Poor Sound Playing DVD on PS5

Friday night my wife and I sat down to watch a DVD with a guest and had to do some troubleshooting with my surround-sound system. The father of a friend from work was driving his motor home from Calgary to Phoenix. He had planned to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot but I offered to let him park it at our house and sleep in one of our guest bedrooms. The weather is a bit cold and while I'm sure he had a nice bed in the RV, running water and heat would be nice too. He accepted and joined us for our Friday-night movie.

For the past week or so, I have been trying to watch the 2004 version of Flight of the Phoenix. This seemed like a very appropriate movie as my friend's dad is a pilot and was headed to Phoenix on his road trip. We put the DVD into the PS5 and jumped past all of the previews. When the movie started, the speakers sounded like I had blown one of them. I knew they were fine as we have been watching a lot of movies lately. To double-check, I switched the receiver from the PS5 to a radio station and the audio came out clear. Therefore I knew it was a problem with the PS5.

Not wanting to play around too long and troubleshoot the problem, I quickly moved the disk to the PS4 and the sound had no issues. We watched the movie and my friend's dad really appreciated the audio. The powered subwoofer created a very unique experience for him, especially in that movie.

The next day, I wanted to figure out if there is a perpetual problem with DVD's playing on the PS5 and so I took the time to troubleshoot the issue. After all, if there is a problem, I could always reach out to my buddy that works on the CODECs for the PlayStation consoles and log a bug even though I no longer work there.

When I am done using my PS5, I always put it in standby mode. That allows any updates to automatically download and install. The first thing I tried is powering off the PS5 and then restarting it. I put in the DVD and it played fine. I wish I had known that the previous evening but now I do. Should you find the sound not working correctly in a movie you are playing on your PS5, just restart the device and see if the problem goes away. If not, then it is a different problem than mine.

A Late Christmas List

Normally I am much more together and have my Christmas Gift Idea list put together long before now. This year I have been procrastinating it. Part of the reason is that I have pretty much all of the material possessions I could want. Getting more just means I have to find a place for it all. My house is overflowing with stuff to the point that it is time to start getting rid of some of it. Perhaps it might help you to know what things I would keep as I mentally catalog my computer equipment.

One of my favorite gadgets is my color laser printer. You can find them for around $200 and I highly recommend one. A lot of people don't print because they think it is bad for the environment. I agree but sometimes you need to print something and if you are going to use a sheet of paper, you might as well print it in color. In this day and age, I think a black-and-white printer is a waste of money. There is probably a joke in there about how it will practically print money. Just don't try that at home or the secret service will come after you.

Sticking with the theme of printers, my next favorite gadget is my 3D printer. If you have someone on your Christmas list that loves building prototypes or playing with computer aided drawing (CAD) programs, a 3D printer should be on your list. They can get rather expensive and so I only recommend one if you can get away with a less-expensive model. I still enjoy my Creality Ender 3 and think it is a great beginner printer. I must confess though that my son uses it more than I do but that is why I got it.

My next recommendation would be for dual monitors if you have someone on your list that doesn't already have them. While in Japan this past week I did not have the luxury of dual monitors on my laptop and I really missed it. With a bit of searching you can find a second monitor that will work with most computers for only around $120. I suggest a minimum resolution of 1920x1080p. All of my computers have dual monitors at work and at home.

Another peripheral that is often overlooked is a USB CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc drive. My last several laptops have not had internal drives and that is fine most of the time. However every once and a while you really need one and when you do, you need it badly. I have one that I keep on my desk at home and another one that I have in my office at work. They both come in handy every so often.

Finally I have one more recommendation for those of you that might have a really tight Christmas-gift budget. I do not have enough phone charger cables. I use USB-C for one of my phones and a Lightning connector for the other. I carry all sorts of spares and am amazed at how many times other people need to borrow them. On occasion I need them too. A couple of each would make great stocking stuffers.

I don't think there is any big surprise in this list. Perhaps you might not think about how important a color laser printer is or how useful a spare phone charging cable can be. My experience has taught me that they are and you really miss them when you don't have them.

Disc vs. Streaming

Recently I mentioned the Disney+ video streaming service. After playing with it for a while, I now have to ask myself what to do with all of the Disney DVD and Blu-ray discs I have. This is not a new problem as I originally owned them all on VHS video cassette. Over the years I have systematically replaced all of my favorites with the DVD and Blu-ray equivalents. Now I don't need any of them as I can get them all on Disney+ wherever I am in the world.

