In February 2008, Blu-ray emerged as the winner in the high-definition DVD format war, when rival Toshiba gave up on its HD DVD format. This article offers previous coverage on the beginnings of the format war.
What's really exciting in the DVD world is the development of a couple of new DVD formats that will allow true high-definition (HD) programming to be available on optical discs. A number of companies have banded together into two groups with competing standards for these next-generation, high-definition disc formats:
Blu-ray: Led by Sony, the Blu-ray camp has developed a high-definition-capable disc format that is also being supported by Apple, Dell, HP, Panasonic, Pioneer, Thompson, Philips — and a whole bunch of other companies. The really big deal for Blu-ray is that Sony is making it the disc format for their PlayStation 3 gaming console — so the format will end up in a lot of homes quickly.
HD-DVD: The competing format championed by Toshiba, HD-DVD also has an illustrious list of companies behind it, including Microsoft, HP, Intel, NEC, and others (at least until February 2008).
Yep, it looks like we're heading into another format war, in which two competing groups of companies agree to disagree and push two different standards onto the market. This happened a few years ago with high-resolution audio discs, and the results weren't pretty for anyone. With the audio discs, basically no one bought either format in significant numbers, though both are still plugging along. This isn't the first format war to hit the home theater industry either — if you recall the early days of VCRs, Sony and Matsushita duked it out over the Betamax and VHS formats.
Sometimes, one format wins out over another (for example, VHS over Betamax); other times, neither one becomes a clear winner. Predicting which high-def DVD format will win the hearts and minds of consumers is difficult at this point. An interesting thing to watch will be the actions of the movie studios that actually create and sell the discs themselves. Right now, most studios have chosen one or the other format — pretty much splitting down the middle, with a slight advantage to Blu-ray. (Sony owns a few motion picture studios itself, which helps here.)
If one or the other format really becomes dominant, all of the studios will eventually begin to sell movies in that format, no matter which camp they are in today. Heck, Sony sold a lot of movies in the VHS format, even though Betamax was its baby!
Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD produce amazing pictures, and each one has top-notch companies supporting them. The dominating format could go either way, both ways, or neither way. As many as 10 percent of all homes in the United States have HDTVs these days, and there is essentially no prerecorded high-definition material to play on these expensive TVs. People are anxiously awaiting a solution.
One possible solution is a universal disc player that can handle both formats. Universal DVD players are just starting to appear on the market, and some computer systems are being built to support both high-def DVD standards. But it'll cost you a pretty penny. Your best bet is either to hold out a bit until either one format wins out of the other or universal DVD players become more common and less expensive.
A Battle in the Home Theater: High Definition DVD Formats
Home Theater Basics: What's "Electronic Content?"
Grabbing music and video off the Internet probably isn't a new topic for you. But when you get right down to it, knowing a few high-level concepts about "electronic content" helps you understand what all the fuss is about.
Live your digital life intelligently by getting to know the following pointers:
File Encoding: Digital music and video files are encoded (converted to digital formats) using specific encoding formats. For audio, MP3 is most common, but there are many others out there, including Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Code (AAC), and Ogg Vorbis. Similarly, there are a number of video formats (like WMV and MPEG).
The key point about the encoding format used for your audio or video is that whatever system you use for decoding that file to display it on your home theater must support the format you are using. For example, if your digital media adapter doesn't support Apple's encrypted AAC format, you won't be able to play music from the iTunes Music Store on your home theater system.
Streaming versus downloading: Not all audio or video is delivered in the same fashion. There are two predominant ways of sending the content — streaming and downloading.
• Streaming video means that there is no local copy of the video on your device. It plays while it is delivered over your home network and/or the Internet. Most Internet connections aren't fast enough to play really high quality streaming video, so you find that many Internet movies are downloaded to your machine instead.
• Downloaded video is delivered as a file to be stored inside your set-top box, Media Center PC, or other device, and then played back from that local storage. So while downloaded video can deliver a TV-like quality viewing experience, complete with the ability to fast forward, pause, rewind, and so on, you have to wait a while — usually up to an hour or more — for full-length movies to download.
