phoenix nest

I recently wrote the following letter regarding the FISA bill coming up for a vote (which contains telco immunity). I’ve provided it here so anyone who sees it can copy it and change the names for their Senators. Please help to protect our civil liberties by urging your Senator to vote down the bill

Senator Casey,

As you already know, there is currently debate on the Senate floor regarding the renewal of the FISA bill. In that bill is a provision giving previous telecom companies who violated current FISA law, immunity for their previous actions.

It is imperative that this bill be voted down, and a bill with no such provision be passed. These companies knowingly violated the law for a full 6 years after 9/11. They did so knowing the procedures that had to be performed to protect the civil liberties of Americans.

We would not know what happened if it were not for a whistle blower, and now we threaten everything he risked his professional integrity for in order to appease these conglomerates. Furthermore, we will never know the extent of the spying occurring on Americans if there are no investigations and/or court proceedings. All I am asking for is that the truth be allowed to come out, instead of allowing the interest of businesses to dominate our political system once again.

I understand the objections in favor of national security, but we have to draw the line at some point. When are the so called Freedoms we are trying to protect in fact become nothing more than an illusion. We are giving our enemies what they want by beginning to dissolve the good freedoms in our society. I implore you to vote with Senator Dodd on this issue, and if possible, join him in his filibuster effort. Doing so will give me a tremendous respect for your work, and help to secure my future support. Thank you.

A concerned citizen,
Daniel De Sousa.

It was only a year ago that social networking sites like digg were alive with the great upset: Nintendo outsells giant PS3. The result was incredible, especially considering the huge initial demand for PS3, selling for thousands of dollars on auction sites like ebay. But Nintendo had a good business strategy. They tapped new markets while Sony, thirsty for more revenue, had already saturated base consumers with their successful PlayStation2.

The critics were abuzz with talk of what was perhaps the greatest technological market blunder of 2007. How could the PS3 possibly do so poorly when it was so highly anticipated? One answer was immediately clear: price. It was because of price that many consumers and initial buyers into the next-gen market chose Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Sony’s insistence that the PS3 include their new Blu-ray HD disc technology force prices up immensely, and caused initial shortages due to blue laser diode manufacturing problems. It seemed like Sony’s appeal to the high technological base of hardcore gamers was backfiring as Nintendo dominated the new market and 360 emerged as a seasoned veteran with an incredible game line-up. In fact, of the current Playstation 3 owners, only 40% knew about the Blu-ray player at all (1).

But then something changed. Sony dropped the price, introduced new models, cut manufacturing costs. Sales began to pick up, and games like Heavenly Sword and Warhawk — which had been featured on the PS3 box — were finally released, adding some much needed flavor to the system. By a year into its release, PS3 had sold about as many units as the Xbox 360 in the same time period (worldwide that is — it still lagged behind the 360 in the US). But we now began to see something even more interesting. This time it was the Wii that was facing shortages during Christmas season, and the PS3 which may have benefited.

So that brings me to the title of the article — The best decision Sony ever made…why? Because despite being in third place in the next generation video game console battle, they will end up making more money than Xbox 360 and Wii combined. Since the turnover of Warner Bros. to Blu-ray, as well as numerous others (New Line, loss of Universal/Paramount exclusivity), it seems that HD-DVD is all but dead. This means that Sony has successfully leveraged their built up video game market and third party support behind the Blu-ray format. In turn they sacrificed initial sales of their console to become the creators of the next generation optical disc which is likely to become the standard for the next decade or so. In other words, they used the typical Japanese robust business model (many parts to insulate losses from certain divisions) to stay afloat while millions of blu-ray players were placed on the market, overshadowing its rival. And the HD-DVD attachment for Xbox, which was nothing more than an expensive accessory to most, lost out on the potential profits from having introduced the system a full year earlier. Sony may have marketed to those with more dispensable incomes, but those were the individuals that would actually buy HD technology this early in the game, and in turn decide the winner of the format war before the mass public ever had a say.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next two years as HD begins to shift towards the norm consumers look towards more and more HD content. Will the PS3, which will certainly face at least more price cut before then, be more appealing then the Xbox 360 with a possible Blu-ray attachment? Will the SD Nintendo Wii still be selling units? More importantly, will Nintendo release another system to compete.

One thing is for certain, Sony will be apart of the HD entertainment business, in a big way.

Sources:

(1) http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3161833 

So there is a good deal of confusion over the current supported formats for the PS3, and under that confusion, mpeg4 or h.264 comes out as the top contender. It provides the best quality for the smallest space, and is considered a good standard. The resulting files may be playable on other devices including PSP, iPod, etc (depending on the rendered resolution). There is however, one major downside. The videos take FOREVER to convert, especially if you have an older PC. Even with a newer mid-range PC a movie can take over 1-2 hours to convert. There is a program known as handbrake that is ideal for these sort of things. It can easily rip your DVD to a number of different formats and standards.

There is another option that is not often discussed. Among the supported PS3 and Xbox 360 video formats is MPEG2. Those familiar with entertainment tech know that DVD video is in fact stored as an MPEG2 stream along with all the menu data and such. Additionally, when you ‘rip’ raw video files to your computer, you get .vob files which are essentially decrypted DVD video files you can play right off your hard drive with something like Windows Media Player. Since these are merely MPEG2 streams, rename them to .MPG and they will easily stream to your PS3 or Xbox 360. This format has a number of advantages/disadvantages over MPEG4/H.264 conversion.

Advantages: 

• Archival back-ups of your DVD’s with Stream capabilities.
• No quality loss from ripping.
• Ripping takes 1/5th the time or less depending on drive speed.
• Ripping/Conversion not as nearly CPU intensive.

Disadvantages:

• No quality loss, but takes up as much space as the DVD.
• Not portable to other portable devices (due to size and format restrictions).

So cost benefit here is whether you are looking to access your media from anywhere and have the space to do it. This way allows you to simultaneously back up your collection, and access your video seamlessly from your PS3/Home Theater. Also, as an unofficial observation, I’ve noticed less streaming lag on MPEG2 than H.264, but that may be a coincidence (or it may be due to streaming + extra processing to decode signal).

How do I rip DVDs for my PS3?

     So I mentioned handbrake before as a method for ripping to H.264. For ripping to MPEG2 and retaining full quality, I recommend a program called DVD Decrypter. The program was shut down 2 years ago, but there is a fully functional mirror.

It’s a handy tool which easily lets your rip a DVD to your hard disc. The easiest way is to set it to IFO mode, and set file splitting to NONE. You can then rip the titles individually (for TV episodes) or the whole disc (for Movies). You’ll understand the layout if you’ve used handbrake before. Even if you plan on converting to H.264, I recommend DVD Decrypter, since it remove copy protection of any of the discs you have so you can do what you will with your media.

So I noticed that the queue processing was broken in the newest Handbrake release. I couldn’t see a solution anywhere so I took a look at the code. In the middle of messing with it, I recompiled and got it to work again. I don’t think I actually made any changes, but it seems to be working now. It is possible that the developers forgot to recompile a last minute change. Anyway here is the release I have modified: Handbrake Queue Fix

Here’s how you install it.

1. Go to the Handbrake website and install handbrake.
2. Then download this file and unzip the contents.
   
3. Go to <yourdrive>:\path\to\file\unzipped\HandBrake\win\C#\obj\Debug
4. Copy the Handbrake.exe and override the one in program files\handbrake and that’s it!

If you don’t trust me you can recompile the code yourself or download the source from handbrake’s website and do the same. Anyway enjoy!