As we trudge into the dog days of a summer here in ol’ San Antone, we have to appreciate what a year we’ve had weatherwise. We started with about seven months of drought. That was punctuated by what is euphemistically called, The Floods of 2002. Do you suppose the consultants who have screwed-up the DVD formats so badly decided to take a break and do some consulting work for our weather makers? It could happen! This was supposed to be the big year for DVD. Unfortunately, the greedy proprietary interests of the drive makers combined with the fears of the entertainment industry to cause mass confusion for the early adopter DVD burner buyers.
DVD and HDMI
Any way you look at it, DVD is only an interim technology. The DVD-R was supposed to be the universal format that would play on almost all current DVD players. But then there is +R offered on some DVD burners, which use a different disc, and is not compatible with some players. The three rewriteable DVD formats (DVD+RW and –RAM) is where it really gets fun. Each uses a different blank, and of course, the prices are different for each format. And forget about trying to compare their audio recording capability. The existing Digital Visual Interface (DVI), a unidirectional data-transfer protocol, is doing a pretty good job of preventing DVD movie copying, at least to anything worth watching.
The new High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) developed jointly by seven of the big-dog brand names is ready to expand DVI protection to digital music and sound tracks. DVD-Audio is being welcomed like some brown stuff in a punch bowl. That could change with HDMI multi-channel protected outputs on the next generation of players. I don’t think that was really the problem. Exorbitant price is what is driving the Y and Z generations to find an alternate source of music. Most music has a shorter shelf life than Roquefort cheese in the hot sun. I certainly hope we haven’t raised a generation that in 20 years gets all misty-eyed over their favorite cop-killer, female-degradation rap music.
The multi-level burners due out by Christmas [Editors note: This was originally published in Sept ‘02] also offer great potential, but we won’t know till the testers get their hands on them. The hard disk recorders are being stalled until the cop-chip is required. In the meantime, CD burners are selling for less than the price of the bundled software; DVD burners and blank discs prices are falling fast (look on Pricecheck.com), and the blue-ray chipsets are on the way to drive makers. ALi (formerly known as Acer) decided to develop its own burner chipset to copy movies and stuff. An interesting concept. A drive maker using its own chipset. Stay tuned, this promises to confound your expectations.
Heard of ‘di’-music technology? A Hungarian artist named Sandor Mester came up with digital improvisation (di) or Multi-version Play. Every time a di (MS3) file is played, you hear a different version or re-mix of the song. It allows virtually infinite versions of a song to be stored as one file. The first release in Europe is titled "Life isn’t static, why should music be?" This is so cool it boggles the mind!
Intel has announced they plan on selling their new P4 3+Ghz CPUs around Christmas. I guess they want the title of the fastest and baddest back.
DRIVEZILLA
Western Digital has announced a new IDE hard drive called the Drivezilla. It’s a 200GB, 7200 RPM, ATA/100 monster for $400.
Wow! I still think two smaller drives with a RAID interface is a safer setup, but what do I know.
Windows Media Player
I recently downloaded a Microsoft security update for Windows Media Player and it trashed my whole music playing/recording setup. I’m very thankful for GoBack. Our favorite monopolist must be trying to curry a little favor for past sins. Make sure you read the End-User License Agreement (EULA) before you download this security update. It will really mess-up your file associations, deny access to your burner except through WMP, and trash bunch of other music programs including MP3 jukeboxes. If I had read ‘The Register’ article by Thomas C. Green titled "MS Security Patch EULA Gives BillG Admin Privileges on Your Box" before I downloaded that security update, it would have saved me a lot of grief. Here is a sample of the EULA and the article:
"If you caught our recent coverage of the Windows Media Player trio of security holes you may have followed a link to the TechNet download site for a patch, or you might have activated Windows Update. If you did the former (though, oddly, not if you did the latter), you would have been confronted with an End-User License Agreement (EULA) stating, most ominously, that: ‘You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management (‘Secure Content’), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS - components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [the] use [of] other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a Web site explaining the update.’
"‘Reasonable efforts to post notices’ somewhere on the Web. I think it’s clear from the wording that MS has absolutely no intention of bringing this behavior to our attention. Instead, Microsoft has just assumed the right to attack your computer and surreptitiously install code of its choosing. You will not be warned; you will not be offered an opportunity to examine the download or refuse it. MS will simply connect remotely and install what it will, or install it secretly when you contact them.
