DIAMOND Xtreme Sound 7.1 USB Audio Device Review

So this Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 USB audio device came in yesterday. I was able to play around it for a while. First impression is positive to say the best.

This is a pretty new product, it was released at the end of last year. It’s based on c-media cm106 solution. It’s USB 1.1/2.0 powered, and capable of 16bit, 48Khz audio input/output (digital and analog).

The device is smaller than I thought. It’s about the size of a medium sized mouse. Actual dimension is 5x2.5x1”. The construction is made of plastic, it feels ok. It came with a USB cable, one English manual, one French manual, and an installation CD. There are four buttons on the device, recording, muting/un-muting (the play/pause logo is misleading), volume down, and volume up. These are perfect addition to the SONY since the multimedia keys didn’t have these keys!

Installation was easy. Although the device is drive-less, I still opted-in to install the on CD driver which provides a control panel, where you can do some bass management, channel swapping, xear 3D DSP, and equalizer. The driver is mostly stable, but sometimes the control panel will quit, which I haven’t found a way to bring it back unless rebooting… But again, the control panel isn’t really needed, I wouldn’t recommend installing it unless you are intending to use the analog 7.1 HD feature. I haven’t found a way to uninstall the drive and control panel. The driver on the CD is actually an older version (7.12.8.2140), win 7 was able to update to a newer version (7.12.8.2150).

Onto the main subject, I bought this device mainly to suppress the noise from the AC power. My initial testing is positive, while it didn’t eliminate the noise totally, it did keep them down at a reasonable level. I’m actually somewhat satisfied at this aspect. Audio quality wise, there’s no real improvement over the on-board Realtek. It’s a cheap c-media chip, what can you expect after all. And it doesn’t do crazy high resolution, high bit depth like Realtek, just simple 16bit, 48Khz.

There are lots of connectors including headphone, 7.1ch analog output, line in, mic in, digital-in/out. I have tested all the output. The 7.1ch analog output works, but I’m still not able to get good bass response, I’m starting to guess that it’s actually a problem with my AVR? The headphone provides enough amplification, I only need 30% of the volume. If I go beyond 50%, the noise starts becoming noticeable.

The digital output passes through AC3 and DTS without problem. It only supports 48Khz though while most devices I’ve tried supports at least 44.1Khz and 48Khz.

Considering I got the device cheap enough (after the $20 rebate on Amazon), I think this device is a keeper. But I’ll keep an eye on other solutions.

Subtitle Software Bundle Part II - Two subtitle software for getting subs from the original DVD or fansub Ver.2 (03072011 update)

 

(This article is strictly used for hobby and video backup purpose, it would be unethical and illegal to use the software for a profit.)

03072011 update, now includes changing vobsub path under win7 x64.

08242010 update, now includes matching audio that is of different length from original audio (mainly gaps).

06162009 update, now includes multi-angle subtitle decrypting using VOBSUB.

06152009 update, now includes updated easier tutorials on how to sync audios from different editions of DVDs, this method also gives more accurate results.

04182009 update, now includes detailed tutorials on how to sync subtitles and audios from different editions of DVDs.

 

So here are the two more subtitle software... Both of them try to get the subs from the original material, so don't use them for commercial purpose... First software is vobsub (or vsfilter), second is esrXP. Vobsub is used for decrypting subtitles from DVD, it can save as idx+sub file or save as sst/son in conjunction with a bunch of bmp/tiff pictures. idx+sub can be viewed on computer or be embeded into divx files viewed on a divx certified player; sst+scanned bmp/tiff can be used to reauthor DVD. esrXP is used for grabbing the hard-burned subtitles, particularly for Asian language.

Vobsub is designed to show subtitle on computers, but here I am using it to decrypt subtitles from DVD. (There are other software such as Subrip (has more advantage in OCR since it supports italic/bold tag which preserves the DVD typesetting as much as possible), a tool functions the same as vobsub and further more can ocr the pictures back to text or extract menu highlights; or the automation tool, but vobsub has been working fine since day 1 I started to use it, so I never bothered to find other ways to decrypt DVD subtitle. Manual decrypting is good if you want to vastly change the DVD structure such as putting several episodes onto the same disc, if you just want to add subtitle, the easy way is to use automation tools...)

Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro II USB Sound Card Review

 

So in my SONY VPCF13UFX/B Laptop Review, I was disappointed with the on-board Realtek chip. There are two USB audio devices I would like to try so far, and this turtle beach is one of them. The reason I choose this one is because of its small form factor which I can carry it around without any effort. Also this audio device comes with an optical digital adaptor, which I can use either on the digital output from the on-board chip or this device. So yes, aside from the analog output, this device also supports digital audio output via SPDIF. Turtle Beach has also another product with similar shape but grey color, it’s called amigo II, this one doesn’t have SPDIF out, but does have mic in. It’s just something not to be confused of. So here is my review.

Initial setup was easy enough. I choose to install the driver since I want the full control. A reboot was required after driver installation. Also without driver, there’s some issue with volume controlling.

If you change USB ports, a new installation is required, but afterwards, both ports will have the driver. The only issue I have so far is that the device has some problem on my USB 3.0 ports where the volume control malfunctioning. But on the USB 2.0 port, it works fine.

I’m not sure what chipset solution this one uses, but for the audio performance, I think this device is little “bright”, but overall it does have some slight improvement over the on-board Realtek chip.

Unfortunately when connecting this device with SONY MDR-V6 monitor, I cannot get rid of noise! This was the priority issue I would want to solve from the deficiency of the on-board audio chip, but too bad…

Onto the digital output side, this device uses the headphone/digital output sharing design. So a digital output adaptor is needed, thankfully it’s already included. I have no issue with the adapter unlike some of the reviews on Amazon said. It snapped onto the digital cable beautifully, and aligned the light correctly.

This device does output ac3/DTS bitstreaming. It supports 44.1Khz and 48Khz. But in the turtle beach’s control panel, it seems always default to 48Khz.

While as in win7’s control panel, I could enable 44.1Khz output.

 

Summary:

So basically I want something small, not so expensive audio device. I want to connect an SONY MDR-V6 to the analog port for audio monitoring without NOISE. Unfortunately this device fails at this task. I also want to be able to bitstream ac3/DTS as I won’t be replacing my legacy AVR soon. This device works beautifully for this task unlike the analog output. So I think this one is NOT a keeper for me, it’ll go back to Amazon.

Rebuilding database to solve PS3 Error 8003041C

 

This is a solution copied from avforum (NOT to be confused with avsforum) to solve PS3’s 8003041C error when bulk copying mp3 files to internal HDD. It DOES NOT require reformating your HDD, you only lose folder names and audio playlists, all data are retained!

Follow these steps and all your problems (including left-over ghost files) will be solved. NONE OF YOUR FILES WILL BE DELETED, DON'T WORRY. YOU DO NOT NEED TO REFORMAT!

1. Turn off your PS3
2. Press and hold the power button to turn it on. Keep holding it. It will beep once after a moment, then beep again a moment later and turn itself off.
3. Do this again. It'll beep once after a moment, but unlike before, a moment later it will beep twice quickly.
4. As soon as you hear the double beep, let up. The PS3 will ask you to connect a controller via a USB cable and press the PS button. Do so.
5. You'll be at the PS3 restore menu. First thing you need to do is hit option 3, Restore File System.
6. After selecting this, the GameOS will restart and give you a message saying something along the lines of your file system is corrupted and needs to be restored. Let it do so, and wait till you're back at the XMB. The file system corruption will be cleared up and you can now copy music and videos without getting ghost files. However, existing ghost files will still be there, so you'll need to continue the next step.
7. Start over at step 1, and follow it to step 5.
8. You're at the PS3 restore menu again. This time you hit option 4, Rebuild Database.
9. After selecting this, the GameOS will restart once again as it did with the file system restoration, except this time it will rebuild the hard drive's entire database. Wait for it to finish.
10. Done! Ghost files will either be gone if they were connected to a file that no longer existed, or they will now be accessible if there was a file that still did exist. The only problem you'll have is rebuilding the database will delete all of your messages, playlists (just the playlists, not the files themselves), and so on. You'll need to re-add all of your tags to your files under Information again for sorting, but that's it.

PS3 firmware 3.30 - Bitstream (Mix) detailed explanation

 

Well, I haven’t kept up-to-date with the PS3 firmware recently, this one is added retrospectively.

Firmware 3.30 was released on Apr 22, 2010, and the major updates are support for 3D gaming and a hidden feature: Bitstream (Mix) option for people who are still using optical out with a legacy ac3/DTS receiver.

