Thinkcorps

I spent the weekend (while not watching playoff football) backing up some DVDs, partly for sport, partly because I’m probably not supposed to. Turns out, it’s quite easy – much easier than it was a few years ago to try and create Video CDs. The software is amazing, and the hardware is, well, appropriate (DVD burners). In sum, Hollywood is screwed – seriously. You thought ol’ Jack Valenti had lost his marbles? Not quite.

The Drive
I bought a DVD burner last week for around $150 (I picked a new LG 4081 drive). Could have gone cheaper, (LG’s earlier 4040 got good reviews) but I figured I’d go with an 8x capable drive [WARNING: turns out its 8x on DVD+R only, though I suppose firmware update could change this]. Shoved it in my PC and XP immediately recognized it and installed drivers. That was too easy.

The Media
Bought some DVD-R media at Staples. I bought small packs to test, since I have an old Panasonic A300 DVD player which has been finicky in the past with CD-R/RWs. Staples had a Memorex 10pk/$10 deal they sold me on. I should have paid more attention though. Turns out, it’s only 1x media. Speed is important people, make sure you’re buying what you want/need!

Testing media is very important, both on type (DVD+-R/+-RW), speed (1,2,4x), and brand. Brand is important because most manufacturers outsource DVD production and often change manufacturers, affecting quality. There are also pirates selling slow (1x) discs marked at high speeds (4x).

The kicker is that you can’t really tell which manufacturer made your discs until you physically insert the disc in your drive and run an ID program like the free DVDIdentifier. Given all these factors, I can’t see how to safely navigate the purchase of media. There doesn’t seem to be any way to tell which is really good media – different packs (5/10/50) could be of different ages, thus it could conceivably be of different manufacturing origin. The only mitigating factor is that the manufacturers are getting better at producing good media over time.

Backing Things Up, Overview
There are a few different scenarios in DVD burning, which seem complicated but aren’t.

1) Protected or Unprotected Content (Rip)
If you want to back up a movie, chances are it’s encrypted (CSS) and most DVD backup software won’t touch it for legal reasons. Luckily for us, CSS is crappy encryption and was broken in short order (all praise hackers and the Internet). There are several DVD “rippers” available that will decrypt DVD files onto your HD.

I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if DVD backups are legal. I am not recommending you do this. However, since you didn’t break CSS yourself, I don’t think the DMCA applies, and backups seem to fall under fair use, especially if you have children in the house (teething or otherwise).

2) Will it Fit? (Recode)
Many DVDs are DVD-9 (dual layer, 9GB), while all burning media is single layer DVD-5 (4.7GB). Keep in mind that disc capacity is measured like hard drives, kilobyte = 1000 bytes, while your PC measures a kilobyte as 1024 bytes. This means that the effective size of a DVD-5 is 4.38GB. Doesn’t matter much, so go unbunch your undies.

What this all means is that you’re gonna have to do some scrunching to make the movie fit onto one disc. Wait! Aren’t most DVDs full of tons of extras? Yes, Virginia, yes they are. You can easily trim the fat (special features, extra language tracks, menus, etc.). If this isn’t enough, you can recode the movie to make it smaller. There’s software available to do this as well.

3) Putting it onto a DVD (Burn)
There’s two basic choices here, either clone the DVD or burn the movie only. Cloning means making an exact copy, movie only means that you include the movie, one audio track, and one subtitle track (I think subtitle may be optional). When you put a movie only disc into your DVD player, it simply starts playing the movie (chapter info is retained).

There’s a lot of flexibility/options I haven’t gone into, but these 3 steps are the key. Rip, Recode and Burn—the holy trinity.

[Note: I am not authoring DVDs, creating new menus and such. I wanted to start simply and just work with the content at hand. However, for a stripped down DVD, I can see the usefulness of a simple menu. I’m going to try this next.]

