Updated: Facebook's going DOWN - here's why - http://bit.ly/l6Ljx - agree with me or tell me I'm stupid in comments
Friday, October 30, 2009
Facebook's going DOWN - here's why - http://bit.ly/l6Ljx - agree with me or tell me I'm stupid in comments
Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap [Winter Upgrades]
In the spirit of our Winter Upgrades theme this week, this guide details how to turn a cheapo nettop (think netbook for the desktop) into a killer settop box running XBMC. It handles virtually any video file I throw at it with ease (including streaming Blu-Ray rips from my desktop), it looks tiny next to my Xbox 360, it's low energy, and it's whisper quiet.
Huge props to this guide on the XBMC forums, which served as the starting point for much of what I did below.
What You'll Need
- Acer AspireRevo: This $200 nettop ships with 1GB of RAM, an Intel Atom 230 processor, 160GB hard drive, Windows XP (which we won't use anyway), and an integrated graphics chip that handles HD video and can output it to HDMI. It also comes with a small wired keyboard and mouse, but once you're done here, you shouldn't need either of them. Oh, and it's tiny. (Other, more powerful nettops will work [like this one's beefier, $330 older sibling], but this is the cheapest one I could find with the NVIDIA ION graphics powerful enough to handle the HD playback.)
- XBMC Live: This is a Live CD version of XBMC that boots directly into XBMC and has a tiny footprint. Basically all you're running is XBMC, so your media center stays light and snappy. You can find the download specifically set up for these NVIDIA ION machines on this page, you can grab the direct download here, or download via BitTorrent here.
- A thumb drive: It doesn't have to be huge, but it'll need to be at least 1500MB of capacity, according to the installer. You should also format it to FAT32.
- An IR receiver/Windows Media Center remote: This isn't strictly necessary, but if you want to control your shiny new XBMC via remote control, you'll need some sort of supported remote with a USB receiver. I bought this $20 remote because it was the cheapest I could find. (Incidentally, it also works like a charm with XBMC as soon as you plug it in.)
Getting XBMC Live up and running on your nettop is a breeze if you follow a few simple steps, so let's get started.
Install XBMC Live on Your Thumb Drive
XBMC Live allows you to try XBMC on any computer from a bootable CD or thumb drive, then optionally install the lightweight, XBMC-focused Linux distro directly to your dev! ice if y ou like. Since our nettop doesn't have a DVD drive, we'll need to first install XBMC to our thumb drive.
(There are ways around this. If you had a USB optical drive, you could probably burn XBMC Live to a disc and go from there. The thumb drive method isn't much more difficult, though.)
Here's how it works:
1. Download the XBMC Live installer with the updated NVIDIA drivers included on this page (direct link, torrent link). Update: My file host crapped out on this. If anyone wants to help host this zip, send an email to adam at lifehacker.com. It's a 341MB file, so it may take a while.
2. Burn XBMC Live to a CD
3. Install XBMC Live to Your Thumb Drive
Now that you've burned XBMC to a CD, you're ready to install it to your thumb drive. To do so, plug in your thumb drive, put the XBMC Live CD in your DVD drive, and reboot your computer. If it's not already your default setting, go into your system BIOS (for most computers hitting Delete at the first boot screen will launch your BIOS) and set your optical drive as the primary boot device.
(All this means is that when your computer boots, it'll first check to see if there's any bootable media in your optical drive. If not, it'll continue bo! oting to your secondary device—generally your hard drive. If your optical drive does contain bootable media—like your XBMC Live CD, for example—it'll boot it up.)
When XBMC Live loads, select "Install XBMCLive to disk (USB or HDD)", then accept the first prompt (by pressing any key). Next you'll end up at the "Choose disk to use" prompt, where you'll tell the installer that you want to install to your USB stick. Be careful here not to choose your hard drive, because it would be happy to overwrite your operating system if you told it to. Remember, your thumb drive is the Removable disk. After you pick the disk you want to use, confirm that you want to proceed and let the installer do its magic. (It'll only take a few minutes.)
