Thank you for reading the fourth edition of the DVD Catalyst Newsletter.
News:
*Sony’s Playstation Network:
It was turned on again last weekend, but quickly taken down again due to the way the password-reset system was implemented. Supposedly it will be back on again on May 24, but I wonder what they will run into next.
*NOOKcolor:
New NOOKcolor devices have been found that offer less available free space for movies and music. Rather than the 5GB previous versions had available, it now only offers 1GB of free space, with the remainder being left to be used for purchased apps and books. Of course you can add an SD card to store your movies, but this move will surely reduce the appeal the NOOKcolor had before in terms of added functionality.
The Android Netflix App, released last week, has been made to work on NOOKcolor devices running CM7, which is pretty cool.
*Motorola Xoom:
The 3.1 update released last week has been rooted and received a few new kernels that improved overall performance quite a bit, and of course enabled support for the SD-card
*Blackberry Playbook:
No new firmware update this time, so the issues I mentioned in the previous newsletter still exist. Apps in Blackberry Appworld are becoming slightly better, but still it seems that most that are available don’t get tested on the actual device.
*Google Music:
Google finally activated their music service. While still in “beta” it actually works pretty good, and for having access to your music collection on your computer and Android device (Xoom/Droid/Thunderbolt etc) on the go is great.
*Unlimited Data plans:
Rumors are starting up again about companies like Verizon dropping their unlimited data plans. With Netflix finally releasing their streaming app for Android, Google just activating rentable movies and their music service, data usage will increase a lot over the next few months, so it will be a smart move on their part to kill unlimited, so people can pay for the actual movie twice. I wonder if VZW changes their unlimited plan, if it will apply to existing customers as well, and if it does, if they are breaking the contract. I guess I should have read the User Agreement.
DVD Catalyst News:
Yesterday I released DVD Catalyst 4 4.0.3 Beta 6. As mentioned last week, I added some new options to “FixMKV” in Global Settings, which lets you change AVI, MP4 and M4V files into MKV files without actually converting them. In addition, Proxy server settings were added so people who connect to the internet using a proxy server can now actually use the update functions build-into DVD Catalyst.
I think I am nearing a final release. The latest beta releases have seen significant improvements compared to the current (4.0.2.7) official version, and I actually recommend the beta to many people who run into questions.
This week’s Tools4Movies articles:
With finishing up Beta 6, I haven’t had too much time to write articles, however, I did run into a few interesting things:
Subsonic
Subsonic is a free music streaming server app, that runs on your computer (windows/mac/linux) and provides you access to your music collection over your network. Similar to Google’s Music service, however, this runs on your computer, and allows you to listen to your songs from more than one device at a time.
Subsonic also has video-streaming capabilities, however, I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. More to come (hopefully) next week.
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/05/howtosubsonic-music-streamer-part-1/
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/05/howtosubsonic-music-streamer-part-2/
Google Music Beta
A small article I wrote yesterday about Google’s new music service. More a few screenshots, because I was still playing with it myself.
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/05/google-music-beta/
DVD Catalyst 4 v4.0.3 Beta 6
The beta release information. A description of the changes, improvements and a couple of screencaps of where to look.
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/05/dvd-catalyst-4-v4-0-3-beta-6/
Previous Newsletters:
http://www.tools4movies.com/category/applications/dvd-catalyst-3/newsletter-dvd-catalyst-3/
