I updated denki.world3.net with some corrections and more details on the Retro Adapter V2 and a special Sega Saturn to USB adapter I made.
More details on the Retro Adapter V2 to follow. Hopefully when I’ve finished working on the prototype I will be able to so a small run of kits. From the volume of email I get it seems like there is demand.
The ass-hats at Microsoft decided to make the recent .NET 3.5 update silently install an add-on (plugin) in Firefox. No option to not install, and no option to uninstall in Firefox or anywhere else.
Luckily it’s easy to remove:
1. Regedit
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\extensions
3. Delete {20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
4. Restart Firefox
Bastards.
The BBC Have Your Say forums are an almost unending source of distress for any half way sane observer, but occasionally I feel moved to comment. Today’s question: Would you like to see calorie counts on menus?
The responses are predictable; “no” to the nanny state, telling us what to eat, where we can pollute everyone else’s air with smoke, which side of the road to drive on etc. As usual the ultra-liberal politically correct namby-pamby left wing propaganda machine that is the BBC tries to present the story as some kind of positive thing, as if giving people useful information about the food they are shovelling into their foaming mouths is anything other than a fascist boot kicking them in the ‘nads. Ignorance really is bliss apparently.
Unfortunately this seems to be a trend on the HYS forums these days. I try to believe that the Daily Hate Mail reading hate mongers and the moronic Sun readers don’t make up the majority of the population, but they are the two most popular papers in the UK… Two Minutes Hate anyone?
I’ve been thinking about why Britain has so many social problems, and so little social cohesion. I think the root of it is that there isn’t really any such thing as “Britishness”.
For many countries, the their modern identity has been defined by some revolutionary event. The French had their revolution that defined the principals of equality and liberty. For Japan and Germany, it was when they lost the last great war. For the US, it was the declaration of their constitution.
We have never had anything like that. Our civil war didn’t help us very much. Instead, we have had a slow decline, starting with the loss of an empire and following through to our decline as a world leader in science. The occasional triumphs we have had have not been based on any particularly strong philosophical grounds, merely survival (in the case of the world wars) or sports. Our defining moment never came, and as such we are not very well defined any more.
The Scottish have their own strong identity, but here in England a lot of people either seem to feel no kinship with their neighbours at all, or they hold on to outdated and outmoded ideas of Britishness. Well, if anything our identity is based on hatred, of the kind spewed out by the Daily Mail. I get the impression that a lot of people feel that things would be much better if it just wasn’t for everyone else. Unfortunately Thatherism has taught us to only look out for ourselves at the expense of everyone else. Perhaps that is what Britishness is now.
I don’t know how you can have a cultural revolution when everyone is so apathetic, and when all they want from government is someone who doesn’t have any particularly interesting policies.
Recent moves by the police to step up hacking people’s PCs (/. article, original Times Online article) and a recent forum thread got me thinking about ways to defend myself against the snooping that the UK seems to love so much.
A quick overview of what we are up against. In the UK the following is recorded:
Other information is probably kept too. The police also have the capability to record phone conversations (and probably email/IM as well), and turn any phone that is turned on into a listening device (bug). Presumably if they did this with your mobile phone you would notice the battery draining pretty fast though. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention
Basically, it’s a modern high-tech surveillance society, and now the police are looking at trying to hack people’s PCs/wifi and trying to install viruses on target computers.
The first line of defence is your home network. It needs to have a secure firewall. Due to the possibility of there being flaws or backdoors in commercial routers, it’s probably best to use a well tested open source router such a m0n0wall or pfSense. If you have wifi, it needs to be secured with WPA2 and a very strong password (i.e. at least 60 characters, and a mix of upper/lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation.)
Physical security of your PC is important. Make sure you can see the back of it, so that if someone installed a hardware keylogger you would spot it.
You need to harden your OS from attack. Obviously using a strong password is a start, but really you need to use TrueCrypt to encrypt your entire HDD. Since you can be forced to reveal your password or face two years in prison, you should use TrueCrypt’s hidden OS feature and set up a dummy OS you can reveal the password for. Since there is no way to prove that there is a hidden OS, you are protected. Be sure to make the dummy OS look realistic – it needs to have files saved on it, applications installed, the web browser used. You should use it at least once a week to keep file access dates current. If possible, it should be used for non-sensitive use regularly.
