Auto Rip n Compress - A Handy Little Tool

While browsing the World Wide Web (does anyone call it that anymore???) I came across an interesting program on theGreenbutton. Forum member eMpTy3000 has developed a simple program called Auto Rip n Compress which allows the user to rip a dvd (using DVDFab HD Decypter Free) and then optionally compress (using Handbrake), all with the click of the button. Right now it appears to only work with SD DVDs (my guess a limitation of Handbrake). You can adjust the settings, set up an entry point in WMC, and by inserting a DVD be off to the races. I don't deal much with SD DVDs anymore, but for anyone who does this may offer the one stop shop they have been looking for.

Xtreamer Media Player Unboxing

Well, if I don't have enough gadgets to play around with, I just got my hands on an Xtreamer Media Player. I actually just purchased this for my Dad, as I am setting him up for the whole server/streaming video setup in his house. I thougth I would take a chance on the Xtreamer because the price was good ($150 w/ free wireless N dongle) and there was finally an official US Reseller I could go through. I also was interested to test out the Realtek chip, which seems to be the big threat to the Sigma chip. I hope to have a full review up next week, but for now head over the mediasmartserver.net for my full unboxing.

To FLAC Or Not To FLAC?

For those who don't know, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless audio format, which means that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. Until recently I had only been aware of using FLAC for music (as opposed to other formats like MP3s). Although I like the idea of keeping my CDs in a lossless format I never took to FLAC for my music for two main reasons: 1) File size - I am not talking about taking up HDD space on my WHS as that is not an issue. The concern is the limited HDD space of many of today's popular players (i.e. iPod, Zune, etc...) where the tyical size is only 32GB or less. Having my entire music collection in FLAC would dramatically increase the size of my collection well past the point of what my players could handle (I have to also take into account that other family members have varying players with different hdd sizes as well). This point actually becomes rather moot based on reason #2) Somewhat limited support - unfortunately the main players in the market right now (iPod and Zune) do not support FLAC. Since my household is made up of a combination of these two players FLAC is a no go for me (and I would consider it too much work to maintain a separate FLAC and mp3 library).

However, the point of this post was not to talk about FLAC replacing mp3s in my music collection but instead to discuss using FLAC to house my HD audio in my video collection. Currently I use Clown_BD on my Blu Ray/HD DVD collection, grabbing the main movie, HD Audio track (DTS-MA or TrueHD), a secondary AC3 audio track, and throwing into a .ts container. The problem with this is that currently there is very limited support for bitstreaming the HD Audio track. There are only a few media players on the market right now that can do this (PCH A-110 and a few others) or to be able to bitstream from an HTPC you need a dedicated card (either a sound card like the Xonar or a GPU like the AMD 5xx series) combined with specific software (TMT, PDVD). This is where FLAC would come in to play. Using a program called eac3to you could convert the HD audio stream into multi channel FLAC and play the HD Audio track in all its glory without having to worry about bitstreaming. You are probably asking, why not just move over to FLAC and forget about the HD Audio bitstreaming nonsense? Similar to my issue with FLAC for my music collection, there is still limited support for multi channel FLAC amongst the current crop of media players on the market. In my house I have a mix of HTPCs and media players. Right now only one of the media players (the PCH C-200) supports FLAC. All other players do not, so I get no sound and would have to make sure I have the secondary AC3 audio track to switch over to. Keeping the DTS-MA or TrueHD audio track as is allows my players to downmix to stereo (they all support) so there is no need to switch to a secondary AC3 track. Plus, with FLAC I don't get the nice "DTS-MA" or TrueHD" logo lighting up on my AVR!!!

So what to do... I can either start converting my Blu Rays' HD Audio to FLAC and mux into mkv (using a tool like Mike Eby's Another EAC3to GUI Plus, thanks to Richard for pointing me towards this tool). With this I won't have to worry about bitstreaming but will have to check closely what devices support FLAC. The other option is to continue using Clown_BD to create a .ts file with the HD Audio track in tact, and hope that bitstreaming will become a common thing in the very near future (via a dedicated GPU like the AMD 5xxx, via an IGP like Clarkdale, or other means). Haven't decided yet what direction I am going in...

