Fairplay AAC's never had a direct to MP3 conversion. This was discussed ad-nauseum on/. when the store came out. On the other hand, Steve Jobs himself said at the introduction of iTMS: "you can just burn it to CD and re-rip to MP3."
I was heavily into iTunes until I tried out the Urge service that's bundled with WMP11. $10 a month is dirt cheap and I can "try before I buy" tonnes of entire albums. If I want to buy an album, I can do it online. The tracks would already be on my hard drive (if I chose to download instead of stream) and a bit is flipped to state that I've purchased the songs and can now burn them (and re-rip to MP3). Most likely, if I like an entire album, I'll buy the CD used at the local music store.
The radio stations are pretty good; they basically showcase the songs on the service and if I hear a song I like, I can click on the station's "now playing" list and get more info on the song/artist and then download it.
So, I'm getting all the benefits of iTunes Music Store, plus exposure to a whole lot of music I'd otherwise never have incentive to hear.
Clearly, they must have used very sturdy tubes for this project. Therefore, you could take those same tubes and create tunnels to cross the oceans, which would allow a station wagon full of DVDs to drive around the world. Therefore, it will *always* be impossible to beat the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes or DVDs, because the station wagon will just rise with the tide.
We had a service technician from Canon come out to "read the meter" on our big printers that we lease. It was kind of funny to hear that term in such a context.
The subscription services are a good way to try before you buy. Urge is only 10 bucks a month to do this. And any time I really want to keep something, I'll burn the album to a CD for backup, which will prompt me to make a purchase from the service. Then I rip it back my HD as an MP3 for my iPod. The best part is that if both my hard drive and CD backup DIAF, Urge will let me re-download my stuff.
Not really. The same thing can be done with DVD's for Apple TV, using Handbrake. The Akimbo TV on-demand service for Media Center at $10 bucks a month is also much cheaper than $2 per show from Apple. I'm a huge Apple fan, I'm writing this on my MB Pro and I have an iPod, but Media Center + Xbox 360 + Akimbo wins for televisual entertainment.
From everything I've read, it's not hard to compete with Apple TV given the video quality issues. I ordered an Apple TV and sent it back. Now, I rip DVD's from Netflix, keep them on my Media Center (Vista) system and stream it all to my Xbox 360. Adding xvid support to the 360 will make life a little easier because right now a movie in MPEG format takes about 2-3 gigs of HD space...using DVD Shrink and VOB2MPG. Transcode 360 simply wasn't working with Vista, so I welcome native xvid support.
Hi, I'm what you'd call a "bleeding heart, dyed-in-the-wool, northeastern blue state, democrat-voting liberal." We're all Homo Sapiens and each and every last one of us deserves the highest level of human rights. So, excuse me for condemning a country that condones raping children and whose leader is so fearful and insecure that he must jail those who make fun of him.
"The "total freedom or none at all" attitude only applies to western culture."-- I think a more accurate statement is that "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
I don't work for George Lucas, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies. OK, had to get that out of the way:-)
One of my friends is a die-harder Star Wars fan than I am and insisted that the originals are better. So, we did a side-by-side comparison one Friday night. The original versions were simply not as fleshed-out as the enhanced versions. The colors in the newer ones were more lively and the little digital effects (I particularly remember some little droid doo-dads floating by a stormtrooper) really put the original trilogy in line with the feeling of the second trilogy, which has greatly benefited from the Star Wars universe that has been built up through countless novels.
As for Han shooting first or second, I think William Shatner had a very succinct comment on this. In any case, his "I know" comment before getting frozen in carbonite in ESB is what truly established him as a hard bastard.
$2/show adds up really fast, which is why I don't see Apple TV doing too well. Personally, I think of TV shows as disposable and I have no desire to keep them. If they offered shows for much less with a short window of time (like a digital rental), I'd be all over it.
I'll tell you how Apple TV could be buried tomorrow. If the Akimbo video-on-demand service (www.akimbo.com) didn't require the purchase of a Windows Media Center system ($800+ for anything decent) and just worked through Xbox 360, you could have legal, all-you-can-eat TV programming for $10 bucks a month, instead of paying Apple $2 per show. Now, you must either do Windows MCE (and optionally stream to Xbox 360) or buy Akimbo's craptastic RCA standalone unit.
As it stands, I'm getting an HP MCE system at CompUSA on clearance to stream the Akimbo service to my Xbox. I entertained getting an Apple TV and even ordered one, but I cancelled the order.
This makes me wonder about other Best Buy acquisitions that I'm not as familiar with. Does anyone have anything positive or negative to say about that Magnolia home theater store they tuck into the corner of each Best Buy nowadays?
