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7MC additions/mods/tools
0Just thought I’d make up a list of all the additions i’ve added to the HTPC.
First and foremost, there’s BSE, Big Screen EPG: A great app that essentially replaces the useless Over-the-Air Free View EPG and gives you fresh data straight from the source. In addition to this, you also get categorised data (by genre e.g. sports) and most importantly, the ability to add pictures to EPG data meaning you get a title picture of the show in the guide. Cool eh?. I should also mention that this will cost you $20 for 5 licences (2 year).
Next on the list there’s Media Browser, which creates a fully catalogued library of all your videos and inside you get a very pretty interface (skinable). Also it includes support for ISO mounting, which is really cool. I used to use that particular feature lots, but not so much since I converted all of my movies to MPEG4 h.264.
Thirdly, there’s Media Studio, which allows you to pull out and rearrange or rename components of the 7MC start up menu. So for instance if you wanted to remove the movies strip, you just untick it and its gone. Also you can get themes for 7MC with Media Studio which are currently in short supply, though some are pretty good. And I suppose if you’re so inclined, you could make your own.
Then there’s MyChannelLogos, which technically I don’t need as I can do it through BSE but anyways; it automatically downloads all the logos you need for each respective channel and shows it in the 7MC TV Guide.
Next there’s Shark007’s Windows 7 Codec Pack. Now I’m sure you could live without it and work all the little things out on your own, but this takes all the work out. Basically it installs the right codecs for the job, and it works out of the box, but of course you can also fiddle and make changes yourself with relative ease. This was actually an essential part of my setup because I needed to be able to set an audio delay (in the output tab if your interested) and play mkv’s and also I wanted to utilise FFMPEG’s DXVA h.264 decoder, which uses your graphics card to take the load off the CPU.
Oh damn, I nearly forgot the absolute best, useful, life/hair-saver, MCE Standby Tool (MST).
This little baby is the only way possible, unless you really, really know your way around W7’s power management system in the registry and also know the registry configuration of Media Center very well, to ensure your HTPC acts like a PVR/TV and not a PC.
In essentials, MST takes control of deciding when your PC needs to sleep and when it needs to wake up. It can open up 7MC when you resume from sleep, it can also exit 7MC when you put it to sleep, in case it buggers up (which it most certainly will).
And finally, there’s MCEWebView, which is a set of plugins for Media Center that allows you to browse Internet TV sites (such as iView, Fixplay) using the remote (the cursor keys become the mouse).
To the people/groups who made all these tools available (and most for free),
THANKYOU!
It is thanks to your skills and generosity that I have a working HTPC running Windows 7 Media Center.
🙂
Stargate Universe
0It’s finally happened. The last episode of SGU season 2 and also the last episode of the series has been shown.
It was such a dissappointment that they ended it and what’s worse, the way they ended it.Essentially we’re left wondering what will happen next, knowing all the while that we will never know.
Couldn’t they have made one more episode? Just one, or something at least to provide us with at least some closure. Hell a movie would’ve worked fine.
Now I’m the first to admit I really didn’t like SGU at first. It took most of season 1 for me to get used to it (and for them to stop focusing on the people/their relationships).
Season 2 was absolutely awesome. We got a new enemy, we got away from the mundane ins and outs of life alone on the ship, and we got a good dose of stargateishness. So why oh why did they decide that it was best to end it when it was getting good? It’s just so frustrating when they make these decisions with absolutely no input from the fans.
Anyways, I’m hopeful that they will see reason (and the improved viewership on the last episode) and start it up again (Hey it happened with Family Guy).
Please sign the petition Save Stargate Universe by clicking here – Start a Petition or online petition
Join the Facebook groups:
http://www.facebook.com/SaveSGU
Ubuntu Unity Upgrade?
1So I just fired up my laptop today (it really doesn’t get used anywhere near as much as it used to) and during one of my usual passive aggressive ‘update checks’ I discovered Ubuntu 11.04 codenamed: Natty Narwhal (weird right?) is out. So I set off upgrading.
Though I am usually against the practice, I chose to ‘upgrade’ my installation, partially out of curiosity and partially because I simply couldn’t be bothered reinstalling, reconfiguring, etc etc. Now, for some reason the Optus mirror for Linux was being biblically slow (something I’ve come to expect from Optus servers) and because I’ve never tried it before, I opted to download the ‘Alternate’ image using BitTorrent. Speeds were much improved and I achieved a consistent 1.3MB/s, which is about what I would expect from BT anyway (due to my rubbish 512k upload I’d say). So I got the image, dumped it on a USB stick and mounted it on the laptop.
From there all you gotta do is either let the autorun do its thing, or cd to the mount point and ./cdromupgrade in a root shell.
Anyways, the point was, it pretty much went flawlessly. The only issue I had was with what I assume was the Nvidia driver not carrying on which caused my screen to be permanently at 640×480. The solution was to simply open up Synaptic Package Manager and install nvidia-current.
After the reboot, the usual Nvidia screen popped up as it was supposed to, and I was immediately upgraded from the classic gnome experience to the new Ubuntu Unity login.
Not having followed the development of Ubuntu, this was a surprise to me. And from where I’m standing, not a particularly good one.
First thing that really bugs me is the way this thing works.From what I can tell, its like a merge of Windows 7’s task bar, and Mac OSX’s dock. In general, I don’t mind the reusing of ideas but the problem is that it completely replaces the menu bars. I guess the first problem is I didn’t like the ideas they nicked from OSX, such as the application taking the desktop thing.
Screenshot of Ubuntu Unity
Note how when Firefox is on top, it appears on the top bar. And when its in full focus, the FF menu appears where the title is (just like in OSX).
Now I’m sorry, but it’s stupid in OSX and it’s stupid in Ubuntu, more so even, and it absolutely does my head in when it flicks between the application’s title, and the menu bar; Damn it’s annoying.
It seems this Unity thing is around just to save screen space, which in my world, isn’t a real issue.
Now the parts ripped off of Windows is another thing; It is pretty much the same as Windows 7 (you use it as both an application menu and a task bar) and in Windows 7, it works. But here, it really could work, but the fact that it can’t be moved to the bottom, irritates me. It’s like they’re saying “How dare you make your Linux machine look like Windows”. Seriously, if you rip off an idea from somewhere, why not make it work like it was originally intended.
I liked the idea in Windows 7, how it saves space, how it merges the quick launch bar with the task bar. It gives you more choices in less space. But with Unity, it seems to be limiting my choices, rather than giving them. Isn’t the whole idea of Linux Freedom of Choice?
Another thing they ripped out of Windows 7 is the shortcut keys (believe it or not) for accessing task bar items. So Win+1 will open the first icon on the task bar (Unity bar -whatever).
Oh and they also ripped off the searching from the start menu thing as well. Just as in Windows, press the Win button and start typing to search the installed applications (not files -there’s another button for that).
To conclude: I shall be continuing my Ubuntu experience with Ubuntu Classic (you can change this on the login screen), thus my upgrade to 11.04 was completely useless and once again Linux has wasted another few hours of my life and nothing good has come from it.
This is EXACTLY why Linux will NEVER be a reasonable choice for the masses. More time is wasted than is saved from not buying it.
So here’s a top tip for computer users: waste your time making the money (which by the way helps the economy and society at large) to purchase Windows (or hell … a Mac).
i.e. In the long run, Linux will cost you more in time than you could make from money by working.