The Digital Content Version Changing Problem

With the ever-growing list of the source of the content we consume not being physical and buying things or adding things to lists in digital form, I am finding a disturbing trend. I first noticed this with music tracks on Spotify and Apple Music. But I ran across audiobooks and have seen stories of digital purchases being blocked after someone has paid for them and not being refunded as the extreme end of this.

When you have a music track and add it to a playlist, you expect the same track to be there the next time you play the list. I noticed that people would put out a cover or remix of a song, name the song differently, have a different artist, and be part of a different album, but your track on the list and what was downloaded to your device would change. I first saw this on Spotify, but since switching to Apple Music, I see it there too.

As a software developer, I would have expected these systems to function as I would build them. Each track, no matter the title, artist, or other metadata, would have a unique ID for the track. That unique ID would be the thing stored on the list. This should never change; even if there were reasons preventing the user from playing the track for geopolitical reasons, the ID should be kept. Play the track the user wanted or just tell them its unavailable.

So that’s the music track problem, but I now see an audiobook problem. I added the Isaac Asimov – Foundation book to my wish list, but I now have the “Apple Series Tie-in Edition” on my list. That’s strange. That should be a different listing. And I wasn’t the only one who found this to be a problem. People who already purchased the original “©1982 Isaac Asimov (P)2010 Random House” audiobook from Audible have had their version changed and are unhappy. I would be mad, too, if I paid for something and got something different the next time I tried using it. Music track streaming is annoying but buying a book is worse.

I know that with Amazon Kindle, authors can update the book for errors but replacing it with a new version is unacceptable. Wouldn’t it make more marketing sense to have a second version closer to a movie or TV show? The real fans may buy both versions. Movies have “Director Cut” or “Extended Version,” and I have paid extra for them in the case of Aliens. But in the case of Foundation, this is purely used for advertising Apple TV. And Apple TV is one of the worst of the plethora of “Plus” subscriptions.

The final example of digital content change problems was a movie people “purchased,” but the video was removed because of some copyright dispute. The hosting companies will side with any copyright claims and wash their hands of it as though it’s not their problem. The problem was the person who “purchased” was led to believe they owned the digital copy of the movie. The reality is we own nothing these days. Tucked away in pages of “terms of service,” these companies are lying with the “purchase.” They are only giving you a “license” to use the music, movie, software, and information as long as YOU comply with their rules, and they can change the rules and remove the access at any time.

This deceptive practice runs into physical goods such as cars, money, housing, and more. When the World Economic Forum said, “You will own nothing, and be happy,” they meant the OWN NOTHING part, and as long as people are entertained enough, they will think they are happy if they comply.

America's Forgotten

America’s Forgotten Documentary

Due to unintended consequences, America’s broken immigration system leaves a slew of victims in its rudderless wake.”

Namrata Singh Gujral America’s Forgotten Tagline

America’s Forgotten is a documentary following several people affected by the broken illegal immigration systems in the United States. It was started by a Democrat filmmaker who was expecting to produce a film showing there needs to be more illegal immigration. The director began to learn the negative side of illegal immigration and was faced with the decision to follow the facts or hide them by not finishing the film.

She takes you through stories from many walks of life with no political agenda. She shows you the cycle of money, power, and lies used to take people from their home country and put them into the United States. She then shows the consequences of illegal immigration. The truth hurts and is sad on many levels, but more illegal immigration only makes it worse.

Film maker in India finds the family of a girl who died with her mother trying to illegally enter the US that was used by Democrats to push for more illegal immigration, the family was well off and had land, large homes, and made plenty of money growing rice.

I was made aware of this film through a random video I was watching. After reading some of the director’s quotes, I found the trailer on the films Vimeo page at http://americasforgottenmovie.com/. Many news articles bring up the different groups that use people in other countries who are not suffering but are looking for monetary opportunities in the United States. Most of these trying to get in are not the ones suffering from extreme poverty or religious persecution, but those who can pay up to $50-75 thousand to be smuggled across the world and into the United States with the possibility of death or never finding work.