Internet radio: Internet radio is exactly what it sounds like — radio stations broadcasting in a streaming fashion over the Internet. So if you're a college student and you miss your favorite radio station back home, you can still listen to it via streaming audio over the Internet.
Podcasts: Podcasts are the equivalent of downloaded Internet radio. They're files that contain audio (and, more and more, video) that often are packaged like daily newscasts or commentary. Podcasts are so named because they initially were targeted toward easy dissemination of content to iPod users.
Video search: Video search engines scour the Web and find content based on keywords and file formats and then make this available through some sort of on-screen interface. Google has perhaps the best-known search interface at Google but there are others, including Yahoo! and AltaVista. These search engines marry the best of non-X-rated amateur videos from the Web with the ability to buy videos of TV show series and movies, as well.
File sharing: File-sharing networks are networks set up for, not surprisingly, sharing files. In a very "free love" approach to content, early file-sharing networks adopted a "What's mine is yours, and vice versa" approach toward exchanging content. Basically, you were encouraged to make your music available to anyone who wanted it, and they would do the same with you. Napster, Grokster, and other early leaders in this space were taken to court by the music industry, proven to be in violation of Federal copyright laws in the United States, and shut down. Most of the large worldwide music-sharing services used peer-to-peer technologies.
Peer-to-peer: Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a concept often associated with music file sharing because it's the way most of the illegal music download services worked. Peer-to-peer simply means that you connect directly to other people's computers to download files instead of going to a central file server. Peer-to-peer networks operate without such central control and allow multiple users to share files at the same time — you'll often be downloading and uploading different "chunks" of a file to and from numerous folks at the same time.
Digital rights management (DRM): If you download a lot of iTunes songs, you've run into DRM restrictions when trying to load your songs to other devices. (Most portable music players — besides the iPod — simply can't play back iTunes Music Store downloads.) If you've ever tried to copy a DVD, you've encountered DRM.
DRM exists for a reason: to protect the copyright interests of the music, movie, and other content owners. Managing who has rights to do what with which digital assets is a key function of any DRM system.
The rules for sharing content are defined both technically and legally. You can do a lot of stuff technically — that does not make it legal. You can safely assume that the law says you can't copy anything unless you are told you explicitly can. You also can pretty much assume you cannot rebroadcast or retransmit the content in any way.
Remember, part of sharing content is defined technically. In many instances, you can't record or copy content because there is special coding in the content itself that prevents you from doing this.
Some of the music services will explicitly allow you to make one copy, or play the songs on up to five machines, or some such limitation. This will be part of your subscription contract and should be fairly obvious. For instance, if you download content from iTunes, you can house that content on up to five computers (and an unlimited number of iPods). Look for this when trying to decide which service to use.
Copying MP3 Files onto CDs
If your computer has a CD-RW drive or DVD recorder, you can free up your hard drive by storing your MP3 files onto CDs.
The songs on a CD purchased at a record store are known simply as audio CDs. These songs are stored in a format different from MP3. They play in both your computer and your home stereo's CD player, but their bloated file format means only ten or so songs fit onto the CD. A CD with MP3 files plays on your computer, but it may not play on your home stereo's CD player, but on the plus side, MP3's compressed file format lets you store hundreds of songs on the CD.
Before you can create any type of CD, you need a CD-RW drive, DVD-RW or DVD+RW drive, and a pile of blank CDs. (A growing number of audio CD players now support CD-RW discs, which means you can erase the disc and burn a new set of songs — check your audio player's specs to see if it supports CD-RW media.)
To create either type of CD in Musicmatch, for example, follow these steps:
1. Create a playlist of the songs you want to store on the CD.
Simply fill your Playlist window with the songs you want to copy to CD.
If you're creating a CD for your home stereo, start with about ten MP3s. You probably won't be able to fit many more songs, although you'll be given that chance later.
2. Click the Burn button beneath the playlist.
The Create CD from Playlist window pops up, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Seven MP3 songs consume about 49 percent of this audio CD.
3. Choose the type of CD you want to create from the window.
To choose the type of CD you want, click one of the following buttons (shown in Figure 1):
• Audio: Click this button to create a CD for playing in your home and car CD player. This is the default selection.
