Windows 7 to Windows 8:No DVD Playback and More

Windows 8 finally came to face the world on October 26th, with its several forms: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 RT, and Windows 8 Enterprise.

Are you going to update your Windows system from Win 7 to Win 8? If you are not decided yet, let’s check out how Windows 8 has changed compared with its previous version.

1. The “Start” button is removed. As an initial option for all its previous versions, this menu has been there since Windows 95. So is the “Start” menu. This is designed to fully support the “start screen” full-screen menu, which changes from still to dynamic icon.

2. Windows Aero is killed. The Aero Glass - the graphical centerpiece of Windows Vista and Windows 7 disappears in Win 8 as to support Metro start screen.

3. Flip 3D is replaced by Modern UI app. All those animations and transparent glass effects are gone as well as the disappearance of Flip 3D. For Windows 7 or Vista, (key) Windows + Tab allow you to view Flip 3D.

4. Windows update desktop notifications won’t appear on the desktop. All notifications about Windows updates will be shown on the login and lock screens.

5. Some desktop apps will not be available on the desktop. Or will only be seen on the Windows 8 “start screen”.

6. Windows backup and restore is also no longer possible in Windows 8.
 

7. Windows Media Center and DVD playback
As Windows Media Center won’t be pre-installed as a default program, Windows Media Player is not available as well. If you do not install Windows Media Center and purchase Media Center upgrade, no DVD playback is allowed. Even if you download the feature packs will you only be able to play DVD in Media Center, not in WMP. To play DVD in Windows Media Player, an add-on for DVD support from Windows Store is necessary. But for free option, you can try VLC Media Player, or some other video players for DVD playback. Besides, Windows DVD Maker remains no more.

The reason for this is mainly because of the rise on streaming online videos and the decline in DVD and other traditional/physical discs.

Well, there is some kind of tricks we can solve some of the dislikes in Windows 8. After all, it provides many more promising new features. It's technology, people move on! What do you say?

Related Articles:

DVD Playback is not Supported in Windows 8 Without Built-in WMC
Best Free Options for DVD Playback in Windows 8
Best Free Video Player Software for DVD Playback 

Free Media Players for Background Playback on Your Mobile Phone

As has been discussed previously, sometimes we just want the audios while watching videos. Or, you'd like run another app while watching videos/listening music. On such situations, we need video players that enable video playback on the background, when you close the screen or while running other apps. Here are some more video players allow background playback for your reference.

1. BS Player
BS Player(Ad-supported video player) is really a powerful video player, it allows DVD Playback as has been mentioned in my discussion before.
It is featured as the best hardware accelerated video player for Android smartphones and tablet PCs.
Besides, it supports background playback in popup window for both video and audio.

2. Uz Media Player(Beta, Video)
Well, this is a video player to use with other apps at the same time, which means it supports background video playback. Even if you hide your player screen, it will still run the video/music you are just playing.
It is just a beta version, and only supports some of the popular formats that are commonly-used, and only be compatible with several models. Hope it will be improved soon.

3. Act 1 Video Player Trial
It is a trail version of video player, which mainly used for video media on your SD card. It’s really annoying that the trail version (free) only allows video playback limited to 2 minutes.
That’s really terrible, the only reason I list it here is for its background playback function while playing other apps or when you turn off the screen. If someone would be interested in it, you can have a try.

4. Background Video Player
Well, as can be told from its name, it certainly should fulfill the needs for background playback. This is a quite newly-released video player on Google Play. As a media player, it supports video playback in the background with random functionality. Maybe you can regard it as a useful in-car music player.

5. No Video Player
Though named somehow a little weird, as a video player, No Video Player does play videos while you can also shift to background playback mode with only audio playing. Just turn off the screen and listen to the audio part of your videos, this would certainly save battery.

6. MX Player
(as have been introduced before)
Well, there are many limitations, hope they would be removed as they improve.

No matter for what reasons you’d like video playback on the background available, you can have a try with these free apps I’ve searched and collected. For different purposes, you may pick up one right for that.

Upcoming Action Movie DVD Releases on Nov. 2012

This week, several wonderful movies like Magic Mike, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seeking a Friend for the End of The World, etc. are available on DVDs. Next month (Nov. 2012), there will be several great ones on DVDs, as an action movie fan; I would like to collect some of the best action movies on DVDs.

