After my little rant on how much I dislike DVD players that don’t let me skip the F.B.I. warning of doom or anti-piracy ads, I decided it was time to actually put my money where my mouth was and buy one that would let me skip that stuff. I didn’t go as far as buying a region-free player from Hong Kong, but I got pretty close with a box at Best Buy.
I’ve seen the F.B.I. anti-piracy warning of doom way too many times in my life. No matter how many times I angrily mash the ‘menu’ button on my remote, I can’t skip it. Now we have unskipable anti-piracy advertisements too. I’m done dealing with this “Operation prohibited by disk” bullshit. My movie viewing habits are going to change. Hollywood, are you listening?
Ever since my HTPC bit the dust, I’ve been using the basic high definition DVR box that the cable company provides. It isn’t as good as Beyond TV, but it works well enough and doesn’t require an internet connection or extra equipment. The one thing I missed about my old HTPC was the ability to burn video I had recorded to DVD.
With a little internet searching, I found out that you can use your mac to rip video (even high definition) from cable boxes that have firewire ports on the back. The problem was, I couldn’t find any instructions on how to edit the captured video and burn it to DVD. Since the Mac already comes with great video and DVD authoring software in the iLife suite, I figured it couldn’t be a big deal to put it all together.
Using art to serve as social critique is never easy. A good way to measure how well you’re succeeding at it is by the amount of people you get to talk about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re hated because of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re loved because of it. All that matters is that people see it and react to it. That reaction is the only way the art can achieve it’s intended purpose: to cause change.