China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced on its Chinese-language website on February 23 the adoption of the domestically developed EVD (enhanced versatile disc) as a national -player standard.
MII intends EVD to be a guideline for China-based makers in their development and production of ICs, software, discs and players for high-definition digital video entertainment. MII also intends EVD to be a means of freeing Chinese makers from having to pay DVD royalties to the 3C alliance and the 6C alliance, the local media Xinhua Online pointed out.
A number of China-based makers of DVD players, including Amoi Electronics, Nanjing Panda Electronics and SVA Information Industry, are paying a royalty of US$10 per exported DVD player to the two groups of patent owners, Xinhua Online noted.
MII’s decision is expected to frustrate the R D of HVD (high-definition versatile disc) and HDV (high-definition digital video) technology, two other domestically developed DVD formats in competition for MII’s recognition as a national standard, according to Xinhua Online.
Taiwan-based makers of optical disc drives think, however, that EVD players for export will still be subject to royalty charges because EVD is not really different, in its physical properties, from the existing DVD format.
Here is a small list of the most sought after plugins for foobar2000.
Note that a lot of useful plugins are already included in the special installer on the download page. As usual we recommend beeing economic with the plugins you run and only install what you actually need.
Please note that these plugins is based on the fact how much people look for these specific functions. Any plugins that are left out are not done so because they are less usefull or anything like it. This list might get updated as time goes by.
What is x264: x264 is a free library for encoding H264/AVC video streams. The code is written by Laurent Aimar, Eric Petit(OS X), Min Chen (vfw/nasm), Justin Clay(vfw), Måns Rullgård and Loren Merritt from scratch. It is released under the terms of the GPL license.
Website:
x264 limitations: “x264 doesn’t do any of extended profile or high profile. (Though “extended” is misleading, since it’s all about error resilience, and is worse in compression ratio than main profile.)
Properly dealing with adaptive interlacing in all cases takes lots of code.
x264 doesn’t support interlacing.
There are a few other features not supported (weighted prediction, MMCO, B4x4)”
Recent changes:
(r134) Add: implicit weighted prediction for B-frames. Slightly optimize x264mbmc01xywh.
Fix an error in B16x8 cost.
(r135) VfW: Enable weighted B prediction when max B-frames > 1. Enforce max reference frames <= 15.
(r136) Write x264’s version in a SEI message.
(r137) Preliminary adaptive B-frame decision (not yet tuned). Fix flushing of delayed frames when the encode finishes.
(r138) Take into account keyintmax in B-frame decision.
(r139) Cosmetics: Some renaming. Move the rest of slice type decision from encoder.
c to slicetypedecision.c
(r140) Implicit weights in B16x16 analysis were swapped.
(r141) Don’t use uninitialize MVs in x264mbpredictmvref16x16.
(r142) Altivec functions for MC using the cached halfpel planes.
(r143) Simplify x264frameexpandborder.
(r144) Disable deblocking filter in frames of sufficiently low QP that it would have no effect.
(Saves a little CPU time in the decoder.)
Worldwide Digital Camera Shipments Will Exceed 100 Million Units in 2008, says Lyra
Shipments for digital still cameras surpassed 63 million units worldwide in 2004, according to Lyra Research’s Digital Photography Advisory Service. Worldwide shipments will surpass 100 million units in 2008, the group projects in its new digital camera forecast.
Sales of cameras have also had an effect on printers and media. “Many new camera buyers…are looking for a total photographic solution,” says Robert Palmer, director of Lyra’s Digital Photography Advisory Service. Camera and printer bundles, he says, will gain momentum in 2005: “Explosive growth in digital camera sales will fuel the market for photographic prints.
More than 18 billion prints were produced from digital camera images in 2004, two-thirds of which were produced in the home.”
· The 3-megapixel category remained the most popular digital camera segment in 2004, but shipments are increasing in the 4-, 5-, and 6-megapixel segments.
· Most point-and-shoot cameras now shipping are 4- and 5-megapixel models, and Lyra expects that, by 2005, 5+ megapixel cameras will account for more worldwide shipments than any other segments.
· In 2004, for the first time ever, Europe became the largest market in terms of unit shipments, taking the top spot from the US, which is now second in terms of shipments (Japan is the third-largest market). (Lyra: )
February 24, 2005, (Mountain View, CA). The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today released an update to its award-winning Firefox 1.
