Friday, January 12, 2007
Apple TV
Your computer is the center of your digital life. Your TV is the center of your entertainment life. But what if you want to watch movies, TV shows, movie trailers, podcasts, and photos from your computer on your TV? At $299, Apple TV brings iTunes to the big screen.
The revolution will be televised.
Say you've just downloaded Cars from iTunes. Instead of huddling around your computer to watch, you pop some popcorn while your computer wirelessly syncs your new flick to Apple TV. Then you pull up a seat, put up your feet, and pick up the included Apple Remote to play your movie on TV. Give yourself a hand: You've just changed the way you watch digital media.
iTunes to Apple TV, wire free.
Apple TV connects to your TV via an HDMI port or component video and audio ports. Its built-in, superfast 802.11 wireless capability syncs your iTunes library to any Mac or PC in the house. Best of all, what's on Apple TV stays in sync: Anytime you change your library in iTunes, it changes on Apple TV — wirelessly, automatically.
What’s on TV? Whatever you want.
Apple TV puts your iTunes library — movies, TV shows, music, and podcasts — plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV. And your digital photos from iPhoto on a Mac or Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Album on a Windows PC appear in high definition, so you can put on a stunning big-screen slideshow.
How it works
1. Download movies, TV shows and more from iTunes.
2. Sync wirelessly from your Mac or PC.
3. Watch everything on your widescreen TV.
Blu-Ray DVD
Video technology has increased significantly over the past few years, and is continuing to grow at an incredible rate. DVD is most likely the last big jump in consumer video technology that everyone is familiar with. To keep up with the ever advancing world of electronics a new format of video storage will be released soon called Blu-ray.
Blu-Ray is a next generation optical disc which will blow the socks off of what we all know today: DVD. Conventional DVD uses a red laser which has long wave lengths, and limits the storage capacity on a disc. Blu-Ray uses a blue laser which has much shorter wave lengths. Because the wave lengths on the Blu-Ray are much smaller, it can focus on a spot with much greater precision, allowing for data to be packed much more tightly than the red laser DVD.
Blu-Ray discs can hold up to 50GB which is 10 times that of a 4.5GB DVD. 10 times storage will greatly increase the quantity of which we can save on any other disc and will change the way we save information. Dual Layer Blu-Ray disc will be able to hold up to 4 hours of High-Definition Video. High Definition video is going to hit big here, Blu-Ray is an example of a technology that is going to make it happen. 50GB is probably comparable to size of many of our hard-drives, and to picture having all of that information on a small disc that we can slide into a pocket and take wherever we want is a bit scary.
Hope to see Blu-Ray replacing DVD and VCR over the next few years, following along with the transition of video to High Definition Video. Video isn't the only thing that will benefit from Blu-Ray technology; I would expect that it will also become the standard for PC and other types of storage.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Audio & Video formats
AVI
Audio/viedo interleave, the most ubiquitous audio/video container format, which support the most audio and video formats.
MPG
The audio/video container for MPEG,has a streaming attribute. It can be further classified into PS, TS, used respectively as a container for DVD and HDTV.
VOB
The audio/video container format for DVD, supports multi-video, multi-track, and multi-title etc.
MP4
The audio/video container format for MPEG-4, based on QuickTime MOV, and features many superiorities.
3GP
3GPP uses 3GP as a video format to transmit streaming media.
ASF
Windows Media applies ASF as its audio/video container, to be used for transmitting streams, script included.
RM
Real Media uses RM to transmit streams.
MOV
The audio/video container for QuickTime, maybe the most powerful container at present. Besides many common technologies it supports, it even upholds virtual reality and java, an edge over its variations such as MP4 and 3GP.
WAV
A kind of audio container. People often refer to WAV as the unzipped PCM code, but as a matter of fact, WAV also includes other ACM zipping codes such as MP3.
MP3
MPEG Audio Layer 3, as has been mentioned above.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Freeware: PSP Video Manager
Key features of PSP Video Manager:
- The simple and easy-to-use user interface;
- Two beautiful skins are offered in the program to select;
- The program supports two languages- English and Chinese;
- The size of the selected file will be displayed;
- Both veterans and beginners will love it, and you can know what function is available from the status of the buttons;
- What a best and powerful PSP MPEG4 file manager freeware!
With PSP Video Manager, you will no longer be confused by how to manage your PSP video file. Why not free download and enjoy this freeware right now?Before using PSP Video Manager, you need to know what kinds of file can play in PSP. PSP just can play PSP MPEG4 file (.mp4) so that you can not import AVI or another video files to PSP. If you have not PSP MPEG4 file in your computer, you must use other software of converter to convert PSP MPEG4 file, e.g. Xilisoft PSP Video Converter. Interface of PSP Video Manager:

From this icon of easy-to-use interface, it is not difficult for you to see how to use PSP Video Manager.
