winamp on S Anand

Making a Media PC

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, I pulled together a Media PC.

This has been a long-term ambition. I’ve always wanted to have a PC as the centre of all my media. To use it as a radio, TV, stereo system, CD player, DVD player, etc.

I finally did it, for just under 1000 pounds.

At the centre of the setup is my 42" Plasma TV (LG 42PC1D). I was debating between a plasma and LCD TV. The differences, as I understand them, are:

Plasma TVs have a higher contrast ratio. My LG 42PC1D has a 10000:1 contrast ratio. An LG 42LC2D has a 1100:1 contrast ratio. The Plasma TV is also brighter (1500cd/m2) than the LCD TV (500cd/m2).
Plasma TVs are cheaper for a given size. A 42" LCD TV costs about 5-20% more.
LCD TVs are lighter. The only reason this matters for me is if I carry the TV back home to India. But the shipping costs are exhorbitant anyway. So I’d be better off leaving the TV behind. And the weight becomes irrelevant.
LCD TVs consume less power. And my power bill is quite high. But I replaced most of the bulbs in our house with energy-efficient ones. Hopefully it will balance out.
LCD TVs work better with computers. If you leave an image on a plasma TV for a long time, it burns on the screen. Screensavers become a must.

I finally picked the Plasma TV, but it was a borderline decision.

The TV is hooked to a Cyberhome DVD player with DivX and a Freeview receiver. The DVD player lets me watch DivX movies I download as torrents. The Freeview player gives me over 40 free channels for casual viewing. (I don’t watch enough TV to need Sky TV.)

I bought an Intel Pentium III Tower that I bought on eBay. This is my “media PC”. I hooked this up to my TV (which has a PC input), a pair of Bose Mediamate speakers (a gift from my brother-in-law) with excellent sound response, and a Labtec webcam.

Two other components I bought were wireless: a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse to control the system from my sofa, and a Linksys cordless Skype phone (with a speakerphone), so that I could hold videoconferences on Skype while on the sofa.

Having set this up, I’m truly beginning to appreciate the convenience of wireless appliances. Right now, I can do any of the above things without gettin up from my sofa. My laptop, phone and wireless keyboard are always just a hand’s reach away! Here are some of the things I’ve been doing (wirelessly):

Videoconferencing. I leave the computer on permanently. My parents or in-laws call me on Skype. The cordless phone rings. I can answer Skype calls directly from the phone. When I pick up the call, the webcam turns on automatically. We can sit on the sofa and speak, while they see us. I can turn on the TV and see them through their webcam. It’s a full-fledged wireless video-conference setup.
Listening to radio. I use my laptop to connect wirelessly to my media PC using Remote Desktop, start up WinAmp, and pick a Shoutcast channel (which has a decent tamil channel list). The sound comes through the Bose speakers connected to the media PC, and I can control the volume from any room, using my laptop.
Listening to MP3s. Ditto, except I turn on a playlist on WinAmp.
Watching online videos. I turn on the TV, use my wireless keyboard, and connect to Google Video. Most of the time, I watch recent tamil movies or Google Techtalks.
Watching TV. (Live from BD and ShareVDO being some choices.)
Watching movies. I actually use “low tech” to do this. I record DivX files I download on to a DVD, and play them through my DVD player (which recognises DivX). On those occasions that I download WMV files, I play them through the computer.

With this setup, it’s easy to do more cool things, like a Truman-show like broadcast (which Justin.TV already does).

Comments

somnath 29 Mar 2007 2:15 pm: cool. complete value for money. I don’t know about the other products but the cyberhome dvd player is truly vfm (bought two in US 3 years back and they still work)
Watch movies 29 May 2007 1:24 am: watch movies onine all the movies can be viewed free and without any hassel so if you watch free movies online come over teh http://www.movieDesi.com
Watch movies 29 May 2007 1:25 am: If you want to watch english movies online without paying any movies you should come to http://www.newShowtime.com to watch free movies online
V Gopal 28 Mar 2007 12:00 pm: Nice Set up..May be you can upgrade to sonos (or something similar) to feed music to all rooms in the house rather than getting it from speakers connected to PC directly. That should make the music side of Media PC complete.!!
spyder 30 Dec 2008 1:32 pm: have a similar setup, on that i am now deciding to buy a logitech wireless inovo keyboard and mouse combo, i am also using an open source software called mediaportal which is good because i manage to save all my movies on my pc and get the files updated with info from imdb.with a setup like this i have found that there is really no need for my dvd player.
Trike Motorcycles · 4 Nov 2010 10:52 am: Plasma TVs still have much better contrast ratio compared to even the best LCD television ""
Celebrity Gossips Forum 3 Dec 2010 12:45 pm: i think that plasma tvs are more expensive than LCD tvs and they are a bit heavier too *".

How I listen to music

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I have a large MP3 collection (Tamil and Hindi films). I don’t like selecting songs to listen to. Too much effort.

I rated all songs I had listened to (650 songs x 5-10 seconds = 1-2 hrs) and created 7 SmartViews. I just go to one of these and play them in order. Here are my views, in descending order of their use.

