SP2 Beta will be available to some on Oct 29th. It includes Windows Search 4, Bluetooth 2.1 support, Blu-Ray support, Windows Connect Now, and support for exFAT file system. Keep reading →

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a write-protected Blu-ray Disc Rewritable (BD-RE) disc or a write-protected DVD-RAM disc.
• You disable the write-protection feature on the disc.
• You insert the disc into a compatible drive on a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)-based computer.

In this scenario, the disc is recognized as writable media. However, when you try to write to the disc, the operation fails, and you are prompted to insert writable media.

This problem occurs with all Universal Disk Format (UDF) file systems, such as UDF 1.5, UDF 2.0, and UDF 2.01.

Note: The write-protection feature is typically controlled by the notch on the DVD-RAM cartridge or by third-party write-protection tools.

Ed Bott talks about how he setup a machine to playback HD video on a Vista PC, and notes that Vista’s DRM doesn’t come into play. Keep reading →

• Blu-ray, HD DVD, and Vista
  It’s not easy jumping into the HD media arena.
  (tags: Blu-ray HD-DVD )

It’s not easy jumping into the HD media arena. Keep reading →

The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):

• Blue Ray, HD DVD material
• Catalyst Display Driver 7.1 and higher
• Radeonâ„¢ X1950 series
• Windows Vista 32-bit Edition
• Windows Vista 64-bit Edition
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Symptoms:
The resolution 1920×1080/24p which is required to playback Blue-Ray material on LCD TV sets is not available in Catalyst Contol Center.

Vista’s built in CD/DVD burning software works for creating data disks, but doesn’t offer the ability to use a disc image file to burn a disc. If you need to burn an image file, you’ll need a third-party application to do it, and thankfully, their are many to choose from. I use ImgBurn, which is not only free, but supports a ton of image types, and works great in Vista. ImgBurn not only handles CD’s and DVD’s, but is already capable of doing HD DVD and Blue-ray discs as well. The download is only 1.5MB, and once install, isn’t much larger than that, so it’s very resource friendly. It even supports command line switches, so it could be run from a batch file. Keep reading →

When you click the Autoplay Control Panel item on a computer that is running Windows Vista, media technologies are listed that are not installed. For example, HD DVD movie and Blu-ray Disc movie are listed even though the hardware devices that are required to support these technologies have never been installed.