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Never buy licensed digital content like this, not from Apple, Sony, Vudu, Amazon or any of the others. It is NOT the same as buying a blu-ray. The same goes for music, games, etc.

I'm told it's far more expensive per title and per copy for a smaller studio producing a low-budget and/or niche work to make the work available on disc compared to download. For example, only a Blu-ray Disc that is stamped and licensed by AACS can have BDMV features, such as menus and multiple languages (source; source). BD player manufacturers do this to protect AACS licensee movie studios from infringers. Age ratings tend to be more expensive for disc games than for downloadable games. And with many new desktop and laptop PCs not including optical drives anymore, there isn't much of an option for even a DRM-free release of a PC game. What practical ways are there for a smaller studio to mitigate these costs?

For movies, not much. There's definitely a wow factor in some of them but you quickly forget about it and just enjoy the movie.

But for coding and web browsing, I found 4K to be a surprising win.

The extra clarity in text is absolutely wonderful. With low-res screens I often find myself wanting to zoom in on text despite being able to read the small text without straining my eyes. When I got my first 4K screen I noticed I was no longer tempted to do any zooming.

I disagree. For movies there is a good bit of difference, especially for 4K content with HDR. Is it a huge difference, nope. Is it enough of a difference to make it more enjoyable and more lifelike, yep! Is it worth upgrading just for the new format? Not yet. Not unless you have to (i.e. broken TV). I was planning on waiting another couple of years to go to 4K, but my Plasma died and it was under warranty.

Do you notice the difference? Yes, definitely. For content that is filmed in 4K and uses HDR. The big caveat is that most 4K HDR movies only have some original 4K content, the rest is up-scaled, perhaps with better color gamut and less compression. They were not originally filmed in 4K. As more 4K content comes out, the differences will be easier to see. X-Men: Apocalypse, for example, was filmed in 4K and it shows.

Of course, all of this assumes that you have your TV at the proper viewing distance for the size. If you have a 40" TV and are 8 feet away, a 720p picture will look fine. If you have a 65" and are 8 feet away, you'll notice the difference between 720p, 1080p, and 4K.

https://www.avforums.com/artic...

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

Alright now I'm afraid I can't help with your verify problem but I do have one piece of solid advice: get rid of Paragon HFS immediately!

It is a truly shoddy piece of software that as of version 9.0 has a terrible bug that will cause it to destroy HFS+ filesystems. Google "paragon hfs corruption" and you will see many many horror stories from people who just plugged a Mac OS X disk into a Windows machine w/ Paragon HFS and then discovered the entire filesystem was hosed. In my dual-boot win/mac setup I replaced my copy of MacDrive with a trial version of Paragon HFS 9.0 from their website and every single one of the six HFS+ disks I had connected internally were damaged. Disk Utility couldn't do a thing and I had to buy a program called Diskwarrior to even begin to recover data. I ended up losing two disks worth of files anyway.
http://www.mac-help.com/t12137-opened-hfs-drive-win7-paragon-hfs-now-wont-boot.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=299306
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1677099
http://www.avforums.com/forums/apple-mac/1509344-hfs-super-block-not-found.html

whew! Anyway the pain I went through after that software very nearly ruined my life was so great, I don't want it to happen to anyone else. According to their own website 9.0 has this awful bug but they fixed it in 9.0.1. Evidently the trial download on the main page is still for version 9.0 and still has the disk destroying bug! Any software company that releases a filesystem driver with this terrible a bug (not to mention the numerous reports of BSODs and other relatively minor problems) clearly has terrible quality assurance and simply can't be trusted.

Do your homework and read some proper reviews.

Ok, I'll stop to troll now and give you some advice on where to start.

http://www.avforums.com/reviews/index.php

I'll drive 1/2 the length of the UK in an evening to go see friends for a weekend.
Once I drove the length of the UK (700ish miles) just to go on a white water rafting trip.
Last summer we drove more than the length of the UK to go to NYC for a week.

I searched for "High Mileage Car United Kingdom" and this was one of the first hits, here was another.

Those are some very low numbers. My '98 has 250k and I haven't really even driven it the last 4 years. I know people with '00-'02 that have at least that. Somehow I doubt that those in the UK drive as much as us.