Eventually the installer will ask you if you want to create a permanent system storage file, which presumably you'd want if you're not sure whether or not you want to install XBMC Live to your Acer's hard drive. I went ahead and created the system storage (even though we'll install XBMC Live directly to the hard drive in the next step.) Once the installation finishes, you're ready to proceed to the next step.
Set Your System BIOS
You'll need to make a couple of tweaks to your system BIOS to get it working smoothly with XBMC Live. So plug in your thumb drive, boot up your Acer AspireRevo, and hit Delete at the first boot screen to edit your BIOS. Look for the "Boot to RevoBoot" entry in the Advanced BIOS features menu and disable it. While you're there, set your XBMC Live thumb drive as the primary boot device. (You can set the primary boot device back to your hard drive later, after you've installed! XBMC Li ve to your drive.)
Then go to the Advanced Chipset Features menu and set the iGPU Frame Buffer Detect to Manual and set the iGPU Frame Buffer Size to 256MB. (This is detailed here; the actual guide says 512, but that requires that you install more RAM—something I may do in the future, and will detail with a guide if I do. The 512 buffer size will help you stream the larger HD videos without hiccups.)
Now that your BIOS are set, you're ready to try out XBMC Live on your Acer AspireRevo.
Boot Up/Install XBMC Live to Your Hard Drive
At this point, you've got two choices. You can either restart your Acer AspireRevo and boot into XBMC Live to play around a little before you install it to your disk. If you're sure you're ready to install it for reals, just go ahead and run through the exact same installation as you did above, only this time install it to your nettop's hard drive. When you install to the hard drive, you'll also set a system password. This'll come in handy later.
The Final Tweaks
Okay, so far so good. XBMC should boot up directly from your hard drive now, and if you've plugged in your Windows Media Center remote, it should also be working without a hitch. You've just got to make a couple of adjustments to make it shine.
Now, what makes your little nettop work so well is that its onboard graphics processor can handle all the HD business without eating up your regular processor power, so you'll want to enable this in the XBMC settings. So head to Settings > Video > Play, find the Set Render to section, and set it to VDPAU.
Now, depending on how you're planning on hooking up your XBMC Live box to your television, you've got a few more tweaks you'll want to make. Namely this:
If you want to use HDMI for your audio out, head to Settings > System > Audio hardware, then set the audio output to Digital. Set your Audio output device to hdmi, and set the Passthrough output device to hdmi. Last, enable Downmix multichannel audio to stereo.
If you are using HDMI as your audio out (I am, and it's pretty nice), you've got to make one final tweak if you want the audio output to work with menu sounds. (It'll work fine with video without making this tweak, but the click-click sounds that play when you move around the XBMC menu are nice to have.) If that applies to you, create a new text file on your regular old computer (name it asoundrc.txt) and paste the following code (again, this awesome tweak comes from this post):
pcm.!default { type plug slave { pcm "hdmi" } } In the next step, I'll show you how to copy that file over to your nettop (a little trick that'll also come in handy for manually installing plug-ins and copying files to your nettop).
SFTP to Your XBMC Box
If you want to transfer files to your XBMC Live box from another computer, you'll need to get yourself an FTP client (I like FileZilla) and log into your nettop with the password you set when you were installing XBMC Live. To do so, create a new connection in Filezilla that looks something like the screenshot below (the default user is xbmc)! .
Once you're connected, make sure you're in the /home/xbmc/ directory, then copy over the asoundrc.txt file we made above. (The one you want to use if you're running your audio through the HDMI output.) Once it's copied over, rename the file to .asoundrc, restart XBMC, and the click-click menu sounds should be working along with regular old A/V playback.
The same SFTPing method here will be useful if you ever want to manually install any plug-ins or skins down the road, or just copy over media directly to your nettop's hard drive. (Though we'd recommend streaming—see below.)
