The Fiery Source » Feature

Our Pick for Best DVD-Ripping Tools

Bob — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:40:04 +0000

Photo by jonasj

You shell out some serious money for DVD’s, but the format they are in is not enough in this age of multimedia to satisfy all your needs. We created a list of 5 ripping tools that will not only make a back up copy, but also keep them safely on the internet and play them on any of your portable devices. Below is our pick for the best DVD Rippers on the planet.

AnyDVD (Platform- Windows, Price- $60 per year)

This is the 2nd commercial tool in this week’s list. It is pricey, and though you get discounts for having it for years, $60 per year is still high. However, it claims to be the best when it comes to removal of copy protection and coding schemes which implies you are never stuck in your job. It comes stacked with additional features such as allowing you to control the playback speed of the DVD, which means playing the DVD’s is more soothing in media centers, and also gives you power to remove subtitles and any other unwanted information from the disc.

DVD Decrypter (Platform-Windows, Price-Free)

It is very popular among the users for its ability to remove copy protection schemes such as CSS, and cuts across any other hurdles as well. This is despite the fact that the tool has not been updated for the last 5 years. It has a long list of loyal users as well as new ones.

Handbrake (Platform- Windows/Mac/Linux, Price-Free)

It is one powerful ripping tool that not only rips movies but also allows you to play them on computers, your mini devices as well as other systems that are not disc based. Conversion of DVD’s and MPEG videos into MKV and MP4 is possible with Handbrake. With Handbrake, you can even alter the settings of the media to your liking such as frame rate of the video or the audio codec. Handbrake also allows you to fill your portable media like iPod with a single click very easily. As Handbrake does not come with tools to remove copy protection, you may have to depend upon any other software to make the DVD ready for conversion.

DVD Fab (Platform- Windows, Price-$50)

It is not a freeware, and a ripping tool that can remove all copy protections that are prevalent these days. It has a wide variety of options of shredding and repacking the DVD’s, once you have removed the copy protections. It makes it possible for you to rip entire DVD, rip the movie alone or arrange it into sections. Just as is the case with DVD Shrink, you can shred the larger, DVD-9 to stack in DVD-5.

DVD Shrink (Platform-Windows, Price- Free)

It is a free to use, very efficient ripping tool that compresses DVD’s. As we all know, DVD’s come in two formats, DVD-5 and DVD-9 with storage capacities of 4.7 GB and 8.5 GB respectively. Using the Reauthor mode, you can shred the fat DVD’s and bring them to the standard size, which is DVD-5. DVD Shrink is exceptional software that does its job efficiently, but the problem is that there has been no update to remove latest schemes.

Now you can do without cable with the help of Boxee

Bob — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:53:40 +0000

A media center that cuts across all platforms, Boxee is free to use and keeps in one place entire videos you want, including those from the web. Stacked on a computer that is very cheap and slender, Boxee promises to change the scene forever, as far as cable TV is concerned. Sounds familiar? Well, you must have heard similar claims before. Experts have been forecasting the internet to take over cable TV for all your entertainment needs for quite some time now. Boxee comes closest to their predictions, for the time being at least. Online radio, TV shows, on demand videos and films, music and much more; you name it, Boxee has got it.

Boxee is here to rule

A media center that gives you all the above, and what’s more, it comes without a price tag. Built by Xbox, who else, it works beautifully when loaded on Apple TV or a TV connected to a computer. You can do away with your cable connection or satellite TV once you start using Boxee, and you will be amazed with your savings. Let us see what it means to you and then I shall tell all about its installation.

With Boxee, the days of trying to set your antenna or getting irritated with poor signals are virtually over. All the content gets to you via an HD channel. Boxee, if loaded on Mac or Apple TV, will bring to you everything that major online networks have in store for you.