There is are vulnerabilities in TrueCrypt if the attacker has physical access to your PC. Firewire and PCMCIA ports can be used to dump the computer’s memory and recover the encryption key, as well as read files off the HDD. It is therefore necessary to disable Firewire and PCMCIA ports. I have seen devices that exploit this vulnerability in use. You should also disable the Windows “autorun” feature on all drives to prevent similar attacks via CDs or USB flash memory. The workstation should remain locked when not in use, and require a password to unlock. The system should be powered down as often as possible.
In theory if an attacker has access to the machine while an encrypted OS is loaded, they could recover the key from the computer’s RAM, either by rebooting it into a special Linux OS or by removing the RAM and placing it in another PC. The best defence against this is to prevent the attacker gaining access to the key in RAM by performing an emergency shut-down (i.e. press the power button). TrueCrypt will clear the key on shut-down. Setting the BIOS to do a full memory test and setting a BIOS password do it cannot be disabled will erase the key during the POST cycle. None of this is foolproof.
An alternative method would be to use an OS that leaves no traces on the PC for sensitive things, such as a Linux Live CD. TrueCrypt could be used for data storage, with the above issues in mind.
Securing the OS against police viruses and keyloggers is vitally important. Up to date anti-virus software from a non-UK company (e.g. Avira) is essential. Never open email attachments. Use a secure browser such as Firefox, with Java/Javascript/Flash/etc disabled. Make sure your PC has it’s own firewall as your network may be penetrated, either via WiFi or another virus infected PC.
For accessing the internet, at a minimum you should use a VPN service terminating in a less draconian country. Relakks seems to be a possibility. Using Tor is also a good idea. Any internet related software needs to be carefully checked for security. Using open source software is a good idea. Remember to validate any checksums available on downloads.
At all times remember that all communications and movements of your mobile phone and car are being monitored. CCTV is everywhere, and virtually unavoidable. Plausible deniability is the key. Try to avoid anything that can create a paper trail for police fishing expeditions. If you think you details may have been compromised (e.g. bank details, identity theft) report it immediately – the police usually don’t bother to check but it will be of vital importance in court.
Even if you do all this, all it takes is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to have your life destroyed:
‘I was falsely branded a paedophile’ (BBC News)
Police witness on perjury charge (Men’s Aid)
Student researching al-Qaida tactics held for six days (Guardian Online)
A hard look at file-sharing evidence (BBC News)
Judge rules out child porn charge (BBC News)
Four suicides in child porn case (BBC News – most of the accused were later cleared)
So you can check your copy is not damaged or trojaned, here are some XP CD ISO SHA1/MD5 hashes I found:
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (x86) Retail CD (English)
Filename: en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80428.iso
Size: 589.14 MB
MD5: F424A52153E6E5ED4C0D44235CF545D5
SHA1: 1c735b38931bf57fb14ebd9a9ba253ceb443d459
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (x86) VL CD (English)
Filename: en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_vl_x14-73974.iso
Size: 589.14 MB
MD5: 5BF476E2FC445B8D06B3C2A6091FE3AA
SHA1: 66ac289ae27724c5ae17139227cbe78c01eefe40
Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (x86) Retail CD (English)
Filename: en_windows_xp_home_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-92413.iso
Size: 564.72 MB
SHA1: 5a6b959ad24d15dc7ebd85e501b83d105d1b37c6
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (x86) Retail DVD (Japanese)
Filename: ja_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_dvd_x14-80464.iso
Size: 630.21 MB
SHA1: 3125aaed8f40a5d8a10dbb959a03e39acc0d9fcb
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (x86) VL DVD (Japanese)
Filename: ja_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_dvd_vl_x14-74058.iso
Size: 630.21 MB
SHA1: 8719219c7a77756a904f4bb9fd2f32781f091c22
Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (x86) Retail CD (Japanese)
Filename: ja_windows_xp_home_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-92421.iso
Size: 608.73 MB
SHA1: a907477482a45f0c7617e384b1b8a69802bc815c
DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) uses the graphics card to decode video, so all the CPU has to do is a bit of housekeeping and audio decoding. Typically that means that a 1080p video uses <20% CPU time to play back, where as with CPU decoding alone it would be 90%+ or impossible on a cheap CPU.
