AS one use will be aboard "Lionheart" in the near future, I hope, this
should be on-topic.....

I download lots of movies from usenet newsgroups alt.binaries.movies.divx
and alt.binaries.movies. Some of the finest movies on the planet are
there for the taking, usually before they are even in a theatres! Ok, so
slap me in the face and call me names. Krause will.

Having thousands of XVid and DivX movies, mostly DivX 5.x these days,
I've been looking for a better way to play them, both portably and on a
digital television beast, independently from computers or notebook
computers.

I've discovered two great units and bought the portable DVD player just
today:

My first purchase was the LG Electronics model LDA-511 ($149 from Best
Buy or Circuit City). It is a home entertainment DVD/CD player that
loads with the little, almost indestructable, slot like the CD player in
your Lexus. It's full home-entertainment-device width, but is only about
1.5" tall and has no loading tray to break off like your computers. It
has yet to fail to play ANY CDR or DVD+/-R/RW disc I own. It plays
regular CDs/DVDs/MP3s/DivX movies/XVid/Windows media format movies/VOD
movies/in any format on the net I've found. It will slideshow your
digital camera jpeg/gif/tiff/etc. still pictures on the big screen so you
can bore Aunt Sally with pictures of the kids' Christmas to tears. I
have yet to encounter anything it won't play or display. It has plugs
for every new kind of digital TV connection, but has no RF modulator for
the TV cheapies in old analog TV channel. It does have analog NTSC or
PAL or SECAM direct video output with stereo audio in 5 channel stereo,
however.

Today, I tested the new Philips PET1000/37 10.9" TFT LCD portable video
player, which also boasted of DivX compatibility. It is the first
notebook-sized DVD player I've encountered that will play them. It will
not play all the formats the LG 511 will play, no wma/wmv Windows Media
movies for instance, but has played a wide variety of downloaded movie
formats since I got it this afternoon. It was $329 on sale at Circuit
City for the next couple of weeks. The player has a beautiful color
picture in both regular TV size or 16:9 Cinemascope formats, but nothing
in between. My downloaded movies appear a little "skinny" because the
screens on all these portable players are not really 16:9 aspect ratio.
They're not that wide. Philips elected to NOT include a letter box real
16:9 format on this player, but the picture is so clear and watchable
being a tiny big skinny horizontally is hardly noticable as the movie
progresses. Most actors could stand to lose a few pounds, anyways.

Please note - The manual says it will play DVD+R/RW but fails to mention
DVD-R or RW recordable DVD format at all. I only record +R format so
have no -R to test it with. The formats are incompatible, but most DVD
players will play either and this one MIGHT, too.

My biggest beef with the Philips is the hung-on, large, Lithium-Ion
battery pack for truly portable operation. "What WERE they thinking?",
comes to mind. Instead of a battery pack that fits the whole bottom
making the player "thicker" and standing up another inch, some IDIOT
decided to "hook" it by three little cheap plastic hooks to the
bottom...ALL IN LINE....with the battery pack STICKING OUT THE BACK about
2.5 inches! The hooks are nearly in-line with each other so the battery
sticking out back there can swing up and down on the chintzy plastic
hooks just BEGGING someone to push them accidently up or down....breaking
the plastic hooks right off the battery pack. I can see it happening no
matter how careful you are. This pack, too, nearly as stupidly, MUST be
attached to the player for charging! The IDIOTS didn't put a charger
socket in the battery pack's case so you could charge it without it being
attached to the player...charge one while using one style. Dumb,
Philips, DUMB...(sigh) Of course, on a boat using the very nice 12V
power cord or 110/220 switching AC supply (included) you wouldn't have
the portable battery pack attached to the unit when it's plugged in.
This large 5.4AH 14V battery pack is necessary to run the unit for 3
hours with its necessary 30 watt, 2.2A load. The processing computer
gets quite warm. The backlight of the large TFT LCD screen is very
bright, easily seen even in sunlight as the screen is black. All this
takes quite a bit of power. If they'd just put the pack UNDER the WHOLE
CASE, sort of like a docking station....not hanging off to be torn
away....Grrrrr.....(d^

Other than this blunder, the unit is very nice, indeed. It's been
playing since this afternoon and even recharged the battery pack while I
was watching it. (The red charge light goes out on the front.)

I had some vintage TV shows from the late 1940's/1950's downloaded from
usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.multimedia.vintage-tv and some new
documentaries of great interest from
alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries. They all play on both players,
too. Very nice. The documentaries group has, in the last weeks, been
blessed with the entire 1952 NBC Victory At Sea documentary series,
prefaced by Peter Marshall in color, posted to it in DivX format. How
nautical would we need to get 50 miles offshore rolling in the waves?...
(c; GO NAVY!

