Boy, these music execs seem to be a bit dull don't they?
I mean, if they're going to copy-protect *all* CDs, how will they know whether it's a move that pays dividends?
Surely, if they are really going to get an accurate indication as to the effect that CP has on sales, they need to include a "control" represented by some albums sold on unprotected disks.
If the sales of the unprotected albums remains unaffected but the sales of CP disks goes up or down then they're much better positioned to determine the commercial merit of CP.
It's almost as if they don't care whether CP affects sales isn't it?
What next? Copy-protected audio cassettes that come pre-tangled?:-)
Instead of bitching individually (something that's pretty easy for BMG to ignore with canned replies), why don't we convince the manufacturers of "incompatible" CD players to enter the fray.
Why doesn't someone set up a website listing all the known CD players that *won't* handle BMG's copy-protected disks -- and stick a big "DON'T BUY -- FAULTY DESIGN (according to BMG)" tag alongside them.
The site can then be touted to the mainstream news media (who, if it's pitched appropriately) will eagerly make a lot of noise about it. The result will be some great "public education" and a lot of bad press for those manufacturers who appear on the list.
The next thing you know, BMG will have a hoard of angry corporate lawyers beating on their door, complaining that their client's products and reputation has been defamed by BMG's claims.
I suspect that companies like Alpine, Pioneer, etc have a lot more money, lawyers, and muscle to give BMG an "attitude adjustment" than a cluster of snivelling techie-nerds.
Are you tired of old fashioned, un-copy-protected audio CDs which play in all your home-entertainement devices?
Well have BMG got a deal for you!
Now you don't have to put up with a single-use audio CD -- now there's the BMG Audio Coaster!
The BMGAC is a multi-purpose disk that you can use as a handy device for protecting your benchtop surfaces against those nasty, sticky rings left by coffee cups.
But wait, there's more!
You can also use the BMGAC to test all your CD players for faults! Just pop the disk into your player and within seconds you'll find out whether it's functioning correctly, or whether it has some severe design fault.
But wait, there's more!
Come the 4th of July, you can pop your BMGAC into the microwave and enjoy your own private fireworks display. Invite your neighbors over and celebrate with a BMGAC.
But wait, there's even more!
Young and old alike can get hours of pleasure and enjoyment from a BMGAC. Throw them like a frisbee and watch them soar.
Yes, throw away those tired old "regular CDs" and replace them with the new BMGAC today!
Disclaimer: Some customers may find that on placing a BMGAC into a compatible CD player, music may be heard. We apologize for this -- unfortunately our copy protection is not yet perfect and may not affect all playback equipment at this time.
If this problem affects a BMGAC by Britney Spears then we apologize double -- and warn that the noise that may issue forth could cause permanent damage your taste in music.
The biggest problem with integrating the PVR into TV sets is that you can almost guarantee such devices will include powerful DRM capabilities.
As I pointed out in my daily column, the arrival of totally digital TV will see us relinquishing control of our VCR and television set to broadcasters.
If Fox, CBS, NBC or whoever don't want you to record a program, they'll simply enable and disable that function at will -- the button on your remote simply won't work unless they allow it.
Remember who makes many of the TV sets we buy -- Sony and many others who are also content creators with a vested interest in protecting and limiting your ability to copy their intellectual property.
If the PVR is integral to your TV set then it becomes a much harder task to circumvent or ignore any of the draconian DRM that broadcasters might decide to inflict on us.
Oh sure, there'll eventually be a few mod-chips available to help in this process -- but the stand-alone PVR manufactured by indviduals or "offshore" companies who care more about market share than enforcing DRM will be a more common option.
I don't think the Apollo 13 [imdb.com] mission landed on the moon, but for other reasons than your proposed cover-up. Unless you think the whole emergency was faked as well?
Gosh, it looks as if all those old sci-fi books really were a glimpse of the future.
Now if this prediction made in the 1969 edition of Popular Mechanics would just come true:
"Future watches won't just be for keeping time either. Wlatham engineers forsee this exciting possibility: Wristwatches in the year 2000 will be used for more than time measurement. They will be total communication centers, containing devices not only for accurate timing but also for voice and vision communication; and simple recording -- they'll even contain simple miniaturized computers"
Wow -- imagine that, a miniaturized computer in your wristwatch -- nah, it could never happen!
