Last week we were in Florida before and after a cruise. While at a 7-Eleven outside Orlando Florida I saw a Redbox. My first question was do these really still exist? Then it dawned on me people may still actually use DVD’s. Even though I remember my DVD collection I thought the idea of DVD’s in 2020 to be pretty old school. Then again the term “old school” may be dating me.
DVD
Digital Conversion Batch 3
With the money I made selling off my old gear on eBay I more than was able to pay for my next round of digital conversions. I had about 1,000 photo’s and 35mm slides I got from my parents I wanted to scan. I also had a VHS tape my dad wanted on DVD, and my sisters wedding.
Once I send this batch out (hopefully over the weekend) and get the final product back I can goto my parents place and go through their remaining photos and see what else needs scanning. I think I have the bulk or at least over half of their photos already scanned. Now all I need is for my mom to help me sort and date allot of this stuff.
I am still a fan of Home Movie Depot. They have been great. I just hope I don’t jinx myself as I am sending in another batch of stuff to be converted! Yes I am superstitious like that.
State of Play
I am not sure if it is me or it seems like the BBC has more good shows out compared to any US network. There just seems to be more and more shows or specials I watch from the BBC that are just good. I am watching State of Play DVD from Netflix this week. I had no idea that this series was made back in 2003, but I recently found a review for it on another DVD so I put it in my queue. I am glad I did. It is fantastic. I am up to episode 4 (out of 6) and it is fantastic so far. This series adds to the long line of other great series I have watched from the BBC. Recent favorites are Foyles War, Spooks, Hustle, & Torchwood. Then there was Red Cap, The Vice, Doctor Who, and the list goes on!
Sleepy Sunday
I was going to goto the Beer Garden today but felt like I was getting a migraine so I passed on the opportunity. Glad that I did. I crashed around 4PM and slept for a few hours. I felt like crap when I woke up so I did what I normally don’t do when I am home and getting a head ache. I medicated. I feel better now but I know it is only the prescription talking. I am hoping to be sleepy enough to goto bed soon and get a good night sleep.
The rest of the weekend I did some DVD and DVR watching. This week I was into The Wire. I watched season 2 and now I am on clearing out season 3 from my DVR. Man that is a good show.
Reminds me of Homicide Life on the Street. Back to the work grind tomorrow!
Netflix Throttling Shipments
A few months a go (January or February) I signed up for Netflix. I always thought it was a great concept, but I was always worried that the DVD’s would take forever to get to me and I wouldn’t get my moneys worth. I changed my tune after renting a bunch of stuff from Blockbuster. They where costing me more, for renting the theoretical amount of DVD’s I could rent at Netflix for a month, and I can’t stand Blockbuster. They are one of those companies like Walmart that think they know best and edit certain movies for content. Blockbuster, if I don’t think the US government knows best in the what I should and shouldn’t watch department, I don’t think the I trust you to edit crap for me. You aren’t filtering content for “family values”, they are just your interpretation of them. My mom took me to an R movie when I was as young as 12 and I turned out just fine. She did it because she knew I wanted to see it, and checked it out ahead of time. Maybe parents should act responsible like that instead of relying on you to edit crap. Had to get that off my chest, but that is a bit off point. OK, so not a fan of Blockbuster so I tried the free 2 weeks of netflix.
in the begining it was great. I would send in a movie and they would get it the next day. They would then send me out a new one that day and I would get it the next. The whole process took 3 business days. I started getting into a rhythm of watching the movies the day I got them or the next and sent them back on the third day. Then problems started. Netflix would not get the movie for an extra day or so. Then they wouldn’t ship them out for an extra day or so. And the worst would be they would take an extra day or so to get to me. The worst return time I saw was 4 days before they said they got something. Friends of mine have seen articles on the internet where people are claiming netflix is throttling heavy users. I am starting to believe it, or at least question their methods and claims of “unlimited” dvd rentals in a month.
Now my reasoning for signing up with them was if I got 2 movies a week it would still be cheaper than going to the video store. For a while I was doing slightly more than that number, but with the rate the turn around stuff I don’t see that happening anymore. I would be happy with at least 8 DVD’s a month (i have the 2 dvd package and 2 per week x 4 weeks in a typical month). If they can’t do that I will have to look at other options. But even if they can meet that requirement, I will still get pissed if they take forever to ship or receive something. It is just an emotional response to perceived bad service. And no I am not over reacting. If you email me saying I will get something one day and I get half of it, and the other half comes days later when they both where shipped at the same time I have to wonder if you are playing games with me.
