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Star Trek BluRay - with digital copy.I, along with the many people, found JJ Abhrams reinventing of Star Trek a great time. So much so I felt it more than worthy to be added to my small physical media collection. To my surprise, the pictures studio, Paramount Pictures, has started including a digital copy of the their films free. Each BluRay copy comes with a third DVD and note with a unique key printed on it.

I thought it would no doubt involve some horrible DRM and playback system, no doubt dropped or outdated a year from now. You can no doubt believe my surprise that the code really is really just a redeem code for iTunes Store. If you brought the movie in iTunes separately you’d be looking at $24.99.

The DVD contains an autoplay menu which offers links to either to copy the film in Windows Media or iTunes, by choosing iTunes you are taken straight into the Store and where you enter your code. You’ll need to download for that copy but the disc does include necessary WMV files – strangely there are 2. I can’t tell you much more with Windows being Windows just before copying the file I am told that I require security component update and it was required before installing. I clicked the link and sent to a page on the domain drmlicense.one.microsoft.com which offered little information and a single button that couldn’t be pressed. Shortly after Internet Explorer crashed. Good one. I spent a few minutes trying to find the update I’m looking for but its never stated and MS don’t really promote the DRM side of things too loudly.

Star Trek BluRay - Menu…Star Trek BluRay - DRM Windows Media Errors

As far as the iTunes side goes, iTunes downloads as a 1.96GB M4V file, and uses FairPlay3 DRM which allows for syncing to up to 5 iPhones, iPods, AppleTV’s and the other computers linked to your iTunes account. Video wise, the file has a frame size of 640×352, 2052kbps H264 and audio comes in 5.1 AC3 (strangely QuicktimeX lists only 2 channels though). The file also includes chapter marks with thumbnails and can be played in Quicktime or iTunes.

It’s disappointing to not be a more standard 720 frame width, and of course no one likes DRM – but lets be honest, offering the movie in the first place is a good sign. Instantly I can use the film in a usable way outside of my PS3 and couch. I doubt I will ever watch it on my phone, but offering it in more than one format, shows the studio trying to be far more inclusive in the end usage process.

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I used to be a big Outlook user, finding it the only PIM client that kept my life even slightly sorted. I was so tied to Outlook that when I first brought my Intel based Mac, I quickly installed the beta release of Boot Camp, XP and got Outlook going. For the first couple of months of owning a Mac, I ran Windows almost exclusively.
Outlooks IMAP support has always been my single biggest peev. That, and its continued use of a single PST file for all data storage. There a lot of good reasons to not use a single file db, mainly if it corrupts you could loose ALL your previous history from emails to contacts. I have seen more than one person just about cry when they loose all their digital lives thanks to a Windows reinstall and not seeing their well hidden PST file deep in the documents & settings folders.

Of course Outlook being a Microsoft program, export options are nonexistent, unless you wanted to move to, say, Outlook. If so then no worries.
There are commercial applications that can take care of this whole process but I like to do things the free, slightly harder way – so for you all here is a compilation of various steps to take a large PST file to a complete export to iCal, Address Book and Mail.app (or other standard supporting applications on other platforms).
These steps are for Windows XP and Outlook 2007, but should be the same or very similar on Vista.

Getting your email to Mail.app.
This is originally from Schwie’s Pad’s blog post, refined by myself.

