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My Issues With Digital Copy

megaforte84 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:00:13 +0000

Granted, I’ve got warm fuzzy feelings for the concept now, not the least because of the program letting me have a no-credit-card-needed iTunes account. But there are some real problems.

1) The WMV version requires Windows Media Player 11.

This would normally be just an issue of ‘Oh, I need to run Windows Update to get the newest version’. In fact, that would have been true through Media Player 10.

With 11, there is no longer a way to backup media licenses manually. The content provider gets to decide how many times – and if at all – you get to ‘renew’ the license.

In other words, if the kid the DVD was bought for gets a computer of his or her own in high school, you may have to forget transferring it over from the parental machine it was registered with.

I chose the iTunes version because of this.

An iTunes account has leeway of allowing four complete No Chance To Deauthorize computer crashes and still having the file readable on one device. As long as older devices are deauthorized, the file can be moved from machine to machine as a child grows with no problem. If she wants to take the complete Disney princess collection with her to college on her laptop, no problem even if the files were generated years ago so long as there’s an open authorization spot for the laptop. (Well, problem if her classmates don’t think college students should like Disney princesses, but that’s not Disney’s or Apple’s problem.)

Windows Media? From what I’ve been reading online, a DRMed WMV or WMA file may not be readable after an intentional and planned OS reinstall. I tend to reimage at a frequency of under 6 months, and from what I can tell the WMP identifiers for protected files aren’t in the factory image I use.

2) Differences in policy for WMV versus iTunes

Someone choosing the Windows Media option? Only gets one chance to make the file. After that, the code is used and there is no second chance. If a small child accidentally deletes the file from the system instead of just from a playlist, tough luck unless you made a backup. And backing it up requires about 2 gigs of space, or a blank DVD and DVD burner.

The iTunes version? Can be remade at any time using an iTunes installation authorized for the same account. I’m not sure if it still works after the expiration date, but at the very least until then the file can be remade whenever. I’ll test it once mine is supposed to expire (with the file stuck safely away from iTunes’ view, rather than just flat-out deleting it, of course).

This mattered greatly to me. When I started making the file, iTunes tried to put it in a location that didn’t have enough room. I had to point my library to a different location and then start the ‘download’ over. If this had happened while using the Windows Media option, I’m not sure I’d have gotten a file out of the process.

3) Digital Copies? Expire.

No, not the file you make. Don’t worry, Disney is not just renting you the digital version of the movie.

However…

They have set it up so the code in the DVD case is only good for a year… from the time the DVD was released.

So, if someone gets into Narnia movies with the release of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is only just now in production, the digital copy in a DVD set of Prince Caspian will have expired before it was even purchased, even if bought new. (Even if bought directly from Disney.)

If a child with a July birthday receives as a present a DVD released for the previous Christmas season, half or more of the activation window will already be gone.

This also means that someone knowing they will be changing systems or upgrading an OS in the next few years cannot just sit on the WMV version until making the transition. They have to make a choice about what to do, given instructions that even in the online long form assume that the current OS install and system will be used in perpetuity or that there’s a way to move Windows Media identity with the system change (see #1 above).

4) And yes, I know it’s a corporate sore point at the moment, but…

Could there have been a captionable option?

I mean, okay, chances are if you’re carrying a Digital Copy around on an iPhone or iPod any text overlaid over video is going to be well-nigh impossible to read. I watched Between The Lions on someone’s video iPod once, and there was no reading half of what was meant to be read from across a room in the broadcast version.

But that’s not true for netbooks and laptops.

Leaving out the standard arguments of accessibility, I wrote papers in college that referenced C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I took film courses. I’ve even considered talking about the differences between the movies and the books here, because I am one of the people who does like both as what they are.

Not all movies that have Digital Copies are aimed at the little kids. And there are some serious academics who look at the Disney movies that are aimed at the little kids.

Being able to quote accurately without having to break out the DVD or look for a transcript of questionable legality would have been a godsend in those film courses. It would be a godsend when discussing films online.

And really, given the price of 1 TB portable externals on the market now, technologies like Digital Copy should become industry-standard, in my opinion, for the good of the movie companies. The space makes it too easy to just .iso archive an entire film library, and if the MPAA doesn’t want people doing that or using CSS breakers to rip the video, there ought to be legal alternatives that don’t require much effort on the part of the user.

Developing the technology for doing that with Digital Copy and similar programs would also spread the capacity around for downloadable video files. Need the entirety of the original Star Trek series for a paper, and need it quotable? The free youtube series channel does not have captions or subs. Someone might be willing to pay just for the captions, even if the same image quality was free elsewhere.

But right now, the parent of a Deaf child can rip the video off a DVD with the subtitles there, and can’t chose to show captioning at all with the Digital Copy that came with that DVD. A student working from a netbook in a noisy dorm may find looking for that online dialogue rip easier than trying to get hallmates to quiet down.

And sooner or later, that’s going to need to change.

As it is, Digital Copy was incredibly easy to use for me. The process of setting up an iTunes account was quick, and the file was created in less time than it would have taken to watch the opening credits.

But for others, who need the subs or captions to watch anything at all, this isn’t easier than looking at the not-legal rippers.

