This works well for me: If the most popular songs, and generally suckiest, are the most expensive, a quick sort from lowest price to highest will yield the best songs. What's not to like?
The only way we will ever be able to stop DRM is to create our own, free content. Via the same (r)evolutionary technology which threatens to kill our ability to share copy-protected media, the potential to create a world-class television production or film is no longer soley in the hands of corporate entities.
The media industry, from top to bottom, is about money. How can we create a production which can compete with the "big leagues" without being sucked into the same greed-pit that already exists? If content was distributed freely, could a small production company, with actors, producers, technicians, etc. survive on a tip system alone?
I'm guilty. I currently work for a massive player in the media industry, and I don't necessarily see a way out. Breaking something like CableCard would be huge problem to my company. Yet I'd still love to see it happen.
BTW, don't bother trying to hack CableCard. Just figure out a way to crack DigicipherII -- that's where the goods are.
It sounds like you're talking about DXVA-type acceleration, which does hardware assited DEcoding of some types of compressed video. Bascially, it's the reverse of what this article talks about. DXVA does a decent job though. I have a PCI ATSC HDTV tuner card in my PC which does NOT have an onboard HD MPEG2 decoder. Instead, it relies upon a software codec which takes advantage of DXVA to decode the stream without putting a huge burden on the main CPU. Maybe we need DXVE(ncoding)A? Though really, I'd be much happier if it wasn't Windows dependent.
It looks like they're using their own codec to produce MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 material. How would you get an existing, x86-only aware application to utilize the GPU, which is not x86 instruction compatible? It's a good bet that codecs will be rewritten to utilize the GPU once code becomes available from ATI, nVidia, etc.
I'd actually be willing to spend more than $50 on a video card if more multimedia apps took advantage of the GPU's capabilities.
At the time I had a GUS, I was an audio engineering student, trying to get a halfway decent synth at negligible cost. I loaded up samples into one of the midi apps with soundfont support and hooked up my Roland Juno keyboard. Between the older (and not "vintage" yet) analog synth and the sample-playback GUS, it was a far cheaper solution than anything else out there at the time -- and sounded pretty good too. I never questioned the (output) audio quality of the GUS -- it always sounded fantastic to me.
My only gripe was that it only supported 8-bit recording, and by the time the MAX came out with 16-bit support, I was already experimenting with other cards.
So while I didn't personally use the programmer's guide, I'm more than sure a number of apps I used DID use it -- so THANKS for it!
WRT making audio sound better than the specs of the original file, the Gravis Ultrasound cards claimed a similar feature. IIRC, they claimed to interpolate new samples between those fed into the card from, say, a.wav file. This card was from an era before MP3's were ubiquitous.
... it will interpolate the data to give an effective 44khz (or less, depending on how many active voices) sample. This means that an 8khz sample will sound better on the GUS than most other cards, since the GUS will play it at 44khz!
I don't know if this was ever proven to be effective. Some people said that interpolation made lesser quality files sound "smoother". These same folks might also have had a lot of ink on their hands...
a) NTSC wouldn't be a good comparison, as NTSC (AFAIK) only defines analog color broadcasting. ATSC would be the equiv here in the states.
b) The interlaced part wouldn't be the stumbling block -- 720p (aka progressive scan) is one of the ATSC standard modes. The hard part would be the 8VSB modulation, which is a totally different creature than the 16QAM modulation used in the european standard.
I recently acquired a Harmony 676 remote. So far so good. I've been searching for a decent universal remote for a while. I started years ago with a *huge* Memorex CP8 learning remote which had a timer and was macro programmable. It was too large and didn't have enough memory, but I still miss it.
Ten years later, I ended up playing with JP1-based remotes. If you've got patience, it's not a terrible option if you're on a budget. Ultimately, the complicated setup procedure involving a complex Excel spreadsheet made me reluctant to play with it. I've got nothing but respect for the folks who've created and sustain this project -- it's a GREAT hack.
I received a Sony remote for the holidays last year. Though I was excited to get a "real" universal remote, the form factor (square? what are they thinking?) and my system's lack of discrete codes made the decision to return it necessary.
I gave up for a while and ended up using the uni remote which came with my Yamaha receiver. It wasn't horrible, but it was completely confusing to use for anyone but myself. It meant that watching a DVD was all but impossible unless I was there to set it up.
I came across the Harmony 676 at TECHXNY, where Logitech was selling them at a decent discount. I was skeptical, but so far it's the only remote which my wife has been able to use sucessfully. The bigger test: the father-in-law. Whenever he'd come over, he could barely figure out how to change the channel. Once when he was staying over, he left the whole thing on all night because he couldn't figure out how to turn it off! The Harmony remote solved that problem beautifully.
The biggest feature of this remote is it's "intelligence". I press the DVD button, it turns on the dvd player, sets my TV for component in, and the receiver for digial input #2. Why is this unique? Because my TV doesn't have discrete codes, yet the Harmony remembers the system's last state. If the TV was on composite in, it knows to send the 'change input' code two times to get to the component in. And when I press the "TV" button, it knows to turn the dvd player off, send the TV input code three times to get to S-Video, and the receiver to VCR-in. But what happens if the remote gets out of sync with the state of the TV? There's a HELP button on the remote, which will resend the codes and ask you "is everything ok now?". If you press "no", it'll go step-by-step: Is the TV on? Is the DVD player on? Is the TV on the component input? and will send codes depending on your answers. This is *HUGE* - and something a macro just can't do.
Other things I like about it: Programmable via your PC through USB. If your batteries die and it loses its program, just hook it back up and it'll redownload its config. It knows about every device I own, from the Tivo (including different tivo remote addresses) to the Audiotron to the LG air conditioner, and everything inbetween (and if it doesn't list your specific device, you can feed it a few IR commands from your exiting remote, and it'll auto-recognize the device). It feels good in the hand. Similar to my tivo 'peanut' remote.
What I don't like: No true "macros" as far as I can tell. The web interface to program the remote is a little clunky. I'm having a problem with one of the remote's buttons.
Ultimately, it was a good purchase. I'd buy it again.
I'd like to rip CDs under Windows, primarily so my wife can rip without needing to switch from her current PC. They'll be etracted to 16bit, 44.1k.wav files and written to a share on a Linux box. From there, I'd like to have the Linux box check the folder every once in a while (via cron I assume) for new files to be encoded. Once it sees a new file, it should encode it to both MP3 and FLAC with id3 tags, and then delete the original. Additionally, I'd like to have the ability to add PCs running Linux (ideally using some sort of CD-bootable distro) to distribute the encoding.
I know I could do this using Perl/Bash/etc., via cron to make a watch folder and lock files for other machines to signal that they're working with a file. Before I do all that... is there anything out there which does some or all of what I'm trying to do?
Does this mean that every file I've created with my (legal) copy of Sound Forge, registered to me, gets distributed with my name embedded in it? What other programs do this? I already know that MS Office docs do -- but I never suspected Sound Forge of something like this.
Software authors/distributors should be required to disclose exactly what personal information is distributed in files which are created with that product. As much as I like to stick it to M$, Sonic Foundry, now Sony, is the one I'm concerned about here.
Though I use a PocketPC, I still like to avoid Windows Media. Instead, I use these tools for a nearly perfect experience:
PocketDivXEncoder is a wonderful tool, using mencoder to encode video to PDA-sized mpeg-4. Lots of options for video (including rotation) and audio, but not enough to be confusing. More importantly, audio and video stays in sync, I can estimate file size before encoding, and it supports multiple resolutions to support more than one platform.
For playback, I use BetaPlayer, a very capable (and GPL!) video player, with excellent mpeg-4 support. Full speed playback on my older 300MHz Toshiba e355 device, and it doesn't even kill my battery. Excellent support on the CoreCodec BetaPlayer Forum.
On a nearly daily basis, I use TyTool to extract last night's Daily Show from my Tivo as a 480x480 mpeg-2, then use PocketDivXEncoder to convert it to a ~64MB 320x240 mpeg4 file. Extraction, converting the.ty to mpeg-2, and encoding to mpeg-4 takes about 12 minutes on my A64 2800. I don't bother to edit out the ads, since it's very easy to skip them in BetaPlayer. Before I found this, I rarely touched my PDA. This is most certainly the KILLER APP for me.
A family member lives in a rural section of Kentucky without broadband access (satellite access is too expensive). She's only a few miles from another relative with broadband access, but there's no line-of-sight between them -- it's a hilly, twisty road between them, and she's not about to put up any towers. While I suspect some WISP will come along and provide service eventually, part of the beauty of Wi-Fi is it's DIY, corporations-be-dammed attitude. Will we see that in the Wi-Max world?
Is Wi-Max applicable for deployment by individuals? Will there be inexpensive Linksys/Dlink/Netgear Wi-Max routers, as there is now for Wi-Fi?
The Suprnova post was for an RC released Oct-29. See this redhat.com link. If you dowloaded the suprnova torrent, erase it and start again from the official torrent site. If you're not sure, md5sum your results and compare them to the official ones.
If you want to end "Republican Bashing", start by telling Republicans who get bashed that we can record things, and we can play them back. Lying will get people nowhere today.
Not for long. When broadcast flag is implemented, digital recorders can be forced to disallow recording shows (and also ouput macrovision protection to try to keep analog devices from recording). What if these people, as part of their conditions of appearing on the show, demanded that the bflag was set for "DO NOT RECORD"? Keep those camcorders handy -- soon that might be the only way to keep a record of this stuff.
For whatever reason, I read this as "if windows came to pocketpc, would you switch?" I.E. if I could run Win98 on my PDA, would I do it? I didn't hesitate to answer "yeah, why not". With 1GB of SD going for ~$100, and 300MHz+ CPUs, surely this would be able to mach the speed of a 100MHz Pentium. I'd do it.
FCC test report of Nintendo DS
on
Nintendo DS Network
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I was playing with VideoLAN a week ago, and noticed it has a video filter module called "wall" (this is under WinXP, FWIW) which will split your stream into as many multiple windows as your machine can handle. So, split your video stream into four windows, move each one to its own display, and full-screen them. I haven't played with VLC under Linux, but I'm guessing it has the same options.
Great project, BTW! I've been thinking of doing something like this for a while. Good luck!
Watching a 30 minute show fits nicely into my 35 minute subway ride into work. The best part is that I already have everything I need via my (under) $200 Toshiba e355 PDA, a 300MHz, not-all-that-impressive CE device, to which I added a $40 256MB SD card.
I'm using the incredibly easy to use PocketDivXEncoder to encode my video into a 320x240 Divx.avi w/ mp3 audio, and then BetaPlayer, a fast, efficient, and full featured player with all sorts of (optional!) settings, to play it back. A 30 minute show with ads still intact takes up less than 60MB. For example, I schedule my DVR to grab The Daily Show overnight, and I encode it (five minutes!) in the morning before I leave for the office.
I couldn't be happier. Battery life was my biggest concern, and it turns out that watching videos really doesn't drain the CPU all that much.
While I agree that 20GB might be nice for long trips, for casual use I can stick at least two hours of video on my 256MB SD card, which means a 1GB card would give me 8 hours -- plenty for any travelling I'd do, and all on a multi-function device.
Chris Pascoe has written a Linux driver for the Austrailian version of the card. See: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~chrisp/DVICO-Linux/. AFAIK, the only difference between the Austrailian and American versions is the tuner. If we can find the codes (perhaps by sniffing them w/ a homebrew I2C sniffer), we should be able to have a fully-functioning driver for the US card.
Bonus: the card is half-height, and comes with a low-profile PCI backplate, which would make it fit nicely into a small MythTV-powered PVR.
AFAIK, the AT&T Natural Voices app isn't freeware. Their little demo might be free to use, but does that mean we should count all demoware as freeware?
If anyone else has a link to some FREE (and high-quality - none of this "SAM" or Dr. Sbaitso quality stuff!) text-to-speech converters, I'll all ears. Ha. Get it? All ears... hehehe...
Slashdot Mirror
This works well for me: If the most popular songs, and generally suckiest, are the most expensive, a quick sort from lowest price to highest will yield the best songs. What's not to like?
You only need 1.21 Gigawatts.
The only way we will ever be able to stop DRM is to create our own, free content. Via the same (r)evolutionary technology which threatens to kill our ability to share copy-protected media, the potential to create a world-class television production or film is no longer soley in the hands of corporate entities.
The media industry, from top to bottom, is about money. How can we create a production which can compete with the "big leagues" without being sucked into the same greed-pit that already exists? If content was distributed freely, could a small production company, with actors, producers, technicians, etc. survive on a tip system alone?
I'm guilty. I currently work for a massive player in the media industry, and I don't necessarily see a way out. Breaking something like CableCard would be huge problem to my company. Yet I'd still love to see it happen.
BTW, don't bother trying to hack CableCard. Just figure out a way to crack DigicipherII -- that's where the goods are.
It sounds like you're talking about DXVA-type acceleration, which does hardware assited DEcoding of some types of compressed video. Bascially, it's the reverse of what this article talks about. DXVA does a decent job though. I have a PCI ATSC HDTV tuner card in my PC which does NOT have an onboard HD MPEG2 decoder. Instead, it relies upon a software codec which takes advantage of DXVA to decode the stream without putting a huge burden on the main CPU. Maybe we need DXVE(ncoding)A? Though really, I'd be much happier if it wasn't Windows dependent.
(Acronym overload!!! Acronym overload!!! Ack!)
It looks like they're using their own codec to produce MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 material. How would you get an existing, x86-only aware application to utilize the GPU, which is not x86 instruction compatible? It's a good bet that codecs will be rewritten to utilize the GPU once code becomes available from ATI, nVidia, etc.
I'd actually be willing to spend more than $50 on a video card if more multimedia apps took advantage of the GPU's capabilities.
No way! That's crazy -- small world!
At the time I had a GUS, I was an audio engineering student, trying to get a halfway decent synth at negligible cost. I loaded up samples into one of the midi apps with soundfont support and hooked up my Roland Juno keyboard. Between the older (and not "vintage" yet) analog synth and the sample-playback GUS, it was a far cheaper solution than anything else out there at the time -- and sounded pretty good too. I never questioned the (output) audio quality of the GUS -- it always sounded fantastic to me.
My only gripe was that it only supported 8-bit recording, and by the time the MAX came out with 16-bit support, I was already experimenting with other cards.
So while I didn't personally use the programmer's guide, I'm more than sure a number of apps I used DID use it -- so THANKS for it!
From the The Official Gravis Ultrasound Programmer's Encyclopedia:
I don't know if this was ever proven to be effective. Some people said that interpolation made lesser quality files sound "smoother". These same folks might also have had a lot of ink on their hands...
Hmm... wait. I guess he does provide analog PAL and SECAM modulation. Oh well -- yeah, NTSC would be cool too.
a) NTSC wouldn't be a good comparison, as NTSC (AFAIK) only defines analog color broadcasting. ATSC would be the equiv here in the states.
b) The interlaced part wouldn't be the stumbling block -- 720p (aka progressive scan) is one of the ATSC standard modes. The hard part would be the 8VSB modulation, which is a totally different creature than the 16QAM modulation used in the european standard.
That said, WHAT A NICE HACK!
I recently acquired a Harmony 676 remote. So far so good. I've been searching for a decent universal remote for a while. I started years ago with a *huge* Memorex CP8 learning remote which had a timer and was macro programmable. It was too large and didn't have enough memory, but I still miss it.
Ten years later, I ended up playing with JP1-based remotes. If you've got patience, it's not a terrible option if you're on a budget. Ultimately, the complicated setup procedure involving a complex Excel spreadsheet made me reluctant to play with it. I've got nothing but respect for the folks who've created and sustain this project -- it's a GREAT hack.
I received a Sony remote for the holidays last year. Though I was excited to get a "real" universal remote, the form factor (square? what are they thinking?) and my system's lack of discrete codes made the decision to return it necessary.
I gave up for a while and ended up using the uni remote which came with my Yamaha receiver. It wasn't horrible, but it was completely confusing to use for anyone but myself. It meant that watching a DVD was all but impossible unless I was there to set it up.
I came across the Harmony 676 at TECHXNY, where Logitech was selling them at a decent discount. I was skeptical, but so far it's the only remote which my wife has been able to use sucessfully. The bigger test: the father-in-law. Whenever he'd come over, he could barely figure out how to change the channel. Once when he was staying over, he left the whole thing on all night because he couldn't figure out how to turn it off! The Harmony remote solved that problem beautifully.
The biggest feature of this remote is it's "intelligence". I press the DVD button, it turns on the dvd player, sets my TV for component in, and the receiver for digial input #2. Why is this unique? Because my TV doesn't have discrete codes, yet the Harmony remembers the system's last state. If the TV was on composite in, it knows to send the 'change input' code two times to get to the component in. And when I press the "TV" button, it knows to turn the dvd player off, send the TV input code three times to get to S-Video, and the receiver to VCR-in. But what happens if the remote gets out of sync with the state of the TV? There's a HELP button on the remote, which will resend the codes and ask you "is everything ok now?". If you press "no", it'll go step-by-step: Is the TV on? Is the DVD player on? Is the TV on the component input? and will send codes depending on your answers. This is *HUGE* - and something a macro just can't do.
Other things I like about it: Programmable via your PC through USB. If your batteries die and it loses its program, just hook it back up and it'll redownload its config. It knows about every device I own, from the Tivo (including different tivo remote addresses) to the Audiotron to the LG air conditioner, and everything inbetween (and if it doesn't list your specific device, you can feed it a few IR commands from your exiting remote, and it'll auto-recognize the device). It feels good in the hand. Similar to my tivo 'peanut' remote.
What I don't like: No true "macros" as far as I can tell. The web interface to program the remote is a little clunky. I'm having a problem with one of the remote's buttons.
Ultimately, it was a good purchase. I'd buy it again.
I'd like to rip CDs under Windows, primarily so my wife can rip without needing to switch from her current PC. They'll be etracted to 16bit, 44.1k .wav files and written to a share on a Linux box. From there, I'd like to have the Linux box check the folder every once in a while (via cron I assume) for new files to be encoded. Once it sees a new file, it should encode it to both MP3 and FLAC with id3 tags, and then delete the original. Additionally, I'd like to have the ability to add PCs running Linux (ideally using some sort of CD-bootable distro) to distribute the encoding.
I know I could do this using Perl/Bash/etc., via cron to make a watch folder and lock files for other machines to signal that they're working with a file. Before I do all that... is there anything out there which does some or all of what I'm trying to do?
Does this mean that every file I've created with my (legal) copy of Sound Forge, registered to me, gets distributed with my name embedded in it? What other programs do this? I already know that MS Office docs do -- but I never suspected Sound Forge of something like this.
Software authors/distributors should be required to disclose exactly what personal information is distributed in files which are created with that product. As much as I like to stick it to M$, Sonic Foundry, now Sony, is the one I'm concerned about here.
Though I use a PocketPC, I still like to avoid Windows Media. Instead, I use these tools for a nearly perfect experience:
.ty to mpeg-2, and encoding to mpeg-4 takes about 12 minutes on my A64 2800. I don't bother to edit out the ads, since it's very easy to skip them in BetaPlayer. Before I found this, I rarely touched my PDA. This is most certainly the KILLER APP for me.
PocketDivXEncoder is a wonderful tool, using mencoder to encode video to PDA-sized mpeg-4. Lots of options for video (including rotation) and audio, but not enough to be confusing. More importantly, audio and video stays in sync, I can estimate file size before encoding, and it supports multiple resolutions to support more than one platform.
For playback, I use BetaPlayer, a very capable (and GPL!) video player, with excellent mpeg-4 support. Full speed playback on my older 300MHz Toshiba e355 device, and it doesn't even kill my battery. Excellent support on the CoreCodec BetaPlayer Forum.
On a nearly daily basis, I use TyTool to extract last night's Daily Show from my Tivo as a 480x480 mpeg-2, then use PocketDivXEncoder to convert it to a ~64MB 320x240 mpeg4 file. Extraction, converting the
A family member lives in a rural section of Kentucky without broadband access (satellite access is too expensive). She's only a few miles from another relative with broadband access, but there's no line-of-sight between them -- it's a hilly, twisty road between them, and she's not about to put up any towers. While I suspect some WISP will come along and provide service eventually, part of the beauty of Wi-Fi is it's DIY, corporations-be-dammed attitude. Will we see that in the Wi-Max world?
Is Wi-Max applicable for deployment by individuals? Will there be inexpensive Linksys/Dlink/Netgear Wi-Max routers, as there is now for Wi-Fi?
The Suprnova post was for an RC released Oct-29. See this redhat.com link. If you dowloaded the suprnova torrent, erase it and start again from the official torrent site. If you're not sure, md5sum your results and compare them to the official ones.
Not for long. When broadcast flag is implemented, digital recorders can be forced to disallow recording shows (and also ouput macrovision protection to try to keep analog devices from recording). What if these people, as part of their conditions of appearing on the show, demanded that the bflag was set for "DO NOT RECORD"? Keep those camcorders handy -- soon that might be the only way to keep a record of this stuff.
For whatever reason, I read this as "if windows came to pocketpc, would you switch?" I.E. if I could run Win98 on my PDA, would I do it? I didn't hesitate to answer "yeah, why not". With 1GB of SD going for ~$100, and 300MHz+ CPUs, surely this would be able to mach the speed of a 100MHz Pentium. I'd do it.
Check out the FCC test report. According to the document, it looks like max RF output of the unit is 1.45mW -- not very much power!
Coral P2P link to FCC report
or
Direct FCC link to report
More info on Coral distribution network
I was playing with VideoLAN a week ago, and noticed it has a video filter module called "wall" (this is under WinXP, FWIW) which will split your stream into as many multiple windows as your machine can handle. So, split your video stream into four windows, move each one to its own display, and full-screen them. I haven't played with VLC under Linux, but I'm guessing it has the same options.
Great project, BTW! I've been thinking of doing something like this for a while. Good luck!
Support the little guy and get free shipping to boot.
X D0 22341
http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemID=F
(No, I get nothing for referring these guys, except hopefully continued low prices on all other DVDs I buy from them).
Watching a 30 minute show fits nicely into my 35 minute subway ride into work. The best part is that I already have everything I need via my (under) $200 Toshiba e355 PDA, a 300MHz, not-all-that-impressive CE device, to which I added a $40 256MB SD card.
.avi w/ mp3 audio, and then BetaPlayer, a fast, efficient, and full featured player with all sorts of (optional!) settings, to play it back. A 30 minute show with ads still intact takes up less than 60MB. For example, I schedule my DVR to grab The Daily Show overnight, and I encode it (five minutes!) in the morning before I leave for the office.
I'm using the incredibly easy to use PocketDivXEncoder to encode my video into a 320x240 Divx
I couldn't be happier. Battery life was my biggest concern, and it turns out that watching videos really doesn't drain the CPU all that much.
While I agree that 20GB might be nice for long trips, for casual use I can stick at least two hours of video on my 256MB SD card, which means a 1GB card would give me 8 hours -- plenty for any travelling I'd do, and all on a multi-function device.
P.S.: Check out this forum for a discussion of the Linux drivers: http://forums.dvbowners.com/index.php?showtopic=10 85
YES!!! There is a Linux driver for this card!
Chris Pascoe has written a Linux driver for the Austrailian version of the card. See: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~chrisp/DVICO-Linux/. AFAIK, the only difference between the Austrailian and American versions is the tuner. If we can find the codes (perhaps by sniffing them w/ a homebrew I2C sniffer), we should be able to have a fully-functioning driver for the US card.
Bonus: the card is half-height, and comes with a low-profile PCI backplate, which would make it fit nicely into a small MythTV-powered PVR.
Dammit... when will /. start letting us edit our posts? Freakin' typos...
AFAIK, the AT&T Natural Voices app isn't freeware. Their little demo might be free to use, but does that mean we should count all demoware as freeware?
If anyone else has a link to some FREE (and high-quality - none of this "SAM" or Dr. Sbaitso quality stuff!) text-to-speech converters, I'll all ears. Ha. Get it? All ears... hehehe...