  • First you’ll need a copy of Outlook Express installed on your XP machine. In our case we’re going to use it as a conversion tool and not the just the shittiest email client ever. I would recommend a virgin setup of Outlook Express.
  • Open Outlook Express, it should detect your other Outlook profile and ask if you want to import the profile. If it doesn’t detect Outlook, you can import your mail manually. Under the File menu, choose Import, Messages. Choose Microsoft Outlook.
  • Choose the default profile and then choose selected folders and choose any folders that have email in them. You can use CTRL to select multiple folders. You do not need to choose contacts or calendars, that is done via other workarounds below.
    Import Outlook Profile to Express
  • It should spend sometime slurping through your emails and bringing them into Outlook Express.
  • Once they are all imported, we now need to access the Outlook Express .dbx email files, these are stored in your Documents & Setting folder on your system drive (probably C:\). Best plan is to enable hidden files (via Tools menu, properties) and then go through the folders from C:\ – in my case it was – C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{D54D6AEB-503D-49E3-BD59-11545746A4D2}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
    The two italicized names can be different but you should be able to get there.
  • Now you’ll need a little command line app by Ulrich Krebs called DbxConv.exe. It’s freeware and available here. Extract the zip into you Outlook Express folder you just found. This program will convert your email folders from MS’s dbx format to the standard mbox format.
  • Open command line via the Start Menu and Run command – from here type CMD.
  • Now for the tricky bit, as command line was designed from the days of 8.3 file names theres no real easy way to get your way to a folder buried deep in windows file system – I have discovered though if you type “cd ” and then drag the folder icon in the address bar of explorer to the line in command line, it will insert the full folder address in to the  command. Press enter and you should be in the same folder as the files you need to convert.Insert address in to dos command promptResulting command
  • Now in command prompt type this command – dbxconv -mbx *.dbx
  • Depending on the size of your original pst file it could take a while (up to 20mins). You will see few failed items that don’t convert (such as Contacts, calendars, Folders and Offline), you will not need these.
    Congratulations – your email is now in a format all reasonable email clients should use – mbox. From here you aren’t just limited to Mail.app, other clients support mbox including (ironically) Microsofts own version of Outlook for the Mac, Entourage and the opensource Thunderbird.

Getting your mail into Mail.app

  • From here you’ll want to get your newly created mbx files from windows to your OS-X install. I would recommend taking only the mbox files of previous email folders you want – Inbox.mbx and Sent.mbx being the obvious choices.
  • Now with them on your Mac, open Mail.app. If this is your first time opening Mail.app, setup your email accounts as you need. Once you’re all done there open Import Mailboxes from the File menu.
  • Choose mbox files and navigate to the folder with your converted mbox emails in them. You can select miltiple mbox files which will be imported as separate folders into Mail.app.
  • A progress bar later and you should find an IMPORTED folder, and you can now move them as you need to.

Exporting your contacts from Outlook to Address Book
Originally from macosxhints.
As you may have figured out by now, Microsoft makes it as difficult as possible to escape their Office/Exchange ecosystem, either by not including export options or making it as much a convoluted process as they can. For this we will make the files we need by faking an email with all your contacts as attachments – smart.
You can export individual contacts to a vcf file by selecting the contact and choosing Save As under the file menu. This is great for a couple of contacts but not those of us with 1000 odd contacts –

  • Switch to contacts view in Outlook, Select All contacts (or just the contacts you want to take with you) and the under the Actions menu, Send Full Contacts and then In Internet Format (*.vcf).
    Send Outlook Contacts as vcf files.
  • Outlook should then make a new email with attachments of all you contacts as usable VCF files. You could email that to yourself but if you have quite a few contacts, it’s best to copy the files out the unsent email and into a folder to move manually. Click on one of the vcf file icons in the attachment panes and select all. Drag its icon to an folder in an explorer window.
  • From here you need to get the folder of vcf files to you mac, open Address Book and drag all the vcf’s on to the Address Book window.

Getting your calendar
This is actually the easiest part of the process.

  • Switch to calendar view in Outlook and select the calendar you want to export.
  • Under the File menu, choose Save As. ical format should be the default.
  • Choose more options and set the date range as Whole Calendar, detail on Full, leave the advanced options unticked.Save as ical format in Outlook dialogue
  • Save.
  • Again, get the resulting files on to your mac, and then open iCal.
  • Choose File, Import and choose Import and iCal file
  • You’ll be asked if you want to merge with a previous calendar or make a new one.
  • Rinse & repeat if you have more calendars.

