A must have for PC Blu-ray playback is AnyDVD HD, as this will remove the incredibly annoying regional zones. Furthermore it will allow ripping your purchased BDs to hardisk for more quiet playback; the Pioneer BDC-S02 player has many nice qualities, but ultra quietness is not one of them. Furthermore, having backed up your BD, you can safely store the original out of harm’s way and instead use the back up for playback.

Unfortunately for us, that’s not the way the studios see the picture - instead they want to make it as difficult as possible for us to do this by way of DRM. (There’s little wonder why hardly anyone is using their HTPCs for Blu-rays!)

I used to be able to just point PowerDvd to the ripped directory, however at some point in the version PowerDvd 7 release history the ability to play back ripped Blu-rays from folders disappeared. I therefore stayed on the last known good version that I had. This lasted well until recently where I’d get rather annoying upgrade prompts every time I started a movie, and then the inevitable happened - a Blu-Ray version 1.1 title arrived in the house last night - namely Resident Evil: Resurrection (RE#3) - that just refused to play back.

Blu-rays on PowerDVD 8 Ultra is relaxing business… as long as you’re using AnyDVD HD!

As it just happened, PowerDVD 8 was released the same day - so I decided to splurge out for a full update. With version 8 I had no problem playing the title directly from the reader, and the quality of the Resident Evil disc was just phenomenal.

However version 8 still refused to play back Blu-ray rips (DVDs ripped in the exact same manner were fine), so today I set to figure out how to play back my BD backups. To cut the story short, I would

1. Rip the BD to a single ISO file with the UDF 2.5 file system using the great freeware tool ImgBurn. Having the latest version of AnyDVD HD installed ensured that copy protection was removed (it will also take care of BD+), however some are recommending not to have it enabled to preserve the originalty of the drive. Whatever works would be to go here. IMGBURN is free and can be used to convert an existing AnyDVD HD backup.
2. Mount the image using an appropriate program. Whilst Daemon tools would do the job, I instead ofted for the latest beta (available from the forums) of SlySoft’s Virtual CloneDrive which includes BD support. The nice thing about CloneDrive is that it keeps a list of the most recently mounted images on the right click of the drive letter, thus making it easy to change discs.
3. Simply play back the movie from PowerDVD after the iso file has been mounted. AnyDVD should be enabled if the disc was ripped without AnyDVD being enabled.

Having run a Vista Blu-ray HD HTPC for 6 months now, I welcome this point of stability in terms of my software setup. A newly purchased Western Digital GreenPower 1TB drive makes for storing every single BD I’ve so far purchased, with room to grow!

However, the following still concerns me:

1. There’s STILL no Vista Media Centre integration. I have to leave Media Centre (exit full screen mode) and then start PowerDVD to view Blu-rays. Plus of course the whole business of mounting images if playing a backup. This is a significant reduction of user friendliness and I really have to ask, what is the story here? My Pioneer BD player came with a OEM version that had a plugin to enable BD playback through Media Centre, however it was restricted to stereo only (as if ANYONE at this stage would buy a BD player in a HTPC and not have a full surround setup - we are talking about early adopters here, not early majority or even late majority).
2. Not that my 10 year old Rotel preamplifier supports it, but there’s still no way out outputting TrueHD sound from a HTPC. Whilst PowerDVD now is better grounded for it, the hardware for outputting sound via HDMI is not there. Hopefully this will change in the short to medium term future.

I will blog a description of my HTPC later; for now, in short, what you need for Blu-ray playback is PowerDVD 8 Ultra, at US$99, and AnyDVD HD at €79. Whilst this is a fair amount of money, and there’s probably many ways to get PowerDVD, I strongly urge anyone using AnyDVD to purchase this as the work Slysoft do is absolutely essential to the viability of the HTPC as a Blu-ray playback platform.

Without Slysoft’s brilliant work we’d be left in shambles; I for one congratulate them for their efforts.

One issue was that the maintenance mode plugin didn’t let me go to upgrade.php, so I simply renamed the plugin directory and I was fine.

The interface has undergone a huge change, the dashboard looks complete different with a much cleaner look.

In particular, image uploading has massively improved - and I’m sure I’ll find many more things to enjoy. In fact, for a much better write up, read Technosailer’s write up.

For any users of the Yichi Resurrection theme; if you had it working on the previous version (2.3) it works fine in the new.

