Apple - Discussions - DVD Player and/or drive craps out on DVDs
Interesting discussion. It looks like this might be a fairly new problem -- either 10.3.4 or a bit earlier. On some machines DVD playback stutters about 1/2 to 3/4 way through commercial movies. I wonder about a CD/DVD driver problem. Doesn't appear to be hardware related.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
OS X 10.3.4 intermittent system freezes (iTunes, others): VM and HFS issue
MacInTouch 8/3/04
Rohan Lloyd nailed down a widespread Mac OS X freezing problem [discussed in our iTunes reports], which is apparently a known Apple bug, and noted his workaround:
The 'iTunes Freeze' that some readers are experiencing (well described by Jim Pollock) sounds like a problem I have experienced that is not related to iTunes.
I recently started getting system freezes with the same symptoms (system would hang, iTunes would periodically play about 5 seconds, mouse would move but nothing else)
I reported the problem to Apple, they got me to get a kernel stack trace when it happened and confirmed that it was a known problem related to VM and HFS that they are working on.
It's got nothing to do with iTunes, it's just that iTunes has a realtime thread playing audio that periodically runs out of data and has to wait till a non realtime thread fills up the buffer from disk. (at least that's my guess at what's happening)
About the same time I downloaded and tried out hfsdebug. When I look at the Volume header of my root volume:
$ sudo hfsdebug -v -V /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
I saw that it had 'serious inconsistencies'
kHFSVolumeInconsistent (volume has serious inconsistencies)
After a backup/re-format/restore over a week ago, I haven't had the problem again (fingers crossed).
Monday, August 02, 2004
Apple - Discussions - DVD Player 4.0 skipping and stuttering during commercial movie playback
Apple - Discussions - DVD Player and/or drive craps out on DVDs: "DVD suttering halfway through disk ( msg # 4.: Posted Aug 2, 04 4:24 pm ) New!
I'm using 10.3.4 on an iBook 600. I played quite a few commercial DVDs on this machine using 10.2.x. Yesterday, for the first time, I tried to play a commercial DVD using 10.3.4.
Shrek was fine half-way through. Then it began stuttering severely. It was unwatchable. I never saw an error message. The DVD is fine in a dedicated player.
Any thoughts on how to debug this? If 10.3.4 no longer supports commercial DVD movie playback on my iBook that's a rather severe loss of functionality for me.
meta: jfaughnan, stutters, skips, skipping, play back, playback, Panther, DVD Player 4.0.
I'm using 10.3.4 on an iBook 600. I played quite a few commercial DVDs on this machine using 10.2.x. Yesterday, for the first time, I tried to play a commercial DVD using 10.3.4.
Shrek was fine half-way through. Then it began stuttering severely. It was unwatchable. I never saw an error message. The DVD is fine in a dedicated player.
Any thoughts on how to debug this? If 10.3.4 no longer supports commercial DVD movie playback on my iBook that's a rather severe loss of functionality for me.
meta: jfaughnan, stutters, skips, skipping, play back, playback, Panther, DVD Player 4.0.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
TrustedReviews: a sophisticated web site of product reviews
TrustedReviews
Interesting angle. The kind of thing we used to read PC Magazine for in the old days, when it was a hefty pile of paper. (And a shill for Microsoft before Gates was a bazillionaire.)
Interesting angle. The kind of thing we used to read PC Magazine for in the old days, when it was a hefty pile of paper. (And a shill for Microsoft before Gates was a bazillionaire.)
Google Answers: An unhyped gem
Google Answers
You can pay for researchers, but the amazing feature is that answered questions may be freely searched or browsed. Fascinating browsing. A place to start looking when your search doesn't work.
You can pay for researchers, but the amazing feature is that answered questions may be freely searched or browsed. Fascinating browsing. A place to start looking when your search doesn't work.
Review (preliminary): Canon s410 vs. s230
Amazon.com: Camera & Photo: Canon PowerShot S410 4MP Digital Elph with 3x Optical Zoom
I'll eventually post a review on Amazon and my photo web page. Some initial impressions from a very picky customer:
1. s230 was (is) a fabulous camera -- almost a perfect blend of form and function. The s410 is a better camera, but it's drifted a bit from the vision of the original design team. It feels like a "B Team" product rather than an "A Team" product".
2. s410 has more than twice the picture power (50% more zoom, 90% more pixels)
3. s410 has a ridiculous menu that configures startup tones, pictures, etc. Stupid but one can ignore it. I have to see if I can modify the startup screen picture, if I can I'll put our name and address on it!
4. s230 looks and feels better than the s410. It's slightly more slender, feels more solid, is less flashy, looks more elegant. The s410 looks a bit cheap and gaudy by comparison.
