Kickin' Appss

With all the hype and countless hours of fun surrounding Windows 7 upgrades I thought I'd toss in my two wooden nickels worth of useful applications that have installed themselves into my heart. (aww... ain't that just sweet?, too bad mine's beyond fraggmented to care) These are not really Windows 7 specific, just good Windows based apps that I like. *Some of the descriptions are straight from the makers' own summaries or cnet's download.com site.*

Google Chrome Browser - "Chrome is blazingly fast and is easily the quickest browser available. Chrome is Google's attempt to make the Web browser disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools." If clean and simple are your things then Chrome is the browser for you. The 'address' bar also doubles as the classic Google search bar.

Cost: FREE

Google's Picasa (3) - "Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!" Just like they say, it organizes pictures, and makes it very easy to edit and share, especially if you have an existing Gmail account.

Cost: FREE

Libra - "Libra is a beautiful library software to manage your Books, Music, Movies and Games. You can track items you have lent out, or tag them with meaningful terms to organize them effectively. Libra can import your items from other applications, or scan them from either your webcam or any barcode scanner (including CueCat). Once you have built your collection, you can print out beautiful catalog pages of all your items." I use a 400 Disc DVD changer and store most of my kids' movies on my home network, this is by far the best way to organize them and use to pick a movie to watch. The library is also exportable to Excel for a text list print out.

Cost: FREE

DVDFab (6) - "DVDFab----Copy any DVD to blank disc/PSP/iPod or other mobile devices in smart ways, the fastest DVD copy software. Powerful and Flexible! Enjoy it!" This software can copy any movie disc and is really simple to run. I use it for full quality rips for the the kids' flicks.

Cost: Free basic edition (~$30)

Belarc Advisor - "The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. " Basically it reads your entire PC and sums it up and displays it in web-browser format.

Cost: FREE

PlayOn\TVersity - Media servers to share local and web-based conetnt, see my previous post for a lot more information.

AVG Free Anti-Virus - "AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is an anti-virus protection tool available free of charge to home users. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability." I shouldn't have to explain what this does.

Cost: You gussed it, Free

WinRAR - "Anyone seeking an all-in-one archiving solution would be remiss to not check out WinRAR." In a quick summary; its like winzip, on crack.

Cost: Free Trial, $30 full product.

VLC Media Player - This bad boy will play just about any format of audio and video out there. It also is light weight and comes in a portable version (for use on a USB thumbdrive).

Cost: FREE

This is a quick, off the top of my head type list, so if there are some apps that need some love and respect, please post it in the comments section.

All's Well That Shares Well

No, despite popular rumors I haven't given up on this blog. In fact its kinda nice since that long break I now have more goodies to rant and rave about. So with a great home theatre comes great responsibility. First you must have content to play and this presents opportunities and challenges. Fortunately many others share this passion and have developed fantastic tools, many free, to assist A/V junkies.

To kick things off many people have access to disc based media (CDs & DVDs etc), and then classic sources like TV, DTV, satellite, cable etc. So what next? Digital streaming media of course! Terabytes (it comes after gigabytes silly) of entertainment are chomping at the bit (computer joke, did you catch what I did there?) to be played whenever you choose.

Ok so you have movies or music sitting on your PC in another room, and you want to play it on your big screen and surround sound, well what to do? What to do? Answer: Get the signal from your your home network to your theatre room, that's numero uno in making this possible. The choices are wired or wireless. If you plan on HD content of any kind go wired, period. It will be well worth any efforts of running the cable. Wireless is pretty convenient but slower and more often than not it will cost more as well. If you need help with the networking side of things, enlist the help of some friend or family member, and do the nerd in him a favor and make it worth his while. Nerds and geeks often prefer monies or foods as payment, or tickle their floppies and hit 'em with both.

Part duex is choosing a player. If you have a Wii, Xbox360, PS3, XBMC, or theatre PC (HTPC), you'll be set. If not, other players exist like stand alone media players and even some newer DVRs are capable of a great many things. The newer generation consoles and especially the more powerful Xbox360 and PS3 are ideal for theatre setups since they are made to handle HD content and have been designed to work with shared media, and by the way they play games as well.

Since most of what you'll be streaming; movies, music, and photos will be stored on a computer somewhere you need to be able to get to them. There are mainly two sources; 1. local area network (LAN or your home pc) and 2. media available via the World Wide Web. 1. LAN is often 'easier' since no high speed Internet is needed, just that wired network at home. 2. WWW sources require high speed Internet and depending on the site and content may require a paid membership or special software be used to access what you want. Many popular sites for movies and TV shows include direct network sites like CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN etc. Other sites like Hulu and Joost are not network specific and host a wide array of videos to watch. Netflix is natively supported by the Xbox360, but with the help of software can be used on other devices.

PlayOn and TVersity

These two bad boys of media server and sharing software are both easy to use and fulfill many digital desires. They accomplish many of the same things and therefor have many similarities but have different strengths and weaknesses. Each will require that a host PC be on running the software at the time you wish to use them. Click on their names below to visit their sites.

PlayOn: This tool is most popular for streaming Hulu to your home theatre, though it is very capable of accessing other sites. Its is extremely easy to setup and use. It generally costs about $40 and has a good support staff that constantly keep it up to date. It comes with a 14 day trial to give you a chance to take it for a spin. This software uses less power from your PC to run. The ability to share your local files has been recently added. If Hulu is your main reason to bring streaming media to your entertainment room this is very recommended.

TVersity: A little more complex this one packs a powerful transcoding punch. This is meant to be able to get any media to any device, automatically. Very popular for sharing locally stored files. It detects devices accessing it and adjust the media to fit the player, all on the fly. For this reason it will require a little more horsepower to run on your PC. It also can access Hulu and other online sites but approaches it in a different manner, and in some cases not as smoothly as PlayOn. TVersity rules the locally stored kingdom. TVersity will stream media to fit your gaming console, HTPC, iPhone, PSP etc. and the list goes on. It can even allow you to access your media from anywhere in the world. They offer two flavors: Free Edition for locally stored files and a few online sources and the Pro Edition for $30 for Hulu and other similar sites.

I cannot praise both companies enough for offering solutions to fulfill our deepest streaming media desires. Since both offer trial periods or free versions they can be tested to ensure they fit your needs. I currently use both and they can run on the same PC without conflict. Other media server software exists and usually end up being more specific for a certain device or purpose. If you fill an app needs a shout out please post it in the comments section.

If you ever have said to yourself, "It would be awesome if you could just click on something and watch any movie or TV show whenever you want." That day is upon us my friends! Sure there are some wrinkles yet to be straightened out but you, the Media Pioneer, will pave the way for future users. Your grandchildren will honor thine efforts with even more hours in front of the 'boob-tube".