Choosing the right codec setup for your Windows 7 Media Center build can be tricky. Should you stick with the built-in Microsoft decoders or get something a little more tweak-able? Even the built-in decoders need some help playing a number of file formats available, including the most popular format among enthusiasts, MKV. How do we choose which route to go while installing our Media Center setups for the first time (or after having trouble with an already setup machine)? First we’ll have to take a look at what we want from our setups.

The first question is do we need DXVA (hardware acceleration) or why would we need to use hardware acceleration? Hardware acceleration in the form of DXVA requires the proper hardware, a recent video card with sufficient power, and takes the load off of the CPU when decoding video files. With modern video formats reaching enormous resolutions some older CPUs have trouble processing them without severely crippling the frame rate, the addition of a more recent video card to an aging machine can clear this up with DXVA however and save an older box from the recycling bin.

Microsoft’s built-in decoders are perfect for DXVA acceleration and require only the installation of a good splitter to play most video file types. The problem with using Microsoft’s built-in decoders for playing back your video files is the almost complete lack of support for subtitles of any kind. In fact this is a problem you’re likely to find across any DXVA enabled decoder. Most cannot decode and display subtitles while still retaining DXVA capability.

If subtitles aren’t a problem, however, we advocate a minimalist approach to everything here at Hack7MC and encourage using the built-in decoders since video quality across any set of decoders is unlikely to vary much if at all. To play most video files using the built-in decoders you’ll only need to install a good splitter and we suggest either Haali’s splitter or Gabest’s splitter which you can download for x86 systems here and x64 systems here. Install the Gabest splitter package  by extracting the files to the root C:\ drive and running the gabest_enable.cmd file as administrator (right-click -> run as administrator).

To display MKV files inside the Media Center movie library you’ll also need to install one of the available registry entries for either x86 systems or x64 systems.

If you’ve got a system capable of handling all the resolution video you plan on throwing at it and you do need subtitles with your video playback, and most users will considering foreign dialog usually present in a few movies in everyone’s collection, we’ll need to install a subtitle renderer. This will make DXVA playback no longer possible, however.

Installing a capable subtitle rendered is fairly simple using one of the packages we’ve put together. Download the VSFilter package for either x86 systems or x64 systems and extract the file to the root C:\ drive. Then right click the vsfilter_enable.cmd file and select Run as Administrator. A dialog should appear and confirm successful installation.

If you need even more control over your video playback than simply being able to watch your video and read subtitles it’s likely time to move away from the built-in Microsoft decoders and look for a more complex solution. One of the best available decoders available is FFDShow Tryouts. This set of decoders allows for decoding most any video type and includes a large array of options for tweaking the video output.

To install FFDShow Tryouts select the latest version available for x86 systems or x64 systems for download and install them to the Media Center machine. Once installed the filter can be tweaked quite a bit by launching the decoder options from the ffdshow start menu entry. To get the FFDShow decoders to override the built-in Microsoft decoders requires some extra work, however.

You will also need to use the Windows 7 Filter Tweaker to select the FFDShow filters for each video type you’d like to use FFDShow to decode. Simply download and run the Filter Tweaker and select FFDShow for each of the applicable video formats. In some extreme cases you may also need to disable the Microsoft decoders completely but generally restarting Media Center or the machine will be all that is required after using the Filter Tweaker tool.

If you aren’t comfortable making these installations and using programs to make changes to the heart of your system you may prefer to go with an all in one solution to video playback. The most recommended all in one solution for Media Center users is Shark007’s complete codec package.

Shark007’s package will install a large number of options and decoders to choose from as well as a simplified control panel from which you can select and configure each decoder. Download the x86 package as well as the x64 package if you’ve got a 64-bit machine and you’ll be all set to play virtually anything.

No matter which solution you decide to go with, Microsoft, FFDShow or Shark’s we hope you’ll continue reading with us here at Hack7MC as we continue to bring you even more how-tos and guide to Windows 7 Media Center this fall!