…

Shorter version: I like it. I’m pleased. I’ll probably post again with reasons I’m pleased. But like any relatively new technology, it needs some work – and a lot of it is not Disney’s problem, but issues with the technology that was widespread enough for them to use.

The Washington Blade Closes...for now.

dcbigpappa — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:26:12 +0000

What started out as an easy going Monday morning, quickly delved into a chaotic rush for information

Install restricted extras for Ubuntu

Arnab Das — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:11:32 +0000

These packages will add MP3, Quicktime, Windows Media support, and a whole lot of codec support which virtually will result in you being able to play almost anything under the sun!

So, this is how you install the pack (you can use any one):

1. Terminal method

Open the terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

2. Synaptic method

Open the Synaptic package manager (System >Administration > Synaptic package manager) and search with the following words: “ubuntu-restricted-extras”. Install the package which appears in the search result with the same name. After installation the package should look like the pic below.

Mind you, there are legal restrictions for these packages. (Go through this link for more on Ubuntu Licensing : Licensing)

Install restricted extras for Ubuntu

Arnab Das — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:11:32 +0000

These packages will add MP3, Quicktime, Windows Media support, and a whole lot of codec support which virtually will result in you being able to play almost anything under the sun!

So, this is how you install the pack (you can use any one):

1. Terminal method

Open the terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

2. Synaptic method

Mind you, there are legal restrictions for these packages. (Go through this link for more on Ubuntu Licensing : Licensing)

Microsoft language interface packs and input method downloads

Corwin Tse — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:09:17 +0000

This is a compilation of Microsoft language interface packs and input methods available at the Microsoft website for download. The list is current as of October 24, 2009.

Windows

Office

Other

7 for Windows Media Player 11

Rafa — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:28:29 +0000

Para muitos embora o Windows Media Player 12 não tenha muito glass como o anterior Windows Media Player 11 no Windows Vista ele é bonito.
Esse skin não é pra deixar o Windows Media Player 11 do Windows Vista identico ao Windows Media Player 12 do Windows 7, ele sim deixa parecido. Até mais que é impossivel a interface virar uma cópia exata, mas o skin dá uma aparencia de uma tipica aplicação do Windows 7.

7 for Windows Media Player 11.

Download: Clique aqui.
Obs: Apenas para Windows Vista.

This Week on NECW TV: Richter & Munroe in Tag Team Action, AUTUMN UNLEASHED Preview & more!

Carnage Chronicles — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:48:07 +0000

With just hours to go before NECW’s AUTUMN UNLEASHED weekend, we have a brand new edition of NECW TV

The World has ENDed!

nuttyphilosopher — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:15:05 +0000

I just got home from work and immediately turned on the TV (it’s a habit) but there was no TV. Rushed to my internet and there’s no connection! Alas…the world has finally ended. At least my phone still works so I immediately call COMCAST customer service and Shaquille O’Neal answers (for real only it’s automated). I get an automated message that service is down in my area. Phew! I instantly feel better knowing that I’m not the only one suffering this momentary life-disruption.

So it’s really quiet and I can’t deal with this silence. I can hear myself breath and think. I feel stuck. I’ve lost all connection and signals to the virtual world (My only source of useless and sometimes useful information). How am I supposed to know what’s going on with the rest of the world? What if a meteorite is about to hit my town and it’s all over the news and I can’t access this very important information?

This deafening silence must go away now. So I open my Itunes to listen to music but no access. Thank God for Windows Media. Now I can listen to my whole entire library of songs..anything to make me feel normal. Man, I used to like 50 cent back in the days (jamming to “Bitch Get in My Car”).

Ok, now I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the world ending. I realize that millions of people live without TV and Internet because they can’t afford it, by personal choice, lack of electricity and other factors. I’m sure these people have very fulfilled lives and unpolluted minds. They probably value family and social ties as a way of communicating and maintaining networks. I need to be more like these people. The number of hours I spend on the computer outside of work is just ridiculous.

It brings me to the issue on social networking. I used to and still like e-mail. It’s allowed me to communicate with family and friends overseas without the hustle of writing and posting a letter. Then came the introduction of Facebook. Facebook was once limited only to college networks and it was really fun back in the days. Then they decided to go global and everyone joined. It was really nice reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances and find out who’s married, has kids etc. Then, that was it! It didn’t really bring me any closer to these people. Some of these people who were once very close to me once-upon-a-time. I can’t blame it on Facebook but on people themselves. We assume by seeing people’s current status, recent updates and photos that they’re doing OK. So maybe no use in dropping a line or dialing a number.

I wish the world could go back to when people spent less time online and more offline with actual people. Since technology is advancing, I only see this situation getting worse.

* Exactly an hour later, TV and Internet returned. Life can now go on:)

DRM removal tool - legal!

wildcafeblog — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:16:53 +0000

I just found a tool (Tunebite), that allows you to remove the DRM (digital rights management) from audio- and videofiles. It’s 100% legal! Unfortunately it works just on Windows…

How it works:
This software plays and records your music in up to 54x speed! It records your music in several different audio files that are compared after completion. This should maintain the output quality. Nevertheless I assume there’s a loss of quality, although the manufacturer says, the output will be high quality.
But if you have a 256kB/s aac and recode it with Tunebite I think there will be (nearly) no difference between original and copied file. So it’s a real alternative to play your drm protected music on every player you like to play it at.