You can have the Boxee experience from your Apple TV which is the most inexpensive way, but if you use any Mac Mini in addition, or a computer with A/V adapters, it becomes all the more easy. Supporting very high resolutions (up to 1080p), Boxee brings entertainment to your Apple TV through HDMI cables and the audio output is RCA or optical. Boxee has a remote of its own, and it catches your local network using Ethernet port. You get a cool system with 40GB drive that looks classy with a starting price of just $200. The system is indeed very nice and you get access to all the features even if you have Boxee installed.

The only thing missing is Netfix support, and that is because of the slow processor of Apple TV. May be Apple decides to upgrade, or any technological breakthrough is achieved, but it doesn’t appear likely in the near future. Go for PC or even Mac if you so desire.

Let us talk about the installation of Boxee instead. Go get a USB with 512MB memory, a PC with Windows or Mac, and open the carton of your Apple TV. Time for Boxee!

Below is a clip of Boxee in action.

USB as an installer

Apple TV just doesn’t accept some USB drives as installer, and it has nothing to with their size. The feedback suggests that those USB’s which are standard and available in the market do the trick rather than those you are gifted with. It is better to Google your USB for this use.

For Windows

It is better to download the atvusb interim solution from the site which comes zipped. Open and extract using 7-zip. When you search the contents you will find two batch files, called mk-atv-xbmc and mk-atv-xbmc-ssh. Open the file and if you are having the internet, everything falls in line. Many command texts will appear, with some downloads starting. What actually it does is to download the ATV-boot loader, which is what makes your Apple TV Boxee ready. Actually image files are converted into Mac format which is what Apple TV understands. Also it downloads a image tool for the USB from HP which installs on the USB, Mac images.

As soon as this process is over, you find a Disc Image file and a USB image application in the atv-win folder. Now you can insert the USB. If you are using XP, you have to go to the administrator account to start this application and if you are using Windows 7 or Vista, you can right click on the application and choose run as administrator. Make sure that you switch from volume mode to device mode by clicking on the image tool or else it will be your iPod or backup drive that will be selected, and not your USB drive. Even if the USB is empty, hit backup as after the session with Apple TV is over it will be easy to restore the USB drive. Click ‘Restore’ again, and got to atv-xbmc-ssh image which is in the folder named atv-win, and click open. You might be asked if you want to use image or about other matters and in general you are safe if you move ahead. Once it has been finalized, the drive is ready to bring the world of entertainment to you with Apple TV.

Mac users

Installation is simpler for Mac users. Just go to ATV USB site, press download to get the copy of Mac tool, insert the USB, and start the program. What you see on the screen might be similar to this:

The tools and the selectors on the screen are same though the screenshots may be obsolete. For installation, press “ATV-Patchstic, and then select your USB which is at bottom. If you are not aware of its BSD or mounting address, go to System Profiler to search the section of the USB. Pray to God that your Apple TV is loaded with latest firmware, as you are choosing Apple TV version 2.x. If all is well, click ‘Create using ->’, and within minutes you are ready to go.

Installation of Boxee (XBMC as well)

This is quick and easy, but if you are interested in a video guide, it is there in the installation guide of the Patchstick. Take out the plug of Apple TV, insert the formatted USB in a slot close to power cord, and then once again plug in your Apple TV. If you see Tux on your Apple TV, you can be sure that your USB drive has been picked up. A lot of text scroll is also seen on the screen. If you see it freezing with words like ‘failed’, once again check that the USD stick has been created in the Device Mode if you are Windows user. All known issues need to be checked at this point. Once installation is complete, you will get a line that says to restart. Now is the time to pull out the USB stick, take out the plug of Apple TV again, and then insert the plug once again.

It is not that Boxee has been completely installed, but you have done the hard part of installing the tools to catch it and update it on Apple TV. Choose launcher from the home menu, go to downloads and get copies of all that you have done so far, the launcher, the Boxee and XBMC. Make sure that in a hurry you do not go for all the buttons such as the Downgrade button to get the launcher. Finally, Boxee is installed, and if you did not sign up earlier, you can now do so by visiting the official site of Boxee, that is Boxee.net.

