DJPalmer.com

I’ve just stumbled onto something that will make your YouTube videos look a lot better, especially if they’re widescreen. This applies to those who cap stuff off their TVs using PVRs and DVD encoders, etc…

As it stands, YouTube doesn’t properly show widescreen clips (i.e. 16×9), instead it forces them into a letterbox size to fit to a 4×3 standard. It also has the added downside that you can’t view clips in high quality, where as 4×3 clips can be viewed in high quality.

I’ve found a away around this. Yes, this will put your clips in 4×3 letterbox mode, but at least they won’t look as squashed, and they will be available to view in high quality.

First of all, make sure your aspect ratio is set to Letterbox, or something similar. This will give your clip the black bars at the top and bottom. Once you’ve done that, record your clip to DVD, and then rip your clip to your PC. After you do your editing, make sure your clip is 640×480, save and encode your file and then upload to YouTube.

You should see something like this:

To view it in high quality, click here: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=mqj4Or5gj-Q and click on “Watch in High Quality”.

Note that DailyMotion doesn’t have this problem. I’ve uploaded widescreen clips a few times and it allows me to watch them in HQ.

The web and other media has been alive with talk this morning out of Philidelphia where former KYW 3 anchor Larry Mendte has been caught out hacking into co-anchor Alycia Lane’s email accounts.

Talk about newsroom rivallary! Apparently he had even been doing it while they were presenting their nightly Eyewitness News broadcasts on the CBS owned-and-operated station for four years. Naturally, it was over such petty things such as how much one was being paid over the other and related jibber-jabber.

What a bloody dope! It’s an federal offence and he’s facing gaol time for it. Mind you, Lane’s a piece of work as well, so I’ve read.

Source: National Nine News.

Last night, I decided to get some sort of order into my life and installed Mozilla Sunbird to arrange stuff like my Centrelink payments (yes, I’m on Centrelink. I don’t aim to be on it for long, so don’t worry all you taxpayers out there), hockey and dart games and so on. Then I discovered you can add other calendars by importing iCalendar files (.ICS files) into Sunbird, so after tracking down stuff for Euro 2008, the V8s and the A-League, I then tried to find a NRL calendar.

I remembered I had downloaded a hefty package from e-Diary for the NRL season in Outlook format. Now, I don’t have Outlook installed, so I decided to attempt converting that into either iCal or to a CSV file and import from there. Well…that was easier said then done.

After doing several Google searches, downloaded a few programs, couldn’t get them to install and so on, I was at my wits end! I was about to send an email to e-Diary to convince them to do a ICS version of the calendar, when they had it up on their website! A few forms and a email message later and there it is!

And the lesson here is? Your solution often is in places you forgot to look!

Now I can keep track of the footy and V8s as well my hockey, darts and Centrelink stuff through devices like my iPod (simply by copying the ICS file to the iPod). Now to find a way to put it on my mobile…

Wow! So enlightening, and honest, yet so very puzzling…

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially since I posted this to The Spy Report today - CBC to distribute show via BitTorrent.

While some broadcasters are happy to offer shows free of charge online, which is fair enough, what if they wanted to put ads in their shows? Say they put the ads at the start, middle and end of the file.

Or what if they wanted you to pay, say, $1 or $2 for a non-DRM file, in high resolution and in any format you wanted, minus the ads.

What would you do? I cannot see them sitting on their hands about this for much longer.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to know…

While my computer was undergoing the 9,999,999th crash cycle (and not at a good time, I was preparing to start summarising the midday news bulletins), I decided to figure out how to record these shows on my two PVRs for tomorrow night, since last week was an absolute schmozzle, missing out one show and having to use a tape to record another show.

Because I’m at darts of a Thursday, I need to tape shows so I can watch them later (I don’t subscribe to this channel BT nonsense either), and the shows in question are:

• 8.30pm Out of the Question (Prime)
• 9.00pm Family Guy (Prime)
• 10.15pm UEFA Champions League Hour (SBS)
• 10.30pm American Dad (Prime)
• 10.30pm The Nightcap (7HD via Prime HD)
• 11.15pm The Late Show with David Letterman (Southern Cross Ten)

Now, I happen to have two PVRs, both 160GB, but one of them is a twin-tuner HD PVR, and the other is a twin-tuner SD PVR, but you cannot record two shows at the one time with the latter. You can watch one and record another, but not record two shows.

So…I had to sit down with a TV Week, piece of paper and a pen and figure it out. Basically, here is the main points of note:

• The Nightcap can only be recorded on the HD box.
• Out of the Question and Family Guy can be recorded on either.
• Again, the SD PVR cannot record two shows at once.

I came up with this solution, and so far, it all appears to be locked in:

On The HD box…

• 8.30pm Out of the Question (Prime)
• 9.00pm Family Guy (Prime)
• 10.15pm UEFA Champions League Hour (SBS)
• 10.30pm The Nightcap (7HD via Prime HD)

On the SD box…

• 10.30pm American Dad (Prime)
• 11.15pm The Late Show with David Letterman (Southern Cross Ten)

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the shithouse programming practices of the commercial networks. But we’ll see. There’s no live programming tomorrow night, so it shouldn’t delay any programs.

Yes, I was bored. And decided to mash buttons. But it could work!

See? Playing around does come up with some good solutions…

R-rated games may be on shelves soon (from The Age)

About time too! Most gamers are over 18, and most are sane, reasonable people.

And for the God-bothers out there, don’t worry…I’d assume there will be relevant rules attached to the rating barring children from purchasing games in store. Online I’m not so sure…if parents have any brains…I doubt it.