GBTV #579 | Archos 9, Blu-ray Manage Copy, Virtual Home Controller, Twitter Downtime, Opera Unite
Posted on: June 16, 2009
Posted in: Video
Posted by: Cali Lewis
Shownotes:
The Archos 9 will have a lot of the same functionality as the CrunchPad, but it’ll have a 9″ screen and will cost twice as much. It will run Windows 7 with an 80GB hard drive.
In 2010, there will be a Blu-ray standard, Manage Copy, that makes it legal for consumers to rip a single copy of a DVD. Is this a good thing? Movies like Marley & Me offer a good compromise between consumers and the movie business. It costs a little more, but it offers a Blu-ray disk, a standard def disk and a digital copy. Chime in with your thoughts in the comments below!
I talk a lot about Savant Systems, the home automation company that builds on Mac hardware and software, has a new product called the Virtual Home Controller. It’s the most intuitive controller I’ve seen.
Twitter rescheduled maintenance downtime due to the Iranian situation.
Opera wants to make it possible to do things from your browser, like share files, serve a Web site, play your media from any browser, share photos, host a chat room and create a virtual wall for notes.
Yesterday, we welcomed Brookstone (promo code SHOWGEEK) as a new sponsor. Today we welcome Petco.com. I have two offers from Petco. Promo code BRIEF10 gives you 10% off an order. If you need more than $65 worth of Pet supplies, just use the word BRIEF and you’ll get 10% plus free shipping.
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June 16th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hi Cali,
Very much love your show thanks very much. Just a quick note around the “Marley and Me” 3 disc discussion. As long as the 3rd disc contains at least a DVD quality copy to enable us to back it up to a server for viewing from any medium sized TV or on the laptop while on the go, then I’m all for it.
As a techno person, I’ve been watching your show for quite some time now and really enjoy your content. I too enjoy the multi-room info you present and have purchased a few gizmos based on your esteemed recommendation (budget approved of course).
Cheers
Rich Williams – Auckland New Zealand
ps sorry you didn’t win the Hamilton gig…but at least you got close. Well done girl – we voted big time.(I know…old news)
June 16th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
will the new standard work on the ps3 ? i hope so its sonys flagship bluray player really i hope it does sony call it a media center but so far its crap for a media center, doesnt even have rss support(so no HD podcast on ps3)
June 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I’m still hoping Real wins their suit for RealDVD. Consumers should not be treated like criminals by the movie and music industries just because we want copies for personal use (or in case of media failure) of the movies and music we purchase legally.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I’m stoked that you have sponsors. I was beginning to worry when I kept seeing briefs w/o any sponsorship.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I liked this show especially. BTW, great talk at Word Camp ; )
It would be nice when you no longer have to buy dvds and go straight to pure digital. This was be especially nice for travelers.
Cheers
Jose
June 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I like the 3 in one deal with Blu-Ray purchase. It’s about time. When I bought the “Dark Knight” it came with a digital copy and I just thought it was the greatest thing ever! If they keep this up I just might drop my Netflix subscription and start buying Blu-ray again.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’m all about choices, too. A three-disc edition of our favorite
motion picture gives us nine different ways we can enjoy it and I
write, it’s the same much better of a buy than a single disc.
On the same note, I’d like to thank you for the viewing choices
GBTV gives us to enjoy our favorite tech podcast.
The Archos 9 is not enough of a screen and too much of everything
else, especially the price. I’ll wait for the CrunchPad.
/\__/\
(=’.'=)
(“)_(“) Music: Aimee Mann – Save Me
June 16th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
The few digital copies I have tried have not impressed me. With Handbrake’s loose anamorphic support and use of 25p I can get full DVD resolution in an iPhone compatible file. Plus it takes up only 2/3 the space! That is my middle-ground.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Hey Cali,
The 3 discs are awesome and all but they are still rediculously expensive. Microsoft will be streaming 1080p to the Xbox 360 soon, if they haven’t already. It will not take long for other companies to follow suit. So don’t worry, our dependancy on discs will soon bite the biscuit, and movie studios will finally be happy.
Awesome podcast, as always,
ChrisSERPro
June 16th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Agree, Archos is too expensive versus crunchpad. Enjoyed the Brief and agree abeout Twitter timing. Thanks for the Petco promo codes…plan to use them now that we have a new dog – your GoDaddy codes have been helpful as well.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
A new GBTV is up: GBTV #579 | Archos 9, Blu-ray Manage Copy, Virtual Home Controller, Twitter D.. http://tinyurl.com/nqunpb
June 17th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Hey Cali! I agree about the three-disk standard, though I only need two :-)
I have a 144″ Theater equipped with Blu-Ray and an AppleTV. I just bought Gran Torino, which has a digital copy version so I can use the BluRay version for the theater, and the Digital copy for the AppleTV, Laptop, or iPhone.
