are not tethered to the console.

With that slightly cumbersome configuration out of the way, I was soon up and running, blasting my way through a few levels of “Turok.” I swiveled left to right too fast early on when panning the horizon, looking for enemies. My performance improved once I got accustomed to the sensitivity and speed of the mouse.

The bottom of the three trigger buttons on the FragChuck allowed me to zoom in with my rifle scope, while a click on the left mouse button on the other hand took the shot. During my gaming sessions, the top two triggers had no duties to handle, but I could have assigned something to them had I wanted.

And so it went with “Call of Duty 3″ and a few other shooters. It felt a bit more like PC gaming and a little less like the standard console approach, which for shooter titles isn’t a bad trade-off.

Overall, I noticed improved performance when strafing opponents. It was easier to center on targets by using my entire mousing hand and all of its muscles, rather than just a few in my thumbs with a standard controller.

The aforementioned thumbstick extenders can snap off if you handle them too aggressively, but this mouse approach to console gaming doesn’t depend on extra plastic bits you snap on to your existing controller.

I use a mouse daily, so extending that use to my console gaming sessions offered a quick feel of familiarity.

Your own level of enjoyment with the Shark 360 really depends on personal choice and muscle memory. If you commit to using it consistently for some select shooter titles, you’ll quickly get accustomed to the button layout and may find your traditional controller gathering a bit of dust on the shelf.

It’s not the best solution for all games, but it’s a welcome bit of kit for some titles, particularly the first-person shooters.

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Ron Harris can be reached at

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Online:

SplitFish AG: http://www.splitfish.com

The package also comes with a USB device that plugs into the Xbox and communicates wirelessly with the controller mouse.

Finally, there’s an analog controller stick, dubbed a FragChuck, that is held in the non-mousing hand. The FragChuck has three triggers, various buttons and a thumbstick to walk or run the player’s character through the game, while the mouse handles the aiming, shooting and other tasks.

The FragChuck also sports an up-down-left-right directional pad that can quickly toggle the player through an array of weapons in shooter games. The directional pad can be programmed to handle other tasks as well by adjusting the settings from in-game options menus.

This rethinking of the controller changes the gaming experience much more than the add-ons I’ve tried, such as small extenders for the thumbsticks that give gamers a new feel and range of motion.

One thing to note is that the configuration is not completely wireless. I discovered that when I tried the Shark 360 out for the first time.

The USB device that I plugged into the front of my Xbox 360 had to be connected to a standard wired Xbox 360 controller as well. The Shark 360 won’t function without that. I had to dig through more than a dozen boxes in my attic to find one because wireless controllers have been the norm for some time now.

The rest of the operation is wireless, however, and you are not tethered to the console.

With that slightly cumbersome configuration out of the way, I was soon up and running, blasting my way through a few levels of “Turok.” I swiveled left to right too fast early on when panning the horizon, looking for enemies. My performance improved once I got accustomed to the sensitivity and speed of the mouse.

The bottom of the three trigger buttons on the FragChuck allowed me to zoom in with my rifle scope, while a click on the left mouse button on the other hand took the shot. During my gaming sessions, the top two triggers had no duties to handle, but I could have assigned something to them had I wanted.

And so it went with “Call of Duty 3″ and a few other shooters. It felt a bit more like PC gaming and a little less like the standard console approach, which for shooter titles isn’t a bad tradeoff.

Overall, I noticed improved performance when strafing opponents. It was easier to center on targets by using my entire mousing hand and all of its muscles, rather than just a few in my thumbs with a standard controller.

The aforementioned thumbstick extenders can snap off if you handle them too aggressively, but this mouse approach to console gaming doesn’t depend on extra plastic bits you snap on to your existing controller.

I use a mouse daily, so extending that use to my console gaming sessions offered a quick feel of familiarity.

Your own level of enjoyment with the Shark 360 really depends on personal choice and muscle memory. If you commit to using it consistently for some select shooter titles, you’ll quickly get accustomed to the button layout and may find your traditional controller gathering a bit of dust on the shelf.

It’s not the best solution for all games, but it’s a welcome bit of kit for some titles, particularly the first-person shooters.

___

Ron Harris can be reached at

___

Online:

SplitFish AG: http://www.splitfish.com

Generation after generation of would-be Eric Claptons have tried learning the guitar with instructors, books, DVDs and other teaching tools. Most of us get stuck at the intro to “Stairway to Heaven.” With some minor guitar experience under my belt, I dared “Rocksmith” to teach me, entertain me and keep me engaged. It succeeded on all fronts.

Guitar lessons turn into a game: Keep in step with the colored, glowing and spinning rectangles that fall down the screen and land on a numbered fret. The more notes you get correct, the better your score.

It takes some getting used to. The descending rectangles are colored with a different hue for each of the six guitar strings. But most guitar strings aren’t colored, so you have to mentally keep track of those color-and-string pairs — which change quickly during the action.

I was able to learn the melody to The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” within minutes, but the techniques get more complicated. For example, the double-stops technique requires covering two strings at the same time while muting the adjacent strings. It’s easy when you’re looking down and staring at your fingers with all the time in the world. It’s a lot harder when you have to look at the screen, remember where the correct frets are by muscle memory and strike them fast enough to get ready for the next set of notes.

The teaching aspect of “Rocksmith” hinges on the very nature of playing a video game. You have to watch the screen. You don’t have a lot of time to look at your hands. So you are forced to get better at knowing where the frets are by feel, as well as how to pluck, say, the fourth string instead of the fifth without looking.

The “Rocksmith” playlist runs from classic rockers like The Animals and Cream to up-and-comers like Titus Andronicus and the Black Keys. There’s also an “amp” mode in which you can play whatever you like, and you can download filters that add fuzz, feedback, distortion or other effects to the sound mix.