Most played. Sorted by Play Count. Songs I play the most. Plays stuff I listen to usually.
Not heard recently. Played Last before 3 months ago AND Rating >= 3. Plays good songs I haven’t heard recently.
Not played much or recently. Played Last before 1 month ago AND Play Count <= 2 AND Rating >= 3. Plays good songs I haven’t heard often enough.
Recent hits. Last updated after 3 months ago AND Play count >= 3. Plays songs recently added and liked.
Recently played. Sorted by Last Updated. Often, I like to listen to songs I listened to yesterday.
Top rated. Sorted by Rating. My best songs. (Suprisingly, I don’t use this view much.)
Recently added. Sorted by Played Last. Plays songs I just downloaded.

But WinAmp’s not good enough. For example, I can’t find out what songs I played at least thrice last month. How do I see what I’ve been listening to a lot recently? Fortunately, there are a few WinAmp history plugins. I installed Pepper, which produces a log file that can be analysed. I did this two weeks ago, and don’t have enough data. When I do, I’ll modify two views

Not heard much or recently. I’ll change this to “Not heard much recently” - Rating >= 3, Play Count > 5, Play Count = 0 last month.
Recent hits. Modify it to show songs played at least thrice last month.

Comments

arunvis 12 Dec 2005 12:29 am: Windows media player has these as auto playlists
S Anand 12 Dec 2005 6:50 pm: I just was the Windows Media Player auto playlists. They’re pretty good, actually!
S Anand 12 Dec 2005 6:54 pm: But it doesn’t have the equivalent of “what have I been listening to a lot recently?” – for which WinAmp has a plugin. Wonder if there are plugins like this for WMP.
jawahar 4 Mar 2007 1:50 pm: hai anand how do u create such smart views

Software inventory

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I end up changing my office laptops every year or so, and hence reinstall lots of software. Here’s my inventory.

I most certainly will install the following.
ActivePerl. I still program. I know Perl. I love Perl.
Acrobat Reader
BitLord
DivX player
Dave’s quicksearch deskbar
Microsoft Office 2003. Has some really good improvements over Office 2000.
NoteTab Light. Multiple tabs notepad. But is there anything better?
Nero Express
Picasa 2
WinAmp (with Media Library import/export)
WinRar
WinZip

I most likely will install the following, but not necessarily.
Adobe Photoshop. Almost vital, but I can live with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
Goldwave. I often record interviews, or give commentary for home-made movies.
Google Earth (with Fraps). To browse the world and make movies out of them.
Google Toolbar
Mozilla Firefox. For multi-tabbed browsing, mainly. Otherwise, IE is fine.
MSN Messenger. Just for the interface. Somehow, it feels “smoother” than Yahoo.
RealPlayer. Don’t listen to RealAudio that much. Still…
UnixUtils. I use “grep” and “less” more often than “dir”
VirtualDub. For the occasional movie editing that Microsoft Movie Maker can’t handle.
WinHtTrack. To browse offline.
Google Desktop Search. Helps remember my browsing history.

Tempting, but no thanks.
Opera. Mozilla’s fine, thank you.
Yahoo Messenger. MSN Messenger’s better, thank you.
Yahoo Desktop Search. Better interface than Google’s. But no browsing history.

Comments

Krishna 20 Jul 2005 6:08 pm: Looks like bloglines has issues with showing the RSS of the post. Especially the list of programs. I get a blank list :(
Krishna 20 Jul 2005 6:09 pm: And a really nice way to show comments! I love it!
S Anand 20 Jul 2005 7:44 pm: Hope the RSS feed is fixed now. And thanks!
Dhar 21 Jul 2005 1:11 am: Does Winzip do something that Winrar doesnt?
Dhar 21 Jul 2005 1:13 am: No anti-virus software?Tipping my hat to you… You, sir, are a brave man! Try Avast, it is free and it is good!
Shiva 21 Jul 2005 2:05 am: ‘Digit ’ One of the popular PC magazine rated it as the â€˜Bestâ€™, i tried it believe me after that my system had 50 Trojans and worms and my Laptop was badly affected
S Anand 21 Jul 2005 4:52 am: I just like WinZip’s interface. As for anti-virus, believe it or not, yes, I am quite foolish on that front.
S Anand 21 Jul 2005 4:55 am: How’s AVG? Heard it was good.
Krishna 21 Jul 2005 7:11 am: RSS Feed is fine now. Thanks!
Dhar 21 Jul 2005 8:25 am: Since I did not want to shell out loads of moolah, I just downloaded Avast to give it a shot. I have been pretty impressed by it since then. Another one you might want to give a shot is Clamwin (www.clamwin.com)
Dhar 21 Jul 2005 10:37 am: Are you able to run Bitlord from behind firewalls? Or do you use some kind of tunneling software? I have been unable to get bittorrent to work with tunnelling software. :(
S Anand 21 Jul 2005 11:47 am: Not behind a firewall, luckily.
A Karthik 22 Jul 2005 4:33 pm: jedit is good
S Anand 22 Jul 2005 7:17 pm: Hey, great to hear from you, Karthik! Will mail you.
Dhar 25 Jul 2005 10:37 am: Just saw that you will be installing DivX player. Why not give MPlayer or VLC a try. I personally love Mplayer.
sathish 26 Jul 2005 4:05 am: for editors, I have off late starting using ScitE editor.. It is pretty good with multiple tabs and coloring based on the language one uses for coding
Dhar 26 Jul 2005 5:57 am: Somehow I still prefer VIM for simple editing. I tried convincing people at work that I use LaTe X for all document preparation needs, but somehow it got shot down. :(
S Anand 31 Jul 2005 9:05 pm: I tried Avast. Pretty impressive.