Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

I am a loyal Emusic subscriber. That being said, I think the company has gone completely looney. On November 21st, 2006, Emusic will be reducing its monthly download allotments for new accounts. While the price of eMusic Basic, Plus, and Premium subscription plans will remain the same, the number of downloads in each [...]

In my search for DRM-free songs (with lossless compression too!), I recently came across Nugs.net, an online distribution website for concert downloads of some pretty prominent recording artists. For almost the cost of a Ticket Master transaction fee, you can download a DRM-free album of the specific concert you wanted to attend. Not [...]

I am a big fan of artists providing music DRM-free and in a lossless format. More and more artists are doing this. In my search for DRM-free music, I came across Metallica’s website and was surprised to find free concert downloads. If you remember, Metallica had always been reticent and digital [...]

My goal is to get rid of Windows XP on my audio server and manage all of my digital media using Linux, most likely Ubuntu. Linux is appealing to me because I can run my server without having to purchase another version of Windows XP. There is also a certain level of “coolness” [...]

iTunes dominates the digital music arena. The number 2 service is Emusic, which I believe has a lot of untapped potential. I like the site and I love that the songs do not have any digital rights management (DRM). The catalog of music is impressive, but the site is about 90% [...]

The Barenaked Ladies are offering their latest album, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me,” as a download from their website without digital rights managment. All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 196kbps. Some audio has also been made available in FLAC file format, which is a lossless format. [...]

The dilemma facing any owner of copyrighted works continues to be how to compete with online piracy, mainly torrent sites that offer online versions of books, music, and videos. The usual response is some sort of digital rights managment, which is frustrating for the user and actually provides little protection against piracy. [...]

Network2.tv is an internet video aggregator, attempting to be the next network television “station.” This website is like a compiled TV guide to Web-only, independently produced episodic video shows.

One of the main advantages of a media center or HTPC is the ability to rip DVDs and store them on a hard drive to access through a slick user interface. For some reason, this really bugs the movie industry. There is so much potential in media centers and home theater computers, yet [...]

One of the advantages of a Media Center/ HTPC is the ability to rip your DVDs to a hard drive and access them through a user interface. For some reason, this really bugs the movie industry. ProtectDisc has released a copy protection dubbed Protect DVD-Video which actually will not allow HTPCs to read [...]