I hesitated to post this because I'm going to get slammed, as always, but
I think it a great accessory to the boat entertainment suite for those
rainy days at anchor. Slams ignored, as always....

EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER! Dad has just booted his slide show of the trip
to Dizzey World in '96!.....Yecch.

those are cool shows....



" the entire 1952 NBC Victory At
Sea documentary series"

"~^ beancounter ~^" wrote in
oups.com:

those are cool shows....



" the entire 1952 NBC Victory At
Sea documentary series"



Three more have been posted to alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries
yesterday....I have nearly the whole set.

nice..."go navy"

uss ranger cv-61
1974-1976
airdale...

"~^ beancounter ~^" wrote in
oups.com:

uss ranger cv-61
1974-1976
airdale...



ET1, Calibration Lab Shop 67
USS Everglades (AD-24)
1966-1969
Have coffee....wanna trade??...(c;
Aux duty station, salvage yard, Charleston Naval Shipyard.
Need something they say doesn't exist? No problem...(c;
50# of Navy coffee can get any motor under 3 tons rewound at the head of
the line in the shipyard....
Some called us "duty thieves". We thought "mission expediters" was more
correct.

While on a four man EOD Team at Refit Site One (USS Hunley), Holy Loch
Scotland, I learned the actual value of $3.98 "K-BAR" fighting knives. One
of my secondary duties was supply and my OIC couldn't figure out why we
always order knives by the box, but was very pleased that all maintainence,
calibration, and team gear were in order whenever a mission or inspection
popped up!

"Larry" wrote in message
...
"~^ beancounter ~^" wrote in
oups.com:

uss ranger cv-61
1974-1976
airdale...



ET1, Calibration Lab Shop 67
USS Everglades (AD-24)
1966-1969
Have coffee....wanna trade??...(c;
Aux duty station, salvage yard, Charleston Naval Shipyard.
Need something they say doesn't exist? No problem...(c;
50# of Navy coffee can get any motor under 3 tons rewound at the head of
the line in the shipyard....
Some called us "duty thieves". We thought "mission expediters" was more
correct.

ha!!...ships supply or chiefs mess hall were
the "place to be" on our carrier......

Larry,
How do you download and use these files?
MMC
"Larry" wrote in message
...
AS one use will be aboard "Lionheart" in the near future, I hope, this
should be on-topic.....

I download lots of movies from usenet newsgroups alt.binaries.movies.divx
and alt.binaries.movies. Some of the finest movies on the planet are
there for the taking, usually before they are even in a theatres! Ok, so
slap me in the face and call me names. Krause will.

Having thousands of XVid and DivX movies, mostly DivX 5.x these days,
I've been looking for a better way to play them, both portably and on a
digital television beast, independently from computers or notebook
computers.

I've discovered two great units and bought the portable DVD player just
today:

My first purchase was the LG Electronics model LDA-511 ($149 from Best
Buy or Circuit City). It is a home entertainment DVD/CD player that
loads with the little, almost indestructable, slot like the CD player in
your Lexus. It's full home-entertainment-device width, but is only about
1.5" tall and has no loading tray to break off like your computers. It
has yet to fail to play ANY CDR or DVD+/-R/RW disc I own. It plays
regular CDs/DVDs/MP3s/DivX movies/XVid/Windows media format movies/VOD
movies/in any format on the net I've found. It will slideshow your
digital camera jpeg/gif/tiff/etc. still pictures on the big screen so you
can bore Aunt Sally with pictures of the kids' Christmas to tears. I
have yet to encounter anything it won't play or display. It has plugs
for every new kind of digital TV connection, but has no RF modulator for
the TV cheapies in old analog TV channel. It does have analog NTSC or
PAL or SECAM direct video output with stereo audio in 5 channel stereo,
however.

Today, I tested the new Philips PET1000/37 10.9" TFT LCD portable video
player, which also boasted of DivX compatibility. It is the first
notebook-sized DVD player I've encountered that will play them. It will
not play all the formats the LG 511 will play, no wma/wmv Windows Media
movies for instance, but has played a wide variety of downloaded movie
formats since I got it this afternoon. It was $329 on sale at Circuit
City for the next couple of weeks. The player has a beautiful color
picture in both regular TV size or 16:9 Cinemascope formats, but nothing
in between. My downloaded movies appear a little "skinny" because the
screens on all these portable players are not really 16:9 aspect ratio.
They're not that wide. Philips elected to NOT include a letter box real
16:9 format on this player, but the picture is so clear and watchable
being a tiny big skinny horizontally is hardly noticable as the movie
progresses. Most actors could stand to lose a few pounds, anyways.