She shows Americans who have been affected by illegals in the country, many losing family members, veterans who have served and come home with PTSD with no opportunities. She talks to locals in other countries who say they have no interest in leaving their homes and families. When she showed, the Dal Lama explain to a reporter that the rich countries should try and help educate and then send people back to their homes to help their home country, leaving the reporter aghast was great to see.

Democratic Debate of support for giving illegals health care free used by smugglers to trick people looking to make money in the US to pay them to get help getting them in illegally.

This film works hard not to take a political side. But she talks about the benefits of building the border wall with Mexico for blocking illegal immigrants, drugs, and terrorists. She also talks about the dangers of AOC and the Squad’s stance of bringing in anyone with no checks and how their policies hurt Americans and the people coming in illegally. She even shows how the Democrats saying they will give illegals health care helps the smugglers trick people into paying them. She shows how Biden has flipped from protecting the borders to now wanting them gone and how his ideas she cannot vote for.

The film is an hour and a half, costing $10 to buy and $5 to rent. I bought it to support her purely because she chose to seek the truth and not hide in her preconceived bubble. We need more media who are willing to put the truth first and not the ideals. After watching it, I was glad to support her, too, because the film is touching while showing the reality that illegal immigration only helps the smugglers, big corporations, and politicians who support it.

America’s Forgotten Trailers

TITLE: AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN
TAGLINE: Due to unintended consequences, America’s broken immigration system leaves a slew of victims in its rudderless wake.
SYNOPSIS: Shot around the world in the USA, India, Middle East, Mexico and Central America; America’s Forgotten reveals the staggering human and material cost of illegal immigration, from across the globe to the US. The film focuses on lost American jobs and wages, but especially American lives lost, because of illegal immigration. 
The documentary, directed by award winning filmmaker Namrata Singh Gujral explores death, torture and hardship surrounding illegal immigration in the U.S., a topic so sensitive, especially in Hollywood, that the film contains the following disclaimer: “Due to the possible political backlash all credits have been voluntarily withheld by the crew of this film.”
HOW: Streaming | On Demand
*Find list of platforms at www.AmericasForgottenMovie.com (www.America’sForgottenMovie.com)
WHERE: USA & Canada
WHEN: 16 OCTOBER 2020
Directed by: Namrata Singh Gujral
Hashtag: #AmericasForgotten

TRUMP @WAR – Full Documentary

Just wanted to put this here. I think it’s important that all watch it, it doesn’t matter what your political ideals are, this Documentary shows what is really going on. The media hates to bring light to any thing that President Trump does that is positive to the citizens of the United States or even the World. He has a great record of making things better but you have to look past the media with their millions of dollars coming in from political campaigns, special interest groups, elites, and people out of touch with what is needed to be done to keep our country moving in a positive direction.

Below is the YouTube copy of the Documentary. I am amazed that they have been able to keep it on that site with the growing history of censorship of the big tech companies who calmed to support a free and open internet as long as it kept their sites on the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9ejkYkb88

To find more out about this Documentary visit their website at https://trumpatwar.com 

Take the hour and a half to watch this. If it dose not awaken some thoughts of what the media and politicians are up to in pushing violence and misinformation in a negative way towards Trump and his supporters than you must really be asleep.

CES 2012 Pre-Thoughts

CES is coming for 2012 and I like to see what comes from the show. Last year it was all about 3D TVs and Android Tablets. This year it looks like tablets and apps on TVs will be some of the big things. I’m sure they will have more 3D TV but some without glasses but I don’t care because I can’t see the 3D.

Android Tablets were big last year but the ones that did come out in 2011 were flops and the main reason was that they were trying to do the old computer trick of having spec wars and charging too much. The iPad dose so good because it is not that expensive and is somewhat of a good device that has a sexy or prestige factor that the Android tablets lack because of marketing by Apple.

