LT-2006 20″ TV and DVD player

No, that's not an iMac G5, but they sure look similar. OPPO Digital, Inc., a consumer electronics manufacturer, on August 1st will release the stylish and sexy LT-2007 20-inch LCD TV and DVD player combination wrapped in a fashionable translucent case.

The LT-2006 is great for television and movie watching in small spaces, such as the kitchen counter. The LT-2007 sports a high quality enhanced definition 20-inch flat-panel LCD TV with a slot-loading DVD player that is built directly into the base. It even plays DiVX files. The LT-2007 plays DVD-Video, DiVX, Audio CD, Kodak Picture CD and many other digital audio/video/picture formats, such as CD-R/CD-RW, DVD-R/DVD-RW, and DVD+R/DVD+RW.

It includes several input and output connections, including digital audio output, component video input and VGA. The LT-2007 can be connected to a surround sound home theater system, a PC, a cable box, or a satellite receiver.

“The LT-2007 features one of the highest pixel resolutions for its size combined with a striking DVD player, all packaged as pure eye-candy for entertainment aficionados,” stated Nathaniel Plain, Manager of Technical Service at OPPO Digital.  “With its convenient adjustable base, the LT-2007 is right at home whether watching TV,  DVDs, playing the latest video games, or displaying precious family photos through the built in flash card reader, it is ideal anywhere.”

It also has a built-in 181-channel NTSC tuner with automatic station searching and fine tuning.  Additionally, digital 3D comb filters deliver stunning color reproduction and enhanced picture resolution and sharpness.  Convenience features incude last channel recall, sleep timer, headphone jack and a cradle for the remote control.

Available from OPPO Digital and authorized resellers for $599.00. 

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Tags: divx, dvd, lt-2007, oppo digital, television, tv
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 28th, 2006 with no comments.
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WiJET.e gadget streams DVD video over WiFi

The new WiJET.e from Pegasus Wireless Corporation is a cool new wireless video streaming gadget that can connect to your home entertainment system and stream 5.1 surround sound audio and high definition video (up to 2048 x 1536) in real time to any display in the home. Think of it like a Slingbox, except it was specifically designed for high-quality video on your LAN where as Slingbox was designed for streaming over the Internet.

Not only can the WiJET.e be used to make wireless presentations and play movies wirelessly, it is also a feature rich media gateway, wireless access point as well as an Internet appliance.

The WiJET.e is 802.11a/b/g compliant and features all of the existing functions now supported by our existing WiJET products, but it is also capable of playing any DVD movie (MPEG 2), VCD, plus many of today's popular media formats including MP3 music, DivX, and MPEG 4.

FEATURES

Wirelessly replicates PC screen to multiple remote displays.

Wirelessly streams video and audio from PC to remote displays and receivers/speakers

Supports wireless direct DVD playback (>10Mbps) with full navigation control feature

Supports Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound

Resolution support up to 2048 x 1536

Supports 802.11 a/b/g

Configurable as wireless AP or Infrastructure Station

Supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 wireless security in both AP and Station mode

Supports Dual Monitor function

Supports Moderator function

Supports Automatic Script function

Local mode supports: Internet access, web browsing

Local video and audio playback from USB storage devices

Supports lR remote control, controllable from PC or directly through WiJET.e

Audio-Visual formats supported:

DVD

VCD

Audio CD

AVI

MOV

ASF

WAV

Video Codecs supported:

MPEG 1/2

MPEG 4

DivX

WMV

Sorensen

Audio Codecs supported:

WMA

PCM

ADPCM

AC3

MP3

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Tags: 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.1b, dvd, entertainment, slingbox, streaming, wifi, wijet.e
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 20th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Home Entertainment and WiFi and streaming and dvd and entertainment and slingbox and wijet.e.

MovieLink offers DVD downloads

Movie download service Movielink announced that it has licensed technology from Sonic Solutions to allow consumers to download a movie and burn it onto a DVD for use in standard DVD players. This is a huge move since before MovieLink required that you play its downloaded movies only on PCs since they used DRM (digital rights management) to ensure that only the PC you downloaded the movie could play it - plus up to 2 other PCs.

If you recall, back in April, I wrote about MovieLink's movie download service and said this:

The films available on Movielink can be stored indefinitely on a computer hard drive or transferred to as many as two other computers. A copy can be burned to a DVD as a backup, however these DVD discs can only be played on up three PCs authorized by Movielink - they cannot be viewed on a standard DVD player because of special security encryption. Studios are being extra cautious about selling films online in part because DVD sales produce more profit than theater box office receipts. Still, this could be a deal breaker for many users that don't have a PC hooked up to their large-screen TVs. Who wants to watch a DVD on a teensy 17" or even 21" PC monitor?