The Walkthroughs
Next, I thought I’d walk through 3 different scenarios I imagine you might experience.

a) A recording you made on your DVR (unprotected, no recode, full cloning)
b) Backup with movie only, no menus or extras (protected, recode, movie only)
c) Backup with menus, most extras removed (protected, no recode, stripped & cloned)

A. Backing Up A Homemade DVD
This is the easiest scenario. You’ve a got single-layer (4.7GB) DVD with unencrypted content. You don’t have to decrypt it or resize it. It just fits. For this, I tried a program called CloneDVD. It’s super-friendly to use, down to the cute sheep mascot animating every step. It also can preview video files, so you don’t select the wrong one. Very nice. I’m not going to go into too much detail, you can get that in other places (like the manual).

I selected ‘Clone DVD’, and created an ISO image file on my HD, ready for burning. I did this just to be safe. CloneDVD will burn straight from DVD files or an ISO image. Then I burned the disc, and when it was done, I had an exact copy of my original DVD. Easy.

For clarity, the DVD files is a folder with all the data files that are going on your DVD. The ISO image is a single file containing exactly all the information and structure that would be burned onto the DVD. You can read ISO images using your DVD player software.

B. Backing Up A Movie Only
For this (theoretical discussion), I first had to decrypt the DVD files. I used DVD Decrypter, which just cracks the CSS encryption and copies all the DVD files into a directory on your HD. Then I opened up DVD2one, a recoder (transcoder), that shrunk the original movie down to a size that would fit on one disc. I selected the movie file, an audio track, and a subtitle track, and DVD2one output new DVD files into a new directory I specified. Now, I could use CloneDVD. I chose ‘Copy DVD Titles’, then selected the directory created with DVD2one. I then created an ISO image, then burned the ISO to DVD in CloneDVD. Easy.

C. Backing Up A Movie, But Including Some Extras, Like Menus
This is the complicated scenario, since you have to choose yourself what to include, and some of the files aren’t that well labeled. You can always write the ISO image file first, then test it on your PC’s DVD player software. [You will need Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a virtual disk]

Software Options and Links
There’s a lot of different packages out there, and many different packages that will handle the 3 steps (rip, recode, burn). But as long as you have each step covered, you’ll be fine. I haven’t tried everything, but suffice it to say, there is a totally free combination out there if you so desire. I am personally very impressed with CloneDVD, but it doesn’t rip.

To learn more, I like DVDRHelp.com. This site has tons of resources and reviews on DVD media, players, recorders, and software, as well as many many guides on burning DVDs (as well as VCDs, etc.). A very comprehensive site.

In my research, I found myself hitting articles on CDFreaks.com quite often. This article Copying DVDs, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly gave me a great introduction.

Lists are basically magazines’ way of telling you that you’re stupid, and that just like crows, you are easily distracted by shiny objects—in this case, big numbers and the word ‘Best,’ usually bolded in red, sometimes overlaid on a pair of breasts. It’s holiday time, folks, so get ready to be patronized—to the EXTREME!!

It’s still early—we’re not seeing the buying guides just yet—but apparently the next new thing is “best of the year,” which is actually easier to do, since editors don’t actually have to cull all that contact and pricing information, or ensure that the product is either available for purchase or doesn’t actually suck big fat air. [note: I did the first Wired Tools gear supplement, so I have some experience in this arena.]

For brevity’s sake, I think I’ll just point out the really stupid items, it’s more fun this way.

1. Time: Coolest Inventions of 2003
1) The iTunes music store isn’t that cool: $.99/track for DRM you don’t own and Apple doesn’t actually make any money off it. 2) BeoLab 5speakers: I like Bang & Olufsen as much as the next guy, but $16K for speakers doesn’t make them cool. 3) The NeCoRo robotic cat is freaking me out (I say: cage match between the robo-cat and the lobster). 4) The Gibbs Aquada is the stupidest f*cking product of the year. How much of an asshole do you need to be? 5) Invisible Tech: You have to be perfectly in line with the video camera for the illusion to stand muster. ‘nuff said.