The move from physical copies of media is something the music industry faced over the past decade. Go try to find a CD of your latest favorite song. It can be tough because people have stopped buying CD discs. For a while, people were buying individual songs on services like iTunes. Now everything has gone to streaming. If you want to listen to a specific song, you just go to YouTube and pull up the music video which may or may not actually be a video.

I don't plan to get rid of my Blu-ray collection of movies any time soon. There are a number of my favorite movies that are tough to find on any streaming service. I am still looking for one of my favorite movies on disc that I used to have on VHS. Most people would think it is not that great of a movie but I really enjoyed it as a teenager.

I am also waiting how long it takes for people to tire of paying the monthly fee for access to movies. If you watch a movie several times a week, then paying for the streaming service makes sense. However if you only watch once or twice a month, there are some people that will justify pay-per-view, owning a disc, or owning the digital rights to favorite movies.

Ultimately I think the movie industry will follow the music industry and we will stop purchasing physical discs. While my current preference is to own physical media, I may be in the minority soon. The writing is on the wall.

Great Courses

New Year's is a time were most people think about bettering themselves and so it makes sense that my wife and I received a catalog in the mail from The Great Courses. They had a sale going on where you could pick up 2 or 3 hundred dollar courses for less than $50. So my wife and I went through and found several classes that we thought would be interesting. We spent less than $100 and have our evenings planned for the next several months.

Every night we are home together, we watch one or two lessons from "Wonders of the National Parks." Each video lasts 30 minutes and includes all sorts of interesting facts about the National Parks in the United States. There are also some parks mentioned outside the US, like several in Mexico. We have finished the first of 5 DVD's and are thoroughly enjoying them.

I also picked up a beginning guitar course. Yes I have been playing guitar for about 2 years now and probably qualify as a solid intermediate. I learned from RockSmith but wanted to see how an instructor would teach vs. a video game. So far I have been through the first 2 30-minute lessons but have learned something from each one. It is interesting that a friend who plays the guitar gave me a warm-up exercise when I first started playing. The 2nd lesson from the DVD course gave a similar exercise. This is something I wouldn't have gotten from RockSmith. I have to confess that the course is well worth the $35 I paid for it. I just looked online and it is now $235. I need to run through a few more lessons before I can confirm if it is worth that price.

I like to learn new things and so having in-depth courses about topics I am interested in learning about is a lot of fun. Yes, I probably could just watch the Discovery channel every night. But then I am at the mercy of their programming and I don't really want to be a crab fisherman.

No Exciting Computers

I had a bit of time to think as I walked the 3 miles to my office this morning. Mostly I thought about how I had already crossed the threshold of distance to where summoning Uber seemed a waste even though it was raining. What driver would pick me up for such a short drive. I did think about other things and one of them surfaced again when I go to the gym at work and prepared to get another 30 minutes of exercise. I briefly glanced at the locker-room TV and noticed that one of the ESPN commentators has the same laptop I do. It seems like the vast majority of people have settled on the same few laptops. There just doesn't seem to be any exciting new computers these days.

Naturally I have spent part of my day thinking about the state of computing hardware and what would make me excited. The size of a laptop is something that used to differentiate various models. Now it seems we have settled on small, medium, or large and each has its merits. We also used to have peripherals such as floppy, CDROM, or DVD disk drives. Now it seems that everyone relies on network connections and doesn't need removable media any more. What about case material? Well you have the brushed aluminum look, solid black carbon fiber, or some colored plastic cover. All of that is boring. About the most exciting difference between laptops is the lit brand logo that appears on the back of the screen. Some love the simple Apple logo while others prefer the 3 intertwined-snakes for the gamer specific Razer laptops.

As I thought about the lack of excitement in the computer market right now, I realized that we can't really blame the hardware manufacturers. It is tough to get excited about new hardware when it all runs the same old software. You have your choice between Windows, MacOS, or Linux. Even then Linux really isn't an option for most people as it is still more of a hobbyist's operating system unless you are working with servers.

So what will it take to get me excited about a new computer or laptop? I don't know. Perhaps this just means there is a new opportunity out there for something extraordinary to come along. I would hate to think that computers have evolved as far as they will go.

