Thank you Ginger. I just have to say I found that question impossible to google!

I'm looking into Blu Ray again. I want a player that plays all regions of DVDs, since a large part of my collection is international. I've found a list here, but what I can't tell is if any of those players actually don't suck.

What's the basic bottom line for a decent, forward looking Blu Ray player in terms of stats? And what's a reasonable cost? My TV is only 720p, so that's not a big deal.

Depends - any newish Blu-ray player will generally do fine for Blu-ray playing. You might want one with a little bit of built-in storage for fancy downloadable content things, though I've yet to use that feature myself. The main difference between low-end and high-end, near as I can tell, are video/audio quality things you're unlikely to be able to see and extra features: streaming options, video decoding capabilities, and built-in wireless. I use all of the last three, so I bought a high-end player (around $300 when I bought it, similar ones are closer to $200 now) but you should be able to go cheaper.

Basically, if you don't need the streaming decoding stuff, I'd grab the cheapest DVD player on that list that fits your region needs. If you can figure out how to unlock it yourself, I'd go ahead and buy one from newegg or whomever and then do it yourself, though, rather than paying markup though that company you linked to.

If I were you, ita, I think I'd probably go ahead and get the Sony BDP-S470 or BDP-S570 and a One4All universal remote and use this region-free hack: [link] (it apparently works on BDP-S??0 remotes)

Total cost < $250, lots of streaming options, etc.

ita, for region-free hacks, you should look here. It might widen your list of possibilities.

Whoah. That's a hell of a list. Confusingly, not everything on it has a hack. Some of the hack comments are just "How do I hack this?" But it will give me a good reference.

I'm trying to bypass the onboard mic on my iSight camera, and use the Snowball mic ND hipped me to ages ago.

I hear Quicktime Pro might accomplish this.

Has anyone used QTP for video podcasting or similar? I'm not loving iMovie and will gladly pay the freight, but I'd like to know that it works for importing sound and is, in general, easier to use.

Any thoughts?

Thought I'd share. I have a digital mixer at work that is basically a big control surface conncted to a computer running windows. Seems the big control surface didn't want to work today. The head unit (computer) looked like it was turning on, but nothing came up on the screen, and the faders didn't initialize. I call tech support. I open the front panel to see a bunch of PCI cards. He tells me to reach in, past the PCI cards, and to the right of the processor, and unseat the RAM sticks, and reseat them. Then push down gently on the CPU fan to make sure it's seated properly. Viola! The puppy booted just fine. Crazy. Since all that stuff was in the back, and reaching through tons of ribbon cable and such, it felt like the triceratops scene in the Jurassic Park movie. Fun! (but less messy)

Attempt number 2, in correct thread:

I realize this is a long shot, but does anyone here have Sibelius installed?

Edit: I think I'm sorted, though I'm still curious.

R.I.P. Google Wave [link]