Things that don’t export/import.
Tasks! although these can be imported as an email folder via the Outlook Express method although tasks will be turned into emails as far as Mail.app is concerned.

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GTA IV DLC <br /> The Lost & DamnedI’m eagerly awaiting the release of GTAIV’s first DLC content The Lost & Damned, as I’m sure many are. Microsoft paid a pretty penny for the exclusive rights to the first DLC release. So next Monday, 14 Feb, we could possibly see the biggest DLC release too date for any platform and I, along with millions of others will be rushing online to get their fill of new stuff in a tired Nico Ballic world.
I’m not sure why you would release an addon on a Monday, as a Thrusday / Friday release would have proved to be good days but hey its Microsoft. The obvious sometimes eludes them.

Originally this post was going to be a moan about the stupidity of a globally standard pricing structure. 1 world, 1 price system but in reality is 1 world, yet many differenct costs for said pricing system.

Microsoft has gone on record as saying they think the user wants a standard pricing structure the world over, as its easier to deal with and for them easier to promote. Um, yeah. Thats what Walt Mossberg thought too (FYI The Zune uses the same points as the 360)

“To buy even a single 99 cent song from the Zune store, you have to purchase blocks of “points” from Microsoft, in increments of at least $5. You can’t just click and have the 99 cents deducted from a credit card, as you can with iTunes. [..] So, even if you are buying only one song, you have to allow Microsoft, one of the world’s richest companies, to hold on to at least $4.01 of your money until you buy another.”

You would think with the NZ dollar tanking, that if anything we would be paying more than America, but somehow it isn’t the case. So as I hunted around trying to get the cheapest live points I could, I discovered inconsistancies in per point worth depending on where you get them from, and strangely found the cheapest place to get MS Points is from MS themselves! Not only that, but you have more point options as you can buy packs of points from XBOX.COM in 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 lots.

The cost of The Lost & Damned is 1600 Live Points. I did some hunting around and found:

1500 Points @ Dick Smith $29.95 = 2c p. 1 MS Point
2000 Points on XBOX.COM $NZ33 = 1.6c p. 1 MS Point
1600 Points @ Amazon.com $US19.49 = $NZ37.72 = 2.3c p. 1 MS Point
Lost & Damned Retail Box @ Gamestop USA $US19.99 = $NZ38.68
The Lost & Damned can be picked up for 25% less than American gamers. In Your Face.

I suppose the biggest jib of all this though, is that in NZ you can’t even buy 1600 point cards (as you can in America) so you will need to buy 2x 1500 points cards to have enough to buy a 1600 points addon. There are no lower point cards in NZ anymore so basically if you follow the most obvious process to get the addon (Buy addon card, load code, use points to buy addon) you get screwed. Thanks Microsoft, for taking something simple, then making it overly complex and at the same time, ripping off your users a little.

Of course I should also mention how last week I purchased WipeoutHD for my PS3 which uses real money and charges your credit card in a real currency $NZ33.90. Not too hard to understand, and possibly a little easier than the “Need 1600 points, can only buy 1500 points” deal Microsoft offers.

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I received an unexpected email welcoming me to the 2nd batch of NXE (New Xbox Experience) testers on the weekend, and thought I would share my thoughts, from a NZ perspective. I fit snugly in the average game console owner. I’m not a hardcore gamer. I don’t have a Gold Live! account, I don’t feel I have enough spare time to play online regularly. So with that in mind, how is it?

The first impression I get with the NXE is a reorganization, a redesign and more than anything a re-emphasis to the 360 interface. There’s not really anything ground breaking, the re-emphasis all being towards Microsoft’s Live! platform and the services around it.


You’d think when you log in to your machine this would be the first menu…….