Especially if you need blinds anyway (for the windows so as not to get up with the sun at 5am), even some of the cheapest ones such as http://www.avforums.com/forums/projector-screens/372990-ikea-tupplur.html at US$15-20 make a great screen (up to 100" approx. with a much better viewing angle than LCDs, and none of especially Plasmas' reflection issues). With cleverly designed brackets, they can even be mounted to curtain rails (and double as LED fixtures) to be removed without a trace from rented rooms later on: http://diy-community.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=63752&d=1278867980

Very often, some piece of furniture or drywall (easily bridged by 125mm ventilation tubing or one of the monster-sized grommets e.g. from http://www.mockett.com/furniture-hardware/wire-cable-management) at the opposite side of the room will lend itself to building an excellent "hush box" for the projector (smokers will want to integrate an otherwise optional "museum glass").

The hard part is to hide it from the neighbors or they'll want to visit all too often ;-) - and the pressure it creates to upgrade the entire collection to BluRays now that the difference in resolution really shows.

A pity affordable FullHD 3D projection is still a few years away for home cinemas - but even then this type of installation is most easily upgraded.

SOLVED.

That's sold out, $35 and possibly not available in Australia. However, after viewing that, it has occurred to me what has happened here. The submitter is used to (what I learned to call) RCA jacks in stereo. These I guess are two jacks looking like this. I believe what the submitter needs is only one of these adapters that will run you a few bucks at your local store (unless you're finicky about quality which I'm guessing he's not if he's doing this on that old of a computer).

Yes, the large RCA version of it is going the way of the buffalo and probably has for some time. Similar to the new video out ports looking smaller and smaller but being essentially the same standard.

You want a Network Media Player. eg an IcyBox MP305 but there are loads of other players based on the same chipset (realtek 1073), or the competitor (sigma erm.. something). They're all quite cheap - £80 or so (ie probably $80)

They all tend to have 1 or 2 USB ports for attaching an external HDD, an ethernet port to connect to your router, and HDMI and composite/optical outputs. They will stream quite happily from a DLNA server (eg PS3MediaServer, TVersity or Twonky) or a SMB share (thought setup can be tricky if you have any security on the share).

I love mine, it just works for all my, erm.. legitimately ripped backups of my DVD collection.

You can find a lot more information on them on my favourite AV forum

Ermmm.. ok.. lets pull apart some of your trollish stuff....

a) the PS3 DOES upscale DVDs and some other SD content VERY well... and it gets better... Arguably its one of the best upscalers around. I really dont know what you are talking about by saying its not as good.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/ps3/641470-ps3-dvd-upscaling-performance.html
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=852732
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1180189

b) the firmware which introduced DVD upscaling is now VERY old, and on a NORMAL ps3 would have been updated more than 2 years ago, either via the internet (newer firmware always required to access PSN), or updated via certain games/Blu Ray discs.

The plain fact is, most upscalers are now very good, and you woudl be very hard pressed to choose between them. The PS3 is VERY good, and is likely to get better, due to its powerfull processor.

And yes, Sony, although would love to sell more BD, they also sell DVDs and do promote the PS3 as a great DVD player.

How many people will buy several of these and never play games on them?

Probably more than you think, go to AV forums and you'll see a lot of people using the PS3 mainly to watch Blu-ray discs, especially now you can get the BBC iPlayer on it.

That does look like a nice screen. My Westinghouse is nice, has an MVA panel, but is now only being sold with a TN (at first I felt ripped off, when I saw it go from $700 to $399... but then I checked out forums, so at least I know why).

It does seem like a lottery in getting a monitor with an IPS panel. This happens with Dells, HPs, and Samsung along with other companies, even Viewsonic. Hardly any brick and mortar stores sell these monitors so they have to be ordered online. Yet companies like Newegg that do sell them don't guaranty a monitor will have an IPS panel. What's worse is that they have bad exchange policies for monitors with dead or stuck pixels. I think Newegg requires 7 before they will exchange a monitor and they wait to test a returned monitor before shipping a replacement.

After searching and driving to different stores I found an employee at a Best Buy that found the HP online, at Best Buy for Business website. So if and when I get one, I'm hoping to in a month or two, I may be able to take it to Best Buy for an exchange. Normally for a purchase like that I'd also buy a buyer protection plan but in this case I won't have to, HP's warranty on it is a 3 year on site plan. If I have a problem I can call HP and they'll send a tech to me. Because of this instead of ordering it from Best Buy I may get it from B&H Photo and Video. Because of the panel lottery and dead, stuck, pixel issue I'll have to check their return policy first though.

Falcon

Some players disregard the UOP (User Operation Prohibition) flags, while others can be patched to do so.