2. Popular Science | Best of What’s New 2003
PopSci is an interesting hybrid, trying to bridge its old-school astronomy-loving audience, with the new breed of tech-loving readers. Not an easy challenge, by any means. Their best of list goes more traditional (defense tech, auto) than most.

1) There’s that damn aquacar again. Why do people think that’s cool? 2) iTunes Music Store: still a raw deal. 3) Computer manufacturers selling digital CE isn’t that revolutionary, if you actually think about it. 4) Sharp LCD TVs: $1700 for 15 inches. Wow. Cool. 5) Garden Groom Hedge Trimmer: Trimmers are exactly the wrong way to trim your hedges. Seriously, ask those This Old House guys. They’ll tell you.

3. NYT Circuits: A Little Digital Something for Everyone
NYT has a pretty typical grab bag of products, nothing really outstanding, though I have to point out the strange love letter to Mac accessory-maker Griffin Technology (I like the company myself, but why so many products?).

Standouts: Recommending satellite radio just seems weird to me (some people love it however, I’m sure. People loved Who’s the Boss?) Sidetalkin’ Nokia 3300—guaranteed to drive away potential dates and mates. Kid’s stuff is all basically crap, but they’ll break it anyway, so who cares? Pacific Digital MemoryFrame digital photo display (LCD in a frame)—and you thought technology couldn’t be pretentious. And finally, ‘cause I’m tired of this, not cause I’m at the end of the list, the Sharp Aquos Mobile: Yes, Virginia, Wifi is cool—ground-breaking even—but it’s a 15-inch TV for $1800. Seriously, people wake up.

4. Business 2.0 Gizmo Guide (subscription required)
OK, I have to immediately take points off for using the word ‘gizmo’. It’s not me, these are the rules. But beyond that, I have mostly positive things to say: partly because I don’t have the print mag in front of me right now, and partly because it was put together by Shoshana Berger (Readymade founder) who knows what she’s doing and is pretty damn cute to boot.

Shana has products grouped into several typical user types (also typical B2 reader types, I imagine). I didn’t really feel like the products picked for the “CEO” were that good—but they did tend to scream “asshole”, which is probably appropriate. All in all, one of the best gift guides I’ve seen this year.

more to come …

I am a hug fan of Best Buy. Why? Because in their pseudo-infinite wisdom, they have deemed it acceptable for consumers like me to buy items from their stores, open them, play with them, and then, after every button has been pushed, twiddled and tweaked, take those items back to the store—no questions asked. Honestly, it’s kinda cool.

Big Box Retailers
All the big retailers—Best Buy, Circuit City, Good Guys (the “bad guys”)—have these no-hassle return policies. I’ve brought opened cables back to Best Buy and they’ve happily accepted them and refunded my money—not store credit, mind you.

When you’re considering a new purchase, you want to take the product for a test drive. Do not trust some marketing copy off a manufacturer Web site. You have to make sure it’s going to plug in to all your different components correctly, that it does what you think it does, that you like the remote, etc. These devices are complicated, if you’re spending the money, you might as well get something that works.

When you find something you like, simply take a spin around the Net and see if you can get it cheaper. If you can, you just saved some cash. If not, well, your product’s already installed and creating happiness.

When returning items, for God’s sake, do it on a weekday, preferably early in the morning. Take a little time and save a lot of time. The customer service folk are generally nice, but they’re rarely fast.

The Warranty
OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here. In some situations, you might actually want to consider that in-store warranty. I know, I know, it’s sacrilicious. But consider what you’re buying.

Take the iPod, for instance. It’s expensive, extremely difficult to repair, and comes with a 1 year warranty. And while Apple is generally very gracious in repairing product defects, once you’re beyond a year you are sh*t out of luck, my friend. One year just doesn’t cut it for as expensive and vulnerable a device as a portable iPod.

Many manufacturers have tightened up their warranty repair processes as well. You’re either going to have to shell out to ship the item to some facility several states away (this gets muy expensive), or dump it at some seriously disreputable repair shop from which you can pretty much forget about seeing your product again. Dropping your product off at the local Best Buy is looking pretty good. It’s much more convenient, it covers your product all the way through its expected lifespan, and there’s no shipping costs.

