Customizing SharePoint RSS Web Part

I will be brief, because this is pretty simple and obvious. I have my favorite reader (Google on my iPhone) and the RSS web part sometimes seems crude, but it is sometimes very useful when a site really is crying for relevant news.

Don't be afraid to mess with the XSL Editor. Just copy the contents into Notepad - that's your backup. Now start hacking away. If something goes bad, paste back in your backup.

You want to remove the titles? Just snip out the whole node: div class="groupheader item medium."

So have at it!

Stanza Ebook Reader for iPhone With Calibre

In my post about Kindle and the Kindle iPhone app I was a little off due to my new found enthusiasm for ebook reading. I've been having a good time reading several books on my tiny screen - it really works - using Kindle for the iPhone. My only apprehension is that the iPhone screen will not be good enough to use while basking in the tropical sun when I go to Cancun in May. But I picked the wrong application. The Kindle solution I proposed requires a jailbroken phone, which not everyone has, and there is a much better alternative: Stanza for the iPhone and Calibre on your computer.

At first blush, Stanza has many features Kindle does not, and I'm not sure if anything from Kindle is missing on Stanza. But Kindle does have a nice feel and good speed. Some operations on Stanza can be slower (especially on my 3G, the most brain dead iThing still sold) and the feel is different. But after a little digging, and working with the very good Calibre application and Stanza on the phone, I have concluded that this is a far better solution. There is nothing to prevent you from using both, but Stanza is the way to go.

Using them is simple - no instructions necessary - just get Stanza from the app store and Calibre here: http://calibre-ebook.com/download. Both are free.

Using the Kindle iPhone App for Reading Non-Kindle Ebooks

Please see my update - I found something that works much better and does not require a jailbroken phone, which using a back door to the iPhone file system does. Read: http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2010/03/stanza-ebook-reader-for-iphone-with.html


I've tried reading PDF's off the iphone, but I really wanted to read big ebooks. It was very much hit or miss, mostly miss. The PDF could be too big or too small and would not reformat appropriately. Not useable.

The answer - Amazon Kindle. The Kindle itself is a great device, but one whose days are numbered (unfortunately - I think they are a great idea). The Kindle iPhone app is free. Kindle books are expensive, but there is usually a free download of the first few chapters which gives you a good idea of both the books' contents and the reading experience on the hand held. The XML-ish text reformats based on the size font you want. The PRC file format seems to mostly be XML and some binary compression standards. Bookmarks are kept. It all works nicely. And Kindle isn't a horrible deal right now - $259 for the device and free global wireless data access (for now). 

PDF's, TXT or DOC files can all be turned into Kindle PRC files with a free app called MobiPocket Creator. Home made PRC's can be a little idiocyncratic, but they aren't bad. You sftp into your device (OpenSSH from Cydia and Winscp) and drop these files into your hand held (find the folder by searching for *.prc with Winscp). I am reading multiple books this way right now, and the Kindle app keeps my place nicely. Highly recommended.

FlashForward

When ABC's FlashForward started last fall I was immediately thrilled with the premise - a mysterious temporal event takes place causing all human consciousness to see a glimpse of the future. The show's first 10 episodes were great, leaving me wanting more! My wife Gayle (who reads constantly) passed the Robert J. Sawyer book on to me when she finished it, thinking I would like it. She was right. It is a great complement to the TV series. The premise is similar, and the characters and feel of the story has some similarity, but they are different stories.

The book definitely is more satisfying. An easy, quick read, I recommend zipping through it before the second half of the first season is over. My only disappointment was the ending. After blazing to a blistering climax, things go a little too far, and it lost me (I guess I wouldn't be getting a second Flash Forward).

What are you going to see in your FlashForward?

SharePoint Fast Search Conceptual Speculation

Excuse me while I think out loud here (what else is new). As someone who truly likes the SharePoint platform, and as an IT professional who had an opinion about Fast (that it was aptly named, a pretty good product and expensive) BEFORE Microsoft had anything to do with them, I have been trying to come to grips with what the Fast SharePoint marriage means to us all.

