coathanger007

Lately many freeware have disappeared from view and are either no longer freeware or very hard to get a download link to . e.g.:
2ce CubicEye 3D Browser, CleanDisk 2002, CM DiskCleaner, Codecreatures Benchmark, Coffeecup FreeHTML, Corel Presentations, Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens, Diskeeper lite, Fusionsoft DVD Player, JV16 Powertools/Regcleaner, Lexun Backup Solution, Oozic Player 3, Shelltoys, System Security 2002, XP Smoker...what a looong list

Good, thing is my site (in signature) is still hosting these.

---

CrazyBoyS

Basically what is happening is everyone is on the internet and cashing from it.

No one wants to offer FREE as they see a bigger picture, Their personal pockets. It plainly sux.

---

NetRyder

In the meantime, open source software just keeps getting better.

---

Friend of Bill

Capitalists, all of them I tell you!

CrazyBoyS

LOL My words EXACTLY!

---

Vetrius

lol, how true.... nooooooooo freeware! soon they'll make us pay for flash games too!

---

SPeedY_B

So true. In my experience, open source software has always been of a higher quality than freeware anyway.

---

Electronic Punk

Working DVD software just can't be free

---

SPeedY_B

http://videolan.org/ - Works for me, also doesn't query the Region of my drive. mmm.

---

Dark Atheist

http://www.mplayerhq.hu - another good player

NetRyder

Heck yeah. With VLC installed, you just don't need anything else (except for certain oddball formats...but it's usually AVI/MPEG/DVD for me anyways)

---

Mainframeguy

... so I am going to tag on here at the risk of seeming OT,

today I was at a loose end and somewhat bored... for some perverted reason the M$N thumbnail of Kylie drew me into their infernal plan to download .WMA tracks at around 0.75p a go (well, that was for Alanis Morrissette - when I wanted Fugees it went up to 0.99p!)... anyway, £10 down but I do have four tracks and some credit left to play with....

So far so good - then I want to add them to my Foobar playlist, well hang on = need MP3 not WMA, so off I goes to dbpoweramp and gets the codecs and.......

when I tries there is some encode block that stops this

Now the thing is I paid for this music and now cannot play it on my mp3 player! I am a little upset - coulda put that money towards a regular purchase and all would have been well. There is something going wrong here.

Anyway - doubt Muzikool or that other dude (dreamliner77) that knows all about music will find this thread, so hopefully I will only be ripped apart gently so to speak (because I feel sure it is all my own fault!)

---

dreamliner77

I found the thread, do I get a prize?

Anyways, FB2K does not by defualt support WMA. You must download the WMA runtimes and the WMA plugin. Try here :http://foobar2000.blogsite.org/

It won't help I don't think if the files are DRM restricted, but you can give it a go. (I do believe there is a way to strip the DRM, but I'm not sure what it is, and even if I did, I don't think I would be at liberty to discuss it here).

---

Mainframeguy

yeah - and the prize is another question
I just played around some more - I did get the foobar plug in for the format, but that ain't the issue here it is down to the media being licensed and the licenses being for Windows Media Player and I am just starting to realise that when I bought the downloads I was buying a lot less than if I bought this media in a retauil outlet - and I do not just mean the cover art!

But that's not the question - the question is supposing I take the WMA file, which I have now got playing on another machine with WMP after a lot of frigging and clocking up another download (only allowed to do it a certain number of times, usually three altogether - so if you have more than three PCs you are truly stuffed!) So still trying to head this track over towards my dinky lil mp3 player... but how? What about if I burn a CD (license should allow me to do that once or twice) and then from the CD I rip it back to get to MP3? Surely they have not done anything that prevents that? Because the CD surely has to play in any device?

If you tell me I am wrong I could get mad, but at least I will have learnt...

---

coathanger007

Do mp[layer and videolan include a DVD decoder like Fusionsoft? Or are they simply players?

---

NetRyder

I know VLC does include a DVD decoder.

---

dreamliner77

Mainframe:

What I'd suggest is get ahold of some pro recording software (Audacity is open source and free) or Total Recorder (sorry no links, too busy to look right now). They will record exactly what is going to your sound card as wav files. I'd then use a lossless compressor like Monkey's Audio or FLAC so you have a permenant copy as close to the original as you're gonna get. Then you can encode the wav's to whatever you want (mp3) and play them anywhere.

DRM sucks.

www.againsttcpa.com

---

Geffy

vlc refused to work properly for me to play DVDs in BSD, will have to beat it into submission sometime

---

Mainframeguy

I agree there now that I understand it

But wanted to say Audacity is a cool thing and thankyou for the flexible answer to my requirements - you saved me CD burning too

---

dreamliner77

No problems, glad I could be of service

I'll be here all week, two shows a night...

---