"This means Microsoft will have administrator privileges on your personal computer. What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of work, but you’ll have no recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP critical security patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you’ll agree to give BillG deed and title to your personal property and to leave Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine. The pusillanimity of wrapping what amounts to a digital land-grant into a needed, critical security patch is matched only by the arrogance of assuming that Windows is now such a fundamental linchpin of a human life worth living that no retaliation in the courts or at the retail counters is conceivable. (And that’s not to mention ‘informal’ retaliation by outraged IP warriors, which we fully expect to see.) We’ve heard the BillG rubbish about Trustworthy Computing until we’re sick to death of the trivial incantation. Ironically, Microsoft has just taken steps to make the Internet immensely more untrustworthy than it already is. When we know that arbitrary code will be secretly installed on our connected boxes by software vendors who are not accountable for the damage they may do, any issue of trust is obliterated."
On my system, the bit-bucket is where Windows Media player belongs.
Can’t live without Windows Media player? The new version 9 has been leaked to the Beta-news. The new version adds DVD copying, improved encoders, and better plug-in management. File-sharing on MSN and DVD copy-to-disk are listed features, as are cross-fade and normalization plug-ins. Scheduled for launch September 3, 2002 in LA – interesting to see what the EULA says.
If you use CloneCD and want the "Amplify weak sectors" to work, search the registry for "weak sectors". Edit the 0 to a 1. It should work.
Combo drives - that’s a CDRW drive with a DVD-ROM read capability, are currently more expensive than buying two separate drives with this capability. The anticipated demand in the market is for a DVD burner with a fully functional CD-RW. I would think since many of the current coaster burner wannabes already have a CD burner, the drive makers should jump a generation and concentrate on giving us an affordable Blue-ray or Multi-Level burner.
I’m still not sure why we need all that burning capacity since the entertainment industry is working so hard to preclude us from time-shifting or recording our favorite TV shows and movies. We are going to find it impossible to copy our favorites since all digital devices are going to have a cop-chip to preclude making copies of anything that is copyrighted – and everything is copyrighted by some big corporation. My guess, the "Fair Use" rule will soon go bye-bye and the cop-chip will be mandated on all digital devices (including the A/D converters). You have to give the greedy entertainment industry credit for getting help from the most influential legislators money can buy. Nothing gets the attention of a politician running for re-election like a ton of soft money. You can watch the play-by-play at the Library of Congress.
Been wondering what it would be like to have a personal video recorder (PVR) like TiVo or ReplayTV? Stan Miastkowski at PC World posted an article titled "Step by Step: Turn Your PC into a Personal Video Recorder." It’s a hoot! And if you had the Drivezilla, you could record forever. You’ll need to have a video capture card, some software, and a big hard drive. I have an ATI All-in-Wonder card and it has everything needed to use it as a PVR, including software and cords. For the techno-geek, it can be a lot of fun. Check it out! It makes digital recording video and audio from cable, satellite, VCR or analog camcorder easy and fun.
Finally, Sony and Universal Music Group have figured it out. They plan to offer their U.S. song catalog this summer for download at reasonable rates (99 cents per single song and $9.99 per album). At last, Sony, the innovator, has got it right. The service also is supposed to allow transfer to MP3 and portable devices. It’ll be interesting to see how RIAA reacts to this defection. The "catches" in some previous record company down-load plans made them overpriced rip-offs, like if you dropped the service, none of the previous down-loads would work anymore.
Burning Tip of the Month
For the more complicated CD burns (audio, photo, video, etc.), it’s a good idea to make a checklist of the steps involved for your computer setup. A step like not deactivating your virus checker or not un-checking Auto Insert Notification can interrupt a burn. Or not remembering to set the appropriate burn speed and track-at-once/disc-at-once choice gives you a worthless CD. If you do the same burn all the time, you probably have the settings where you want them. If you do a different burn, or with new software, a checklist will jog your memory and save you time and effort, and that’s a good thing.
Think Clean
Think clean when you load a CD in your drive. It doesn’t take much to defract the laser light and confuse the reader diode. A little skin oil or hand cream smudges can cause read/write errors. Tiny scratches from using paper attempting to clean the surface make the error correction circuitry go crazy. So what to do? Handle CDs by the edges. Always store them in their jewel cases. If the bottom face is dirty, use a mild soap that doesn’t leave a residue, and a clean, soft, lint-free cloth to remove the water spots. It’s no longer recommended, but I use a 5% rubbing alcohol solution on a clean, soft cloth to clean the bottom face of my CDs. Do not use anything on the label side. It works for me. Do not try to rub out or fill scratches in CDs. The laser focus and polycarbinate defraction are critical, so don’t mess with it. You will probably be worse-off than if you just made a copy of the CD before it becomes unreadable. Buy a defraction lens cleaner (looks like a CD with a fuzzy bottom side) for about $12 at your favorite computer store and use it at least quarterly. A little prevention goes a long way.