I think that to the portion of Fast's clientele that had no interest in SharePoint it may be an annoyance (that may be an understatement). Doubly so for any of them running it on something other than Windows. For the rest of us, though, it is supposed to be an easy path to a high quality enterprise search engine. It's funny, though, because I have been a proponent of SharePoint as a very good poor man's enterprise search engine. SharePoint 2007 search works well. Yes, it is a bit quirky, but it is pretty powerful. It has served us well (though not as an enterprise search engine, just for SharePoint search).

Microsoft isn't content to stand still, though, so they have added this great option. I have not worked with even a beta or demo of the product, and as far as I know, pricing has yet to be released, so my impressions are based on fairly thin marketing vapor, but it's still OK to start thinking about what it all means.

One would expect this product to scale better than OOTB SharePoint 2007 search, but I wonder if the this is really the case. After all, if you implement this product you probably will be taking it more seriously and devote more resources to it, so THAT will make it scale better too. Old SharePoint search can be scaled quite large without having to resort to anything magical. A million or two documents is a piece of cake.

But I would expect the product to deliver better relevance, with or without active intervention. I am anxious to seek how well search librarian tasks can be delegated - this is important functionality.

Unified installation doesn't look like it is really coming in 2010. From what I've heard, it may be in the same box (or on the same box) but the code base isn't really all that close to SharePoint. Unified administration, on the other hand looks like it IS in the box. But like I said earlier, administration needs to be distributable (think "librarians").

Soon it will be time to stop thinking about possibilities and testing the release product to see how it meets these expectations. Fast in SharePoint may democratizes enterprise search, but a lot will depend on pricing. Soon we will see!

Vambo Rools in Hot City

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is alive and well and living in Parma and Brooklyn and Cleveland Ohio. Playing under the pseudonym of Vambo Rools, SAHB can still rock the house!

Last night the Winchester Music Hall in Cleveland played host to a special tribute to the Sensation Alex Harvey Band, one the greatest things to come out of Scotland since Glenlivet. "Alex Harvey" doesn't seem to have aged much (unlike the hundreds of avid fans that turned out and overwhelmed the tavern's bartenders), but like his audience, Alex seems to have put on a few pounds.

Two fantastic 80 minute sets were unleashed on a big crowd that pretty much all knew where every chord, fill and cymbal crash were supposed to be. The band had the chops to pull it off. Playing much better than their MySpace videos, all aspects of the band were on. The latter part of the second set got a bit sloppier, but I am not complaining. It was a real rock show and a comprehensive tribute. The band consisted of two guitars, keyboard, bass and drums, with "Alex" playing nothing except an (awful) harmonica on one number. Alex and Zal Clemenson were in character ("Zal" with face paint and miming). "Zal" taunted Alex and chided the band in mime throughout the show.

Schoolboy's 96 kHz 24 bit Zoom H2 recording filled 5.85 GB! It sounds very good, and shows how nice the sonic balance was (there were only a few times where leads were a bit buried). I didn't remember the Winchester having the main PA speakers that were hanging from the ceiling. They looked like the same ones the Beachland used to have in the tavern, doubled, and they sound better in the Winchester's bigger room. Those same speakers used to be very harsh at the Beachland.

From what was said on mic, it seems like this is the second time they have played this tribute but that the shows may be at one year intervals. For Sensational Alex Harvey Band fans who missed it, it's a SAHB story - you missed the "Last of the Teenage Idols" but hopefully you will get another chance.

Vambo lives!

Demo Day at Holiday Valley

The Saturday before Christmas (December 19th) was a great day to go to Holiday Valley. Although winter had been a little slow in our region, you can usually count on reasonable skiing in Ellicottville, New York this time of year. My son had a final exam (AND it was his 22nd birthday too) so he couldn't come. My friend Bryce, an excellent skier who has made the Holiday Valley trek with me (and Matt) a number of times, came along and brought HIS son and several of his friends.

