PetrieWeb » Reviews http://www.petrieweb.com The Home Page of Cyril and Tracie Petrie Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:23:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Tracie’s Room http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/09/tracies-room http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/09/tracies-room#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:42:50 +0000 Cyril http://www.petrieweb.net/?p=309 Quick tour of Tracie’s room at Scottsdale Healthcare – Shea

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/09/tracies-room/feed 0 SharePod http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/08/sharepod http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/08/sharepod#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:46:43 +0000 Cyril http://www.petrieweb.net/2009/08/sharepod Wow I finally got a problem I have had for years fixed today.  My old iPod classic had hundreds of songs on it that were just stuck there, because that Library had long since been disassociated from iTunes, and the computer it had been created with.  There were numerous paid solutions I had found to fix the problem, but I wasn’t spending $30 bucks for software I was only going to use the one time.

Well I finally found a free application that worked perfectly.  Share Pod not only is an iTunes replacement, but it will take the music “trapped” on your iPod and copy it to your computer.

Take seconds to install, and a few minutes after that I was able to rescue some songs, that I’ve only been able to play on my classic for the last few years.

Sharepod is donationware, so I kicked a couple of bucks the developers way. If you have this same problem , this could be the fix for you.

]]> http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/08/sharepod/feed 0 ASUS EAH 4550 http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/03/asus-eah-4550 http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/03/asus-eah-4550#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:40:00 +0000 Cyril http://www.petrieweb.net/wp/2009/03/asus-eah-4550 Updated the HTPC today.  I had been using the onboard graphics solution which had component out to my HDTV.  When I first built the computer I had always intended to add a discrete graphics card.  At one time I had an NVIDA card that also had component HD out, but I found that the onboard graphics actually had better saturation and contrast.

So that worked fine, until last year when Netflix updated their DRM for instant viewing, and I was unable to watch instant movies on the HTPC without a HDCP compliant video card.  At the time most HDCP cards were well over $100, so while it sucked to only be able to watch instant movies on my laptop,  I decided to wait for awhile to see if any cards came down in price.  (Ok I was told by Tracie to wait for a while to see if cards came down in price!)

Fast forward to now and I finally got around to check out what HDCP compliant cards are out there. To my surprise I found the choice out there now to be almost overwhelming! I have always liked ASUS, in fact the motherboard  in the HTPC is an ASUS M2NPV-VM, and as I said its integrated graphics outperformed that old NVIDIA card.  Also as a Canuck I have always been biased to the ATI cards, even though they are owned by AMD now. I have always felt that when it comes to games NVIDIA usually has the edge, but for TV, video and HD applications, ATI is where its at.

EAH4550

I picked up the ASUS EAH4550 card from NewEgg.com.  It is a low profile, HDCP compliant card based on the ATI HD 4550.  It has VGA, DVI and HDMI out, and all for about $45 after rebate!  My HTPC is such a hack right now, that I’m always leery about changing anything on it because that usually means that something else will break. I’m still running XP on that machine, because Vista just can’t get all the components working together. Well I installed the card, attached the HDMI cable to the TV and booted her back up.

2d

Everything worked the first time! I was so disappointed! :-) There was one small hiccup.  After installing the drivers I noticed that any audio for video went through HDMI cable instead of the audio out to home theater amp. After disabling the HDMI audio, everything worked as it should. The picture quality is amazing, and the contrast and detail over the component video is like night and day.  Why did I wait so long to do this?!  Oh that’s right Tracie! :-)

But the best part is Netflix on demand works again. And now that they are adding more and more HD content, the card will be able to handle all that onboard, without offloading that the CPU.

While its not a gaming card, I hope to try a few out to see how it handles them.  Nothing better that killing a few Nazis on the big screen!

]]> http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/03/asus-eah-4550/feed 0 Rocket Man http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/03/rocket-man http://www.petrieweb.com/2009/03/rocket-man#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:03:19 +0000 admin http://www.petrieweb.net/wp/?p=12 Click here to view the embedded video.

I just love this video!!

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