Posted 11/24/08 at 12:00:00 PM by Will Smith

It’s hard to believe in the iTunes era of blink-and-you-miss-them CD rips, but in the mid-90s, ripping a CD was a time-consuming process, fraught with peril. Ripping a single disc to 128kbps MP3 could take 8 hours on a 200MHz Pentium! Fast forward a decade, with faster hardware and better software and CD ripping is so mainstream your mom does it.

Ripping DVDs and transcoding the video stored within into more efficient formats involves an order of magnitude more scary math than ripping audio CDs. A machine that will rip the latest Miley Cyrus CD in moments could take hours to extract and convert your copy of AVP to an iPod-friendly format. However, with the right software, a quad-core equipped PC, and a little know-how, you can cut your disc rip time from hours to 20 or 30 minutes. There are still plenty of tricks and traps for first-time rippers, but we’ll show you the basics, then walk you through the secrets of ripping power users everywhere.

However, the first thing you need to decide is simple: what player are you ripping your discs for? Are you ripping for a portable player, like the PSP or iPhone? Would you rather stream to device in your living room, like the Xbox 360, PS3, or Popcorn Hour? Are you simply interested in making an archival-quality DVD rips, in case you lose your collection? More likely, you’re probably looking for a combination of all three of these things. We’ll show you how to rip your DVD to a file suitable for streaming that consumes a fraction of the disk space of a DVD but maintains full video and audio quality. Then you can take that file, and convert it for whatever other devices you might have, like a PSP or an iPod. For the purposes of this story, we're going to focus on DVD rips. Getting ahold of unencrypted high-defintion video legally is still pretty tricky. We'll update with Blu-ray ripping info as ripping Blu-ray gets easier.

Hit the jump to get started.

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23

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Software, xbox, Blu-ray, dvd, ripping software, psp, ps3, iphone, Xbox 360, rip, hardware, handbrake, h.264, h264, appletv

Posted 11/20/08 at 09:30:42 AM by Paul Lilly

While Blu-ray continues to inch into living rooms amid lower prices, it won't be long until the high definition format becomes a mainstream feature in PCs, says Lite-On. The optical drive maker predicts 2009 as the year BD combo drives are a standard option in new PCs, with BD burners becoming commonplace by 2011.

By Lite-On's count, BD-ROM drives, BD combo drives, and BD burners are already showing signs of significant growth as the total number of global shipments has increased from 700,000 units in 2007 to 1.7 million in the first of 2008 alone.

But it all comes down to price, and OEMs will continue to charge between $100-$200 for BD combo drives in 2009, according to DigiTimes. Lite-On says the price of BD burners is expected to drop to between $50-$100 in 2011.

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4

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Blu-ray, optical, hardware, Lite-on, build a pc

Posted 11/18/08 at 05:54:44 PM by Andy Salisbury

It’s an all to common story; boy gets Blu-ray player, boy wants Blu-ray movies, boy doesn’t want to pay full price for said movies so boy goes to China to snag bootlegs – we’ve all been there. But should you find yourself caught in this conundrum wait a moment before you do anything. Those fancy new Blu-ray movies you just got could very well be DVDs.

High-end movie pirates in China are ripping the legitimate Blu-ray movies (which use 1,080 lines of resolution) and then burning them onto writeable DVDs (which only support 720 lines of resolution). The swindlers are reportedly making roughly $7 a pop per movie.

Reports say none of the movies have made their way out of China yet.

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2

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Blu-ray, dvd, pirates, china

Posted 11/10/08 at 01:05:45 PM by Paul Lilly

To the victor go the spoils, so why then is Sony having such a tough time pushing its Blu-ray format on consumers now that HD-DVD has long been laid to rest following the high-definition format war? There's no single answer, and instead the explosion of digital downloads (thanks in large part to Netflix, who is intent on getting its streaming service on every device out there), upconverting DVD players, and high prices are all factors leading to a slower adoption rate than many might have thought.

Looking for a holiday surge and reacting to market conditions, high prices may soon become less of a factor. According to ABI Research, holiday season prices for Blu-ray players could hover in the $150-$200 range, despite previous market forecasts to the contrary. The price drops can already be seen, particularly in what ABI calls tier 2 players, models which have been available for 6-9 months. On Amazon, it's possible to pick up an earlier model player along with four Blu-ray movies for under $200, and more deals like it will probably surface within the next month.

Would you be willing to jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon if player pricing drops to the $150 range? Hit the jump and let us know.

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10

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Blu-ray, consumer electronics, price drop

Posted 10/30/08 at 08:33:43 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Psystar, a leading Mac clone manufacturer, has stolen a march on Apple by launching the very first OS X-compatible PCs outfitted with Blu-ray drives and GeForce 9800GT graphics cards. Psystar president Rudy Pedraza lampooned Apple, in a press release, for having still not embraced Blu-ray despite the fact that it has already won the HD format war.