Little Mountain Limited, a ski/sports shop and travel agency located about a mile from my house, had a very reasonably priced bus trip, so we tagged along. I intend to go on at least a couple more of their day trips this year.

It was "demo day" at HV. This is when ski manufacturer's reps set up tents and allow you to try the latest gear, all set up for maximum ski lust. I normally use some pretty old, long skis, and Bryce' are even older and longer. We signed up for demos, and each got to try two - one Blizzard and one Line. Both were great experiences. The Blizzards were the best skis I ever had on. It was amazingly easy to carve up even steep, ice crunchy sections of hills. Nice. The Lines were not so good for control but man were they fast.

From The End of the 00's

From The End of the 00's

We had lunch at the brand new John Harvard's Brew House in the new Tamarack Club at HV. The place had been open less than a week, and you could tell. Everything was clean and the staff was green. Our server had no idea what kinds of beer were served (we were part of her first ever shift there). It turns out the beer is quite good. I had a pleasant stout and a good biting IPA. Bryce had an Amber ale he said was tasty. The food was much less memorable - the menu is pricey all-American fare ($15 meatloaf, $8 sandwiches with fries).

The Hearth restaurant at HV has been part of my New York skiing tradition for decades. It was always classy and there is a fantastic view. I still liked it even when they chopped off the better half of the dining room. The menu was old and tired, but not as boring as John Harvard. I guess I will go to the new place for the next few trips (my next trip is to Holimont anyway, and that is always a fancy bring-your-own-picnic and drinks affair, no restaurants).

After lunch we went to get more demos. The reps were all packing up because a storm was coming. We were at a ski resort where they get 300 inches of snow a year, for crying out loud. I called them a few very politically incorrect names and we went on our way, laboring with our old skis. The storm never came. Wimps.

Problems Indexing an EML Inside a ZIP in SharePoint

Previously on Bob Klass.Info (I've been watching too much TV lately, re-watching several seasons of the "Dexter" series in the last few days):

"Friday, December 18, 2009

Adding Zip Search File Type in MOSS 2007

I am a little behind the curve on this. Better late than never.

1. Get the filter pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en
2. Install it
3. Set up the item type in the SSP
4. Set up a new key for .zip in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
5. Give it a value of {20E823C2-62F3-4638-96BD-90F4F6784EBC}
6. Restart the search service

That is the shorthand version! This is done for you in SharePoint 2010."

That was all fine and interesting, but then the real interesting stuff turned up. My Foxit PDF ifilter and standard MS text ifilters both seemed to function on files nested within ZIP files. But EML files did not (and EML's further have attachments!).

It turns out there is a property of the ifilter called "threading." This threading is simply an object property to say whether it works in single or multi-threaded modes.

A utility called IFilter Explorer will help you look at threading. I don't know if there is another tool like this anywhere or an alternative to this tool. Running this on my test indexer seemed to work OK, but it is old (in software years - like doggie years, it is about 80) and it seems to be an orphan (widow?). But it beats sifting through the registry manually.

Now it gets (unnecessarily) messy.

I was looking to find how EML indexing works. It uses:

• c:\windows\system32\mimefilt.dll
• content type message/rfc822
• GUID of {5645C8C2-E277-11CF-8FDA-00AA00A14F93}
• related PersistentAddinsRegistered of {89BCB740-6119-101A-BCB7-00DD010655AF}

I should have found the threading model set as "both" indicating that BOTH single threaded or multi-treaded daemons can use it. I found it marked as "Bo" in the two places in the registry.

I changed the first "Bo" entry to "Both" and the second one magically was fixed. Time to restart the services and re-try the indexing ... and ... it worked. Even PDF's attached to the EML inside the ZIP were indexed. This "Both" corrupted to "Bo" burned up a few hours of troubleshooting.