The Amazing Spider-Man (PG-13)

Publisher: Columbia Pictures
Release date: November 9

The Amazing Spider-Man is the story of Peter Parker (Garfield), an outcast high schooler. It is a reboot of the Spider-Man film series, portraying the character's origin story and his development into a superhero while a high school student.

The Expendables 2 (R)

Publisher: Lionsgate
Release date: November 20

The Expendables are back and this time it's personal. It is a sequel to the 2010 action film The Expendables. It is actually Action movie stars’ gathering: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Men in Black 3 (PG-13)

Publisher: Columbia
Release date: November 30

It is the third installment in the Men in Black film series. In Men in Black 3, Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) are back. Agent J travels in time to MIB's early years in the 1960s, to stop an alien from assassinating his friend Agent K and changing history.

Principal photography began in 2010, taking place ten years after its predecessor Men in Black II. And in fact, it is fifteen years after the original Men in Black. What also attracts people’s attention is that Barry Sonnenfeld returned as director while Steven Spielberg executive producer.

There must be some interesting extras unveiling the background stories which are my favorite parts of DVDs. Let’s wait and see.

Video to Music: Android MX Player Background Playback

From the downloads and rates in Google Play, MX Player for Android Smartphones definitely is on the top of the most popular players for Android phones. As a free media player (well, it is ad-sponsored – ads appear while pausing or so; for ad-free version, it costs $5.37), it supports almost every video file with subtitles.

The recent massive updates in Google Play Store of version 1.7 have largely enhanced this app in many aspects: it packs a new H/W+ decoder, support for Tegra 3-powered devices, Vietnamese language translations and especially the realization of background playback function.

The background playback feature enables users to enjoy the audio of the video file as it plays in background mode- it means that users do not have to pause or turn off the video while you hit the home button as is always the case with most video players. This is how it is done: (in full screen) Menu – Play – Background play; Or Menu – Settings – Player – Background play, thus playback will be continued in the background even after screen closed.

To return video mode, just hit the tidy widget MX Player installs to your Android’s notification panel with basic playback controls and playback duration counter just like most music players do.

In fact, there are occasions when we prefer audios only rather than videos: a speech which you only want the sounds or music videos while you are traveling on the train and trying to get some rest by listening to music. It may save battery power consuming. You can probably try this feature. You can download it from Google Play for free(supports Android 2.1 or higher).  If there are other video players with background playback feature, please leave a comment.

Related Article:

Free Media Players for Background Playback on Your Mobile Phone

Movies Viewing: DVD/BD or Online Streaming?

How many movies do you averagely watch in a month? And how do you watch them: DVD, Blu-ray or online streaming?

Before that, let’s check out some figures from comScore (comScore is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics.): 18.1 million American internet users viewed 37 billion movies for April, 2012, which suggests that 84.5 percent American internet users spent about 21.8 hours on online movies each person per month. Among the online streaming websites, YouTube top the list of viewers’ number.

Well, these figures is not surprising to me as I seldom purchase physical disks like DVDs or Blu-rays for movies unless for my favorite collector’s edition (e.g. E.T., Titanic, etc.). I always choose watch the latest movies online, regarding it as the most convenient one for me.

According to a new research from Mintel (Mintel Group Ltd is a privately owned, London-based market research firm.), digital download, subscription streaming and video-on-demand sales of movies will rocket tenfold from 2007 to 2017. The fact is that figures during the period of 2007 to 2012 have already quadrupled from $1.3 billion to 5.5 billion.

As physical disks such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays are dropping, they still remain as the major forms of movie viewing- movie rental. Steaming services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are gaining in popularity these days. At the same time, an increasing number of people prefer Video on Demand.

Undoubtedly, there are still large numbers of DVD lovers who cherish the nostalgic feelings, the physical belonging knot, and the background extras, as well as sharing goods with others. But in the mainstream, the general trend is leading to the leaving of traditional physical media, maybe not in 5 years, as Mintel indicated.

So, how about you? Do you watch through DVDs, Video on Demand, or streaming online? Well, personally, I’d rather a single clicking for my movie viewing online, probably YouTube, Hulu, Dailymotion, Yahoo or Vevo. Besides, I can always download them for later viewing. 