He heavily extolled Blu-ray, which he believes is a huge asset for media editing professionals and enterprises - a demographic that Psystar can now serve.

Psystar is certainly trying its best to get under the skin of Apple whose patience must be wearing thin. Around a fortnight ago, Apple and Psystar agreed to an “Alternative Dispute Resolution”. Prior to that, in July, Apple had slapped a lawsuit against Psystar. The latter soon returned the favor by filing a lawsuit of its own against Apple.

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19

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Software, apple, Blu-ray, OS X, legal, law, OS, hardware, build a rig, leopard, psystar, 9800GT, mac clone, open computer

Posted 10/30/08 at 02:40:37 PM by Alex Castle

It was at the beginning of 2008 that the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war came to an end, and it looks like the beginning of 2009 is going to see the start of a new battle. Blu-ray just got a new competitor, and if maker Royal Digital Media can deliver on their promises, it could mean big trouble for Sony’s format.

News of the new format broke by way of a press release from DreamStream, who RDM has contracted to provide military-grade, 2,048-bit encryption for the discs. Compared to Blue-rays paltry 128-bit encryption, the new format should prove significantly more of a challenge to crack, which must look good to publishers looking to protect their IP.

RDM says that their as-of-yet-unnamed HD disk will be able to hold 100GB of data, and will support 1920p video. That means that a single disc will be able to hold about 4 hours of super-HD content.

The best part about RDM’s new format? According to the press release, it’s based on “inexpensive red laser technology” and therefore the discs and players will cost about as much as traditional DVDs and players.

The format is scheduled to launch as soon as the beginning of 2009. It’s going to be interesting to see if they can keep their promises. If they can, is this going to spell the end of Blue-ray? Tell us what you think after the jump.

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22

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hd, Blu-ray, optical drive, hardware, consumer electronics, royal digital media, 1920p

Posted 10/28/08 at 03:24:09 PM by Andy Salisbury

Moore’s Law (which states that the maximum number of transistors on a given chip area doubles every one and a half years) has been a driving force in the hardware industry, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change. Some of the industry’s biggest names are dumping money, time and effort with the goal of extending this, with the goal of pumping out some über hardware.

There are concerns already ahead, with companies like IBM, AMD and Intel all looking to move ahead to 32nm, problems with controlling light at ultra low nanometer resolutions are looming ahead. But, thanks to research from the University of California Berkeley that wall could crumble, and usher in a new generation of ultra-tiny transistors, and even a brand new type of drive that could end up replacing Blu-ray.

UC Berkeley’s Xiang Zhang and David Bogy, both professors of mechanical engineering took a new approach that uses a metal arm similar to that of a record turntable or a hard drive, and utilizes a tiny lens that quite literally flies over the chip wafer. This would allow designs that are being made at 80nm wide to become much smaller. And even still, with the wafer being spun at 12 meters per second, production would be fast. "Utilizing this plasmonic nanolithography, we will be able to make current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful.  This technology could also lead to ultra-high density disks that can hold 10 to 100 times more data than disks today," said Professor Zhang.

What’s more, the new tech has the potential of being cheaper than what we’ve got now. 45nm technologies are expensive thanks to complex lens and mirror setups required to concentrate the light that’s required to read data. This new method, called photolithography, would only have one costly component, which would be a plasmonic lens. The rest of the components would be run of the mill, and drop costs dramatically.

It’s expected that you’ll be seeing this breakthrough in your very own drives relatively soon. Professor Zhang states, "I expect in three to five years we could see industrial implementation of this technology.  This could be used in microelectronics manufacturing or for optical data storage and provide resolution that is 10 to 20 times higher than current Blu-ray technology."

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Hard Drive, Blu-ray, optical drive, hardware

Posted 10/23/08 at 01:58:56 PM by Paul Lilly

Netflix continues to lay the groundwork for subscribers to stream movies and television shows to their TV sets with yet another partnership announcement. This time around, it's Samsung who the online rental service is cozying up to, as owners of Samsung's BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray disc players now have the ability to instantly stream content from Netflix's catalog.

As you might recall, a similar announcement was made with LG last summer. In addition to the $99 Roku set-top player and upcoming fall dashboard update to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, Netflix subscribers have a bevy of options to choose from in streaming content to the living room.

"Samsung presents a new value proposition for Blu-ray players by posititioning it as a portal to a world of engaging digital content, be it Blu-ray discs, movies from Netflix, or other online content," said Reid Sullivan, VP of Marketing, Audio/Video & Imaging at Samsung.

Both Blu-ray players sell for about $400, and Netflix points out that existing owners can upgrade their device at no cost by flashing the firmware. Once upgraded, BD-P2500 and BD-2550 will have access to Netflix's growing library of 12,000 movies and TV episodes.

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6

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streaming, samsung, movies, hd, Blu-ray, NetFlix, high definition, BD-P2500, BD-P2550