Dexter's usual actions would be justified if he could find a guilty party in this case.

Adding Zip Search File Type in MOSS 2007

I am a little behind the curve on this. Better late than never.

1. Get the filter pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en
2. Install it
3. Set up the item type in the SSP
4. Set up a new key for .zip in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
5. Give it a value of {20E823C2-62F3-4638-96BD-90F4F6784EBC}
6. Restart the search service

That is the shorthand version! This is done for you in SharePoint 2010.

I've Been Promoted ...

... from Acolyte to Initiate on the Beer Advocate web site. This is a promotion from the lowest of first time public users, to the next to lowest. Although I should consider this insulting considering the amount of premium brew I have consumed in my lifetime, and as a graduate of THE Ohio University in Athens, Ohio (a supreme school of partying for over 200 years), I am instead thrilled!

If you like beer a lot, you should become a member at Beer Advocate (http://beeradvocate.com). Although it is a great source of beer info, it is more importantly a great place where you can record your beer observations (in public). I have been doing this for four years, mostly for my own records.

For a while I have been wondering what criteria gets a person a promotion at this institution. I had been a member for a long time and I have submitted well over 100 beer reviews, but no promotion. Their system is mysterious, kind of like my employers' salary and partner info (but obviously of less consequence). Very hush hush. The writings I have published are far more interesting than the same old recanting of the color, head, aromatic characteristics, etc. I thought perhaps one needed to subscribe to their magazine or something, as some people seem to get promoted quickly. That's my guess since I never did that. But my efforts and long term advocacy of Beer Advocate have finally been acknowledged.

Take a visit to the Beer Advocate web site today and look for me there under my beer alias "Schoolboy."

Asus O!Play HDP-R1

Sometimes I feel like I am a little slow adopting some technologies. Of course this isn't really true. There are just some I don't like. MP3's, for instance. They don't sound very hi-fi, like most digital TV (and it's all digital now, isn't it). I didn't get a DVR right away, but we've had one since we got Uverse (maybe a year ago) and we love it. I am almost always bleeding edge on Microsoft products. I convinced myself, I'm not a Luddite.

I like my video hi-fi too. The Uverse DVR is reasonably good (like the Uverse service), and I have a Blu-ray player, and that stuff looks and sounds great. I have a lot of video content (most of it high definition) on the 3TB of internal disc in my Windows 7 machine. I had been sneaker- netting it to my Blu-ray sometimes (or watching on the 25" LCD monitor) but I got the idea that a media player would be way better. This is also better than trying to attach a PC to my living room HDTV (I tried this in 2005 when I got it and it didn't work well - I needed better stuff).

Shopping for media players, I found there are a bunch. A few are expensive. A couple don't have a network connection (that won't do). I stumbled on the Asus O!Play HDP-R1 and gave it a long look due to the great price and the Asus name. When you are building a computer, Asus is always a brand you should consider - their stuff is first rate. This product is VERY new.

I don't know much about what is in the box. It's small, and consumes very little power. The Oplay is running some flavor of Linux.

The Asus forums had lots of posts from dissatisfied customers, but reading between the lines, I thought I would be able to make it work just fine and that it would do exactly what I needed - play just about any video or audio file, connect to my network, host ESATA, etc. It does all it was supposed to do, and well. This post on the Asus forum has the secret to getting it working with Windows 7.

If you buy one, it will probably come with firmware version 1.07N on it and the network will not work right for Windows 7 machines (other computers will be OK). Set up a Windows 7 user "OPlayer" with password "OPlayer" and give it permissions on shares that hold your media. Reset the Oplay to factory defaults, load firmware version 1.13N, and the network connection will work perfectly (UPnP will work too).

So I have another cool gadget! It is a highly recommended toy!

SharePoint 2010 (Caveman Edition)

I am hopelessly (humorously) politically incorrect and caveman readers probably will be offended, but it seemed like the 2010 beta was aimed at them. I mean this as a big compliment to the killer Install Software Prerequisites option in the 2010 installer and the smoothness with which a simplistic stand alone install runs.