Best Free Video Player Software for DVD Playback

Although DVD has lost its past popularity as Blu-ray and online streaming boomed and have rapidly developed these years, many movies lovers, DVD collectors would still like to extend their DVD movies collection. For the sake of these guys, the free DVD players for DVD playback (for Windows) listed below would be useful, I hope.

1. Windows Media Player
If you are not using Windows 8, you may easily get DVD played on your computer. This default Windows Media Player developed by Software enables DVD playback. In Windows Media Player, you can play audio CDs, data CDs, and data DVDs that contain music or video files. If you have a DVD drive and a compatible DVD decoder installed on your computer, you can use Windows Media Player to play a DVD-Video disc.

2. Free Version BS Player
BS Player supports more than 90 languages and plays high definition videos in formats of DivX, HD and AVC video, movie, audio, DVD, etc. You can enjoy the playback of HD DVD and AVCHD movies of the highest quality with minimal system requirements by using BS Player.

BS Player works nice for DVD files on Android Smartphones and tablet PCs as well.

3. VLC Media Player
Needless to mention about its high reputation or powerful functions, this wonderful free video player VLC Media Player enables DVD playback. Generally speaking, almost any videos can be viewed through it. Besides, Windows 8 DVD playback is also available with it.

4. UM Player
UM Player is also free and open source video player software. It plays everything as displayed in its website. This media player features as advanced yet simple to use, cross-platform supportive, etc. Media formats such as AAC, AC3, ASF, AVI, DIVX, FLV, H.263, Matroska, MOV, MP3, MP4, MPEG, OGG, QT, RealMedia, VOB, Vorbis, WAV, WMA, WMV, XVID and many more, are all can be played with UM Player.

5. Real Player
Real Player, the product by a giant media enterprise Real Networks, plays more audio and video files than most media players. It allows video downloading from websites with a single click and then you can transfer them to mobile or other portable devices. Converting and editing also can be fulfilled with Real Player.

There should be more amazing video player software out there, if you guys have some recommendations, please feel free to leave a message for me to  enlarge my collections.

Top Video Players for iPhone 5 Full Screen Playback

Quick time is pretty good to use in your Mac devices, however, you can still have some other options for better video viewing experience for there are many formats Quick won’t support. Especially for the 4-inch iPhone 5, a full screen video player will enhance your enjoyment for sure. So below are some top full screen video players for iPhone 5.

1. RockPlayer2 (free)

This great app supports plenty much of video formats such as MKV, AVI, WEBM, FLAC, etc. a universal video player.

RockPlayer2 contains many useful features: RockShare, FreeSeek, Custonizable play control bar, Gesture control, Media file management and even TV Support. It is highly compatible with iOS6 and iPhone 5 while 4 inch full screen playback of videos is possible.

2. Azul Media Player ($0.99)

It is a video and music player and downloader for your iPhone 5! It plays almost any video (3gp, sf, avi, divx, dv, flv, gxf, m2p, m2ts, m2v, m4v, mkv(non-hd), moov, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, mpg, mpv, mt2s, mts, mxf, ogm, ogv, ps, qt, ts, vob, webm, wm, wmv.) and audio format while in the built-in downloader you can download movies for free.

Video attachments through email can also be played by using it. Other features like TV out, passcode lock, download video/music, iTunes file sharing, custom tutorials, video tutorials, and much more!

3. Video Stream ($2.99)

HD Retina quality (up to 1080P) video playback of videos, movies or TV shows is one of its amazing features. Video streams smoothly and formats like XVID, AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc. are all supported with other app or tool.

Several accounts are allowed. The UI and video will now use the full resolution of the new iPhone 5 in v1.42.
You can just purchase it once and applies it to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

And JASMINE is a youtube player that play full screen on iPhone 5.

Besides, some people suggested that Rushplayer would also support full screen of iPhone video playback. Goodplayer, anyplayer and some other ones are also recommended by some internet users.Maybe check them out later.

You can try these cool players to find the best one for yourself. With it you can enjoy full screen video playback better on you iPhone 5.

Related Article:

How to Enable More Video Formats Playback on iPhone?