Make your Boxee powerful

Videos from the net: Even if no videos are loaded, Boxee, with the help of your Apple TV can bring in a lot of entertainment for you. Get to the menu with your Boxee remote, search for videos and then the option of internet, and Voila! You start getting the clips from all your favorite social video sites such as Hulu.com, CNN, Joost, MTV music videos, YouTube videos, and much more. What is great about Boxee is that you get all this free of cost. Of course, all this is there in Apple TV as well, but the user interface in Boxee is easier and simpler. Wait till you get to ‘My Torrents’, which is one great section that you will simply fall in love with.

Boxee is awesome and much more when it comes to access to all the Internet videos. Miro guide is one great directory that contains the best and the most popular that is there on the net for you. Some of the top rated stuff such as TED conference, Adult Swim, Make TV and all the similar things that you always search for are all there in Boxee for you to watch anytime you want. What is great is that you need not write the lengthy, 80 words URL as you do with the remote of Apple TV. Rather, you can just go to the Boxee account of yours and paste your URL’s in the My RSS category, so that Boxee remembers them and brings them to you whenever you need them in future. If any of your friends are also using Boxee, you can see what they are up to, and also watch if they have liked some videos or if they have recommended some of the videos, just as users do in Netfix.

Your content, in any format: Are you passionate about your favorite videos? What about those that you have made with your own camcorder? Till now, they have been lying in the obscure by lanes of the internet. But now you have the option of sharing them all with your friends by placing them on home network provided to you by Boxee, or if you so desire, you can place them in the hard drive of your Apple TV. Go to Media sources from the menu option of your Boxee and the rest is done by Boxee to let you share them with everyone. Boxee scans the network to see if there is anything that it can pick up easily. If you wish to start afresh, you can take help of Gizmodo’s guide to set up your own network for your Mac or PC.

There is no dearth of people who like to do all their stuff manually, and if you are one of those, Boxee lets you do that. Get the IP address of your Apple TV from the set up page of your router, or from the General settings from the ATV menu. Use FTP client with SFTP mode (for Mac use Cyberduck and for PC use Filezilla. Both are freeware and easy to obtain) to get the both the password and the username of your Apple TV. There are four folders that are important when you get to the directory and these are Downloads, Movies, Pictures and Music. Place your media in the corresponding section, and your Boxee should not have any difficulty in finding them for you from there. Otherwise, you can go to the option of Media sources and set up your sections yourself. As far as Downloads are concerned, once you tell Boxee where to drop them, it will automatically do so, and you can retrieve them in future easily.

If there is still some problem and your Boxee is unable to match your needs, you can select Browse from any category that you like, such as movies, music or video and you have the options of play or recognize. If you choose recognize, Boxee will get to work straight away. It will start searching the net for related content to identify and will get the thumbnail and information for you. If it is unable to do so, what you can do is to type the name to help Boxee in its endeavor. It will refine the search and in all probability will come up with what you want. This is truly amazing exercise as with one video, Boxee gets you all the similar stuff from the web so that the next time you wish to play your video, there is a menu directing you to all the similar stuff on the web.

Leave all your worries about the format to Boxee. Apart from some files that are DRM-protected, Boxee can play for you all that is there on the net for you, whatever format it is in. This is because Boxee employs Linux based player, and you know that Linux does not like getting access to any format it wants, don’t you.

Latest Torrents from the net on Your Boxee: If the speed of your internet connection happens to be good, and if you let Boxee do its bit by leaving some time for it, you will be amazed what it can do for you. Leave your PC for a while and your Apple TV will do all your bidding at BitTorrent. Use the SFTP access method that has been described earlier to get to Users/frontrow/ Library/Application/support/BOXEE/Userdata/Torrents. Place the torrents there, and downloading will be done by Boxee when you start it next time. You get the options of pause, resume and throttle the bandwidth when you go to download section in the menu.

