From High-Def Digest

Fox Offers 'Speed' Replacement Discs
Fri Dec 01, 2006 at 03:58 PM ET

Due to technical issues preventing playback on Samsung Blu-ray players, Fox Home Entertainment has announced a replacement disc program for its 'Speed' Blu-ray release.

As we reported yesterday, many consumers have been unable to play 'Speed' in Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player (both with and without the latest firmware upgrade).

Today we received official word from Fox Home Entertainment, confirming that there is a "technical glitch in a portion of the manufactured 'Speed' Blu-ray discs that only affects playback on Samsung players," and will be offering a corrected replacement version for anyone who purchased a defective copy.

Consumers wishing to exchange their defective 'Speed' disc can call 1-888-223-2369. The original defective disc needs to be sent to Fox. A replacement disc will then be sent at no extra charge, including reimbursement of any postage for shipping back the defective disc.

Note that we've been able to successfully play our copy of 'Speed' in other Blu-ray players aside from the Samsung, including Sony's PlayStation 3, and we'll be posting a full review of the disc soon.

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Roxio MediaTicker 2 is now available for FREE download here. We'd love to know what you think about it. Let us know by posting comments to this blog entry.

What's MediaTicker?
MediaTicker 2 is a fun, scrolling ticker that delivers your local digital photos and remote RSS feeds directly onto your desktop. Unlike other newsreaders, MediaTicker gives you a visual perspective on your RSS feeds by displaying content in both text and thumbnail format.

Top New Features

 NEW! Add the latest news, sports, headlines, cartoons, photos and more from sites like Flickr, Yahoo and MSNBC to your ticker using RSS.
 NEW! Click on RSS news items in your ticker to jump right to the full article on the web.
 NEW! Delete an image on your hard disk permanently by pressing the "delete" button in the full-size photo display. Great for cleaning up those thumb-over-the-flash shots you copied from your camera.
 NEW! Jump directly to the folder on your hard disk or to the web page for any image by clicking the "target" button in the full-size photo display.
 NEW! Save images from RSS feeds to your hard drive by pressing the "Save" button in the full-size photo display.
 Watch photo memories fade in and out or subtly scroll across the screen.
 Click any thumbnail image to zoom in to the full-size picture or website.
 Send photos via email, set them as your desktop background, print in multiple sizes.
 The unique docking “sidebar mode” keeps the photos on your desktop without interfering with other application windows.

FIXES:
 Pictures are now sized proportionally for even spacing in scrolling mode.

Those MediaTicker 2 Features in Detail...

Flexible, Fun User Interface
MediaTicker can present photos, news and other syndicated content to your desktop in a variety of different formats. The “ticker” mode will scroll images and text along your screen while the “fade-in” mode provides a more subtle way to view your content. Use the spacebar to start and stop the scrolling effect and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to advance the ticker backwards and forwards. You can even choose the location of the ticker on your screen and whether or not it behaves like the Windows taskbar.

Your Ultimate Photo Viewer
To view your digital photo collection in your ticker, you simply point it to the folder containing your photos. MediaTicker supports all popular image formats and you can even specify an unlimited number of folders from which MediaTicker can display pictures. As your pictures scroll by in an endless loop, you’ll discover and re-discover images you’d forgotten ever taking.

View, Email, Print and Rotate Photos in a Snap
Having your pictures scrolling by in an endless loop is a great way to review photos you’ve taken. Click on any photo to display the large view of the image, then use the controls at the top of image window to email the image, print it out, rotate it and much more.

Integrated Roxio PhotoSuite Support
While MediaTicker provides some basic image tools, actual image editing is done within the Roxio PhotoSuite application. You can choose to send any image over to PhotoSuite for editing and repairing photos, creating DVD slideshows, collages, calendars and even turning photos into moving images! MediaTicker and PhotoSuite are your perfect picture partners.

Add RSS Feeds to your Ticker
Now you can add RSS feeds from almost any source, turning MediaTicker into the coolest newsreader around. An RSS feed is a simple system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. MediaTicker displays the images found in many RSS feeds - mousing over the image shows the source and headline for the story and clicking on the image will take you to the feed’s website so you can read the article in full. MediaTicker also supports text-based RSS feeds by displaying hyperlinked headlines along with a snapshot of the originating website.

Save Images from RSS Feeds
Many websites feature RSS feeds with pictures. With MediaTicker, you can save those images to your hard drive with a single click of the mouse.

Ah, new generation of gaming consoles, new generation of unexpected user problems. Apparently some people get so into flailing around with their Wii remotes that the wrist straps break, sending the remotes flying into expensive living room equipment.

For those who somehow haven't heard, the new Nintendo Wii gaming console heralds a new kind of interactive gaming experience by using a remote control with motion sensors such that your physical actions (arm movements) drive the game play, rather then just your thumbs.