Further, I stated back in April - "If Hollywood makes it easy for users to download and play movies on their television, they could make a killing. Just look at what Apple iTunes did after everybody said that no one would pay for music in the "Napster age". Apple proved them wrong. Hollywood could do the same if they make the user experience as easy and simple as Apple did." Ironically, the example I gave - Apple iTunes - is now rumored will offer movie rental downloads. (with DRM embedded, but of course! )

Well, thank goodness Hollywood has finally gotten its act together and plans to allow users to burn to a standard DVD playable on any DVD player using MovieLink.  I should point out that the download-to-burn service won't be available until the company obtains a license for DVD encrypting technology later this year. "We are hopeful this gets into the market in a big way in the next six months or so," Jim Ramo, MovieLink chief executive said.

According to Reuters, only a portion of Movielink's 1,500-title library will be available for download-to-burn until Movielink clears those rights with its studio investors, Ramo said.

However, as I previously stated, this is a momentous change for Hollywood since until now, the major movie studios have been very hesitant to allower consumers to download DVDs over the Internet since it opens the door to increased piracy. In addition, downloaded content is usually much less expensive than the retail DVD copy, so the enticement for fraud and financial loss is potentially greater. Simply pay $3 to download the movie, burn to a DVD, then copy the DVD using a ripper such as DVDFab Decryptor. It copies the entire DVD movie to the hard disk and removes all the protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying. AnyDVD is another popular ripper. Compare $3 vs. $25 for a retail DVD and you can understand the movie studios concern. Retail DVDs still have a huge markup even with the distribution, packaging, and retail costs. Maybe if they used less of that stupid security tape that is damn near impossible to remove from the DVD box, they'd increase their profit margin even more.

With this announcement. Movielink is the first major download service to offer download-to-burn DVD for use in both personal computers and standard DVD players connected to television sets.

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Tags: apple, digital rights management, downloads, dvd, movielink, movies
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Home Entertainment and movies and digital rights management and downloads and dvd and movielink.

Fix Scratched DVD problems

A scratched DVD can certainly leave you frustrated, especially if it's one of your favorite movies, but at least the DVD can be replaced. Now imagine the scratched DVD is a home video of your most cherished family memories and you have no backup copy. This is pretty bad. Now imagine the scratched DVD is your wedding video, you then try the backup DVD and the backup DVD also fails with sector errors. Both of these wedding DVDs are the originals provided by the professional videographer. Oh for the love of humanity!

I did have my own 3rd backup copy of our wedding which worked, but this was the "beta" version and not the finalized version which had more footage. I discovered the sector errors on the wedding DVDs when I attempted to watch the video and the DVD player choked on the bad sectors. "If my wife finds out that our wedding DVDs are screwed up and I didn't keep a digital copy on my hard drive, I'm a dead man," I thought to myself. I actually had the wedding DVD on my hard drive, but it was taking up 4GB of space and I was running out of room. I figured I had 2 copies of the wedding DVD, so why take up valuable hard disk space? So the wedding ISO image was deleted. Word to the wise - megabytes cost pennies, so buy another hard disk rather than trust burned DVDs.

A DVD-ROM drive or DVD player utilizes a laser beam to read the metal layer. This laser beam crosses the plastic layer and reads the metal layer. If the plastic layer is scratched, the beam will be unable to pass through it, resulting in a read error. In other words, the data to be read are still on the DVD, the trouble lies in the layer of plastic refracting the laser beam. Since the DVD's contents are still there, a scratched DVD can be recovered by polishing its surface. But I wasn't about to start messing with the physical disc itself just yet, since once you do, there is no turning back.

Thus, I proceeded to try and rip the wedding DVDs to my hard disk to see if I could re-burn them. First I tried DVDFab Decrypter, a free ripping utility that can ignore sector errors while ripping. It also removes all DVD protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying, though my wedding DVD wasn't copy-protected. After about 8 hours of ripping the DVD it finally finished (takes longer due to sector errors), I was finally able to at least rip whatever content was still available. I played the DVD image from my hard drive and I noticed that parts of the wedding video were messed up. Frustrated that I was missing portions of the wedding video, I thought perhaps if I tried my secondary (slave) DVD-ROM drive and another piece of software called ISOBuster, I might be able to read these bad sectors. I rarely use the secondary DVD drive since it isn't a burner, so its laser might be more "fresh" than the primary DVD drive.

After several hours, ISOBuster was able to rip the DVD, but it too had to skip some bad sectors. I was able to recover about 95% of the DVD, but when it comes to your wedding DVD, you want 100%. Who knows what that missing 5% contained? It could have been a priceless moment in our wedding. Undaunted, I tried to find a utility that can rip a DVD image to a hard drive, skipping bad sectors and marking the sectors it couldn't read so you can try and re-rip the DVD on another DVD drive to try and read these bad sectors. I also had 2 identical copies, so in theory, I could rip the 1st DVD to an image, then run this utility again to read the "missing gaps" from the 2nd DVD. The odds that both DVDs had bad sectors in the same location were pretty small. Now if only such a utility existed...