• MP3: Click this button to create an MP3 disc, which stores a huge number of MP3s to play back on your computer, boombox, or on a portable MP3 player that can handle those CDs.
• Data: Click this button if you want to simply burn the MP3 files as data files on a standard CD-ROM.
Clicking one of the three buttons shows how much space you have left on the CD. In Figure 1, for instance, the seven MP3s listed in the Create CD from Playlist window have consumed 49 percent of the audio CD, leaving room for several more songs.
When you click the MP3 button, however, those same seven songs consume only 11 percent of the CD, leaving much more room. (That shows you how much MP3 compresses songs.)
4. Add or remove songs until the CD is filled.
Keep dragging or removing songs from the Playlist window until you're satisfied with the amount of songs stuffed onto the CD.
5. Place a blank CD or CD-RW disc into your CD or DVD recorder and click the Burn button.
Musicmatch converts the MP3 songs into audio format, if necessary, and copies them to the CD.
If you purchase the upgrade version of Musicmatch, you can print CD covers and jewel box inserts to go with your newly created CDs. It can print any artwork you'd like on the cover, or it can tile the covers from the works you've placed on the CD.
Burning CDs of Music Files Purchased Online
After you download a music file, you are ready to burn it to a CD. When you're downloading a file, always be sure that you know exactly where it's going on your computer. Many services have a default folder for music — iTunes places it in a preexisting My Music folder, for example.
You may want to store your music somewhere else, however, such as a dedicated hard drive that you've set aside for audio. You should be able to establish exactly where your music is headed when you first download it. Simply navigate your folders until you find the right location, and then click the Save button. Your file is headed right where you want it.
Depending on what store you use, you may be able to burn your music to CD as either an audio track (to be played in standard CD players) or as an MP3 or WMA CD (to be played on your computer or some CD and DVD players). The advantage of the audio burn is the ability to work in older CD players, while newer players allow you to burn more and smaller files on one disc. Assuming that you have a CD burner, this should be an easy process. Players like Windows Media Player have an integral burning function built into them. Select the playlist of the music you want to burn, click the Copy button, and you're off, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Burning a playlist in Windows Media Player.
You can also use third-party burning software like Roxio or Nero to burn your music CD. You probably got a free or limited-function version of this type of software when you bought the burning drive on your computer. Here, you must create the playlists again manually, but the software can give you more control over how you burn your CDs. The software can also allow you to burn other files to discs.
When using third-party software, be sure to specify that you're burning a music CD or a data CD. That way, you'll know exactly what you're getting and you won't be surprised by a nonplaying CD.
Composing Digital Music: Helpful Devices to Have
Composing digital music, like any other endeavor, is easier when you have the right tools. Here are a few hardware and software devices to know about when composing digital music — for when you want to impress your fellow musicians or if just want to understand what the pros are saying.
Sampler
A sampler is a computer music device that can be either hardware or software. The sampler doesn't generate its own sounds, but it contains a library of sounds and combinations of sounds called instruments. These instruments can be any type of sound, from traditional acoustic instruments to weird digital noise. The samples can be edited with a DAW or sequencer in a studio, or played by a MIDI device like a sequencer or a keyboard controller on a live gig.
Hardware samplers are not as popular for digital music creation as they used to be. Software samplers have really taken over the music production market.
Most samplers are polyphonic, and many are also multitimbral. DropZone is a polyphonic, multitimbral sampler plug-in that comes with several SONAR products.
Sequencer
A sequencer can be either a piece of software or a hardware device that allows the user to record MIDI data, and then play it back and edit it. A sequencer does not record audio (either analog or digital); it just controls the digital data information going to and from other MIDI devices, such as synthesizers and tone modules. The MIDI devices are what actually produce the audible sound.
In the first days of computer music, and even up to the last decade, all sequencers were hardware devices. Today, they are primarily software products. As the personal computer has become more powerful, software sequencers have been able to replicate the functions of the hardware varieties and provide many more features, such as Internet updates and bug fixes.
The term digital audio workstation (DAW), which originally referred to a hardware device that only recorded and edited audio, is often used today as a synonym of sequencer. But today, a DAW usually has many more features than a sequencer has.