But a Dick-Tracy wristwatch communicator, yeah, that'll work:-)
You forget that the Soviets parked quite a few satalites in lunar orbit. They would have known. Of this I have no doubt
Come on -- even if they had satellites orbiting the moon, they were hardly anything like today's spy-satellites capable of resolving small objects at arbitrary locations on the surface from great distances, and they were undoubtedly (given the limited fuel supplies, guidance, onboard computing, etc) in a fixed orbital slot.
About the best these satellites could have done is relay the radio transmissions of the Apollo craft -- but I doubt they'd even be equipped to do that.
And, if you're suggesting that the Ruskies were in a position to verify the US landing, why have we never seen any images of the US landing sites returned by those orbiting satellites. Perhaps this argument works as much in favor of the conspiracy as it does against it.
...who was going to be there waiting to prove you a liar?
Soviets. They won't be there, but don't you think they'd be monitoring the transmissions and looking at everything that came out of the moon landing to make sure that they'd really been beaten?
Hang on -- even with today's far more advanced technology we can't see anything small enough on the moon's surface to constitute proof of a landing so how would the Ruskies have managed such a feat three decades ago?
And you think radio transmissions couldn't be faked?
I have no doubt that Apollo 11 may have spent a few days in lunar orbit and then returned to earth. From such a lunar orbit, it becomes very easy to transmit carefully scripted radio transmissions that give the illusion a landing has been performed.
Even some staged video footage of the landing and moonwalk could have been either taken with them or relayed from earth.
Come on folks, it's not hard to understand why some people might he skeptical is it?
We're talking about 1969 -- when the cold war was at its peak and US pride was at stake.
Kennedy had promised to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade and time was rapidly running out. If it couldn't actually be done then (knowing the way governments work) it had to appear to have been done.
Yes, it would be a deception of the highest magnitude but also an extremely safe one. After all, who was going to be there waiting to prove you a liar?
I firmly believe that the USA *has* landed men on the moon -- but I'm perhaps not quite so sure it happened on the Apollo 11 mission (or even the Apollo 12, 13 missions).
The Fox documentary was pure tabloid TV but I don't think it unreasonable to suspect the government of the day of faking the Apollo 11 landing, just so that Kennedy's promise was (seemingly) kept and US superiority over the Russians was seemingly proven.
One issue that lends weight to the consipiracy theory is the sorry state of computing back in the 1960's. Hell, this was well before the invention of the microprocessor and many of the few "realtime" computers that were around in those days were analog devices with limited precision and badly affected by environmental factors.
The power consumption of even the smallest digital flight-computer of the 1960's would have been horrific -- and remember that power-cell, battery and solar-cell technology was also pretty crude in those days. This meant that hi-drain devices were a risky option.
"the unique Time Slip feature allows viewers to replay a scene recorded 30 seconds earlier without disrupting the recording process, simply by touching a button on the remote"
Err, not only is that sales-speak, but the last time I checked the meaning of the word unique it was: Without an equal or equivalent. Now someone correct me if I'm wrong -- but doesn't the Tivo and ReplayTV have this feature too??
There's nothing worse or more valueless than an advertorial "review".
Now I'm going to play devil's advocate here so the statements are not necessarily representitive of my own feelings but:
[the US government] doesn't explicitly repress free speech
Errr... have you read the DMCA????
the US government doesn't maintain a specially horrific prision for the children of dissidents
No, but it does hold "combatants", including US citizens, supposedly protected by The Constitution, without the right to consult a lawyer, without the right to a phone call, under conditionditions that appear to have raised the heckles of even Amnesty International. The basic tenet of presuming innocence until guilt is proven seems to be missing in both cases eh?
doesn't execute military officers by the hundreds
No, but there are plenty of states in the USA that do execute people -- and on occasion it's been shown that those people were not guilty of the crimes with which they were accused. It could be argued therefore that both Saddam and George W are responsible for the executions of innocent people.
No, Bush is not as bad as Saddam -- but it's not an absolute black and white distinction, it's only a matter of degree.
Okay, who on Earth thinks that they should "backup audio cds"?
Well here in NZ where charting CDs cost as much as $35 each, backing them up onto a $1 CDR constitutes cheap insurance against damage.
If you argue that it's not worth spending a buck to protect $35 then chances are your house and other posessions are also uninsured -- after all, why spend money to protect your assets?
