Why hasn't anyone pointed out that Nintendo is already doing this in Wii Fit?

That's a Magnolia display in the picture, but no... the reason why Best Buy gets all the Samsung stuff early is because the company in general has a very tight relationship with the Samsung reps. They drop by the store 2-4 times a month, shoot the breeze with associates, and generally provide support to a lot of questions. It's not necessarily that the associates personally prefer them.

David --

First of all, thanks for taking the time to follow up on all this. The direct and earnest feedback is encouraging. A few of my concerns:

1. The lack of ability to remove region encoding is kind of a deal breaker. And it's not just that simple -- you've got your standard regions, plus additional RCE protection on a fair amount of discs. Since RipIt is being billed as a straightforward "click and go" solution, it would be appropriate to zero out all the region encoding. Or at least, offer the tickbox in basic preferences that allows people to automate that process or not. Maybe some of us really don't care one way or the other. But to convince the power users (like me) who archive our hundreds of DVDs, it's a good idea.

2. ISO copying is a nice addition, but raw .vob extraction via VIDEO_TS would still be more preferable. It depends on how you burn it in Toast -- you can use VIDEO_TS mode, or DVD-ROM (UDF). I have encountered very few problems with both.

3. How does RipIt handle blank sectors and other structural copyright protections?

On another aside, most of you having issues with MacTheRipper are using the 2.6.6 free version, which doesn't include any of the regular updates being made to paid members. There's a considerable difference in effectiveness. That being said, the developer is having some pretty difficult personal issues right now on top of some already dwindling support over the last couple years. I don't expect RipIt to support advanced features like selective extractions (main title feature, AC3 audio, deselecting subtitles, etc.), but it can be a purposeful, viable alternative for backups with a little more work.

Bought it without even thinking, and just tested it to scout out my upcoming trip to Royal Gorge this weekend. VERY impressive work, incredibly easy to navigate and tells me almost everything I want to know. Map functionality and specific info on actual river runs (Such as "Boulder Drop" instead of "X to X" for example) are probably the only things I'd like to see in future revisions. WELL worth the two bucks to any fellow whitewater addict.

And for that matter, why hasn't someone come up with a tide app for surfers? Hmm...

You're going to have to get some additional hardware. One route would be through an A/V receiver with built-in Dolby Digital decoding. Then go optical from the Mac (TOSLINK) to the decoder and finally from the decoder to the speakers. There are some 5.1 external audio interfaces, but the FireWire-based FireWave from Griffin lacks Windows drivers, while the USB-based Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 lacks Mac drivers. So your best bet is with an external receiver or preamp.

I've have those same Klipsch 5.1 ProMedia speakers for about five years now, and spent a long time on this same problem (Logitech circumvented it with a digital coaxial out!). Here's a couple options:

M-Audio used to have a delightfully kickass little external USB gadget called Sonica Theater which piped the digital signal out, then routed the sound accordingly to your three 1/8 stereo headphone jacks: Front L/R, Rear L/R and Center/Sub. I'm not sure why it was discontinued, it was actually quite a superb little unit.

http://cgi.ebay.com/M-Audio-Sonica-Theater-USB-7-1-Surround-Audio_W0QQitemZ120275906149QQihZ002QQcategoryZ75518QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

When I ran into this problem a couple years ago, I was unable to find any external receivers that outputted this way (though I did see one much later once -- might've been a Yamaha). My solution at the time was to snap up a Creative Labs DDTS-100, a standalone box that has multiple TOSLINK/Optical/Analog inputs, all that routed output to the same Front L/R, Rear L/R, Center/Sub combo. It didn't integrate terribly well with my living room setup, but it certainly performed well.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/449/449167p1.html

Might be more difficult to find these days, but I still have it to this day.

He ruined a perfectly good Tecmo Super Bowl for THIS? Of all the games... !! Ugh.

Hey, I know you! You're the author of the kickass Circle Six blog that's been in my RSS feeds for the last year and a half. TUAW scored big with this free agent, good to see you on board! :)

These are classics, used by quite a few primetime DJs and musicians in clubs. Defo sign me up.

Engadget needs to hire p-diddy next. That was an impressive trip through the comments.

Bravo. Good call guys.