The most basic feature for Bitstream (Mix) is to provide full sound for button click and PIP secondary audio. But there’s more to it, the most beneficial thing is the ability to playback LPCM 5.1 tracks encoded in DTS 5.1 in real time. Before this update, you will never get the surround sound out of LPCM 5.1 since optical output is only capable of 2 channel LPCM, but now you will at least get the 5.1 full information. This is equivalent to the “Auto mix based on source audio” option provided in Totalmedia Theatre 3 long time ago.

PowerDVD has also provided such mixing, but it’s only limited to AC3/DTS mixing.

“Auto mix based on source audio” is a more elegant way to mix the surround sound, it differs from just AC3/DTS mixing which just lumps all audios into ac3 or DTS.

These are the behaviors I have observed:

For any 1 channel sources:

Always expands to LPCM 2.0

For any 2 channel sources:

LPCM 2.0 - decodes/retains to LPCM 2.0*
Dolby TrueHD 2.0 - decodes to LPCM 2.0
DTS-HD MA 2.0 - decodes to LPCM 2.0

(while if AC3/DTS mixing is chosen in PowerDVD or TMT3/5, these audio will be mixed into ac3 2.0 or DTS 2.0 regardless)

For the LPCM 2.0 source here, I’m not sure what PS3 exactly did, since in LPCM mode, the button sound can be heard regardless if it’s decoded or in original form. I’m guessing it’s more likely to retain the LPCM 2.0 rather than decoding for simplicity, but I could be wrong.

For any 5.1 channel sources:

LPCM 5.1 - compresses as DTS 5.1 and bitstreaming in real time (biggest benefit)
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 - compresses as Dolby Digital 5.1 and bitstreaming in real time
DTS-HD MA 5.1 - compresses as DTS 5.1 and bitstreaming in real time

Any button sound and PIP secondary audio will be mixed in.

I believe for audio more than 5.1 channels, they will be downmixed to 5.1, then compressed and bitstreamed as well. as for why Dolby TrueHD goes to Dolby Digital rather than DTS which is what I preferred, I think it maybe due to a license constraint? Also I have no way to determine what kind of bitrate these streams are compressed into. As far as the sound quality goes, you NEED to increase the volume a lot to get the same level of the audio in its original form. I think the sound is a little bit inferior to the Bitstream (direct) mode, especially the bass sounds a little mushy.

PS3 firmware 3.50 adds incomplete 3DBD playback

 

In Sept 2010, Sony released firmware 3.50 to add 3DBD playback (profile 5.0). But due to the limitation of the hardware, we are really only getting “4.5” features. Here is my attempt to explain in details from an authoring standpoint of view.

In order to play 3DBD, you need an HD 3D display, active 3D glasses, and a high-speed HDMI cable (for PS3, you only need 1.3b since it doesn’t support 1.4a standards, maybe we can get an upgrade like the switch from fat to slim models which adds HD audio bitstreaming?)

Here are some Limitations on Blu-ray 3D™ disc playback from Sony:

• The 3D display of some elements such as menus and subtitles may be different on the PS3™ system than on other 3D playback devices.
  • When Dolby TrueHD is selected as the audio format, audio will be output in Dolby Digital during playback of Blu-ray 3D™ content.
  • When DTS-HD is selected as the audio format, audio will be output in DTS during playback of Blu-ray 3D™ content.

These are due to the PS3 has to focusing on decoding two 1080p HD streams simultaneously, it lacks the power to do any BD-J application and HD audio at the same time. This is only a PS3 limitation, the real profile 5.0 machines can do BD-J AND HD audio. In HDMV mode, the menu system doesn’t support real 3D “pop” visual effect, you can do 2D+z-depth value. Under HDMV mode, you can do upto 32 streams containing the z-depth. Sonic uses OSF format to include the parameters, the values can be accurate to frames. I believe sonic currently does NOT have a solution to create real 3D menus. The 2D can still be done in photoshop+designer PS plugin.

• Depending on the content, some BD-J (Blu-ray Disc™ Java*) features such as BONUSVIEW™ and BD-Live™ may not play in 3D or may not function properly on the PS3™ system.