The Achilles Heel of the PlayStation 4

Last night I practiced my guitar as my daughter came in and asked if I wanted to watch a movie. Being in the middle of a song, I wanted to finish it before hanging out so I told her to get started without me. She headed down to the TV room and booted up our other PS4. The only problem is that I was in the middle of my song using Rocksmith on the console in my bedroom. The PlayStation 4 does not allow you to be logged in at the same time on 2 different physical machines and that is its Achilles heel.

I had to laugh as my daughter yelled up a sincere, "Sorry," when she heard me tell my wife why I suddenly stopped practicing my guitar. Last night was not the first time we encountered this problem and probably won't be the last. My daughter could have used the dedicated DVD player or our PlayStation 3 but prefers to use the PS4 as it does so better than any movie player available today.

There is a very simple solution to getting booted from my PS4: create a user on it in the TV room specifically for watching movies. I could even name it something like "Movie Watcher." That way when someone else in the house wants to watch a movie, I get kicked off my console in the bedroom.

Ransomware and Backups

I few days ago I was watching TV and saw an ad for a local computer store in Utah. The owner of the store talked about a new kind of computer virus called Ransomware. As I use only Mac or Linux and not Windows, I really don't worry about computer viruses. While a protected operating system doesn't guaranty you won't get a virus, it makes writing viruses really difficult and so most hackers don't even bother. Besides Windows has the majority of the market and so if you are going to extort money from unsuspecting computer users, that is where you will make the most.

Today I discovered that most of the antivirus software vendors have been able to lock out the majority of ransomware. That doesn't stop would-be extortionists from trying though. There is another class of ransomware that lacks any real ability to harm your computer. Basically you go to a web page that claims you have done something criminal like downloaded music illegally, or worse. You are then told you have several hours to pay a "forgiveness" fine. When you try to leave the web page, you are unable to do so. When you try to close your browser, you can't. For the unsuspecting user, this can be very frustrating. The trick is to kill your browser from the operating system. PC Magazine has an article outlining the steps if you need help.

The best thing you can do to keep yourself safe from any computer virus is to back up your hard disk frequently. I like to keep my computers backed up locally. That means I use a portable hard drive, Burnable DVD's, or some other form of backup media and keep the data myself. There are a number of online backup companies that also work well. It doesn't matter what you do, just make sure you back up the important stuff. Then when some website tells you to send them money or you will never see your stupid cat videos again, you can rest assured knowing you've got a nice copy of your important data.

PS4 First Impressions

The new PlayStation 4 has some impressive features. It also has some problems. Most of the problems I have encountered are software related and so I know they can be fixed with an update. The biggest problem is that there is an update to begin with. I got wind that the update was going to be huge and so I downloaded it to a memory stick yesterday. Then when I turned on my PS4, I held the on button for 7 seconds and listened for a beep. This put the console in safe mode and allowed me to install the update. Then I could begin playing games. Unfortunately the PlayStation Network is so overwhelmed with people logging in and trying to install the almost 1 GB update that I couldn't download any of the new PS4 games and am stuck playing the only game I purchased on disk so far: Killzone Shadow Fall. Don't worry, I ordered a couple of more games this afternoon.

The first thing I noticed was how superior the graphics are over the PS3. Don't get me wrong, the graphics on the PS3 are incredible. The PS4 is just that much better. We are playing both PS4 and PS3 games this evening and so it is easy to notice how much better the PS4 really is. The PS4 games have intricate detail while the PS3 ones looks plastic and fake.

We also tried to watch some movies on the PS4 today with mixed results. DVD's played just fine. Some Blu-ray disks worked without any problems on the PS4 while others didn't. Speed Racer played flawlessly and I felt it looked better on the PS4. Neither Chasing Mavericks nor Avatar would play. As for 3D Blu-rays, I don't think they are supported yet. The only 3D disk I own is Avatar and I was not even given the option of 2D or 3D, just 2D and that didn't work. No worries though as I still have my 2 PS3 units that play them just fine. I have also not been able to get to the PlayStation Store because of connections problems.

I'm sure it will take a bit to get the kinks worked out of the PS4 and so don't feel bad if you have to wait a bit before you can pick one up. I also talked with the folks at my local Gamestop and Best Buy stores this evening. They are both getting more shipments soon and so you should be able to get one before Christmas if that is what your family wants. The trick to finding one will be to ask the store when the next shipment comes in and being their that day. Otherwise you run the risk of someone else getting your console.