Let’s say you and your friend are preparing for an all important exam that is going to decide the course the rest of your life takes. Your friend has some important notes on his computer that he isn’t going to share with you. Your friend is a moron. You need the notes so badly that you are willing to steal from him. He deserves it anyway.

To get the notes you can either break into his house at night, an accomplice keeps you hanging by a rope from the roof while you deliberately copy the files to your flash drive taking care not to let your feet touch the floor. Or you can walk into his room one morning and say with a feigned smile, “Hey, buddy! I have some great new music. Want it?”. Then plug your USB Flash drive into his PC to automatically copy his notes to your pen drive, secretly and silently. Copy the songs you brought to his PC to complete the act.

Sneaky, isn’t it? So let us prepare such a sinister USB Flash drive.

STEP 1

Open Notepad (I recommend Notepad++) and copy-paste the following lines.

Save this as autorun.inf

The icon line is optional. You can change the icon to your tastes or leave it to the default icon. It’s useful for social engineering purposes like enticing the user to click a file on the drive by making it looks like a game or something.

The “action=” command is optional too but sometimes when the autorun launches it may ask the user what to open. Depending on what you put here the user will be instructed to click Ok or run the file. This code acts as a backup just in case the user is asked what to open. This is not required if you are operating the computer.

The “shell/open command” also acts as a backup in case the user clicks cancel instead of open when prompted. This code will execute when the drive letter is clicked on.

STEP 2

Open Notepad again and copy-paste the following lines

Save this as file.bat

This file is configured to copy the contents of the current users pictures, favorites, and videos folder to the Flash drive under a folder called “all”. This is the section of the code you will need to edit depending on what you want to copy.

The first file path “%USERPROFILE%\pictures” – is the target.
The second file path “%drive%\all\My pics” – is the destination.

STEP 3

Open Notepad once again and copy-paste the following line.

Save this as invisible.vbs

This code runs the file.bat as a process so it does not show the CMD prompt and everything the batch file is processing.

STEP 4

Open Notepad one last time and copy-paste the following line.

Save this as launch.bat

This batch file does two things, it looks for the invisible.vbs file in the root of the Flash drive then loads it with file.bat so file.bat is run with code from vbs file.

STEP 5

Copy all 4 files created in the above steps and put it on the root of the Flash drive, including the icon file if needed. Also create a folder named “all” where the contents are to be copied automatically. You can call this folder by any name, but then you need to reflect the changes you made in step 2.

This is all that needs to be done. Test the Flash drive on your own computer first before playing it out on your victim. It works flawlessly.

FreewareUpdater is a marvelous software management tool that helps you keep track and install some of the most popular freeware and open source applications.

FreewareUpdater by itself is a small tool and does not include the installation packages of these freeware. It only provides you an interactive list of applications, which you can install with just a click. You can also read descriptions of each program and access it’s official website from within FreewareUpdater. At the time of writing this, Freewareupdater contains 203 freeware programs across multiple categories.

Freewareupdater presents available software in the form of a list showing the description of each software. To install any of the presented software just double click on it. Freewareupdater will then download the current version of the software from the internet and install it on your computer. The software list is regularly updated on their server. To update and sync this list with the one on the desktop client, you just need to click on the update button. The Freewareupdater also keeps track of the applications that are already installed on your system, so you can see at a glance, which software is already installed on your computer. It can also notify you when updates of your favorite freeware is available.

FreewareUpdater is immensely handy. Need a video editing software? Open FreewareUpdater and see what free solutions are available. Need a backup utility? FreewareUpdater offers you 6 choices. Audio players, video converters, file archiever …  this is a gold mine!

Who can give better advice on your site’s SEO than Google themselves? This is what the Google India team is now offering. The Official Google India Blog yesterday announced the launch of the Google India Site Clinic that will give webmasters an opportunity to get their site reviewed and analyzed by who else but Google’s Search Quality team!

Starting from January 6 till 20, the Google India team will accept submission of sites from Indian webmasters, although it’s not clear whether or not webmasters from other countries are invited to the Site Clinic and how, if at all, Google will verify the nationality of the submitters. Also to participate, the site must be registered on Google’s webmaster tools.