That's the benefit of such a thing...it's advertised as a laptop with an attached diamond instead of a rare diamond that comes with a laptop. This whole thing is probably an accounting scam to let you buy an expensive diamond, but reap depreciation benefits (ie tax benefits) because in a technical sense you bought a "$1MM laptop." This idea is as flawed as that diamond probably isn't:-)
I'm one of the biggest Apple fanboys you'll ever find and I'm writing this from my MacBook Pro. But there's no way I'd use this for my TV programming. TV shows are a disposable form of entertainment, IMO. I'm perfectly happy getting seasons of shows on DVD from Netflix. I absolutely do not want to buy copies of TV shows (with very, very few exceptions). I want volume and I want it cheap. For my new house, here is what I'm doing:
1. Verizon fiber optic internet: 10mbps for $40/mo 2. Media Center 2005 PC from Dell for $800 or so 3. $10/mo subscription to Akimbo, which has all the same stuff as Comcast On-Demand, but it comes in through your internet connection to your Media Center PC.
The shows then stream to my Xbox 360. $2.00 per TV show is way to expensive for something I'm likely going to watch only once.
I didn't fill you in on the rest of the story. They don't pick up after their dog and play their music too loud. Fark'em, I think I've netted positive karma despite it all:-)
My neighbors learned this the hard way, after their wifi signal was overtaking mine. Let's just say their SSID mysteriously went from being "linksys" to "cia-fbi-disney" and the wireless function somehow stopped working soon thereafter.
If Dell or Gateway won't sell a naked PC, then let that be their folly if such strategy fails. In the meantime, do a bit of research and find smaller vendors that will sell a PC sans OS. Here's a small company that sells many brands of laptops with no OS by default: www.powernotebooks.com. If it wasn't for the Intel Macbook line coming out, I would have gone with something from them.
Put your money where your mouth is, do business with those small companies and they'll eventually become big ones if the demand is great enough. Dell once started out as a small company and selling computers with Windows worked for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Fairplay AAC's never had a direct to MP3 conversion. This was discussed ad-nauseum on /. when the store came out. On the other hand, Steve Jobs himself said at the introduction of iTMS: "you can just burn it to CD and re-rip to MP3."
I was heavily into iTunes until I tried out the Urge service that's bundled with WMP11. $10 a month is dirt cheap and I can "try before I buy" tonnes of entire albums. If I want to buy an album, I can do it online. The tracks would already be on my hard drive (if I chose to download instead of stream) and a bit is flipped to state that I've purchased the songs and can now burn them (and re-rip to MP3). Most likely, if I like an entire album, I'll buy the CD used at the local music store.
The radio stations are pretty good; they basically showcase the songs on the service and if I hear a song I like, I can click on the station's "now playing" list and get more info on the song/artist and then download it.
So, I'm getting all the benefits of iTunes Music Store, plus exposure to a whole lot of music I'd otherwise never have incentive to hear.
Clearly, they must have used very sturdy tubes for this project. Therefore, you could take those same tubes and create tunnels to cross the oceans, which would allow a station wagon full of DVDs to drive around the world. Therefore, it will *always* be impossible to beat the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes or DVDs, because the station wagon will just rise with the tide.
We had a service technician from Canon come out to "read the meter" on our big printers that we lease. It was kind of funny to hear that term in such a context.
Hm, you're not married, are you?
The subscription services are a good way to try before you buy. Urge is only 10 bucks a month to do this. And any time I really want to keep something, I'll burn the album to a CD for backup, which will prompt me to make a purchase from the service. Then I rip it back my HD as an MP3 for my iPod. The best part is that if both my hard drive and CD backup DIAF, Urge will let me re-download my stuff.
Ia Ia - Cthulhu fhtagn!
Not really. The same thing can be done with DVD's for Apple TV, using Handbrake. The Akimbo TV on-demand service for Media Center at $10 bucks a month is also much cheaper than $2 per show from Apple. I'm a huge Apple fan, I'm writing this on my MB Pro and I have an iPod, but Media Center + Xbox 360 + Akimbo wins for televisual entertainment.
From everything I've read, it's not hard to compete with Apple TV given the video quality issues. I ordered an Apple TV and sent it back. Now, I rip DVD's from Netflix, keep them on my Media Center (Vista) system and stream it all to my Xbox 360. Adding xvid support to the 360 will make life a little easier because right now a movie in MPEG format takes about 2-3 gigs of HD space...using DVD Shrink and VOB2MPG. Transcode 360 simply wasn't working with Vista, so I welcome native xvid support.
