I’m not really in the need for space, but I am in the need for convenience and that’s what DropBox gives me.  Especially for the daily builds I’m going to be doing.  All I have to do is RAR it, toss it in my DropBox directory and get the public link to you here.  The hosting plan I have was meant for serving up pages…files, not so much.

So, if you want a great way to share files, photos and whatnot, please use any of the DropBox links in this post to sign up and install with.  Each time I get a referral, it’s an extra 250MB I can use for hosting files.

Thanks!

Oh…by the way.  I don’t know who it was, but I just happened across my affiliates provider account and noticed I had a couple of commissions!  I am proud to announce I made $2.05 last month, haha!  Anyway, it was pretty cool to see, so don’t be shy.  Just head over to my Affiliates page, click  a link and shop.  They’re all quality vendors

Been a while, but I thought I would throw the actor images I have gathered over the past few months into a RAR and offer them up to you.  You can get the latest update (to the May 29 base file) in the Downloads section (dated Sep. 30 – today).  It contains 337 new actor images and is about 11MB in size.

If you’re new to my ImagesByName packages, then all you will need to download is the May 29th Base file and the Sep. 30th update posted today.  That is all (for actor images, that is)! Those two packages together contain right around 4,700 actor images.  You can also grab the studio images package listed, but I have made no updates to it.

It’s not finished yet, but I do have a little more there than what was on the old plugin index page. I didn’t see any reason to hold it back when I thought it could really help you out now. I will be adding the additional sections throughout the next week or two, so continue to check back to see what’s been added.  The location is the same…the content is new!

I have also added a contact form at the bottom of the index so that you can submit your own plugins and/or corrections to the list.  Let me know what you think or how I can improve it!

Since I don’t have much time to play around with my HTPCs and look for new ways to make things better for your own, I decided I would rework my plugin page in order to provide better service.

My plugin page is, by far, the busiest part of my site, so I figured it may benefit everyone if I made it a little better to read and find what you want.  So, hopefully sometime next week, I will have a brand new plugin index page.  I am dividing the plugins into categories and alphabetizing them, which should make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for.  I’m also adding a couple of extra columns to indicate compatibility levels (MCE, VMC, 7MC) and to provide a quick screenshot.  I will also adding additional content such as some of the better codecs, metadata managers, disc ripping tools and encoding utilities that I have come across and use or have used.

I will probably post what I have completed by the end of next week and if not in 100% state, I’ll update until finished.

I’m still too busy to do anything fun and exciting in the HTPC world, but I did happen into a couple of nice things over the past couple of days.  Yesterday, I had an old Dell GX280 released to me from work.  It’s nothing spectacular, but will make a nice replacement to my son’s HTPC, even though it is a slightly underpowered in comparison.  It’s a SFF  (small form factor) model, so it will be a much better fit (plus MUCH quieter).  It’s outfitted with a Celeron D336 (2.8GHz), came with 1GB of PC-3200, slimline DVD and has built-in Broadcom Gbit LAN (which is nice).  Hard drives have to be destroyed here for recycled systems, so I’ll have to find a SATA drive for it.  I’ll also bump it up to 2GB of memory, relocate the HD2600XT (it came with a low-profile bracket, which is a plus) and throw Win7 on it.  I just hope the PSU it came with can handle it.

I also finally got my caller-ID working on HTPC2 (bedroom HTPC) this morning.  I use a combination of a YAC server with Andy VT’s Vista Caller-ID Add-in.  It has always worked great on all of my HTPCs except that one.  I had hoped the upgrade to Win7 would fix it, but I was still getting the same problem (something in the .Net stack was blocking the connection…I’m no coder, so I can’t begin to explain it).  Anyway, maybe it had been a long time since installing it and I forgot, but installing the desktop client service, disabling the tray application and running the Media Center add-in fixed it for me.  I thought the add-in package installed the service, but maybe it doesn’t (or maybe something is blocking the service install on this system so the add-in has nothing to connect to…I don’t know).  All I know is that it is working now.  This is the only caller-ID combo I could get to work effectively for my setup, so it maybe real happy to get it going in the bedroom since 95% of what we watch is on that HTPC.  The one from VistaCallerID.com did work, but the server setup doesn’t provide for multiple listeners…which I need.  OABSoftware’s Caller-ID Server/Client offering worked great when sending test calls, but it didn’t receive anything externally, so that was a bust.

Finally, and I mentioned it a little bit above, I did officially upgrade my bedroom HTPC to Windows 7.  I went with the 32-bit after a little bit of deliberation, but considering the p965 chipset it’s on only supports 4GB, I didn’t see the need to induce any 64-bit codec headaches.  I’ll write more on my experiences with it later, but so far I am pleased (especially since Advent’s Media Center Studio and the Win7 DirectShow Tweaker utilities worked so well).

Anyway, a little bit of sunshine for me despite all the rain.