I stopped because I was not in fact buying the same movie over and over again. I was buying subsequent derivative works based on the same original movie.
I would have less objections if I could actually pay for the originals in new formats. I could go for BD versions of the special editions. I just have no interest in versions that were never released theatrically.
...or you could just feed disks into the machine whenever.
If you're talking about movies then that's the single biggest issue. Even with TV shows, most of your time "wasted" is going to be spent swapping disks.
Beyond that, if you are spending a lot of time on this sort of thing then you are simply using the wrong tools. Once a movie is a file on your hard drive, things like Handbrake and mencoder should be doing all the work and they can run unattended for as long as the task takes.
Of course a big pile of disks is going to take time. It will also take a non-trivial amount of money if you decide to take them all to Walmart.
Very few DVDs have extra copy protection that something like mplayer can't handle. For the rest, stuff is pretty simple actually. Movies are especially trivial.
A "technical" person should be embarassed to consider this service.
A non-technical person would likely find trying to use the associated online services to be outside of their comfort zone.
The idea that the device itself is any more suitable than something that one of us might cobble together is dubious at best. Part of the "product" seems to be after market support and that's not something you would get with cheap consumer appliance even if it were an exact clone.
> My original preference would have been for a physical > disk jukebox approach but that tech never really developed > in a sophisticated and affordable form.
That means it is widely available, works well, and does not cost an arm and a leg. A link to some vendor's website does not adequately address any of those concerns.
So how's the interface? How does it compare to AppleTV, Plex, MCE or even MythTV? What limitations are there? Can you stream to another room with it? How easy is it to use more than one of these things?
You sound like the MPAA trying to make bogus claims to the Register of Copyrights.
You are grossly misrepresenting the situation. How the Netherlands treats these "illegal drugs" and how the US treats these drugs are worlds away from each other. Compared to the US approach with this sort of thing, for all practical purposes these drugs are in fact legal in the Netherlands.
There's a little more to the situation than the bits of legal language one might choose to cherry pick.
No one seems interested in playing Dirty Harry or Elliot Ness in the Netherlands. Big difference.
I am not sure "bending over forwards for Hollywood" really makes this California judge "out of control". If anything, I suspect that's there expected mode of operation.
Although if there was ANY grey area in that contract at all then the judge should have found for k-scape. There are such things as precedents that are older than the nation and this is one of them.
This is the key element. This is also the part that makes replicating the k-scape experience with other tools more complicated. Otherwise, ripping DVDs would be much like ripping CDs. All tools would connect to cddb (or dvddb) and everything would be sorted auto automagically.
All the gymnastics that's done now with DVD media management would evaporate.
The cost of the product is entirely artificial and has nothing to do with preserving the DRM on the original media. You can do that with dd. Some people even prefer the "clone the disk" approach. It primarily escalates your storage requirements.
There is no moral superiority to complying with a clearly unjust law just so that you can spend $50,000 on an overpriced workaround that will get sued into oblivion anyways.
My original preference would have been for a physical disk jukebox approach but that tech never really developed in a sophisticated and affordable form.
The phrase "DVD movie server" should have been a hint. I know it's asking a lot to actually read the original article but you should at least bother reading the summary.
You might want to actually to scarfing down some really alien part of some other country's cuisine some time. You may find that this stuff is not just "personal preference" or just being "spoiled Americans". You may find that you are actually adapted to the diet of what ever place your great-grandparents came from.
Let's not forget about EA. They're probably the most relevant gorilla in this context. Plus they're probably at a disadvantage in terms of experience when compared to developers that already have decades of experience dealing with "fragmentation" in the PC market.
That's not yet established. Although the fact that it can output 1080p of some kind is a useful improvement. These ARM devices are slowly improving to the point where HTPCs were about 5 or 8 years ago. The "curated" nature of these devices help hide that fact.
Play video, and not just stuff spoon fed from the Apple store.