Install Software Prerequisites does the following steps from a one click operation:

• Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client
• Microsoft "Geneva" Framework Runtime
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
• Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

Any installation "cookbook" will be streamlined by this (assuming it is putting in the right settings).

The configuration wizard of the 2010 install failed when I first ran it Tuesday morning. I got the same "Failed to create sample data" error lots of people did. I corrected it Wednesday (when I didn't see anything official posted) by removing the two references to "allowinsecuretransport" (deleting both entries entirely) from the Client.config file in the 14 hive /WebClients/Profile folder.

I don't think this change is recommended, but it gets you over this hump for now. This is a pain future cavemen will be spared. More time for Visio cave wall workflow diagrams.

I don't know Jack, but now I know Jorma

Founding member of the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Jorma Kaukonen, appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yesterday for the American Music Masters Series tribute to Janis Joplin. Jorma and Janis were part of the San Fransisco area pre-hippie scene and they shared some interesting early times before they were rock stars.

Per the usual Rock Hall format for such events, he gave an extended interview interspersed with a number of songs, followed by a meet-and-greet. As always, the fourth floor theater was filled to capacity and the sound and overall experience were first rate. Jorma was playing his new signature model Martin guitar (serial number 1).

Schoolboy was in attendance and I heard some of his 24 bit 96 kHz Zoom H2 recording and it is very good.

Afterwards, at the meet and greet, I asked Jorma to bring Hot Tuna to the Beachland. Hopefully I planted a seed in his mind. It would have been very cool if Jack Casady could have been there, but since he wasn't, I still don't know jack.

Adding a New Text Search File Type

As heavy Interwoven document management users, we sometimes include Interwoven link files (.NRL files) in SharePoint document libraries. This doesn't give a whole lot of functionality in and of itself, but it is necessary. The NRL is a very simple one line text file that contains a library name and a document and version number. There are times when a user might want to search on the document number, so we needed to add the NRL as a searchable file type.

To do this, there are two places the extension needs to be added in the registry, and the SSP needs to know about the file type (Search settings / File types / New File Type). Your registry keys will look like the entries below. It would be good to verify the GUIDs with the TXT entries on your system. If you navigate in the registry to the locations below you will see how the keys look.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{C5BD8BA8-4209-4A15-B010-534AEB020A54}"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{4A3DD7AB-0A6B-43B0-8A90-0D8B0CC36AAB}"

Naturally, this would extend to other text file types and of course you will do this in your test environment first, etc., etc., blah, blah.

Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop in Cleveland

If you are a Travis fan you have probably heard about Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop's current tour of North America. It brought them to my favorite concert club yesterday, the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. Everything you have heard about this show is true.

From Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop of Travis

The show is a very humorous look back on the history of Travis. There is as much dialog as music, and the audience is quickly won over by Fran's wit. This is a program that is best for hard core Travis fans, and that is pretty much all you had in Cleveland.

Schoolboy was there and made a 24 bit 96 khz hand-held Zoom H2 recording. I heard some of it and it is very nice. Nearly every person in attendance seemed to be buying the "official bootleg" (which is considerably shorter than the full Schoolboy version that is over three hours, including the meet-and-greet).

After the show, most of the crowd (that I would guess at around 150-200) waited around to greet Fran and Andy, and they took the time to chat with everybody. I think I was there for a good hour and a half after the show. In April, the Travis Cleveland House of Blues show proved to be my musical highlight for 2009. Last night was an extension of that great vibe.

Check out my photos and youtube. The video gives a good feel of what it was like.

SharePoint 2010: Honing Up on Powershell

One of the interesting bits to come out of the SharePoint 2010 previews is the inclusion of more than 500 Powershell cmdlets. As a SharePoint admin or developer (remember, you developers, you have to know admin and end-user stuff so you know what NOT to develop) it will be important to know your way around Powershell.