Of course the RIAA could kill the need/right/claim to backup CDs by offering an "at cost media replacement" service...
If they were prepared to replace a scratched or otherwise unusable original CD for just the price of the media (say $1) then they could say "you don't need to back them up" -- and that would add huge weight to their copy-protection pitch.
However, as we well know, the RIAA isn't interested in being fair.
Which leaves us wondering exactly what you're buying when you purchase a music CD.
It can't be a license to listen to the music or they'd be happy to replace the media at cost should it get damaged.
That means you must really be paying a significant amount of money just for the plastic and aluminum that make up the disk itself. In which case -- who the hell do they think they are trying to tell us that, having paid for it, we can't do whatever we want with it (including duplication for fair use purposes).
It strikes me that the RIAA want to have their cake and eat it to.
How can so many really stupid people be in control of so much money? Me thinks it can't be simply by virtue of hard work.
DivX was one of the first *free* MPEG4-compatible codecs available on the Net and it also has its own DivX file format -- creating a true MPEG4 file is an option.
For that reason, DivX does not necessarily equal MPEG4 and due to its rather widespread adoption it represents a defacto standard all its own.
I'm planning to update the site with all my latest findings later this week -- including a review of a Haupaugge tuner/capture card that has onboard hardware MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding.
Linux-based options are also being reviewed as I type this;-)
I'm the guy who posted the story and I'm documenting my experiences and the project at aardvark.co.nz/pvr/.
What you say has some merit -- SVCD is certainly streets ahead of VCD in terms of image quality.
However, DivX is not quite the ogre you make it out to be.
For a start, it takes no more CPU to encode DivX format as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG encoding.
On a 1.8GHz P4, TMPGenc takes around 6-8 hours to encode a 100 minute movie into an MPEG2 file to SVCD standards using multipass variable-bit-rate encoding.
You can get faster multi-pass MPEG2 encoders but they are *expensive* -- TMPGEnc is free for MPEG1 encoding and costs (from memory) just $49 for the version with MPEG2 capabilities.
By comparison, the same machine usually does a multi-pass DivX encoding in just a fraction that time.
In respect to playback, the DivX codec is quite nice insomuch as it allows some optimizations and post-processing to be performed as the video is played. This means you can create a video file that is able to be played back on a variety of different machines with different CPU-powers -- such that the faster machine will produce a better result but the slower machine will still play without pauses or stuttering.
In the past couple of months I've downloaded and evaluated hundreds of MB of applications, drivers, documentation, etc for all manner of commercial and freeware PVR solutions. These will all be compared on my site shortly.
I'm also about to publish my findings on the Haupaugge PVR card which does hardware-based MPEG1 and MPEG2 encoding -- thus freeing up the PC's CPU and allowing more "headroom". This is important when you're trying to do things such as timeshift or concurrent record/playback.
Linux-based software solutions are also being evaluated but unfortunately (damn it!) there are only two or three that appear to have much merit.
Given Microsoft's agenda to hog-tie all video and audio with DRM I'd really like to come up with a Linux based (and preferably OSS) option that is reliable, functional and ergonomic.
In the process of building a PC-based PVR I was worried that the noise of a PC might be distracting when placed next to a TV set in the family room.
I needn't have worried. The PC I'm using is a 1.8GHz P4 with a 7200 RPM Seagate HD, Sony CDR/RW and DVD drives plus a top-spec video card.
The noise of the hard drive seeking when doing time-shift is about the only barely audible sound -- and you can only hear that if you mute the TV.
Some PCs are just very quiet anyway.
In my office I have two tower systems and two mini-tower systems with a total of 8HDs, 4 PSUs and 4 video cards. Once again, the loudest noise used to be the clicking of my IBM Deskstar drive until it died (yeah, mine too) and now there's just a very gentle white noise from the air being blown around by all those fans. It's certainly not noisy.
Just choosing your hardware properly will likely negate any need to take special care to cut noise levels.
The RIAA charges a broadcaster for the right to distribute their music by RF, IP or whatever -- so when it arrives on my TV, radio or computer then it's already been paid for.
Bearing this in mind, I simply capture and record the music I want onto CDR (MPEG-1 is fine) and also rip the audio tracks to MP3 format.
My library of music is not as large as some -- but it contains all of the chart-music I like and it has only cost me a few $ for CDRs.