Once you’ve mastered a few techniques and chords, you might want to power off the game and see where the instrument will take you all on its own. The ultimate challenge presented by “Rocksmith” is to get good enough that you won’t play it all. You’ll just play the guitar. Four out of four stars.

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Ron Harris can be reached at

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Online:

The dance moves are fun even if some of them like the “bear cub” are best left to an embarrassing uncle at a wedding. Truly, it’s an awful lot of hand-waving and arms akimbo.

Some of the new features include the ability to create your own playlist from the provided songs as well as top-notch voice commands that allow you, among other things, to slow down the music if you’re having problems nailing some tough dance moves. Three out of four stars.

—”The Gunstringer” (Microsoft Studios, $39.99, rated T): In this fairly strange game, you play as the operator of a marionette skeleton that also happens to be one of the fastest guns in the Old West. You hoist up the Gunstringer by the strings and walk him around with movements from your left hand while your right hand handles the trigger-squeezing duties with a swift motion upward at the elbow.

The Gunstringer battles various comical foes, including a wavy inflatable tube character that would seem more at home in front of a used Ford dealership. I had to lean the skeleton out from side to side carefully to avoid getting whacked on the head by one of the wavy man’s long arms.

It’s mild fun at best. Kudos to the developers at Twisted Pixel Games for their unconventional take on player controls and offering gamers lighter gunfire fare rather than a scaled back, Kinect-friendly “Call of Duty” knockoff. Two out of four stars.

—”Disneyland Adventures” (Microsoft Studios, $49.99, rated E10+): In this title, the gamer uses Kinect as a gateway to the Magic Kingdom of the Disneyland amusement park in Southern California.

Walking my childlike character around the park was a little clunky at first. I raised my arm to move forward, but instead of following a sparkling golden path to my next task, I ended up plowing through crowds of families and getting stuck in a corner near a fence. This got better once I learned to slow my walking pace.

The best part about this game is walking to attractions from memory. If you’ve been to Disneyland more than once, you know the Adventureland section is on the left side after you enter the grounds. And sure enough, I found it quickly. But the similarities ended once I boarded the Jungle Cruise ride. I had to use my arms to control a water cannon and fend off legions of raging hippos. This is a pretty good game for the young and young at heart if you’ve visited the park. Three out of four stars.

— “Deepak Chopra’s Leela” (THQ, $49.99, rated E): Putting your spiritual and physical well-being in the hands of someone like Deepak Chopra is a good bet. But it’s probably tough to book an appointment with him, which is where “Deepak Chopra’s Leela” comes in handy.

This is the most soothing video game I’ve ever played. After custom-crafting my own mandala design (with gestures from my hands), I took part in a hip-swiveling session in which I controlled an image of the rotating Earth. The goal was to align growing trees with moving rain clouds and later to the sun. This was a good warm-up exercise in the game’s Muladhara, or Root Chakra, section.

The goal of the game is to help the user align the seven chakras; spinning wheels of energy in the body if you believe in such things. I had the option to Play or Reflect. During Play, I moved my body to engage with Leela, a Sanskrit word meaning “the play of the universe,” according to the game instructions.

During Reflect, I took a seat on the floor while Leela led me through breathing and meditation exercises. The imagery is beautiful and the background music is calming.

I found this game both physically and mentally rewarding. These types of wellness titles truly take advantage of Kinect’s capabilities and when well-designed, as with “Leela,” showcase what gaming can become. Four out of four stars.

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Ron Harris can be reached at

Those ancient memories are where all the fun comes in as Desmond relives the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Ezio isn’t the biggest guy on the block, but what he lacks in brawn he makes up for in wall-climbing, rooftop-leaping and knife-chucking.

So how does it play? Gorgeously. The sprawling old-world metropolis of Constantinople is one of the most realistic gaming environments I’ve ever seen. It’s wide-open for exploring, and the exhaustive attention to detail is really impressive.

While death was just a blade away, I had to remind myself not to kill everyone in sight. Knocking off civilians remained a bad move, as it drew attention to me and made my presence as a troublemaker more evident. Byzantine guards, for example, sought to kill me on sight, so I had to duck in alleyways and blend in with crowds of commoners and pickpockets. Luckily, I was able to pickpocket some of them back, earning a little cash for armor upgrades.

“Eagle Sense” is a cool new tool that allowed me to gain the upper hand on my enemies by reveals and shows environmental clues to help solve level challenges. It revealed handholds in stone walls for climbing tips and well-walked trails behind people I was following. That came in handy when I felt I had begun to wander the cobbled streets of Constantinople a bit too aimlessly.

The story mode is full of small missions that lead to the greater goal of finding missing artifacts before the Templar goons do. And there is plot consistency: Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, the assassin in the first game of the series, is back as a playable character.

Online play was decent. I was plunked down in a scene with a handful of other assassins, and we milled about a souk with some civilians before springing into action. I was given a target to kill and it was crucial to quickly find and dispatch that player without letting him know I was in pursuit.

I used various methods, including the trusty hide-in-a-bale-of-hay approach. But this isn’t the fastest way to notch the kills, so I mostly fast-walked the paths with my eyes peeled. Often, just as I was about to take out my target, I was treated to the cold steel blade of death myself. Trickery abounds everywhere online.

If I noticed my enemies coming and acted quickly enough, I was able to grant myself an “honorable death” — which didn’t prevent my demise, but gave me a few points for seeing it was coming.

In its solo campaign and in multiplayer, “Assassin’s Creed: Revelations” is easily one of the year’s top action titles. Four stars out of four.

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Online:

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Ron Harris can be reached at