Sad Day for Video Conversion

I am genuinely saddened by the news that Techspansion the company behind my all time video conversion application Visualhub is to cease developing their range of software. The message on their website used the familiar “Nostalgia” message to convey “It was good while it lasted”.

We have been using Visualhub for a few years now as it was one of the few applications that allowed conversion to any other format and that even included windows media (WMV).

The software also enabled users to get as much video on to a DVD that they desired with Visualhub managing all the compression etc. Read the story »

Genius Comes to Apple TV

Apple have released the genius playlist option to the Apple TV device. We have been fans of the Apple TV since their release and with each update the device becomes more and more a living room centre piece. Initially the Apple TV worked as an iPod for the living room but a number of recent updates have substantially increased the power of the media centre. The Apple TV update, 2.2 offers a number of new features as well a fixing an important security flaw. Read the story »

Focus on iTunes 8

Apple have just released version 8 of their iTunes media management software with a host of new features. Grid mode, new visualisation engine and the new genius mode. 

Firstly I have to say how much I am loving grid mode. You can opt between artists, genre and album view with the ability to play the full album or double click for selected songs.

The only negative I have found is that is really highlights the missing album art although it does appear as if iTunes is now better at locating album art as I have a number of albums not available on iTunes that when I selected ‘find album art’ it was able to do so. Read the story »