Under profile 5.0 mode where you’re playing 3D titles, you don’t get PIP, multi-angle and BD-Live. But you’re getting a considerable performance gain. The menus get double amount of memory, which I assume to be 32mb for HDMV and 96mb for BD-J? The max bitrate increases from 48Mbps to 72Mbps. The MVC streams used can only be 1080p23.976, 720p60, and 720p59.94, no other combinations are allowed. In Scenarist BD, MVC have base and dependent clips. The base is the main stream, dependent clip is added as a subpath, kind of like PIP. The base can be used as a pure 2D playlist, the feature was disable in 5.5, but was later added back in 5.5.1. (I’m not sure why some retail disc has separate 2D and 3D discs…) The dependent information is the difference from the base, it is usually 50% of the size of the base. There are no I-frames in dependent stream. The dependent stream is put under the SSIF folder. Scenarist BD has a convenient feature where it can automatically generate 3D playlist using base and dependent stream (under a folder) without adding subpath manually. There are some extended PSR values to check 3D capability only available in profile 5.0 mode. I think someone said the SSIF structure uses a linux file system, that’s why under windows, we are getting double the size if we store the disc in folders, therefore it’s definitely recommended to store the disc in ISOs. When outputting a testing disc using Scenarist BD 5.5x, you’ll need to remove AACS in CPS unit, and using premastering - CMF to mux. Thre will be a ud.dat file under Dst0 folder, rename the ud.dat to ud.iso and burn. You can’t do fake AVCHD for 3DBD. These are the information I have gathered so far.

PS3 firmware 3.21->3.42->3.55 Sony desperately trying to prevent cracking the system, but only proved to be futile

 

I lumped these 3 firmwares into one since they pretty much are just security patches.

Firmware 3.21 was introduced on April fool’s day 2010. It was THE infamous patch that REMOVES the install otherOS feature. This also pretty much started the long battle with preventing the system from being cracked. But it only catalyzes the progress IMO since four month after, we’re greeted by some Australian vendor selling USB jailbreak device. There the firmware 3.42 was released for solely defeating this device. Not too long ago, PS3 downgrader was introduced which can be used to downgrade current firmware to lower versions to allow jailbreaking the system. And for defeating this, Sony released firmware 3.55. But shortly after Geohot the original hacker who is pretty much responsible of the removing of install otherOS feature came back with releasing PS3’s master key, which marks the day that PS3 system is totally cracked.

Blu-ray ISO Mounting, Burning and Playback Guide 20100119 Update

 

Since I’ve been fiddling around different software for the past two days, I’m semi-happy with what I got so far. I’ll just summarize my experience.
My system is still winxp SP3, it’s relatively old for multimedia purpose, but still kicking.

The Blu-ray playback software:

1. PowerDVD 8 Ultra version 2217a with HD-DVD add-on.
2. TotalMedia Theatre 3 with SimHD plugin. (TMT3 for short)
3. WinDVD 9.

I have achieved playing actual discs with all three software via a Lite-on BDROM. For playback quality, my preference is: PowerDVD (Hardware Acceleration [HA] on; well, powerDVD always turns on HA for Blu-rays, you can’t turn it off since version 8)>WinDVD 9 (HA on)>TMT3 (HA OFF). PowerDVD gives the best visual quality, but BDMV folder playback and image capture function are disabled on build 2217a; while I didn’t spent too much time on winDVD 9 since it doesn’t do anything; TMT3 can play BDMV folder directly, plus it can capture images as long as the disc has no AACS protection (can capture images from Blu-ray ISO). But TMT3’s video quality is definitely the worst among the three, even after turning off hardware acceleration; with hardware acceleration on, the video quality is even worse, any still images will show aliasing lines, and the DVD playback is totally crapped out! So for serious viewing on PC, powerDVD is the way to go, TMT3 is only good for its functions, winDVD is somewhere in the middle…

For mounting Blu-ray ISO without a physical discs, first you’ll need that famous UDF2.50 reader if you are still using winxp. powerDVD has no problem with either Alcohol 120% or Virtual CloneDrive. TMT3 don’t like Alcohol 120%. After reading around online, I think I found the explanation:

Emulation from Alcohol puts Blu-ray ISOs as a giant DVD-ROM, while from Virtual CloneDrive regards them as a BD-R; although when building the images in Imgburn, I think Imgburn still treat them as DVD-ROM.

Obtaining Blu-ray ISO:
So far, only two pieces of software are easy to use: AnyDVD HD and DVDFab HD Decrypter. AnyDVD HD can work on-the-fly, while DVDFab only works on dumping files to hard drive. After obtaining BDMV folder from the disc, the best option is to make ISO using Imgburn (I think AnyDVD HD can put ISO file directly). The reason I don’t like BDMV folder is because Blu-ray file structures are quite complicated, I don’t want to mess them up, this is especially important if you want to process m2ts in tsmuxer, eac3to later on; making an ISO will make the files read-only and not writable within the ISO so that you won’t mess up the original structure. The drawback to this is that you cannot put a srt/ssa/ssa subtitle file under the “stream” folder, load up mpc/Kmplayer/Potplayer to play the streams with subtitles. But currently the all these multimedia players are still poor at handling raw m2ts streams if there’s Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA advanced codecs, I wouldn’t worry too much of losing this convenient feature.