Software Synthesizer
Most digital music hardware is being replaced by software versions. This is also true of the keyboard synthesizer, which is evolving into a MIDI keyboard controller using a software synthesizer (softsynth) program.
A softsynth can run on a regular Mac or PC, and replicate synthesizer sounds through the audio card of the computer, or input synthesizer sounds into the digital audio recording program.
A softsynth has two main advantages over a hardware synthesizer:
Expense: A softsynth is almost always cheaper than a hardware synthesizer.
Upgradability: The program can be easily upgraded and the sample library expanded quickly and simply over the Internet.
Stand-alone hardware synthesizers are still preferred for live performance, however, and can be more stable and reliable than software synthesizers.
Software synthesizers come in many varieties. A softsynth can be a VSTi or DXi plug-in to a DAW or sequencing program, emulating older, popular synthesizers, like the Yamaha DX7 or the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5.
VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology instrument) was developed by Steinberg as a universal platform for softsynths and samplers. Cakewalk, initially, did not go with VSTi — it created DXi, which is based on Microsoft Direct X code. But now Cakewalk's products support VSTi as well.
Some softsynths may have a large sample library. Because softsynths are computer-based, the software synthesizer's sample library is only limited by the amount of free space on the hard drive and by how much you're willing to pay for libraries.
Making Use of Every Pit: Overburning
Overburning -- sounds like you're making digital toast, doesn't it? Overburning, a recent phenomenon in the world of CD recording, refers to a drive that can record more than the "rated" maximum capacity of a CD-R disc. For example, a drive that can overburn to 76 minutes can record 76 minutes of music on a standard 74-minute CD-R, or you can use the same drive to store 685MB of data rather than 650MB. The amount you can overburn depends on your recorder and the specific brand of discs you're using.
Overburning is mucho grande, but you must remember two important caveats:
Most CD-ROM drives made in the past two or three years have no trouble with overburned discs, although some older drives spit them back out as unreadable. Therefore, if you distribute your discs, you probably shouldn't overburn them.
Media manufacturers don't guarantee their discs past the 74- or 80-minute rating, so you overburn at your own risk.
How does a drive overburn? It uses the lead-out portion of the disc, which was not originally intended to store data; in fact, the lead-out area is supposed to indicate to your drive that it has reached the end of the disc. When you overburn, you're burning past that point. If your read-only CD-ROM doesn't care and can read an overburned CD-ROM, you're, in effect, storing more in the same space.
Important: Any CD recorder can use an 80-minute CD-R disc -- you're not overburning when you put 80 minutes of music or 700MB of data on this kind of media. Again, however, not every recorder can use these larger-capacity discs; check the specifications of any recorder you're considering to see whether it can use 80-minute/700MB discs.
Advertise Your Blog with Google AdSense
Google AdSense advertising is extremely common on any site with changing content -- especially blogs. Google's service is free to use, easy to implement, and provides advertising based on the keywords Google finds on your pages: Write a post about fried chicken, and you might get Google AdSense ads for cooking supplies and restaurants. And these ads are contextual on a page-by-page basis, so every permalink page on your blog has its own set of topic-appropriate ads.
Each time a reader clicks a link in one of these ads, you earn money. You choose where the ads are on your pages, what they look like, and even what kinds of advertisers to display. You can see Google AdSense ads on the Apartment Therapy blog.
You can also include a Google search box on your blog. Users who use the search box from your blog get targeted Google ads in their search results -- and you receive money from any ads they click.
You can sign up for Google AdSense by opening a Web browser and following the steps at Google's AdSense sign up page.
After you finish the application, Google reviews your blog, and if it approves your application, you have to provide some additional information: Social Security number, Employer Identification Number, and so on. The review Google conducts ensures that the Web site the ads are placed on meets Google's editorial guidelines (for example, no obscenity).
After Google completes its review, you receive instructions on how to customize and place the ads into your blog templates. You may need a little help from your technical staff or some HTML skills of your own.
The ads appear automatically on your pages based on the content of your blog after you add the code to your templates. Visit the Google AdSense site to customize the look of your ads, check your earnings, and remove certain advertisers (such as your competitors!) from the ads that appear on your site.