Some more great features

There are countless other features offered by Boxee and probably it is difficult to describe all of them, but it would be unfair if I do not talk about features for other platforms. The streaming of all the videos from Last.fm, Shoutcast, Picassa Web Albums, Flickr, and many others is possible for Boxee. You name it, you got it. Leaving some of the excitement for the installers might be a good idea, but I cannot resist myself from telling about some other applications of Boxee.

IPhone remote control: This remote control comes handy when the user gets tired with the keyboard on the screen. This is applicable to units that have been jailbroken. But Boxee claims that a version from Apple is on its way.

This is the end of a comprehensive guide on Boxee, and it should probably make you ready to start streaming any video in your living room, with cost saving that will amaze you. If you have something more that has not been covered here, feel free to tell us about it in the comments.

Boxee is available for Download Here

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Trailer

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:53:13 +0000

Ubisoft just released this amazing CG trailer for Assassins Creed: Brotherhood at E3 2010.
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 & PSP
This trailer looks so real, amazing graphics

Best Bookmarking Management Tools

Bob — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:36:18 +0000

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to save, share, organize, search, and manage their bookmarks of websites. The resources themselves aren’t shared, only the bookmarks that reference them. Most of the time these bookmarks are made public, or they can be saved privately, sharing the bookmarks only with specified people, groups, or certain networks. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags.

Bookmarking your favorite websites is a simply process with most browsers, but after some time you end up with a large pile of Bookmarks. Then there’s the possibility you may even lose that data due to some unforeseen incident. The following tools listed below will help you organize your bookmarks and avoid losing them. Above photo compliments of stock.xchng

Xmarks

Xmarks was formally known as Foxmarks, and it’s an incredible bookmark tool. This bookmarking tool does it all like syncs bookmarks, shares bookmarks, you can even sync profiles, and depending on the which browser you are using will even sync your tabs and password. I use this one to keep my laptops and desktops in sync, no mater which one I use there all the same. Great Tool to have in your arsenal.

Diigo

Diigo puts a twist on their bookmarking tool; besides just saving the URL of a website, you can also annotate your bookmarks, highlight, add sticky notes, archive, and share both your bookmarks and archived research with whom ever you please. Create a private or public group for your company, class, and teams. Diigo can be accessed through their website, via the Diigo toolbar for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the Diigo Chrome extension.

Delicious

Delicious is one of my favorites and it gets well used around here. The social bookmarking service is one of the most popular bookmarking tools and is set-up by default to make your bookmarks public unless you check the “private” box. Delicious is focused on sharing bookmarks, and is a solid choice for those new to social bookmarking and those looking for more than just a place to store their bookmarks. The ability to easily share bookmarks with friends and the general public are great features of Delicious that really set it apart from other social bookmark tools.

Google Bookmarks

Another popular bookmarking service I heavily use. By defualt Google Bookmarks is a private bookmarking tool with a handful of public features added on for those who want them. You can save bookmarks in Google Bookmarks by using the Google Toolbar, it lets you save the title, URL or location of the web page, label (also known as tags or keywords), and a area to describe the page you want to save.

Like most other Bookmarking services Google Bookmarks has a search bar where you may search your bookmarks or the web for the tags that you may be looking for. Bookmarks can be organized into private, semi-private, or public lists for research or sharing with friends or the public. Naturally, You can access your Google Bookmarks from any browser by logging into your Google account.

Friendfeed

Friendfeed is another popular a bookmarking tool, although many wouldn’t call it that. What makes this one nice is that it combines your feeds from various websites into one location just like any other bookmarking service. Friendfeed also allows you to insert links directly into your single feed, and each item has its own comment thread.

Friendfeed is simple to use. Sharing is a big plus here, you can allow your friends to comment on the things you share. Read and share however you wish — from your email, your phone or even from Facebook. You can also publish your FriendFeed to your website or blog, or to services such as Twitter.

via lifehacker

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