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HDD Media Players: A Revolution in Full-length Movie Consumption

September 2nd, 2011

In recent years, the selection of media available through the internet has grown dramatically in size and variety. As data transport rates increase with the years and the bandwidth capabilities of networks around the world are upgraded, it’s likely that we will see this trend continue. It’s hard to doubt the fact that, if you’re looking to watch a movie, listen to some music, or browse through pictures, the internet is one of the best places you can go to get them.

Music, video clips, and pictures have been on the internet for quite a long while now, but full-length movies have only recently really started to make their presence felt on the World Wide Web. With the birth of sites like Netflix that offer unlimited movies streamed off the internet or Blockbuster.com and CinemaNow.com that give you the option to purchase movie downloads that you can keep, and with the proliferation of movies both legally and not-so-legally through torrents, the internet has become one of the best places to go find the movies you want to see.

Convenience is the word behind why viewers are turning to the internet for movies, despite their availability on DVD or Blu-Ray. Not only is it simply easier to just store hundreds of movies in an external hard drive and be able to take them around with you to watch at, say, a friend’s house, it also relieves the clutter and lack of storage space that is a problem with optical or magnetic tape media. But downloaded movies also go an important step further, both optical and magnetic tape media are prone to damage that can cause skips and errors when watching movies or keep the movies from playing properly at all, but movies stored on a hard drive are capable of lasting longer while still maintaining the same quality they had the day they were bought and downloaded.

But convenience can actually become an issue for some when trying to watch movies from an external hard drive or memory card source on a television. Being able to watch the movies on their computers doesn’t appeal to all viewers, especially if their televisions produce better HD picture on a larger screen and they also have great surround sound being produced by a set of great speakers to complete the experience.

To address this problem, a new generation of media players have evolved that allow users to access and play movies directly from an external hard drive or memory card. HDD media players come in all forms and sizes, with different capabilities that serve different purposes.

In the most basic sense, an HDD media player is a device with hardware and software for playing audio and video files from a hard drive through a home entertainment system. Some HDD media players simply combine a hard drive enclosure with the audio and video hardware and software, and can come either with a hard drive installed already or simply as an empty shell, giving users the choice of what hard drive they want to install. There are also smaller HDD media players that do not have their own hard drive enclosure, but instead, have either one or two USB ports that can be used to plug in an external hard drive and/or some sort of memory card slot. Some of these simpler HDD media players that do not have their own hard drive enclosures are small enough to be portable – thus allowing users to bring their external hard drive and HDD media player with them, and watch their movies anywhere they can plug their device in, for example, in their employee lounge or at a friend’s house.

As far as HDD media player capabilities are concerned, the range is quite stunning. Some HDD media players come with networking capabilities, allowing users to access media via file sharing networks from the hard drive of a networked computer. Other HDD media players are able to do this via Wi-Fi as well. Some HDD media players also have the capability to access streaming media from the internet and might also have torrent downloading capabilities. And there are also HDD media players that have the ability to digitally record media from an external source. In this respect, the possibilities for HDD media players are endless.

While the technology behind HDD media players is still young, it is very likely that we will see their popularity increase in the future. At the moment, China is taking the lead in HDD media players, and the majority of developers and manufacturers are based there. Because of this, HDD media players tend to be quite inexpensive, especially if they are purchased through online wholesalers, making them a great investment for any home theater setup.

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Posted in Entertainment, Gadgets

Tags: audio download HDD media player internet movies video

The United Nations Declares the Internet a Basic Human Right, Now What?

June 12th, 2011

Last June 3, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank la Rue, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland that “governments are using increasingly sophisticated technologies to block content, and to monitor and identify activists and critics”[1]. He also said that “the unique features of the Internet, which allow individuals to spread information instantly, to organize themselves, and to inform the world about situations of injustice and inequality, have also created fear among governments and the powerful”[2]. And affirmed the United Nations declaration of the internet as a basic human right when he stated that “there should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in a few, very exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law”[3].

The United Nations, therefore, acknowledges the fact that the internet will always be here to stay and is a tool for the betterment of mankind, and one by which we can exercise our freedom of expression, reform ourselves and our societies, and exchange information that is vital to our daily lives.[4]

This very acknowledgement of the United Nations on the significance of the internet is a milestone of our evolution as human beings. It acknowledges the achievements we have made and will make with the help of the internet. It gives importance to the technologies that we have developed in communications that allow us all to stay connected. And most importantly, it shows us just how important a role the internet will play in our daily lives in the future.

Even now, we try our best to stay connected wherever we go. Our cell phones are capable of accessing the internet via a variety of protocols: WAP, GPRS, 3G, EDGE, HSDPA, and Wi-FI. We can stay connected without wires – without “tethering” ourselves to one spot. We communicate on-the-go. No matter where we are, we try to stay “in the know.”

And because we know that our cell phones cannot do everything we need them to do on the internet, we’ve developed laptops and netbooks so that we can bring our the feature-rich experience of browsing the internet from a computer with us. Wi-Fi has been made available for us no matter where we go – most of the time it’s free for us to access in the malls, in the coffee shops, in our offices, and even in whole cities. And when laptops and netbooks still won’t cut it for us because we think of them as bulky and heavy, we opt for the next best thing, tablets – although there are those who hold them in higher regard than laptops and netbooks.

In a sense, each one of us has made the internet what it is today, a web of interconnected computers, cell phones, TVs, laptops, netbooks, servers, workstations, watches, e-book readers, PDAs, media players, traffic lights, and much much more. We are a society where everyone is connected no matter whether we know each other or not.

Imagine the future, then. Imagine what it will be like to live in a world where the internet exists all around us in every sense – where it will be weaved into the very clothes we wear, where it will be visible in our glasses, where our soda cans will update our statuses on Facebook, and our TVs will know all our favorite shows. Imagine it and let it linger in your mind, because we are headed there.

Even now, we are developing technologies for connecting devices that we never thought we would be able to connect to the internet. Consider the how we can now access the internet on our wrist watches because of the advancements we have made in miniaturized electronics. Or how we have included Internet access capabilities to media players for our TVs. And we’ve even managed to invent security cameras that we can access via the internet without an intermediary host computer or DVR.

It’s true, that imagined future is not far from us. No matter where we look these days, we’ll find the internet it one way or the other. It’s so prevalent in fact, that sometimes it seems the world has begun selling, buying, and distributing it wholesale. It’s almost as if the internet has been a fact of life for each one of us since we were born – and that it seems like the United Nations declaration of its status as a basic human right was known to us “yesterday.”

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[1] Internet should remain as open as possible – UN expert on freedom of expression, News and Events, United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, 3 June 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] UN report shows broadband potential for economic and social development, United Nations News Center, United Nations, 6 June 2011