I wouldn't call myself either a command line junky or command line phobic. I always liked command line scripting. Powershell is something I have used, but having touched the surface of it, I've known that I need to know more. I think most of you are in the same position (be honest).

A little knowledge, while being dangerous, can calm those feelings of ignorance. A quick search brought up this TechNet lab:

TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Windows PowerShell

If you spend the prescribed 90 minutes studying it (and trying other stuff), you won't be an expert, but you will feel more comfortable when it comes time to sort and pipe and filter all those SharePoint 2010 commands that are coming your way.

Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert

We made a little diversionary trip to Tennessee this last week. My son is an electrical engineering student in his senior year at Purdue and since they had a two day break, it was a nice time for a quick trip. We originally were going to go to Memphis and Nashville, but we didn't get going early enough to include Memphis. None of us had been to Nashville.

Along the way we stopped and took landmark photos at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Churchill Downs in Louisville. We started exploring at Churchill Downs and found that there were no locked doors. That was fun. We ended up in a deserted top level Millionaires Club. Nice view.

Nashville is a nice town. It has a unique cosmopolitan flair. More sophisticated than I expected. I liked it. Much of the city is very beautiful and nicely kept. We walked and drove around quite a bit, seeing lots of nifty stuff, including:

• The Broadway area (bars, shops, etc. downtown)
• The Country Music Hall of Fame
• Ryman Auditorium
• The Parthenon
• Bicentennial Park
• The Grand Ole Opry House
• Belle Meade Plantation

The weather was variable (cloudy some of the time, a little drizzle here and there, nice the rest of the time). It was definitely warmer than we are accustomed to in October. Nice.

I hoped we could catch a good show while we were there, but I never anticipated we would see such a great one. While we were at the Grand Ole Opry in the afternoon (October 12, 2009) we inquired about tickets to that night's performance. They had some floor seats at around $50 each, but they were selling good balcony seats for $12. What a deal. As it turns out, this hall is a good one. The balcony view and sound are first rate. They even have pews just like the Ryman Auditorium (but they are nicely padded).

Here is the lineup we saw. It was the Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Celebration.

• Minnie Driver did a set and acted as MC for the show. She sang beautifully and was very witty. The Show was being recorded for broadcast on PBS in March.
• Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas gave Matt and Gayle a nice introduction to live, jumpy zydeco music.
• Bela Fleck did an interesting little set. Mesmerizing banjo, as always.
• Irma Thomas had a special guest of Henry Butler. Very soulful.
• Mary Chapin Carpenter was uplifting and inspiring.
• Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas finished the evening with the most beautiful singing and string band playing you can imagine.

Over all, the show had the feel of many of the Rock Hall tribute shows (American Music Masters). They pulled it off better, but it was a smaller scale. It was a bit drawn out as it took time to switch the bands out. With the exception of Bela Fleck, these were good sized bands! The Grand Ole Opry House gets a 10. They even had a house beer (something like a dark lager - I think they called it Opryhouse Brew).

Goodbye to an Old ...

... well I was going to say "friend," but it's really just a refrigerator, so friend is going too far.

In September 1974 I was a freshman at Ohio University. My first week there I decided a fridge was imperative, so I headed to a place where they rented them. I can't remember if rent was $40/year or $40/quarter, but I do remember that you could buy one of the well used ones for $45 - as-is, no warranty (or maybe a very short warranty). That was a no brainer for me. I bought it. For two years it served me well, and for the following two years I lent it out to friends.

Since then, it languished in the basements of the three houses I have owned since 1980. Most of that time it has been plugged in and running. The last 15 years or so it has been set on a very low setting to keep beer barely cold, the way I like it.

When I went to check on my stash of killer beers today, it was very warm in there. The compressor seems to have been running continuously for a while and it was very hot. I will try (not too hard) to fix it, but I think my old friend may have finally given up the ghost.

Another Use for AVCHD - Hi-Fi

If you are coming into this cold, you might first read my other two posts about AVCHD.

