The HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray war confuses consumers
The war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray entered a next stage with the announcements of Paramount and Dreamworks to publish their lineup exclusively on HD-DVD. Rumors soon spread around the Internet that both companies were receiving payments (Paramount $50 million dollars, Dreamworks $100 million dollars) from HD supporters to make this decision.
The situation is currently the following: Paramount and Universal will publish their movies exclusively on HD-DVD while Disney, Fox, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM publish theirs exclusively on Blue-Ray. Time Warner seems to be the only movie company that is producing movies for both HD formats.
While the companies are battling for the one true format consumers are confused and left with choices that they can't make at the moment. No one wants to pay hundreds of dollars for a nHD player if that player will be obsolete in a few years. Remember the Beta / VHS fiasco back then ?
The best choice at the moment is to wait in my opinion and buy the movies on DVD which is the only format that will see all movie releases from all companies. If you already made a purchase you can enjoy some of the movies in HD but will have to rely on DVDs to be able to watch the other movies.
I'm really happy that I do not have an HD television yet and no desire to buy an Xbox 360 with HD drive or a PS3 with Blue-Ray in the near future. I have all the time in the world to wait and see how this war continues. Will it be decided by money or by the choice of the consumers?
Update: The so-called HD format war is over. HD-DVD has lost it and is no longer available as a format. All movie companies and producers are now publishing their movies on DVD and Blu-Ray.
It is interesting to note that Blu-Ray is still not performing that well considering that it is the only format left standing. This may have something to do with the universal acceptance of the DVD format, and that DVD movies are a lot cheaper than Blu-Ray movies.
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Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?