The middle button area:
Copy button: You can copy PSP MPEG4 files located in your computer to your PSP and also copy PSP MPEG4 files located in your PSP to computer.
Move button: You can move PSP MPEG4 files located in your computer to your PSP and also move PSP MPEG4 files located in your PSP to computer.
Delete button: You can delete the file located in your computer or PSP.
The left blank area: When you want to copy or move PSP MPEG4 files located in your computer to PSP, the selected files from your computer using the Browse button will be displayed in the left blank area; or when you want to copy or move PSP MPEG4 files located in your PSP to computer, the copied or moved files will be displayed in the left blank area.
The right blank area: When you want to copy or move PSP MPEG4 files located in your computer to PSP, the files copied or moved to your PSP will be displayed in the right blank area; or when you wnat to copy or move PSP MPEG4 files located in your PSP to computer, the selected files will be displayed in the right blank area.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Ringtones
MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface , is a kind of language. Just as computer know well about 0 and 1, midi serves as a language commonly used for electrical instruments and related equipment. It is the multi-media format of smf (standard midi).
SPMIDI, almost the same with midi, came into being by adding some controlling message to midi, and applied as a special edition for mobile phone.
MMF/SMAF, are abbreviations of APP Mind Message File and Synthetic music Mobile Application Format respectively. SMAF is developed by Yamaha as a multi-media data format, and MMF is the relevant file. SMAF file, compared to congeneric files, has such advantages as small size and high expressive ability. SMAF is mainly for making ringtones of mobiles, and the extension format of SMAF can be also used for text and image. Thanks to these attributes, when it comes to make multi-media ringtones for handsets, SMAF can afford strong feasibility and performance.
RTTTL, Ring Tone Text Transfer Language, is a standard format for handset ringtone, and has been supported by many mobiles.
WAV, Wave form Audio, is also a standard audio file format, close to equal to CD quality, but takes up much more memory space when compared to other compressed files.
WMA, Windows Media Audio, is a audio format of Windows. It gets CD quality with a coding rate running as low as 64kps. For the same content, WMA digital music files eats up half memory of that for WAV.
AMR, Adaptive Multi-Rate, a name of AWB, gave by Nokia for commercial use ,has been ratified by 3GPP as the codec standard for broadband language of GSM and 3G WCDMA.
With technology of ringtone advancing by the day, imperfections of many classic formats began to come into people’s attention. MMF’s short play time of at best 10 plus seconds turns out to be unbearable .It is this dissatisfaction that gave birth to AMR , which enables long time play ,but came at the cost of relatively creepy quality. Meeting people’s ever demanding expectations has always been an impetus to technology innovation, and so more different formatted ringtones will come into being in the years to come.
With all these different formats to choose from, editing recoded sound or any other source of audio files or DIYing a string of notes to personalize ringtones has become ever more popular. There is a lot of compact software out there to help you compose like a musician.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
How to convert video to MPEG4 using Xilisoft MP4 Converter
Xilisoft MPEG4 Converter can easily convert video to MPEG4, such as convert WMV to mpeg4. This article will guide you how to convert WMV to MPEG4, AVI to MPEG4 and VOB to MPEG4 with the MPEG4 converter. Xilisoft MP4 Converter can convert video files such as AVI, MPEG, DivX, MOV, RM, WMV, 3GP, VOB, VCD, DV to MP4 (MPEG4), Xvid, and convert audio files to MP3, AAC, M4A freely and fast, with excellent quality.
Step-by-step guide:
How to convert video to MPEG4, such as WMV to MPEG4, MPEG to MPEG4 and VOB to MPEG4 with this MPEG4 converter?(Take converting AVI to MPEG4 for example)
Step 1: Free download Xilisoft MP4 Converter and save it in your computer, and then run it.
Step 2: Launch Xilisoft MP4 Converter.
Step 3: Click "Add" button to load AVI file(s) to be converted to MPEG4:
Step 4: Click "Profile" combo-box to select MPEG4 as output file and the information about the output file is displayed in the right panel:
And you can also set the parameters of the video and audio codec, and then click "Save As" button to save the appropriate name:
Step 5: Click "Browse" button to select an output path:
Step 6: Click "Encode" button to start to convert AVI to MPEG4:
Tip:
The output file MPEG4 file supports many potable media player (MP4 player) such as Acrchos Archos AV500, Archos AV700, Archos Gmini402, iriver PMP-100, Creative Zen Vision, iPod, PSP, etc.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
How to convert video files to FLV file?
This article will guide the user how to convert video files to FLV file using Allok Video to FLV Converter.
Step 1: Free download the Allok Video to FLV Converter and run it.
Step 2: Launch Allok Video to FLV Converter.

Step 3: Click "Add" button to load files you want to convert.
Step 4: Click "Change" button to choose output file for FLV file, and you can also use the default path.
Step 5: Click "Output Format" combo-box to choose FLV as output file.
Step 6: Click "Convert" button to start to convert files to FLV file.
Complete!