Awesome new Mercedes-Benz commercial with Nico Rosberg, Michael Schumacher and a pregnant woman.

This is a repost of the article, How to Synchronize Your XBMC Media Center Between Every Room in the House, at Lifehacker. The functionality is dead simple, I just wasn't aware that it existed. The advantages of keeping a central library for all of the xbmc boxes in your home should seem obvious; however take a moment to think about the design implications. So, obviously, for this to work you have to have a central server box in your home network that will be on 24/7. On that box, you'll need to install MySQL. I'm not going to replicate any of the details of that from the post because I know that I know how to do that. And since I'm my audience ... Next create a new db for xbmc and create/assign a user. CREATE USER 'xbmc' IDENTIFIED BY 'xbmc'; CREATE database xbmc_video; CREATE database xbmc_music; GRANT ALL ON 'xbmc_%'.* TO 'xbmc'; The Lifehacker author assumes that you only have MySQL running for this purpose and tells you to use grant all on * to xbmc. Not the best choice if you also have MySQL for other things. MySQL has additional security options if you're so ...

This post is outdated after the Dharma release, I will copy relevant info from this post to the newer post. [Note: There's currently a bug that has been fixed in svn (changeset) that causes Aeon to crash. I compiled and installed from svn and confirm that the bug is fixed; will create an idoits guide to installing from svn soon. Again, like most things XBMC, it wasn't hard but nobody wanted to give up concise, correct instructions.] Notes I'm filling in a lot of blanks from this guide on the XBMC.org forums here, or the Lifehacker guide here. Unfortunately a lot of this info is scattered around forum posts and these guides will only get you most of the way there. For instance, don't mess with adding the nvidia drivers to the iso ... I mean you could if you wanted to but why not just do them after install? Purpose I need to catalogue all of the changes I had to make so that, in the event I ever need to do it all over again, I don't spend the six - seven hours it took me the first time digging through random forum posts. For my purposes, I want to install ...

The PS3MS default icon bah-lows. I tried using all manner of exe resource editors to change the internally embedded icons but after the program wouldn't run. Finally I came across this post on the PS3MS forums. If PS3 Media Server is running, shut it down. In %program files%\PS3 Media Server\ find pms.jar. Rename pms.jar (make a copy just in case) to pms.zip and open with Windows Explorer. Find \resources\images\ Replace Play1Hot_256 (and probably Play1Hot_32 and Play1Hot_16 too). Close and let Windows Explorer recompress. Change name back to pms.jar and restart PS3 Media Server. The only thing I'd add is that the instructions only have you change out Play1Hot_256 but there are also resources for 16 and 32 that I changed out. I didn't leave those as default to see what happened, so if you still have the default small icons that'd be why. Also, the main XMB icon under Video doesn't preserve alpha. I'm currently using this icon I found on deviantart. black green purple yellow So far, I have to admit, I'm only using PS3 Media Server to stream .mkv (usually muxed with mkv2vob first. Sometimes .mkv transcodes can have audio sync issues. But next up I'll look into internet radio, the itunes library integration and web ...

Part 2 in my PS3 Media Server series, icons for movies and folders. This is should be covered extensively in the FAQ, and it may or may not be, I'm not going to bother checking. Primarily this a resource on where to find movie art and icon templates. The naming convention for assigning icons is %filename% (including extension).cover.png(or .jpg). E.g. Man On Fire 1080p BluRay DTS.m2ts.cover.png. Folders: create your folder and drop in a folder.png(or .jpg). Image dimensions are 320x240. [ Finding Artwork ] themoviedb.org Site is mainly for XBMC / Plex style media center apps but it's a good resource for good quality artwork. Look in the lower right corner for the movie poster. GetVideoArtwork (Beta) New one I just found a couple of weeks ago, geared toward iTunes artwork and sometimes slim pickings but really high quality. [ Creating Icons ] PSD Templates: I did not create these templates, I found them in a forum thread about PS3MS thumbnails. I believe it was this thread on avsforum. Click on the image to download the PSD. FullHD Template 1080p text, blue case and disc with blu-ray logo. I turn off the blue glow layer. Create a new layer in the ...

First in a series of three posts about PS3 Media Server. Install is a breeze, just run the installer (as admin) and if you don't have JRE it'll download and install it for you; if you need x64 you'll need to download it manually. The problem I encountered on Windows 2008R2 was that the provided, 'Install as a Windows Service' option didn't work correctly. It uses Java Service Wrapper and seems to install and start correctly. Netstat even shows it listening on the correct interface and correct port. The only thing I could find, was the debug log showed that it was trying to use a temp directory that didn't exist. However, even creating that directory and making sure it had permissions, it still wasn't working. This may also be a problem on Windows 2008, I'm not sure and I didn't find any mention of it on the PS3 Media Server forums. The solution was to use good old instsrv / srvany from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. Go through the normal process of using instsrv, naming your service and then pointing to srvany. Edit the service in the registry, add a ...

