Laziness or the Family Man

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Recently, I was at a friend’s house, visiting.  As I was looking around his house, I noticed that my friend, who is married and has children, kept his house spare of any expensive or precarious objects.  As we were getting ready to watch a movie, he went over to a cabinet, that was closed and locked, selected a DVD from a collection that was close to the top of the shelf and carefully opened the package.

I wasn’t use to this level of carefulness, but I guess when you have a house filled with children who have fingers that are covered in peanut butter and enjoy throwing dvds onto the ground under other toys, you need to be careful with your video discs.

It reminded me of something I started to do last winter as a way to allow myself to be lazier than I normally am.  It irritates me that, in order to watch one of my dvds, I need to get up, take the disc over to my player and put it in.  Then, if I am watching a television series with multiple discs, this routine repeats itself several times.  I wanted something simple.

Enter: Slysoft’s AnyDVD HD.

For 79 euros ($110), AnyDVD HD allows you to copy your movie discs to your computer as an image file.  Basically, it is a singular file that has all of the information of the DVD.  When selected, this file, in conjunction with Slysoft’s Virtual CloneDrive, tricks your computer into thinking that the disc is in the drive and plays the movie for you. 

In other words, I have made it so that, with other applications, I can watch any movie I own, on my computer just by clicking on the file from my bed; no disc, dvd covers, or getting up required.

How does this apply to my friend?  Using this program, you could make backup copies of your movies so that, if Toy Story 3 ever gets scratched or destroyed before a long car ride, you can burn a quick copy with a blank dvd and you don’t have to fork over another 20 dollars to avoid the screaming banshee in the back seat.  For a parent, I can’t imagine a more wonderful, technological security blanket. 

Now there are stipulations.  I only use this to make copies of films that I already own.  And I do NOT make copies of films I own, then turn around and SELL.  That is illegal.  Well, to be strictly technical, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act DOES imply that this is illegal, but if I own the movie, I feel that I should be able to do what I want with it as long as I am only using one copy at a time.

For the next couple posts, I am going to be talking about some of the cool tricks and tips that you should know if you want to start backing up your media and DVDs, so keep posted.

And remember to email me any questions you may have and follow my technology twitter feed.

An exciting new frontier in Entertainment

The exciting thing about our new faster internet is the ability to watch video in real-time. What I mean by real-time is that it doesn't have to "buffer" or doesn't stop in the middle of viewing to "catch up."

With this development, many television studios and channels have begun offering entire episodes of their current shows to view for free from their websites. This is wonderful for the person who accidentally forgot to record desired program, or doesn't have a recording device for their cable service. This is even MORE convenient for the person who chooses to not have a cable service at all in their home.

The problem is that viewing television shows from a computer in an office is not as relaxing as a living room. Well, why not connect your computer to your television screen?

Most mid-level HDtvs come with inputs for PC video and PC audio. It's only a matter of connection. With a PC connected to your television and a wireless keyboard and mouse, you can use websites like HULU, TV.COM, ABC.COM, NBC.COM, CBS.COM, FOX.COM and many others to catch your favorite television shows. For those of you who need your cable news fix, but don't want to pay for the cost of cable, CNN, FOX NEWS and MSNBC have many of their daily and weekly shows online for viewing, as well.

Now, granted, most television shows aren't usually able to be seen until the day or week after being aired, but if you're like me and don't usually end up watching your shows on the day they air, this is a great cheap way of getting a basic cable experience for the cost of a computer you have lying around. All you need extra is a wireless keyboard and mouse.

In the coming posts, I'll let you in on a few secrets to getting the full experience out of a PC television or a Home Theater PC (HTPC).