Interface
Suffice to sat it works. It’s a nicer, pettier version of much of what we’ve all used.
Sadly there’s very little customization – your previous themes have been turned into mere backgrounds. There’s no way of making a menu based on what you use often over what Microsoft wants me to see.
I’m yet to discover a way of making the first menu opened on boot as the MyXbox menu, it instead defaults to the Spotlight menu – which is basically a section of advertisements (see a pic below).
The amount of XBOX Live! ads now present is now over the top. In the old Blade system ads were displayed on a panel ad on the right and that’s all you would mostly see – now, thanks to its new found 3D menu, Live ads can go off into infinity and almost every ‘section’ has some sort of ad for either a game add-on or LiveArcade game.
Also some old interface annoyances turn up in dark corners, one personal peev is that in my house there are 4 profiles on my machine, my girlfriend has one, along with housemates past and present – yet I am near the bottom of the profile list, I don’t want to autologin but do login in a lot more than anyone else.

Another interesting thing, last week some news popped up that half of the features originally planned for NXE were dropped (*cough* Longhorn *cough*). Infact some demo’d already have been dropped – PrimeTime, an Xbox Live based online game show program co-developed with Endemol creators of shows such as Big Brother and Fear Factor. It’s meant to be a more social gaming section, with less one player and more emphasis on multiplayer.


This is the default menu to the new NXE. Advertisment city.

Game Installs
Awesome – we can all finally hear our games and not the DVD drive (easily the 360’s biggest flaw beside RROD’s). This is a mildly ingenious way around a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Interestingly this shows that some parts of the old XBOX has been used in 360 games XBE’s from day one – ie Playfrommedia switch. From what I imagine, the 360 rips the entire game, patches the XBE to allow execution off HD and then uses a quick NXE based check for original media before executing.
Sadly game start times haven’t shown a huge improvement in early tests which makes the main motivation for installing games only really a noise improvement.

Avatars
This is like the Wii’s Mii’s but in HD, and as with your Mii’s you can have a great laugh trying to create yourself on the new system. Face and body shapes and features are adequate and clothing options are good, but not fantastic. My fear is that we’ll be paying for many new outfits, jewelery and hair do’s. I wonder will Game dev’s offer items of clothing via games – will I be able to get Master Chiefs armor? or favourite bands Tee via Rock Band? who knows.

What does seem sad though is that in someways this doesn’t quite go far enough – with Playstation Home being only a few months away Microsoft would have been well placed to include a few Avatar friendly mini games in NXE. It would have caught up with some of the Wii’s instant ‘I wanna play as me!’ aspect that you get with Mii’s and Wii Sport. Along with the fact Home will be offering bowling alleys and other basic social games – yet on the NXE (for now) what you get is a 3D customizable profile picture and little more. Games are in development that support Avatars – so far only a couple have been announced Scene It? Box Office Smash will add support (via an update) and cutesy SimCity clone A Kingdom for Keflings.

Media
If anything, the 360’s media capabilities have been downgraded in importance. Which is surprising as it is a terribly import part of any console beingbe the centre of your lounge (something even more the case now we have drums and guitars lying around).
Of course this shows if anything a huge ideological difference between Microsoft and Sony.
Sure, the two systems interfaces look completely different, but they both fundamentally offer almost identical features and end uses. Sadly I think this is still done best on the PS3’s XMB, with it’s Music/Pictures/Games/Online/Friends system. It keeps it simple, yet offers a wider section of uses.

The Music playback interface still blows, no new visualizations, no cover views, it seems to take 4 (Music Source->Albums->Album Name->Play All) clicks to get things playing when two should do.
There’s also some things missing, the ability to actually get your non Microsoft media on to the console – in a time of DRM there should be an easy way of moving/backing up your iPod/Zune/Harddrive to the 360’s music library – nope. Importing is still CD only.


The same as the old one but different colours……

Another big disappointment is the 360’s video playback has seen no improvements, AAC/MPEG-4 files still require a separate download and force you login to Live to playback files in those formats. The codecs package aren’t installed by default, even though it has been over a year since the update was released. Also, when I tried to see if clips I knew used to play, often wouldn’t, despite flawless playback previously – see pic.