Google’s Search Quality team will then analyze the websites submitted, and offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility the website in Google’s search results.

It’s expected that Google will receive thousands of submissions, but only a selection of sites will be lucky enough to get reviewed by Google. From those who had the privilege of getting optimization tips and advice directly from the experts, a few representative websites will be chosen as examples for a few follow-up posts that Google intends to make to share the best practices. Kudos to Google!

Some torrent search engines provide users an alternative way of downloading torrent files – via Magnet links. A magnet link is a unique way of linking to a specific file. Instead of linking to a file by location or name, magnet links identifies a file by content, more precisely, by the content’s hash value. This peculiarity of magnet links allows users to download torrent files directly from a seeder or leecher without the need of a tracker!

Magnet link on The PirateBay

A magnet links can be compared to ISBN or catalog number of products on a store.  A typical magnet link looks like this:

“sha1” indicates the content hash is encoded using SHA-1.

The biggest advantage of using magnet links is that you are able to download the content of the torrent, even if the tracker is down or closed for registration.

Unlike traditional identifiers like the torrent tracker, magnet links (or content-based signatures) can be generated by anyone who has the file, and so do not need a central authority to issue them. This makes them a popular and practically useful method of file sharing on a P2P network.

Another advantage of magnet links is that they are concise and plain-text, which makes it possible for users to simply copy-and-paste the links into emails or instant messages, a property not found in, BitTorrent files.

Magnet links are supported by almost all modern BiTorrent clients including

• Vuze
• BearShare
• DC++
• Deluge
• Kazaa
• LimeWire
• FrostWire
• BitComet
• BitSpirit
• Shareaza
• aMule
• μTorrent
• Transmission
• and more…

How to create a magnet link from a torrent file?

Creating magnet links out of a torrent file is easy if you use uTorrent, although other BitTorrent clients might have this feature too, I’m not aware.

Add the torrent file to uTorrent. Right click on the file on the list and choose “Copy Magnet URI”. Wasn’t that easy?

If you found a torrent file on the web but the website doesn’t provide the magnet link, tryMagnet Catcher a userscript – that can be used on Firefox with Greasemonkey, and Opera and Safari too. Magnet Catcher identifies torrent links on a page and automatically creates and adds a magnet link next to the torrent like this:

Simply click the magnet icon to get the magnet link.

Magnet Catcher also does away with the need to click on a torrent description in a search result page in order to download the torrent. The magnet links are displayed directly on the browse pages next to the torrent titles.

Magnet Catcher works on almost any web site.

Sleep Moon Xpress is a remote control application for Windows that lets you schedule a computer shutdown, restart, log off, hibernate, standby, or launch files at specific times or send control signals to execute these commands via a Bluetooth equipped device, a WAP enabled phone, an Infrared remote control or a simple clap of the hands!

The main screen of Sleep Moon Xpress lets you choose the action you want to execute. This can be a computer shutdown/restart/log-off etc as already mentioned. It can also sound an alarm, display notification messages or run a file. Next you have to choose the trigger i.e. when the action will be executed. This can be time based – at a certain time on a certain day or it can be based on the download/upload speed. The later option is useful when you are downloading some files from the Internet and wish to shutdown the computer upon completion of the download, although many file downloaders and Torrent clients come equipped with this function.

Sleep Moon Xpress can also execute an action based on the sound input level. To configure this option plug in a microphone to the computer’s sound hardware and normalize the background noise level using the ‘Sound Activation Console’. Also set the sound level above which the program will react. Any sound that exceeds this level like clapping of hands or shouting will trigger the program to execute the action chosen on the main screen.

The program also allows controlling of the PC with a Bluetooth device. To use this feature the user simply needs to send the computer an image file with a particular file name. For instance, sending an image file named shutdown.jpg (GIF, PNG, BMP files are also supported) will cause the computer to shutdown. Similarly, Restart.jpg, Alarm.jpg or Run.jpg will cause the computer to restart, sound an alarm or run a file respectively. The content of the image doesn’t matter, it’s only the filename.

