Neowin.net

Just in case you've been under a rock for the past few months, today is the release of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace on DVD. Woo Hoo!!!

This is the first Lucas/Star Wars DVD to become available and comes wizz bang packed with lots of goodies and 7 new scenes.

I'm hopefully gonna pick my copy up tonight after work, but if anyone has gotten their grubby mits on a copy before I do, why not post a review of it here for the rest of our readers to drewl over...

Here are the details of this two disc DVD that is sure to be an essential part of just about anybody's DVD collection.

• 133 minutes, THX, Widescreen anamorphic 2.35:1
• Commentary by George Lucas, Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, Rob Coleman, John Knoll, Dennis Muren and Scott Squires
• Exclusive Deleted Scenes Documentary features seven new sequences completed just for this DVD release
• All-new hour-long documentary film culled from over 600 hours of footage, "The Beginning," including an insider's look at Lucasfilm and ILM during the production
• Multi-angle storyboard to animatic to film segment featuring the Submarine and Podrace Lap 1 sequences
• Five featurettes explore the storyline, design, costumes, visual effects and fight sequences
• Award-winning twelve-part web documentary series that chronicles the production
• "Duel of the Fates" music video featuring John Williams
• Never-before-seen Production Photo Gallery with special caption feature
• Theatrical teaser and launch trailers, and seven TV spots, posters and print campaign from around the world
• "Star Wars: Starfighter-The Making of a Game" featurette from LucasArts

Buy On-line @ Amazon.com (you may actually get it cheaper at a local retailer, US only :D)

When a customer buys a prereleased CD, that person is sent an encrypted URL, which links to Speedera's streaming area, Smith said. The buyer can then listen to the music featured on the CD as often as desired. But once the CD is released to the public and presumably delivered to the customer, Speedera will block the Web address.

This also serves to protect the property of the music industry. After Napster, music companies grew hypersensitive to any offering that distributed copyrighted materials to a mass audience. They worried that the technology could be cracked and thereby allow the music to be copied, pirated and spread over the Web.

With Speedera's technology, listeners are kept from copying or recording the streamed music. Smith said there is a secret key embedded into the encryption that prevents anyone but the buyer to access the URL. He declined to offer specifics on how that is done.

"You can't record the music; nor can you e-mail to a friend. And it can't be accessed if someone posts it on a Web site," Smith said.

The technology is easily accessible for other kinds of media, such as video, and through different software, such as Microsoft's Windows Media and RealNetworks' RealMedia.

Sources close to Amazon said that if offering prereleased music over the Web proves successful, the e-tailer will likely extend the feature into other digital content.