If the RIAA or whoever, doesn't want me recording this stuff then don't broadcast it.
Hell, I've got a great collection of stuff in MPEG and MP3 format -- and I've never ever used Napster, Kazza or any of the other P2P networks -- it all just arrives by RF, delivered by broadcasters who have paid the royalties.
If the RIAA demand their right to earn money from broadcasts but still condemn my recording activities then they should sanction those in their own ranks (such as Sony) who aid and abet people like myself by selling us mini-Disk players/media, audio cassette players/media, VCRs/media, CD burners, etc.
Perhaps the bottom line is that the recording industry is trying to make a huge fortune from a product that is really only worth a small one. Of course to do that, you must have a monopoly, charge more than the product is really worth, and preferably -- charge multiple times for the same service/product.
The current situation (regarding broadcast and bitching about piracy) is somewhat akin to handing a child some candy and then slapping them upside the head for eating it.
It seems that the RIAA wants its cake, eat it, and then eat it again -- all at our expense.
If they were so superb 10 years ago ? Why did you need to buy new ones in the past 2-3 years ?
Maybe because I wanted one for the bedroom and one for my home-office. Likewise with the TVs.
My original Sony VCR did die a short while back anyway but it did give 10 years of good service -- having lasting three times longer than the rather expensive one I bought more recently.
Sony used to make some of the best consumer electronics around. The Sony TV, video and audio gear I bought 10 years ago was superb.
Unfortunately, the Sony TVs, VCRs and audio gear I've bought in the last two or three years has been absolutely awful!
They seem to have exchanged quality and performance for features and gadgets.
My 1990-model Sony VCR gave a markedly better picture than the 2000 models I bought to replace it just three years ago. The difference was so marked that I actually took the first unit back thinking it was faulty.
Not only that but the VCR bought in 1991 gave almost 10 years of perfect service -- one of the units I bought in 2000 has already died and isn't worth fixing. And I'm not talking the cheapest machine in the range - I'm talking about the more expensive units.
Likewise the Sony TV I bought back in 1991 is still chugging away and delivering a great picture. The one I bought three years ago now has an inferior picture with poor geometry and what appears to be the sound subcarrier affecting the picture on some lowband channels (again I returned the first one I bought unit thinking it was faulty). What's more, it has just developed an intermittent fault.
When I asked the Sony service techs they admitted that the consumer electronics (TVs, VCRs, audio) that Sony sellings today simply isn't engineered to the same quality standards as it was a decade ago.
Up until recently all my consumer electronics were Sony but I've decided that it's simply not worth paying a premium price for quality that's no longer there. The DVD player I bought a couple of months ago is a no-name Chinese unit that works superbly and was just half the price of the cheapest Sony equivalent. Even if it breaks in 18 months it will still have a lower total cost of ownership than Sony's gear (based on recent experience).
It strikes me that Sony have started resting on their laurels. This, plus their atttiudes to things such as DRM have made me an ex-Sony advocate.
As far as i know methanol is a very popular "gasoline" in Brazil. All those beetles run on it!
Boy, if you don't know the difference between ethanol and methanol then you'll never get work as a bartender;-)
But seriously -- ethanol tends to created from biomass reactions, whereas economic methanol production usually relies on the fractional distilation of more complex hydrocarbons such as light crude.
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Boy, these music execs seem to be a bit dull don't they?
:-)
I mean, if they're going to copy-protect *all* CDs, how will they know whether it's a move that pays dividends?
Surely, if they are really going to get an accurate indication as to the effect that CP has on sales, they need to include a "control" represented by some albums sold on unprotected disks.
If the sales of the unprotected albums remains unaffected but the sales of CP disks goes up or down then they're much better positioned to determine the commercial merit of CP.
It's almost as if they don't care whether CP affects sales isn't it?
What next? Copy-protected audio cassettes that come pre-tangled?
Instead of bitching individually (something that's pretty easy for BMG to ignore with canned replies), why don't we convince the manufacturers of "incompatible" CD players to enter the fray.
:-)
Why doesn't someone set up a website listing all the known CD players that *won't* handle BMG's copy-protected disks -- and stick a big "DON'T BUY -- FAULTY DESIGN (according to BMG)" tag alongside them.