Here’s the link: TUNEBITE

Another Microsoft horror story, the Huntington Indiana public library

Ryan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:26:56 +0000

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while but just never did until now.

If you want a prime example of how reliance on Microsoft software damages the community and betrays the public interest, look no further than the Huntington, Indiana public library.

To say nothing about the potentially tens of thousands dollars their reliance on Microsoft software has cost taxpayers in Huntington County directly, their reliance on it also conflicts with the budgeting they’re allocated to the point where they paradoxically almost never upgrade anything because it will cost money.

Case in point: Their website. If you look at the source, you’ll see meta name=”GENERATOR” content=”Microsoft FrontPage 4.0″.

When was Microsoft Frontpage 4.0 out?

2000. Now I’m no mathematician, but 2009 minus 2000 means that their web page generator is 9 years old and still targeting Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (which was still in wide use back then).

Why bother having real bona fide web standards if public institutions entrusted with public money squander and abuse their budget?

Now, judging from the image on the top right of the page which is a 1.3 Megabyte JPEG at a resolution of 2204 x 1364 pixels which someone tried laughably to turn into a thumbnail, when any semi-competent Windows user would know that even paint.exe can resize an image, I am kind of left to deduce that some fucking idiot without even the slightest skillset produced these pages.

With their caveman wit, they chose 10 year old standards-violating Microsoft products and couldn’t even figure out how to resize an image with some bundled freeware.

People like this are a disease.

The IT department

Moving on… Someone thought audio books in DRM’d WMA would be a good idea:

This means that if you’re not using Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can’t check out an audio book, so suddenly the library isn’t just abusing your tax money, they’re practically ripping money straight out of your wallet. I’d liken the Huntington Library using DRM’d WMA to a daylight theft by a pick pocket that the police wouldn’t do anything about.

That means that since I have Kubuntu Linux on my main system right now, that I can’t just load the audio file into my media player and hit play because it won’t work. It also won’t play for Mac users.

The library could use Speex, which is a codec in the public domain with no royalties and broad cross platform support, but the Imaginary Property pushers at the book publishing companies wouldn’t go for that. Who made the law that says that knowledge has to be bottled up to protect the profits of a few corporations, at the expense of the entire public?

Federal lawmakers who have been bought by lobbyists and other special interest groups of course. This one isn’t to be squarely blamed on the incompetence of the Huntington Public Library, but also on state and federal lawmakers betraying their duty to the American people.

And lastly, the internet computers at the Huntington Public Library all run Windows XP:

This falls back under the categories of incompetence of staff and the misappropriation of public tax money.

Not only that, but Windows is so susceptible to viruses and worms and spyware that would never affect any operating system where security was one of the design concepts from day one, that the Huntington Public Library has locked all of them down in the mistaken belief that this will protect them.

They’ve locked the systems down so tightly that you can’t even use sites that have been designed with Flash or use thumb drives you brought from home. Whoever did the locking down also missed one giant problem, they all use Internet Explorer 6. The least secure web browser ever.

What is the alternative?

The library in Marion, Indiana, just 15 miles or so south of me, uses Linux. Not only do they use Linux, they use a distribution based on the free Fedora Linux called Userful Discoverstation which uses terminal multiplexing. This allows one tower to power 10 workstations with their own monitors, keyboards, and mice. This is not only much better for the environment than having 10 boxes running their own copy of the OS, it saves on the electric bill, and they don’t have to buy licenses from Microsoft. (You could set up a free Linux distro to get the same effect, Userful just makes it easier).

Userful creates an account that is deleted when the user logs out, and times the session to last however long the library allows. So instead of the librarian having to get up and tell someone who is hogging the computer that their time was up 30 minutes ago and others are waiting, the system gives them a warning 10 minutes before they’re logged out to get their shit together and get lost. (In more diplomatic terms obviously).

The systems are secure with the normal permissions of a Linux user account plus the standard SELinux targeted policy inherited by Fedora which helps keep malicious remote attackers out. Since there are very few security concerns on Linux and because the user is literally incapable of any lasting damage to the system, you can do anything on one of these boxes that you could do as a user on your PC at home. (except for clearly Administrative tasks). Where the Huntington library Windows XP systems are useless, I was using the Linux system at the Marion library to log into Pidgin instant messenger, browse with Firefox, plug in a thumbdrive with documents saved on it from home, and EVERYONE is allowed to do this because the system is in no danger.

So I guess the thing to take from this if you’re the Huntington Library or are in a position of trust to use taxpayer money in a non-frivolous manner and to not discriminate against users with disabilities or with non-Windows systems (or browsers other than IE), is that you should never use Microsoft products in this setting.

They are wholly inappropriate with no merit whatsoever in this use case.

I emailed the Huntington library with my concerns about six months ago and they never bothered to reply.