0 browser. The Firefox security update is available for the 27 million users who have already downloaded the free browser. The Mozilla Foundation encourages all users to download the update, which is available now on all platforms at .
“Regular security updates are essential for maintaining a safe browsing experience for our users,” said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. “The Mozilla Foundation has developed a community of users and developers who continuously provide feedback on Mozilla software, and as a result of that constant vigilance, we are able to provide quick and effective responses to security vulnerabilities.”
The Mozilla Foundation evaluates security issues on an ongoing basis and will issue security updates as warranted.
The security update for Firefox includes several fixes to guard against spoofing and arbitrary code execution. More information is available in the release notes at
Firefox has been widely praised for its stability, trustworthiness and innovative features including tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, built-in pop-up blocking, and hundreds of available extensions. SC Magazine, a leading security magazine, recently awarded the Mozilla Foundation with its Editor in Chief award.
The browser has been downloaded more than 27 million times and is available in 28 languages.
ABOUT THE MOZILLA FOUNDATION
Established in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization hosting a collection of leading innovators whose mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet. The Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open source software project.
The Foundation is based in Mountain View, California. Learn more about the Mozilla Foundation at .
In a press conference in Tokyo recently, Nintendo head Satoru Iwata confirmed that the next console will be titled ‘Revolution’, and, like the DS handheld device, promises to innovate in the field of entertainment.
The ‘new ideas’ hinted at are not mentioned - Iwata fearing other manufacturers may steal their plans, however he did also reveal that the Revolution console will be far more than upgraded GameCube.
“What we need is not a next-generation machine but a next-generation way of playing games,” Iwata commented. Iwata’s words come just a day after European Nintendo head Dave Gosen slammed Microsoft for driving the industry towards new hardware too early, stating that the industry’s cyclical nature is damaging and inflexible.
The headline grabbing violence of GTA, the media’s fascination with future hardware and ridiculously cheap game bundles also came under fire.
Apple has refreshed its iPod range of music players, cutting the price of the popular yuppie accessory.
Tacitly acknowledging that the color iPod Photo was overpriced, Apple lopped $150 off the price of the high end 60GB model, which is now $449 (UK:£309), and replaced the $499 40GB iPod Photo with a 30GB version that's also $150 cheaper (UK:£249).
The cheapest 4GB iPod Mini is now $199 (UK:£139), a price cut of $50. It's joined by a 6GB model at the old price of $249 (UK:£169). The UK prices quoted include VAT.
Apple will also make a cable that allows the iPod Photo to connect directly to a camera, for $19, in around a month's time.
That post you just lost, would it have changed the world?
Adds Word Processor like functionality to web forms, including opening and saving form entries as files.
* Open and save form entries as files.
* Quickly save to a local file as you type.
* Never lose a post again due to your internet connection being dropped or laptop battery going out.
* Save form entries to a local Scribe XHTML file.
* Load form entries from a Scribe XHTML file.
* Overrides Ctrl-S so you can quickly save as you type.
* The Scribe html file is a normal XHTML document - You can edit long posts in your favorite HTML or text editor then use Scribe to load it back into the web form.
* Updated install script to be compatible with Firefox 1.0 PR.
* Added support for iframes.
* Now works correctly when using Google's Gmail.
* Fixed javascript error message.
* New option to disable saving hidden form fields.
* New option to disable overriding Ctrl-S behavior.
*
Known Issues
Does not work correctly when StumbleUpon extension is installed.
Sometimes international characters and html tags are not saved correctly.
"Ashampoo CD 2 iPod" - More Music for the iPod® !
Ashampoo CD 2 iPod, first released on February 3rd, comes with a full package of advantages over competitors.
Ashampoo CD 2 iPod is your personal control center for extracting audio files from CDs and transmitting them to your iPod®! In the great tradition of Ashampoo software, this multimedia application is really easy to use!
Ashampoo CD 2 iPod extracts audio files from AudioCDs and sends the converted files to your iPod® without any plugins.
The audio files will be converted automatically into the high quality *.m4a format (MPEG4- ) so that they can be read by your iPod®. The program also modifies all music tracks directly when they are sent to your iPod® so that all of them have the same volume (normalization).
Ashampoo CD 2 iPod is smart and easy to use. It automatically takes care of all the complicated settings of audio encoding and allows the user to focus on what he/she actually wants to do.
The advantages of Ashampoo CD 2 iPod at a glance:
- The download files of Ashampoo CD 2 iPod are considerably smaller as iTunes and the installation runs faster.
