Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

Windows 7 is out and it’s really solid. It has out-of-the-box support for most popular audio and video formats. In fact, the only two I was missing was MKV (Matroska), and FLAC. The latter is easy to fix, the former not so much. If you do a Google search you will find over 8 MILLION hits, and pretty much all of the top hits did not actually tell you how to (successfully) get MKV support easily. The forum posts ask you to download codec packs, splitters, containers, use your imagination.

What you really need are two simple links:

• The DivX Tech Preview and
• The AC3 Filter (Full)

The first one gives native version of the DivX MKV framework for the newly introduced Windows Media Foundation. Anything else you download at the moment does NOT utilize the WMF. The problem with that is you lose hardware acceleration and everything needs to be transcoded (converted to another codec on the fly). If you use DivX’s codec you get a crisp picture that is not overexposed.

The only problem with the DivX tech preview is that sound didn’t work for any of my HD files. That’s where the AC3 filter comes in – it installs the necessary codec for you to get the sound. That is also what all the forums I came across failed to mention.

DivX Plus on Windows 7

So install those two and you are set for playing almost anything you can come across on the Internet without sacrificing quality or installing 3rd-party players like VLC (Which I tried and failed to configure to reproduce the same quality as Windows Media Player for any video format).

In case you are wondering why Windows Media Player runs in 32 bit mode when you have a 64 bit Windows 7, and how to run the 64 bit version, read on. It seems that by default Microsoft decided on running the 32 bit version, perhaps for codec compatibility. However, the 64 bit version is already included. To use this instead (the quick and easy way) do the following 10 second fix:

1. Unpin the WMP icon from the taskbar (assuming that’s where you started it from)
2. Open C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe (Notice it’s not the C:\Program Files (x86) folder).
3. Just pin that version instead and you are set.

Here’s the result:

My Digital Life blog has posted a rather complex solution that modifies the registry. However, this does will not work if you still have the 32 bit version pinned to the taskbar and you use it from there. Much simpler than running all those registry hacks is to run your 64 bit version and associate all audio and video files with it.

I find that the performance is at least moderately better, especially when loading my immense music library. WMP 32 bit seems to freeze up for at least 5-10 seconds, whereas x64 just takes a second or two. The 64 bit version seems to take up about 7-8MB more RAM, but not that I care now that I have 4 GB to spare.

Microsoft has finally came out with the final version of MS Security Essentials, a security software that complements Windows’ built-in firewall in XP and Windows 7 and offers antivirus, antispyware, rootkit detection, and trojans – all for one great price – free!

That’s right, you no longer need to shell out $80 each year for your (crappy) antivirus software (if you used ESET NOD32 or Avira Premium, disregard the crappy part). So what’s so exciting about another free antivirus? Well, for starters it doesn’t have annoying ads like Avira Free, offers decent detection rate (greatly improved compared to OneCare), and is pretty light on resources (about 8 Mb for me in the background).

I’ve been using the Beta for a while, and the final version (1.0) is available in both 32 and 64 bit. Quite happy with Microsoft lately. Get your hands on it while it’s hot: Microsoft Security Essentials Download

I just got my hands on the most amazing deal for software I’ve ever had, which is a Windows 7 Ultimate for less than $10 through my university’s software program. Since I was already using Windows 7 RC1 for months and the license is set to expire spring 2010, I was more than happy. However, I realized that Windows 7 installer won’t let you upgrade to the final version so I would have to do a clean install. But I DON’T want to. Thankfully, I stumbled across this article on HowToGeek that has a simple 2 second fix to that whole problem.

Enjoy the best OS ever made!