Blackberry Storm

Review Queen — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:38:51 +0000

The blackberry storm is a version of a smart phone. I have had lots of these. This is a touch screen. I like that I can take music from itunes transfer to windows media to the phone. I even use my phone as my mp3 when I run now because I can answer a phone call or even call for help if need be. I like the touch screen. It has been two months and no issues. I love the Facebook app, Myspace app, Yelp ( like a gps in your area) It has a gps too so I can track distance when I run. I found it to be easier than Palm smart phones,,,,I have had them all and I like Verizon’s service over Sprint so it works for me. Any questions feel free to ask in the comment thread.

An Audiophile’s Dream (and Nightmare)

Andy — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:41:35 +0000

To be honest, most people don’t give a seconds regard to sound quality, or at the very most, only check the bit-rate of their MP3 files. This is all good enough, but for a discerning listener (like me), the “standard sound” which comes from any old MP3 player is simply not good enough, (and yes, I’m also looking at you Apple). It really doesn’t matter how big your speakers are, or how much you paid for your headphones, if you plug them into such a crap audio device such as a Walkman Phone or an iPod, you might as well trade them in for a cheaper pair.

So what’s wrong with the sound coming from these devices then? Well, a lot. Firstly, these devices output sound which your speakers or headphones simply can’t reproduce, contributing to bad sound quality or worse, damaged speakers. Then there’s the problem with stereo positioning and noise, certainly a problem with headphones and iPod docks.

SRS Audio Sandbox

Thankfully, there are software and devices out there which claim to improve sound quality by quite a stretch, and some products which actually work very well. Here’s a list of all the software and devices I’ve used over the years, starting with the worst of course;

An Equaliser; Practically all devices dealing with sound contain some form of equaliser, and they do help especially when speakers reproduce certain frequencies differently at different volumes. It is not to say however, that an equaliser would suffice when enhancing your audio, it won’t. Increasing bass may enhance bass-lines and increasing treble may give the audio more clarity, but eventually, you’ll hit the limit of what your speakers could do, and eventually, damage them.
Windows Built in Audio Enhancements; Yes, Microsoft does include some audio enhancing software with its OS (aside from the volume control of course). These include options such as Virtual Surround and Low Frequency Protection. Whilst the low frequency protection feature is certainly helpful, it doesn’t seem to work very well as an audio enhancement and as for the Virtual Surround feature, well, this doesn’t really work very well (or arguably at all)
DFX for Windows Media Player; This audio enhancement software is a plug-in for Windows Media Player, as well as a few others such as WinAmp. It has loads of features which appear very good on paper, but where it really lets itself down is real world performance. Whilst it does enhance the audio (somewhat), its processing can be a little too aggressive and the music ends up sounding too unnatural and full of processing artefacts. I would even go as far as to say that it ends up sounding worse than an iPod Nano (no, really). Added to this the fact that it only works with certain media players and not system-wide, and you’ve got yourself a very questionable purchase.
SRS WOW; is available on many devices and software, especially LCD TV’s where it shows as TruBass or SRS WOW. The level of enhancement you get really depends on the device and software you use, but in my general experience, SRS WOW enabled LCD TV’s perform surprisingly well considering they have only the puniest of speaker drivers. Their sound is very wide with the presence of surprisingly deep bass due to harmonics processing. There is one problem though, which seems to be very prevalent in almost all SRS WOW enabled devices, and that’s a slightly hollow sound due to the TruBass processing, however, it is usually only noticeable when you compare it directly to other audio sources.
SRS Audio Sandbox and PremiumSound; This software is generally designed for laptops and desktop PC’s and works very well, and best of all, it works system wide, so even dodgy Youtube audio is enhanced somewhat. In notebook speakers, it creates a much wider sound stage, breaking the limits of how far the speakers are placed on your notebook, but unfortunately, the entire thing suffers for the exact opposite problem that DFX faces, and TruBass doesn’t work very well on smaller speakers and you end up wishing the effect could be turned up just a little bit more than the limit allows.
Waves MaxxBass; Possibly the best audio enhancement software for Windows in terms of sound quality. Even though this company deals mainly with high end audio mastering products, it does offer a small plug-in for Windows Media Player which uses the MaxxBass system. Surprisingly, it works very well, especially with smaller speakers where bass sounds rich and full (though don’t expect any floor thumping bass). MaxxBass is also available in a few other audio products such as iPod Docks and speakers, where it works really well.
Samsung DNSe; Sadly only available for Samsung products such as TV’s, Phones and especially their PMP devices such as the YP-P2, though I can forgive this as DNSe is possibly the best piece of audio enhancement I have come to hear (almost). Bass is extremely rich and full due to harmonics processing and the soundstage is incredibly wide. Admittedly, it seems to work better when headphone’s are involved, but playing DNSe enhanced music to a decent set of speakers and a woofer provides a far better experience than any other device I’ve come across (especially an iPod).
Saving the best for last, Creative’s X-Fi technology is just something else when it comes to audio processing. Available as a sound card for your desktop, an Express Card expansion for your notebook or in some of Creative’s Media Players, it provides simply the best audio experience of all devices. Audio sounds warm and crisp with plenty of bass, no matter how bad the audio source is. Even a low sample rate MP3 file sounded great once the processing was applied. To take full advantage of this technology however, the sound card for your desktop is the way to go as it has practically all the audio processing under the sun. If money is no object, then Creative X-Fi is he way to go.

