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William Matheson's Journal
Aug. 7th, 2008
09:13 pm - Psst... wanna movie coupon?
If anyone is planning to go to a movie at Empire Theatres with a friend in the next little while, you might be interested in this "one for me, one for free" coupon. It's literally just a publicly-accessible JPEG file; you print it out, and off you go. Ostensibly it's for joining "Empire Insider" but since the file is unprotected as of this writing, anyone can just download and print it. Have fun! [It's valid until September 10th. It's not valid on Tuesdays. (because they're cheaper days anyway?)]
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hungryMar. 23rd, 2008
12:12 pm - Artifact
Artifact is now fully deployed on willmatheson.com and YouTube.
I had hoped to get it up on Google Video too, but Google Video was belligerent. The in-browser upload form wouldn't work at all, and the uploading program would work sometimes - but when it did work (about 50% of the time), the uploaded videos wouldn't appear in my account. I even made up a new Google account and tried doing everything again in the most proper ways, waited several hours, and it still didn't work. I've been trying to get Artifact and the Seven Years featurette onto Google Video since Thursday - Google Video has a higher potential for quality, since it will theoretically accept uploads that are both larger than 100MB and longer than ten minutes - but now I officially give up.
That being said, the movie is uploaded to willmatheson.com, where it's available for download. (Windows Media, 844Mb) There's also a 100Mb version, and downloads and YouTube windows of the other features - it's all at the new mini-website. You can even poke the download links into Windows Media Player if you'd prefer to stream them (use the "Open URL..." command), and this can shorten your wait time a little bit since you can watch the beginning before you finish downloading the end.
The downloadable versions are of much higher higher quality than their YouTube counterparts (they're barely distinguishable from the DVD versions), and they're highly recommended if you want to sit back and really enjoy the movie.
And that's the note I'd like to end on. Enjoy!
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pleasedMar. 4th, 2007
10:16 am - DVD region unlock: Dell Inspiron 6400 or any pc with DVD drive SONY DVD+-RW DW-Q58A *or* LiteOn
I'm pretty pleased with my Dell notebook, and last night I decided to play a DVD in it. I had played a DVD in it before, of course, but the particular movie then happened to be region-free.
This one was a Region 1, as are most of the ones we in North America tend to come across. The Dell MediaDirect player prompted me to change the regional setting on the player. Naturally, you're limited to five resettings, after which you're SOL and stuck on the final regional setting. So I resolved to work around this, especially since the DVD region system is tyranny, and serves no useful purpose whatsoever.
(You may be able to extrapolate SOME of this information for your own purposes, if you don't own a machine quite like mine.)
1. First, you need to find out the make and model of your DVD drive. In Windows XP, you normally go to My Computer, right-click on the drive, hit properties, and check the hardware tab. You should see your make and model listed there. (For more details, you can select it and hit the properties button, and there will be a Regions tab (or something like that) where you can see the number of changes remaining.)
2. Now you need to search for it - in my case, using search terms like "region unlock SONY DVD+-RW DW-Q58A".
3. Then I got lucky and found a result from the forums at The Firmware Page, and did a "find in page" search (Ctrl+F) for DW-Q58A, actually found it (!!), and that the drive was manufactured by LiteOn, and someone made a utility to disable the region counter on LiteOn drives! Wow!
4. So I download and use said utility - it does require that a DVD movie be in your drive - and hit "Query..." (for curiosity's sake) and then "Disable." That's all! Now my DVD drive itself is region free.
5. Unfortunately, we're not out of the woods yet. We have to disable the software side of the region system. For instance, putting that Region 1 DVD on with MediaDirect just made the region select option come up again.
Your specific options depend on which operating system and playback software you use, but what worked for me (Win XP Pro SP2 in conjunction with Dell MediaDirect) was DVD Region Killer, which runs in the system tray. (I suppose it's the DVD equivalent of Game Genie or Pro Action Replay! =) j/k
DVD Region Killer was a snap. It was a matter of installing, rebooting, and right-clicking on its red globe icon on the system tray and clicking "Enable DVD Region Killer." I slipped that Region 1 DVD back in, and it played perfectly. I'm playing regionalized DVDs now, even though my DVD drive still hasn't been set for a region. And that's the way it should be.
So, to summarize:
- For notebooks with Sony DVD+-RW DW-Q58A drives (or anyone with a LiteOn drive), all you need to do is download and run LtnRPC as described, then obtain a software workaround for your software DVD player, such as DVD Region Killer.
- As far as Dell MediaDirect is concerned, I am solely referring to its use within Windows. I would like to test its supra-Windows functionality, but I think MediaDirect relies on specific parition and boot settings that I bulldozed back when I was trying to use use Ubuntu (a popular Linux distribution). So my MediaDirect power button now simply shows the MediaDirect splash logo before loading Windows normally. Anyway, I assume it would not be able to play regonalized discs, as my software workaround runs from the Windows system tray. I'm not really disappointed, either, because my Windows boots in 45 seconds anyway.
- In any case, try to avoid the temptation to pay for a DVD solution; there's usually a free workaround, and yours may be as easy as mine.
pleasedJan. 27th, 2007
02:31 am - William Matheson's "The Artifact"
In case anyone's interested, the "epic" 2000 masterpiece thing then dubbed "William Matheson's 'The Artifact'" is now available on both willmatheson.com (where you can even save it and keep it, if you like) and on YouTube (in the director's account).
It shows its age and it needs to have about 45 minutes cut out of it, but recent advances in both bandwidth and video codecs have prevented this from becoming a lost classic. =) Michael Kidson was going to do a Pop-Up Video-like lampoon of the numerous errors in continuity and sound design (anyone want to count the number of times they hear me talking on the track?), which would have been pretty cool. He did, however, write this:
THIS IS YOUR ONE WARNING!
This is a very cheap, very bad movie, and should not be downloaded by anyone ever.
If you get brave and decide to watch this, I am in no way responsible for
1. concussions
2. broken bones
3. Insanity
4. Death
5. Spontaneous combustion
6. Strange dreams
7. Blindness
8. Detatched retinas
Enjoy, and blame Will.
That about says it. (You can also see pictures of the cast and from the production here.)
accomplished