Posts Tagged: online streaming

Grammy Time: Performances Worth Recording

As we’re sure you heard, the Grammys were a few days ago. Aside form the actual who-won-what part, the next best reason to watch any awards show is always the performances. This year was no exception. In fact, the show changed it up by giving out 10 awards before the cameras even started rolling, which means that this Grammy show was all about the performances. It got us thinking of some of our past favorite Grammy spectacles… so if you haven’t seen these, get comfy, and enjoy!

Although Beyonce had a seductive performance this year with Jay-Z, we prefer the flawless 2010 moves in “If I Were A Boy”, plus it turns into a perfect cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Outta Know”… you’ll see:

We don’t want to make you depressed today, but if you need a good cry then watch Eric Clapton’s 1993 Song of the Year “Tears in Heaven”.

We had to post this 2007 performance by Christina Aguilera singing the James Brown classic “It’s A Man’s World”… because, I mean, those pipes. Yeesh.

There’s no way we could assemble a list of best Grammy performances and exclude the King of Pop! Here’s the iconic 1988 “Man in the Mirror” performance from Michael Jackson.

Our favorite performance from this year would have to be the finale jam of Daft Punk’s stellar hit “Get Lucky” with some awesome assistance from disco-royalty Nile Rodgers and the man himself, Stevie-freaking-Wonder. It’s definitely one worth watching, and re-watching, and re-watching…

Of course, you can always record these performances for your own personal archives with our Replay Media Catcher app. Try it here and start collecting all of your favorite Grammy performances!

Which was your favorite live performance of the night? Think any of them were Replay Media Catcher save-worthy? Let us know in the comments.

Five Great Sites for Streaming Music

Every other month or so I put together a list of sites that are great for streaming audio or video and publish the list in our newsletter. Here are five sites that were featured in the March newsletter:

I like having 1.FM on while I am at work. I am a total fan of the 70’s pop station. The songs crack me up.

1.FM

Band of the Day is an adventure – you never know what kind of music you’re going to hear. And if you miss a day – no big deal – they recap the bands they’ve chosen from earlier days at the bottom of the home page.

Band of the Day

I confess I haven’t set up my own station with earbits – instead I like the editors’ picks – always a good listen.

Earbits

8 tracks is my absolute favorite for discovering new music and new bands!

8 Tracks

Thanks to Mixcloud I now have a few DJ favorites that I like to listen to and follow. Always great for livening up my afternoon at work.

mixcloud

And of course all these sites work fabulously with Replay Music. 🙂
What are some of your favorite sites for discovering new music?

Downloading Media and Copyright Trolls

People are getting their media fix in a variety of ways these days. Some use our software to record or download for their personal use, others go to clearly illegal download sites, and some use BitTorrent. While downloading is the most convenient and fastest way to capture video or audio, it does have some inherent risks. And some unscrupulous people will try to take advantage.

Take the case of Prenda Law, documented by blogger Popehat and others here. (Read the link backwards for a good history.) In a nutshell, a few lawyers allegedly bought the rights to worthless adult movies, had them posted on BitTorrent, and then watched as other people used Torrent software to download them. They captured the IPs of the downloaders, and then subpoenaed the internet providers to get the name of the customers. Then they filed copyright actions against these alleged downloaders, in the hopes that they would settle rather than going to court to defend themselves from downloading porn. A pretty clever scheme.

This is starting to fall apart, as many bloggers and opposing lawyers claim the very same lawyers who were doing the suing also formed the company to buy the copyrights, and tried to hide this fact from the courts. Oh – and these guys apparently did some identify theft to make a CEO for these holding companies. One federal judge is particularly not amused, and has ordered all the parties to appear in his courtroom April 2. A lot of people are following this, as it’s pretty unusual for a judge to take these steps.

Nevertheless, I understand from reading articles about this that many people caught downloading have decided to pay up to $3000 instead of fighting this in court, which is the preferred outcome to begin with for these (alleged) schemers.

The moral – when you download something from a file download or torrent site, your IP address is available, and anyone motivated enough can find out who you are. Using products like ours – where the server logs look like normal use – is one way to protect yourself.