The fact that the movie industry is waking up to consumer wants and needs to have their media available anytime, anywhere, is very encouraging. I hope posts and videos like this continue to put chinks into the armor of the paranoid copyright crowd.
-Anthony
June 17th, 2009 at 6:51 am
I vote ’stupid’ on the 3-disk set. After all, I’d rather not have to keep the plastic case, or the physical dvd’s at all, especially since movies can be downloaded and kept on a hard drive. No storage space needed, no plastic & paper wasted, plus an improved carbon footprint. Instead of less waste, now there’s more.
Here’s an idea, an online service where once you purchase a movie, you have access to re-download if you lose your copy (hard drive failure) or maybe even just re-stream it whenever you want to see it.
Where incremental content and versions only cost you an incremental cost. Why pay an extra $20-30 for a directors cut, or more cast interviews, or blue-ray when I already have most of the key content on old media? How about $5 for more interviews, and another $5 for a directors cut, or an upgrade to the blue-ray format.
Now that I’d applaud and pay a premium for.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I’ve found that the “digital-copy” disc always includes two formats… WMV and M4P, both standards include large amounts of drm, and allow you only to play it on a limited number of devices. I would like to watch my movies on both my palm T|X and XBMC on my laptop, but neither of them can support the DRM of the formats.
Generally when I rip a dvd I rip it to divx, which plays nicely with nearly everyone. I wish they would include a divx version (although I’m sure the movie industry has some stigma because of its history as the format of choice for pirates.)
June 17th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Agree with Delat: discs should disappear whatsoever. And I bet you they will. I think BlueRay disc has high chances to be killed by global economic recession.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I have been trying to get my digital life in order. Music was no problem, its very easy to rip music and download music noadays. Photos and home movies are easy two with the digital cameras, althought scanning old photos and ripping old DV movies is time consuming. The hardest part is movies. Having children, most of our kid movies are scratched and I would like a way to ‘legally’ back them up or play them where I want. WALL-E had a digital copy that worked well but it had some Digital Rights to it and for some reason I cant play it anymore. I cant quite get to my digital home theatre dream until it becomes easy for me to create a digital copy. If I had a choice, I’d buy the DVD that included a digital copy every time.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Well, whatever the format, the movie industry needs to wise up, and so does the consumer.
Get rid of discs? The movie industry would LOVE to! You pay them $5 every time you watch the movie. Ever. Anywhere. You will no longer OWN it, and they’ll make it illegal to save a copy locally (oops, they already have!) Then they’ll reduce the quality to cut their bandwidth costs.
So, for example, the 4th season of Lost is $25 on DVD and $49 on Blu-Ray. The movie geniuses are charging twice as much for the blu-ray version…because they can! The recession won’t kill blu-ray, the movie industry will.
If you look at the prices on kindle editions of books, you will find that they have been rising. Why? The publishing industry wants you to read the book, and then give it away, lose it, throw it away. Then, when you want to read it again, you have to buy it again.
Movie, music, and book publishers have spent decades making a fortune by selling and re-selling us the same stuff, and they don’t want to give it up (how many copies of Dark Side of the Moon and Back in Black have I paid for?)
The music industry finally got pushed into the 21st century (thanks, Steve!!!) and if we all hang together by NOT letting them have their way, the movie and book people will as well. Viva la resistance!
June 17th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I find the three disc idea very interesting. I desire to have a regular DVD for easy transport from place to place and universal playing ability. I could get into digital copies for streaming and use on a laptop. I don’t have Blu-ray right now though and that is what is keeping me from buying DVDs.
When will I upgrade? Who knows. Someday. I get most of my movies via Netflix right now and don’t want to buy a standard DVD because then I’d just need to buy the thing again later (I swore I wouldn’t do that with VHS but there are dozens of tapes in the attic that match DVDs in my library now.
I would be MORE likely to purchase a DVD if it had all three formats and cost around $20. Otherwise I’m better off with Netflix.
The all digital idea doesn’t appeal to me because I like having physical copies of things even if I do have to store them.
I haven’t posted in a while but thanks you guys for all the great shows. Still one of my favorite things to watch!
June 17th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Comment around the “Marley and Me” 3 disc.
