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…

Head over to Instructables to get some instructions and such if you dare to rape such a gorgeous console.

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.

Engadget

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum (from here on out, WXP) isn’t the most beautiful Windows DVD ripping software I’ve seen. Then again, “beauty isn’t exactly one of Windows’ strong suits. But I digress. The real meat of this story is in the function. What WXP lacks in beauty it more than makes up for in function. When you first open the app, you’re greeted with a screen ripe with options. Admittingly, to more novice computer users, WXP’s menu can look a bit daunting. There’s tabs all over the place. If there’s one place that stands out as needing obvious improvement, this is it. At the same time, you don’t really have to drill down into any menu to get from start to finish. Simply select the tab that has the video format you’d like to copy your DVD to, select the DVD source and output destinations, and tweak a few of the encoding/copy settings and you’re done.

On my system, I’m rockin’ an overclocked Core i7 940 humming along at 4.1GHz. So when setting WXP to utilize all 4 cores, entire 1:1 DVD rips were taking me no more than 4-6 minutes on average (depending on whatever else I was doing in the background). The program itself is rather efficient even at high system resource settings. I was able to rip Avatar in its entirety in a little over 20 minutes (a two hour and forty-one minute long movie) while also playing Dirt 2 in Eyefinity mode at 6,144 x 1,152 without so much as a stutter anywhere in the game. Mind you, the CrossfireX (and heavily overclocked) ATI 5850′s do more of the games heavy lifting, but Dirt 2 also taps into the proc pretty hard too.

Over the course of three dozen movies, I only had one movie that after three attempts kept failing at a certain point. A quick check of the disc didn’t return any scratches or blemishes, so I checked the “Safe Mode” box. Sure enough, it allowed the rip to complete, but at the expense of speed. What would have taken roughly five and a half minutes in normal mode took a touch over ten in Safe Mode. But in the end, I had a working copy so it was well worth it.

Looks aside, WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a great value at $29.99. When backing up large collections of movies, having the speed and options at your finger tips that WXP provides is a monumental help. Sure, I could go grab a few freebie apps. But they don’t offer the robust set of video formats or speed. Everything from your older standard 320 x 240 mp3 player/phone format to straight iPhone-rips to 1:1 perfect DVD rips, WinX DVD Ripper Ultimate has a format and option just for you. For me, that alone is worth the $30 bucks. Don’t take my word for it though. Digiarty was kind enough to give me 20 free copies of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for Gadgetsteria readers. All you’ve got to do is drop a line below and you’re entered. Be sure to either leave an email address below or email me directly at: mike@gadgetsteria.com. First 20 to comment get a free copy….

What are you waiting for?! Get to it!!

**Mac Users:

Don’t worry. There’s plenty of fun to be had on your side of the fence too. From now until July 14th, Digitary is giving away WinX DVD Ripper for Mac completely FREE! In order to pick up your free copy, point your browser to: http://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-ripper-for-mac/.

[Digiarty (WinX DVD Ripper)
[Image Source: ABC]

So is Hyper CD worth holding our breath for?

The way Hyper CD hits those astronomically high storage capacities is by way of holographic storage technology. Basically, a combination of 40nm-sized signals, fluorescent photosensitive glass, and glass-ceramic discs with many many layers built in all work towards the 1 PB+ goal.

Upcoming plans to show off the extremely early prototype tech at the Optical Data Storage 2010 conference have gone on to be cancelled unfortunately, signalling to the technologies monumental road blocks in becoming mainstream.

But it begs the question: Aren’t physical formats dying? The simple answer is yes. No matter how revolutionary they claim to be, digital is going to take the cake at the end of the day. Still, that won’t deter such companies from trying to milk all they can from the long-in-the-tooth physical CD.

Hey, let ‘em try I say. It’s entertaining to watch a desperate industry fight for relevance. And yes I’ll admit, a 1PB disc is rather tantalizing.

The Register

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…

The technology, being worded on by Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo, centers around Titanium-oxide. The properties behind TO have it normally displaying a “black state” when conducting electrons, turning into a “brown state” when hit by light. Nerdy stuff indeed.

Now before you get all hot and heavy over potential pricing issues, take note: Titanium-oxide is in abundant supply and therefore cheap. Very cheap. A claimed 1/100th the price of current materials that go into Blu-rays in fact.

25TB discs are a pretty sweet thing to think about. Now if only such storage increases and claimed price reductions would hit SSD’s, then I’d be super stoked.

Slashdot > Redorbit

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?

