The DVDList

The DVDList is a free subscription mailing list for optical disc and digital media professionals.

The DVDList owner/manager is Geoffrey Tully of Geoffrey Tully, Inc.
The list server is hosted by John Blakney of Visual Database Systems.


DVDList Archives

Access to the archives requires a password.
To get a password, send an email to [email protected] with a subject of "Archive access request" and your real name in the message body.

Search the DVDList archives (over 85,000 posts!) by Keyword or Subject, Date, or Author

(The DVDList Archives are updated overnight so today's posts will show up tomorrow morning (US Central Time).)


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DVD FAQ

The DVD FAQ is located at Jim Taylor's excellent http://dvddemystified.com.


How to subscribe/unsubscribe to the DVDList

Here's how to subscribe:

The easiest way is to start and manage your subscription from our web interface. Point your browser to

http://dvdlist.tully.com/mailman/listinfo/dvdlist

You can easily manage your subscription from there.

You can also do this all the old-fashioned way by sending an email to:

[email protected]

with the word 'help' in the subject or body (don't include the quotes), and you will get a message back with instructions.

Subscription management

You must know your password to change your options (including the password itself) or to unsubscribe. If you don't know your password, don't worry, you will receive an automatic monthly reminder of it and instructions on how to change your subscription options and how to unsubscribe. There is also a button on the subscription management webpage to have your password mailed to you automatically.

Digest

We also have a digest version of the list that comes out once a day or more frequently if there is a lot of traffic.

You can subscribe/unsubscribe the same way as above except selecting the digest options on the webpage.

Contact a Human

If the mailing-list robot seems to not like you, contact one of the following for human assistance:

The DVDList owner is Geoffrey Tully   -   [email protected]

The list is hosted by John Blakney of Visual Database Systems   -   [email protected] he will also try to assist you.

Posting to the DVDList

You have to be a list subscriber to be able to post directly to the list. If you are, just send an email to [email protected] . If you put a new subject in, you start a new thread. The system adds the "[DVDList]" and other boilerplate for you. A reply is even easier but please be careful when pressing that reply button, it will go to several hundred subscribers of the list all around the world, faster than you can say "oops!"

Non-member postings, email that is formatted to anything other than plain text and anything containing an attachment is bounced to the humans for approval before it is posted. This means that it will be delayed and may be annoying to the humans if done repeatedly.

Plain text, please

We only relay plain text messages. To prevent the spread of dangerous attachments, virus propagation and serious mailbox overload, we pass all messages through a 'Demime' filter. This seems to be very effective but some email with high-order characters will get a bit mangled. You can easily surmise the message and it keeps you safe.

A bit of list etiquette

When replying, trim quoted material to just a minimum number of lines. The mailer can't always remove the garbage headers and footers that it self-generated and after a reply or two, it can be hard finding the message hidden amongst the boilerplate. In our soon-to-be-available digest, it looks even worse.

You should use reply without changing the subject when continuing to discuss the same topic but start a new thread when changing topics. When the archives are available, this will make them much more useful for the future. A descriptive but short subject line is always best.

As a final tip for those of you using mailers that makes your email look "pretty", please turn off the formatting and use only plain text format. This is helpful for those whose readers can't interpret your format, prevents it from being mangled by the mailer and keeps the digest and archives looking good. In MS Outlook, click Format|Plain Test on the message itself and if you use an address card for the DVDLIst, check the use plain text box under the email address block. In Netscape, look under Options the the Format dropdown box and set for Plain Text. Other mailers have similar features. Please don't include any mime attachments such as address cards.

Here is a useful link: Mailing List Manners

Be careful when pressing that reply button!

Replying to a message from the DVDList send it back to everyone on the list. If you want to send a response just to the messages's author, you must manually cut and paste that address. Don't be the next one of us to embarrass yourself by making public a bit of dirty laundry (of course the rest of the list's readers sometimes get quite a giggle out of your slip of the finger).