okay, here is my pain in the ass, extremely first world diamond shoe problem, which I am trying to solve without making any purchases. or at least not a major one.

1. I have an HD tivo in the living room with a cable card, so that it recieves digital cable and the pay channels.

2. I have a series 2 tivo with a DVD burner in the bedroom, but it's connected to an old tv with an RF adapter, so I have only one set of RF inputs.

3. I own a laptop with a DVD burner, using Windows DVD maker.

My problem? I would like to burn DVDs of tivo recordings. Thus far, this has been impossible because

1. If I transfer a recording from the living room tivo to the bedroom (dvd burner) tivo, the machine automatically copyright protects the transfer so that it cannot be burned.

2. I can download the recording to the laptop, but the format is incompatible with the DVD burner, and wants me to buy $100 Roxio software. I figured this out after ruining 3 or 4 DVDs

3. Because of the RF adapter, I cannot hook up both the tivo and the digital cable box to be able to record shows on the DVD burning tivo.

Suggestions? Hacks? Freeware?

This might help, Vortex. It "converts TiVo files into standard mpeg2 files which can then be used to produce a playable DVD."

It's not free, Vortex, but I use VideoReDo to convert the .tivo files. There's a free trial to try, and frankly I found it so useful that to me it was worth the $$.

(Other than the issues I've been having with Nero, but I think that's really a codec issue.)

Ailleann, do you do anything other than burn tivo DVDs?

I was also thinking of upgrading to the tivotogo plus or whatever. It's only $25 and it will convert stuff for viewing on the iPod. Of course, I have no room on the iPod, so the point is kind of moot.

I haven't used VideoReDo for anything other than dealing with .tivo files. I haven't had much need for a lot of video edit capabilities other than that, and I have DVD burning software for other things. I will say that the editing controls are very easy to use for the VideoReDo, so I think it would be good for people who don't want to futz too much, or don't need a high-powered editing program with a lot of bells and whistles.

I've done a lot of browsing on some Tivo message boards (trying to find answers for my codec problem), so if you feel like spending time googling there's a decent chance you'll find a free program that will do the same thing.

I haven't used VideoReDo for anything other than dealing with .tivo files.

If all you want to do is convert the files to something burnable, then my (free software) link above does the trick quite nicely.

Anyone have any problems with the latest version of VLC?

I tried uploading it to my new laptop (reconditioned Thinkpad, Windows XP) and while it runs fine, EVERYONE IS BLUE. It looks like Scenes from Blue Man Group no matter what video I try to play.

Windows Media Player works fine, so I'm thinking it's *not* a problem with the machine itself, or the video card.

Any ideas? Is there any way to upload an older version of VLC? That's what I had on the old machine, and I never had a problem with it, but as far as I can tell the DL links are only to the newest version. Help?

Did y'all know there's manga about ubuntu?

x-post w/Natter:

Worst abuse of Flash evah? International Congress of Churches & Ministers

That reminds me ... I'm in a situation where I'm going to be taking over primary responsibility for my employer's web site. We're an association for the design and construction industry and our front page has a large image of a project that won an award in our annual competition. They're "rotating" in the sense that every time someone visits the front page, it's a different picture; as long as they remain on the page, the image is the same.

We've had kind of a free for all situation - everyone's been able to make any changes they wanted to (yes, that worked out about as well as you'd expect). Two of the people who've been doing a lot of the work have been doing things like putting up high-res graphics, putting the entire text of items on the front page, etc. Yes, that's going to change.

Now ... one of them suggested that in place of the stationery image we have a Flash file of the various images, so that they change while someone's on the page.

I'm trying to get the site set up so that people who don't have access to a lot of bandwidth, or are viewing the site on a BlackBerry or some such, will be able to get information, if not all the pretty pictures.

Can anyone help me pose more - or better - arguments against the Flash movie? eesh ....