VLC Media Player 1.0.0 for Windows 7
VLC media player 1.0.0 final is now available for download. Built by the VideoLAN project, the media player comes with support for a variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. In this regard, even before version 1.0.0 was finalized, VLC was playing nice with the next iteration of the Windows client, Windows 7, in addition to releases such as Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows XP SP3. Version 1.0.0 continues in the same tradition as past releases from VideoLAN, meaning that the media player is free and open source. In this regard, while end users can access, download and install the VLC 1.0.0 bits, developers can also grab the source code and modify it according to their preferences.
“The VideoLAN project is pleased to announce the release of the first version of the Goldeneye branch of VLC: 1.0.0. This major release introduces many new features, new formats and new codecs to the VLC multimedia framework and fixes a very high number of bugs that were present in the 0.9.x or 0.8.6 versions. The VLC project only lives with volunteers and would love help from new users and contributors: time, code, hardware and money would help us a lot,” VideoLAN revealed. Read more
Hulu Adds ABC Content
Hulu is taking another step in becoming the online hub for TV content with the announced availability of content from Disney’s ABC on the online video site. Initially announced a few months ago, the first episodes from one of ABC’s shows are now live on the site. The first snippet is made up of several episodes of the network’s popular primetime drama Grey’s Anatomy with other shows coming soon.
“Today marks the official start of a new relationship: the launch of ABC content on Hulu. Things kick off with five episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the primetime drama set at Seattle Grace Hospital, where surgical interns try to navigate the challenges of romance and friendship as they scrub in for complicated medical cases,” Rebecca Harper wrote on the Hulu blog. “We have more ABC titles on the way, too,” she added.
The growing popularity of Hulu prompted Disney, which owns ABC, to join the site in April this year with each of the three big networks now owning a reported 27 percent of it. Since the announcement though things remained quiet and only today has ABC content become available. The network plans to add even more content in the coming two weeks, following the Grey’s Anatomy episodes with shows like Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Read more
Britney Spears Shooting Video for ‘Radar’
Britney Spears is preparing to take the airwaves by storm again with the release of yet another single. As she’s doing so, she’s also busily shooting for a video for “Radar,” while she’s taking a short break from her ongoing – and highly successful – Circus tour, Radar Online informs.
Gossip blogger Perez Hilton reports he spotted Britney in Los Angeles shooting scenes for the video in an outfit that positively screamed Audrey Hepburn glamour and style. Photos of the star show her in a black and white dress with a huge black ribbon in front, matching oversized hat and black gloves, apparently attending what looks like a fancy garden party – just so that fans can get a vague idea about what the video might be about. Read more
NVIDIA GeForce 185.81 Beta Drivers
Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has recently introduced a new series of GeForce graphics drivers with a new Beta release of their 185 series. The new release offers support for all of the company’s latest graphics accelerators, including the most recent GeForce GTX 275, as well as other previously-released GeForce cards, part of NVIDIA’s GeForce 6, 7, 8 and 9-series of desktop GPUs. In addition, according to the release notes of the new GeForce drivers, users of NVIDIA graphics accelerators will be able to take advantage of a series of performance increases.
The company’s new GeForce Driver release 185.81 Beta includes support for its latest GeForce GTX 275 graphics processing unit, as well as a number of new features. According to the release notes, users upgrading their drivers to the latest beta release will be provided with support for Ambient Occlusion, a new setting in the NVIDIA Control Panel, CUDA 2.2, for better performance in GPU-enabled applications, and expanded support in the NVIDIA Video Encoding library for GPUs that use less than 32 cores. Read more
Yet Another Disc Format?
How much data can you cram onto a CD/DVD sized optical disc? Well, we know CDs manage around 800Mb, DVDs can ramp that up to around 20Gb using both sides and multiple layers, and a two-sided Blu Ray disc manages around 50Gb, but that’s small beer, compared with the new General Electric Holographic Versatile Disc (ugh!) or HVD.
Instead of the reflective pits used on conventional optical discs this uses a ‘microholographic’ process to store data, raising the bar to an impressive 500Gb per disc, enough to store more than 100 DVD movies. Read more
Pavement P.U.M.A
Okay, forget all my previous Christmas present lists, the new one has only one item on it, a Segway/GM P.U.M.A. That stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility and basically it’s a sit-down Segway, for two people. Like the Segway it scoots around on two wheels, balanced by lots of chips and motion sensors; the small wheels front and back are only for use when the machine is parked. It looks like a real hoot to drive; there are videos on the Segway site and You Tube that are well worth watching. It’s electric, obviously, so it’s very green and apparently it will be capable of going 20km between charges. Read more
First Skype Certified Videophone Unveiled
Asus, of cute little netbook fame, are at it again, this time with the world’s first Skype Certified standalone videophone. As you probable know Skype, the free PC to PC phone VOIP service has a built-in videophone facility, but it can be a bit of a pig to set up, so why not remove the PC from the equation and make it a simple one-box product, and here it is. It has a 7-inch display, there’s an integrated webcam and because it’s dedicated to the task, picture and sound quality should be as good as it can get. It works on both cabled and wireless links to your router and it has it’s own rechargeable battery, so you can walk around with it. The price, when it reaches the shops in the next few weeks will be around £220.
Firefox and enjoy HD video on YouTube
Developed for plug-in called Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox, Mozilla browser to open high-quality YouTube videos automatically changes.
Greasemonkey script to use the first plugin to be installed. Then the “YouTube HQ + 720p” script can be added at www.userscripts.org. The only high-quality YouTube video after the move is not play, you can scale the HD-Ready resolution 720p well.
Moreover, for slow computers or Internet connections can be made in low quality video playback.
Windows 7 Codec Packs
After installing windows 7 Beta on your computer you might face some error while playing some formats of video in windows 7 media payer and in media center.
However windows 7 Beta comes with some more additional codec’s bundled with it like DIVX, H.264 video and AAC audio, but still multimedia files cannot be played in windows 7 with out installing the right codec’s, so you can play any Divx or MP4 video. Windows 7 Beta has windows media player 12 and media center which cannot play most of the formats of video with out installing the codec packs.
So, we are going to list all the codec packs available on the web to resolve the video not playing problem in windows 7. Read more
Hybrid DVD/Blu-Ray Disc Trialled
In an effort to help speed the up-take of HD video Pony Canyon in Japan is set to release what is believed to be the first commercial hybrid DVD and Blu-Ray disc. And before you say it has been done before, with DVD/Blu-Ray ‘flippers’ (i.e. DVD on one side and Blu-Ray on the other, this one is different. This disc uses a technology developed by JVC a couple of years ago, it’s s single-sided multi-layer construction, with the Blu-Ray layer on the top, and one or two DVD layers underneath. The clever bit is a semi-reflective layer separating the Blu-Ray and DVD layers, this reflects blue laser light, but the red laser, used to read DVD passes through to the layers beneath.