Please note - The manual says it will play DVD+R/RW but fails to mention
DVD-R or RW recordable DVD format at all. I only record +R format so
have no -R to test it with. The formats are incompatible, but most DVD
players will play either and this one MIGHT, too.

My biggest beef with the Philips is the hung-on, large, Lithium-Ion
battery pack for truly portable operation. "What WERE they thinking?",
comes to mind. Instead of a battery pack that fits the whole bottom
making the player "thicker" and standing up another inch, some IDIOT
decided to "hook" it by three little cheap plastic hooks to the
bottom...ALL IN LINE....with the battery pack STICKING OUT THE BACK about
2.5 inches! The hooks are nearly in-line with each other so the battery
sticking out back there can swing up and down on the chintzy plastic
hooks just BEGGING someone to push them accidently up or down....breaking
the plastic hooks right off the battery pack. I can see it happening no
matter how careful you are. This pack, too, nearly as stupidly, MUST be
attached to the player for charging! The IDIOTS didn't put a charger
socket in the battery pack's case so you could charge it without it being
attached to the player...charge one while using one style. Dumb,
Philips, DUMB...(sigh) Of course, on a boat using the very nice 12V
power cord or 110/220 switching AC supply (included) you wouldn't have
the portable battery pack attached to the unit when it's plugged in.
This large 5.4AH 14V battery pack is necessary to run the unit for 3
hours with its necessary 30 watt, 2.2A load. The processing computer
gets quite warm. The backlight of the large TFT LCD screen is very
bright, easily seen even in sunlight as the screen is black. All this
takes quite a bit of power. If they'd just put the pack UNDER the WHOLE
CASE, sort of like a docking station....not hanging off to be torn
away....Grrrrr.....(d^

Other than this blunder, the unit is very nice, indeed. It's been
playing since this afternoon and even recharged the battery pack while I
was watching it. (The red charge light goes out on the front.)

I had some vintage TV shows from the late 1940's/1950's downloaded from
usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.multimedia.vintage-tv and some new
documentaries of great interest from
alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries. They all play on both players,
too. Very nice. The documentaries group has, in the last weeks, been
blessed with the entire 1952 NBC Victory At Sea documentary series,
prefaced by Peter Marshall in color, posted to it in DivX format. How
nautical would we need to get 50 miles offshore rolling in the waves?...
(c; GO NAVY!

I hesitated to post this because I'm going to get slammed, as always, but
I think it a great accessory to the boat entertainment suite for those
rainy days at anchor. Slams ignored, as always....

EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER! Dad has just booted his slide show of the trip
to Dizzey World in '96!.....Yecch.

"MMC" wrote in
:

While on a four man EOD Team at Refit Site One (USS Hunley), Holy Loch
Scotland, I learned the actual value of $3.98 "K-BAR" fighting knives.
One of my secondary duties was supply and my OIC couldn't figure out
why we always order knives by the box, but was very pleased that all
maintainence, calibration, and team gear were in order whenever a
mission or inspection popped up!



Electronic calibration in the panic before an inspection is gonna cost
you big favors and markers well into the future from our shop....(c;

I remember one time the Canopus (AS) cal lab got overloaded and there was
some crazy inspection or other happening tomorrow. Strings were pulled
and my shop filled up with some sub's equipment within an hour!

I had stumbled onto a supply of votive candles (thousands) over in the
salvage yard some chaplain tossed out. So, as the astonished bubbleheads
looked on, one of the technicians wrapped a fart sack around his head to
make his turban. We stuck a white cal lab sticker on the turban where
the jewel should have gone. Someone else put a votive candle on each
piece of equipment they'd brought and lit it, putting a nice warm glow in
the lab. The guy with the fart sack turban took a brass spitoon filled
with our ship's evaporator "holy water" and sprinkled the sacred
calibration blessing, while chanting some foreign tongue he'd heard from
a Naples cabbie whos fare had split, over the equipments, instantly
putting all of them in perfect alignment...without even opening the
cases! Another cal lab concubine blew out the candles behind him and put
them back in the sacred box quite reverently. The last guy affixed the
coveted 'CALIBRATED' stickers, stamping and dating them as appropriate.

After the added "Blessing of the Bubbleheads" was performed on the
equipment carriers, guaranteeing safe passage back to the sub, a final
blessing of the local cal lab technicians was performed and we all helped
them load their gear back into their truck.