Those games must be intense. Nintendo has issued a warning about it and there's even a blog site that's cropped up called Wiihaveaproblem.com to chronicle the mishaps.

I for one agree with many bloggers that Wii may be a great way to help fight obesity in kids. Hey, guess what, sports-like motions yields sports-like injuries. Who knew!

Sony has some competition in HD with Canon's HDV1 HD camcorder. From Wired's Test labs:

When played back on a 56-inch HDTV, every frame of a busy city scene resembled a photo, the colors of garden blooms were accurately reproduced, and the darting actions of toddlers were smoothly rendered.

Now if only it were hard disk based instead of tape...

OK, you've got your HDTV, your PlayStation 3 on order, and your HD Camcorder all wrapped up under the Christmas tree (you were good this year). What would complete the package for an HD enthusiast like yourself? How about making awesome HD home movies on Blu-ray?

Roxio announced DVDit Pro HD last week, an interactive video authoring package that lets you output to Blu-ray disc in 1080i, 1080p, and 720p.



Watch an interactive Flash demo here.

This blog reports that Bill Gates expressed his dissatisfaction with current DRM solutions. Isn't that music to your ears? Maybe this reflects an incentive over at MS to keep hammering away at a better solution, which we're all waiting for.

A company called Polar Rose AB has announced that they will provide free technology that can recognize faces in photos. What I want to know is, one, how accurate is it and, two, can I use it to automatically tag my photos? I'm guessing it's not fast enough to do away with a database of tags when thousands of photos need to be searched. But give me automatic tagging and I'll be very happy (and willing to pay). Even if it's not 100% accurate, provide a confidence measure so I can sort by confidence. That would be good enough for the snapshotter that I am.

The video sharing site revver.com allows you to grab code for your blog or web page that displays collections of videos. Below should be some of the videos available on the Verizon Vcast network. If they don't show up, I may repost this blog after some tweaking.

Here's a handly little chart comparing the iPod and Zune media players.



I love the line about "Pre-installed virus." I actually laughed out loud at that one.

As this article from Red Herring points out, we are only at the beginning of media search. Given the number of companies working on this, and the massive amount of new content being created on global scale, this field will see some significant advancement in the next decade. "Minority Report," here we come.

"Even multimedia search is still very much in its infancy. As it is, search technology has yet to perfect a way to find still pictures across the Internet. Right now, Google, Yahoo, and MSN mine the web for text aiming to find pictures related to it tagged with the same search term—and results are often feeble."

We just had to have a Zune in the Lab. Like the iPod and PSP, its just one of those devices your software should work with.



The device itself is zippy, easy to use, and very addicting. I realized that if you hold it somewhere around arm's length, it's the same relative size as most TVs from the typical viewing distance. So, even though not as much detail is available to your eye, the space it consumes in your field of view is nearly equivalent (depending on what kind of TV you're used to watching, of course).

Zune, like many other media players, comes with it's own software. Apparently Microsoft has created a competitor to its ubiquitous Windows Media Player. Go figure. The software is no iLife, but it's a reasonable start for a product late to the game. One hopes that there will be a greater integration level in a future version of Vista.

Roxio applications like Easy Media Creator can work with Zune today. All you have to do is output one of the file types Zune supports, such as JPEG, WMA, WMV, MPEG-4 and more. Zune will automatically synchronize with your PC and pull the files over.

One glaring omission in the Zune feature-set: The Zune has built-in wireless to share songs with other Zune devices, but can't wirelessly connect to PCs or XBox 360s. Wireless streaming to an Xbox 360 would have been a killer "walled garden" experience that would have really added to the Zune's allure, and who knows, maybe with firmware updates on both devices, that will be possible someday. All the same, I respectfully disagree with engadget's assessment that the wireless is worthless. I think the person-to-person sharing experience is one that hands-down beats downloading from a corporate Internet site. Most people hear about albums from their friends anyway. It's a communal thing.

Besides, I suspect that Apple and Microsoft may have other motives for not offering a computer-free experience in a digital media device. Both companies make their bread and butter from computer sales and licensing (either hardware or software). The more the device can do to enhance and compliment that experience the better. (Yes, I know iTunes is on Windows, but Apple didn't have much choice there). Either that or, uh, they're just too busy.

DVD Info Pro is:

"Everything you ever wanted to know about your DVD/CD/BD drive and optical discs but couldn’t find out. DVD Info Pro checks all the supported drive features, verifies media performance, and helps you get the most out of your drive investment."

Now you can get the trial version on the Roxio Labs web site, good for 28 days. We think you'll find it an invaluable tool - whether it's checking what kind of media you just popped in (there are so many kinds these days!) to verifying your drive burn speeds, this is the tool for every computer.

Get it here. Have fun!