NXE ERROR

Finally, media serving via uPnP from other sources over a network is still borked, with Microsoft still sticking to it’s nonstandard version of uPnP – meaning devices that are detectable on the PS3 and numerous other supporting devices – still fail to appear on the 360.

Add to this that one of the killer new features, Netflix, is of course tied and limited to North America. I can’t imagine Microsoft working with other companies to offer other markets to offer alternatives. Of course if Apple can offer movies via iTunes NZ then I’m sure Microsoft will planning to offer something similar sooner or later.

Over it
It’s in this end the new interface actually goes slightly backwards, all too much of the update push you to Live! and recommends and hypes Live! content – often even when you may have turned on your 360 to watch a movie or to just listen to an album.
This update hasn’t addressed the other and possibly far more serious threat – the PlayStation 3.

While not perfect, the PlayStation 3 still offers a much better package for someone who might buy just one console.
Add Sony’s short term plans of releasing a NZ compatible FreeviewHD PVR, Sony Home, and it’s more compatible media offerings, I can only see them continuing to strengthen their base.

If someone asked me which console to buy, and they said they wanted play a few games possibly online, watch movies, play music, I just can’t see any reasons to choose a 360 over it’s slightly more expensive competitor.  And I think that’s where Microsoft have an issue.

Microsoft have possibly the best games console out there – but don’t have any of the cherries that sweeten the deal.

Ups
Avatars
Installing Games = less noise.
Nicer interface design (not much better though, just nicer).
New OS = New bugs, Exploits?

Downs
XBOX LIVE Ads everywhere.
No web browser.
Media playback still lacking. no MKV, no MOV, no AC3, very hit and miss on what will actually play, even when it looks like it should. Still no true DLNA uPnP support.
No favourites menu or ability to turn off any live ads.
If you don’t play online or live in the USA there’s not as much new shit as you’d have hoped.
DRM implementation still looking as bad as ever.

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Over the last 2 or so years I have witnessed the slow demise of yet another format that saw Microsoft no doubt spend millions on developing. Windows Media Video (WMV) has been a relatively safe format to deliver video content to users as it offered good compression along with pretty much guaranteed compatibilty. Doing post production myself I often have to email a quick proof and would generally use WMV. It worked. It Played – as long as the person recieving it had a PC.
Yet Redmond, with it’s infinite wisdom, decided to kill Mac support in early 2006 and then leave it to a 3rd party to continue offering playback support, via Flip4Mac. No DRM support but 99% of WMV content plays. It does the job. Of course the irony is it now plays in Quicktime, and not the ugly Windows Media Player for Mac.

Here’s a post from a zdnet blog post on the discontiunueing of WMPlayer for OS-X:

….the decision to halt work on Windows Media Player for the Mac was a matter of prioritizing for Microsoft’s Windows Media unit.

“It’s basically a business decision for Microsoft,” Anderson said. “Like any other company, we have business priorities. Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers.”

Sure. You want to keep it real. Microsoft has an operating system and want it to be a feature to support playback of your awesome video format. Everyone else can go screw themselves.

But seriously, do they really think a format they hope would displace the original AVI container format (and possibly Quicktime), can really win if it doesn’t work everywhere. I’d argue making sure it’s as ubiquitous as it can be is one of the main selling points. That means it must be platform agnostic. It’s worked for PDF, MP3 – it could have worked for WMV.

Windows Media Page @ Microsoft - Circa 2002
A clipping of Microsofts Windows Media page in 2002

Via iTunes on Windows, Apple has managed to slip Quicktime on nearly every windows computer – and via that promoted (for better or for worse) it’s other Windows applicaitions. Microsoft could have had this same ‘in’ on Mac’s and Linux machines but for sake of “delivering the best experience for Windows Customers” it doesn’t.

