I received an e-mail from Netflix today informing me of yet another price increase, due to the fact that I rent Blu-ray movies. I was paying $11.99 for 2-discs-at-a-time and 4 rentals per month. And this did include the Watch Now online viewing. But over the past few months, Netflix removed the Watch Now from [...]
Netflix Raises Blu-ray Prices – I Move to Cheaper Plan
The State of 24p Playback on a Home Theater Computer
To get the best video quality playback possible for movies in a home theater, it's necessary for the refresh rate of the source component to match the refresh rate of the display. One of the most common problems stems from the fact that most movies are 24 frames per second while most televisions are 60 [...]
The State of Blu-ray Lossless HD Audio in Home Theater Computers
If you're a home theater enthusiast, you want the highest-quality audio and video possible, and that means Blu-ray with lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio) and the best video compression codec (VC-1 or MPEG-4 H.264 AVC HP.)
Most people would choose a Sony PlayStation 3 or stand-alone Blu-ray player to deliver this content to [...]
Some Facts about HD Video Compression Codecs used in Blu-ray
I just finished reading an interesting article by Amir Majidimehr (former Microsoft VP, video compression) in Oct 2008 issue of Widescreen Review. I was surprised that there are 4 different, incompatible versions of MPEG-4! Here are some facts from the article; I recommending picking up a copy of the magazine for all of the details [...]
Continue reading »Skipping Advertisments on Blu-ray Movies
I'm very annoyed by the fact that I spend $30+ to purchase a Blu-ray movie and yet still forced to watched advertisements, trailers, and FBI warnings. Several years ago, SlySoft released a version of AnyDVD that allowed users to overcome these User Prohibited Actions for regular DVDs. Today they announced version 6.4.3.2 of [...]
AnyDVD HD 6.4 allows backup of BD+ Blu-Ray discs
I firmly believe in paying for the movies you own. In doing so, I believe you should be able to move them to your media server and play them back however you please. BD+ protection (DRM) prevented this with recent Blu-Ray titles, but latest version of Slysoft's AnyDVD HD overcomes this limitation.
Here is [...]