It's too bad that DVD player companies collude against the user, but at least there's something that can be done!

You can expect problems pairing any HDTV up to any video card using Vista, MythTV, any Media Center type solution really. It can be hard work getting them both talking to each other and having the display output the correct resolution but again that applies to an solution you choose for the job. Whether it's hard or easy it will be possible and if you post on site like http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f= 302 they (me included) will happily try to help you out when you get there, or indeed before you make your mind up on a TV and system.

Verified problem with PS3 Bluray playback which is NOT the same as game playback, and at NO time did I conflate the two. I don't know what your problem is, why the facts are so annoying to you, but no matter how much you pose and posture, you can't change the facts. Read the links - READ them, don't skim them. You are wrong, you've been wrong since your first post, and that's not going to change until you change your position.

What are you talking about? When have you ever seen a 720p native display refuse 1080i input?

About 2 minutes ago, in my Rec room. Infocus 5000, Firmware 753-0363-10, Brandware 753-0363-02, Bootcode 002-1082-00. That's what I'm talking about. You feed this thing 1080i and you get 1/2 vertical screen of bright green squish.

What does this mean? Well, that your complaint about being unable to watch a Blu-Ray movie on the PS3 due to lack of display support is completely bogus.

No, what it actually means is that you don't know what you're talking about, that there are 720-only capable displays out there, and that you didn't do any research before you shot off your ignorant mouth. For instance, one quick Google search turned up the problem at IGN, avforums, arstechnica, joystiq and many more, both user forums and more technical forums. So lets just drop the "it's not a problem" nonsense right now. It is a problem.

I find it pretty funny the lame excuses Microsoft's army of fanboys are making for the consoles very poor relibility... There is a poll here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=43 63999#post4363999 Showing 50% of 360 owners are on at least their 2nd console... Yet Microsoft continue to lie, and say failure rates are within industry standards...

I feel the need to call fanboi on your entire response...

Sure there are die-hard, rabid, Playstation fanatics who would still buy one if the price was your first born. But if you look at the fact that Sony has always had lame launch titles, the PSP's consumer excitement around it's launch could be described as "apathetic" with the die hard fans camping out for a product that didn't even sell out....

Its true that the DS is handily beating the PSP in sales, especially since the DS Lite launched; but apathetic is alittle strong. The PSP is selling about half as well as the DS. That's still something like 200k units per month.

Considering that the DS or sales numbers were not even brought into the discussion, where the hell did this come from? The OP was describing the consumer exitement about the PSP and the less then spectacular launch titles for the system, which after the die hard $ony fans had gotten theirs, dropped to apathetic. I don't know anyone that was excited about the PSP mainly due to the lackluster titles at launch.

Root kit lost a lot of fans...

Rootkit fiasco lost a lot of nerd fans. Jo Q Public still has no clue. They don't even know what a rootkit is.

That's funny... I get asked all the time by people who know that I am into computers about it. It was featured on the network news, CNN, MSNBC, etc. etc.

... as did Sony's double talk arrogance and bad mouthing of their competition, and lets not forget the clear rip-offs of Nintendo's Wii-mote and Microsoft's Guide button,

Arrogance: check.

Wii rip-off: undecided. Its a natural progression, the tilt sensor they added, if you ask me. More likely this feature was bumped up in priority when Sony saw the impression the Wii remote made. I can see that one either way to be honest. This is sort of like saying that every single digital music player is ripping off the iPod.

MS 'guide' button: what are you talking about? I don't even know what this is. Hardly a feature that's touted as interesting, at any rate.

Natural progression? I think you hit the nail on the head, though. When $ony saw the impression that the Wii controller made, they made the feature a priority... it has nothing to do with saying digital music players are ripping off the i-pod. It's like another music player coming out with a click wheel.

and perhaps most importantly THE PRICE.

Price is bad, I agree. Way bad in comparison to the other consoles, specifically. Of course, we don't actually know the final price yet.

Ummm... where have you been? The price has been known for quite awhile now. $499 for the basic, $599 for upgraded system.

Heck the reason for the high price was because of the Blu-Ray drive, and reviews thus far have shown that HD-DVD is stomping all over Blu-Ray. Really! I'd like to see that. Cite a source?

Here
Here
and here

HD-DVD has 2 layer discs (15gig per layer/30gig total) and uses the awesome VC-1 codec.