Technorati Tags: netflix, dvd rental
Archiving
I finally broke down and bought Roxio Toast Titanium 7 today. I really wanted some of the advanced features it offered over the plain old burning of disks of the Apple finder. I am now able to take MPEG-2 files I DVR and back them up onto DVD’s. Not just as a file, but playable dvd’s in any normal player. My digital archiving and clean up continues. I probably should clean my apartment, but physical cleaning is less interesting!
Technorati Tags: dvd
Video Redux
I finally took the time to look at an article that shows how to convert video from my DVR program to a format that works with my video iPod. Turns out it is a free video extractor (windows only) that will convert almost any video file (i am using a generic mpeg-2 file that worked flawlessly) into a compatible format for use on the video iPod. I ran a test this morning and it worked flawlessly. I programed my DVR computer to convert a bunch of other shows I have. I also programed my desktop to convert a bunch of misc video’s (a lot of them) to the same format. The conversions take allot of time so I am going to let them run overnight. While I sleep they will perform.
I also broke down and bought an Elgato EyeTV 200 for my Mini. it is not as elegant a system as my Beyond TV, but I wanted to use my Mini as part of the home entertainment center. Since my DVD player was going I removed it and now I have my Mini & my Media Center PC as my only components of my home entertainment center. The Tivo is now in the bedroom, and it will be gone as soon as I watch whats left on it. Tomorrow I hope to go through video’s I have and encode what I want to keep for use on the iPod and get rid of the rest. The other advantage of this conversion is the space savings. An hour long video in MPEG-2 is about 2 gigs, in the H.264 codec it is less than 500 meg. Not a bad savings.
Multi Region DVD Bliss
Today was busy, but like most days recently I can’t say my time was taken up by X. it was just hectic with “stuff”. I could give you a breakdown of the time by going into my Request Tracker system, but for this blog purposes I just don’t care! 🙂
I had to hit CompUSA today to get an external CD drive case. I needed it to build my semi-region free PC. I wanted a region free DVD player for the PC, but couldn’t find a really simple way to do it. It sucks. I own 2 different region DVD’s. Region 1 USA stuff, and Region 2 European stuff. I have mainly region 1, but do want to play the region 2 stuff. I also wanted use my DVR (now media center) pc and not my DVD player. I have a region free stand alone dvd player that worked fine up until last week (that is another story), but I am trying to do everything via the media center. Here comes the external cd/dvd bay. I found out that the region coding is per drive. so in theory (and practice) I can get a second dvd player and set it to a different region. I can then play dvd’s from 2 regions. A semi hackish approach but I only need 2 regions, so for my needs it worked out fine. I also don’t have ton’s of region 2 dvd’s so I can put the dvd player I set to region 2 in an external case and plug it into the media center via fire wire only when I need it. So I bought the case and put an old DVD drive I had around. Guess what? It worked flawlessly so far. Such a simple fix, and I didn’t find anyone on the internet talking about it. yeah a region free or region 0 player is better, but this works.
After CompUSA I went over to the store I bought my Omega Speedmaster X-33 from. The battery started to go and I needed a replacement. the branch I went to couldn’t do the work so I need to go tomorrow to the main branch and get the work done.
Technorati Tags: dvd, request tracker
Home Entertainment System
I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV for over a year now. I am hooked. I like the free aspect of the system (aka no monthly recurring charges). But lets be honest I paid a bunch for all the gear to make the system work. That is not a complaint, just an observation. Part of the cost was getting certain pieces of hardware and then replaceing them over time after I slowly learned I didn’t like them. Now a year later, 2 revisions of beyond tv later, & two comptuer setups later I am finally able to truly use my computer as a DVR. Right now I have it working so well (not trying to jinx myself) that I am about to cancel Tivo. Not because tivo is bad or anything (except for their evil policy of requiring a 1 year contract for new service), but because I can do everything I want to and sometimes more on my computer without a monthly fee.
The latest version of Beyond Media solved my DVD playback issues on my computer. Now I have a fully functioning Media Center PC. My DVR computer is hooked up to my TV. It plugs directly into the TV via a VGA connector. I have my firefly remote, Beyond TV, Beyond Media doing everything that a Windows Media Center PC would do for me. I have Beyond TV for my Tivo like DVR, and Beyond Media is finally working properly as a Media Center replacement. That means I can watch DVD’s on my computer with ease. I can also browse videos, photos and music right from my TV. personally I use my Mac for iTunes so I wont use the music function, but the photo album function is cool. Having the DVD player work is fantastic.
My next project is to get the entire setup to work in HD with my HDTV.
Technorati Tags: beyond tv, dvr, home entertainment, tivo, windows xp