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News for Friday, 8 August 2003

Dolby in Apple DVD player in Jaguar

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 13:59:29 CEST - Category: Sound
Ralph shares with us his interesting finding, for the music buffs out there :

Hello,
I just found an hidden feature on the Apple DVD player, that activates the "Line Dolby mode" on my iBook 2. I don't have any clue as to what it means, but it improves tremendously the sound quality for my DVDs with Dolby 5.1 or Dolby Digital recordings. Before, it felt the sound was compressed, as in, when there were volume peaks, the DVD player would lower suddenly the volume then increase it gradually back. It was really irritating on a musical DVD.
Looking for a solution I looked into the preference file "com.apple.dvdplayer.plist" in TextEdit and found the following lines :
DisplayDolbyLineMode

DolbyLineMode

When replacing "false" by "true", a new tick box appears in the preferences of the DVD player (see screen shot). To activate or de-activate this feature, you need to restart the player. And then, the sound of my musical DVDs is amazing! With Dolby Digital, it is a real Stereo, really dynamic, and in Dolby 5.1 (and a headset) one feels like being in the room with the musicians, as if there were an ambiance effect.
To activate wihout any delay!


Caution, there is no point in plugging the computer into a 5.1 amplifier and hope to get more than two independent lines. The audio processor of all Macs before the G5 is not able to do that.

Comments about the patch 106 [MàJ]

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 13:47:29 CEST - Category: MacBidouille
It seems that for some people, the patch written by Lionel, to activate the pioneer 106 DVD burner in iDVD and in the system, does not work.
Nicolas managed to get it working, and here is how:

ahhh, ok, I found where the error came from.
As soon as I got rid of the back-up made by the patch the OLDPioneer....CDR, after restart everything is back in order.
So, there, if people are complaining, tell them to get rid of the old file

Could also be that the chmod of the patched file is wrong. To change that, enter the follwong command in Terminal (on one line, of course)
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/DiscRecording.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DevicePlugIns/ ; sudo chmod 755 PioneerCDR.device-plugin

We'll try and fix the code of the patch so as to get rid of these issues as soon as Lionel comes back.
[Upd. from taz]
here is a new version of the patch, that should correct the above bug :
106 is a Superdrive
PS: if you used the old patch and it did not work, use the above recommended solution, but DO NOT use the new patch version.

Precision on the XServes for the US Navy

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 13:28:27 CEST - Category: Apple
Xrissley, from the Macbidouille team, wants to add a few precisions to this information :
Reading the artcile from the Register, one can make a few comments:
The clusters are planned to be used inside the submarines:
1) So it is not a cluster of 260 machines we are talking about, but more lots of differents clusters, those maybe of 10 machines?
2) The use in submarines is the reason for the rack adaptation.
3) It gives a very good image of ruggedness and reliability for the Xserve, and confirms the quality of the product (for military equipment, products must before all be reliable and solid, and more than often, it is an old generation of product that is adopted as these have tested, proved and improved). So here it is a tremendous proof of success and acknowledgement of the techinical quality of the XServe!
4) The ratio power to electrical consumption was also very important in this situation.
5) One can always lament on the replacment of OS X by Linux (Terra Soft is the only reseller officially licensed by Apple to do such thing) but one must take into account the probable facts that the US Navy (or at least Lockheed, the manufacturer of these equipements) has a long epxerience under Linux, or the applications and resources to use it. And then, clustering is being refined for OS X, maybe not yet mature? (and often linked to the apps themselves)
Let's go step by step: Apple validates here the quality of the machines, and gives a huge boost to their image. On its own, OS X is starting to convince lots of users (I see it everyday, being already direct or undirect responsible of the switch of a couple of java developers or Unix admins)

[Rumour] New products on the 19?

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 13:17:06 CEST - Category: Apple
many sources are agreeing to announce new offerings at Apple, either on Monday 18th or Tuesday 19th. New powerbooks are mentioned, with an aluminium 15'' and an increase in frequency for 12'' and 17'' , but also new displays, which would adopt the G5 look with a punch-holed casing.
And maybe but who knows, a little update of the iMacs, to boost the sales that have been quite sluggish the last months.

Geo-location of mobile phones in the U.K. [Upd.]

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 13:13:43 CEST - Category: Network
For quite a while, geographical localization of a mobile phone has been trying to make its way to a market that still considers it with suspicion. Technically, it has possible for a long time. But it is a feature that is difficult to sell without attracting the fury of privacy defenders. Althoug it is already possible to localize an AT&T phone in the U.S. and, as of recently, in the U.K. with the service
mapAmobile [http://www.mapamobile.com]. This service requires the localized person to give its agreement, so as to protect the psy-like use of it. But it is rather difficult to know the reliability of this protection (material or human). When one knows that localization is precisie to a radius of 40m, it sounds rather chilling. Last but not least, be aware that mapamobile plans to extend its service to the whole of Europe Le point sur l'actualité sur la géolocalisation sur Zdnet.
(Thanks to merlone for the info).
[Upd.]
I have received accounts of the fact that these services are already used, more or less openly, in Europe.
First from Numa who works for a major telecom company in a neighbour country, not in France:

Hello,
I'd like to add a few precisions to your article. As a matter of fact, it's a been possible for a long to localize people through their mobile, but operators refused the of this process, careful to try an drespect privacy, as an Imode or Wap service provider would be able to use this information for different purposes than foreseen. But one must know that, for quite along time already, in France like abroad, secret services and the police have had access to this informations, so in reality privacy protection is rather weak... You'd rather have the state or the police know where you are, or a little company that provides you with a localization service and cartography? I'd prefer the small company myself ! What is an issue for the telco is more "why would one company have access to this, and not the other one?" which then opens a door for all commercial abuses, spam and marketing that can be done with this information. For example, geo-localized advertisement, marketing campaign in a supermarket, our mobiel would get inundated with SMS and telephone calls.
So there you have it
Bye now
Numa

From Jean-Baptiste, who lives in France :

It has been in use for a while on Orange "Do you want to transmit your geographical coordinates ..." for weather forecast or yellow pages per instance.

I want to add that Mapamobile wants to offer this service to anyone, to know where is located another mobile, not one's own, of course.

An official RealVideo player for Unix and Linux

By Xavier Rissley. Original by Yoc - 08/08/2003 12:48:05 CEST - Category: Video
Helix is the community created from scratch by RealNetworks, and the company specialized in video diffusion is now using it to present the last phase of its multi-platform multimedia player.
Helix is the source of three projects, respectively Helix Server, Helix Producer and Helix Client. These are for the time being aimed mostly at developer, as can be seen in their rather serious UI.
The aim of Realnetworks is now to create an opensource player, targeted for all users, and as user-friendly as the Windows or Mac version. This player would have the strong point of keeping pace with the evolution of RealVideo and RealAudio codecs (although these would remain closed-source).
You can if you want participate to this project or just download the binaries and source code (there are binaries for Mac OS X) already available by signing in at www.helixcommunity.com.
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