…and I don’t have much to bring you this morning.  Or, by the looks of it, this week, for that matter.  I really need to start putting together some guides or codec configurations since I still see so many new users having issues with that kind of stuff.  What do you think?  Would posting my guides to encoding, codec configurations, etc. be worthwhile?  I typically use Handbrake, Ripbot264, MeGUI, VirtualDubMod, AVISynth, ffdshow, AC3Filter, MKVToolnix tools, FairUse Wizard and several other odds and ends.  I’ll let your comments dictate whether I should go through the trouble or not.  Or, maybe I’ll start a poll.  I haven’t had a poll in a while…

VMCNetflix does have a new v1.1.13, however.  It’s primarily consisted of bug fixes related to 7MC and the Silverlight player.  Grab it now if you haven’t already.

I’m still waiting on my DDR RMA from Crucial.  I sent them a 2GB kit of DDR-500 Ballistix that I’ve now RMAed for the 4th time.  They don’t carry them anymore, so I’m getting some standard modules in their place.  I’m actually happy about that since those Ballistix sucked big time.  The last two sets they sent were run a stock and they still failed.  Once my “new” memory arrives, I’ll be able to start putting together another HTPC client.  It will probably just replace the one in our office/playroom so that one can go to the spare downstairs bedroom.  I also plan on trying 7MC out on it so that I can start sharing some of my experiences with that on here.  Other than the very brief review I did on it a while back, it’s never mentioned and it’s gaining popularity with the HTPC crowd.  I don’t want to be left behind, so I’m going to give it another chance (force myself to use, in other words).

I received a used Biostar TForce 6100-939 from the OCForums (give them a visit, I moderate there too) Classifieds, which should make a near perfect HTPC board.  I’ll be putting my old AMD X2 3800+ on it and I’ll probably have to find a cheap video card to go along with it all.  If I can get the TV-Out to work on the old 6200LE I have, then I’ll just use that.  Plus, I just removed the unused 74GB Raptor from my primary system.  I just hope I have a decent power supply in a box somewhere.

Kapone over at AVSForums is doing a little teasing that those of you who use the built-in Media Center DVD Library may want to keep an eye on.  Apparently he is developing some sort of, what I assume to be, pre-caching engine that speeds up the loading times for the library.  I have never used the built-in DVD Library, so I can’t really offer much insight.  So far, he is being very hush-hush, so you may want to watch this thead on your own.

SecondRun.tv is going strong with new releases in the past few days that have fixed a lot of bugs and added tons of new content.  You’re going to want to get this if you like online media plugins.  This is one of the hottest plugins to hit Media Center in a long time.

Meta<Browser /> has released a new beta that tweaks the interface, allows minimize-to-tray functionality and folder monitoring.  Hit Google Code for the download and discuss at the Media Browser forums.

I don’t won’t to leave out OML, which doesn’t get much press here, but they are still going strong with their video plugin project.  It is really gaining some ground and looking better every time I remember to take a look.  They have a new daily build dated for the 28th here.  They also have completely reorganized their forums.

VMCNetflix has a new version out for the first time in a month with 1.1.12.  It looks to be a minor fix related to the Silverlight player that affects full screen playback and the Pause/Play/Stop functions.  Get it here.

CyberLink has announced native Blue-Ray support for Media Center.  You can read more about it here at EngadgetHD.

Work has been killing me lately, so still not much from me.  I’m hoping that after this week, I’ll have more time for updates and news.

I did find that VMCNetflix has a new 1.1.10 release that fixes some logon issues that were a result of changes to the Netflix site.  It has also been modified to install on Windows 7, but I have not tried that (he has not either, apparently).

I also finally finished updating every single one of my XML files so that Media Browser would display parental ratings.  It took about 3 weeks of gradual editing and I estimate that I edited about 1500 files.  I also created custom backdrops for all movies that did not fetch one from TheMovieDB (or for ones that I did not like).  Media Browser also has a new domain to look out for – please update your links to www.mediabrowser.tv.

The last thing I did was edit the backdrop.mcml file in the Media Browser source so that the blue filter on the backdrops was not so dark.  It made some backdrops almost appear black.

Default filter:

My edited filter:

Default filter:

My edited filter:

These aren’t the best examples as the backdrops aren’t all that dark to begin with, but you can see that there is defintely more detail while still being able to maintain good readability on the overlayed text areas.  I like it better, anyway.  Now I just need to edit the header and footer areas so they are darker, since the lighter filter affected that too.  It’s not that bad, however, so it can wait.

In completely unrelated news, I ordered a Bowflex Motivator 2 from Amazon this morning.  Hopefully, I can begin getting myself back into some sort of shape.

Just wanted to leave a quick notice of a few popular Vista Media Center plugins that have ramped up as of late and introduced new versions with some excellent features.

• JackLuminous’ Video Library over at TheGreenButton has re-added movie metadata fetching capabilities now that TheMovieDB.org has a working API.  There has been a lot of updates for this project lately, so check often.
• Sam Saffron’s Video Browser has a new public beta available on his Google Code site.  You can read about all of the new additions here and I have some screen shots of the preceding SVNs a few posts back.  Bill Daugherty II has some additional screenshots (higher res than mine) also.  Head over to his Windows Media Center blog to see them.
• Finally, a new release for VMCNetflix is out (1.1.7) from eluttmann1 at TheGreenButton.  It fixes login issues as a result of changes on the Netflix site.  I’m sire there are some other changes, but you can read about them on the VMCNetflix site.  Support, comments and discussion are available at TheGreenButton.
• MyMovies has also released v2.49 about a week ago.  I was going to hold off since there is going to be another release very soon that will be removing the locked down sort field that I complained about.  But, I’m not sure that it will warrant a new version.  I would wait, personally, for that one to come out if you need to upgrade.  The Windows Home Server version is also now at v1.01.

There are other plugin updates, but these are all that I really use and follow.  I did notice that there is a little spark of life back in the OML project.  There were a few SVN changes during the week, so that’s reassuring.  I believe the volunteers’ real lives have interfered a bit, so hopefully things will progress in the coming weeks.  Keep an eye on them though…it’s eventually going to be a very nice plugin.

I’m planning on posting instructions on how to relocate the default location of the MyMovies database soon.  I’ve come across some interest in that and thought I’d share how to do it.  It’s not a supported “hack”, so I didn’t want to post it on the MyMovies Forum.  I know Brian doesn’t want to deal with any complications that it may bring, so it will be at your own risk.  It’s also a bit involved (if you’re a typical user), so be prepared for some moderately scary stuff if you’re not comfortable with SQL tools.

Well, this was the last plugin I expected to spring to life since my last post, but VMCNetflix has a new beta 1.16 available for download.  From the site:

• Fixed issue displaying Instant Queue.
• Fixed issue w/ listing all search items.
• Updates to login page
• Made install check less restrictive, now requires Vista+ instead of requiring Vista-only

I just installed it and tried it out on my bedroom HTPC and noticed right away that the load time (start pulling available covers) was drastically improved for me.  It used to take at least 2 minutes before I could start browsing titles.  This version starting populating movies >30 seconds.

It does appear that this may be the final beta before a rewrite is necessary, however.  It appears the developer needs to rewrite according to Netflix licensing terms since they have finally provided an API.  I think this will be great in the long term though.

Also, from around the house, I setup my NETSVR with the Kiwi Syslog Daemon to grab syslog messages from my unRAID server.  I’ve been having a few issues as of late, but I can never see anything in the syslog since it is reset at every boot.  I believe the mis-matched memory I’m using is causing a reset when copying to certain drives.  I’ll probably just remove that extra 1GB I added since it started happening right around that time.