One of the reasons why I don’t like iPods is the entire philosophy of having everything closed and according to the likes of Apple. But, fortunately the open source community is too awesome and have developed a firmware that we can install on several different audio devices.
Rockbox is a bit like an operating system for portable media players. You can install it on several different devices from the following manufactures: Apple, Archos, SanDisk, Toshiba, iriver, and more.
VLC has just came out with a bug-fix new release, v 0.8.6f. From the site, the update includes:
“VLC media player 0.8.6e and earlier versions suffer from security vulnerabilities in the Subtitle demuxer, Real RTSP demuxer, MP4 demuxer and Cinepak codec.
This release also includes improved video output on multi-screen setups running Mac OS X and compatibility with Windows 9x/ME has been restored.”
You can get the newest version from VLC’s website.
Miro comes to organize all the video content on the web in a very nice way for us. First, right out of the box there is a very nice way for you to find and watch videos from YouTube, blip.tv, DailyMotion, and others. Just use the search bar at the bottom of the program to find what you want. Easy to search and then once you find something good, watch it and download it if you want.
VLC, in my opinion, is one of those programs that needs to be installed on every machine. I mean, on every machine you’d like to watch movies on. Which is easy because it works on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
This program plays pretty much any video format you want, and audio files but it isn’t the perfect choice for your music management app. You can easily play a DVD, VCD, SVCD, AVI, OGG, MKV, MOV, 3GP, FLAC, FLV, and much more. It doesn’t play Real’s format since it is proprietary and Apple must be keeping it a tight secret.
Want to burn a movie DVD with files from your computer? Do it ever so easily with DVD Flick. I’ve yet to find another program that is better and easier to use then DVD Flick.
You can even add subtitles (and edit its appearance), add different audio tracks, and adjust some other settings of your DVD project. The process really couldn’t be easier.
For a simple burn just select the file and click on “Create DVD”. Under 1 minute’s worth of effort and then you can just wait (a couple of hours) for the project to be completed all by itself. If you want to modify some settings – I always choose to burn directly to the DVD for example – you can easily do it.