Of course hindsight is a great thing, and even in 2006 I don’t think we could gaurantee that DiVX/XViD/MPEG4 would become the default format of video distribution on the internet and the widespread adoption of Bittorent for media sharing. Heck – we could be downloading files with the RV/RMVB extension now instead – or even *gasp* WMV – but we don’t – it’s all AVI. Fine AVI a orginally a Microsoft format but I don’t think you could say its in anyway controlled or even promoted by Redmond.

But this isn’t the only format that Microsoft is killing by it’s pigheadedness – lets not forget MODI – Microsoft Office Document Imaging – MODI was introduced and installed by default in Office 2003 but was dropped by Office 2007 – it was a format that could have competed with the functionality of PDF but because Microsoft kept the format proprietry and only offered supported for it within that install it never went anywhere. The legacy of MODI is still around – anyone upgrading to 2007 or still just using Office 2003 will find an extra printer installed – a printer they neither really chose to install, explained to what it did and I gaurantee will ever use. The technology did eventually end up becaming part of Metro and then finally XPS, which on top of being a file distribution format is the foundation of Vista’s printing subsystem.

This is of course a direct copy of OS-X’s Postscript based printing subsystem – which is also the basis of PDF. Postscript & PDF are the industry standard for printing – on all platforms. Because of this ubiqutousness, one things for sure – XPS will never truely offset PDFs domince. Everyone can open files in the PDF format. The same can’t be said for XPS – as of writing, and 2 years since it’s launch, I could only spot 1 application that lets you view/edit XPS on a Mac and is a bargin at $US99 (not) and no support at all for Linux. Not a good way to get people onboard you’re awesome new format MS.

Microsoft is the king of failed formats.

P.S. One last bitch –
Of course with the eventual failure of MODI/XPS, it would be good to see implementing system wide PDF support in Vista. I doubt that will ever happen though. Instead every man and his dog will continue to have to go off to Adobe.com and download Acrobat reader – giving another company an ‘in’ to the Microsoft system. I’m not condoning anti competitive behaviour, more that if Microsoft had much interest in improving the end user experience and if everyone has to install PDF support – then shouldn’t it be on the list of needed features in Windows 7?

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XBOX 360 Fun
Pic from Splitreason.com

I just read this article over at Venture Beat, and I must say it paints a pretty bleak picture of the XBOX 360 design process. To sum it up, Microsoft cut too many corners, rushed the thing to market and at launch had a failure rate of 68%!!! Yes more 360’s were made that just didn’t work than actually did – and they just kept on shippin’ them.

Fast forward 2 years and after enjoying over a year of flawless play on my flatmates beige model, I finally brought a 360 Elite – I was willing to spend a little more on the Elite as I wanted HDMI, a  black case and theoretically a newer design that would be quieter/more reliable. Fat Chance on that last one. My Elite last 2 weeks until its first crash and then only 2 weeks later it died completely. So for my $800 I got to enjoy 2 weeks of play, 2 weeks of on and off play and then 3 weeks of waiting. Add  the cost of me shipping it to an AKL Airport based address, not a big cost but seriously – I had to pay for something that was not my doing. Interestingly I found it was shipped to Sydney for ‘repair’. For that I got a free month of Live Gold – whoppee.

Since the repair I’ve had no issues thankfully but the more I think about it the more I’ve gone off Microsoft’s console. I’m not rushing out to buy games and theres no way I’m spending $80 a year for Live Gold. Infact I was ever slightly pissed that I couldn’t download the Force Unleashed demo when it came out and instead have to wait a week to get it – which is a Gold ‘feature’.

Things that are good about my 360 –
It’s Black (is this even a feature??)
The controllers are the best weight/layout.

Things that REALLY suck –
Noise from DVD drive
Reliability
Lack of support of true DLNA uPnP – which makes DIVX support more of a gimmick than a usable feature.
Noise from DVD Drive (seriously it’s that noisy).