Sleep Moon Xpress also uses the indigenous WTP Mobile Technology (or WAP To PC Mobile Technology) to enable any remote connection from any WAP Enable Mobile Phone or browser to the computer to execute an action on the receiving PC.

Sleep Moon Xpress is free for personal and commercial purposes and supports both 32bit and 64 bit flavors of all Windows editions from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

After you download any Linux distro from the internet, you have to burn it to a DVD, CD or a number of CDs to install it. That CD or DVD is generally used only once after which it lies unused , and worse, almost every Linux distro comes up with a new release every 6 months. So if you are in the habit of upgrading to every new version, you must have dozens of CDs lying at the bottom of your drawer. What a wastage of CDs! But with a little trick you can install any Linux directly from the hard disk without burning a single CD or DVD. The prerequisite of this trick is to have an operating system already installed on your computer. This is obvious because unless you are able to boot into your machine, you can’t install anything; and we are not going to boot from the Linux disk because we aren’t burning any. Here I’m going to focus on Microsoft Windows as the pre installed operating system. 

Almost all Linux installers uses two files to boot the computer: a Linux kernel, and an initial root file system containing a minimal set of directories that is mounted prior to when the real root file system is available. This initial root file system is also called Ram disk (initrd). We will use these two files to boot our PC. Now lets get to the actual procedure.

1. The first thing you will have to do is copy the ISO file(s) of the Linux to your hard disk (ofcourse, you already have it). Make sure that the partition is FAT32 unless the distro you are installing has native NTFS read/write support. Some distros require you to copy the ISO file(s) to the root of the partition. If you keep it inside a folder, the setup might not be able to detect it.

2. Use Winrar to open the ISO file (you need not need to extract it). Now you will have to extract the two files I talked about earlier. The files are usually found inside a directory called isolinux. Different distros might place the files in different location; you just have to search for it, but it isn’t hard to locate. These two files are also named differently in different distros. The files that you will need to search and extract are: (the kernel file is shown in green and the Ram disk is shown in red)

Fedora: vmlinuz and initrd.img

Suse: linux and initrd

Mandriva: vmlinuz and all.rdz

Ubuntu: vmlinuz and initrd.gz

Gentoo: gentoo and gentoo.igz

Knoppix: vmlinuz and initrd.img

Slackware: bzImage and initrd.img

Debian: vmlinuz and initrd.gz

3. After you have extracted the two files, copy them to c:\boot (you will need to create the folder “boot”)

4. Now download the file called grub4dos from here. (Note: the new versions of grub4dos i.e. 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 does not work. So download the earlier version 0.4.1. Direct download link)  Extract the folder “boot” and the file “grldr” from the downloaded zip file. Inside the folder “boot” is another folder called “grub“; copy the folder ”grub” to c:\boot. Copy the file “grldr” to c:\

5. Open c:\boot\grub\menu.lst and add these following lines. (Notice that hd0 refers to the first hard drive. If you have more than one hard drive, they will be named hd1, hd2 etc. Replace hd0 with the proper hard drive number incase you have windows installed on another drive.) Replace Linux_kernel and Ram_disk with the appropriate file names below. (the ones you copied to c:\boot)

6. Now you have to add grub to your c:\boot.ini file. You can open boot.ini by clicking on Start>Run and typing c:\boot.ini. If Windows does not allow the file to be modified, then go to Control Panel>System and click on the Advanced tab. Now under Startup and Recovery click Settings and then under System Startup click Edit. Open boot.ini and add this line in the end.

C:\grldr=”Start GRUB”

7. You are now ready to install Linux. Restart your PC and from the boot screen select “Start GRUB“. This will load GRUB. From the grub screen select “Install Linux”. During the setup you will be asked the source of installation. Choose hard disk and then select the hard drive partition where you copied the ISO files. Sometimes you might have to type the whole path of the partition and the exact name of the ISO. So write it down before you begin.

