Technology

I figured that since I only want the movies themselves off of dvd, I will just hook the dvd player into the s-video on my TV Tuner and just record them with BTV. Such a simple solution, fuck this ripping and converting and whatnot. What a PITA.

I’ve been fooling with trying to find a good program to backup my DVDs for quite awhile. The only thing I am interested in is the movie itself. I don’t particularly give a shit about the menus or other interactive crap that they put on the DVD. When I buy a DVD it is because I want to watch the movie. Very simple.

I’ve looked at program after program trying to find a decent one that would get past the encryption and just save a damn video file to my HTPC’s hard drive. Finally I have settled on two, DVDDecryptor, which does a great job pulling to vob files to the hard drive, and DVDx to convert them to mpg. At least I know what I will be doing the next few evenings.

Did a couple of test runs on the recording stuff yesterday. I won’t say that it worked flawlessly, but it was pretty damn close. Recorded Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, a classic if there ever was one. My 15 year old said it was cheesy. I guess maybe it was. Hell, I though it was pretty damn cool when I was 15, still do.

Finally gor got my HTPC where it will change the cable box channel itself when I change the channel on my PVC software. Had to do it a roundabout way using three different programs, but hey, it works. That will make a big difference because now I can schedule it to record stuff and not worry about what channel it gets left on.

I’ve spent alot of time over the last couple of weeks working on the HTPC. Main programs are there. Beyond TV Beta, which I am also using for videos, rather than Beyond Media. Beyond Media has some issues and will not let me add as many video folders as I can with the TV application. Go figure. I am using Beyond Media to display photo’s and music. Could use some work with the Audio library interface, but it is pretty decent. Shitty browser interface. It includes Spotlight, which is also part of XP MCE. It just fucking sucks. I added a couple of menu items to pull up a full-screen IE with my HA touchscreen pages, including weather. It’s kind of clumsy, but seems to work ok. My TV Tuner also has a builtin FM Tuner, but for the life of me haven’t found anything that I am currently using that will allow it’s usage. Not that I have looked that hard. Guess I need to. There might be a winamp plugin just for that.

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I’ve taken to using Beyond Media and Beyond TV on my HTPC, and it kicks ass. Basically all of the functions of Tivo. I am using beta versions of both of these programs, but they are working very well. Now I just have to sync everything with girder and Homeseer so that when I hit the channel change button for my PC, it does it at the same time on my cable box.

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Finally got my HTPC working correctly. I had to swap out some video cards between PCs in the house, now it seems to be working ok. Picked up a bit of extra speed since I moved the web server to it’s own machine, that seems to have helped a bit. I am using a Radeon 9600 Pro, with Homeseer, Beyond TV and Beyond Media, with the Firefly remote control. I am thinking about switching to girder for my remote program though, as it gives more options, and I can control it with the HS plugin.

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Uploaded a new DesktopX pack today, here as well as Wincustomize. This lets you use Homeseer and DesktopX to control your lighting from your desktop.

Download file

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Microsoft has released RC2 of the latest service pack to the general public. In the process of downloading it right now. I will post more once I have finished setting it up.

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Came across this link while surfing this afternoon. Pretty cool.

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