With better profiles available and stuff like QPEL that the 642 doesn't have the horsepower to deal with, why buy a new DVD player every couple years when salvation is usually only the latest build of XViD (Koepi's build, of course) away?
Update: My SPDIFfer stopped SPDIFfing
My SPDIFfer stopped SPDIFfing
Unfortunately, due to some odd occurance deep within the guts of Creative's SoundBlaster Live! drivers, the SPDIF output on The Beast has stopped working. I wasn't able to get it working again so I ran analog (ugh) RCA audio up to my receiver. Just to maintain geek cred, I threw an old PixelView PlayTV Pro and as soon as I remember which versions of it's drivers don't bring Windows to a screeching halt, I'll get it working.
The Beast
The Beast, 3/4 rear view
First off, this isn't the latest, greatest most powerful of computers. In fact, it just went through a down/upgrade, here are the specs:
Motherboard: Asus P2B-D
Processor: 2xPentium III 550MHz
Memory: 1gb PC-100 (Technically PC133, but it's a 100MHZ FSB)
Video Card: Asus Radeon 9250 SE w/ 128mb
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Live!
Software: Windows XP Service Pack 2 + Team Media Portal
Remote: Packard Bell Fast Media receiver
The video gets fed into my television by a 25' S-Video cable coming off the Radeon and running through the basement wall and up to the television. The big white RG6 cable actually has a couple adapters and carries coaxial digital audio from the SB Live! to the coaxial input on my receiver. This setup will even play back full Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS audio tracks if I felt the need to encode with them. I tried it wireless, but a USB wiereless adapter on an older machine is a recipe for disaster and 100mbps ethernet is better all around. Plus, it lives on a wire rack in the unfinished basement, so running wires everywhere is no big deal :)
The RS-232 plug coming off COM2 leads to the Packard Bell Fast Media remote receiver upstairs by the television and talks to Media Portal via it's winLIRC plugin. I used to use the remote control that came with it, but a little while ago I stole my 5-device universal remote back from my parents and trained it to work off the VCR key.
Should I ever need to interact with Windows itself, I've also installed VNC running as a system service. I did this mostly because Remote Desktop logs the console user out when a remote user logs in which is completely useless for debugging.
What's it like?
Honestly? Completely kick ass. My only complaint is Windows not reconnecting the network shares when it first reboots, but that's solved by a quick visit via VNC.
I've found Team Media Portal to be a very well designed program (although it's configuration utility sucks) and have had no problems of any kind using the system via only the remote control. This box used to be a single 650MHz Pentium 3 but video playback (especially my higher bitrate XViD encodings) stuttered, so even though the dual is slower, Windows' scheduler is good enough MediaPortal's video player winds up on one CPU while Windows thrashes the other doing whatever Windows does.
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