I have personally tested this with Fedora, Suse and Mandriva and it works without problem. I have no doubt it will work for others too.

Update: dougfractal adds that this is possible from Linux too. The method as he describes is:

From the terminal enter these commands

sudo mkdir /distro
sudo chmod `whoami`:`whoami`
cp MYLINUX.iso /distro/distro.iso

Now extract Linux_kernel & Ram_disk to /distro#

Open  /boot/grub/menu.lst

#ADD NEW ENTRY#
title Install Linux
root (hdX,X)
kernel /distro/Linux_kernel
initrd /distro/Ram_disk

Reboot and select “Install Linux” from grub.

Need to run different versions of Firefox at the same time on your computer for testing a website you designed? The Edskes Software Mozilla Firefox Collection will sure come handy.

The Edskes Software Mozilla Firefox Collection (ESMFC) contains multiple versions of the Mozilla Firefox, all of which are standalone so they can be used at the same time. The Mozilla Firefox Collection lets you see how your websites look when rendered using different versions of the Gecko render engine. The Firefox collection comes from the same person who prepared the Internet Explorer collection kit containing standalone executables of different IE versions.

However, ESMFC is not just a simple collection of Firefox. It has a number of interesting features that eases web development and testing. ESMFC lets you open a location or URL in all installed versions of Mozilla Firefox by enclosing the URL in quotes (“). Multiple locations and URLs can be opened in different tabs under different Firefox versions by separating the typed URLs by spaces.

For example:
“C:\Directory\Local File.xhtml” “http://mozilla.com/” “http://edskes.com/”
in the input field will open the local file and the two URLs in three tabs in every installed version of Mozilla Firefox.

Edskes Software Mozilla Firefox Collection also includes the Firebug and Web Developer add-ons for all included versions of Mozilla Firefox. These add-ons provide a variety of tools which make troubleshooting websites much easier. The installation is fully customizable, which means that you can install only those components that you want.

Other features of ESMFC that enhances web development:

• It appears in the context menu of Windows Explorer, so a file can be directly opened in every installed version of Mozilla Firefox.
• It includes a number of window resizing options for the Web Developer add-on. Settings for all common resolutions like 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900 and 1600×1200 are included.
• It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7

Edskes Software Mozilla Firefox Collection contains the following versions of Mozilla Firefox:

• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.20
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0.17.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5.7.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6.0.0 RC 2

Edskes Software Mozilla Firefox Collection contains the following add-ons and plug-ins:

• Firebug 1.5.0 add-on
• Web Developer 1.1.8 add-on
• Flash Player 10.0.42.34 plug-in

A unique online service called Torrent2exe allows users to download torrents without having to install a torrent client by converting the torrent file into a standalone EXE file. Using Torrent2exe is very simple. Copy the URL of the torrent file or browse to the location of the torrent file in your hard disk to automatically upload it to their site. Once you they have got the URL of the torrent file, they will convert it into a self downloading EXE file. Here you get the option to select the size of the EXE file to be downloaded. There is a “Small size” where you will have to download the EXE file along with an additional program file. This happens only once per computer. Then there is a “Normal size” where the whole EXE file along with the additional program files are downloaded each time you choose to download a torrent. Didn’t get it? Let me explain. Suppose you want to see a movie. What will you require? A movie player and the movie itself. Now you have two choices. In the first choice, you download the movie and the movie player, which needs to be downloaded only once. Subsequent movie downloads do not require you to download the movie player since you have already downloaded it. However, if you move to another computer you will need to download the movie player once again.  This is the “small size”. In the second choice, you download the movie along with the movie player every time you download a new movie. This is the “normal size”

After you have download the converted EXE file, just run it and it will automatically start downloading the torrent.

The standalone EXE file makes it easier for people to share files and applications on the Internet. You can publish the EXE files on your site or blog to make the downloads easy for visitors, send EXE files to your friends who don’t want to be bothered with installing the client.

Torrent2exe is available both as an online service and as a desktop application.