Other Options
As I said above, you can buy more expensive, meatier machines, but for my money this Acer nettop has worked perfectly. Apart from upgrading to better equipment, you can also add up to 2GB more RAM if you're up for the job (RAM's so cheap these days, anyway). Like I said, though, so far I haven't seen the need for it.
I also quickly switched the skin to the MediaStream skin, which is the one you see in the photo at the top of the page. For a look at some other great skins you may want to apply to your XBMC box, check out these five beautiful skins—or just head to XBMC's main skins page.
Now that you've got it all set up, you've probably also realized that 160GB isn't all that much space for your media. You'd be right, of course. You've got two pretty good options. First, the nettop should have something like four free USB ports still, so you can easily plug in a big ! old driv e that way. Assuming, however, that you can run an Ethernet wire over to your nettop, your best option is just to connect it to a shared folder on your home network. XBMC works like a charm with Samba shares (Windows shared folders use this).
Whichever method you use, you just need to add your extra hard drive space as a source in XBMC. You can do so through any of the individual menu items (videos, for example), or you can add a default Samba username and password in the settings so it can connect automatically without asking for a password each time you add a new watch folder on that machine.
At this point I could go into more detail on how to use and get the most out of XBMC (it can be a little hard to get your head around at first, even though once you do, it's not actually confusing). We've covered souping up your XBMC—and building your classic Xbox XBMC machine—and both offer some help in those directions. But stick around; tomorrow we'll follow up with an updated guide to some of our favorite XBMC tweaks.
This guide covers in pretty close detail one method for putting together a dedicated, quiet XBMC media center without breaking the bank, but it's certainly not your only option. If you've gone down this road before, offer your tips and suggestions in the comments. For my part: I'm completely in love with my new little media center.
Adam Pash is the editor of Lifehacker and loves a good computer-based DIY, especially when the results are as beautiful as XBMC. His special feature Hack Attack appears on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader, or fo! llow @adampash on Twitter.
Remains of the Day: Smartphone Cost of Ownership Edition [For What It's Worth]
(Click the image above for a closer look.)
- Total Cost of Ownership: Motorola Droid versus iPhone 3GS versus Palm Pre
Interested in Verizon's Droid? This handy infograph compares the cost of ownership to other popular smart phones. (Hit the link for the full-size image.) [Billshrink] - Our response to the FCC on Google Voice
Google Voice and the FCC do a little more dancing about restricted numbers. [Google Public Policy Blog] - ReoCities: One Man's Quest to Bring GeoCities Back from the Dead
GeoCities may be dead, but a project called ReoCities is doing its best to resurrect all the old GeoCities-hosted pages. [Mashable] - Facebook spells out updated privacy policy
Facebook updates their privacy policy, explains. [CNET] - Remote Desktop 7 Download for XP & Vista
Grab Remote Desktop 7 to enjoy RDC's new Windows 7 features. [CyberNet]
Android-Based Asus Smartbook Arrives Early Next Year [NetBooks]
Maybe all the interest in Android 2.0 got them interested again.
As a reminder, Smartbooks are just Qualcomm's name for netbooks that use ARM-based processors, which are needed to run Android. (Acer actually ported Android to Atom processors for its Aspire One netbook). Nvidia is also pushing its ARM-based Tegra chip for Smartbooks. [Shanzai (translated)]
Acer debuts 23-inch T230H multitouch monitor
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/acer-debuts-23-inch-t230h-multitouch-monitor/
Acer hasn't exactly been slacking when it comes to Windows 7-related hardware, but it looks like its still putting the final touches on its launch line-up, with it now rolling out a new multitouch monitor to complement its range of laptops and desktops. What's more, at a full 23-inches, the company's new T230H monitor best similar offerings from Dell and HP in terms of sheer size, and it packs some respectable specs across the board, including a full 1920 x 1080 resolution, a 2ms response time, a promised 80,000:1 contrast ratio (take that with the usual grain of salt), and an HDMI port in addition to DVI and VGA. Still no official word on US pricing, it seems, but this one will apparently run €349 in Europe (or just over $500).