So? Blu-ray has a max storage of 200 gigs, over six layers. The codec is irrelevant; you can write a Blu-ray disc with MPEG-2, or the awesome VC-1 codec, OR the 'even awesomer' AVC codec. HD-DVD can only use MS-approved codecs and by the way, that has DRM built-in to the wrapper. (H.264/AVC does not necessarily have this stipulation (weak praise I know), but ALL MS codecs will have to deal with this.)

A six layer blu-ray disk has not been produced outside of the lab, and may be years (if ever) before it is able to be mass produced. Where do you come up with that hd-dvd can only use MS approved codecs? You are just spouting FUD now, as blue-ra

I apologize for not citing sources for the HD-DVD over Blu-Ray debate. I figured it was common knowledge at this point, what with the AV forums buzzing about it.

The whole thing about Cell yields isn't that they're low (of course we expect them to be low when starting production) it's that its look like they'reFAR LOWER THEN EXPECTED.

And since you asked, I don't have a link but IIRC the last cost estimated the Cell and RSX chips cost Sony ~$110 a piece. No idea about how the RSX yeilds are. I'd almost be more conserned about RAM yeilds though.

The original and still the best:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56 924

It all depends on what you believe the main contribution and technical risk of Blu-Ray to be. As I said, I don't think it's the codec

Blu-Ray is *much* more complicated than just a codec. The spec papers for it are several hundred pages long for a compliant player(one can easily find portions on the internet with google). As I mentioned in my first post it has it's own virtual machine just for playing content. It also has AACS a very highly technical cryptographic security system. Plus Blu-Ray spec supports more than one codec depending on how much space there is(MPEG-2, H.264, WMV9).

There is also the BD9 spec which will be helping the red to blue laser transition period. The spec is Blu-Ray format on Dual-Layer 9 gigabyte capacity DVD drives. here, and here

Except it didn't really happen.

I decided this weekend to try and quiten my PC by following some other members lead and going down the water cooling road. The fans on my PC were really starting to drive me mad. The first thing that I did was to remove all the fans. The one on the processor and graphics card were no problem but the one in the power unit was a bugger to get out.

The most difficult part was sealing all the ventilitation openings in the PC case with silicon. I also put silicon all around the joints on the PC case. The smell of silicon was dreadful but when my wife complained I told her to be patent as it will be worth it when we have a completely silent PC.

Because I had completely sealed the PC case the only opening near top was the DVD drive. So I opened that and put the small hose I had purchased specially for the job into the DVD drive as far as it would go. With what I can only describe as great excitement and anticipation, I turned on the water. It really is amazing just how long it took before the case was complete full, and boy was it heavy. That didn't really bother me as I didn't intend to be moving the PC anyway.

The big moment had arrived so I called in my wife and mother in law (who was visiting) and I announced "prepare to hear nothing!" and flicked the switch on the socket on the wall.

Before I could even press the power button on front of the PC, with a loud bang, the whole place was plunged into darkness

I knew that it was only the tripswitch so I told my onlookers not to panic and I ran out to the hall to turn the trip switch back on. But can u believe it, it wouldn't stay on. After five attempts I decided to try unplugging the PC and would you believe...yes the trip switch stayed on. My conclusion: the PC must have in some way been causing the problem.

After about an hour of tries I finally decided to abandon the whole idea of water cooling and emptied the water out of the PC, put back in the fans (except the fan in the power unit, I had broken that one getting it out) and tried the pc AGAIN. IT STILL CAUSED THE TRIP SWTICH TO BLOW!

My PC is completely shagged thanks to stupid suggestions that I got on this forum. What the hell am I going to do now. I spent two hours last night with a hair drier inside the PC case and it still trips the switch.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated

Conor

I use ac3filter http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net/download/ to do the same thing - great for watching HD p2p downloads when the file is wmv-hd (wmv-hd doesn't use AC3 or DTS, it uses WMA Professional 5.1 for the audio).

Instructions here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19 25770#post1925770

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&p ostid=384992 Turns out it was a fake, but still, funny as heck to read.

I decided this weekend to try and quiten my PC by following some other members lead and going down the water cooling road. The fans on my PC were really starting to drive me mad

The first thing that I did was to remove all the fans. The one on the processor and graphics card were no problem but the one in the power unit was a bugger to get out.

The most difficult part was sealing all the ventilitation openings in the PC case with silicon. I also put silicon all around the joints on the PC case. The smell of silicon was dreadful but when my wife complained I told her to be patent as it will be worth it when we have a completely silent PC.

