DVD DIGEST - LIVE UPDATE Issue 18 DVD DIGEST - http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/ DVD DIGEST | LIVE UPDATE Issue 18 Your fortnightly (plus of minus a few days) DVD newsletter Sunday, 28th May, 2000 ************************************************************** TOP NEWS SUMMARY : 0. Section Zer0 - an introduction to this issue 1. Cinemaster 2000 - here it is 2. MGI SoftDVD 3. PowerDVD Skins - now available for download 4. What's new at DVD Digest Downloads ? 5. How to cancel/change your subscription email address/settings - how to maintain the subscription to this newsletter even if your email address has changed 6. A simple thank-you - a thank-you message for all those that joined this list ******************************************************* 0. Section Zer0 Welcome to this, the 18th issue, of the DVD Digest LiveUpdate newsletter. There has been some sorts of milestones around here at the moment. Just last week, we have now over 3000 subscribers to this newsletter, and that number is growing daily. Also, our site have surpassed the 100,000 hits per day mark on the 15th of May, with more than 20,000 unique visitors visiting us on that day as well. This might be nothing compared to "super" sites such as Yahoo.com (which, by my outdated figures, gets over 1,000,000 unique visitors each day), but it's still pretty good for a small site such as ours. If you don't believe us, you can access our page stats here : http://www.hitbox.com/cgi-bin/v5stats_world.cgi?vwr1/WQ590716467E Also from now on, this newsletter will have more "attitude" - meaning that instead of being a even reporting of the latest news, we'll offer our own biased views on these issues. For most, this probably means nothing, so I won't say more about it. Alrighty then, on with the news ... ******************************************************* 1. Cinemaster 2000 - here it is First, a history lesson. Quadrant International's (QI) Cinemaster 98 was a very good DVD player - efficient and great quality. When QI was sold/renamed to Divicore, and then a few days later, renamed to Ravisent, it released Cinemaster 99. Cinemaster 99 didn't improve things, and instead, made a lot of things worse for a lot of people. Now comes Cinemaster 2000, and the verdict is in - and it's not good news for Ravisent. It's finally here, but for some, it's a definite disappointment. For us, it's a mixed bag, while it's nice to see the interface of the player getting updated for the new Century (or 1 year before the new Century, if you want to get technical), there are some changes that are just plain annoying. First of all, it now uses the DirectX filter based system, found it crappy players like XingDVD. This means tons of problems if you have other DirectX filter based DVD players installed, and since all DVD players install filters like this (although they won't use it for normal DVD playback, eg. PowerDVD and WinDVD), it's a right mess. Also, by doing this, it now uses Windows's own region system, which DVD Genie cannot always crack (at least not with the current version). Another problems is that the interface, while new, is not pretty. Just take a look at WinDVD or PowerDVD's interfaces (and I'm not even going to mention their graphically amazing skin addons - check section 3 below for more information) - you can see that Cinemaster 2000's interface was knocked up pretty late in the development process. And bug city it is too. Hang ups and blue screens are common, at least on the version/systems I tried it on. I'd rather they have stuck to their old 1.0.3x and 2.0.3x based driver systems, instead of trying this new "DirectX filter" stuff (which really isn't new, since XingDVD uses it). Playing back DVDs, once it works, does give great performance and quality. Playing DVD files, however, causes a lot of problems. It feels as if Cinemaster 2000 is more like a fancy version of the free Microsoft Media Player, rather than a full serious DVD player. I guess the advantage of this is that you can always use Cinemaster 2000 as a fancy DivX player ... if you don't mind paying a lot for something you can get for free (eg. Redz's DivX Player, which gets a new interface - http://www.geocities.com/divxplayer/, or the highly acclaimed MicroDVD player - http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/microdvd.html). Cinemaster 2000 also adds DVR, or Digital Video Recording options, which is just a fancy work for a video capture software. We haven't tested it, so we can't say much about it. Hopefully, it will be better than the DVD player part of Cinemaster 2000. Final verdict for Cinemaster 2000 : looking forward to the bug patches, which there will be many, I am sure. Tech-support guide : added a few questions/answers on installing the damn