Rescue Me
Head on over to Hulu to see the entire Rescue Me series. Sorry if I made-ya-look with the title. 
HD Format of the Future?
So as we are all aware by now there’s the whole Blu-Ray vs HDDVD debate on which HD movie/video format will win. While it seems to be clearer these days that Blu-Ray is going to be the winner with multiple studios announcing the allegiance to Sony’s Blu-Ray format, I’m not convinced that the future of HD content will even be on Blu-Ray. Why? Keep reading.
As I’ve stated before, I think that the wave of the future is going to be medialess - meaning that there will be no tangible media for movies and content. Look, it’s quite simply the trend that we see now. All your favorite movie rental places are coming out with a download or on-demand video service, such as Blockbuster & Netflix. Even Apple is starting to get in the game with their revamped Apple TV product, which lets you download some movies in HD format.
So how is this going to be accomplished? How are the big ISP’s going to manage that much bandwidth and streaming media over their networks? Well, I guess you could start by saying that they are commiting to better connectivity such as fiber-to-the-curb service by both AT&T and Verizon. But what about all that bandwidth moving through the internet and major backbones? It’s not! And I’ll tell you why. While I think that clearly the future for HD content is in fact medialess and will be streamed over major transit carriers, the way that it has to be done is via set-top boxes in a BitTorent model. About two years ago I wrote an article about ISP v2.0 and streaming media to a set-top box as a media center PC replacement. However, being that I work for an ISP (Speakasy) I don’t think that streaming media in it’s final state is going to go over the net. Rather, it’s got to be localized and supported by BitTorrent set-top boxes so that media can be delivered locally on last mile connections rather than upstream on the major carrier backbones. Here’s a great article over at Wired on Myka’s new BitTorrent set-top-box; it’s a pretty good read.
Watch folks, HD media v2.0, set-top-box v2.0, and ISP v2.0 will be born soon. All your content will go right into your living room without inserting or ejecting a tangible disc.
Watch TV Online. No, Really - it’s Joost!
So as the internet continues to mature and grow in regards to content delivery and media, more and more companies are popping up on the radar for online videos. In comes Joost. This is a pretty cool service that allows one to use it’s client-side application to watch TV online. Tons of shows and there’s not any annoying commercials you have to push through. Check it out, it’s free!
It’s Mike: 1-Year Anniversary
Well, exactly 1 year ago today I started writing and blogging on my own server! I’ve written 167 articles during that time frame and can say that I’ve really enjoyed keeping up with my blog. It initially started out to simply write about life, technology, and work, but grew to so much more. It ended up being more about articles on items that I’m passionate about (excluding work for obvious reasons) such as Technology, Internet, Athletics, as well as a lot about my family, pictures, and videos. So I guess I would classify my blog as more of a multimedia type experience given the videos, content, and pictures that I have published. I even had fun with some photoshop to spice things up a bit (sorry Ella, I love you though!)
I’m also amazed at all the folks that visit my site as well. While I obviously don’t get many comments (55 to date), I am often told by friends, family members, and colleagues that they visit my blog frequently. So many thanks to all of you that read it and have a glimpse of the different aspects of my life and family. We are truly blessed by it all and love sharing in our experiences.
To my Ella - You are truly a blessing in my life. Watching you grow over the past 14 months has been amazing. Words cannot express the joy that I have when I am around you and when you smile, talk, garble, yack, clap, hug, kiss, slap, and gaze at me. You are an inspiration to your Mother and I and we will always love you, teach you, care for you, be an example of God’s word to you, pray for you, and provide you the best life we are physically able to provide. You love it when I sing to you, play with you, walk and talk with you, kiss and hug on you, and read to you. Your smile, your cute little curls, and your big-blue eyes will always be forever burned in my mind.