Capturing Live Streams with our Screen Recorder – Replay Video Capture

Capturing CNN Live Online

While I am at work I can’t watch TV – but that doesn’t mean I want to miss live coverage of major events as they unfold. Thanks to live streaming news sites like CNN – and our professional quality screen recorder Replay Video Capture – I don’t have to.

I had CNN streaming live on my Windows 8 desktop and Replay Video Capture, our super easy screen recorder, was capturing all the coverage as it happened. Later today, when my work is done 🙂 I’ll be able to watch the news as it happened. Which is how I like it.

The image above is from my recorded video from earlier today – look at that gorgeous quality. That’s Replay Video Capture! Don’t miss another live event as it happens. Replay Video Capture is the prefect screen recorder for capturing all live streams – and any other streams you can’t download like webinars, encrypted sites, video chats, etc. Enjoy.

How Replay Music, Our Audio Recorder for Music, helped me Discover a New Band

Recently I saw a fun commercial about the NFL draft (don’t ask me why I was watching a commercial on the NFL draft – my husband must have left ESPN on). It was this Deion Sanders Super Bowl Commercial.

I love the song they used!

Leon Sandcastle Commercial

I immediately wanted to hear more of the song they used in the commercial. A little bit of digging and I found the song, “This Head I Hold” by Electric Guest. Once I knew the song title, I opened Replay Music and went to Grooveshark and captured the song and other songs from Electric Guest. I also used Replay Music to get the song on my phone and I have been listening to it ever since. I am now an Electric Guest fan. And being the good fan that I am I also went to iTunes and supported the band by buying the song. All this thanks to Replay Music.

What bands have you discovered recently?

Installing Replay Media Catcher on Windows 8

Replay Media Catcher in Windows 8

YouTube video: Downloading, Installing and Using Replay Media Catcher in Windows 8I just created a short video showing how to install and use Replay Media Catcher on Windows 8.

As long as you are in desktop mode in Windows 8, your experience using Replay Media Catcher will be no different than in earlier versions of Windows. Watch the video and see.

There is one slightly new thing that may occur during your download of Replay Media Catcher – you may be asked to install .NET Framework. Windows offered to help me find the program – and then did find it and install it on my PC. Once it was installed, I saw this screen and Replay Media Catcher finished downloading.

.Net Framwork Dialogue Window

Have you tried Replay Media Catcher with Windows 8 yet? How’d it go?

Recording the 55th Annual Grammy Awards – A Reminder to Get it While You Can.

The 55th Annual Grammy Awards

As most of you know last Sunday, February 10th, was the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. And conveniently for many it streamed live online on a variety of sites:
CBS.com
Grammys.com
Hollywoodlife.com
just to name a few.

And as many of you also know, Replay Video Capture, our professional quality screen capture program, can capture live streams beautifully. It would have been the perfect program to use to capture the 55th Annual Grammy Awards particularly since Replay Video Capture has a scheduler. It’s easy to set up Replay Video Capture to record a live stream at a particular time.

But I didn’t do that.

Monday I went online to find a site that was re-broadcasting the Grammy’s. I thought for sure CBS.com would be. But no.

No one is.

The Grammy’s aren’t online anywhere that I can see. I even wrote the Grammy’s to find out where I could get a copy of the broadcast. I still haven’t heard back.

The moral of this little tale – capture what you can when you can because tomorrow it just might not be there.

🙁

Download Video from the BBC iPlayer with Replay Media Catcher

BBC iPlayer Logo

BBC iPlayer

Last week we were at a trade show demonstrating our software and were so surprised at how many people didn’t realize that Replay Media Catcher can download video from the BBC iPlayer. When we showcased Replay Media Catcher in action people were really amazed.

I made a short little video showing how Replay Media Catcher works with the iPlayer – you can see it here.

There is such wonderful content available through the iPlayer. Downloading the shows and watching them on my iPad – when I am offline – has been great. Replay Media Catcher makes that so easy. Especially with its built in converter.

Are there other sites that you are interested in downloading? Remember we have a great tool on our homepage that will show you which products will work with each site. Have you tried our tool recently?

Why not give it a whirl.

Enjoy!