Some audiophiles recently started burning AVCHD discs instead of using DVD-Audio or the LPCM capabilities of DVD-Video.

DVD-Audio and PCM on DVD Video both allow some pretty high quality audio. With DVD-Audio, you get two channels of 24 bit 192khz or 6 channels (5.1) of 24 bit 92khz and lossless compression. PCM on DVD video also goes to 24 bit 96khz, but they take a lot more space and I am not sure if anyone did much with multi-channel PCM on DVD-Video for this reason.

Lots of people have been using those formats for original recordings, vinyl rips and such, but now we have some AVCHD's starting to show up. This is somewhat lost on me because of equipment limitations. My Blu-ray player is in my living room home theater which has Pioneer/Bose audio which is very much inferior to what I use for hi-fi listening in my studio. So far I haven't gotten my studio PC to play these either (although I thought it might be able to with the right software). This will probably lead me to getting a Blu-ray for the studio.

I am exploring tools for authoring this content: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd. This may be a good way to go for the future. It's nice to have so many options, but I just recently authored my first DVD-Audio (of a nifty vinyl rip I made myself of The Three Sounds "Soul Symphony"). Now on to the next format!

Lastly, I will share some somewhat related links that are cool. The first is some analysis of various formats including vinyl, and the second is a look at DVD-A vs. SACD.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part4.html

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/sacd-dvd-a/

9-9-9 Beatles Remastered - Criticism - They Got it Wrong

Today the long awaited remastered Beatles CD's were released. The new versions are not an improvement on the versions released in the 80's, unless you were looking for compressed dynamics and some tweaks in the bass equalization. Like many CD's being released today these days, the new Beatles releases were made to sound louder - they are less dynamic so they don't sound quieter than other recordings.

This of course is not a good thing. The one thing CD's can do well is dynamic range, but lately many CD's are all about being loud. Ultimately this will help kill the CD market and further deaden peoples senses, so they can be happy with horrible compressed audio (MP3, etc.). As far as the bass, I think I could have tweaked in a little bottom if I thought it was missing. I do not understand the whole mono thing (the new releases are available in both stereo and mono). These recordings for the most part were originally stereo, so what's with mono? I want more channels, not less.

My listening tests compared the new CD's with the old ones as well as with vinyl and some oddball Beatles releases like a 20 bit HDCD of Let it Be (Naked) and the Love DVD-Audio (remixed by Sir George Martin and son). As you may know, I am quite the audio snob, with some serious listening gear (electrostatic speakers, tube amps, etc.). I am also a long time Beatles fan - I have purchased pretty much the whole cycle at least two or three times.

So I would be lying if I said I didn't want these new CD's to sound great and jump out of my speakers like the Stones and Kinks and many other old rock groups' high resolution remixes. The regular 16 bit CD's can sound very good too. I wanted these to be good. But they don't offer any improvement for me. In fact, although I may change my mind after more listening, for now I prefer the old CD releases over these new ones.

I did not do any empirical analysis of the new versions of any of the tracks (maybe I could suck them into Sound Forge and measure the dynamic range - for now I used my ears). I also have a strong prejudice in favor of vinyl. Nine times out of ten the listening experience from vinyl (even somewhat worn) beats CD's, HDCD's, SACD's and DVD-Audio. It doesn't matter which digital media is used, vinyl is almost always significantly better. Remember, the resolution of analog signals is continuous, so it has infinitely higher resolution than anything digital. The best digital sound comes from DSD (SACD), but it's still not analog.

I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me, but time will tell as other audiophiles weigh in on the subject. I am sorry if I sounded harsh, I am just trying to steer you readers towards the best sound.

If you have the vinyl, play that, and enjoy the best there is. If you have the old CD's, you don't need the new ones. If you have neither, you can get the new (and hardly improved) ones or seek out old versions. Have they inadvertently created a new market for the vintage Beatles CD releases? Wouldn't that be something.