thing ; http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/support/cinefix.html Full review coming soon ... ******************************************************* 2. MGI SoftDVD If you've looked at our site sometime soon, you might have seen the banner ad for MGI's new SoftDVD player, which features the (perhaps hyped) Dolby Surround Headphones feature (which is certified by Dolby). We have just received a promotional pack for this player (MGI SoftDVD Max 3.6 - our big thanks to BurstMedia and MGI for sending us that), and will go through the testing/reviewing process for it immediately (which in our dictionary means : when we're not too busy watching DVDs). It's about time a fourth DVD software players joins the market, to give the others (PowerDVD, WinDVD and Cinemaster 2000) some incentive to improve their far from perfect programs. However, noting that MGI SoftDVD is based on Mediamatic's SoftDVD programs, it's hard to say whether it will make any impact on the market at all. For those who don't remember, Mediamatic's SoftDVD program wasn't very good. In fact, I don't recall it ever working on our test systems, at least not fully. But since it was never meant for retail distribution (it was bundled with some Diamond/S3 products), this was excusable (just). As always, full review and all that's related. ******************************************************* 3. PowerDVD Skins - now available for download Yep, they are finally here. New and wonderful PowerDVD skins to replace the ones bundled with PowerDVD (although they were pretty good too). Many graphically talented (and patient) souls have worked hard on these skins, and it shows - they are simply amazing. I especially like the Pioneer skin and most other "realistic skins", but you just have to admire the "eye" skin of the "south park" one. It's hard to think that while people are doing this for free, and all the time, designers at companies such as Ravisent keeps on releasing crappy interfaces - and they are paid for it as well. Anyhoo, enough of my ranting, you can download all the skins here : http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/pdvd_skins.html On a related note, the WinAMP to PowerDVD skin convertor was also released. This allows you to convert existing WinAMP skins over to PowerDVD ones, with a few simple mouse clicks. You can download it here : http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/pdvd_down.html ******************************************************* 4. What's new at DVD Digest Downloads ? We are no longer going to do this section anymore, as it takes too long, and is quite pointless, since you can get the same information on these pages : http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/index.html http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/oldnews.html We'll concentrate now on more news and analysis, rather than a list of our updates. If you disagree, please provide feedback using the email address listed in section 6. ******************************************************* 5. How to cancel/change settings/email address for your subscription to this newsletter Changing subscription settings for this newsletter can be hard, so here is a short guide : 1. Go to this link : http://www.listbot.com/cgi-bin/subscriber 2. Enter the email address this newsletter is sent to and also the password you chose when signing up to this newsletter. The email/password should have been sent to you in an email from "ListBot" or "ListBot Verifier", with the subject "Account Activated" or "REPLY REQUIRED: DVD DIGEST LiveUpdate Subscription Verify". 3. You should find options to change/cancel your subscriptions. Note : using your sign-up account, you can sign up to the 1000's of other newsletters available from listbot.com ******************************************************* 6. A simple thank-you Just a note to thank all the thousands of people (3000 at last count), including you, who joined the DVD Digest LiveUpdate program. We've spent quite a bit of time developing this site, and making it what it is today, and really do appreciate your continued support. We have changed most of our click ads into banner impression ads, which means you no longer need to click on them, although it will still help my advertisers. And if you are interested in advertising on our site, please refer to our Advertising page : http://www.digital-digest.com/advertising.html If you would like to provide us with some feedback as to the quality of this newsletter, please contact us using this email address : webmaster@digital-digest.com We hoped you enjoyed another LiveUpdate newsletter. We'll try to make this newsletter a regular fortnightly one in the future. Thank-you ======END OF LIVEUPDATE NEWSLETTER======