[ad#250 x 250 Sqr Adsense]The future of entertainment has always made for good copy. Trying to divine the extent of technological possibilities has kept a number of pundits employed for as long as technology has bother to advance. Of course, this begs the causal question: which came first, the technology or the entertainment. Granted, it is a rather rhetorical question as an answer will not change the outcome.

Entertainment, as a matter of course, must remove us from our current reality, our current state of mind, and transport us into a realm that is all together otherworldly. To be sure, how does a re-imagined retelling of the Pocahontas and John Smith legend manage to become the highest grossing film of all time? It certainly did not hurt that the re-telling was done via 3D glasses, computer-generated imaging, and IMax theaters. Essentially, the modern movie-goer “loves him some CGI,” as Pa Kettle would put it.

The promise of a new way of spending our leisure time is one most cognizant members of the global community wait for with bated breath. When the distractions that fill our lives inevitably fall short of the mark, we long for the next big thing to shake us from the doldrums and tempt us to think, neigh to dream. What the future seems to have in store for us, if companies like Yoostar are to be believed, is a more and more blurred line separating the real from the unreal.

As it stands, assuming the identity of our favorite film character now requires the use so so many props and a rather clumsy green screen. Indeed the promise of the future — the future crafted by Gibson and Sterling — is an immediate plugging into the Net — a quaint term now, but we can substitute it with “virtual reality” to keep it hip and crackling with promise. Perhaps even “virtual” is a hackneyed term now. When the unreal and real are fused, what good will delineating one extreme or the other do?

In a future where what can be physically felt and what is conjured by pixels become one in the same, what will it mean for a thing to be real? Will the word “real” be phased out of our collective lexicon, like so many archaic words of yore? Perhaps things will simply be. Yes, you are the star of a perpetual action movie, wherein you’re never hurt and you always win. How will that impact our self-perception as individuals and a society? Will society matter at that point? Perhaps time will tell.

Companies of the Yoostar brand are positioned to deliver a new kind of entertainment to your home and hearth.[ad#inpost]

Totally forgot to post this earlier… dang!

DVDFab are running a 20% off deal until the 27th of December this year (2009). DVDFab is probably the Rolls Royce of DVD copying software and comes with incredible features for copying and converting from and to DVD.

It supports a huge range of outputs for conversion purposes and you rad the full review here: DVDFab Review

To take advantage of this discount go to this link DVD Fab DVD to DVD and enter this coupon code: FAB-XMS-OFF

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For a while now I have been meaning to take a closer look at the latest incarnation of Ahead Software’s: Nero 9 Reloaded. Finally I have had a chance to sit down and play with it and you can read about it here: Nero 9 Reloaded Review.

In the past Nero has been progressively getting more and more bloated with each new release. It is great to see that with this latest release they have opted for two valuable points in addressing this.

First they have not gone with a full release of a new version as they have in the past. So instead of going to version 10 they have remained at 9 with the “reloaded” tag to indicate the upgrade. This means a cheaper alternative for those who already have the program and would like to upgrade.

The second pleasing point is that they have mainly addressed the two areas of criticism they been attacked on for he past few years. The program is smaller and they have included as part of the installation procedure the option to load or not load the individual modules that comprise the entire suite.

Finally they have significantly reduced the amount of time it takes to actually install the program. In the past even some of the fastest computers were still taking nearly an hour to complete the install. The current version has shaved this down to around the 10 to 15 minute mark.

Nero 9 Reloaded is a pleasing development of this popular DVD burning program.

Click Here to See Nero 9 Reloaded for Yourself

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A couple of interesting DVD related items here that I noticed.

The first is a service called PC No Evil.

The site offers family friendly re-mixes of a number of popular Hollywood movies and by the look of the site there appear to be about 70 titles up so far.

It will be interesting to if the service catches on and they can expand their catalogue. To use the service you need to have either the free or paid version of CyberLink PowerDVD 8 or higher so as to be able to play the movies through your computer.

The list of titles looks kind of tame in the first place but if you have kids and don’t want to have to answer awkward questions like “What is that man doing to that woman?” or at least not have to retrieve them from under the sofa you may find it useful.

PC No Evil.com

The second item is an article outlining some of the benefits and downsides to trying to repair scratched or damaged DVDs, CDs and game discs.

There is a lot of info kicking around the net on just how to go about this and the article gives a pretty even handed covering of what is available.

Fixing Scratched DVDs, CDs and Game Discs

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