Posted 01/07/2009 at 11:29:07pm

I've a few choice words to add about some of these Disney DVDs.  I have 2 girls and they aren't gentle with anything.  Naturally, its a lot cheaper to copy all of their discs to the cheap, reburnable  alternative.  Every DVD they have I've had no problem ripping to an iso and burning back to a blank...several times.  Forget HD and Blu-ray for now.  I only have a regular old DVD burner.  Which brings me to my point.  Disney DVDs are damn near impossible to rip.  From time to time I get lucky but lately no dice.  Maybe its my house but neither the Laptop nor the Desktop PC can rip these.  On a good day, VLC or Power DVD will play them fine but I've not had any luck ripping.  Dvd43 hasn't been helpful although I use it quite frequently with other DVDs.  I do revert to DVD Decrypter in times of need and it's pretty good with Sony films, but not Disney.  Will, since you're the resident expert, is there a confirmed solution that has consistently worked for you guys?  The obvious answer is probably AnyDVD, of which my wife won't let me spend the $80 USD so I'm lookin for another solution.

P.S. I'd love to hear Gordon's rant about this topic...

-A<br>Folds@Home

Posted 10/02/2008 at 05:35:32pm

For some reason I recall the BB in our area not even offering in store exchange because they were an independent franchise.  That may or not be true as my memory serves me.  The owner may have just been a d^ck.  But long have I loved the services that Netflix provides and to check the account and notice that the price dropped; well is just unheard of.  But Netflix did it.  If she were to serve her sweet content to my PS3 I'd be even happier. 

-A 

Posted 09/11/2008 at 11:23:21am

I don't think that the residential customer can honestly win such an argument. That doesn't fix the problem.  If the carrier [Comcast] is to put an upper limit on its customers' bandwidth then it "should" also provide tools to limit unwanted traffic.  By that I mean it needs to stop at the source.  This is just like the phone company charging you for incoming text messages.  I could care less about the various pharmaceutical ads that stream on Hulu. I just want to watch the show.

Speaking of media services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon unbox, Xbox 360 and the Playstation Network and the beloved FireBox (to name a few), I can easily see a family exceeding this on a regular basis because HD content is huge. Maybe if Comcast defined which traffic protocols are subject to the bandwidth tracker, and provided customers with tools to prevent unwanted traffic then customers would feel slightly less violated.

-A

Posted 01/02/2008 at 11:51:22am

I'm one of those nerds that buys toys for me but my kid also reaps the benefits and this also pisses me off! What the hell is up with the Toy Companies anyway? Let's save thousands of hours of labor and ease back on the packaging. I had a helluva time getting a Transformer out of the box without breaking Starscream. And I needed wire cutters and a box cutter to get a Mickey Mouse toy out of its box. Its exhaustive. Thanks for the sentiment. -A