Big PC Geek Tech Blog

Have you ever burned a CD only to find it does not work or part of it is missing? If so, the fact that the CD does not work is generally not your fault. The problem is with Buffer! Most burning software these days like Nero and Roxio automatically set to burn full speed which may be spitting data too fast at either the disc or filling up the buffer and causing errors. One problem this could be is using CD’s rated at a lower speed than your burner is burning at.

To fix this, don’t go out and buy new DVD’s or CD’s just set the setting to burn slower. Generally, you can set the speed just before you hit the burn button in most programs.

I recently purchased a Blu-Ray Player not for my home theater system but for my computer and there are some things people should know before they try to tackle adding Blu-Ray to players to their computer. Luckily, I had been planning this so I was not as unprepared as some might be.

First HDCP which stands for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection and it is the new wave of copy protection added to Blu-Ray movie discs. The key to remember is that all devices in your computer that a Blu-Ray movie’s data will transfer through needs to be HDCP compliant or the movie won’t play. This means the Blu-Ray drive need to have HDCP but that should be included in all Blu-Ray players, your video card must be HDCP compliant, and finally your monitor must be HDCP compliant. If you have a computer with none of this, it can be very costly to add a Blu-Ray player and it might be cheaper to get a dedicated player for your TV. One last part you will need is software to play it on like Power DVD Blu-Ray edition which may be included with your Rom drive.

Seriously, this copyright junk really makes life miserable for honest people but it is necessary given all the people who steal movies and music over the Internet. HDCP is no joke, I have an nvidia 8800 GTS which is a high end HDCP compliant. To test HDCP, I connected my 8800 to two monitors, one HDCP compliant, and one not. I decided to move a playing Blu-Ray movie between the HDCP compliant monitor over to the non-compliant and as soon as I moved the window, it stopped playing and threw an error message at me. No exceptions, HDCP needs the Blu-Ray player, special video card, special monitor, and Blu-Ray player software. There is a possibility that there is some other HDCP compliant hardware that may be necessary which I have and have not heard of. This was tested on Windows Vista, I have no clue if XP will support Blu-Ray even with compliant hardware.

Everything I say goes for Windows computers only, all of you Mac people have to wait till Apple decides to add the functionality.

The retail giant Wal-Mart has announced that it will officially stop selling HD DVD in June this year. Among others, Best Buy is also going to feature Blu-Ray in all of their stores. If you have been waiting for the war to end before buying HD DVD or Blu-Ray, I think your safe to buy Blu-Ray.

It looks like the war is over, with WB switching to BluRay the major movie companies are offering their movies in BluRay. I think this is it, the format war is now ending. I think BluRay is the winner. I still think the cost of the movies is outrageous.