5. Both are made in Japan!
6. The s410 has improved on the s230's mode setting (camera/video) and menu structures. It's hard to alternate between the two because of this, but one is much less likely to record video instead of taking a picture. I also like the way to switch between manual and auto mode.
7. The s410 has a spiffier intelligent focus mode -- that doesn't work any better than any of these things do! I turned it off, I prefer to use center focus at the right distance then reframe.
8. The s410 gets HOT if you take pictures quickly. CPU is working more. I wonder about battery life.
9. The s230 used the same data cable as my G2. The s410 uses a USB mini-B cable. Nice to have a standard data cable, but I wonder what happens if one accidentally uses a powered USB cable!
10. s230 and s410 use the same battery and elegant power charger. YAY.
11. s410 has a tactile feedback on the shutter that feels stiff to me -- as though it would increase camera vibration. I don't like it.
12. Both the s410, s230 and G2 use standard CF cards (YAY), but the s430 benefits from a high speed card.
I'll eventually post a review on Amazon and my photo web page. Some initial impressions from a very picky customer:
1. s230 was (is) a fabulous camera -- almost a perfect blend of form and function. The s410 is a better camera, but it's drifted a bit from the vision of the original design team. It feels like a "B Team" product rather than an "A Team" product".
2. s410 has more than twice the picture power (50% more zoom, 90% more pixels)
3. s410 has a ridiculous menu that configures startup tones, pictures, etc. Stupid but one can ignore it. I have to see if I can modify the startup screen picture, if I can I'll put our name and address on it!
4. s230 looks and feels better than the s410. It's slightly more slender, feels more solid, is less flashy, looks more elegant. The s410 looks a bit cheap and gaudy by comparison.
5. Both are made in Japan!
6. The s410 has improved on the s230's mode setting (camera/video) and menu structures. It's hard to alternate between the two because of this, but one is much less likely to record video instead of taking a picture. I also like the way to switch between manual and auto mode.
7. The s410 has a spiffier intelligent focus mode -- that doesn't work any better than any of these things do! I turned it off, I prefer to use center focus at the right distance then reframe.
8. The s410 gets HOT if you take pictures quickly. CPU is working more. I wonder about battery life.
9. The s230 used the same data cable as my G2. The s410 uses a USB mini-B cable. Nice to have a standard data cable, but I wonder what happens if one accidentally uses a powered USB cable!
10. s230 and s410 use the same battery and elegant power charger. YAY.
11. s410 has a tactile feedback on the shutter that feels stiff to me -- as though it would increase camera vibration. I don't like it.
12. Both the s410, s230 and G2 use standard CF cards (YAY), but the s430 benefits from a high speed card.
Monday, July 26, 2004
Photo sharing services (NYT)
The New York Times > Business > E-Commerce Report: Businesses Help Organize Photos
The article mentions a few services I've looked at, but it doesn't address key questions like storage limits, upload size restrictions, business models, printing services, print ordering, OS X support, workflow convenience, etc. In other words, it's not that useful an article .. EXCEPT it mentions which are popular now. These are the ones mentioned:
- CNET is buying Webshots, Webshots angle is sharing photos about places (travel, etc)
- Google has bought Picasa (which also distributed "Hello", a peer-to-peer file sharing app. See my prior posting on Picasa.
- Kodak's Ofoto.com, District Photo's Snapfish.com and Shutterfly.com are growing in popularity
- Yahoo is adding new features and may return to frontrunner status (displays ads with photos)
- Sharelot (displays ads with photos)
I've used Picasa/Hello, Flickr (very hot but he missed them), SmugMug, and Shutterfly. Of these only SmugMug let me upload full sized images for sharing and distribution -- they charge a yearly fee and have no ads. Google/Picasa/Hello is the real favorite since they seem to be able to provide tons of storage at low costs.
The article mentions a few services I've looked at, but it doesn't address key questions like storage limits, upload size restrictions, business models, printing services, print ordering, OS X support, workflow convenience, etc. In other words, it's not that useful an article .. EXCEPT it mentions which are popular now. These are the ones mentioned:
- CNET is buying Webshots, Webshots angle is sharing photos about places (travel, etc)
- Google has bought Picasa (which also distributed "Hello", a peer-to-peer file sharing app. See my prior posting on Picasa.
- Kodak's Ofoto.com, District Photo's Snapfish.com and Shutterfly.com are growing in popularity
- Yahoo is adding new features and may return to frontrunner status (displays ads with photos)
- Sharelot (displays ads with photos)
I've used Picasa/Hello, Flickr (very hot but he missed them), SmugMug, and Shutterfly. Of these only SmugMug let me upload full sized images for sharing and distribution -- they charge a yearly fee and have no ads. Google/Picasa/Hello is the real favorite since they seem to be able to provide tons of storage at low costs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)