The site can then be touted to the mainstream news media (who, if it's pitched appropriately) will eagerly make a lot of noise about it. The result will be some great "public education" and a lot of bad press for those manufacturers who appear on the list.
The next thing you know, BMG will have a hoard of angry corporate lawyers beating on their door, complaining that their client's products and reputation has been defamed by BMG's claims.
I suspect that companies like Alpine, Pioneer, etc have a lot more money, lawyers, and muscle to give BMG an "attitude adjustment" than a cluster of snivelling techie-nerds.
Let's not get angry, let's get smart!
Are you tired of old fashioned, un-copy-protected audio CDs which play in all your home-entertainement devices?
Well have BMG got a deal for you!
Now you don't have to put up with a single-use audio CD -- now there's the BMG Audio Coaster!
The BMGAC is a multi-purpose disk that you can use as a handy device for protecting your benchtop surfaces against those nasty, sticky rings left by coffee cups.
But wait, there's more!
You can also use the BMGAC to test all your CD players for faults! Just pop the disk into your player and within seconds you'll find out whether it's functioning correctly, or whether it has some severe design fault.
But wait, there's more!
Come the 4th of July, you can pop your BMGAC into the microwave and enjoy your own private fireworks display. Invite your neighbors over and celebrate with a BMGAC.
But wait, there's even more!
Young and old alike can get hours of pleasure and enjoyment from a BMGAC. Throw them like a frisbee and watch them soar.
Yes, throw away those tired old "regular CDs" and replace them with the new BMGAC today!
Disclaimer: Some customers may find that on placing a BMGAC into a compatible CD player, music may be heard. We apologize for this -- unfortunately our copy protection is not yet perfect and may not affect all playback equipment at this time.
If this problem affects a BMGAC by Britney Spears then we apologize double -- and warn that the noise that may issue forth could cause permanent damage your taste in music.
The biggest problem with integrating the PVR into TV sets is that you can almost guarantee such devices will include powerful DRM capabilities.
As I pointed out in my daily column, the arrival of totally digital TV will see us relinquishing control of our VCR and television set to broadcasters.
If Fox, CBS, NBC or whoever don't want you to record a program, they'll simply enable and disable that function at will -- the button on your remote simply won't work unless they allow it.
Remember who makes many of the TV sets we buy -- Sony and many others who are also content creators with a vested interest in protecting and limiting your ability to copy their intellectual property.
If the PVR is integral to your TV set then it becomes a much harder task to circumvent or ignore any of the draconian DRM that broadcasters might decide to inflict on us.
Oh sure, there'll eventually be a few mod-chips available to help in this process -- but the stand-alone PVR manufactured by indviduals or "offshore" companies who care more about market share than enforcing DRM will be a more common option.
I don't think the Apollo 13 [imdb.com] mission landed on the moon, but for other reasons than your proposed cover-up. Unless you think the whole emergency was faked as well?
:-)
You mean Tom Hanks really did go into space?
Gosh, it looks as if all those old sci-fi books really were a glimpse of the future.
:-)
Now if this prediction made in the 1969 edition of Popular Mechanics would just come true:
"Future watches won't just be for keeping time either. Wlatham engineers forsee this exciting possibility: Wristwatches in the year 2000 will be used for more than time measurement. They will be total communication centers, containing devices not only for accurate timing but also for voice and vision communication; and simple recording -- they'll even contain simple miniaturized computers"
Wow -- imagine that, a miniaturized computer in your wristwatch -- nah, it could never happen!
But a Dick-Tracy wristwatch communicator, yeah, that'll work
You forget that the Soviets parked quite a few satalites in lunar orbit. They would have known. Of this I have no doubt
Come on -- even if they had satellites orbiting the moon, they were hardly anything like today's spy-satellites capable of resolving small objects at arbitrary locations on the surface from great distances, and they were undoubtedly (given the limited fuel supplies, guidance, onboard computing, etc) in a fixed orbital slot.
About the best these satellites could have done is relay the radio transmissions of the Apollo craft -- but I doubt they'd even be equipped to do that.
And, if you're suggesting that the Ruskies were in a position to verify the US landing, why have we never seen any images of the US landing sites returned by those orbiting satellites. Perhaps this argument works as much in favor of the conspiracy as it does against it.
...who was going to be there waiting to prove you a liar?
