Miscellaneous tech question - anyone know of a way to either convert Region 2 blu-ray discs to Region 1, or a way to hack my Sony blu-ray player to become region free?
You could try this to see if your player has the ability to remove region restrictions. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks</a> The only way to change region codes is to re-burn the disc, which is fairly trivial but requires you to own a Blu-ray burner, rip the Blu-ray disc to your computer, obtain a blank Blu-ray disc, then re-burn it. There are multi-region Blu-ray players if you want to replace your Sony player. If there's no unlock code for it, that's probably your best option.
In my experience, never ever buy a Sony DVD/BRay player, unless there is no other option. I've always found that they are the least up to date with codecs for playing your own stuff, and heavily enforce region locking and DRM. The cheap-ass Korean brands you can find at Costco seem to work well for me, and even let you perform firmware updates every now and then to keep shit up to date. Very handy when you burn/share DVD's full of torrented media files or want to play other-region media.
So I'm in the process of trying to set up a home theater system in my house and have a few questions that might fall into this thread. First off, I bought this Sony receiver (not at this price here, much cheaper at Costco since it's being discontinued) to use as my primary input source. The receiver is going to be housed in my basement directly fed into my TV. My plan, if it's feasible, is I would like to set up a desktop in my upstairs office that would essentially serve two purposes: 1. I'd like it to be a media server that I could then stream through the receiver to watch downloaded movies, TV, music, etc in the basement, and 2. It would also need to still be usable as a regular desktop for when I need to work from home and possibly some limited gaming (nothing too graphic intense, think some steam indie games at the most). So my ultimate question is sorta two fold... 1. Is a setup like that even feasible. 2. If so, would I be better served buying an out of the box PC from one of the box brands, or can I save myself some money and just build it myself on the cheap? It's been some years since I've done a PC build, but I have access to a clean room and can probably talk one of my IT friends into helping out in exchange for a crafty six pack.
How are you planning to push video through your receiver? I looked at the product page and didn't see anything that made that option a possibility, unless you're planning on running a super long HDMI cable through your house. Audio shouldn't be a problem. Here's what I'd do: 1. Get some kind of cheapo PC and install Plex or XBMC on it and plug it directly into the receiver. (Maybe this?) 2. Move my media to some kind of storage like an external hard drive and plug it into my router. (My router has a USB port for this. You may need to either share it out over your network or transfer it to the new computer's hard drive.) 3. Stream media from attached storage. 4. Get a remote that has a keyboard/touchpad. (Like this.) 5. Fap in glorious HD and 7.1 surround.
This probably belongs more in the peripherals board but it will probably get more exposure here. Does anyone here know how makes joysticks/steering wheels anymore? I have the original Microsoft Force Feedback Pro, but it just 15pin or what ever port and isn't useful anymore. Logitec has one Joystick and 2 Different steering wheels. I haven't looked for one in many many years, there used to be options, now there doesn't seem to be, unless I am missing another company that makes good products.
I cant believe I forgot about thrustmaster they do alot of joysticks, but there is a company called "Mad Catz" they seem to have good reviews, anyone try them? Just by the name they seem like those cheap Chinese knock offs.
Hard drive encryption. Yay or nay? I don't have anything illegal (as if I'd admit to it) on my computer, I use AxCrypt to overwrite everything I delete instead of putting in my trash bin, and I use Free Internet Window Washer to overwrite things like Temp internet files, history, recent docs, etc after every use (I had my identity stolen once, somehow, and don't care to repeat that). But I hear about more and more people encrypting their HDDs and wonder if I'm being an idiot by NOT doing it. Particularily on my wife's laptop. Nett tells me that Mac has an HD encryption pretty much built in, but both my wife and I have PC's. Any Advice? Any preferance to which programs to use for anything I mentioned above?
Are you actually high risk? For me, I put an angle grinder, or at least an axe through the platter of any harddrive I own before it leaves my possession. Once you open the platter up, unless you're a high level terrorist - nobody is putting that fucker back together to get evidence against against you. And encrypting your drive is a pain in the ass that isolates a pretty low risk circumstance for most people.