- The program has a well-designed user interface and is very easy and fast to use.
- The normalization function is active by default and not hidden in advanced options as in other programs.
- Ashampoo CD 2 iPod uses the freedb song database to fetch information about the Audio CDs (title, artist, .
..).
- Ripped and converted audio files are stored directly on the iPod®.
- No cumbersome transmission from the hard drive to the iPod® has to be done.
- Existing associations with audio files will not be changed and the program will not force itself into the foreground when an audio cd is inserted.
- The possibility to contact the Ashampoo Support via a prepared problem report is integrated in an excellent way into the program. So if there are any problems our support can help quickly and efficiently.
Difficult software is history -- now it's easy with Ashampoo!
BSplayer is a Windows ® player that plays back all kinds of media files ( avi / mpg / asf / wmv / wav / mp3...
) and specialises in video and divx playback.
* Display subtitles - Support custom subtitles position, color, font, transparency,..
. Supported formats: MicroDVD, Subviewer, SubRip
* Fully skinnable - Any shape, transparent skins..
.
* Resizable movie window
* Multilingual
* Drag drop support
* Command line support
* Pan-scan and custom pan-scan option
* Custom aspect ratios
* Playlist support
* Resolution changing
* Frame capture
* AVI files with more than 2 audio streams supported (multilanguage)
* Support for OGM files, including more then 2 audio/video tracks, supports embeded subtitles/chapters
* External audio file supported
* S/PDIF output supported for AC3 files (with Intervideo audio decoder)
* INI files
* Remote control support - WinLIRC
* Bookmarks
* Simple equalizer (DirectX 8 required)
* Playback rate (1/2x, 1x, 2x) and custom
* and lots of other features not listed here, try it out.
*
pan scan settings are now remembered
* fixed some problems with file association
* fixed bug in skin engine, some skins were not properly loaded
* fixed -nsub command line option, was working properly only for current file
* fixed some problems with subtitles, last line was still visible in some cases after subtitles were turned off
* some changes in subtitle loading, added more strict checking, so subtitle for another movie shouldn't be loaded anymore
* some other bug fixes and internal changes
* added more friendly interface to bspfilters.
dat and improved filter management a lot, it's now possible to define black list (filters in black list won't loaded), white list (only filters in white list will be used), VSFilter and similar filters will now be loaded (optional), it's also possible to define which filter will be used for playing specified media type, you can also register, unregister filters and set merit from BSplayer
* added support for Audio CDs and CDDB
* added option to set default audio stream, by index and iso-6392 language code (language code only for mkv files)
* added option to define more subtitle paths, path can also be relative (ex. '..
\subtitles')
* added option to set default subtitle, by index and iso-6392 language code (language code only for mkv files)
* added option to set default audio stream for every item in playlist
What is it?
* Free open source (GNU General Public License).
* A keyboard, joystick, and mouse remapper.
* A word recognition engine that expands abbreviations as you type them (auto-replace).
* A simple yet powerful hotkey (shortcut key) scripting language for Windows, supporting both mouse and keyboard macros (if you're new to scripting, it might be easier than you think; check out the quick-start tutorial).
* A regular scripting language (backward compatible with most existing AutoIt2 scripts).
The program includes a script compiler that converts a script to an EXE. It also includes AutoScriptWriter, a macro recorder written by Larry Keys.
FileAppend's text parameter may be omitted to create an empty file or update the timestamp of an existing file.
The following change from v1.0.26 was undone because it is not needed: "Changed hotkeys such as "a b::" to be seen as "~a b::" if "~a::" also exists as a hotkey.
" In such a case, the hotkey "~a::" causes an A keystroke to be sent whenever A wasn't held down to modify another key such as B.
Improved SoundPlay to play standard system sounds (hand, question, exclamation, and asterisk).
Improved the tray icon to optionally be unaffected by Pause and Suspend.
The icon can be "frozen" by specifying 1 as the last parameter of the Menu command. Example: Menu, Tray, Icon, C:\My Icon.ico, , 1
Added ahk_pid as a way to find window(s) matching a process identifier (PID).
Example: WinClose ahk_pid %VarContainingPID% ; Closes only the first matching window.
Added command SoundBeep, which emits a tone from the PC speaker.
Added support for hotkeys that fire upon release of a key.
Examples:
*LWin::Send {LControl down}
*LWin up::Send {LControl up}
^!r up::MsgBox You pressed and released Ctrl+Alt+R.
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