** Vic <lug@???> [2008-06-16 17:55]:
> > Sadly I am, once more, laptop-less. My old Dell is an old story, but my
> > 'new' Compaq has recently been taken out of action by virtue of the
> > hinge siezing up and breaking the bezel. I've not found the time to see
> > if I can repair it yet.
>
> I fixed a Toshiba Qosmio with a broken hinge last year (sppokily enough,
> it's back in for a different repair as wep speak). I forget what the bill
> came to exactly, but it was roughly £100, and it's a job I rally don't
> want to do again :-(
>
> I don't know your Compaq is put together - it might be less hussle than
> the Tosh.
I've had it apart before, and was just about to do so again to fit an
internal mini-pci wireless card. Dismantling wasn't too bad, I'm not
entirely sure how easy it will be to repair the hing and broken bezel
though. I've been keeping my eye out for another N160 on eBay or
similar, but I am constantly surprised at the cost of second hand
laptops. I've seen Dell Latitude C600 units go for a touch under a
couple of hundred before now, which is so close to the cost of a budget
unit from somewhere like Novatech as to be silly. There is some seeming
mileage in the bigger name brand and possible build quality, but from my
experience of this model, particularly battery life (as in charges
before expiry) and the quality (or lack thereof) of the PSU connector
I'd probably consider an el cheapo that lasts half as long a better buy.
Not that either are an option at the moment :(
> > A bad
> > comparison perhaps, but the 'family' PC running Windows XP Pro with
> > around 768M memory is largely incapably of playing even the tiny YouTube
> > videos without major frame drops.
>
> A dreadful comparison. Windows *sucks* at things like that. If you're not
> going to run a Linux box as your decoder, you've only got yourself to
> blame.
I have no intention of running a dedicated decoder on anything other
than Linux, don't worry :) This just the best spec hardware I'd have
'spare', although actually better - unless you count my electricity
eating dual Athlon boards!
> > Streaming to the TV would require some sort
> > of box at the TV end to receive, or runnig cables through walls to get
> > to it (and rushing back into another room to pause or etc.).
>
> WiFi is your friend :-)
>
> Get yourself something small & quiet (e.g. an *old* laptop) & equip it
> with WiFi. Mount your data (held on a big, noisy server somewhere other
> than the front room) with sshfs, and start playing it (mplayer or
> equivalent).
I've been somewhat dissapointed with WiFi, or at least I have been for
my own use (sort of sums up a lot of my IT experience, I can keep other
peoples kit running nicely, but my own produces a strange collection of
bizarre glitches [1]). I have an access point just inside the door to my
office, and a PC about 6 feet away just inside the dining room door. The
signal is of poor quality according to the driver utility (Windows I'm
afraid), and even when it gets a decent quality it will drop and have to
reconnect every few minutes. This happens with either of my two access
points (D-Linka and Linksys). I need to play with positioning a bit to
see if I can improve it, but the 'route' to the TV would be through the
chimney breast, so lots of brick! Oddly this reliability improves with
my office door closed.
Anyway, I have an ethernet point just behind the TV :)
> > DRM also prevents me from watching legal DVDs on one of our other TVs.
> > Since it doesn't have a SCART socket I have to use the arial. The DVD
> > player doesn't have an arial out, so I decided to run it through an old
> > VCR to convert the SCART to UHF/arial. Unfortunately this would allow
> > you to record the DVD, so this has been blocked (well pre-DRM, so would
> > that make it ARM?!).
>
> MacroVision is easy to defeat. Have a search on the web; the first circuit
> I ever saw to do this was long before I had web access, and it came to me
> within 48 hours of the first time I'd seen MacroVision (on Tomorrow's
> World, IIRC).
Easy, but not exactly cost effective. I suspect that purchased units
have a major mark up on cost to produce, but I'm far from handy with a
soldering iron. I'd probably consider money spent on a new TV a better
option :)
<<snip>>
** end quote [Vic]
[1] I'll avoid the long version, but when I was doing my degree at
Portsmouth Poly (as it was back then) I got banned from the computer
room once when we were learning assembler. My machine crashed, and so
did the other 3 or 4 I was sent to work with on a shared basis as soon
as I got near them (no touching). Admittedly they were Sinclair QLs, but
it wasn't something they'd had problems with before! I have the opposite
effect with customers though. They can get very frustrated trying to
recreate a problem and failing, only to have it return just after I walk
away!!
--
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