Re: POLL REQUEST (was Re: Eat the Video Nightmare)

d~ <katebush@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Really? I remember heaps of praise and general kudos on RMG - when he
> announced the plan, when he gave us updates on the progress - and I'm
> sure there will be much more once deliveries begin to occur.

Yeah, I got tons of praise when I originally announced what would come
in the future. But almost all the positive feedback I've gotten now
that I've *delivered* more than 200 copies via BitTorrent, plus all the
copies being shipped by several folk who are making dupes for folk, is
from the kind folk who helped out in the project, like Tippi, who
formated the liner notes, and Heisjohn, who did the beta testing, and
KJB, who is duplicating the DVD's (but at an apparently rather pokey
pace). There's been a couple others, like from Mike Wade, but for every
one comment saying thanks, I get ten complaints about how KJB has stolen
their money, or how the DVD's won't play on their ten-year-old DVD
player, or how the quality of the video doesn't live up to their
post-"Lord of the Rings" DVD experience.

I'd hate to have to put up with an "I told you so" from Chris Williams,
who admonished me when he finally admitted that he was never going to
keep his word of sending me the higher quality source material, that he
got out of the business of helping to distribute video material to the
community, because it consists of mostly people with a "gimme" attitude,
who then whine about the quality not making full use of their 50-inch
wide-screen plasma TV's and THX sound systems. I'd much rather have
Chris proved wrong, rather than right.

> I found the tool I need, I just need to set some time aside and figure
> out how to use it. Time I haven't had a lot of lately but hopefully
> this (long) weekend I'll be able to get it together.

I'd recommend either DVD Decrypter or the software that came with your
DVD burner, if it supports burning ISO's. For DVD Decrypter, burning
ISO's is very easy, and it works extremely well. (It's a terrible
tragedy that the author of this freeware has been recently sued into
submission, and there will be no future versions. He should have
released the sources before this happened so that other people could
have kept the program alive.) You just put DVD Decrypter into ISO write
mode, select the ISO file as your source, the burner as your
destination, select "verify after write" if you feel so inclined, and
push the big burn-it button in the middle of the screen.

> No. I asked |>oug to join in on the "hey, we need updates" cries. I
> would like to see KJB himself offer up periodic updates.

I've sent KJB email every week asking for updates and asking for him to
update his website, and I've posted what he has said in reply. For a
while his website languished because of a claimed disk crash that
destroyed his source material for the web site. He now has an update on
his website saying what the current status is, which is self-admittedly
very pokey. The rate of shipments via BitTorrent is probably 5-10 times
the rate he is shipping. For those who are not the patient sort, I
recommend fetching via BitTorrent, or taking up the offers of those who
have volunteered to duplicate disks for people in return for a pair of
blanks and a SASE (or whatever their terms are).

It would be nice, however, to someday receive those pressed DVD's in
nice packaging and liner notes, and unless someone else tells me that
they have the capability to do this, I don't know what other choice we
have than to be patient with KJB. Coming down like a ton of bricks on
his ass is much more likely to cause him to say, "*** it", issue
refunds, and close up shop.

>>> All he has to do is update, on group, every other week or so the
>>> status of the delivery process.

>> well KJB replied to my email saying my discs were sent. That was in
>> April and I'm still waiting.

> that doesn't bode well, now, does it?

Perhaps not, but Tippi lives in Canada, I think. KJB claims that he's
been having a lot of problems with customs when shipping to other
countries. Whether this is all just excuses and "the check's in the
mail", I don't know, but if he's scamming us to make a few extra bucks,
there have certainly got to be easier ways to make money, especially
when his personal information is easily available and people can
complain to PayPal, which wouuld make life difficult for him.

Most likely, he's just like me, and when I think it'll end up two weeks
do something, it might end up taking me a year instead. In the
meantime, there are a number of ways for people to get the discs. I
should think that people would be happier about this, than about delays
in a receiving a nicely packaged version, or the potential loss of a few
bucks: Lost Paypal transaction, $10 -- decent quality Kate Bush video
material on DVD, priceless.

|>oug
.