From what I’ve gathered both in articles and consumer comments, it’s only the actual Blu-ray (B-DVD) variant that is causing headaches. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) It’s yet another disappointing highlight of how DRM is useless in “fighting piracy”. All DRM does and ever will do is hamper legitimate users’ ability to consumer the digital poisoned product.

But just in case you were wondering, there is a mighty nice Blu-ray crack of Avatar floating around in 720p form. If you must have 1080p, I’m sure it won’t be too long. Criticize me if you will. It’s only a matter of time before consumers are pushed to illegal downloading due to overly restrictive DRM and bullshit policies.

Congrats Fox, real winner on your hands.

Consumerist

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?

As always, the bottom line is all that really matters in today’s day and age. Because of that, consumers suffer. As Netflix continues down this path of siding with big media instead of the people that actually prop up their business (and ignoring the whole digital aspect of media distribution/consumption), how much longer will they continue to be on top?

Will you wait 28 days for new releases via Netflix or simply find other means to fulfill your entertainment appetite?
TechDirt

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

[Image Source]

If we were to add up every memory, every recollection good or bad, we would end up with terabytes if not petabytes of data. Of course, actually putting a solid number on a humans lifelong memories is near impossible. However, if you find yourself using Blu-rays to document each and every one of those moments or simply torrent legally download tons of stuff, those 50GB dual layer Blu-rays are no doubt bouncing off their limit.

For when 50GB isn’t enough, you’ll soon be able to reach for that bigger dual layer Blu-ray disc compliments of Sony and Panasonic. Their joint effort in further developing the i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) technology will net roughly an additional 8GB per layer — up to a total of 33.4GB of data per layer to be exact.

For now, information regarding price and availability is nil. I guess another question would be how many of you actually use Blu-ray for backup purposes as opposed to external hard drives?

TechFresh > Electronista

Attention all big media exec’s and content owners: This is how you need to continue conducting business….

The digital hipsters and modern age, forward thinking individuals have come under fire the last several years from big media corporations and content owners for their disdain for physical products and embracing of digital counterparts. Going the digital route means companies shouldn’t be charging the same due to much lower distribution costs and practically non-existent shipping costs. But that’s an argument for another time for today the big story is Amazon’s “Disc + On Demand” offering. The concept is simple, and frankly, I’m shocked that it’s taken this long for someone, anyone to market such a deal. For Amazon’s Disc On Demand service, whenever you purchase a supported Blu-ray or DVD, buyers are also able to immediately stream a digital version of their just purchased movie via Amazon Video on Demand. If you don’t feel like streaming it and don’t have the time to rip the physical copy yourself, you can always download the digital copy for playback on your PC, Mac, or TiVo.

See, simple and effective. This should have been breaking news years ago. But I stopped hoping for change from the likes of Hollywood studios and other media entities long ago. Could this be the sign that they are finally waking up to the digital world? So Disc + On Demand is a big step in the right direction. But it isn’t quite perfect.

1. Amazon Disc + On Demand is being marketed as a “limited time offer”. If Amazon or the supporting studios were intelligent at all, they’d make this permanent. One other thing to take into consideration is that the “limited offer” verbiage could simply be there to spur more sales — especially with the holiday shopping season in full swing, such a conclusion isn’t too hard to fathom.
2. Currently, the selection of titles that feature Disc + On Demand are but a pittance of Amazon’s overall video catalog

Not deal breakers but certainly things to consider and keep a watchful eye on. Think it’s a good deal — one that could even make you buy more movies than normal?

[Amazon

Mashable > NewTeeVee

[Image Source]

No matter the type of storage format, death will come at some point. We humans exist for but a mere moment when all things are considered. To leave our legacy, ideas, thoughts, and knowledge behind we rely on storage in the form of (these days) DVD’s, hard drives, flash memory, and even a few cassette tapes. The problem with these formats is that they are not infinite. Physical compositions degrade, quality suffers, and before long you have a useless piece of plastic. What is the average lifespan for these formats. For most, a couple years to a couple decades (with manufacturers claiming hundreds of years) is about as good as it will get — if you’re lucky. But if you’re quick on your toes this morning you’ll realize none of these formats have even been around several hundred years. So we don’t really know. Why take chances?

CranBerry is banking on that very question above: “Why take chances?” Their Cranberry drive is specially designed to work with their innovative “DiamonDisc” which is claimed to last up to 1,000 years. Is anyone’s “gimmick” alarm going off? Harshness aside, there are some instances such as history, medical records, and other sensitive information would greatly benefit from backups on DiamonDiscs. The only problem is we won’t be here in 1,000 years and as such have no way of confirming this number. The second problem is that a thousand years is a long, long time in the digital world. There’s a good chance physical storage formats will be no more and holographic and implanted body circuits, among other things, will have taken over.