Before burning, to make the ISO playable in software players such as PowerDVD, you’ll need to have a complete Blu-ray structure:

BDMV
-----AUXDATA
-----BACKUP
------------BDJO
------------CLIPINF
------------JAR
------------PLAYLIST
-----BDJO
-----CLIPINF
-----JAR
-----META
-----PLAYLIST
-----STREAM
CERTIFICATE

More info HERE.

So to summarize all the above, here is the procedures:

PC:

Original Disc->AnyDVD HD(can handle BD+)/DVDFab HD->BDMV->(Complete Blu-ray structure if folders are missing)->IMGBURN UDF2.50 making ISO+MDS/BDISO->Alcohol 120% / Virtual CloneDrive mounting->PowerDVD 8 2217a HA on / TMT3 HA off (specifically used for Title/Pop-up menu captures).

PC with additional subtitle without losing menu:

It is possible at the moment with BDMV titles, some people report that they have successfully muxed in audios and subtitles into m2ts and tricked clipinf files to have a valid stream. I haven’t tried the guide yet.

PS3 without subtitle:

Mounted BDISO->TVersity with transcoding off+add BDMV folder to share->PS3 (only works on simple m2ts with LPCM, poor at handling complex Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA)

PS3 with additional subtitle:

Mounted BDISO->tsmuxer with srt subtitle/4GB cut->FAT32 USB drive->AVCHD manager/AVCHDme->PS3 (no restriction, but menu is lost).

Maximum size for blank Blu-ray discs:

BD-R
12,219,392 Sectors
25,025,314,816 bytes = 24,438,784 KB = 23,866 MB = 23.31 GB

BD-RE
11,826,176 Sectors
24,220,008,448 bytes

BD-R DL
24,438,784 Sectors
50,050,629,632 bytes
46.61 GB

BD-RE DL
23,652,352 Sectors
48,440,016,896 bytes

"If the disc is formatted with what's known as 'spare areas' for error correction etc (part of the blu-ray standard), that size will be smaller still.”

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=8315

Imgburn to turn on spare areas:

Tools-->Settings-->Write-->Prefer Format Without Spare Areas (versions after 2.4.3.0 has this on as default)

Here goes the 122509 update:

A little bit about the players troubleshooting, mainly for TMT3 going explode (causing PC immediate reboot, no BSOD, not even a chance for memory dump). So this is the third time I got hit by this, last two times I got away from it by reinstalling winxp because I did have a reason to, but this time I definitely DO NOT wish to reinstall. So I did a bit research online, and found out I’m NOT alone. The only difference is that some users were speculating about hardware+driver deficiency, while my situation is that it occurs when I installed Canopus Edius NLE on my system (so more like pure software incompatible).

Here’s the procedure I solved the problem this time:

Uninstall Canopus Edius
Uninstall Canopus codec
Uninstall TMT3 completely (manual register and folder cleaning required, see below for details)
REBOOT
Install Canopus
Install TMT3 –> Reboot –> Update to latest .160 version as of this writing –> Reboot

And miracle did happen when I did the above steps.

Details on how to clean uninstall TMT3:

Step 1: Please uninstall the program in the Control Panel. If you have other ArcSoft programs installed, please uninstall them too. Then delete the program files in "C:Program FilesArcSoftTotalMedia Theatre" folder (the installation directory).
Step 2: Delete all the files and the folders (including the hidden ones) in "C:Users<username>Application DataArcSoft" and "C:Program FilesCommon FilesArcSoft" folders.
Step 3: Double check "archlp.sys" in "C:WINDOWSsystem32drivers" has been deleted, if not, please deletes it manually.
Step 4: Clean up the registration files:
1).Go to the Vista Start menu and click in the Start Search Dialog Box, type "regedit" and press Enter.
2).Delete "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREArcSoft]" and "[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareArcSoft]" these two nodes.
Step 5: Reinstall TMT after rebooting the computer.

http://cid-6e8f6dc16096cb25.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/TheFiles/TMT_TroubleShootingGuide.pdf

Reference Links:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1118509
https://ssl.arcsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1359&PID=6030
http://www.arcsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1642&PN=3

File system:
For cars mp3 CD:

change the filesystem to ISO9660 + Joliet

Joliet is what most standalones will look for when playing MP3 / DivX discs.