Soviets. They won't be there, but don't you think they'd be monitoring the transmissions and looking at everything that came out of the moon landing to make sure that they'd really been beaten?
Hang on -- even with today's far more advanced technology we can't see anything small enough on the moon's surface to constitute proof of a landing so how would the Ruskies have managed such a feat three decades ago?
And you think radio transmissions couldn't be faked?
I have no doubt that Apollo 11 may have spent a few days in lunar orbit and then returned to earth. From such a lunar orbit, it becomes very easy to transmit carefully scripted radio transmissions that give the illusion a landing has been performed.
Even some staged video footage of the landing and moonwalk could have been either taken with them or relayed from earth.
" And I don't doubt that Apollo 11 was the real deal. For one thing I watched it on TV as it happened"
:-)
And last night I watched Jean Luc Piccard be assimilated by the Borg in a Startrek TNG rerun. Does that make it real?
Or what about that "news item" screened by NBC which allegedly showed GM pickup trucks exploding like bombs when hit by other vehicles.
What about CNN's report that the CIA and US military had used nerve gas on American defectors during the Vietnam war?
Hey, we saw all this on TV too -- but it doesn't mean it wasn't a lie.
If you believe everything (or anything) you see on TV then it's about time you cashed in that reality check
Come on folks, it's not hard to understand why some people might he skeptical is it?
;-)
We're talking about 1969 -- when the cold war was at its peak and US pride was at stake.
Kennedy had promised to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade and time was rapidly running out. If it couldn't actually be done then (knowing the way governments work) it had to appear to have been done.
Yes, it would be a deception of the highest magnitude but also an extremely safe one. After all, who was going to be there waiting to prove you a liar?
I firmly believe that the USA *has* landed men on the moon -- but I'm perhaps not quite so sure it happened on the Apollo 11 mission (or even the Apollo 12, 13 missions).
The Fox documentary was pure tabloid TV but I don't think it unreasonable to suspect the government of the day of faking the Apollo 11 landing, just so that Kennedy's promise was (seemingly) kept and US superiority over the Russians was seemingly proven.
One issue that lends weight to the consipiracy theory is the sorry state of computing back in the 1960's. Hell, this was well before the invention of the microprocessor and many of the few "realtime" computers that were around in those days were analog devices with limited precision and badly affected by environmental factors.
The power consumption of even the smallest digital flight-computer of the 1960's would have been horrific -- and remember that power-cell, battery and solar-cell technology was also pretty crude in those days. This meant that hi-drain devices were a risky option.
Or I could be wrong -- it happens all the time
It reads more like a sales-pitch than a review!
"the unique Time Slip feature allows viewers to replay a scene recorded 30 seconds earlier without disrupting the recording process, simply by touching a button on the remote"
Err, not only is that sales-speak, but the last time I checked the meaning of the word unique it was: Without an equal or equivalent. Now someone correct me if I'm wrong -- but doesn't the Tivo and ReplayTV have this feature too??
There's nothing worse or more valueless than an advertorial "review".
Now I'm going to play devil's advocate here so the statements are not necessarily representitive of my own feelings but:
;-)
[the US government] doesn't explicitly repress free speech
Errr... have you read the DMCA????
the US government doesn't maintain a specially horrific prision for the children of dissidents
No, but it does hold "combatants", including US citizens, supposedly protected by The Constitution, without the right to consult a lawyer, without the right to a phone call, under conditionditions that appear to have raised the heckles of even Amnesty International. The basic tenet of presuming innocence until guilt is proven seems to be missing in both cases eh?
doesn't execute military officers by the hundreds
No, but there are plenty of states in the USA that do execute people -- and on occasion it's been shown that those people were not guilty of the crimes with which they were accused. It could be argued therefore that both Saddam and George W are responsible for the executions of innocent people.
No, Bush is not as bad as Saddam -- but it's not an absolute black and white distinction, it's only a matter of degree.
There endeth my role as devil's advocate
Okay, who on Earth thinks that they should "backup audio cds"?
Well here in NZ where charting CDs cost as much as $35 each, backing them up onto a $1 CDR constitutes cheap insurance against damage.
If you argue that it's not worth spending a buck to protect $35 then chances are your house and other posessions are also uninsured -- after all, why spend money to protect your assets?
Of course the RIAA could kill the need/right/claim to backup CDs by offering an "at cost media replacement" service...