[Via Engadget Korea]
[Via Engadget Korea]
Filed under: Displays
Acer debuts 23-inch T230H multitouch monitor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsLG launches official site for GW620 Android phone, sort of
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/lg-launches-official-site-for-gw620-android-phone-sort-of/
LG's GW620 handset may be easy to miss among all the other current Android-based offerings, but it looks like LG is now starting to ramp things up a bit to help it get noticed, with it recently launching (inadvertently, judging from the copy) the official site for phone complete with some fresh new images and promo videos. While there's expectedly not much in the way of new details, LG's ads and promo videos (check one after the break) do seem to position the phone squarely in CLIQ territory, with LG even going so far as to dream up a series of mascots (including a "Social Butterfly") to demo the phone's social networking capabilities. Head on past the break to see for yourself, and keep an eye on the link below for what should soon be the "official" official website.
[Via Android-France]
[Via Android-France]
Continue reading LG launches official site for GW620 Android phone, sort of
Filed under: Cellphones
LG launches official site for GW620 Android phone, sort of originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsHomebrew head-mounted Linux system for telepresence, looking silly
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/homebrew-head-mounted-linux-system-for-telepresence-looking-sil/
[Via Hack A Day]
Filed under: Wearables
Homebrew head-mounted Linux system for telepresence, looking silly originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments27-inch iMacs having performance issues?
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/27-inch-imacs-having-performance-issues/
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Read - First Apple Discussions thread
Read - Second Apple Discussions thread
Continue reading 27-inch iMacs having performance issues?
Filed under: Desktops
27-inch iMacs having performance issues? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsMotorola DROID user guide unearthed in its entirety
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/motorola-droid-user-guide-unearthed-in-its-entirety/
[Thanks, BBLeaks]
Filed under: Cellphones
Motorola DROID user guide unearthed in its entirety originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsCisco FlipShareTV streamer outed in FCC documents
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/cisco-flipsharetv-streamer-outed-in-fcc-documents/
[Via Zatz Not Funny]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs
Cisco FlipShareTV streamer outed in FCC documents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsIntel and Numonyx pave the way for scalable, higher density phase change memory
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/intel-and-numonyx-pave-the-way-for-scalable-higher-density-phas/
Filed under: Storage
Intel and Numonyx pave the way for scalable, higher density phase change memory originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsASUS' Android-based 'secret weapon' smartbook launching in Q1
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/asus-android-based-secret-weapon-smartbook-launching-in-q1/
We got our first glimpse at a computing future filled with low-cost, ARM-based ASUS smartbooks running Android on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor all the way back on June 1st. Since then, however, the pencil-spinning boys in Taiwan have been poo-pooing plans to launch such a device due to what ASUS called an uncertain market opportunity -- or was it pressure from Wintel, we never can tell? Then yesterday, ASUS' Jerry Shen pulled an about-face at an investor meeting in Taipei with talk of launching a $180 smartbook in Q1 of 2010. Bristling with confidence, Shen goes so far as to call it a "secret weapon" in a category offering potential for huge, Eee PC-like growth. Well, with the first big-name smartbooks just starting to ship, even a dozen or so sales could be considered statistically significant.
[Via Shanzai]
[Via Shanzai]
Filed under: Laptops
ASUS' Android-based 'secret weapon' smartbook launching in Q1 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsMIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/mits-affective-intelligent-driving-agent-is-kitt-and-clippys-l/
Continue reading MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video)
Filed under: Robots
MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsAndroid 2.0 ported to original T-Mobile G1 (video)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/android-2-0-ported-to-original-t-mobile-g1-video/
Continue reading Android 2.0 ported to original T-Mobile G1 (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
Android 2.0 ported to original T-Mobile G1 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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