But wait!!! It does exist. After some creative Googling, I came across a German DVD utility called h2cdimage that purports to do exactly what I was looking for. It can rip a DVD, mark the bad sectors, remember which sectors were read with an accompanying "flag" file, then let you try to read the bad sectors from another DVD drive (or using another identical DVD disk). Woohoo! Excited, but still not sure this was going to work, I proceeded to download the software. In my case, I had two DVD drives to try on the same PC. However, if you have a network you can put the ISO image and flag files into a shared folder and then use multiple DVD drives on the network to try and recover the DVD disc. What's nice about the software is that you can interrupt it with Ctrl-C and then continue whenever you want. I should point out that Read errors are often a thermal problem or a problem with the drive itself. Often opening then closing the drive or putting the disk in the freezer could help rescue some sectors.

In any event, I ran the h2cdimage utility as follows:
c:\h2cdimage\\h2cdimage.exe 1:0:0 dvdiso -i
c:\h2cdimage\h2cdimage.exe 1:1:0 dvdiso

Note:
0:0:0 is primary master
0:1:0 is primary slave
1:0:0 is secondary master
1:1:0 is secondary slave

The first command above creates the dvdiso image filename due to the -i parameter and it uses the Primary Master. The second command reads from the Secondary Master and fills in any gaps it can by attempting to read just the bad sectors that the Primary Master could not read. Unfortunately, the software is written in German, so the results of each command returned the results in German, thus, I couldn't initially determine if a portion or all of the bad sectors were read. So I headed over to AltaVista Bablefish translation and copy/pasted the German text and converted it to English. The first time it ran it told me that 95% of the sectors were read. The second time it ran, it told me that 100% of my sectors were successfully read and I now had a 100% working wedding DVD. Great Scott! This software is the greatest thing since I got my first home video gaming system (Atari 2600).

Words can't express the relief I felt when I was able to successfully restore my scratched wedding DVD. I still can't believe my wedding DVDs failed in the first place. They are "burned" copies and not professionally "pressed" DVDs. Pressed DVDs are supposed to last decades. However, I have read that the die in burned DVDs can sometimes only last 2-3 years, especially for "cheap" DVD media. Apparently, this is the case with my wedding DVDs since they are only 3 years old. Wish I knew that 3 years ago or I would have had my wedding video professionally pressed

Soon after I recovered my DVD I decided to write about my experience and in my research I came across another DVD recovery software, called ISOPuzzle, that is based on the same concept as the German h2cdimage software. Only in this case, it is coded in English, and instead of a command-line it has a GUI. According to some forum posts I read, the author of ISOPuzzle is familiar with h2cdimage and he compared them by saying, "This one - I hope - is more user friendly because of it's GUI, it's 'GiveUp' and it's 'shutdown' function and it takes the filenames from the disk automatically (which could be a useful feature late at night). I also tried to find a faster an more efficient retry strategy with pausing or spinning up the drive after some read errors." I tried ISOPuzzle and it certainly seems like a more powerful version of the h2cdimage.exe utility, with some logging features, shutdown features, and more. I like how the log window shows how many reads and failures it makes on each pass.
 
Here's a screenshot of it running on my PC:


Here are some other suggestions I found on the Internet for fixing a scratched DVD you may find useful.
1) Use a yellow highlight marker and draw it over the scratched area. Careful, dry tips can scratch the disc.
2) Sprayable "silicone oil" - sold in Europe as "cockpit spray". I read it has a good affinity to the hydrophobic plastic material and a similar refractional index, which is the point!
Similarly, silicon spray will work. It should look like a mirror finish, but if you use too much the disc will be unreadable. Try spraying a tiny bit on and rubbing it over the surface with paper towel - you'll see it 'hide' the scratches as you rub. If you put too much on, it comes off pretty easily with eye glasses cleaner or other mild glass cleaning agent.
3) Toothpaste, with its abrasive particles can work their way into the scratches. Use a small pointer to rub it into the scratches to bring them closer to the surface and more even with the rest of the disc. Just make sure to clean off the disc when done. You don't want toothpaste flying around your DVD drive.
4) Try cooling the disc. If that doesn't work, try heating it. This trick will often help you get some more sectors read.
5) Some have had success with car wax or car polish. Worth a shot if all else fails.

I hope you find this info useful.

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Tags: dvd, h2cdimage, isobuster, isopuzzle, problem, scratched, sectors, video
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Comments on this Entry:

(Fred on Dec 13, 2006 12:57 AM) There seem to be large differences from one manufacturer to another in how long the dyes will last. Most people I've heard from will go to great lengths to buy their blanks from Taiyo Yuden. There's a recent and nerdy article about choosing media That wouldn't help with your scratching problem, though. The common advice seems to be to avoid sleeves and use jewel cases instead.

(Tom Keating on Dec 13, 2006 10:03 AM) Thanks for the link Fred. I'll check it out. You know, one of the DVDs wasn't even scratched, so it was definitely the dye fading that causesed the sector errors. I wonder if the outside of the disc (where all of the errors were) tends to fade faster than the inner part.

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
Read more articles on Home Entertainment and video and dvd.