If they were prepared to replace a scratched or otherwise unusable original CD for just the price of the media (say $1) then they could say "you don't need to back them up" -- and that would add huge weight to their copy-protection pitch.
However, as we well know, the RIAA isn't interested in being fair.
Which leaves us wondering exactly what you're buying when you purchase a music CD.
It can't be a license to listen to the music or they'd be happy to replace the media at cost should it get damaged.
That means you must really be paying a significant amount of money just for the plastic and aluminum that make up the disk itself. In which case -- who the hell do they think they are trying to tell us that, having paid for it, we can't do whatever we want with it (including duplication for fair use purposes).
It strikes me that the RIAA want to have their cake and eat it to.
How can so many really stupid people be in control of so much money? Me thinks it can't be simply by virtue of hard work.
DivX was one of the first *free* MPEG4-compatible codecs available on the Net and it also has its own DivX file format -- creating a true MPEG4 file is an option.
For that reason, DivX does not necessarily equal MPEG4 and due to its rather widespread adoption it represents a defacto standard all its own.
A more useful approach, instead of building the station 5/6 of the way, would be to simply build it on the surface of the moon
:-)
Hell no! Didn't you ever watch that TV series Space 1999
Do you want to blow the moon out of orbit?
Try this link.
;-)
I'm planning to update the site with all my latest findings later this week -- including a review of a Haupaugge tuner/capture card that has onboard hardware MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding.
Linux-based options are also being reviewed as I type this
I'm the guy who posted the story and I'm documenting my experiences and the project at aardvark.co.nz/pvr/.
:-)
What you say has some merit -- SVCD is certainly streets ahead of VCD in terms of image quality.
However, DivX is not quite the ogre you make it out to be.
For a start, it takes no more CPU to encode DivX format as it does to do a *good* job of multi-pass MPEG encoding.
On a 1.8GHz P4, TMPGenc takes around 6-8 hours to encode a 100 minute movie into an MPEG2 file to SVCD standards using multipass variable-bit-rate encoding.
You can get faster multi-pass MPEG2 encoders but they are *expensive* -- TMPGEnc is free for MPEG1 encoding and costs (from memory) just $49 for the version with MPEG2 capabilities.
By comparison, the same machine usually does a multi-pass DivX encoding in just a fraction that time.
In respect to playback, the DivX codec is quite nice insomuch as it allows some optimizations and post-processing to be performed as the video is played. This means you can create a video file that is able to be played back on a variety of different machines with different CPU-powers -- such that the faster machine will produce a better result but the slower machine will still play without pauses or stuttering.
In the past couple of months I've downloaded and evaluated hundreds of MB of applications, drivers, documentation, etc for all manner of commercial and freeware PVR solutions. These will all be compared on my site shortly.
I'm also about to publish my findings on the Haupaugge PVR card which does hardware-based MPEG1 and MPEG2 encoding -- thus freeing up the PC's CPU and allowing more "headroom". This is important when you're trying to do things such as timeshift or concurrent record/playback.
Linux-based software solutions are also being evaluated but unfortunately (damn it!) there are only two or three that appear to have much merit.
Given Microsoft's agenda to hog-tie all video and audio with DRM I'd really like to come up with a Linux based (and preferably OSS) option that is reliable, functional and ergonomic.
The truth will (eventually) be revealed
In the process of building a PC-based PVR I was worried that the noise of a PC might be distracting when placed next to a TV set in the family room.
I needn't have worried. The PC I'm using is a 1.8GHz P4 with a 7200 RPM Seagate HD, Sony CDR/RW and DVD drives plus a top-spec video card.
The noise of the hard drive seeking when doing time-shift is about the only barely audible sound -- and you can only hear that if you mute the TV.
Some PCs are just very quiet anyway.
In my office I have two tower systems and two mini-tower systems with a total of 8HDs, 4 PSUs and 4 video cards. Once again, the loudest noise used to be the clicking of my IBM Deskstar drive until it died (yeah, mine too) and now there's just a very gentle white noise from the air being blown around by all those fans. It's certainly not noisy.
Just choosing your hardware properly will likely negate any need to take special care to cut noise levels.
Ban aluminum?
Curses, "foiled" again!
Hell, what's all the bitching about?
The RIAA charges a broadcaster for the right to distribute their music by RF, IP or whatever -- so when it arrives on my TV, radio or computer then it's already been paid for.
