I'm fat.  I know it - basically everyone else knows it too.  Today, I decided to use a little of our Tax Return money to buy a Wii fit.  We actually looked around quite a bit for one, but everyone was sold out.  We even talked to the guy at Best Buy and he told us that they are almost impossible to order.  The demand is just too high and the supply is not.  Obviously, Nintendo knows about economics, because the law of supply and demand means prices are high.

I saw a Wii Fit a couple months ago (the original one) for about $80, but when we went looking, the cheapest we could find Wii Fit Plus was $140.  So, yeah! it's an extra $60 for the Plus in the name, Sheesh.  We did find it online at walmart for $138, but it was sold out.  Today, my wife asked me to go to the big Wal Mart to get some supplies for FHE, and I heard over the intercom that they had Wii fit in stock. So I ran back to the Electronics department and found a lady carrying one.  I asked her if it was claimed and she told me no.  "I want it then!" I said and was pleased to see that it was only $100.  so, yes I got it.

We got it home, Unboxed it and hooked it up to our Wii.  I went through the introduction, which weighs you and gives you your BMI.  Now, I am not a proud man, so I'll share that my BMI is 33.  I've put in a goal to work off 10 pounds in 4 weeks.  The darn game called me Obese... can you believe it.  I'm only 70 pounds overweight D: So, here's my blog to get back into shape.

It's actually a fun game.  Be sure you wear shoes when you play it though, as it does a number to the soles of your feet.  I played a few of the balance games and then raced my wife in a 100 yard dash (I'm sure it was longer - it was the Short Distance Free Run).  I decided to take it slow in the beginning, so I only worked out for 15 minutes today, and worked off about 1/5 of the cupcake that I had for dessert. Hey, it's a start.

I'll keep a log here for me, because the only reason you're reading this is because you stumbled upon it. But I am interested in how much this actually works.  If I can lose weight while playing a game, yay for me.  We (being my wife and I) have already planned out diet conscious meal menus, so eating sensibly and working out with the Wii might actually provide us with real results.  Only time will tell.

I have a PlayStation3 and I have 2 children under 8 years old.  I also have a lot of DVDs that are getting scratched, so I decided I'd test out how to format files for my PS3 so I could watch movies without having to dig out the DVD and hope it works.  All the tools I used are free and after testing the quality, I've found what I think it the perfect format for the PS3.

First, the PS3 has a lot of different formats that it uses that are nice, but not all. It's actually quite picky as to the format of the file.  The formats can be found here.  I decided that I want all my video in an MP4 container, so that limits my capabilities as to what format I can use. 

First: Ripping the DVD: The first thing to do is to Rip your DVD from the disk to your computer. The best free tool for this job is DVD Shrink. DVD Shrink decrypts the CSS of the DVD and can package it to ISO format, which is what we want. You can dload the app from Softpedia, a simple Google Search will get you to the application.

Simply install the application, Start it up and put your DVD in the drive.  Next you want to Re-author your DVD.  Click the Reauthor button and drag the main movie (Title 1) to the right column.  Then click the compression settings tab again and uncheck everything you don't want.  Typically, you don't want audio tracks in different languages or subtitles in different languages.  Leave the compression ration on Automatic.  These settings rip the DVD with the highest bit rate which is good for the next step. Should rip between 15 minutes to an hour depending on the speed of your computer.  When you rip, be sure to choose Image File (ISO) - this is the format we'll need to convert it to a file for your PS3

Second: Installing MediaCoder: The application we'll use to transcode the movie to MP4. You'll also need to download the Nero AAC Codec as this is the format the sound needs to be in.  Install MediaCoder, then unzip the Nero Codec files (in the Win32 folder in the archive from Nero) to the \Program Files\Media Coder\Codecs.  (I'll put all of this into a video and upload it to youtube with instructions.) 

Third: Transcode: We are now ready to transcode.  Follow these steps to Transcode the file for use in your PS3:

1. Start MediaCoder.
2. Click File > Add File
3. Browse to the ISO you ripped in Step 1
4. Click the imported File in the upper left list in Media Coder.
5. In the bottom section, you'll set your settings
   1. Click the Video Tab, Choose H.264 next to format. Set the BitRate to 2000 Kbps 
   2. Click the Audio Tab, Choose Nero Encoder next to Encoder and LC-AAC as the format
   3. Click the Container Tab, Choose MP4
6. Once the settings have been chosen, click on the Summary tab on the right to view the estimated output.  The video should be H264 at 2000Kbps.  The Audio should be LC-AAC. The container should be MP4.  If this is all correct, click the Start button in the top toolbar.
7. The Transcoding process should take about as long as watching the video for good quality results.  The resulting video will be approximately 1GB per hour in size and will be almost the same quality as the DVD itself.

Finally, Some Information: Here is the answers to a couple Questions you might ask:

1. Why did you choose MP4 and not DivX?
   1. The Divx 7 codec uses the H.264 algorithm which is far superior to other codecs, especially when it comes to compression vs quality.  since the MP4 with H.264 is the same as an AVI with Divx 7 (H.264) the quality should be identical, but the MP4 is slightly smaller in file size.
2. Why did you choose 2000Kbps for the video bitrate?
   1. Retail DVDs are encoded at about 9800Kbps video bitrate.  This allows for ultimate video quality. However, they are generally released in Standard Def, or approximately 720 x 480 pixels in resolution.  The PS3/HDTV both will upscale this image in real time to HD (Usually 1280x720).  I don't know the algorithm that the PS3 uses to upscale, but it is far superior than allowing your computer to do the upscaling.  Media Coder can upscale video, but it ends up grainy and ugly, especially when played back on the PS3.  So this is what I did: I took my copy of "Big Fish" and ripped it 5 times, One at 1000Kbps, one at 2000Kbps and so on.  I then played each of the files on my PS3 next to the DVD to see which one was the closest in quality.  There was significant quality differences between the 1000Kbps rip and the 2000Kbps version, while there was little improvement on the 3000, 4000, and 5000 files. Also the file size difference was notable.  The 1000Kbps file was 1200MB, the 2000Kbps file was about 2200MB, and about a gig each.  So, I determined the best quality for the file size was the 2000Kbps bitrate and ~2GB file.

If you've ever had a kitty, you can relate to this video: