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After a lot of dithering I've decided to get a replacement Media PC.

The one I'm using now is not what I once had. The internals were swapped around when Kevin was here and really I should have had them swapped back before he left (but it was just too much). I had a major problem with it a while back. The boot drive it was using stopped booting and ( Read more... )

I think I should wait until next pay and have the PC motherboard replaced. A little research shows that a new SATA card is $A 29. A new motherboard (that would fit inside the existing case, the current one is only 24x24 cm) is probably either $69 for a N68-S3 UCC (only 24x17, and which if I'm lucky will run the spare AMD CPU I have, or something ( Read more... )

On Kevin's advice, I'll be returning the dual digital tuner I bought at ALDI. It's proved to to be too fiddly and unreliable. Apparently one that Kevin bought for 1/2 the price or less has been workking fine on his PC using only an indoor rabbit ear aerial. Good job I have all the recepets, packaging and accessories still on me. ALDI have a 60 day ( Read more... )

I spent the last half of yesterday doing a fresh reinstall of Windows XP on the Media PC. I installed the necessary applications, codecs and updates to run GB-PVR. I was able to tune in most of the local channels on the tuner.

And the damn thing wouldn't show any TV, and kept crashing. There were error messages all the time. When Kevin finally ( Read more... )

Well, the tuners work, but strange stuff happens (like time-stretched recording). The best solution is to backup the data from applications I still want to use on the PC (e.g. Firefox) and to wipe C: drive and do a clean reinstall of windows, CODECs and applications. Sounds like a day's work. All the other data (images, music and videos) are stored ( Read more... )

The rules:

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this every day for a week without fail.

Kevin figuring out how to (mostly) tune in my digital tuner with GB-PVR

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The rules:

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this every day for a week without fail.

Watching episode 1 of Full Metal Alchemist on the media pc

Here's a photo of the bloody Media PC + peripherals from this morning:




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Have been talking to Kevin about putting together a media pc for me. Looks like I get one made for just under $600. It would:

• receive record digital TV (especially with FreeView coming in next year);
• play DVD/CD/MP3 media;
• be connectible to the local network (and thereby the net), which means
• I could record stuff on it and watch/copy/play it on my ( Read more... )