Bearing this in mind, I simply capture and record the music I want onto CDR (MPEG-1 is fine) and also rip the audio tracks to MP3 format.
My library of music is not as large as some -- but it contains all of the chart-music I like and it has only cost me a few $ for CDRs.
If the RIAA or whoever, doesn't want me recording this stuff then don't broadcast it.
Hell, I've got a great collection of stuff in MPEG and MP3 format -- and I've never ever used Napster, Kazza or any of the other P2P networks -- it all just arrives by RF, delivered by broadcasters who have paid the royalties.
If the RIAA demand their right to earn money from broadcasts but still condemn my recording activities then they should sanction those in their own ranks (such as Sony) who aid and abet people like myself by selling us mini-Disk players/media, audio cassette players/media, VCRs/media, CD burners, etc.
Perhaps the bottom line is that the recording industry is trying to make a huge fortune from a product that is really only worth a small one. Of course to do that, you must have a monopoly, charge more than the product is really worth, and preferably -- charge multiple times for the same service/product.
The current situation (regarding broadcast and bitching about piracy) is somewhat akin to handing a child some candy and then slapping them upside the head for eating it.
It seems that the RIAA wants its cake, eat it, and then eat it again -- all at our expense.
If AOL really wanted to have people waiting in eager anticipation of the mailman's arrival then they'd use CDRW media instead of stamped disks.
This way, we'd all be getting something for our efforts -- even if we didn't want to join AOL.
That's why I used to like it when they sent floppy disks instead of CDs.
If they were so superb 10 years ago ? Why did you need to buy new ones in the past 2-3 years ?
Maybe because I wanted one for the bedroom and one for my home-office. Likewise with the TVs.
My original Sony VCR did die a short while back anyway but it did give 10 years of good service -- having lasting three times longer than the rather expensive one I bought more recently.
Sony used to make some of the best consumer electronics around. The Sony TV, video and audio gear I bought 10 years ago was superb.
Unfortunately, the Sony TVs, VCRs and audio gear I've bought in the last two or three years has been absolutely awful!
They seem to have exchanged quality and performance for features and gadgets.
My 1990-model Sony VCR gave a markedly better picture than the 2000 models I bought to replace it just three years ago. The difference was so marked that I actually took the first unit back thinking it was faulty.
Not only that but the VCR bought in 1991 gave almost 10 years of perfect service -- one of the units I bought in 2000 has already died and isn't worth fixing. And I'm not talking the cheapest machine in the range - I'm talking about the more expensive units.
Likewise the Sony TV I bought back in 1991 is still chugging away and delivering a great picture. The one I bought three years ago now has an inferior picture with poor geometry and what appears to be the sound subcarrier affecting the picture on some lowband channels (again I returned the first one I bought unit thinking it was faulty). What's more, it has just developed an intermittent fault.
When I asked the Sony service techs they admitted that the consumer electronics (TVs, VCRs, audio) that Sony sellings today simply isn't engineered to the same quality standards as it was a decade ago.
Up until recently all my consumer electronics were Sony but I've decided that it's simply not worth paying a premium price for quality that's no longer there. The DVD player I bought a couple of months ago is a no-name Chinese unit that works superbly and was just half the price of the cheapest Sony equivalent. Even if it breaks in 18 months it will still have a lower total cost of ownership than Sony's gear (based on recent experience).
It strikes me that Sony have started resting on their laurels. This, plus their atttiudes to things such as DRM have made me an ex-Sony advocate.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap!
"I was skeptical that FatAway(tm) would work but I've dropped 47 dress sizes in two weeks -- George from New York"
Since I purchased my FastCash(tm) Work at Home Kit, I've earned over twelve trillion dollars in just one month -- Dick from Arkasas
etc, etc.
The interesting similarity between such testimonials and Microsoft's little works of fiction are:
Like most consumers, I only have so much money to spend -- so will I buy the breast enlargement cream or Windows XP? Hmmmm...
As far as i know methanol is a very popular "gasoline" in Brazil. All those beetles run on it!
;-)
Boy, if you don't know the difference between ethanol and methanol then you'll never get work as a bartender
But seriously -- ethanol tends to created from biomass reactions, whereas economic methanol production usually relies on the fractional distilation of more complex hydrocarbons such as light crude.