If they can make new tablets with Android 4.0 that are good specs and don’t cost over $500-600 then they may work out but if they want to sell lots they need to have it be good spec, Android 4.0 and cost less than $350.

As for the TVs with apps, it looks like they will be running Google TV aka Android TV, but the mistake that the companies are going to make is putting skins on them, they need to look and feel the same. Also Google and the TV companies will need to make deals to get the content producers to make apps to put their content on the system.

With Microsoft also pulling out I don’t see much coming from them, probably some new looks at Windows 8 and a recap of the new video options on Xbox 360. And I’m sure Sony and Nintendo will save most of their big things for games for E3 were I’m sure Microsoft will still have a big setup to pimp there Xbox stuff.

This year I will probably keep looking over some of the blog sites, and check out Twit.tv they have the most raw unorganized look from the floor as if you were there. CNet has some good stuff but it is more organized and almost too setup only with big names.

Kind of Want a Kindle Fire

All the talk about the Kindle Fire that came out today I have been unsure if I would like one because it isn’t a full Android tablet and its only running the older 2.3 rather then 3.2 OS. But it dose look like it would be good for consuming content, I probably would want a full Android tablet, but it would work out good for something to watch videos on and to have around. So as I’m still unsure on it check out this video that Tom Merritt did an unboxing at TWiT.TV …

Handbrake Windows 7 + 8 64-Bit DVD Ripping

So if you are into getting your DVDs onto a computer for viewing on the go or just because you want to box up those disks and you can’t find the show on Netflix or what not you have heard of Handbrake for converting video files. But when working with it on Windows you had to get a program called DVD43 that would unlock your DVD so you could make a backup of the video. The only problem is that it doesn’t work in Windows 7 + 8 64-Bit or other 64-Bit Windows so what do you do?

I have found on the Handbrake forums a post that says all you need is one DLL file and you can get things going. Glyxor on the forums talks about using libdvdcss.dll from the GStreamer install to get this to work.

Here are the step by steps to get things up and running.

  1. Download (64 bit) Handbrake for Windows from http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php and Install it. Take note of the install location.
  2. Download the libdvdcss 64-Bit from VideoLan at  http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll and move it to your Handbrake install location. ( C:\Program Files\Handbrake )
  3. Rename the libdvdcss-2.dll to libdvdcss.dll in your Handbrake install folder. ( C:\Program Files\Handbrake )
  4. Start Handbrake, put in your DVD and go from there. For a good Handbrake for Windows tutorial go to https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/WindowsGuiGuide

Note: Make sure you download the Handbrake 64-bit version, and rename the DLL to libdvdcss.dll its what worked for me.

Note: Some have said you can just get the libdvdcss from http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/ I tried it with the latest version and all I got was garbage video, even tried with the name libdvdcss-2.dll and libdvdcss.dll and no luck. If you use a different version then latest let me know and I’ll give it a try. The one I have for the download dose work with the newest version of Handbrake.

Note: For MAC OS users if you have problems ripping DVDs you can also do the same trick to get it to work, just download the libdvdcss from http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/last/macosx/libdvdcss.2.dylib and rename it to libdvdcss.dylib and put it in the /usr/lib/

Ubuntu / Mint Linux: I have switched to Linux Mint and after installing Handbrake I was able to just make copies of some of my disks with no extra library’s I’ll list the steps below, you may also need to enable “Community-maintained free and open-source software (universe)”. Also the process may be much faster, nothing scientific but it didn’t take as long on the same system to rip a normal length movie.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

Now you should be able to make copies of your DVDs and all should be good, if you have a newer computer it should take about 30-50 minutes a movie, it took me 34 minutes to make a backup copy of Avatar on my system so times will vary. Hope this helps this problem was making me upset because some of the other copy tools just suck and give you a slow copy that looks like garbage.


UPDATED:

12/21/2016 – I have done a little testing on Windows 10 64-bit and this wasn’t working for me, I didn’t have a lot of time to test things so you may have better results. It seems that LifeHacker.com has ripped off the entire artical from me now and nolonger link here as the source, shame on them. I also don’t post on this site but once every few months now so meh. I may look into getting this working again on Windows 10 now that I have moved over to it full time.

