Category Archive: Optical

May 13 2012

Hacking a Burner’s Firmware

DVD Identifier - Shintaro BD-R Results

Following on from yesterday’s post I briefly outlined a problem that I was having with my LG GGW-H20L Super-Multi Blu-ray drive burning to a Shintaro single layer BD-R (Blu-ray disc recordable). In a nutshell, it seemed that my burner did not know how to handle the Shintaro BD-R discs when it came to burning so I …

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May 12 2012

Not All Optical Discs Are Created Equally

Yesterday, I had bought some Blu-ray discs to use with my Blu-ray burner. I haven’t burnt an optical disc for quite a while so I had forgotten that individual burners have differing compatibilities with the various brands of discs and range of discs within each brand. What this comes down to is the firmware in …

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Apr 25 2012

Slow or Infinitely Long Shutdowns on Mac OS X

Just thought I’d share a potential solution for a problem that I faced today. The copy of Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro had never been activated and given that I hadn’t used it in ages I thought I’d wipe it and replace the Windows installations on the laptop with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. …

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Mar 14 2012

Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes Out of Print

This has been widely publicised already today but I thought it was a noteworthy event to record. The Encyclopaedia Britannica will cease its printing the 32-volume encyclopeadia after nearly a quarter of a millennium (244 years to be exact). You could have called the Britannica the old school version of Wikipedia which was updated once in what would …

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Feb 25 2012

Meeting the 2GB RAM Prerequisite for Windows Home Server 2011

I’m doing a server build for a business at the moment who needs the neat automated backup functionality found in Windows Home Server 2011 to help keep daily backups of important point of sale computers and office machines while consolidating and centralising the data storage on the network. For this task, I thought that Windows …

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Oct 16 2011

Check a Power Supply Unit’s Efficiency

Here’s a tip for people looking to build a new computer or upgrade their existing one. Most things inside the computer will require power measured in “watts”. To put it simply, this measures the rate at which electricity moves through a circuit. One watt (1W) is equal to one joule of energy consumed in one …

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Sep 27 2011

Panasonic DMR-BWT800 Full HD 3D Blu-ray Disc Recorder Launch

The Function Centre at Panasonic HQ

Tonight, I attended a launch event with a number of the Insider Crew for the Panasonic DMR-BWT800 Full HD 3D Blu-ray Disc Recorder (henceforth called “the recorder”) at Panasonic HQ in Macquarie Park. This was the first time that we had a go at live streaming the event so that Insiders who weren’t lucky enough …

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Sep 12 2011

“About This Mac” Just Got Friendlier

Here’s another tidbit of information about Mac OS X Lion. If you are unaware, the “About This Mac” screen has been refreshed to be a bit more user friendly compared to versions of Mac OS X prior to Lion First up is the “Overview” screen which looks a bit cleaner and even includes a picture …

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Aug 23 2011

There Was a Problem Installing Mac OS X (Lion)

I had a couple of MacBook Pro laptops grace my desk and I have been upgrading them to Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). The first one (maybe eighteen months old) went through without a hitch but the second one (which is a few years old) had all manner of problems including reading my original DVD-RW …

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Jul 11 2011

Bolster Your DOS USB Boot Disk – Part 1

DOS Files

Yesterday, I walked through how to make your own DOS USB boot disk with the final result being a bootable USB stick that won’t do much more than let you browse the USB stick itself and other internal FAT and FAT32 drives. Today, we’ll make that USB stick a bit more useful. The first and …

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