SEMI-DEVILS
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WD HD TV Player Can’t Play MKV With Sound
DESCRIPTION
WD HD TV Player first generation, latest firmware 1.03. It plays most mkv videos perfectly but can’t play sound on some.
THE CAUSE
None of your fault. Most .mkv files either have audios in DTS or AC3 format. The media player can play AC3 but can’t downmix DTS to stereo and play via HTMI cable leaving you with no sound.
THE SOLUTION
(1) Hook up the media player with optical cable but you need to have surround sound systems that support DTS.
OR
(2) Convert the DTS soundtrack to AC3
This article will be on solution (2)
How to know which sound format your .mkv contains? Usually if you pirate movies, it should say in the description. Something like this
Pulp.Fiction.1994.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-ESiR.mkv
Another way is to use MediaInfo. It’s free and open-source. After installation, just browse to the video and it will display all kind of cool info about the file.
Now let’s cut to the meat. There are several ways to convert DTS to AC3. Normally, you’d need couple programs to do this. One to extract the soundtrack off the video, one to convert the soundtrack, and another to remux the converted AC3 back to the original .mkv. Quiet some work there.
Luckily, PopCorn MKV AudioConverter will handle pretty much everything in one place.
Launch the program, and go to Options > Download external utilities
Wait for it to download all the tool packages needed for the task.
For me though, it failed to get the AC3 Fix. Under Audio Tools 1, if you see a red bar next to AC3 Fix and AC3 Fix: File not Found message flashing then you know you need to get the AC3 Fix file manually. Just click on the blue button right in front of AC3 Fix and it should lead you HERE. Download, extract, then have PopCorn browse to ac3fix.exe
You’re almost done.
Under MKV Tool, browse to the mkv file with DTS soundtrack then choose the location for the converted file.
On the right, for the DTS setting, make sure it looks like this
I untick the Preserve DTS track because I don’t need it and plus it help cut down the file size.
Hit Run and you’re all set.
Merry Christmas. Enjoy the movies!
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iTunes [10.4] Shows Black Squares as Album Arts
Since I upgraded iTunes to a newer version last week, Album Artwork fails to work ever since. I simply can’t copy and paste an album image I find on Amazon or Wikipedia anymore.
WTF iTunes?
I roamed Google high and low searching for a solution but it was fruitless. I’ve tried repair, re-install iTunes/Quick Time. Nothing worked. I don’t have a straight fix for it but at least I found 2 work-around:
#1. Save the album image you want onto the computer, then right-click the song > Get Info > [under Artwork tab] Add > Browse to the location of the downloaded image.
Note: You can delete the download image after. iTunes retains its own copy of the album art.
#2. Just right-click the song and “Get Album Artwork”
Note: You must have an iTunes account. It’s free to sign-up but they need your credit card number (so that you can buy songs off their iTunes store conveniently later on). This method is faster given that you provide song info correctly especially the album name.
But 2 caveats though:
(a) iTunes can only get Album Artwork for you if that particular song is available on their store. So if you listen to a lot of underground music, independent, foreign artists then you’re out of luck
(b) You can’t choose a different version of that album art. Sometimes album arts have different versions of design for the same album but you’re stuck to what iTunes gives you.
I think it’s probably a bug or something. If they don’t fix this in the next version, i’mma ditch iTunes.
Update: Just updated to the latest iTunes 10.4.1. The problem’s fixed in this version.
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iPhone Doesn’t Recognize Turbo (GEVEY) SIM
For the last couple days, I’ve been struggling trying to unlock my 4.1, 02.10.04 iPhone with GEVEY SIM pro but my phone just simply refused to acknowledge its presence. So basically I turned off the phone, inserted the turbo SIM along with my t-mobile SIM, turned it back on and waited but nothing ever happened. No welcome menu whatsoever. I’ve tried it on my dad’s phone and it worked just fine so the turbo SIM is in good order. Nothing’s wrong with the t-mobile SIM either as I could make call using another phone with it. I stumbled on the solution by chance while toying around with it.
So this is what you do, you insert the turbo SIM with your SIM card into the iPhone, turn it off, then turn it back on. Nothing peculiar here. OK, when the phone doesn’t show you the “welcome menu” what you want to do is turn on/off Airplane mode, wait for a while (be patient) and the welcome menu will show shortly after then just proceed to follow the instruction in the GEVEY’s user guide.
NOTE 1: Even if the “welcome menu” doesn’t show after you turn on/off Airplane mode, turn the phone off and back on now, the phone shall see the turbo SIM and the welcome menu will pop up.
NOTE 2: For some reason, after you did that your iPhone will start to recognize the turbo SIM automatically every time after like how it’s supposed to in the first place.
Here’re some tips I found that will ensure a quick and successful unlock
1. Slide the “slide to unlock” uh slide (a bit repetitive I know) quickly after you reboot the phone because if you don’t, the phone will go in standby mode. I found this prevent the phone from recognizing the turbo SIM. Even after you resume with the home button, no “welcome menu” will show.
2. For the “SIM Failure” notification, don’t tap on the “OK” button and close it. Just let it sit there until the “No SIM Card Installed” kicks in.
Cheers…
XP Internet Security 2011 And How to Remove its Ass.
First and foremost, FUCK YOU, XP Internet Security 2011 (XPIS).
Remedy:
- Download rKill, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MBAM), unhide.exe from a healthy computer. Put all of them onto a USB flash drive.
- Boot into Safe Mode with Networking on the infected machine (connect directly with an ethernet cable). NOTE: if you can’t access the internet. It’s very possible that XPIS has set or change proxy setting. In that case, get this tiny batch file and run it.
- Execute rKill.
- Install and update MBAM immediately. Do a full scan of all the hard-drives.
- Run unhide.exe to “unhide” all your stuff again.
Attention: This bastard operates under various names across XP, Vista, and 7. The solution is supposed to work on all variants.
Same shit.
Chrome OS on USB drive
An entire operating system runs directly from your USB thumb drive? COOL! The idea is obviously nothing new. Heck, even Chrome OS itself is quiet old (first announced in mid-2009). What makes this all different from the plethora USB boot-able, lightweight Linux distros out there beside being a mere new kid on the block is it’s completely web-based. So dust off that forgotten USB drive in the corner of your room (at least 2GB or it won’t work) and get to work. (more…)
Linux: Screen Resolution and Wireless Problems on Gateway MX 3215
My dad got a brand new sleek MSI laptop for quiet a while now so his old Gateway get shoved in a corner collecting dust. It’s a pretty ghetto laptop though: 1.4 GHz Celeron M 360 and 256 MB DDR2 – still sluggish running windows at its bare minimum. The sound and touch pad don’t even work anymore. But to be fair it’s still a laptop and I want to do it justice so I decided to install a light-weight Linux distribution on it.
i think it still looks pretty sexy though
