From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V10 #244 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Saturday, November 24 2007 Volume 10 : Number 244 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... [Ari ] Re: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... ["Paul Pietromonaco"] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:34:19 -0800 (PST) From: Ari Subject: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... .........slysoft/anydvd (burning programs) Note to people considering investing in HD media: Please buy HD DVD instead of Blu-ray. HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no region coding, AACS not mandatory, no BD+). Don't give your money to people, who throw your fair-use rights out of the window.( meaning Sony/Blueray, A) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:09:18 -0600 From: "David McKenzie" Subject: [idealcopy] Fwd: New book on progressive rock It's finally finished, "The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock" by yours truly. Please click the link below for further information / ordering / cover art / preview etc.: http://www.progressiverock.com/index.html In early 2008 the website will get a dramatic overhaul, as I'm in the midst of "wikification". best regards, charles ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:25:41 -0800 From: "Paul Pietromonaco" Subject: Re: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... Hi Ari, I think the Slysoft folks are being a little unfair... For example, HD DVD doesn't have region codes... yet: http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/26/hd-dvd-forum-working-on-region-codes-and-china-only-format/ Whether or not they implement them is another question. Most of this seems to be due to the immaturity of the HD DVD specification comparted to Blu-ray. Another thing to consider is even though Blu-ray discs are marked for a region, they may not actually *be* region encoded. Check out this link: http://bluray.liesinc.net/ Of interest to me are the Region B (Europe) discs - some of them will play in America, and unlike the old PAL/NTSC debacle, HD video is identical in resolution and format, with minor differences in frame rate (ie. 24/25/30 fps) that all systems seem to be able to handle. I found this description of history particularly interesting. Seems like Microsoft may be ulitmately responsible for the fracturing of the HD disc standard by supporting HD DVD - which makes me more likely to support Blu-ray. From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray : "The costs of a format war are large, both for consumers and for the industry. In an attempt to avoid that, Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum started to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that the Blu-ray camp wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J), while the DVD Forum was promoting Microsoft's "iHD" (which became HDi).[21] A much larger issue, though, was the physical formats of the discs themselves; the Blu-ray member companies did not want to risk losing billions of dollars in royalties as they had done with standard DVD.[22] An agreement seemed close, but negotiations proceeded slowly.[23]" [22] http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3671091 "On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed.[27] Rumours surfaced that an "unnamed partner" had pressured Toshiba to stick with HD DVD-in spite of Blu-ray's strong support among Hollywood studios and some analysts saying that HD DVD's days were numbered-but these rumours were denied by the parties involved; instead, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited.[22][26] At the end of September, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD.[28]" [26] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_42/b3955113.htm "HP made a last attempt to broker a peace between with Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft. The company demanded that the Blu-ray association adopted Microsoft's HDi instead of its own Java solution, and that Blu-ray would adopt a mandatory managed copy feature. If the demands weren't met, HP threatened to support HD DVD instead.[29] In a research report, Gartner analysts Van Baker, Laura Behrens and Mike McGuire wrote that if HP's proposal was accepted, Blu-ray would become the winner of the format war.[30] However, the Blu-ray disc group did not accept HP's offer.[31]" Cheers, Paul P.S. I admit to some bias here - I have a PlayStation 3, which is a Blu-ray player. And - I love Blu-ray. Best looking video I've ever seen - and I don't even have an HDTV yet! - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ari" To: Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 10:34 AM Subject: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... > .........slysoft/anydvd (burning programs) > Note to people considering investing in HD media: Please buy HD DVD > instead of Blu-ray. HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no > region > coding, AACS not mandatory, no BD+). Don't give your money to people, > who throw your fair-use rights out of the window.( meaning Sony/Blueray, > A) > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. > Make Yahoo! your homepage. > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:42:45 -0800 (PST) From: Ari Subject: Re: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... >>P.S. I admit to some bias here - I have a PlayStation 3, which is a Blu-ray player. And - I love Blu-ray. Best looking video I've ever seen - and I don't even have an HDTV yet!<< I think that anydvd (slysoft) were commenting more on the ability to copy discs etc. torn between microsoft and sony I'd be hard pressed, I dislike them both, Sony for it's spying and the way it treats it's artists, and microsoft for continually releasing products that aren't 'finished'.......n ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:12:58 -0800 (PST) From: Ari Subject: [idealcopy] Wire related?........ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071124/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/antarctica_ship_sinking ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:06:16 -0800 From: "Paul Pietromonaco" Subject: Re: [idealcopy] O.T: interesting note from.......... Hi Ari, > I think that anydvd (slysoft) were commenting more on the ability to copy > discs etc. Well - like I said, I think anydvd/slysoft were being slightly disingenious. Let's look at the original comment: > .........slysoft/anydvd (burning programs) > Note to people considering investing in HD media: Please buy HD DVD > instead of Blu-ray. HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no > region > coding, AACS not mandatory, no BD+). Don't give your money to people, > who throw your fair-use rights out of the window.