Passing their inspection with flying colors with all this calibrated
equipment, they brought the gear back for "regulation" calibration a few
days later with, of course, a deluxe ship's plaque for our bulkhead
collection and their captain's letter of commendation for our personnel
jackets, the original of which was framed and hung under the sub's nice
plaque.

The formalities of receiving over, we set out on our task to insure
accuracy of submarine equipment. We surface sailors were well aware of
how our safety was challenged should submarines' calibrations be "off a
tad", as we say in the calibration biz.

Another happy customer with fond memories of USS Everglades (AD-24).

"We Fix Subito!"

"MMC" wrote in news:751lf.56841$1l6.17617
@tornado.tampabay.rr.com:

Larry,
How do you download and use these files?
MMC


You need four pieces of software.....

I use Xnews from http://xnews.newsguy.com as the download client because it
has a nice Q field where I can que up all the pieces of all the files I
want then simply walk away and let Xnews do the work on tens of thousands
of message files. Xnews will download, decode any encoding scheme,
assemble the group of messages that make up a piece and store it in
whatever download directory you tell it to.

You mark all the various pieces on Xnews' nicely-compiled file list. It
automatically threads (collapsed) all messages of a part, say a single .rar
file into one line on the list. You simply click the Q field in that line
and a que number is installed for that line. You click and drag down the Q
field to select all the rar and par files for the movie you want. After
you've marked one, click the blue rubix cube in the middle of the lower
edge of the newsgroup panel and a window will pop up for you to select
where all these files should be stored on your disk...in a SEPARATE
directory from where your movies are actually stored, please! You continue
to mark more movies until you bottom out the list...today. You can mark
more files while it's downloading, no problem. The numbers just get
updated ok.

Ok, we've gotten all the .rar parts and all the .par parts for "The Movie"
on the MOVIE DOWNLOAD directory. We'll need two more pieces of software
to, first, check the rar files with the par files for parity accuracy,
automatically CORRECTING any errors, even supplying missing whole parts if
there are enough par files present. The software for that is freeware
called "Quickpar" from:
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
Install it in the usual manner...run the .exe file and follow the
instructions.

Ok, all the rar pieces (or in another case the numbered pieces like .001,
..002, .003 which I'll describe in a minute) have been parchecked and
automatically fixed by Quickpar for this movie. Now we'll need another
proprietary software called WinRAR from http://www.rarlabs.com/ that's
shareware to read all the pieces, uncompress them by a lot, assemble all
these uncompressed rar files and store the REAL movie on you MOVIE
directory to watch. (It's really easy to do all this in a few minutes
after you get the swing of it.)

Download and install WinRAR. You can pay for it later. This is
proprietary and the finest file splitter, well worth the pittance it
costs....about 2 movie tickets in our scenario..(c;

Once Winrar is installed, it assigns itself to handle all the rar files and
files numbered .r01, .r02, .r03 from the old version of the encoder. To
automatically combine all these rar parts into the movie file, just
doubleclick on your Windows Explorer on file with the ending "part01.rar"
or ".r01" on the end of it. DO NOT BE ALARMED NOTHING HAPPENS INSTANTLY!
Before Winrar pops up the interface screen, it gets basic information from
the first rar file telling it what SHOULD be there and does a thorough test
before it boots the windows window looking for you. This can take 30
seconds to a minute on these huge movie files. Just wait.

Ok the Winrar window pops up and you see the file in the file list you
clicked, now what? Click on JUST THAT FILE....nothing else. This keeps
you from tryin to decode some asshole's virus someone may have attached.
It happens VERY infrequently as these posters are very proud to post what
they post. It's a regular hacker competition to see who has the best copy
of some movie the theatres won't get until 3 weeks from now. So, click and
highlight just that ONE file with the .mpg or .avi or .dat (VCD wrapper)
that's the movie. Some movies come with several other small files for
chapters and subtitles! ALL these extra parts are optional and up to you.
I like subtitles if they are available. Subtitle files have extension .sub
and the chapter files have .idx extensions on them. It's ok to get them,
too. Some .subs are separate rar files on the server you'll have to decode
with winrar separately. It's up to the poster how he splits them.