Being able to do Netflix is not terribly interesting these days. Just about anything can do that. Some of those devices will even play your home movies or DVDs.
Conceptualizing is a great thing to conflate invention with when the "invention" in question is a "design patent". As if something like that has any business being patented to begin with.
Such conceptualizations have been prior art in other areas of patents. Sci-Fi authors are great when it comes to this sort of stuff.
> They claim they own the design patents of their tablet in that Samsung's phones and tablet looks too much like theirs.
Like the summary said. 2001: A Space Oddessy beat them both by about 40 years. Apple's "design patent" is even mor e absurd than their other patents and a lot of those are total rubbish to begin with.
Yes. They will make excuses for this stuff not being built in then they will happily go and buy dongles to get those features.
You won't even be able to use more than one of these at a time. You will have to choose between dongle A or dongle B and if you need to do something else at the same time you will just have to invent some other lame excuse why you shouldn't be doing such a thing.
Oddly enough, USB could provide faster networking.
There are all manner of interesting things you can plug into a USB port including cameras, storage, scanners, printers, video capture devices and whatever else someone could come up with.
Not everything is wireless. Nor would you reall want it to be.
Apple simply does not dominate in this area like it does in others. It has a much weaker showing in video streamers than it does in mp3 players or tablets.
Might be more comparable to the smartphone market now that Apple is not the dominant player there anymore.
3rd party developers are already there and making this turd into something useful. They are doing this despite the fact that they aren't even really allowed. They only thing they are lacking is some degree of legitimacy so that non-geek users don't have to "jailbreak" the device first.
Slashdot Mirror
Just don't give Hollywood a map and a flashlight.
It's illegal but it's not the sort of thing anyone is going to persue you over.
OTOH, there is a statue of limitations on it.
Some of my older rips are old enough for that to be the case.
I stopped because I was not in fact buying the same movie over and over again. I was buying subsequent derivative works based on the same original movie.
I would have less objections if I could actually pay for the originals in new formats. I could go for BD versions of the special editions. I just have no interest in versions that were never released theatrically.
...or you could just feed disks into the machine whenever.
If you're talking about movies then that's the single biggest issue. Even with TV shows, most of your time "wasted" is going to be spent swapping disks.
Beyond that, if you are spending a lot of time on this sort of thing then you are simply using the wrong tools. Once a movie is a file on your hard drive, things like Handbrake and mencoder should be doing all the work and they can run unattended for as long as the task takes.
Of course a big pile of disks is going to take time. It will also take a non-trivial amount of money if you decide to take them all to Walmart.
Very few DVDs have extra copy protection that something like mplayer can't handle. For the rest, stuff is pretty simple actually. Movies are especially trivial.
A "technical" person should be embarassed to consider this service.
A non-technical person would likely find trying to use the associated online services to be outside of their comfort zone.
No. They still have people to baby sit the thing.
K-scape also sells pre-ripped media packs.
The idea that the device itself is any more suitable than something that one of us might cobble together is dubious at best. Part of the "product" seems to be after market support and that's not something you would get with cheap consumer appliance even if it were an exact clone.
From my original remarks...
> My original preference would have been for a physical
> disk jukebox approach but that tech never really developed
> in a sophisticated and affordable form.
That means it is widely available, works well, and does not cost an arm and a leg. A link to some vendor's website does not adequately address any of those concerns.
> Simply put, there is no better platform to listen/watch a CD/DVD/BluRay from than Kaleidescape.
It's overrated and overpriced for people with more money than sense.
Scrambling the display is a bug, not a feature.
So how's the interface? How does it compare to AppleTV, Plex, MCE or even MythTV? What limitations are there? Can you stream to another room with it? How easy is it to use more than one of these things?
You sound like the MPAA trying to make bogus claims to the Register of Copyrights.
You are grossly misrepresenting the situation. How the Netherlands treats these "illegal drugs" and how the US treats these drugs are worlds away from each other. Compared to the US approach with this sort of thing, for all practical purposes these drugs are in fact legal in the Netherlands.
