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So, for many, many years now... okay, not that many, seeing as torrents and downloading episodes from online is just not that old a technology, but for a while now, I have watched friends downloading episodes of shows to watch on computer, and have not seen the appeal. Specifically, I don't like watching shows on my computer. A big part of enjoying a show for me is being able to sit on the sofa, watch it on a decent sized screen, and fight for space with my cat, sometimes with my laptop on one knee so I can multi-task. Or, you know, have guests over to watch with me!
Downloading an episode to watch required going to the office, where the desktop (with the better monitor, and extra diskspace) lives, sitting in the not-so-comfy office chair, and watching it on a decent, but smaller sized screen, only a foot or so away. I mean, doable, but not actually fun for me, too much like work. It put me off to an enormous degree, actually.
If only I could watch these downloaded files on tv, I said to myself, now THAT would be something. But no. While I know it's possible to convert a file to something watchable on tv, I've failed to manage it myself, and the process requires a lot of time and effort for each episode you'd like to convert. Still, I decided to give it another shot, in the hopes of catching a few episodes I've missed this year. So I asked![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astolat for a few tips. astolat answered, "Hmmm, probably TMPGenc will do it, but you know, there's this new player on the market I've been looking at...."
She described the player. I expressed disbelief. I repeatedly asked her the same questions, over and over, to see if I could trick her into different answers, but NO! I discovered that indeed, she was saying there existed a dvd player on the market that can playback divx/xvid files without any conversion at all. Just burn them down to dvd or cd, pop them in, and PLAY. And that said player is only $45 before shipping. (There are, it turns out, other players out there as well, like the Phillips... but this is certainly the cheapest I've seen listed).
I stared at the player online a while, then a while longer, and then twitched a bit, and then twitched more, and then a seizure at minute 21 or so caused me to hit the buy button.
( The player is the Norcent DP-220, and it arrived today. Cut for the length of this review )
Downloading an episode to watch required going to the office, where the desktop (with the better monitor, and extra diskspace) lives, sitting in the not-so-comfy office chair, and watching it on a decent, but smaller sized screen, only a foot or so away. I mean, doable, but not actually fun for me, too much like work. It put me off to an enormous degree, actually.
If only I could watch these downloaded files on tv, I said to myself, now THAT would be something. But no. While I know it's possible to convert a file to something watchable on tv, I've failed to manage it myself, and the process requires a lot of time and effort for each episode you'd like to convert. Still, I decided to give it another shot, in the hopes of catching a few episodes I've missed this year. So I asked
astolat for a few tips. astolat answered, "Hmmm, probably TMPGenc will do it, but you know, there's this new player on the market I've been looking at...."She described the player. I expressed disbelief. I repeatedly asked her the same questions, over and over, to see if I could trick her into different answers, but NO! I discovered that indeed, she was saying there existed a dvd player on the market that can playback divx/xvid files without any conversion at all. Just burn them down to dvd or cd, pop them in, and PLAY. And that said player is only $45 before shipping. (There are, it turns out, other players out there as well, like the Phillips... but this is certainly the cheapest I've seen listed).
I stared at the player online a while, then a while longer, and then twitched a bit, and then twitched more, and then a seizure at minute 21 or so caused me to hit the buy button.
( The player is the Norcent DP-220, and it arrived today. Cut for the length of this review )
