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

Hulu update and quick Media Center Studio fix

I just received a comment on an old Hulu/AutoHotKey fix I had done sometime ago to get a better resolution for Hulu streaming.    Seeing this, it occurred to me that since then, Microsoft made some changes that broke Media Center Studio.   Searching the  Australian Media Center Community (which has a couple interesting projects you won’t… Continue reading Hulu update and quick Media Center Studio fix

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

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.

More 7MC and Video Streaming

So I finally carved some time out after the 11PM feeding to do some more Media Center upgrades.    Following a tip from this 7MC config page, I installed the Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta to address a flash performance problem I was noticing.  This, plus the ATI Catalyst 10.1 drivers did the trick.  I now suspect… Continue reading More 7MC and Video Streaming