Binary Gamer | Digital Gaming Reborn » Sourced

OzSource Australia Update

AzzX — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:41:34 +0000

You may have noticed all the non Steam content has evaporated from the site, That’s because I have split the site and moved the media aspect to www.OzSource.com.au

binarygamer.com will now remain a Steam fan/info site just the way it has always really been.

What’s new at Ozsource AU?

Printable Home Theater signs and Logo’s

I came across this excellent resource of various Theater Signs whilst visiting AVS forums. What can you do with these? Checkout this AVS forum post and finish off your home theater room with some professional looking wall posters. You can even create an impressive desktop background or Collage for your HTPC screen using these images.

HDMI cables and Versions, buying cheap is fine.

Is a more expensive HDMI cable better? In most real world cases, the answer is a definite no. As long as the cable you are buying conforms to the HDMI 1.3 spec you will be fine in today’s consumer devices. There is a common saying on the internet in regards to buying HDMI cables

What is ITC Processing: ATI

ITC Processing has been available on ATI graphics cards since Catalyst 9.2 though it can have a positive or negative impact depending on your display device. I posted this on my blog at azzx.org a while ago though I have yet to see any significant difference with having this option enabled.

Logitech Mini diNovo perfect for a HTPC

If you have a Windows based HTPC this little baby is an awesome addition to your Home theatre Centre. Offering two distinct operating modes: A media mode (see pic) and a cursor mode, this portable keyboard offers pretty much everything you require for a lounge room PC based perspective.

XBMC HTPC Windows Quick Setup guide

As highlighted with our previous XBMC introduction article, I have been using XBMC since it’s transformation from XBMP (Xbox Media Player) and was the sole reason I purchased the original xbox. This day and age the focus is on High Definition formats and the original Xbox just doesn’t cut it in terms of horsepower.

Cheapest online PS3 Slim Australia.

Available now for pre-ordering and finally arriving on the 3rd of September (Tomorrow) in Australia, the PS3 Slim is a hot piece of hardware. At long last Sony have got the pricing almost perfect on their current generation console. From the vast majority of stores, it looks as if it will retail for around AU$500 but

PS3 Media Server

AzzX — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:58:30 +0000

Until recently, using the PS3 as a HTPC device was a tedious and almost pointless affair. Installing Linux was a possibility though restricting direct access to the PS3’s RSX GPU pretty much reduced the benefit of using a PS3 in this way.

Using software like TVersity was the closest you could get in turning the Playstation 3 into a functional streaming media device through the method of Transcoding both the video and audio the source material. This requires the use of a PC or Mac to act as the streaming server. Whilst this method works well for Standard Definition devices and for streaming to portable devices like a PSP or a mobile Phone, the loss of quality is considerably noticable on HD TV sets.

Our next Sourced article looks at the latest media streaming software available for the PS3 and it is damn impressive.

PS3 Media Server

PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant UPNP Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration. It’s backed up with the powerful Mplayer/FFmpeg packages.

PS3 Media Server is available for OSX, Windows and Linux and can play natively all PS3 supported videos such as AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG and does a fantastic job of transcoding your typical Net formats and containers such as MKV.

Latest Version: PS3 Media Server v1.10.5 for Windows/Linux/OSX

Current features:

Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing is required. All folders are directly browsed by the PS3, and it also includes an automatic refresh.
Real-time video transcoding via MEncoder, tsMuxer or Avisynth
DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding
Thumbnail generation for Videos
Supports a virtual folder system using the audio/subtitle language on the PS3
All formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/WMA, JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, and all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG) the PS3 will play
Display camera RAWs thumbnails (Canon / Nikon, etc.)
ZIP/RAR files as browseable folders for pictures/audio files
Support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer
Podcasts audio/ Video feeds support

Windows/Linux Only:

Lossless 5.1 PCM transcoding with DTS movies
Remux video and remux/reencode all audio tracks to AC3/PCM in real time with tsMuxer
FLAC 96kHz/24bits/5.1 support

PS3 Media Server Blo g Forum Google.Code

XBMC MEDIA CENTER

AzzX — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:39:50 +0000

In our second Sourced article the spotlight is on the award winning XBMC Media Center.

What is XBMC?

Originally named Xbox Media Center, XBMC is now a full featured, award winning free and open source software media-player and entertainment hub for all your digital media. I have been using XBMC since it’s transformation from xbmp (Xbox Media Player) and was the sole reason I purchased the original xbox. The software turned a standard game machine into a state of the art network media player – better priced and far superior to anything like it on the market at the time. With the proliferation of High definition content, The original Xbox based XBMC didn’t have enough horsepower and thus began the interest in bring Xbox Media Center to the GNU/Linux Operating System.

Currently XBMC supports the following platforms:

XBMC for Linux
XBMC for Mac
XBMC for Windows
XBMC for Xbox
XBMC Live (Bootable iso)

XBMC Advantages

Multi-Codec support.
Codec independent.
Can play media within an archive (rar,zip), even multi-spanning archives.
Your wife and Girlfriend can use it.
RSS feed support.
Localised weather.
Quicktime Support.
LastFM Support
Itunes support.
Distributed as open source under the GNU General Public License,
Extensive Python scripting plugin system.
Fan Art & Album and Cover Art.
Fully Skinable and Customisable interface.
Configurable webserver, control your Media Center via any internet enabled device like a mobile phone.
Effortless media management.

XBMC Disadvantages

No native PVR capability.
No hardware Video acceleration – Hopefully Soon or check XBMC forums for different solutions.

XBMC Forks

All great Open source software has its share of forks and xbmc is no exception:

Boxee introduces a unique Social Media aspect to HTPC software.
Plex is a OSX specific Port of XBMC.
MediaPortal is a Windows only complete Home Theatre PC frontend with full PVR capability. Loosley based of the old XBOX only XBMC builds.

Hulu Sourced

AzzX — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:34:05 +0000

In our first Sourced article the spotlight is on the incredibly popular Hulu Video service.

What is Hulu?

Simply put, Hulu is a commercially supported online content distribution website for streaming TV shows, movies and trailers at Hulu.com and other online destination sites – all for free anytime. The Hulu service is only available in the U.S. at this stage though they are looking to expand based on the acceptance of their content providers. Similar in concept to Youtube, Hulu allows content to be embedded in other sites as the player is Adobe Flash based. In terms of quality, Hulu offers videos in a 1,000 Kbps, 480p stream or a HD 720p format encoded at 2,500Kbps, both using the H.264 codec.

Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp though offers videos from FOX, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros as well as NBC Universal.

Why?

The thing that intrigues me so much about Hulu, is that it represents acceptance by the big media players in the use of the internet as a viable and commercially relevant media distribution network. The large number of users torrenting media is not always just a simple case of people wanting to pirate, more often than not it is due to the ease of use of watching what you want, when you want. Hulu represents an alternative to this sort of piracy and has so far been very successful. In the gaming world, Steam is a perfect example of how well this model can work.

Issues?

As with anything to do with media, Content providers can make some bad decisions thinking they are protecting their product. Boxee, a HTPC product based off the excellent opensource XBMC was recently asked by the Hulu team to remove the Hulu feature from Boxee:

Two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.

This decision merely confuses the situation as Boxee represents a superior way to interface with Hulu on the big screen. It is a big loss for both the provider, the consumer in general. I guess it is a case of the old guard still not coming to terms about the true nature of online content distribution. Forcing people to watch via a web browser is probably more to do with ad revenue considering it is really only a different interface.