So, I really hope I’ve convinced you that its not really all about the speakers, but where the sound is coming from that matters; and why I giggle ever so slightly at that guy with massive headphones on the tube plugged into an iPod Shuffle, yes an iPod Shuffle!

Atualizações para Windows - setembro/2009

Ricardo Luis — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:59:39 +0000

A Microsoft disponibilizou hoje algumas atualizações de segurança para o Windows como parte de seu c

This Week on NECW TV: Pat's Pit; Richter-Westgate Grudge Match plus Matthews, Osbourne, Arion & more

Carnage Chronicles — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:51:34 +0000

A big new episode of NECW TV is now online and it kicks off with a special Pat’s Pit that took

How do you know when Paul Thurrott is lying?

Ryan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:22:45 +0000

His lips are moving.

Seriously, if Microsoft was the Republican Party, Paul Thurrott would be Fox News Channel.

Some people are constitutionally incapable of shutting the fuck up no matter how many times and how thoroughly they’re proven wrong, some people incessantly insist that they were taken out of context when they’re called out, and some people are just pathological liars that deliberately construct every sentence to be as misleading as possible. Paul Thurrott, in my opinion, is three for three.

On top of that, he has this odd mix of gung ho patsy and outright stupid that sometimes makes it difficult to tell when he’s lying and when he really has no idea what he’s saying.

This guy has bothered me for years with his total and utter disregard for journalistic quality, instead often opting to resort to hearsay, weasel words, the statistics that most favor his opinion, and anything that makes Apple and Linux look tiny or irrelevant.

Just a few of the lies and contradictions he’s been unable to escape (in order of how they amuse me):

(Windows Me in Thurrottland) “It is, quite possibly, the most under-hyped version of Windows ever created…It’s easy to ridicule Microsoft for milking the Windows 9x cash cow yet again. But the reality is that this release is exceptional.”

(2007 in Thurrottland) Tries bashing Firefox 2 and gets called out by Asa Dotzler

(2008 in reality) Gives up and writes a positive review of Firefox 3 but insists his abortive attack from the year before was “misconstrued”, goes on to list a few trivial gimmicky features IE 8 has that Firefox doesn’t. (Thurrott, you don’t want to go into feature comparisons between IE and Firefox, it can’t end well for IE)

(2004 in Thurrotland) Like zOMG!!!!1111 MSN Music is gonna be HUGE!

(2006 in reality) MSN Music is shutting down and your licensed files are toast if anything happens to Windows. (Such as upgrading XP to Vista or a slightly less devastating catastrophe like a hard disk crash.)

(2002 in Thurrottland) Like zOMG!!!!1111 Windows Media Audio is the second coming!

(2007 in reality) Finally forced to eat crow and admit that WMA is dead, and everybody uses MP3.

BONUS:

“AAC doesn’t play nice with products made by Microsoft and its partners. AAC isn’t compatible with Windows Media Player or Media Center” -Thurrott, October 2007

“Put simply, I am a fan of the Zune…The online marketplace is good, but not as good as iTunes Store, though that matters less with music because MP3/AAC is universally compatible.” -Thurrott, July 2009 (Note that Zune supported AAC in 2007 when he made the first post)

And just for an added face palm:

“..there are audiophiles and technology trolls out there who might recommend [lossless formats]…Don’t be confused by the term “lossless,” however: These formats are still compressed…This is a foolhardy idea, unless you will never use a portable media device or enjoy the thought of storing and managing two copies of your music collection, one in lossless and one in another format that’s been transcoded from the lossless masters.” – Thurrott, October 2007

I don’t suppose he bothered to mention that you can decompress lossless files back into WAV or onto another CD and the CRC checksums will even match the original disc! Or perhaps that both Windows Media Player and iTunes can transcode from your lossless library on the fly and put the resulting lossy files on your device? This isn’t new folks, they’ve both been able to do this since at least 2003-2004.

(2009) Admits the Zune is going nowhere but tries to play it off by comparing it to a Macintosh computer’s supposedly miniscule market share.

In a survey conducted last fall, IDC’s Kevorkian said only 4.8% of those with a portable media player reported having a Zune, while 61% had some sort of iPod.

So, in late 2008, the Zune actually had 50 percent more usage share in the MP3 player market than the Mac did in the worldwide PC market. (Hey, math can be fun.)

Of course it is, especially when it’s wrong/fake/conjured up with the rest of his delusions.

While we’re comparing apples and bowling balls, Mac rounded out the fourth quarter of 2008 with 8.87% of the desktop computer market (nearly double the market share of the Zune in the MP3 player market), and the Mac has gone on to 9.81% as of May of 2009. *source*

Mac and Linux have driven Windows down to an 87.75% market share, which is still a commanding lead, but in 2004 they had 96.34% *source*. While Windows isn’t dying off as fast as Microsoft’s other products (Read: Dropping like a brick), it *is* shrinking, and it should worry any investor when a company cannot at least break even year-over-year.

