We've been hearing rumblings about Hulu subscription service for months and today Hulu officially announced it's availability. Never fear free Hulu fans, this Plus service is intended to be complimentary. It's essentially an extra tier for those that want the new addition features and programming. And for those extra features and programming you'll need to pony up $10 / month.
File this under cool, but unproductive. One of the many capabilities of VLC media player is the ability to set a video as your desktop wallpaper. To my surprise, not only does this work very well, it isn't a noticeable drain on resources. I could watch a movie while working with a few open applications without any issue. Here's how it's done.
I often played around with "Photoshopping"myself or friends into movies scenes, famous paints, etc. Usually I relied on being able to download images from the web to be able to do this. With VLC, it really easy to grab a screenshot yourself. Of course, you don't have to be into it for the Photoshop shenanigans, maybe you just want cool desktop wallpaper, or whatever. One of the readers over at How To Geek had a really clever use for movie screenshot from VLC. He used them to create a pattern for his wife's cross-stitch based on the intro to the British comedy "The IT Crowd."
Sidenote: Folks from the U.S. with a Netflix account who have never seen the IT Crowd, can check it out the first 3 seasons for free on Netflix Instant. It's worth a look, especially if you have ever worked in IT.
Taking a screenshot, or snapshot, in VLC is pretty easy. When playing a movie simply select Video from the menu and click Snapshot. By enabling the advanced controls you can also take a snapshot directly from the the main interface with just a button. You can even advance or reverse the video frame by frame to get the perfect shot.
Check out the full article for all the details.
So, you like to croon along with your tunes? Hey, doesn't everybody? If you'd like to have the lyrics to your songs displayed right in Windows Media Player, check out the aptly named Lyrics Plugin. It's a pretty simple plug-in without any bells and whistles. The full lyrics are displayed on a single screen, rather than scrolled across like with a Karaoke machine. You'll have to scroll down if the lyrics sheet is too big to display in Media Player.
Read the full How-to article or download Lyrics Plugin for Media Player and check it out for yourself. (It's also available for Winamp)
With rare exception, I'm not a big fan of movie previews on DVDs. Usually when I throw in a DVD I'm ready to watch. I don't care much for the previews and I definitely don't want to see any silly commercials. Often you can just click the menu button or just skip past all that annoying excess, but sometimes the DVD won't even let you do that. Thus, you end up sitting through excessive amounts of extras before actually getting to the feature.
I recently came across this little tip on CNET that caught my eye. When the trailers begin on the DVD, press Stop, Stop, Play, on your remote control and you should skip by all the trailers.
Here's a quick tutorial from Lockergnome. They use Vuse, which is a bit-torrent application, to show you how to stream video or music to your Xbox. They do, however, firmly remind you to pay for all music and videos. Anyway, here's the video from YouTube, and for a little more detail, you can check the original post from Chris Pirillo's (aka the lockergnome) website.
Looking for a no hassle way to watch online movies on your tv? Roku is a convenient little set top box that allows you to easily view Netflix, Amazon On Demand, and MLB.TV streaming video on your TV. They currently offer 3 different devices that run between $79.99 and $129.99. Depending on the model you choose, you can connect with component video, S-Video, or HDMI.
If you don't already have a membership with Netflix and a login for Amazon On Demand, you'll want to set those up a head of time. The same goes for mlb.tv if you'd like to subscribe to their service. For $129 per year you get unlimited access to all out of market major league baseball games.
It's a option to consider for those who don't mind dropping a hundred bucks to watch Netflix instant offerings and Amazon's Video On Demand content on their TV without the hassle of connecting your PC or laptop to the television.
I think Roku has some potential, but for now I'd rather save a few bucks and either watch on my PC or connect my laptop to my TV with S-Video. Perhaps if Roku can team with Hulu and some other content providers it will be more appealing to me.