Another Dot Com

Are you a mac user? Need a good tool to rip your DVD? Well, I’ve got a solution for you. Handbrake is a tool I’ve been using to rip DVDs for my MAC and Video iPod. Let me tell you, it kicks A** and it’s Free! I’m running Handbrake on Powerbook G4, 1.25 GHz PowerPC, 15 in, 1.25 GB Memory, OS X 10.4.8.

HandBrake is a GPL’d multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux.

Download Handbrake

Tech Spec
Supported sources:
- Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (even encrypted)
- PAL or NTSC
- AC-3, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks
Outputs:
- File format: MP4, AVI or OGM
- Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer encoding)
- Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)
Misc. features:
- Chapter selection
- Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
- Integrated bitrate calculator
- Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
- Grayscale encoding
- Universal Binary for PPC and Intel

In my previous entry, I covered a mobile device, i-Station, that was DMB compatible. And, I wanted to follow up and talk a little more about it. Since 2005, folks in S.Korea enjoys watching TV on their DMB cell phone as well as on other DMB enabled mobile device. The contont is delivered to the DMB device thru Satellite DMB(S-DMB) and Terrestrial DMB(T-DMB).

Here’s how S-DMB and T-DMB works:

Really cool, right? Well, I think so. In the U.S., we are just beginning to see video clip downloads on our cell phones. Before, we had to settle with ringtone downloads, downloaded games, and photos….Weak! Most cell phones we call cutting-edge and new are old news to folks S.Korea - in Korea, most cell phones and some handheld wireless devices are and have been DMB enabled for over a year (I’ll post some DMB phones on my next entry).

One some mobile device, you can record real-time. I can see it now….Tivo on handheld or Tivo control on handheld and content saved to a virtual folder (This way, you can set it and do other things on your handheld.). Most of you are lucky. Why? because you don’t know what you are missing. Me, I’ve tried it and I like it…and I miss it when I’m on the go - waiting for a flight, waiting for a meeting, just waiting, etc.

Little more info on DMB? (Click image to see full description)


If you want to read more about TV on cell phone, click here. I found this paper written by a PHD candidate in U of Mich that covers DMB in S.Korea.

I came across a product called i-Station on my trip to Seoul. i-Station is a handheld media player with some really kick*ss features. It’s media player (plays mp3,ogg,wma/radio/video/photo); it’s a DMB TV viewer; it’s a Navigation device (on some versions); it’s mini computer with Wi-fi. I really like the DMB feature. Folks in S. Korea can enjoy digital TV on their handheld DMB device - all S.Korean network tv channels are available thru DMB.

Photo by AP

It was an ugly game. Cold and rain filled day, the Beavs looked like they were going to walk all over the Ducks, but in the 2nd half, Beavs let the Ducks climb back in. I found myself screaming at the TV…well, I guess I was screaming at the Beavs to get their act together. Alexis Serna really saved the day…the kicker who let us down 2 years ago against LSU is now a solid and reliable kicker. Well, the Beavs are 3rd in Pac-10 and heading to Hawaii for their last game of the season. If we can pull one out against Hawaii, we can end the season with 9 wins and 4 losses. I never thought that Mike Riley led OSU team could do so well. It looks like the Beavs are Sun bowl bound. Go Beavs!

Adventure by Yahoo! Korea

Yahoo Korea has some cool features on their site. Most recently, I landed on a service called “adventure” by Yahoo Korea and found it to be interesting and different way to search and discover news on the web. Adventure is a flash based app that let’s you search for news based on timeline and topic. I’ve not seen anything like it in the U.S. Now, Adventure is not going to revolutionize or take search to the next level. But, it shows that there are many different ways to present search content to the user. If you want to try Adventure, click here. Let me know what you think. I’m out!

Here is some search market data from Oct. of 2006 (Data by comScore Networks)

Google - 45.4% (+.03 from Sept. of 2006)
Yahoo - 28.2%
Microsoft Sites - 11.7%
Ask Network - 5.8%
Time Warner Network - 5.4%

Yahoo and Microsoft has much to catch up. Time Warner (mostly AOL) and Ask better get their act together. Search market is huge, but if Google has their way, they will keep taking shares away from Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

I read today that Apple is working on a version of iPhone with iChat (iChat is Mac’s IM client). This is cool! I wonder if iPhone will include a camera? If camera is supported on iPhone, using iChat, you could do video chat. That would be sweet!

Photo by AP

Beavs walked all over the Cardinals today in Palo Alto. Because Oregon Quacks went down to Arizona, the Beavs are all alone sitting 3rd in Pac-10. This is beautiful! This makes the Civil War with Oregon really interesting — Come on Sun Bowl! Go Beavs!

If you want to try Soapbox on MSN Video, send me an email. I have 5 invitations left.

According to PiperJaffray analysis, iPod marketshare is around 77.9% (US) and still gaining. Well, Zune is just starting to get into the market. So, this is kind of similar to Sony Playstation vs. Microsoft Xbox. In the Playstation vs. Xbox, Microsoft is still #2, but really showing to the world that they could become the king of Game consoles. Playstation f’d up with PS3, but Xbox 360 hit a homerun. So, the big question is….can Microsoft do that for Zune? can Microsoft become a real contender to iPod? Hummm. I’m not sure if Microsoft can pose a real threat to iPod. I’ve been playing around with Zune for a day, and so far, I really don’t see reasons to prefer Zune over iPod. If I walked into BestBuy and saw Zune and iPod, I would buy iPod. It’s smaller, everyone and their sister has one/two/or even three, looks cool (form factor is great), it’s not Microsoft, cool commercials, and works on PC as well as Mac. Sure, Zune has some features that iPod currently does not offer….like WiFi music sharing, but I don’t think that’s enough. Zune really has an uphill battle. Zune will first have to battle all the other mp3 players in the market — iRiver, Toshiba, Creative, and 10 others. If and when Zune becomes the king of other mp3 players, then it can look to iPod. Until then, I don’t think Zune should be mentioned on the same level as iPod. Just my opinion. I could be wrong. If Microsoft is smart, they would look for value-add ways to integrating with Xbox and PC. This could drive adoption by steering away Xbox and PC consumers from iPod and drive them to Zune.