I use to f*cking love this movie when I was a teenager. Watched it again for the first time in forever last night, how disappointing. Underneath, it's still a great movie. But wow, the effects are so awful that it kills it; totally doesn't hold up. And while there are a lot of good actors, some of the, um, performances, are a little, way, over the top. And the pacing is so plodding compared to what we're used to that I just about fell asleep.

Okay, no, not really. How about, 'Best movie I can remember seeing. That wasn't Dark Knight.' By itself, as a hollywood behind-the-scenes parody, at first glance it's standard stuff. But three things made this one for me. Robert Downey Jr. That one's a given, I mean he's the big punch line that's supposed to get everybody to go see it. But he chews up every scene so much, that you begin just watching the movie to see what his next line is. There's a layer of very subtle humor underneath the obvious schtick. It's hard to catch, it'll just a be a line said off screen. Tom Cruise. Yes, Tom Cruise. Wait to see before you judge.

Holy jeebus I wanted to like this movie. I've had the theme song as my ringtone for months now. But, if I'd known that the entire screenplay was Lucas, I'd have never gone. The man has either gone senile, or he never had any talent or early on he surround himself with it, sucked it dry, and now nobody will get near him. Either way, this movie is a bomb. There's a quote in Fight Club where the narrator is describing insomnia as viewing the world as a copy of a copy. That's pretty much what KCS is. Everything's there, it just has no feeling to it; it's dull and rounded. The 3rd Indy movie, while still enjoyable, was already milked dry. I'm guessing this is about the time Lucas had strapped on his depends and started shitting on his screenplays. You can start to feel it in the short round character/mine cart chase in Temple of Doom, but for the most part it tries to take itself seriously. By Last Crusade they'd given up and were going mostly for comedy. I'll just leave it at this; any ...

I wanted this in the highest possible quality, so with my slow server connection this may take awhile to download. Highly suggest just pausing it, letting it download and then watching it. I don't know how they pulled shutting down streets in Manhattan, Rio and Rome to get this commercial shot. Monoco would've been easy during gran prix weekend. And there's no CGI. Video after the jump.

Oh wow, this movie kind of sucked. Which is weird, because I really enjoyed watching it. But I couldn't help tag, as I was watching, how many times they used the same stuff over and over. It begins almost immediately with an interview. They shoot conversation scenes over the shoulder, using the head of one person to block half the screen, while focusing in tightly on the person with dialog. This gets repeated so often it could be made into a drinking game. Shaky-cam is back in full effect. Unfortunately. The wounded limp, can't forget the wounded limp to make the hero appear vulnerable and in peril. Bourne Identity felt perfectly paced. Slow, even mundane, and then punctuated by short bursts of intense violence. Supremacy had to get turned up a notch and ended up being one long fight/chase sequence after Marie is killed off. Which was fine; Bourne was on the warpath. But, being Hollywood, Ultimatum had to get turned up to 11. I was really hoping that they'd go a little more mellow/spy game-ish with this one, than all out action. Car chase with shitty car that gets beat ...

Sony dropped the price on the 60gb PS3, to make way for the new 80gb model. I've been wanting a blu-ray or hd-dvd player for awhile so I figured why not. I get a decent 1st gen blu-ray player and a game system for the same price as just a stand alone player. And that's where the problems started. Reading up on the blu-ray vs hd-dvd battle, on paper, it seems clear blu-ray's going to win (not that sony has a good track record for their proprietary media formats winning) eventually. Blu-ray's got two movie studios that are blu-ray only, Sony (duh) and Disney. Having a kid, Disney movies are important ... but being a Disney nut and having a kid makes it key. And along with Disney comes Pixar FTW. Then there's Fox and MGM that are releasing on both formats. But then comes Universal, who got burned on UMD, and who's big-up is on the hd-dvd board, who is hd-dvd only. Seems like a no brainer.

Couldn't ask for a more perfect popcorn movie. I didn't see Spiderman 3. My weekend movie passes are in short supply so I have to pick and choose my outings. I snuck out to see Ocean's 13, but it was so forgettable I didn't post anything. I'd even forgotten I'd seen it until I started writing this. I just wasn't ever a big Spiderman fan, so it was easily skipped. Point is, I don't know how this compares but it ranked higher on the summer popcorn scale than Pirates did. The beloved cartoon to live action is getting tiring though; please tell me that Speed Racer is the last of them. Please. The only complaint I can have is that it was straight out of the Michael Bay play book. However, he did make sure to throw in enough comedy bits and wonderful cameos to lighten the slow mo explosions. Oh, and it was too long. 2:30hrs seems to be the norm now; it's just too long for an action movie. I also would've liked a bit more transformers background, but that's asking a lot.