If there was a better option out there, I’d certainly consider it, but after my receiver crapped out on me, I took it back to Best Buy after refusing to drop it off at the authorized repair center, which looked like it was run by someone who’d died in the early 70s. I was expecting to get reamed, but to my surprise, I had already purchased a warranty. I can only assume, after a few rounds of product returns (I had tried out several receivers), that I had ended up with a credit balance that I decided to blow on the warranty. They fixed the receiver, at no cost to me, within a week.

That’s a much happier ending than I got with my 2nd-gen iPod and its crappy broken headphone jack (a recallable design flaw, in my humble opinion).

There’s a new kid on the block, Audio Lunchbox. Cast in the same mold as Apple’s Music Store but tailored to indie labels, Lunchbox sheds a slightly clearer light on the whole a la carte MP3 business model (no Apple worship).

Now, I really like the presence of Lunchbox in the market—diversity is good. Their site has some design issues, but those can be worked out, and its library is small, but that will grow. My main issue is that I just don’t think their product is that good a value.

Now despite all the talk of market-making for digital audio downloads, we’ve really got 3 camps: Apple DRM, Microsoft DRM, and no DRM. And these 3 camps can really be broken down into 2: proprietary and open formats.

The Apple Store sells protected AAC files, which only work through iTunes or on the iPod. Not so flexible, even with the loose DRM. You also can’t resell your tracks, which is HUGE.

Buymusic.com, Musicmatch, and others all sell protected WMA files, which don’t work in iTunes or iPod and pretty much lead you into the waiting arms of Windows Media Player 9, which I’ll let others argue about. The DRM here can be more restrictive than Apple’s.

Now, for my money, the best of the lot are Emusic and Audio Lunchbox, both of which sell unrestricted MP3 files. Emusic used to have a monthly “all you can eat” plan, now a monthly fixed # downloads plan (which is still damn good). Lunchbox is a la carte—.99/track and $10/album on average.

On quality, I can speak only to these two stores, since I have yet to find an album I want on Apple’s store. Emusic sells VBR MP3’s which tend toward 160Kbps (my experience only), while Lunchbox sells 128Kbps MP3’s (no VBR).

Of course, I also like the indie bands and labels these two services cater to. If you’re a BigMusic fan, then you’re out of luck. Still, you should take the time to peruse their aisles, you still might dig up something good.

Can you float my boat for .99 cents?

When choosing where I shop, I have to rule out the stores selling DRM-protected files.
1. Proprietary formats preclude me from using files on whatever device I choose. MP3 is the most open solution right now. Hopefully, Ogg will follow.
2. Cost is just too high. I will pay $1 for my musical freedom in a CD.
3. Quality is questionable. Why not sell higher bit-rate files (or higher quality in general)? Fear. The industry is still short-changing you, you just don’t realize it. I will pay $2 for the best available quality song.

So, I’m pretty much back buying CDs now. I hate myself for saying this, but check out the online shop at MTV.com. They actually have some really good deals on CDs (<$11 for some titles).

For downloable music, I like the Emusic model best. It fits my tastes, my budget, quality is good, format is ubiquitous, and my consumer rights remain intact.

Grado Labs SR-60 (http://www.gradolabs.com/)
About the best headphones (open air) that you can buy for the money (~$65). Sweet cans, good for home/office use, where you don’t want to block out ambient noise. The cable is quite thick on these, making them less than ideal in portable situations.

Shure E2c (http://www.shure.com/psm/earphones/default.asp)
These sub-$100 ‘phones have been getting nice reviews. They’re on my list. Because they are in-ear, they block ambient noise very well. I’d be a little cautious taking them out walking (some times, hearing traffic is a good thing), but many folks swear by these for traveling.

Etymotic ER-6 (http://www.etymotic.com/)
Comparable to the Shure E2c’s, Etymotic also makes superior in-ear headphones.

Have a superior product you’d like to recommend? Add your comments below.