Now that you've highlighted the filename in Winrar's file window, click the
EXTRACT button and a directory tree selection menu should popup. (On some
complex winrar sets, a window will pop up asking you if you want the whole
set or just the file you've highlighted. There may be HIDDEN FILES so,
being a paranoid that has served me well, I tell it just the file(s) I've
selected to make sure.) Be SURE to select your MOVIE directory, not the
root directory or desktop or some place crazy so you have to search all
over for the movie. You can set an option to open a default location in
Winrar. Click OK and Winrar will create a watchable movie file with an
extension like .avi (almost universally DivX format movies now), .mpg
(almost universally VCD or SVCD format, now, which is Video CD or Super
Video CD), or .wmv/wma in Windoze Media format. DO NOT DECODE OR RUN ANY
..BAT, .COM, .EXE, .VBS or any kind of RUNABLE files! If you see a runable
file in the winrar window when it boots up....DELETE IT AND FORGET THIS
MOVIE AS IT MAY BE JUST A VIRUS/TROJAN INSTALLER. **** happens....

Oh, oh....we tried to watch the movie and it wouldn't play with any
standard player on our computer.....nuts! The movies are in DivX or VCD
formats that BillyDOS, in cooperation with his movie and music friends,
does not include in Windoze to try to prevent you from seeing them. Isn't
that nice after you've given him $300? The cure is a new player that's
free from some really smart French engineering students in Paris, called
VLC (Videolan Client), which comes with its OWN codecs that'll play most
anything on the planet....so good the MPAA lawyers are all over them to try
to block them or bankrupt them.

VLC player is available as freeware from:
http://www.videolan.org/
Click the "Download Now for Windows 9.0MB" to go to the download page. VLC
is a great little movie player that's gotten even better with 400 hackers
making improvements to it across the planet. It comes as an auto-install
..exe file. Download and run it to install VLC, very simply.

When VLC asks if you want it to be the default player, say YES and it
automates it running all the movies and music it can run. After you've
gotten it installed, simply point your mouse in Windows Explorer at the new
movie and doubleclick. VLC will boot and start your movie. Right click on
the movie, itself, and pick FULL SCREEN to put VLC in TV mode. There are a
LOT of controls in VLC to play with. The docs are also for downloading on
their webpage. Your movie runs....sounds crappy on those cheap PC
speakers....so get some cables and HOOK THE PC TO THE BIG STEREO! In the
boat, I recommend buying the PC an FM transmitter module so you can listen
to the movie on the boat's nice installed stereo system from whereever the
laptop is running the movie....laid back in the cockpit, libation in
hand....

Oh, look at that guy MMC 2 slips over! Is that "Master and Commander"
playing on his notebook through the cockpit stereo speakers?? COOL!
For those boring dock parties, just boot up a good concert or chick flick
and watch those beautiful girls from down the dock slip quietly into your
boat to watch...(c;....making all this decoding WELL worth the effort!

I can see, already, you're running out of hard drive space. You'll need
permanent storage on DVD+R for archive and I recommend a Maxtor 300GB
external hard drive to plug into the notebook's USB2 port for online movie
storage....hundreds of movies and thousands of MP3 music files in one box
on the boat. Works great, and you can just take the hard drive to someone
else's party and run VLC on their computer. On DVD's you get SIX DivX
movies on a single DVD if they were encoded, as most are, to fit on a
single CDR..733MB. The higher res DivX movies, you get 3 on a DVD, usually
split in two to store on cheap CDRs by the poster.

You can also get a gazillion MP3 music files from Usenet with Xnews more
directly! You don't need Winrar or Quickpar for MP3 files. They are
simply split in Usenet to overcome usenet's 10000 lines/message limits on
some servers. If you point to a song, which will show up on a single line
in Xnews' list (collapsed), Xnews will deocde the MP3 directly to a
playable MP3 file as it wasn't compressed with Winrar, just split and
posted. Those newsgroups start with alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(genre here).
Whatever type of music you like, Usenet has a group for it....

I have 21,000,000 MP3 files collected over about 12 years. Party
music?...shuffled? No problem.

Need an MP3 catalog program to organize them? MP3 Catalog Pro from:
http://www.wizetech.com/amc/
These Russians have the finest MP3 catalog program on the
planet...Blazingly fast, even on HUGE directories with 10000 MP3 files in
them! All others just suck by comparison.

"Have you got 'My Love's Gone' or any music by the Platters?", she asks in
a husky voice. You click the search in AMC and type in Platters. A new
window pops up showing her the 329 Platters songs scattered across your
300GB hard drive in 28 directories. "Oh, I want to hear that one.", she
says smiling at you and pointing those lovely fingers at your screen. You
click and drag it into Winamp's playlist under the song that's playing,
now. "It will play next.", you reassure her slipping your arm casually
around here waist ready to dance her night away. Great program...(c;

Life is GOOD......