All my devs use Macs, as do I, for our work. It's as simple as checking the "enable FileVault" box in a preference pane, and then waiting for it to chug through the conversion/encryption. I do the whole drive, not just the home directory, and ensure everyone in my office does the same. We deal with rather sensitive data (according to the US and Canadian government), and this is one way we mitigate the risk of having someone getting their laptop ripped off and then having that data out in the wild. Will it withstand government or similar analysis? No. But it is quite good at protecting us from the moderately technical hacker. My personal boxes are all encrypted as well, so fucktards can't get at my personal or banking info (without some serious work) should they steal them. $0.02
It really depends on what's on your harddrive. If you've got sensitive work material - the mac file vault thing is great. But if someone got access to my harddrive? Social media and online gaming accounts are about the only private information that would annoy me that you could get to. The IP that's stored on my laptop in terms of my photography and writing doesn't have any particular sensitivity or real commercial value. That said, I had a filevault encrypted drive that hit issues a few years back. They might not keep out the NSA? But it is a pain in the fucking ass to try and recover if your laptop shits itself between deleting photos from your camera and dropbox syncing.
They've really come a long way in stabilizing the FileVault stuff... I've recovered a few drives, updated a few drives, and really done some rather tricky shit with them and TimeMachine backups, and it's all worked out well. As a "free", in-the-box solution, I highly recommend it. But as with everything, proper backup/recovery process (and occasional testing), etc., is key. If I had to guess, I'd say trusting DropBox to have their shit together was your mistake in that scenario...
What's everyone using for malware protection? I've been using the free version of Malwarebytes in conjunction with MSE, but I don't like the new version of Malwarebytes and have been considering something else. I'm looking for something that's free, has a small footprint, and either does not have active protection.
I'm thinking about buying a cheap-ish tablet to use while I travel. I'm stuck between an ASUS Memo 7 and the Nexus 7. The specs on the Nexus are better and although it lacks storage expansion, I think I could live with that. But is it worth the extra money?
The Nexus 7 receives updates directly from Google, so new versions of Android are almost immediately available. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Thanks for the reply... I was close to getting the Memo (found a deal on Amazon) but now I'm leaning towards a rerurb Nexus 7.
I think the Memo is a good tablet, but I just think having long life OS support is an important feature for tablets/phones. Google is still releasing updates for the original Nexus 7 and the Nexus 4, both of which are 2 years old now. You won't get that support from most tablet vendors.
so i just purchased the following mid level gaming rig, that i'm going to assemble myself: amd fx-6300 vishera 6-core 3.5ghz (4.1ghz turbo) asus m5a99fx pro r2.0 am3+ amd 990fx + sb950 sata gigabyte gv-r928xoc-3gd rev2 radeon r9 280x 3gb corsair vengeance 8gb (2 x 4gb) 240-pin ddr3 sdram wd black series wd1003fzex 1tb 7200 rpm 64mb cache asus 24x dvd burner - bulk 24x dvd+r 8x dvd+rw 12x corsair carbide series 500r arctic white steel corsair cx series cx600 600w atx12v v2.3 at this point, i'm not planning to overclock the processor. should i also get a cpu cooler, or will the stock one be fine?
the stock one will be adequate but noisy. i always buy an aftermarket cooler with at least a 120mm fan simply so that my desktop isn't howling. it'll help keep the temperatures down but typically the stock cooler will at least keep the cpu at safe temps by cranking the fan up. if some of your other components (especially your video card) are noisy, then it might not matter as much. i'm a little bit sensitive about fan noise, though - it's pretty hard to tell when my desktop is powered on. also, i'd highly recommend springing for a little bit extra and buying a ssd for your os/applications drive. it's amazing.
dollar for dollar, an ssd for your os and key apps is the single most effective performance upgrade possible in the current tech market. can't agree with binary strongly enough on this point.