Archive for: DVD
Now, if you knew me (which you don’t), you’d know my deep love/lust for the NES and all NES type NES things. I have loved the original Nintendo Entertainment System since it showed up under my Christmas tree like 25 years ago or whenever it was. I have had a couple of them. Unfortunately, I no longer have my original console, but I do at least have one that still works. Granted, the reason it still works is because I have lungs that double as NES-saving bags of air.
I could go on and on and on raving about my beautiful little console of the gods, but I won’t. I’ll just leave you with something that I know some of you will have to change your pants for, but if you are like me, you will want to murder someone because of the blasphemy this video contains. This is anti-nerd if you will. This is killing such a perfect box of love. Honestly, even if my NES was dead and no longer worked, I wouldn’t mod it. I wouldn’t have the heart to rip it apart and shove the components of another into it. I couldn’t do that. Perhaps another more realistic analogy: If my wife were dead and gone, I wouldn’t shove the working lady parts of another into her just to seem cool for my friends.
This hurts my eyes and my feelings. I’ll leave you with the video. Go ahead and bash me in the comments if you must. But know this — I’m all for the mod scene. I’m all for taking apart your red ringed xbox and putting a toaster in it. But this is wrong, and will get you no where but Hell in my books…
Video after the break. But seriously, no one wants to do this…
Ask any tech competent person about DRM and they’ll correctly tell you it’s useless — unless of course you goal is to piss off someone and neuter their experience with legally obtained content. The image that has attached itself to DRM isn’t going away. So, content creators have to get crafty every now and then. (Too bad they can’t put that creativity into creating actual legitimate business models that don’t fuck over consumers…) Meet the latest face in DRM: UltraViolet.
The aim of UltraViolet is to be a digital, cloud-based locker of sorts that will “just work”. The claim to fame is that no matter the destination, whether it be gaming console, smartphone, tv, computer, DVR, etc., UltraViolet will allow playback of your content without hiccup. Though of course, that was the original claim of your standard DRM scheme. And we all know how that played out. Not to mention, a cloud-based account signals to me that an internet connection would be required to authorize/de-authorize devices to play your content. For a fair chunk of users, that wouldn’t be a problem. But alas, not all of us have internet. What are those people going to do? Everyone involved managed to get one thing right though — it’s free.
There’s plenty of big name media partners, physical, and digital retailers jumping on board, so DECE UltraViolet looks like it may stick around for a little while. Let’s just hope it goes better than the last dozen and a half DRM it-always-works schemes. Anyone remotely excited? Or would you rather keep playback across devices in your own hands, manually, and without a needed internet connection? Ya…me too.
Movie buffs and downright digital junkies know the importance of backups. For if one hard drive fails, a backup can mean the difference between endless tears and a simple swap of a drive, and continuing of your life. While media pundits and rights holders continually fight against consumers and deem personal backups as some how illegal, it’s nice knowing that there are still ways to get the job done, and keep your content safe. I’ve used plenty of DVD ripping software in the past, though on my new Windows 7 rig, I haven’t had too much exposure to more updated titles. Thankfully, Digiarty was kind enough to drop a line and offer a review sample of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. After ripping a solid three dozen movies over the last couple of hours, what do I think? Jump in to find out…
Digital distribution may be the way of the future, but that won’t stop disc creating companies such as Storex Technologies from touting their Hyper CD technology. Hyper CD’s claim to fame is the lofty 1 petabyte (1,000,000 GB) storage capacity. Indeed, 1 PB is a ton of data and could prove rather useful in certain situations. But then you have the whole issue of it being another proprietary physical format.
So is Hyper CD worth holding our breath for?
Blu-ray is the current physical format champ. At 25GB — 100GB if you take into account those quad-layer specimens we’ve heard about — Blu-ray technology is the go-to standard for people that have an almost insatiable hunger for physically transported data. Many of us nerds would handedly prefer a large flash drive, as over the course of the drives’ life, a considerable amount of money will be saved. Plus, it’s just so much easier to copy something to a flash drive instead of a Blu-ray.
But a new technology out of Japan could have us “physical is dead” fanboys contemplating where our loyalty lies with promises of 25TB — yes, that’s a terabyte — discs…
It never ceases to amaze me how uterly retarded, stupid, and incompetent the movie studios and “the old Hollywood” in general really are.
Todays fluster cluck of DRM spotlight features Avatar and the unplayable disc. I’m seeing reports all over the web (Consumerist in particular) of new Avatar customers unwrapping their new gift only to find it unplayable in their Blu-ray players. Effective DRM, huh?
Like renting new releases via Netflix soon after they’re released? Well, now you’ll have to either (A) find a new similar service or (B) start pirating that crap because Netflix just made it harder to enjoy the service you pay for. With the help of Fox and Universal, delaying new movie rentals for 28 days after release in hopes of increased physical media sales is the sole motivation behind this move. According to the trio, it’s a “win-win” for everyone, ultimately bringing lower prices.
Forgive me if I don’t understand, but how does fucking over consumers and forcing us to purchase a product we obviously don’t want going to “help” us? How is it “better” for us?
If you love blowing money on stupid gadgets, I’ve got a few things that will be right up your alley. Piggy backing on the apparently popular “Gangsta Lifestyle”, “Gangsta Gadgets” look to bring a little bit of the street into a geeky style with such things as shoes with speakers and DVD players, Gun remote controls, and thonged mice Gangsta Gadgets has it all. To be fair, I’m not knocking the designer of said concepts, Kristin Kerby as I am more-so knocking the ideology.
Humans already kill other humans for plain shoes, plain stereos, and plain…shower heads? Blinging them up with speakers, gun shapes, and other Gangsta qualities seems like an a poor way to highlight that particular lifestyle, don’t you think?
Regardless of your stance however, Kristin’s renderings are still pretty sweet to look at no less. What do you think: Harbinger to needless violence or another geeky niche that is desperately needing filled?
Walyou
Normally I’m not one to tell of impending doomsday tales and other nonsense. It more often than not ends up being nothing buy hype and fear mongering. But the type of doomsday I’m talking about today isn’t for the human race. Instead, it’s about Netflix.
Netflix has been a widly popular movie rental service for many years now. While other traditional brick and mortar stores such as Blockbuster have been having red ink stained year after red ink stained year, Netflix has somehow maintained to grow, despite their business model still relying more on physical media. Is that reliance going to be the death of them?
Now I realize that the iPhone and iPad are hardly the universal norm, far from it in fact. But the rate at which the iPhone in particular has grown as well as the amount of mobile apps and data consumed show that consumers want plenty of rich content on the go. The iPhone/iPad and many other mobile platforms offer a housing for such content. Many publishers, producers, developers, and so on are getting on board with the mobile revolution as people spend more and more time away from traditional desktop computers and spending more time interacting with mobile devices — everyone except Netflix.
In response to Wednesday’s iPad announcement, Netflix CEO stated that “iPad and iPhone streaming are not a current priority”. He goes on saying that while they’re not working on anything right now, it is something they’re looking into for future expansion. Um, hello? The time to “look” was back in 2007 when the iPhone was released. Now into 2010 its way past late.
To recap, I’m not saying that everyone and their mother needs to support the iPhone and Apple. What I’m saying is that Netflix in particular and any media company in the modern world needs to embrace the mobile sphere of technology. Keeping your company in what they know and what is currently doing good, getting caught up in a “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” way is a dangerous trap. Such thinking has over the years led to countless companies withering into obscurity and eventually dying out.
It’s almost impossible to think about or rationalize now, but, could Netflix become the next Blockbuster? Are they turning into the very same company that they conquered in years past?
All Things D
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