Bluray: A Primer

Bluray: A Primer

by: Kenny Hemphill

Bluray is an optical disc format which is set to rival HDDVD (http://www.thehdtvtuner.com/highdefinitiondvd.html) in the race to be the defacto standard storage medium for HDTV. The HDDVD vs Bluray battle resembles that between Betamax and VHS and DVD+RW and DVDRW.

Currently, the major Hollywood film studios are split evenly in their support fro Bluray and HDDVD, but most of the electronics industry is currently in the Bluray camp. The key difference between Bluray disc players and recorders and current optical disc technology is that Bluray, as its name suggests, uses a blueviolet laser to read and write data rather than a red one. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, and according to the Bluray Disc Association (BDA), which is made up of, amongst others, Sony, Philips, Panasonic, and Pioneer, this means that the laser spot can be focussed with greater precision.

Bluray discs have a maximum capacity of 25GB and duallayer discs can hold up to 50GB enough for four hours of HDTV. Like HDDVD, Blue laser discs don’t require a caddy and the players and recorders will be able to play current DVD discs. Codecs supported by Bluray include the H.264 MPEG4 codec which will form part of Apple’s QuickTime 7, and the Windows Media 9 based VC1.

The BDA says that although blue laser discs and players are already shipping in Japan, they won’t ship in the US until the end of 2005 at the very earliest. It is likely that players will be very expensive initially, compared to DVD players. In Japan, they cost the equivalent of $2000. However, as with all new technology, prices will quickly fall particularly as Bluray will be competing with HDDVD for that space under your TV.

About The Author

Kenny Hemphill is the editor and publisher of The HDTV Tuner (http://www.thehdtvtuner.com) a guide to the kit, the technology and the programming on HDTV.

This article was posted on February 14

by Kenny Hemphill

Photoshop: Secrets Of The Pros

Photoshop: Secrets Of The Pros

by: Anna Lim

Photoshop: Secrets of the Pros is a book that features oneonone competitions between twenty top artists and designers. Designers include some of the most talented web, print, broadcast, 3D designers in the world. This friendly competition was called the Photoshop Tennis.

Sounds like another tiring outdoor game? It’s not an outdoor game and it’s not tiring. Well, it may be tiring in a way but not, at least, for those skilled designers.

The Photoshop Tennis was invented by Jim Coudal, founder of Coudal Partners, a Chicago advertising and design agency, one summer before the September 11 terrorist attack. He and a friend ขwhackedข a file back and forth to kill time. Then he invited designers he knew to play in official matches.

Photoshop Tennis is an online game in which players are mostly web designers. The object of the game is to add one layer of design on an image document that is sent back and forth by two players. Only one image document is used. Players are allowed to put different layers of designs such as background and foreground. Results are posted on a website in real time. The game ends whenever the players decide to end it or if it takes hours the decision will be based on the number of votes.

After the four test matches and four official matches were completed, designers from ad agencies and design shops visited his site. Some of them contacted Coudal for a chance to play in a match.

The book PhotoShop: Secrets of the Pros is all about this type of competition. It is the first book to feature such game. As explained by the author of the site http://photoshop.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=22104, in Photoshop Tennis in this book, two designers take on one another over the internet over a ten round or volley period. In each volley, the designer either creates a new theme (in the initial volley), or they take what has been sent to him or her and start playing off of what was previously created. The competition results to a different appearance each time out. Programs used in this competition range from Illustrator and Freehand to Flash to 3D Studio Max and Maya. The designers used the basic tools and the basic commands like, brushes, and fills instead of shortcuts.

The book is not about web designing, it is about the 10 different competitions played by 20 professional designers. It is about teamwork and adaptation of different styles from their competitors.

One thing that is frustrating about this game is that sometimes it takes hours for a player to finish his work while keeping the other player waiting and it will only take minutes for the other player to destroy the art work. You can tell a story out of it but most of the time players tend to make his own story. Next thing you’ll notice is that the story of the image focuses on the destruction of the flow of two different stories.

