Well I’m two weeks in with my XBOX360 and I still cannot get it to stream videos from my Vista PC upstairs. Despite my attempts to use Tversity, I seem to be no closer to getting the videos streaming.
Damn you to hell Microsoft. If playing HALO3 wasn’t so much fun….
Okay geeks and nerds, time once again to make yourself useful.
I was a lucky birthday boy and got myself an XBOX 360 for my birthday this week. As I’m used to using my old chipped XBOX as a media center, I was looking forward to using the new one in the same way (while I move the old box to my bedroom). I want to stream music and video from my PC down to the XBOX. I’ve got music working okay but video is a no go. The XBOX can find the PC, can see the video directory, can see the folders underneath it, but can’t see the actual files.
Then I read that the 360 will only stream WMV videos. Jesus H Christ. Of course, everything I want to stream down is in DIVX or XVID. So I heard about this app called Tversity which will transcode DIVX into WMV on the fly. I’ve got it installed and the 360 can see it okay, it’s streaming music via Tversity okay, but the 360 says it can’t find any videos still.
Last night in SL a few people told me it might be because Vista Business doesn’t have Windows Media Center and I’ll need to upgrade to Ultimate, but if that’s the case, why can the 360 stream my music okay? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Anyway… any ideas? Prove to me your geek mad skillz.
Oh and… should I get it chipped? Or not? Thoughts?
About a week ago I tried to open my Acer Travelmate Tablet PC and noticed the little hinge where the screen attaches to the base was broken. No idea how it happened. Wear and tear I guess. I’ve had this machine for two and a half years. Now I can’t open the screen up at all. So I took it into Acer’s repair joint in Melbourne last Thursday. When I realized this morning I hadn’t heard from them, I gave them a call. They told me they had assessed the unit and it would cost me $300 to get it repaired!
I only paid $1000 for the whole machine.
So I went in today to see the quote. Turns out, the replacement hinge will cost $120, there is $60 for labour, and the remaining $120 is to replace the whole upper casing. Why? Because I mentioned that the little latch that hooks the screen onto the base at the front was broken.
$240 for two little pieces of plastic. A quarter of the cost of the entire unit. Makes you wonder what the other pieces of the unit are worth. The screen? Hard drive? Memory? Apparently not as much as the hinge and latch. THAT’S where the big bucks are.
So I told them to forget it, there’s no way I’m paying $300 for two little bits of plastic on a 2.5 year old laptop. That’s highway robbery. I paid my $50 “assessment fee” and left.
Now I’m in the market for a new laptop. I’ve been fairly happy with the Lenovo desktop I bought earlier this year. It’s bloody quiet. Maybe I should get a Lenovo? On the other hand, perhaps it’s time I bit the bullet and went Mac? Is it that time?
Did I mention that I run the largest independent media company (by reach) in Australia? You’d think there would be a whole bunch of hardware companies wanting to buddy up to me….
Via Simon Sharwood’s twitter, I just learned that Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End” has just won the coveted ‘Best Novel’ award at the Hugo Awards! A massive congratulations from all at TPN to Vernor. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of RAINBOWS END. It is a brilliant imagining of what the net will probably look like in 2025.
Vinge was recently on G’Day World and I guess this is as good a time as any to give it another plug! Listen to my July 2007 interview with Vernor Vinge here.
The TPN servers crashed 15 times in the last 24 hours and we don’t know why. I really need a server admin guru to help us get to the bottom of it. Anyone out there a jedi in Apache, etc, and want to help a brother out? I’ll make it worth your while. If you run or work for an IT shop and are willing to help out, I’ll give you free advertising on TPN. Get your brand out to 500,000 people a month.
Yesterday, after the Telstra “social communications roundtable”, a few of us were treated to a live demo of a Cisco Telepresence unit Telstra have installed at their offices.
This photo (and the others here) don’t do it justice, but basically you have a half a boardroom table up against a wall which has three large flat screen panels which carry the images of the people sitting on the other side of the call. It’s designed so you would swear they are sitting on the other side of the table. It’s truly amazing. I want one in my home.