Getting DXVA to work is actually quite easy, despite what a lot of guides say. That is my primary reason for writing this - there seems to be a lot of misinformation about. All you really need to do is this:
1. Install Vista/XP
2. Install Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP)
3. Install latest Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC)*
4. Set MPC to use “EVR Custom Renderer” (Vista) or VMR9 (XP) for output
5. Play video
* MPC-HC is regularly updated with beta versions. Get the latest one rather than the stable one, as a lot of bugs have been fixed. If you have problems you can always downgrade.
A lot of people suggest messing about with other settings, but it does not seem to be necessary any more. Perhaps it once was, but not any more.
There are two issues with to be aware of. Firstly, if you need subtitles simply enable “Automatically load subtitles”. Subtitles that use the DirectVOBSub filter seem to have problems displaying, but that only really affects Blu-Ray/HD-DVD rips. Hopefully there will be a fix.
The other issue is that when using EVR Customer Renderer or VMR9 you are forced to have everything full screen, and windows, menus and overlays cannot be displayed. As such, you can’t access any options on screen, but keyboard shortcuts work. Unfortunately this is necessary to get DXVA working and prevent screen tearing.
The reason you need to install CCCP is that it gives you all the necessary codecs for audio and necessary splitters for MKV etc. You should be able to play back most stuff with it. Rename downloaded Quicktime movie trailers to .mp4 and they will play back perfectly.
A word of warning about PowerDVD. It seems to cause problems once installed, presumably due to the filters that come with it.
The moronic comments posted on the BBC Have Your Say forums never cease to amaze me. Let’s take this gem from the “Will you benefit from the pre-Budget report?” forum:
Actually worse-off.
I calculate that the NI increase on my salary will cost me an additional grand a year.
Ordinairy Joe, Leicestershire, United Kingdom
NI went up 0.5% – that’s 0.5p in every pound you earn. So, to cost Joe a grand a year he would have to be on over £200,000 a year. Either Joe can’t do simple maths, or Joe is super rich and fuck the elite bourgeois capitalist swine anyway.
Another brilliant load of bollocks ideas come from “badger fruit”:
1 drop the olympics
2 drop benefits to long term spongers
3 stop giving money away in “aid”, WE need it more than India (for example) right now
4 force banks to repay their bonuses as they contributed to this mess and should not be rewarded
5 drop council tax, car tax & the tv tax
6 simplify income tax bands so higher earners pay more then lower earners
7 STOP ALL BORROWING! We can’t afford the current debt, let alone more!
8 drop ID cardsbadger fruit, resistance hq, United Kingdom
Resistance HQ must be a horrible place to live for Mr. Fruit. Let’s just check the results of these genius solutions to the global financial crisis:
1. We never get anything ever again because and become known as the country which took on this project then decided it was too hard and gave up, fucking up everyone else, when actually it would have happened at just the right time to give us a boost after the recession.
2. Assuming you could even identify long term spongers from people just genuinely in a bad situation (i.e. the majority) in any reliable way, all they would do is start burgling your house and mugging you in the street.
3. Yeah, fuck ‘em, fuck humanity, let the brown people starve – after all, we NEED a turkey and a tree and some presents or it will RUIN Christmas!
4. Actually, that sounds like a good idea…
5. Don’t want your bins collected or those potholes fixed then? See point 7 too.
6. If you can’t understand the current bands then I’m afraid you are too stupid to survive xmas without electrocuting yourself to death on a light up electric Santa. And if you didn’t already notice, they just did put up income tax for high earners like Joe.
7. Nothing instills confidence like the government not spending any money. When people stop buying stuff, investing in stuff and lending each other money, it’s called a recession.
8. Two out of 8, a pretty shit score then.
I just hope to God it’s mainly Daily Mail reading foaming-at-the-mouth twats who post to HYS, or we are all doomed.
I have finally got my HTPC working well, after much fiddling around to get things perfect. Turns out it’s no easy task, especially compared to my old XBOX media centre which pretty much just worked.
I am using an Abit A-S78H with 780g chipset (see my post about it), meaning Radeon 3200 graphics with hardware assisted video decoding. OS is Vista, mainly because I wanted to try out Vista Media Centre (which turned out to be crap), but XP will do to.
First thing is to get hardware acceleration working. PowerDVD 8 Ultra is the best option. It needs to be installed which includes the DXVA hardware assisted codecs. I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema as my player, and for DXVA to work you must use either the “VMR9 renderless” or “EVR” renderers in the output section of the options windows. Once set to either of those, CPU usage when playing H.264 or VP-1 encoded videos should drop to 10-15% (which is accounted for my misc processing and audio).