About The Author

For comments and questions about the article you may contact Anna Lim at 800 591 1644 or visit http://www.colorprintingwholesale.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 18

by Anna Lim

Media Player Shootout

Media Player Shootout

by: James Kendall

Whether you call them media players, jukeboxes, mp3 apps, music managers, or whatever we all need a proggy to listen to our digital music with, so we figured it was time for the Online Music Blog media shootout. For the sake of this article I am only going to discuss players you can get for free and I am not going to go into p2p apps.

So with that, lets dive right in. For my money there are are only 3 choices Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Players but Iกll talk a little about RealPlayer 10 as well. All of these applications share baseline features playing various media files, cataloging digital media, etc. Weกll focus on things about them that are different.

Back in the day, we had Winamp, and it was good. Unfortunately the original Nullsoft team has all moved on and instead of the hacker cred that Winamp used to have back when Justin Frankel et all were on the job it is now just another corporate media player with a hazy future.

Winamp lost a lot of momentum that it had when it released a ( very ) bad Winamp3 but with the release of Winamp5 they seem to be back on track it is useable, responsive, and has a lot of plugins and skins created for it.

The major problem is that for all of itกs features it is not much, if any, better then the two dominant media players that are tied to successful music stores iTunes and WMP. Additionally you have to pay $14.95 to get the pro version that add features that iTunes and WMP include for free. One of the bonuses of using Winamp is the ability to tune into all of the cool shoutcast radio stations.

iTunes is, of course, is the digital jukebox front end for the iPod and the iTunes music store from apple computer. The iTunes music store was the first to get pay for digital music downloads right and it still has the largest legal downloadable catalog on the net giving the iTunes jukebox a hefty advantage.

If you are using a Mac then it is a no brainer you should be using iTunes as you media player, but even if you are using Windows iTunes provides an attractive alternative. The iTunes store is superior ( imho ) to the Windows Media based stores such as Napster and with the legendary Apple ease of use in full effect iTunes makes a great Windows based Jukebox. Noteworthy is the Apple Lossless codec that allows one to rip CDกs to the ACC format that sound as good as the CD itself to our ears. On the negative side, the iTunes jukebox feels heavy on moderately powered PCกs compared to Winamp or WMP. It runs a little slower, seems to use more resources, etc.

Last (of yea, except for RealPlayer… ) Windows Media Player 10 is one of Microsoftกs best pieces of software and is some much better then the last generation of MS media players. The jukebox itself is stuffed with features such as its ability to monitor changes to your digital media files and update itself, simple sync and burn, ratings, and the auto tag features are all very nice.

One of the changes in V.10 is the ability to rip files if the format and with ( or without ) the DRM of your choice. You also get the ability to listen to Internet radio streams with WMP, and although they tend to be more corporate then the hip shoutcast radio you can still find some good music. WMP also features a lossless ripping of CDกs but I was less impressed with the results then I was with Apples Lossless.

And finally there is RealPlayer. The free RealPlayer 10 is better then previous version although that is not saying much imho. It still takes over your file formats by default, tries to force you register, runs in the background (phoning home ?) unless you can find the settings to tell it not to all of the problems that it has always have. I say stay as far away from Real as possible even if you can use กHarmonyก to use your iPod with the Real store. While I may be being over critical of Realกs jukebox I do think that there are other alternatives that are less intrusive and have better feature sets.

All in all I think that either iTunes or WMP is a solid choice and far and away the best media players available. Winamp is a okay too as long as you don’t need to rip music or burn it back to a CD but it is worth the download and install just to listen to Shoutcast stations from time to time. Personally I use WMP at work and iTunes are home, so take that for what itกs worth. I think that I like WMP a little better, but not so much that I would take the time to switch my iTunes set up at home.

About The Author

This article was originally posted on Online Music Blog http://www.onlinemusicblog.com and was written by James Kendall of Copacetix Digtal Creation http://www.copacetix.com.

This article was posted on December 19, 2004

by James Kendall