ENVIRONMENT!! 3 Discs for a movie with multiple format (redundant) cost more to produce and produce more waste LANDFILL!! Imagine 3 discs every movie, that’s triple the landfill problem we have right now.
I think digital distribution is way of the future.
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE:
Customers come to store (HMV/Blockbuster), grab a disc (like UMD small, but more advanced, higher capacity, re-writeable), pick movie titles they want to rent/buy, drop the disc to the drive and movie been copied to the disc. With special encoding “rent” will only last for xx mins while “buy” will give you infinite mins plus ability to move it to external media (either Hard Drive or SuperDisc, TBs capacity in single layer disc, up to 2 transfers… with special encoding will only allow 2 transfers). Special encoder, think about like self-extract ZIP files. It “unzip” or “encode” the file into whichever destination (psp, ipod, home theatre drive, etc) and customer can directly watch it on their device.
Of course, this is rough idea. Need tons of brainstorming and Q&A. But I believe in the future, we treat disc as a shopping basket in grocery store.
Select – Buy – Consume – Reuse.
no landfill.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
I’ve got to believe that the NSA loves Twitter!! When you can get people to communicate in an unencrypted open forum, that just makes their job easier. Maybe its the NSA who is REALLY behind Twitter!
June 17th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
For folks who want or need to maintain physical discs, I think the two or three disc Blu-Ray sets are a fantastic first step for the movie industry. Many of the Blu-Ray DVDs we’ve purchased only have two discs: the full resolution Blu-Ray disc and a Digital Copy. The three disc set makes life even easier. I agree with you that this eliminates the desire for many to illegally copy the disc. All that said, my first comment stands: this is a good first step for the movie industry until the day comes their paranoia changes.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Cali, you shouldn’t have a TV in your bedroom. It’s bad for your marriage ;-)
June 19th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Can one imagine the bandwidth and infrastructure requirements needed if all motion picture and other bandwidth-intensive media purchases were download-only?
June 19th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I like the 3-disc deal; it would save the time to rip a DVD, and hopefully be of better quality than that from a lot of the rippers. It seems like such a no-brainer; it is hard to believe nobody brought it to market sooner.
I love your show! Keep up the great work!
BTW, my latest project is viewable at http://www.iwarehouse.raymondcorp.net.
E you later,
–Patrick
June 20th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Concerning the 3disc deal…
Perhaps it’s just the conservative in me, but buying 3 discs of the same content seems ridiculous and extremely wasteful, and while it’s convenient I suppose, it seems kind of pointless given the proliferation of portable rewritable storage, and there’s always the problem of the formats they’re going to use (DRM, quality.) I certainly wouldn’t want to buy three discs when I would likely end up doing my own rip of it and not using either of the ‘holdover’ discs. The main reason the movie companies want to do it this way is to keep people from using their bought content freely (Insert in PS3/Blu-ray drive and rip-easy) which would be just that, ideal and easy and the logical process given the technology. And aside doing that with PS3, that is possible, but it leaves unrestricted copies in the wild, exactly what the companies are still trying to avoid despite that there is no way to avoid it. Their strategy is to add the functionality that you want so that people might not resort to piracy, but it’s a clumsy effort and amounts to double drm in the form of superfluous physical media. And it seems a little ironic too, as it would seem to be a force to curb adoption of the Blu-ray disc drive. But maybe they want it that way. I can see the appeal, but I’ve always had a hard time accepting things if I object to them on principle.
I apologise for the verbosity. I love your show and look forward to all future installments and it’s and your success.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I haven’t tried the blu-ray digital copies yet, but the ones that came with my DVDs are worse than useless. They are unplayable DRM laden monstrosities that won’t work on the players I want to use them on. Plus, until they’ve managed to do away with fair use, I can rip a better copy of my DVDs than the ones they want to give me, and it will play on whatever I want to play it on without paying extra for them to tell me I can copy it under these terms.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Back is always a great thing,,, especially when you have kids,,, they are really rough on disc. Personally I would like to move away from disc all together. I would much rather download (legally) blue ray HD quality movies to a hard drive.
Once on a hard drive then have the ability to back up to other hard drives. I like the idea of using a iTunes interface to choose and manage my entire movie collection.
June 30th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I totally agree that the extra formats should be included with new Bluray disc sets. We have a problem because we have a portable DVD player for the car. Another option would be mass production of the hybrid Bluray disc that would play in DVD players at standard def.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Great! I can use it to browse http://www.hongkongtourmap.com easily on the road.
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:34 am
Re:579
Yes, I think you have something, now go for it. Happy hunting. dh