Took a road trip to Florida to see some friends during the opening of their restaurant. Long drive. A bit less than completely satisfied due to a push for getting to the destination instead of enjoying the travel. I don’t like Florida as a state any more than I did before. The Everglades National Park was nice. I forgot Zoe. First time that has happened.
Author Archives: frankson
Impending need for TV upgrade
So today I ran into the first time, well second, that my current ‘media center PC’ had problems with playback of something I was watching. Honey and Clover II at 1280×720 encoded with h.264. The computer just could not keep up. I was trying it on my desktop too and it had problems even when I did not have the noise reduction turned on. I will eventually, and maybe soon, have to upgrade my TV and the computer I use to output video.
This is not something I can afford now but at least I kind of know my game plan. I do not know if FFDshow can use 2 CPU cores so I expect to need a moderately fast one. It will also need to be a modern 3D video card. Pixel shaders are being used by at least the renderer. I can also take advantage of h.264 decoders that use the video card in other ways too since with a TV upgrade I will not be using a video out but rather monitor out. So that means my next TV will need to be able to accept a computer digital output directly. This also means 1920×1080 is the resolution I want.
Such an upgrade will allow far greater control over how good my video looks. I can use all sorts of post-processing now. And fancy renderers. And the resolution will be sick. But processing power will be key. For both the processor and the video card. Core2duo suddenly looks appealing…
Demotivational Poster
If I can afford it, I want to make a demotivational poster and have it printed.
Zoom Player 5.00
Zoom Player 5 was recently released. I tried out the RC for a bit and was very impressed. I’ve been a ZP user for quite a long time and think it is fantastic. The new version adds a super fantastic skin and much improved codec/filter management. The options screen is also much more smartly laid out.
On a related note, I recently switched to using the Haali Video Renderer instead of the overlay renderer. It is suppose to use pixel shaders. I don’t see a difference but that is pretty neat.
A new year. A useless test of a weblog.
This is interesting software. I do not specifically have interest in having a weblog but having the means to install and run the software makes me want to try it. Do I have anything I even want to say? Not so much. I do not even much want anyone reading this. And I doubt I can keep this up. Lack of interest and all that. But here it is.