( meaning Sony/Blueray, > A) > Companies like this use the phrase "fair use" to get people riled up and emotional, so that they don't consider all the angles. Honestly - it's in *their* best interest that you buy HD DVD instead of Blu-ray - not *yours*. For example, nowhere do they point out that Blu-ray uses standardized, newly Open Sourced, Java instead of proprietary Microsoft authoring tools, or that Blu-ray discs are completely scratch resistant (thanks to a special coating), or that they hold more data, have faster transfer rates and are much more interactive. Why doesn't slysoft doesn't mention any of these features? I know - I know - it boils down to copying the discs. ^_^ What's really going on has to do with the BD+ copy protection I think. Unlike AACS, from what I've read on-line, if BD+ is cracked, it can be updated. And, BD+ only exists on Blu-ray. This will mean that Slysoft will continually have to play "cat and mouse" with Sony. Hence, this is why they'd like you to go for HD DVD instead of Blu-ray, since they only make money if they can copy the discs, and they don't seem to really care about the video and audio merits of the formats. Frankly - Blu-ray discs look awesome. And the prices aren't too bad either. Since I'm a video collector - I buy Blu-ray for movies I really like, and watch/rent DVDs for others. Someday I wouldn't mind being able to copy Blu-ray - but at this time, I understand the studios' desire to maintain copyright and make some money too. I can use DVD for my portable media needs. ^_- The eventual solution may be something like Fox is trying on the DVD of "Live Free Or Die Hard" - they're including a portable device version as well as the normal DVD version on the disc. You can copy this file to certain Windows Media devices and watch it without having the DVD. It's not perfect, but it's a good baby step. > torn between microsoft and sony I'd be hard pressed, I dislike them both, > Sony for it's spying and the way it treats it's artists, and microsoft for > continually releasing products that aren't 'finished'.......n Well - I hear what you're saying Ari - that's for sure. ^_^ Having worked at Microsoft for a while, I can tell you that Microsoft is not *trying* to release unfinished software - the problem is scale. Microsoft has literally become its own country. They have their own food service, their own postal service - hell - they even have their own bus service all around the Seattle area. Microsoft actually does try to release quality products - but the internal infrastructure is so huge that it tends to destabilize everything. In other words - it's sorta like "too many cooks in the kitchen." For example - I used/tested Vista builds before the official release. Guess what? They worked great! Why? Because we were only using a subset of all the computers out there - mainly a few types of Dell workstations and a few types of Toshiba laptops. Since Microsoft is so huge, they buy these systems for employee use in bulk - and that's what stuff gets "dogfood" tested on. (i.e. you use what you make.) They do have huge testing labs - but these labs tend to work on automated testing and not manual testing. Microsoft leaves it to people like HP, IBM (lenovo) and Gateway to figure out how to get software working on their machines and report back issues. But - issues reported may have to filter thru a huge block to get to the right people. That's why projects like the Zune and the Xbox 360 team have done so well - they're made up of way smaller teams. As for Sony - it's a different issue. They're problem is that the left hand often doesn't know what the right hand is doing. All of Sony appears to be completely compartmentalized. For example - the whole spying thing was done by Sony/BMG - who used to be RCA records a long time ago. Sony corporate seemed to have no idea that Sony/BMG was doing any of this stuff - they seemed just as surprised as anyone else. The best way to think about Sony is a multitude of small little fiefdoms - each with their own Earl. You see this over and over again in Sony products. An example is with the original PSP - PlayStation Portable. It could play back Music, Photos and Videos. In the original OS releases, to playback Music or Photos, you simply copied the media to the /PSP/MUSIC or /PSP/PHOTO folder. Video, though, you had to copy to a /MP_ROOT/200ANV01 folder and give the files wacky names like MAQ0001.MP4. Why? Because the music and photo player was written from scratch, but the Video player was adapted from the Memory Stick/Clie team. Both players were just kind of thrown together - with no integration. This has been fixed now, but it took a couple of years. That's the Sony issue in a nutshell. It continues today - the PSP and the PS3 are supposed to work together. But - if you use the PS3 to encode a CD to MP4 AAC and then transfer it to your PSP, all the tracks end up in scrambled order - alphabetical, actually. That's because the PSP doesn't know how to read the embedded "track" parameter that the PS3 uses. There is genius in Sony products - but they still haven't figured out how to work as a unified team. Microsoft has the opposite issue - they are completely unified, but they are so unified that nothing gets done, since everyone has to be included on any/every decision made anywhere. There are tons of internal projects at Microsoft that get killed because some other team doesn't understand what is trying to be done, and shoots it down. By the time you explain to them what you're trying to do, and they buy off on the original vision, another team shoots it down. You spend most of your time trying to get a consensus. I tend to cut Sony some slack, and I probably shouldn't. But - the PSP and PS3 are both awesome machines, and I'm glad I have them. They wouldn't exist without Sony eningeering and vision - so there you go. It's definitely a "love/hate" situation with Sony for me - that's for sure. Same with Microsoft too - I used to think they were the "Evil Empire", but now they seem like a place where a lot of my friends work and try to make a living writing decent software. Okay - back to changing diapers, I think. I hear a small cry. Thanks for letting me ramble on, Ari. Take care! Cheers, Paul ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V10 #244 ********************************