Still, the DiamonDisc does hold it’s own when heavy duty physical storage is concerned as it has the ability to withstand up to heat up to 176 degrees (F), UV radiation, and “normal” material degradation. What’s normal and who rates that normal chart? Not quite sure. But I’m rather intrigued on how resilient these little discs are, especially considering the fact that early on, the discs go for $35 per disc and the drive costing a tad bit more at $4995. Of course, if the drive is too much to stomach, you can always go the standard route and ship your data to CranBerry so they can copy it to disc and send it back all nicely sealed in it’s 1,000 year strong sarcophagus. What do you think?

CrunchGear > Computer World

{Image Source

No, I didn’t misplace a zero. The simulation racing game that has spanned the ages of video gaming time packs a wallop in the latest installment, Gran Turismo 5. $60 million is a lot of money, especially considering it was spent on a single video game. Now I’m not to deep in development costs for other big gaming titles, but I’m surprised to say the least. I’ve been playing Gran Turismo since v2 and have loved every minute….and then Forza came along. In order to keep a Forza vs. GT flame war, I must stress that each game has it’s pro’s and cons. Gran Turismo 5 is graphical eye candy at it’s finest. No game on any platform has ever come away looking so realistic (relative to the time period of course) than GT. Boundaries and hardware are constantly pushed to the limit. Forza on the other hand has the one up with real physics/damage modeling that brings a completely different level of realness that GT has lacked. Though several months back, shots of GT running with damage modeling inside surfaced leading many GT enthusiasts to finally have something to compete with their Forza frenemies. In the end, both games are worth of a spot in your collection. I wonder just how much Forza 3 cost to develop. Anyone care to wager a guess?

What would you do with $60 million?

Geek

No this isn’t some sly Pizza Hut advertisement or reference as JVC’s latest player to get announced literally has everything under one roof — VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. I stopped watching VHS movies a long, long time ago. Heck, getting spoiled day in and day out with 1080p HD means whenever I do happen to stumble upon a VHS viewing I’m left wanting so much more. But not everyone loves all HD or simply loves those golden oldies that have never made the crossover to digital. For that, VHS is still your medium of choice. Since pretty much all major manufacturers abandon VHS players recently, thrift stores and refurbs were the only channels left to pick up such a player. Not wanting to miss a marketing opportunity nor alienate a fairly large customer base that JVC realizes still exists, the JVC Trifecta player was born. While not the real name (which is the DR-BH250 — see, mine is better), it’s fitting as this new mashup from JVC features the three main physical video formats in use today, again, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. No matter what type of movie you have in your collection, if you have this player, you should be set.

I’ve been playing on this whole trifecta thing (hey, I like the word) but there’s one more gem tucked away inside. A 250GB hard drive comes as back up giving you umpteen options to defy movie labels and make every kind of physical and digital copy of your movies that you want. Whether you want to go from VHS -> HDD or DVD -> to Blu-ray etc. your options are covered. Other specs that might tickle your fancy include 1080/60p/24p HD support, BD-Live w/ BONUSVIEW, and AVCHD support. As far as actually connecting all of this tom foolery to your display, you’re presented with a few options: 1 USB port, HDMI CEC interface, and an SD/SDHC card slot. Whataya think? $1,400 + the cost of traveling to Japan to purchase one too much? Ooooh yeah. About that. Release in Japan is scheduled for next month, Novermber. Other countries are left out in the cold as for now there aren’t any exporting plans. Bummer. Better start booking those tickets.

CrunchGear

It wasn’t that long ago that two electronics giants were duking it out for your dollar and world wide supremacy. The battle between Sony (Blue-ray) and Toshiba (HD-DVD) was fought out for many months in retail stores and estores across the world. In the end, Sony and Blue-ray won out. Naturally Toshiba was just a tad sour with their loss and initially announced that they had no plans to support Blue-ray. Though the good ‘ol boys in red are finally coming around to the Blue side. As they announced their intentions to join the Blue-ray Disc Association (BDA), today Toshiba announced that they have in fact finally applied for that BDA membership they talked about a couple months ago, bringing together two giants back into a somewhat harmonious relationship. Now that the world is back in one piece, expect Blue-ray adoption to more than likely increase albeit slowly still. Have you joined camp blue yet?

Source: Crunch Gear