Things I Learnt Last Night

1. Networking is tricky.
2. Having 2 DHCP Servers on the same sub-net is not a clever idea (bad Dave)
3. Powerline networks REALLY suck
4. Did I mention Powerline networks?

My bottleneck is the powerline and while I'm getting about 2/3 of the throughput on the local sub-nets that my next door neighbour would expect to see, its adequate for Mega-Bit networking.  I'm only getting 10% of the throughput on the Powerline portion.

Answer: Cat6 the house.  Trouble is we can't.

In other news I am seriously looking at a new Media Center - I quite like Vista Media Edition.  There is some cool shit on there.

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Media Center Musings...

I'm seriously planning to upgrade my Media Center PC.  The one I have has done good work but it doesn't have the horsepower to handle HD content.  Its a 1.8GHz box with a decent video card and 2GB of RAM - but frankly it isn't up to HD nor iTunes content at SD let alone their 720p content.

We took some movies ripped to Ms laptop with us which is running Vista and I was pretty impressed with the changes they've made to Media Center in the uplift.  I've always quite likes the Media Center UI - I am left pondering who created it, because, frankly, it couldn't have been MS.  It's clean, logically organised and easy to use.  In the Vista version they've improved DVD handling, and also included some deals with streaming internet TV providers which are excellent and well implemented.

I had given up on the idea when I was pricing Media Centers last year, but there's a new ASUS motherboard out with onboard HDMI and audio optical output, which makes a huge difference.  A decent set up running Vista would be about $700, which is pretty much what I paid for the old Media Center over 2 years ago.  It would also handle iTunes videos well, and other stuff I have on it as the lounge PC.

I've been using the MyMovies application for handling my DVD collection, which just rocks.  It's really nice to have the DVDs available all the time without having to worry about storing the boxes.

But.   A problem I have been having, and perhaps readers can help, is...  I am getting really bad pixelation on a lot of my ripped DVDs.  I'm using DVD Cloner to rip block for block D9 copies, but when they play back through Media Center using the DVD application it's looking a bit crap in sections with a lot of action.

Is this: (a) a problem with my playback software OR (b) a problem with the software I'm using to rip the DVDs?

I had considered ripping to DivX files and have an application for that (as it also saves space) BUT I've frequently ended up with out of sync audio.

Thoughts welcome...

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Off to look at dog cars...

I can't even believe that I'm seriously considering getting a second car just for the dog...

Still, now that I work from home and M still works in Bellevue, it has been tricky to share the one car.

Even at the current petrol prices my brain doesn't register petrol as expensive.

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New Car

So I found one.  A 1996 Jeep Cheroke.  I wouldn't consider the mileage in the UK but at the price it was a bargain for a 4WD.  Now what I want to do is find somewhere I can actually use it sensibly.

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