Posts By: Jon Scaife

0Blackgold BGT3630 LogoBlackgold: The ultimate TV tuner card?

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware. Last updated .

Whilst look­ing for drivers for my Pin­nacle 3010ix freeview tuner I noticed Black­gold have a new TV tuner due on the mar­ket.  The Black­gold BGT3630 looks pro­vi­sion­ally to tick all the boxes for me.  It sup­ports DVB-T/T2 AND DVB-S/S2 as well as Ana­log and Cable DVB-C!  So everything and the kit­chen sink.  The card is also sup­plied with low and full pro­file brack­ets and fits a PCI-E 1x slot.  I sup­pose the only thing lack­ing is that it seems to only be a single-tuner for each format.  Of course 2 cards solves that (if you have 2 pci‑e slots free in your HTPC)
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0FFmpeg LogoUnsolved: Decoding interlaced vc1 in Media Center x64

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

Whilst my MediaPC setup can decode just about everything thrown at it, I have had prob­lems decod­ing inter­laced VC1 con­tent.  The prob­lem is caused by the fail­ure of ffm­peg to sup­port inter­laced vc1.  Whilst there are oth­er codecs (e.g. cyber­link or arc­soft) these are cur­rently not avail­able as x64.  Cyber­link do have an x64 codec for h.264 and mpeg2, but I haven’t been able to get it to work with VC1 con­tent.  Hope­fully ffm­peg will fix inter­laced vc1 sup­port soon, but as its been on the to do list for over 2 years I’m not hold­ing my breath

2MCEBuddy LogoMCEBuddy Reloaded: h264 wtv conversion

Published by & filed under Misc Media Software, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

I have wanted the facil­ity to con­vert my recor­ded WTV files to anoth­er format for as long as I’ve had a MediaPC.  The lead can­did­ate has always been MCE­Buddy, but for over 2 years the pro­ject was stalled (as far as the user was con­cerned at least) by prob­lems sup­port­ing h264 video inside wtv files.… Read Full Article

0FFmpeg LogoLAV — A new splitter

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

A new dir­ect­show split­ter has become avail­able.  If you’re not happy with the offer­ings from Haali and Gabest then you might like to try LAV.  I haven’t tried it myself yet, so I can­’t cur­rently offer any more inform­a­tion.  It does men­tion split­ting wtv files though, so I will be try­ing it in the near future.
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0IcoFX LogoExcellent free icon utility

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

Just a very quick post to recom­mend the util­ity IcoFX.  In a nut­shell IcoFX is a free icon extract­or and edit­or.  I was impressed with it because the oth­er free icon edit­ors I tried were unable to sup­port full alpha trans­par­ency, Win­dows 7 x64, or 256 x 256 icons.  IcoFX worked flaw­lessly in all respects.

0Serial Key LogoRetrieving serials from Windows

Published by & filed under Windows. Last updated .

I am fre­quently giv­en PCs to repair that require a rein­stall of win­dows.  These often don’t come with a full list of seri­al num­bers for the soft­ware installed on them.  To avoid the hassle of ask­ing the own­er to dig the seri­als out, it is easi­er to simply pull the seri­als from the old install before wip­ing.… Read Full Article