A few nice surprises as well as some confirmations on the rumors.

* new iPod Shuffle

* new Nano with touch-screen. Unfortunately, the demo did not show any video-icons, and with a completely square screen, I’m not sure if it would actually be capable of video playback.

* new iPod Touch. As expected, based on the iPhone 4 specifications, including the high-resolution “retina” display, 2 camera’s and facetime.

* new Apple TV, completely rental-based with netflix, no apps though.

* new iTunes 10, streaming video (and audio/photos) to Apple TV and “maybe” iPod Touch and iPhone over wifi.

*no new iPad

The Apple keynote is about half an hour away, so I figured I’d share some things that “might” be announced.

The last couple of months, there have been rumors about the following:

* Touch-screen iPod Shuffle/Nano. A square ipod Nano without the clickwheel that resembles the look of a (very small) iPad.

The screen appears to be similar in size as the original Nano, so my guess is that the resolution would be the same, 320 x 240, meaning that the original iPod Nano profile will still be the best choice for video on this little device. Because of the touch screen, the device might run iOS, enabling the use of AppsI on it as well. It is possible that the screen would be a mini version of the Retina display used on the iPhone 4, in which case the resolution might be boosted up to 640 x 48, which would make apps that are currently available work on the device as well, however, on a screen that size, I doubt that playing games like Angry Birds on it would be doable.

* Apple TV. Rather than using a locked-down version of OS X, a new Apple TV (or iTV) a new model would use iOS instead, enabling Apps (iPad versions probably) as well as Netflix streaming for example. With the smaller install-footprint (OS X takes up 3-6GB) the device would probably use flash-memory (like the iPhone/iPad) instead of a harddrive. With the limitation in storage size, iTunes on a PC/Mac would probably be used as a streaming solution for videos as well. Video-wise, it is quite likely that the new Apple TV will only be capable of playing video files up to 1280×720 due to the use of the iPad’s processor (A4).

* iPod Touch. A new iPod Touch based on iPhone 4, including a higher-resolution “retina” display, camera(’s), and a microphone. It is a possibility that the new iPod Touch would be marketed as a more portable version of the iPad, in which case a 3G option and Face time would be available. Video-wise, the device would be the same as the iPhone 4.

* Smaller iPad. While maintaining the same specifications, a smaller iPad is rumored to be in the pipeline. The rather bulky iPad, while great for in-house use, is a bit hard to “grab & go” so a slightly smaller one would make sense. Resolution and performance would be pretty much the same, to maintain compatibility with the iPad Apps currently available.

More info during/after the keynote.

While it has been a little while since we posted some information about the update, we are still working on it on a daily basis.

Besides new profiles, the new features from DVD Catalyst Free 2.0 have been added, such as the movie title display in the actual movie, as well as the Album Art feature. Quite a few other things have been added and tweaked a bit more as well, and for the most part, all that is happening at the moment is continuous testing to iron out the bugs.

In addition, the manual is being redone, again, to provide a more organized overview of the features, and of course the wealth of video-conversion related information included already will be altered to fit with the new update.

The Droid 2 is about to be released to the public, and while it does ship with a Blockbuster video app to download movies, of course people rather use their own movie collection than to rent/purchase the same movies again.

Specification-wise, the video capabilities of the Droid 2 are identical to the original Droid and Droid X, so if you are upgrading from one of those models, there is no need to change anything in your video conversion tools.

Of course DVD Catalyst 3 supports the Droid 2, but a specific profile for the Droid 2 is a little time away yet until the new version is released, but the only difference with the Droid profile is the name.

The Droid 2 still sports the same 854×480 screen resolution, and still requires the video files to be in H264 MP4 format, so just select one of the Droid profiles for your video conversion needs.

If you want to use DVD Catalyst Free instead, (to convert your DVDs and video files for free) select the Droid version for best results.

Convert DVDs and video files for your Droid X with DVD Catalyst Free.

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To convert DVD’s and movies for the new Samsung Vibrant Galaxy S, use the Samsung Omnia II profile in DVD Catalyst 3.

While the phones are different, the video screen resolution as well as the video format it needs to play is identical.

DVD Catalyst Free for Galaxy S now available

We need your help !

DVD Catalyst 3 Beta

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While a completely new device, the Droid X features the same specifications in regards of video playback as the original Droid. In the next update of DVD Catalyst 3, profiles for the Droid X will be available, however, these are identical to the original Droid profiles already in DVD Catalyst 3, so you can use those as well.

For DVD Catalyst Free, just use the DVD Catalyst Free for Droid version.

A few days ago, someone asked me some questions in regards of streaming video through the online “DropBox” service. The question asked was why files created with DVD Catalyst Free 2.0 would stream if they were uploaded to the DropBox service, but files created with DVD Catalyst 3 did not.

As it turns out, the “AlbumArt” feature recently implemented in DVD Catalyst Free actually enables the streaming flag as well, and because this is not enabled by default in DVD Catalyst 3, it needs to be enabled for it to work. (Global Settings > Conversion: “Enable streaming for PC”)

After playing with the DropBox service myself to figure out what was actually happening, both the user who asked about it and myself figured it would be interesting for other users to provide a bit more information about using DropBox for streaming your videos.

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Make your own cool ring tones from your favorite movies, tv shows or music files.

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This guide provides details on how to stream your own video collection to your (internet-capable) portable video player. It should work with all devices that can play H264 MP4 video files that feature a webbrowser, such as recent Blackberry devices (Storm/Bold/Tour), Android (Droid, Nexus, EVO etc) Windows Mobile 6.x (HTC HD2) and iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad (iOS2 or iOS4) Continue reading »

Create sound clips and ringtones from DVDs and video files to MP3 for free.

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After going through my collection of news sites I use to stay informed, I stumbled upon this article

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/07/04/app-store-hacked/

While no response from Apple has been given out (yet) it appears the Appstore has more issues than the large amount of fake reviews and clone-apps.

If you use iTunes a lot for your music/movie/app purchases, it might be a good idea to remove your credit-card information asap until this issue has been resolved.

For the iPhone 4, just select the Apple > iPad profile, and change the screen size in “Modify” to 960×960.

For the EVO 4G, just select the HTC HD2 profile. The settings for the video files are identical.

We screwed up.

We were so excited about the new features in DVD Catalyst 3.90 that we took too much on our plates. During development, we added the new file-transfer code recently included in DVD Catalyst Free Plus, and besides inclusion of new device profiles, we modified 2-pass conversions so that the first pass would be faster, and we made some changes to the black bar removal process.

Unfortunately the last bit is causing problems for a lot of people. Even though we cannot replicate the problems ourselves in 3.90.2,  some people are still reporting complications.

As a result, we decided to pull 3.90, and go back to 3.86.2 untill we get everything resolved.

To “update” back to 3.86.2, click on the cat-eyes in DVD Catalyst 3.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

A small bug in 3.90 in regards of black bar removal came to light today, and was causing some major havoc with some DVD conversions “(FAILED)”. DVD Catalyst 3.90.1 takes care of these issues. In addition, the black border removal code has been tweaked a bit for better results.

Of course the new profiles and the file-transfer code of DVD Catalyst 3.90 are still there as well.

Click on the cat-eyes in DVD Catalyst 3 to update. Files are currently uploading, so if you still see 3.90 as the latest version, try again in a little while.

Affordable DVD and video conversion tool for Apple iPad

You can purchase ($5.95) DVD Catalyst Free Plus for iPad here Continue reading »

Convert DVDs and video files for your iPad for free

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All our DVD Catalyst products use a technology we call “transparent batch”. Its the one reason why we made DVD Catalyst in the first place.

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