Hi, I'm what you'd call a "bleeding heart, dyed-in-the-wool, northeastern blue state, democrat-voting liberal." We're all Homo Sapiens and each and every last one of us deserves the highest level of human rights. So, excuse me for condemning a country that condones raping children and whose leader is so fearful and insecure that he must jail those who make fun of him.
"The "total freedom or none at all" attitude only applies to western culture."-- I think a more accurate statement is that "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
It's not without precedent. I'm buying my own house soon and plan on mostly living in the finished basement.
I don't work for George Lucas, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies. OK, had to get that out of the way :-)
One of my friends is a die-harder Star Wars fan than I am and insisted that the originals are better. So, we did a side-by-side comparison one Friday night. The original versions were simply not as fleshed-out as the enhanced versions. The colors in the newer ones were more lively and the little digital effects (I particularly remember some little droid doo-dads floating by a stormtrooper) really put the original trilogy in line with the feeling of the second trilogy, which has greatly benefited from the Star Wars universe that has been built up through countless novels.
As for Han shooting first or second, I think William Shatner had a very succinct comment on this. In any case, his "I know" comment before getting frozen in carbonite in ESB is what truly established him as a hard bastard.
"Whoa why the hostility?"
Probably from playing too many violent video games...just a guess.
It's called a dog.
It's still not as bad as calling every musician an "artist" in the post-Napster world.
$2/show adds up really fast, which is why I don't see Apple TV doing too well. Personally, I think of TV shows as disposable and I have no desire to keep them. If they offered shows for much less with a short window of time (like a digital rental), I'd be all over it.
I'll tell you how Apple TV could be buried tomorrow. If the Akimbo video-on-demand service (www.akimbo.com) didn't require the purchase of a Windows Media Center system ($800+ for anything decent) and just worked through Xbox 360, you could have legal, all-you-can-eat TV programming for $10 bucks a month, instead of paying Apple $2 per show. Now, you must either do Windows MCE (and optionally stream to Xbox 360) or buy Akimbo's craptastic RCA standalone unit.
As it stands, I'm getting an HP MCE system at CompUSA on clearance to stream the Akimbo service to my Xbox. I entertained getting an Apple TV and even ordered one, but I cancelled the order.
This makes me wonder about other Best Buy acquisitions that I'm not as familiar with. Does anyone have anything positive or negative to say about that Magnolia home theater store they tuck into the corner of each Best Buy nowadays?
That's the benefit of such a thing...it's advertised as a laptop with an attached diamond instead of a rare diamond that comes with a laptop. This whole thing is probably an accounting scam to let you buy an expensive diamond, but reap depreciation benefits (ie tax benefits) because in a technical sense you bought a "$1MM laptop." This idea is as flawed as that diamond probably isn't :-)
BluRay lasers...on the read head, duh!
I'm one of the biggest Apple fanboys you'll ever find and I'm writing this from my MacBook Pro. But there's no way I'd use this for my TV programming. TV shows are a disposable form of entertainment, IMO. I'm perfectly happy getting seasons of shows on DVD from Netflix. I absolutely do not want to buy copies of TV shows (with very, very few exceptions). I want volume and I want it cheap. For my new house, here is what I'm doing:
1. Verizon fiber optic internet: 10mbps for $40/mo
2. Media Center 2005 PC from Dell for $800 or so
3. $10/mo subscription to Akimbo, which has all the same stuff as Comcast On-Demand, but it comes in through your internet connection to your Media Center PC.
The shows then stream to my Xbox 360. $2.00 per TV show is way to expensive for something I'm likely going to watch only once.
I didn't fill you in on the rest of the story. They don't pick up after their dog and play their music too loud. Fark'em, I think I've netted positive karma despite it all :-)
My neighbors learned this the hard way, after their wifi signal was overtaking mine. Let's just say their SSID mysteriously went from being "linksys" to "cia-fbi-disney" and the wireless function somehow stopped working soon thereafter.
And if they didn't insist on DRM in their smoke signals, they might still be a pretty formidable group today.
If Dell or Gateway won't sell a naked PC, then let that be their folly if such strategy fails. In the meantime, do a bit of research and find smaller vendors that will sell a PC sans OS. Here's a small company that sells many brands of laptops with no OS by default: www.powernotebooks.com. If it wasn't for the Intel Macbook line coming out, I would have gone with something from them.
Put your money where your mouth is, do business with those small companies and they'll eventually become big ones if the demand is great enough. Dell once started out as a small company and selling computers with Windows worked for them.