I finally found Yichi’s Resurrection - which is fast performing and very beautiful. A couple of things were broken due to it not being a WP2.3 template, however when I got rid of the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and replaced it with Reciprocity’s Configurable Tag Cloud - things were much better.

I also set up a twitter account, which looks like an interesting thingie - I will see how I go with it, on top of Facebook, Google Talk and other places to set my current status.

A little background might be in order:

I used to be very fit before and immediately after moving to Australia. Dancing, gym, climbing, and the like. Finally finding the partner of my life priorities changed, but after several years of slacking off I started paying the price. Bad back, decreased cardio/strength, you name it. So when seeing the availability of classes in a convenient spot (between home and work), I thought it was time to go back to the basics.

Boy, what a reality check… The difference between 2008 and 2002 is that I have gotten very slow, added several kilograms of “beer muscle” and have lost a lot of processing power in the CPU department - all of which are critical requirements for performing a hip hop dance routine! However, getting back into it, whilst a great challenge, will be good fun and also a very good character development task.

Having had back problems, I am starting to realize how much street dancing develops the core. Just about every move offers twists that exercise the core strength in one way or another; in fact, after a few weeks I have just about zero pain (except for being completely buggered after almost every session, especially the next day). I realise that not having danced for so long must have meant that my core strength went straight down together with the rest of my once quite-above-average physique.

Looking ahead, I am envisaging several weeks of getting slightly less crap at it every week. MMA is a great place, with a very positive vibe - and would welcome doing dancing to anyone normally stuck behind the computer. There is just no way that you can even begin think about work when trying to keep up with the instructors!

I wondered, had the empire turned into rebels (in their own view)? Who is the new empire to rebel against? Or were they just blissfully aware of this angle?

Microsoft managed to get everyone to pay to listen to their new product introduction… that was pretty neat work. Mine was paid by my employer… Now, at display was Microsoft’s 2008 lineup - MSSQL Server, Windows Server and the Studio. All is now fantastically integrated, and if we are to use their tools, life is good - or so they say. One very cool demonstration was performed by a fellow Norwegian, who demonstrated JSON and a win/web bridging application. This was but one example of a lot of coolness on display.

Being a Machi-II ColdFusion developer, taking notes with my Linux powered Nokia N810, I could not help but be in awe at the way Microsoft have embraced the hottest Internet technologies. Studio 2008 even runs fast enough, or maybe that’s just my quad pumped 3.8ghz watercooled system? Nevertheless, going to enterprise computing one feels that Microsoft and their 08 range is the path of least resistance; J2EE certainly never gets as easy as this, and staying with ColdFusion would now seem like a career limiting move.

So I guess I will accept their challenge of becoming one of Microsoft’s everyday heroes. However it is not without trepidation of becoming another clone.

Cheers,
Funkdancer

ps. Freebies included time limited versions of Server, Studio etc, plus what the representative claimed was a non time restricted version of Vista Ultimate SP1. Opening the package, however, there was a note saying the software would expire in 365 days after installation. Has anyone confirmed which is true?

If we weren’t renting I’d love to get a solar panel set up. However I settled for getting the air leakage into the garage fixed up; the gaps around this sliding door were big enough to poke a finger through. Got a door specialist to do a perfect install of air blockers to prevent this huge energy loss so that we’re all ready for the winter. It’s pretty mind boggling how bad the house construction standards are here in Australia.

Also, just noting that Rudd’s first action as incumbent Prime Minister was to sign Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto agreement. Well done.

On Howard’s CV we have … Children overboard, The Tampa, Kyoto, Iraq, decimating the Aboriginal communities, lying about GST…

It’ll be an interesting time to see if Rudd will be able to be bring some of the compassion he is reported to have to his new role as prime minister.

Good luck!

Now, why would I go to this extreme? Well, they use 1/5th of the energy - 18w provides 90w of traditional output. 40 or 50w output uses half that. See the following article for more info - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4922496.stm .

So it’ll hopefully offset some of that energy used by that big plasma….

Click on the images to reveal high quality, high res Nikon D70s shots; my apologies for the poor quality of the thumbnails. If your available browser res is less than 1280, click the image again to scale it to 100% - it should open in a nice popup thingie.

A few more…

And a few more….

[All shots copyright myself. Please ask for my permission before using these shots in any way; let me know if you’d have any interest in the original RAW/NEF files for whatever reason.]