Giving Rdio a Second Look
Last Updated on Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:17 Written by Alan Saturday, 25 February 2012 06:00
I tried out Rdio a while back, when it was still in Beta, and I liked it, but not enough to tear me away from Pandora, and more recently Google Music. However, in recent weeks I have received several emails from them telling me my account has been credited, and while I assume this is just a ploy to get me back to their service, I decided to actually take a second look and see what was new and changed.
We hope you discover great, new tunes
Rdio is still offering a free streaming plan, but the that plan is still limited, and after logging in to my account I still couldn’t seem to find exactly how much “credit” I have received. There doesn’t actually seem to be a way to find what the free plan actually allows for – “A generous number of streams per month for a limited time.” The paid plans are still available as well, and that is what they are using to pay for the rights to all of this music.
There actually doesn’t seem to be much that has changed. The service is solid and worth having at least a free account with. You can browse and play any song or complete album you want and it still has the social features that allow you to follow your friends and share music back and forth with them.
Rdio is a fine service – the music is all there and the streaming works well. However, until they are a bit more up-front about their free version, as in how much you actually get and what you have left as the month goes on, I will stick with the Google Music – Pandora combination that has been working for me quite well so far.
VLC Player 2.0 Released
Last Updated on Sunday, 19 February 2012 02:29 Written by Alan Sunday, 19 February 2012 02:29
VLC Player, the popular open source media player from VideoLAN which can play virtually any video format, has finally released version 2.0, known by the name “TwoFlower”. VideoLAN calls it the “most important new version of our VLC media player.” Their Player has become a staple app for almost every computer user who is in-the-know, mostly because it plays almost every format without the need to install extra codec packs.
The new version features faster decoding, the ability to open even formats, a new rendering pipeline, higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos. The new version also has completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces to make VLC Player easier than ever to use. Other new features include:
- With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC Player.
- Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos.
- It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs.
- It features a completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use.
- Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers.
You can download the the latest version of VLC Player from VideoLAN.org.
XBMC 11.0 Eden Beta 3 Released
Last Updated on Thursday, 9 February 2012 12:41 Written by Alan Thursday, 9 February 2012 12:41
Today XBMC, the maker of perhaps the finest HTPC alternative to Windows Media Center, announced that they have moved one step closer to their next big release. XBMC 11.0, called “Eden”, has reached Beta 3. XBMC, which stands for “Xbox Media Center”, brings all of the features of Windows Media Center, but has some additional features, plus it can run on other platforms like Mac, Apple TV, and Linux.
In their latest release, XBMC claims to have “fixed playlist issues, altered some misbehaving Library buttons, provided a little more control over the way movie sets are scraped, and cleaned up numerous other small bugs.”
Perhaps the bigger news in Beta 3, though, is the new XBMCbuntu. With XBMC now being built on the LXDE desktop environment, it now has a built in browser and Flash player, and can run all of the normal Ubuntu Linux programs.
“On top of the many bug fixes though, we are pleased to officially announce the first beta of XBMCbuntu. With this beta release, we have chosen to slightly shift the focus of the pre-built XBMC Live install. In the past, XBMC Live was optimized for a pure set-top box experience. In the switch to XBMCbuntu, we are pushing to a more traditional ‘buntu approach that emphasizes first trying and then ultimately installing XBMC onto the local machine.”
You can download the XBMC Eden Beta over at their Download page, and you can read the entire announcement on their Blog.
