Hi everyone, This is just a simple update to let everyone know that the site is back. Some good things have happened in the past few months. For once, I now have fiber internet, with symmetrical speed. However, my ISP took some time to get me out of the CGNAT. They also do not provide IPv6 so I had to sort that out, but the good news is everything seems to be back and running. Over the next few days,…
Hi everyone, This week, I installed the ListenBrainz and Last.FM plugins to my local Jellyfin server, where I have my Music CDs ripped and listen to them using the Finamp Android app. It seems that the Last.FM plugin is working well, but I noticed that the ListenBrainz plugin had a problem. Whenever I listened to songs with multiple artists, those would not be submitted nor would be shown as “Now Playing”. So, I took some time to find out the…
Hi everyone, Today, we will be seeing a result of QPxTool where I tested a Verbatim DVD+RW disc on the Dell DW316 DVD Burner. The Verbatim disc tested has a media ID of MKM-A02-000: The drive was able to burn the disc successfully at up to 4x. The burn took about 15 minutes and a half. Note that the drive performs online power calibration as it goes: After burning, I did a read test to confirm that the write was…
Hi everyone, I am a backer on what seems to be a scam Kickstarter Campaign for Storaxa. It was supposed to be a NAS system with the choice of AMD or Intel CPU. It’s been over a year already and no one has received this product. Some of us, however, did receive a MicroSD card in what was supposed to be a “test” for shipping. Storaxa said some of the MicroSD were found to be fakes and there was supposed…
Hi everyone, Today, I noticed I had quiet a few plasma updates. Turns out that KDE Plasma 6.1 is now available in the Ubuntu repositories for Ubuntu / Kubuntu oracular, or the 24.10 version. If you already have Ubuntu with KDE Plasma or Kubuntu 24.10, all you have to do is run sudo apt update and sudo apt dist-upgrade. This will update Plasma to the 6.1 version. A side note: SDDM, the display manager used by plasma, works, but the…
Hi everyone, In this post, I’ll be tearing down the YOTUO External USB DVD-ROM Drive to show the components inside the DVD enclosure. DVD Enclosure Teardown The DVD enclosure is similar to other DVD units that can be purchased out there. The design is usually varied. To open this enclosure, we need to remove some screws on the back: We then slide the case and the drive will be revealed: We can see that the cable that connects to the…
Tidal has recently announced they are removing their MQA and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio next month. This change comes after Tidal introduced Hi-Res FLAC as their preferred format and the increasing Dolby Atmos content available on the platform. The last day you will be able to hear MQA and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio is going to be July 23, 2024, with the content being removed the next day. These changes makes sense because MQA is now owned by Lenbrook Media…
It seems like we never would see this day coming since those alien DVDs were added to the kiosk. Recently, Redbox has added 3 movies, 2 of which are from their own Screen Media and 1 from Magnolia Pictures. There has been speculations of Redbox going out of business or not adding new movies. They faced financial challenges and a had a few court cases. In that, was included a Universal Pictures case which is probably responsible for some of…
Hi everyone, Today, we will be seeing the YOTUO External USB DVD-ROM Drive. This is an optical unit capable of reading various CD and DVD formats. The formats this unit is capable of reading includes CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, DVD+/- R DL, DVD+/-RW and DVD-RAM. This unit uses an integrated USB cable Unboxing This drive comes in a small box: The box has some typos in the bottom sentence: After opening the box and taking out its content, this…
Hi everyone, Today, we will be seeing the Verbatim 98938 External USB DVD Drive. This is an optical unit capable of reading and writing to various CD and DVD formats. The formats this unit is capable of reading includes CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, DVD+/- R DL and DVD+/-RW. It can also write to CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-R DL and DVD+/-RW. The drive is powered by USB and uses a Mini USB connector. Unboxing The drive comes in a small,…