Home Theater – MPSharp Technologies

RadioParadise HD Plugin for Windows Media Center

So I’ve become a big fan of RadioParadise. It’s a listener supported, commercial free radio station which plays a great mix of new, old and eclectic rock, with a random mix of everything else when they feel like it. Actually, it’s best explained if you just go there and listen. I also have a shortcut… Continue reading RadioParadise HD Plugin for Windows Media Center

Cracking the Disney Blu-Ray Club for around $10 each

So as a general rule, I don’t like to pay more than $15 for a Blu-Ray Disc. I get most my BDs off of Amazon eye (masks for sleeping) using points/coupons from my credit-card, so I’ll go ahead and spend a little more in that case for something I really want. Also, I find that… Continue reading Cracking the Disney Blu-Ray Club for around $10 each

Replacing the ATI Radeon 5450 with an NVidia GT 430

So I had reached the end of my rope with the MSI ATI Radeon card on a couple fronts. I had HDMI bitstreaming working with Arcsoft TMT (as long as AnyDVD was running), and I could even put up with the flaky Catalyst UI and drivers. But I was stymied trying to get the refresh… Continue reading Replacing the ATI Radeon 5450 with an NVidia GT 430

Windows 7 Sleep Debugging

So after I added the SSD to the HTPC and moved my hard disk into the NAS drive, I began to notice the machine no longer automatically goes to sleep. If I hit the power button (set to sleep) or run it from the command line (%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Standby) the machine goes to sleep just fine,… Continue reading Windows 7 Sleep Debugging

Jumbo Frames, iSCSI and Disabling Nagle

So the new project (which I get to spend about 15 minutes a week on) has been to remove the mechanical harddisk from my HTPC and have it run completely silently off the SSD. The first stage was purchasing the ReadyNAS NV+. 2TB drives have dropped below $100 so a NAS device with 1Gb networking… Continue reading Jumbo Frames, iSCSI and Disabling Nagle

Every SSD could use a little TRIM

So I was an early adopter of a Corsair P128 SSD drive for my media center machine. I was extremely pleased with the fact that it eliminated 95% of the disk noise, even though I left the 1TB HD in the machine. Even when recording to the HD, it barely makes a noise since the… Continue reading Every SSD could use a little TRIM

Amazon HTPC Spec

I put a new HTPC spec up on Amazon listmania. I’m not sure why… 🙂

Couple Interesting Finds

Hanging out in Santa Cruz this weekend, using the new hammer drill to bore through some tile and concrete floor. Quite pleased with the result. Found a couple other things that I need to follow up on this week. Microsoft Silverlight 4 It looks like they added the h261 hardware accelleration in this release, just… Continue reading Couple Interesting Finds

Improved Commerical Skip

Many thanks to Spockers at the Dragon Global forms for posting his ShowAnalyzer global.conf file. Commercial skipping is now much improved and no longer being confused by the odd opening scenes in Damages and Fringe. Seems the tuning effort is a continuous process and if I get anymore info, I’ll post it here.

Category: Home Theater