Because I had completely sealed the PC case the only opening near top was the DVD drive. So I opened that and put the small hose I had purchased specially for the job into the DVD drive as far as it would go. With what I can only describe as great excitement and anticipation, I turned on the water. It really is amazing just how long it took before the case was complete full, and boy was it heavy. That didn't really bother me as I didn't intend to be moving the PC anyway.

Read on...

Yes, but I still think water cooling is the way to go, personally.

The X1 has been usurped by the new Optoma ThemeScene H30. Less rainbows, quieter, greater contrast ratio and produces a very film-like image. Cost is around 1000 (GB Pounds) - projector central lists a price of $1400 (US).
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?thre adid=351894
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?thre adid=127171&perpage=15&pagenumber=1
http://www.projectorcentral.com/part_opinions.cfm? part_id=2235
http://www.themescene.tv/Newsite/H30-Main.htm

From MikeD on avforums.com:

Having completed the fabrication of a steel mount the H30 was duly screwed to the ceiling and a good quality composite and a SCART/VGA cable were connected. Incidentally while on the subject of ceiling mounting, the 3mm mounting holes in the base of the H30 look pretty inadequate for supporting 1100 of projector from the ceiling. I took the precaution of drilling a hole in the ceiling mount base plate to accommodate an additional 6mm bolt; this was then screwed into the tripod-mounting hole for additional security.

Anyway having lined it all up some friends came around to help set it up and see how it performed. One is the proud owner of an AE300 and the other a high end Sony CRT projector that he has installed in a dedicated room with matt black walls to reduce light reflection.

Having quickly tweaked the basic settings on the H30 we darkened the room and put on The Scorpion King, we sat there in utter amazement; the picture quality was truly awesome.

We then put on Armageddon, as we tend to use it, as a reference disc as it contains a good variety of differing scenes, again the picture quality was amazing.

The H30 uses the Pixelworks deinterlacing and scaling chip as opposed to the popular and unquestionably competent Faroudja DCDI, this was my only reservation about the projector prior to purchasing.

Not anymore, the picture was very sharp and had an extremely pleasing film like quality with few artefacts even in fast moving scenes and panned shots.

The black level was incredible far better than anything I have ever seen before south of CRT. I had the masking lens attached which I think I read somewhere increases the contrast ratio to around 2500:1 by reducing unwanted light. Projectors cant project black, correct me if Im wrong but my belief is that to get true black the pixels in the chip are in effect switched off and black is in fact displayed as absence of light. This is one of the reasons why you tend to get a more pleasing picture the darker the room. Most projectors are unable to switch the pixels off completely but it is considered that DLP technology is slightly better at it than LCD particularly on budget home theatre projectors such as the H30. We also found that detail in dark scenes was outstanding, certainly better than we had expected.

Screen door was good and fan noise acceptable, light spill was also not too bad with just a small amount on the ceiling about a foot or so in front of the projector. None of us noticed significant rainbow even though we did try very hard to see them particularly on high contrast fast moving scenes.

We only used eco-mode, as the brightness was more than adequate for a light controlled room and less light tends to give better blacks and contrast anyway, eco mode also has the added benefit of bumping the expected lamp life up from 2000 to 3000 hours. I was actually quite surprised by the projectors brightness, we eventually put this down to the H30s six segment (RGBRGB) colour wheel and the fact

If setup right, the "home-theater" experience is far superior to any TV you can buy. That said their are a few problems.

1. The screen - Half the battle is getting a good screen, which are costly. You can make a decent one if you are DIYer and there are plenty of instructions at AVForums. If you go roll down, make sure it's tensioned.

2. Mounting the projector - This can be a problem depending if you want a clean look or are content to have wires run along the ceiling. Getting the clean look will probably require some holes in drywall.

3. Wires and signal amplifiers - Since the projector will be quite a distance from the A/V components, you will have to buy long distance cables. If you're doing it right then this means RGB component cables from the DVD/Receiver to the projector (figure $100 per 6'). Then there are amplifiers if you want to prevent signal loss.

Of course you could just seal up your computer and run a hose to it and fill it with water and turn it on like this guy did.

Is it a joke? Yes. But it was funny. :)

Ok, so that's the wrong link.

Try this one
No he didn't

Erm...

No He didn't

Jesus! After reading on, it becomes apparent that it's not a wind up, he genuinely made his PC watertight, and filled it with water! Talk about running gung-ho into something without doing some research first!

This guy is the stuff of legends. If he had touched the case and died from the electrical shock, we'd be reading about him in the Darwin Awards!