There's a little more to the situation than the bits of legal language one might choose to cherry pick.
No one seems interested in playing Dirty Harry or Elliot Ness in the Netherlands. Big difference.
I am not sure "bending over forwards for Hollywood" really makes this California judge "out of control". If anything, I suspect that's there expected mode of operation.
Although if there was ANY grey area in that contract at all then the judge should have found for k-scape. There are such things as precedents that are older than the nation and this is one of them.
This is the key element. This is also the part that makes replicating the k-scape experience with other tools more complicated. Otherwise, ripping DVDs would be much like ripping CDs. All tools would connect to cddb (or dvddb) and everything would be sorted auto automagically.
All the gymnastics that's done now with DVD media management would evaporate.
The cost of the product is entirely artificial and has nothing to do with preserving the DRM on the original media. You can do that with dd. Some people even prefer the "clone the disk" approach. It primarily escalates your storage requirements.
There is no moral superiority to complying with a clearly unjust law just so that you can spend $50,000 on an overpriced workaround that will get sued into oblivion anyways.
My original preference would have been for a physical disk jukebox approach but that tech never really developed in a sophisticated and affordable form.
The phrase "DVD movie server" should have been a hint. I know it's asking a lot to actually read the original article but you should at least bother reading the summary.
You might want to actually to scarfing down some really alien part of some other country's cuisine some time. You may find that this stuff is not just "personal preference" or just being "spoiled Americans". You may find that you are actually adapted to the diet of what ever place your great-grandparents came from.
Let's not forget about EA. They're probably the most relevant gorilla in this context. Plus they're probably at a disadvantage in terms of experience when compared to developers that already have decades of experience dealing with "fragmentation" in the PC market.
That's not yet established. Although the fact that it can output 1080p of some kind is a useful improvement. These ARM devices are slowly improving to the point where HTPCs were about 5 or 8 years ago. The "curated" nature of these devices help hide that fact.
> What do you want it to do, exactly?
Play video, and not just stuff spoon fed from the Apple store.
Being able to do Netflix is not terribly interesting these days. Just about anything can do that. Some of those devices will even play your home movies or DVDs.
Conceptualizing is a great thing to conflate invention with when the "invention" in question is a "design patent". As if something like that has any business being patented to begin with.
Such conceptualizations have been prior art in other areas of patents. Sci-Fi authors are great when it comes to this sort of stuff.
> They claim they own the design patents of their tablet in that Samsung's phones and tablet looks too much like theirs.
Like the summary said. 2001: A Space Oddessy beat them both by about 40 years. Apple's "design patent" is even mor e absurd than their other patents and a lot of those are total rubbish to begin with.
Yes. They will make excuses for this stuff not being built in then they will happily go and buy dongles to get those features.
You won't even be able to use more than one of these at a time. You will have to choose between dongle A or dongle B and if you need to do something else at the same time you will just have to invent some other lame excuse why you shouldn't be doing such a thing.
Apple users are great at NewSpeak.
Oddly enough, USB could provide faster networking.
There are all manner of interesting things you can plug into a USB port including cameras, storage, scanners, printers, video capture devices and whatever else someone could come up with.
Not everything is wireless. Nor would you reall want it to be.
Pretty much everything.
Apple simply does not dominate in this area like it does in others. It has a much weaker showing in video streamers than it does in mp3 players or tablets.
Might be more comparable to the smartphone market now that Apple is not the dominant player there anymore.
What a load of bullshit.
3rd party developers are already there and making this turd into something useful. They are doing this despite the fact that they aren't even really allowed. They only thing they are lacking is some degree of legitimacy so that non-geek users don't have to "jailbreak" the device first.
...and it got nowhere until it addressed some of those criticisms.
On the other hand we have it straight from the horse's mouth: "It's just a hobby".