06/12/2014 – This should work on Windows 8 64-bit systems, but not tablets that use the ARM processes such as the Windows Surface. The libdvdcss still hasn’t been updated for Windows to the current build 1.2.13 so just keep using 1.2.11 and enjoying Handbrake.  Also I’m adding how to get Handbrake on Linux Ubuntu based systems.

11/10/2012 – Seems that the link to the for the win64 libdvdcss-2 was changed and the latest is not in the version 1.2.12 so I have fixed the link to version 1.2.11 that I have found to work on most movies. (http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll) not (http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/last/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll)

10/06/2012 – I have tested Handbrake 0.9.8 with libdvdcss 1.2.11 and was able to open an older movie (Ocean’s Twelve) and was able to get it to rip just fine, but when I tried a new movie (The Avengers) VLC (2.0.2 32-bit and 2.0.3 32-bit) crashes, Windows Media Player will open it but it is garbled (even there ads for other videos they want you to buy), and Handbrake gives an error “No Title(s) found. Not sure if this is some of the problems people are seeing but it looks like those jokers over in Hollywood are trying to screw us over again.

One note also it did play on my Xbox 360 S so they must have done something to make it work for non-computer systems. And another note after trying it on the Xbox Windows Media Player did play it without trying to load it with Handbrake or VLC.

After more playing in VLC there is a problem with the Menu (VLC Forum) you can get it to play if you check the “No disc menus” box but then you have to try and find the right Title out of 99 different ones. This error must have something to do with the buggy language menu that first plays on the disk. It also seemed to lag and skip around a bit when changing chapters once I got it playing. In Ubuntu 12.10 with VLC 2.0.3  same problem with it crashing or not loading right and being all garbled.

When looking for more on this problem you can also use this for MAC OS to get Handbrake working again by copying the libdvdcss to the /usr/lib/ directory.

05/24/2012 – Updated for full 64-Bit Handbrake

03/030/2012 – Reduced steps and added my copy of livdvdcss.dll as a zip that I know works.

OLD STEPS:

  1. Download Handbrake from http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php and install the download you go of the newest version. Take note where you installed this.
  2. Download GStreamer WinBuilds from http://code.google.com/p/ossbuild/downloads/list ( I got the newest GPL version ) and install the what you downloaded. Take note of where you installed this.
  3. In Windows Explorer go to the location GStreamer was installed ( C:\Program Files (x86)\OSSBuild\GStreamer\[version] ) then into the bin folder and find the file libdvdcss-2.dll and copy it to the clipboard.
  4. In Windows Explorer go to the location Handbrake was installed ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake ) and paste the libdvdcss-2.dll and rename it to libdvdcss.dll
  5. Start Handbrake, put in your DVD and go from there.


Roku for Cheep New Prices

Get RokuLooks like the Roku box has a new lower price, I’m sure this is because of the Apple TV coming out. I would still recommend Roku to any one who has Netflix over some of the other boxes. If you have a TV like the Vizio new sets that have Netflix built-in then you are only missing a few of the things Roku dose.

But I would have to say that amount and quality of Roku channels are getting bigger and better. All they relay need is a YouTube and Hulu channel and it would be a gold player. Maybe if they could add the ability to stream content from a PC with the media sharing stuff that would be sweet but Netflix has added so much more content (movies, tv shows) that it’s almost dumb to have movies and such on your computer.

So what does the pricing look like will here it goes:

ImageProductOld PriceNew Price
Roku SD$79.99$59.99
Roku HDRoku HD$99.99$69.99
Roku HD-XRRoku HD-XR$129.99$99.99

From the price standpoint and what it does I would say go all out and get the Roku HD-XR and drop one of these babies on to your TV setup.

So if you are looking to get one of these boxes or a Netflix setup go over to our Savings & Support page and help us keep the site up.