Multimedia, AV Archive

While this might be a bold statement, all things point to this. Blu-Ray was already winning in market share slowly but surely, and today's Warner decision to go BD-only puts the final nails into this HD format war as Warner is the biggest movie distributor. The HD-DVD Group didn't seem to know about Warner's decision and they canceled their CES conference out of the blu tonight, amidst making vague references to possible legal action. My take: I wish Blu-Ray had a region-free policy like HD-DVD does. Living in USA today but one day moving to Europe, it will have an impact in my media library.

A few weeks ago I published an editorial on the new school of videographers that has recently started to emerge as profoundly as digital art photography did a few years ago. (OS) News are slow during holiday seasons, so I thought I put together an article with a small collection of some of the best examples of amateur cinematography for your viewing pleasure, as found on the popular with the movement site, Vimeo.com. Leave a comment with what you think of these clips, or even download them in order to watch them in full HD quality through your AppleTV, XboX360 or PS3.

PureMobile sent us in a 16GB iPod Touch for the purposes of this article. This is one of the few times an - essentially - mp3 player comes with a powerful operating system (other examples include the Linux-based Archos and Sandisk offers). Read on for more.

Geeks.com sent us in one of their consumer electronics, the Linux-based Archos 604 PMP for a whirl, and we surely gave it one. This 30 GB PMP is the fourth generation video product from Archos, one of the biggest names in that market.

At OSNews we are committed on being geeky. However, "being a geek" does not always constitute a person who just loves technology. There are geeks about literature (who do you think wrote "Shrek"?), and of course, art geeks. This last kind enjoys a new booming lately with the commoditization of HD camcorders. The following editorial includes suggestions on camera choices, video editors and delivery formats, and has HD video samples of hobbyist cameramen that many professionals could be jealous of.

Neuros Technology did it again: one more of their interesting media products hits the market, and this time it uses Linux. We used the Neuros OSD this past week and here's what we think about it.

Geeks.com sent us in the JVC GR-D347US camcorder for a review. Read on for more and check some test footage for this cheap digital camcorder, possibly the cheapest miniDV model in the market today.

The fourth alpha release of Gnash has just been made at version 0.8.1. Gnash is a GPL'd Flash movie player and browser plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Opera. Gnash supports many SWF v7 features and ActionScript2 classes. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux distributions, embedded GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86 processors, and 64 bit architectures. Ports to Darwin and Windows are in progress for a future release. The plugin works best with Firefox 1.0.4 or newer, and should work in any Mozilla based browser. There is also a standalone player for GNOME or KDE based desktops.

Let's back up for a moment. It's 2007. Most geeks like you and me already use dual monitor setups with their multi-purpose desktop machines. However, have you ever asked yourself if that second monitor should be that old XGA LCD monitor from your previous PC, or a big, impressive flat panel television? Geeks.com sent us in an iLO 32" HDTV and we review it exactly as such: a computer monitor!

Geeks.com sent us over one of the best video cards on the market today: the GeForce 86000GTS with 256 MB VRAM and a crazy fast 675 MHz engine clock. The card is on the high side of the middle-end graphics cards compared to others available and it's currently selling below $200. In this article we will test the multimedia performance of the card as used in video playback and rendering support rather than its already well-benchmarked multiple times so far and well-known gaming abilities.

Everytime we feature a multimedia device review here at OSNews the question is always the same: "...but does it support OGG?". Well, this time we do have such a device in our lab to test out for you. Geeks.com sent us in the iRiver E10, a powerful multimedia music and video player.

From time to time, we like take a break from technology news to query our readers to find out details about our community. Previously, we asked you to show us your desktop. This time, we ask "What's your favorite movie?" Is it sci-fi or comedy? Action or maybe drama? Share your favorites so we can check them out! I'll start: while I'm tempted to say The Red Violin, I'm not sure there's a better screenplay than The Usual Suspects.

Linux.com takes a look at one of our favorite media players, VLC. They write "VideoLAN's VLC is a cross-platform media player with a simple interface that doesn't require a degree in rocket science to operate. That doesn't mean, however, that VLC is a simplistic application: it has a few tricks up its sleeve that can significantly extend its functionality and enhance your user experience. Here are a couple of VLC's nifty features you might want to try."

"4Front Technologies is announcing the availability of Open Sound System version 4.0 for Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Open Server6 and UnixWare7. Open Sound System is a cross platform audio architecture that provides drivers for most consumer and professional audio devices and comes with an API that allows applications to be simply recompiled on any of the supported operating systems."