Adobe Releases Flash 10.1 - Hardware Acceleration Support

Adobe has just released Flash 10.1 which will support hardware acceleration. Support is for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It also appears that it will support ATI, Intel, and NVidia, so looks like we have the whole spectrum covered. I checked out the NVidia website (I have an 8800GT) and to get the benefit of the new Flash 10.1 you need to download the latest drivers (the x32 drivers for my GPU are here). I am assuming the same thing needs to be done for my AMD 4670 GPUs in my HTPCs but over on the AMD site there doesn't appear to be a new driver available yet.

So what are you waiting for, stop reading this post, head over to Adobe, and download the latest Flash player!!! More details can be found here:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

You can also read AnandTech's test of Flash 10.1 here.

EDIT - updated AMD drivers now available as well

XBMC 9.11: Alpha2 Available for Testing

Alpha2 of the latest XBMC release (codename Camelot) has just been released to the public. I had a chance to test Alpha1 briefly, so hopefully this weekend I can take a crack at Alpha2. I also hope to continue my XBMC skin spotlight as I have been testing a few skins these last two weeks. You can download the latest alpha here.

Dell Zino HD Out In The Wild

So it looks like the much anticipated Dell Zino HD is ready to make its way out into the public. It appears the base configuration will be starting at $229 which is very impressive. Of course you can customize it which undoubtedly will bring the price up much higher. This definitely has the looks of being a great HTPC, and a worthy adversary for the Ion platform. Hopefully we will start seeing some real world tests in the coming day to confirm how it handles content such as 1080p. You can see a quick writeup done over at an AMD blog here.

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Processors and Chipset
AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e
AMD Athlon X2 3250e
AMD Athlon 2850e
AMD Athlon 2650e

Operating Systems
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic 32-Bit
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-Bit
Ubuntu® Linux® 9.04

Memory
Up to 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 SODIMM

Hard Disk Capacity
160 GB (7200 rpm, SATA II)
250 GB (7200 rpm, SATA II)
320 GB (7200 rpm, SATA II)
500 GB (7200 rpm, SATA II)
750 GB (7200 rpm, SATA II)
1 TB (7200 rpm, SATA II)

Optical Disc
8x DVD +/- RW
DVDRW/BD-ROM

Graphics
ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 3200
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 (optional)

Sound Cards
Conexant CX20561 2.1 Channel

Communications
Broadcom BCM57780 10/100/1000
Mini PCIe WLAN card (802.11 b/g or 802.11 a/b/g/n)

Ports
Front Ports
Two USB 2.0 connectors
One headphone connector
One 4-in-1 memory card reader

Rear Ports
One microphOne connector
One line-out connector
One VGA connector
One RJ45 connector (10/100/1000)
two USB 2.0-compliant connectors
two eSATA connectors
one HDMI connector

Expansion Slots
Mini PCIe WLAN card (802.11 b/g or 802.11 a/b/g/n)

Chassis & Case
Form Factor
USFF
Dimensions & Weight
Height: 197mm (7.8")
Width: 197mm (7.8")
Depth: 89mm (3.4")
Weight: 1.6kg (3.53lb)
Power
65 W with UMA
75 W with MXM Graphics card
Security
Kensington Lock
Drive Bays
One 3.5" HDD
One 12.7 mm trayload ODD
Memory DIMM slots: 2 available

Some more thoughts on Windows 7 Codecs...

OK, so if I haven't talked about Windows 7 codecs enough already....

I have been reading around and it seems more and more people are running into problems with VC-1 playback in WMP. VC-1 mkvs encounter stuttering since hardware acceleration is not being utilized for VC-1, and VC-1 ts/m2ts only give you audio and no video. It really is a shame that for all the steps Microsoft took to make W7 natively support a larger number of formats there is still a gaping hole with VC-1. I have been fortunate enough to get a workaround I document working flawlessly for me, but I know others have not been as successful. Here are the few ideas I can think of to get around the VC-1 issues.

• Try the Codec workaround I documented here


• Use a 3rd party player such as MPC HC (if you use Media Browser or MyMovies you can specify a 3rd party player to be used for certain video files)


• Encode any VC-1 movie to AVC (using Ripbot264). You can adjust the settings to maintain as much of the original quality if that is a concern (I think setting CQ to 18 will get you close).


• Use a codec pack like Sharks. Shark has added a tab to his Settings Application called "SWAP" which has options to Use FFDShow for VC1 and also to disable WMF. Since I already have my systems squared away I am not going to tinker around and try another codec solution, so I cannot confirm that Sharks solution would work. If I did install a codec pack on my PC/HTPC though Sharks codec pack would be my only choice..