Next, to get perfect frame sync and prevent video tearing, either VMR9 with vertical blank sync or EVR with frame sync needs to be selected. Using either of these means that playback will be full screen only and no menus or on-screen text will be displayed.
My TV is a Samsung with 100Hz motion processing, and it works best when video is synced exactly with the refresh rate. In fact, the output frame rate is the key, because even if the video is 24fps and the screen 50hz, the TV is clever enough to recognise the repartition of frames and deal with it perfectly. What causes problems is odd frame rates (like the standard 23.976 NTSC that Japanese and American TV rips use) and non-exact refresh rates.
First, refresh rates. On my system, 60Hz mode is actually 59.92Hz. In theory you can use Rivatuner to fix it, and get an exact 60Hz, as well as 24hz or 48hz for movies and even exact NTSC timings. I experimented a lot with Rivatuner, but found that when messing with the refresh rate the screen often blanked out periodically as the TV lost sync with the computer. I was unable to find a working set of parameters for either exactly 59.97Hz (NTSC). However, the default settings for 24Hz and 50Hz were spot on. The only problem with 24Hz mode is that for some reason it messes up the audio sync on some videos, while they play back fine at 50Hz. So, 50Hz seems to be the best option. The important things is that the timings must be exact for 100Hz motion processing to work.
To deal with NTSC recordings the best strategy seems to be to use ReClock. ReClock re-works the audio to change the frame rate of the video to 24fps exactly, which the 100Hz processing can deal with. The key in getting it to work with VMR9 or EVR is to set it to use DirectShow rather than DirectX, otherwise you will get an error message. With ReClock and a perfect 24hz or 50hz screen mode everything is nice and smooth. However, I have found that for 24fps movies I need to disable ReClock when using a 50Hz screen mode. There should be a way to configure ReClock to shut down when it sees a 24fps stream, I need to investigate further.
720p60 is, infortunately, actually usually 59.97Hz and so far experiments with ReClock and 60Hz output modes have been patchy. If I find a good solution, I’ll post it.
All that, along with the Combined Community Codec Pack, should play back just about anything perfectly. Unfortunately connecting a PC to a TV for video playback is still a bit of a black art, but it is possible to get excellent results with most media.
I recently bought an Abit A-S78H motherboard with 780g chipset. There are a fair few reviews of this chipset on the net, but most are focused on details and benchmarks rather than what the boards are like in practice.
This chipset seems almost too good to be true. I wanted one for a HTPC, but I am also looking at getting one for a NAS too. The main attractions are the built-in Radeon 3200 graphics with HDMI, DVI and VGA output, the six SATA ports and low idle power consumption (measured at 32W by SPCR with a good PSU).
The Radeon 3200 is fully capable of decoding H.264 and VP-1 video, meaning even a slow CPU can cope easily with 1080p Blu-Ray and MKV rips. My next post will cover using that in more detail. HDMI output on the board is really handy as it is the best way to connect the system to a TV, and it supports audio over HDMI so you only need one cable which can be 10+ meters long. In practice, it works really well, the only down side being that my TV does not auto-switch to HDMI like it does with RGB SCART.
I read that the on-board might not support 7.1 output, only 5.1 over HDMI. I have not tested it, although it seems to be a bit of a moot point because if you have a 7.1 system you probably have a receiver which can decode Dolby Digital and AC3, so you would pass that through anyway which definitely does work. Otherwise, the PC can decode 5.1 to 6 digital audio streams and pass them over HDMI.
Six SATA ports are obviously ideal for a NAS. In tests they seem solid, and support AHCI mode as well as native SATA and legacy modes. One thing I did notice is that in AHCI mode with Vista power management (spin-down) does not seem to work. In native SATA mode everything is fine. SATA seems to have a low CPU overhead, and supports various RAID functions (although I never use on-board RAID).
All boards with this chipset I have seen run passively cooled. The northbridge heatsink gets hot to the touch, but not worryingly so. Combined with a good PSU, Ninja CPU cooler and suspended 2.5″ HDD the system is almost totally silent. Quieter than my XBOX, in fact, which has a modded fan.
AMD is on to a real winner here. Good performance, rock solid stability, good drivers (hi nVidia nForce) and an abundance of features.