It’s cool to be wrong. Well perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Maybe not up to date actually.

I’d assumed (cough) that PC movie files – specifically Xvid video stored in the AVI container file – could not have surround sound nor subtitles. Wrong, Jana, wrong.

I recently spotted a file with the long name of filename.xvid.ac3.avi Mmm. AC3. That’s the correct name for what we call Dolby Digital. So I tried this player on my Neuston MC-500 network media player. The amp’s Dolby Digital light fired up, shortly followed by all 6 speakers. Woo hoo. 5.1 surround sound!

Then I noticed that a foreign language show had a 2nd a file with it; filename.xvid.ac3.sub Subtitles! Double plus woo hoo. Well not quite. Subtitles are ‘attached’ on-the-fly on the PC, but (sadly) not on the MC-500. Double plus ungood, my brothers. I think it’s time for my beloved VirtualDub and a subtitle plugin. Should be able to create a copy of the avi with the subtitles permanently attached. Darn that is one good program.

Work is progressing on turning my old spare-room Athlon 1.4 GHz PC into a data server. That would be a 4 disk drive system running Linux (Debian) and Samba ; so my Windows PC can ‘see’ the data over the LAN.

It’s currently off with my local PC guru store whose mission is – and I quote from my own note to them :

Aim: to have 4 hard drives, currently has 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives.

So please:

a) Remove both optical drives (CD and DVD ROM)

b) Replace them with the 2 provided old Maxtor drives

SN Y2R4Pxxx (60 GB)
SN 2B020yyy (20 GB)

Please leave 2 hard drives already in place there. The first (boot) has both Windows and Linux on it

The system currently dual-boots Windows XP and Linux. Not for long. Windows will soon be purged, wiped, nuked and deleted.