Mr. Thurrott, since IDG has Kevorkian on hand, can they possibly put the Zune under? It can be so quick and painless… No reason to punish the people that unwittingly put Microsoft in their 401(k) for another 2 years.

This of course brings me to today’s Paul Thurrott crap.

Thurrott slanders anything that competes with Microsoft, but seems to go out of his way to bash Apple. Now Opera is on his vendetta list since they won freedom of choice for European consumers to decide what browser they want with Windows 7.

The fact that he is bashing the browser with the most strict adherence to World Wide Web Consortium markup standards should not be overlooked, because Thurrott has a history of bashing industry standards like AAC while promoting Microsoft’s dead end (WMA).

His tirade is, essentially “Well, uhhhm, Internet Explorer has 66% of the browser market, so it should call all the shots”. (It had 92% at the end of 2004 *source* )

Now, Mr. Thurrott has been gay for Internet Explorer for a long long time, and has stood faithfully by it despite several hundred security flaws, the fact that its rendering engine is prehistoric and buggy, and that you can’t extend it with anything but toolbars (oh do we know about IE toolbars…). (Although I have my doubts about whether or not even Thurrott could stomach any version of IE for longer than it takes to glaze over some Microsoft PR notes and grab a few screen shots)

To be dramatic, Paul Thurrott kind of reminds me of that episode of South Park “AhhhH!!! My baby is killing again! Don’t worry, mommy will protect you! I have such a good boy, such a nice boy…”, but there’s only so many bodies you can hide in the backyard and IE is a fuck up that people witness first hand from day one, so there’s really no point in even trying to defend it.

Apparently Thurrott has his panties in a twist this time because he can’t stand that the European Union, unlike the United States, actually has and enforces consumer protection laws. (And it will be interesting to see how the eradication of IE bundling in the Euro Zone affects the spread of spyware over there…)

Thurrott argues, plainly, that users should not be presented with a choice of what browser to use, that IE should remain welded onto Windows, inseparable and popping up even when you thought you hid the fucking thing, and that naive users should continue using what’s there and getting their system deluged with porn dialers, trojans, search page hijackings, and every kind of web annoyance and active content abuse that Adblock Plus for Firefox (or an ad blocking file loaded into Opera’s content blocker) can silence once and for all.

Paul Thurrott remains as pro-Microsoft and anti-user as ever. One could only assume that his yellow journalism is the kind that only Microsoft Monopoly Money could afford.

Do any online music stores still SELL WMA files?

Ryan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:48:27 +0000

I have a portable media player than can play WMA or MP3 that I bought recently just because the PlaysForSure (Play For Now) certified players (fancy term for supports DRM’d WMA) are being sold dirt cheap.

If you look at Wikipedia’s article on PlaysForSure, you can hardly keep yourself from busting out in uncontrollable laughter. Stores using PlaysForSure goes something like “closed, closed, closed, bankrupt, switched to MP3″ and a handful of stores that still distribute WMA files. It’s not because the format is superior to MP3, but because they can use Windows Media DRM to enforce file expirations, restrictions on CD burning, restrictions about what portable software you can us it on, etc.

Pretty much every music store that managed to trick anyone into buying DRM’d WMA files has sent out letters telling users “Oh by the way, we’re shutting the licensing servers down, the next time you go to reinstall or upgrade Windows, none of your music will work anymore. Be sure to repurchase everything in our new MP3 store”.

iTunes/iPod users may laugh now, but unless they repurchase all their music in non-DRM format, then their purchased DRM’d iTunes tracks are not long for this Earth either. I highly doubt that Apple will want to support that FairPlay (FoulPlay) scheme forever.

Having played around with Windows 7, I see that Windows Media Player 12 still defaults to the old WMA “Standard”, even though the superior WMA “Pro” has been out for some time, mainly because most devices don’t even support it, and most never will. Something tells me that there’s a lot of clueless Windows users out there using Windows Media Player to rip all their CDs who are really going to wish they hadn’t 4-5 years from now when nothing plays WMAs anymore and they’ve amassed several thousand of them.

WMA as a media format is dead. It may find a niche as the official codec of Silverlight (If Silverlight 3 can get the few sites that briefly used Silverlight then ran screaming back to Flash to come back). Other than that, Microsoft has effectively preserved it in their fruit cellar so you can go down and talk to it from time to time. Even noted Microsoft FUD spreader Paul Thurrott has washed his hands of Windows Media, and when he won’t touch a proprietary lock-in format that Microsoft has tried to spread, you know you can stick a fork in it. Not that he hadn’t cheered WMA on and even spread a few lies about Apple rushing to support it on the iPod several years prior, and not that he’ll ever stop insisting that WMA is somehow superior even though it still runs into a ton of problem samples that Lame MP3 handles just dandy.

Is there something I’m not seeing here? Does anyone still offer WMA files (DRM or no DRM) for sale? Does Microsoft have any future plans for it, or is it just a vestigial organ forever attached to Windows?