To my Wife, Jennifer - Since the day that I met you I have loved you. You constantly amaze me with your patience, gratitude, warmth, desire for Christ, and being the best Mommy in the world. I truly could not succeed at life without you and know with out a doubt that you are in fact my soul mate. Your encouragement and voice are always on my mind, bringing peace to me daily. It’s been a joy and blessing to be married to you for 5 years, 6 months! You are my best friend, my companion, my love, by sweetheart, inspiration, and motivation in Christ. Words can’t begin to express my thanks and all I know to say is “Thank you for loving me”.
iTunes to Host Movies
Apple today anounced that they are going to start hosting downloads for movies and want all movies to be $9.95 each. I’m all for it as I’m an iTunes & iPod man, however, I don’t want to watch movies just on iTunes or with Quicktime. I also don’t want to have to run it on Apple hardware either. Let’s face it, Apple has some really cool software and hardware, but their machines or Macs aren’t very desirable. What about the folks with media center PC’s?
Anyway, I’m definitely a fan of $9.95 movies for distribution; especially if they are in HD. However, you can go and nab TheaterTek DVD and run the native HD version of a move via its respective file. It’s just that obtaining the files may or may not be ‘consumer friendly’ if you know what I mean.
Munich
I’m a Steven Spielberg fan, which means I usually buy all his movies. Munich comes out tomorrow and I plan on buying me a copy. Why not rent first? Dunno. Why not buy first? Yeah that’s right, I’m a ‘buy first ask questions later’ type of guy.
Transforming your DVD’s into digital media
So a lot of folks have been asking me on how one would back-up some of their movies to a file server, then stream them over a network for playback on a PC our computer just as if you had the DVD in the drive itself. Before we begin, I should tell you first off that copying any material that is not owned by yourself is illegal and therefore I do not encourage it. However, you are all big boys and girls, so you can do as you please. Let’s begin, shall we?
First what you need is what’s called an emulator for your digital media. The emulator that I have chosen is made by Daemon-Tools. Daemon tools allows you to make virtual DVD drives on your computer. This will be handy as this program will recognize the files that is needed to emulate a DVD digitally. For your convenience, you can download daemon-tools from my Filecloud directory.
Now you need two more files. The first is called DVD Decrypter, which since has been outlawed and the site taken down. DVD Decrypter does exactly how it sounds. It takes your DVD in your DVD drive of your machine and then converts that into a massive directory of files. How massive? Like 4GB massive. So you need some beefy HDD space. You can download DVD Decrypter from my Filecloud directory.
The last file you need is DVD Shrink. This program takes the files that DVD Decrypter made and converts it into what is known as an .ISO file. An .ISO file is an ‘image’ of your DVD. Basically, it’s the DVD all packaged up into one file. You will use this file with Daemon-tools so that your machine recognizes it as a true DVD. This allows for playback just as if you had the DVD in your DVD drive. You can download DVD Shrink from my Filecloud directory.
So, I’ve given you a brief overview of what the files do, but not a how-to. There is an excellent how-to for DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink here.
Let’s talk about Daemon-tools real quick. Once you have gone through the DVD Decrypter / DVD Shrink process and now have your own .ISO file, you now need to ‘mount’ it with Daemon-tools. After installing Daemon-tools, you will notice its icon running in your system tray by your clock. Right-click on it, select ‘Virtual CD/DVD ROM’ and then select ‘Set number of devices’. This will set the number of virutal DVD drives in ‘My Computer’. After you’ve set them, go check it out. Now what we need to do is find your .ISO file, which is the virtual DVD, and ‘mount’ it using Daemon-tools. So go back to the Daemon-tools icon, right-click, select ‘Virtual CD/DVD ROM’, select ‘Device 0: No Media’, and then select ‘Mount’. Navigate to your .ISO file, select it, and presto. Open ‘My Computer’ and you will see your movie as if you had the DVD in the drive itself.
*Disclaimer: Remember, friends, you shouldn’t do this unless you own the media and have checked out all copywrite laws. While I have extensive knowledge on how to do this, I am in now way stating that I copy media illegally for my own personal use or distribution. I’m just sharing information :D.
Questions? Comment on this thread.