Use UDF when you're burning DVD Video / HD DVD / Blu-ray discs.

 

Here goes the 01192011 update:

So at the beginning of 2011, I finally bought a Blu-ray writer - Pioneer BDR-206. Actually, I got the retailed BDR-2206, which comes with Blu-ray playback software PowerDVD and an extra case. Otherwise it’s exactly the same as the OEM BDR-206. I was a bit disappointed to find out even the 2206 didn’t include power and SATA cables. BDR-206 is more like a price-down re-release of last year’s BDR-205 rather than introducing something new. Well, there’s the BDR-206MBK which is world’s first BDXL 128GB quod layer writer… Here are some initial impression.

To go along with the writer, I ordered 5 Mitsubishi BD-RE DLs and 3 Sony BD-RE SLs on ebay which shipped from Japan, rather than going with the domestic ones which one BD-RE DL will cost a ridiculous fortune. Majority of my projects are BD50’s, I have very little use of BD25 discs.

For the BD-RE DLs, I was able to get the original packaged Mitsubishi 5 pack. The discs come with a media code TDKBLD-Wfa-000. I was a bit disappointed and was worried about the compatibility with my Playstation 3 since I read online that this specific media code doesn’t go along with the launch 60GB Playstation 3 well. But fortunately, everything went extremely smooth, I was able to play it without any problem. I’ve watched two movies all the way through without any problem. The first time of using requires a full format which takes as long as writing the discs to full which is 90 min. The data verification process takes about half of the time at 45 min. And as the instructions about imgburn above, I burned these discs with spare area without any problem.

For the Sony BD-RE SLs, I bought the re-packaging ones. These come with packaged without the case. I have no problem using these either, everything went smoothly. But I have to admit worrying about the legitimacy of these discs at first. The disc media code is SONY-ES1-002, which I believe are the same as the ones sold in US. The burning process takes exactly half of the time as BD-RE DLs since BD-RE SLs are exactly half of the size unlike DVD 5 vs DVD 9.

I’ve also burned some CDs and DVD 5s using this writer, and everything is smooth, but I’ve only got verbatim ones, can’t test anything else.

Lastly, some testings on my projects so far:

1. The projects authored in Scenarist BD has a very GOOD compatibility in PS3’s compatibility. There’s a playlist with PIP and always-on menu I had in the project, I could never get this to work in PowerDVD 10 various patches and TMT3/5, Sonic’s Scenarist QC worked to some extent, but it runs exactly as I intended in PS3! Other navigation stuff all worked correctly which exceeds my expectation. Since PS3 DVD’s playback has some quirks, I’m a bit overjoyed.

2. The current top menu audio switching isn’t very smooth, I need to change it to switch at the end of the playlist rather than switching right away.

3. The picture in the metadata, as shown above, needs to have much larger texts. The two picture size are only 640*360 and 416*240.

4. Return button might need to use a second button in BOG to turn off popup menu, otherwise the menu would stick on screen until the title is jumped.

Dec 2010 BD Purchase – impulse buy

 

    

Not much going on in December, didn’t plan to buy any BDs anyway since I got plenty stuff to watch… But the two limited editions from bestbuy is hard to resist… I got these 2 for cheap due to their price error. Hellboy II, I got hellboy I, watched it, didn’t really get into it, I hope II be at least watchable. Coraline seems quite similar in style with Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride from the Free 5 disc offer back in the days. Coraline has at least four releases now, one regular BD, one LE, one anaglyph 3D, and now a true 3D is the most recent one, the one I got here is the LE gift set version with both the 2D and anaglyph 3D

.

Product Review master post

 

HOT SUMMER - Some accessories to keep hard drive cool / OR external Rack Mounts?	PowerDVD 10 Review
Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 Review (01-16-2011 Update)	Win7 Installation Thoughts v2
Diamond USB PC to PC File Transfer Device Review	TOSHIBA Satellite L505-S5990 Notebook Review
Playstation 3 as a media hub - how good is it? Part I -- Official bluetooth remote control review	SONY RM-AX1400 Remote Control Review
Canon A560 test -- Self-made sandwich	My little gadget -- Palm TUNGSTEN E2 review
Something worth to buy -- APC UPS general review	My redemption -- HP dv2000t notebook review (Two HP bought around the same time, both died in less than one year. Lessons learned, never buy HP laptop again!!!)