I’ve personally always used the LAME MP3 encoder (usually the latest CVS source build) and the few times I did whack Windows Media Encoder with my pointy stick, I have to say I’ve been fairly unimpressed. Microsoft’s WMA, and MP3’s alleged successor MPEG-4 AAC seem to be what you get when big media companies design a music format DRM system/patent portfolio for their legal department to play with, and Lame MP3 and Ogg Vorbis appear to be what you get when music fans strive to make good encoders for users.

For once I’ll have to re-iterate Paul Thurrott (Don’t get used to it), and say that if you back WMA or AAC, you’re flipping crazy and setting yourself up for a world of hurt down the road.

MP3 could go on for years and years, and it’s not because it’s the best codec out there, it’s because it gets the job done and is the only codec that gives you any reasonable expectation of cross platform and device support. Microsoft and Apple killed their “MP3 killers” when they decided to be greedy cocks and try to deviate from ISO standards (Microsoft) or hijack and pervert them into being proprietary (Apple).

Donald Rumsfeld wants answers too!

VLC 1.0 Goldeneye Released

Chris Ryan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:00:12 +0000

VLC media player, an open-source application from the VideoLAN project, finally reached version 1.0 today. The software had its original start back in 1996 as a school project from engineering students at the Ecole Centrale Paris (though it wasn’t released as an open source project until 2001).

Through many point releases before today, VLC has continued to expand its capabilities, offering support for HD codecs, a diverse set of file formats, live recording, AirTunes streaming and more.

Crazy Formats, Got Ya Covered!

VLC is based on FFmpeg, which means it supports a wider variety of codecs and file formats than your typical QuickTime or Windows Media Player can handle, such as MKV, Og, or FLAC. (There are, of course, alternatives, such as Perian and other plugins to add additional support to QuickTime, but VLC has some more tricks up its sleeve.)

Since it’s a packet-based player, VLC supports playing content that could be partially corrupted or is incomplete. This reason alone makes VLC a popular media player for torrent lovers. VLC is a great addition to your system and is a recommended download for switchers who are used to viewing AVI files on the PC, since the AVI container supports a myriad of codecs that are not all supported natively on the Mac platform.

The 1.0 release of VLC, codename Goldeneye, is available for both Intel and PowerPC platforms (though it does require Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6) and can be downloaded here. If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4.x or earlier, you can download the previous build of VLC, version 0.9.9a, from here.

Play VS - Inspirado no Windows Media Player 11

Antônio Euclides — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:24:04 +0000

Para deixar sua área de trabalho mais negra e agradável no jeito do (quase) mais recente tocador de

Is Windows Media Video Dead?

pinhead — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:00:41 +0000

It doesn’t seem a terribly long time ago that Microsoft’s media format and associated codecs seemed poised to become the de-facto standard for digital media. Five or six years ago the glacial pressure of Microsoft behind any technology push led many to believe that it’s eventual dominance would be inevitable.

Jump forward to the present day and those Windows Media Video files seem to have slid below the surface. Nobody seems to use windows media, few seem to care about windows media.

Only a few pieces of legacy portable hardware ever supported wmv and the hoped for (by Microsoft) eco-system of movies and TV been sold online using the Microsoft DRM system never appeared and the few isolated services which used wmv are slowly receding from view.

This of course reminds us of one of the reasons for the involuntary retiral of wmv. Apple and its iTunes/iPod/Quicktime trifecta. Apple managed to create the on-line, on-demand video market so desired by Microsoft, but with it’s own combination of slightly more open, but no less proprietory technology.

Thanks to the dominance of iTunes and broad industry support, H.264 is rapidly becoming the standard by which all video, streamed or downloaded, is delivered online. It’s only real challenger being its older cousin in the mpeg4 family ASP/xvid/divx, which, mostly thanks to the commercial endeavours of the Divx Corporation enjoys fantastic support on the non-pc hardware side.

So it would seem the codec of the future is H.264 for legal streamed and downloaded services and, MP4/Divx etc for the slightly more ‘un-orthodox’ online sources.

Meanwhile, as the popular codecs seem to have standardised, the idea of a universal container format has fallen by the wayside. The majority of h.264 content streamed online is via the Flash Player, whilst Apple’s content is delivered in it’s own mov/mp4 DRM wrapped hyrid. User generated and pirated content is generally distributed in the venerable AVI format or to a lesser extent the newer more flexible Matroska container.

Nowhere to be seen is the once and future king, Windows Media Video.

Microsoft itself seems to be acknowledging this in it’s upcoming Windows 7 release, where H.264 and AAC audio are given first citizen status with built in codecs and shell support.

Perhaps I’m wrong and there is still a lot of windows media video being created out there.

Is there?

Quicktime fit machen für alle Formate

Fabio — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:07:03 +0000

Mit Quicktime liefert Apple einen schnellen, nicht überladenen und schicken Media Player mit. Einige moderne und proprietäre Formate kann man von Haus aus allerdings nicht damit abspielen.

Das ist allerdings kein Beinbruch, denn Abhilfe schaffen zwei kostenlose Softwarepakete. Namentlich Perian und Flip4Mac.

Perian bezeichnet sich selbst als Schweizer Taschenmassen für Quicktime. So bietet es durch eine Quicktime Komponente Zugriff auf so gut wie alle aktuellen Video und Audio Codecs.

