Netflix continues to inch its way up the movie distribution hierarchy and will soon be able to stream some new releases during the so-called "pay TV window." The company struck a deal with Relativity Media, a distribution house responsible for some major Hollywood films, that will give Netflix users access to streamed movies years faster in some cases.

As many Netflix users are painfully aware, the Watch Instantly pool is typically made up of a random selection of old 'n' busted films (and usually not even the good ones), with the occasional surprise movie that was released sometime after the year 2000. The reason for this is because most distribution houses give priority to their DVD release window, at which time, no one can play the movie until the studios feel they have milked every last drop of DVD revenue.





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After a year without any updates, the developers responsible for the popular video transcoder Handbrake have released version 0.9.4 of the open-source software. With such a small change in the version number, it would be easy to assume that there isn't much new in this version, but that assumption couldn't be further from the truth. In total, there have been over 1,000 changes since 0.9.3 and, while they might not all be life-changing, many of them make for a better user experience.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the new version incorporates improved code from the x264 project that, according to the release notes, makes for speedier encoding, smaller files sizes, and better picture quality. Additionally, 0.9.4 brings 64-bit support, which also provides 10 percent faster encodes. Ten percent may not seem like much, but when you are ripping a huge DVD library, it adds up in a hurry. Users can now include subtitles in their rips, which can be turned on and off (prior to this version, it was all or nothing). Live preview is also a very welcome addition to the software, as it allows a user to find out what their video will look like given specific compression settings.

Today we'll learn how to download a film, transcode it ready for DVD, create the file structure of a DVD, make a DVD ISO and burn the damn thing.

A helpful list of blank media quality. CD-RW, DVD-R, etc.

DV editor for Linux