Category: Optical

Mounting ISOs in Windows 8

Here’s another Windows 8 tip. With prior versions of Windows you would normally require third party software in order to mount ISO files as a native drive in Windows Explorer. This changes in Windows 8 with its ability to mount ISOs without additional software. All you need to do is the following: Locate the desired …

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Insider Guru Blog – Blu-ray Recorders

Time to share another article of mine on the Panasonic Australia blog. As is customary, I’ve updated the Insider Guru Blogs page with my fourth article for the Panasonic Australia blog – it been a little while between drinks but needless to say things have been rather busy! On this occasion, I have focussed on Blu-ray recorders and …

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

The 2011 Panasonic Blu-ray DVD Recorder Range

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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“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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