Jul 16 2010

XBMC- Quick start and keys

— david (site admin) @ 4:57 pm

A media centre lets you manage and play back your media files on your PC (Mac, Linux..) system.  XBMC is XBox Media Centre, and despite the name, really has nothing to do with the X-Box any more.  They describe it as “‘an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”

I have it on my laptop and main PC.  It’s fantastic.  I have my avi, flv, mkv, mp4 etc movies in C:\Movies and use XBMC to watch them back. My quick steps:

  1. Grab it and install it from their download page
  2. It will get any extra s/w off the Internet if it has to, during the install
  3. Run it and then make 2 quick changes
    • Add at least one Folder as a source for your Videos. (select Videos –> Add Source then browse for your C:\Movies or whatever folder they are in.)
    • Unlike some other players it can remember where it is up to for multiple movies, making it easy to Resume playing where you left off last time. This is off by default, so (System –> Video –> Playback, then change Resume From Where Last Stopped to yes)
  4. Off you go to watch your videos

The default keys (at least under Windows) are

 

Function

Key

Notes

Play

Space or P

  

Little jump fwd / back

Right and Left cursor keys

  

Bigger fwd/back

up and down cursor keys

  

Stop

X

  

Time remaining etc

I  (as in Info)

O (letter as in Other) for more technical info

Picture size/ratio

Z (quite useful)

  

Moving mouse may show top menu, which has extra icons/options for Video and Audio etc + manual controls. 

   

To get rid of above menu

Esc  

Esc also general Menu back out

Exit XMBC

S 

As in Shutdown. Note silly use of Shutdown in the popup, it means the program not Windows. Use this.

Fullscreen toggle

Alt-Enter

  

Volume up/down 

+/-

  

Jul 05 2010

First PC versus current 2010 smartphone

Tags: — david (site admin) @ 7:39 am

This topic came up yesterday and I was intrigued by what some quick research showed.

My first PC was an IBM JX, circa 1985.  My new smartphone is a HTC Desire.  And now to the numbers:

Item PC JX HTC Desire smartphone
CPU speed 4.7 MHz 1000 MHz
ROM 96 KB 500,000 KB
RAM 0.5 MB 576 MB
“Disk” storage 1 MB 16,000 MB
Screen resolution 640 x 200 800 x 480
Screen colours 16 16. Well… 16 million.
Price (approx AUD) $2500 $650

Then there’s Ethernet, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3D graphics acceleration, ‘mouse’, touch screen, multi-tasking…okay I can stop there.

Notes:

  • “Disk” storage:  Non-volatile data storage (survives with power off) My JX used diskettes. No hard drive (!)  Maxed out at 2 x 360 Kb (3”) + 1 x 360 Kb (5”) drives. So about 1 MB total. Desire supports user-changeable microSD cards. I have 16 GB.
  • JX had a special 720 x 512 graphics mode, but only in 2 colours (!).
  • JX screen was physically bigger, of course.

This wasn’t my first computer, I deliberately said “first PC”.   I can’t quite recall, but I think the first one I used regularly was a Commodore 64, but I don’t think it was mine; maybe one of the brothers’ (?)   A bit later, I know I then paid for a Commodore Amiga.   Pre-dating both of these, I’m sure someone had a Sinclair ZX-81 that I used to briefly tinker with, maybe a neighbour.