In der Liste fehlen allerdings die proprietären Windows Media Formate von Microsoft. Hier kommt Flip4Mac ins Spiel, welches kostenfrei eine Komponente zum abspielen, und gegen eine Gebühr Funktionen zum editieren mitbringt.

Eine Alternative die alle Codecs gleich mitbringt ist der Open Source Video Lan Media Player, kurz VLC. Allerdings finde ich Quicktime in der Bedienung doch ein tick netter. Aber VLC spielt wirklich so gut wie alles ab, ohne dass man irgendetwas anderes installieren müsste. Vor allem auch gut, wenn man mal irgendwo ist und ein Format nicht läuft. Ein File runter laden und schon läuft es.

Auf den Screenshots spiele ich eine .mkv Datei des kostenlosen Films Big Buck Bunny ab. Dieser wurde von der Blender Foundation erstellt und wird kostenlos verteilt.

http://perian.org/

http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm

http://www.videolan.org/

http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/

Playlist Synchronisation for Portable Devices

Noldorin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:46:54 +0000

I have recently been attempting to properly set up synchronisation between Windows Media Player and my portable music player (which happens to be my phone). Though I found that the Windows Media Player synchronisation tool does the job pretty well, it does fail in one respect: it cannot copy over playlist (WPL) files. For me, this was a bit of a nuisance, since I rely very much on playlists to categorise my music collection.

The solution for me was to write my own tool that synchronises a given set of playlists with a portable device that is compatible with WMP (Windows Media Player) – as I believe many devices tend to be. The tool works simply by finding the appropiate place on the device to which to copy the playlist files (a known XML descriptor file on the device should specify this), and then copying over these files, with the locations of the media files updated to point to those on the device.

Naturally, my choice of technology with which to write the thing was .NET/C# – this does mean that it’s not a fully standalone application, though it does only consist of a single EXE. However, thanks to a few particularly convenient features of the language/framework (primarily LINQ to XML), the code was largely trivial to write, and the majority of the ~200 lines is in fact error handling.

You can download the program here. As mentioned, it requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (SP1) to run, which is not installed on any current version of Windows by default, so it will need to be downloaded and installed firstly if you don’t yet have it. Also, if anyone is curious to see the code, I may be able to upload that at some point.

The tool should be run from the command line, and would seem to be very straightforward to use. (Run the program with no arguments to see the help information.) An example command line to syncrhonise the playlists in the standard location of your user profile with a portable device on drive F might be:

pps F “C:\Users\username\Music\Playlists”

That’s all it takes. The task should finish within a matter of seconds and then report some general information about the playlists it found and what it managed to successfully synchronised; else return an error message.

NB: If you’re wondering how the synchroniser matches the media files on the device with those in the playlist, I have a small admission to make. Because the directory structure is not guaranteed to be the same on the device as at the location of the source media, the current version simply matches media items by file name. This works perfectly well for me, though there is clearly a caveat. I am looking for an improvement on this method, and while I have a few ideas, I haven’t finalised my decision yet. Any recommendations by someone more knowledgeable on the subject would be appreciated.

Now, this program was designed primarily for my own use, but I did consciously attempt to make it usable with any WMP-compatible portable device, so hopefully people shouldn’t have any major problems using it.

Finally, it would be nice to hear any feedback regarding this little tool of mine, so please feel free to drop me a message (even if it’s just to say you’re using it). If I hear any suggestion for a worthwhile feature to add (or of course a valid bug report), I will gladly update the program.

THE BEATLES ROCK BAND - TRAILER DEBUT

beatlest — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:21:17 +0000

A tan sólo 99 días de su lanzamiento, THE BEATLES ROCK BAND tuvo el debut del trailer dentro de la Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 el cual puede verse dando click AQUÍ y/o bajarse en los diferentes formatos:

Para formato iPod da click AQUÍ.

Para formato Quicktime da click AQUÍ.

Para formato Windows Media da click AQUÍ.

THE BEATLES ROCK BAND - TRAILER DEBUT

Entre algunos de los temas que aparecerán son “Saw Her Standing There”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “I Feel Fine”, “Day Tripper”, “Taxman”, “I’m The Walrus”, “Back in The U.S.S.R.”, “Octopu’s Garden”, “Here Comes the Sun” y “Get Back”.

Se puede encontrar más información de los temas, los instrumentos disponibles, así como los venues que aparecerán en el juego visitando www.thebeatlesrockband.com.

How do you watch a DVD on Windows Media Player?

jakeludington — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:07:26 +0000

“How do you watch a DVD on Windows Media Player?”

To watch a DVD with Windows Media Player you need a special codec pack capable of decoding MPEG-2 video. Versions of Windows XP typically did not include this type of codec. If you have Windows Vista Home Basic, you will also need to acquire one of these MPEG-2 codecs. Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate both include an MPEG-2 codec that should make playing DVDs possible. While these codecs aren’t free (because you’re paying to license the technology designed to make DVD playback possible), you can get them for about the price of a single DVD. My favorite option is the CinePlayer DVD Codec Pack. Once you install the codec pack, DVDs should play in Windows Media Player anytime you put a DVD in your computer’s DVD player.