dtb
Latest
WoW Moviewatch: The Assassin
The Assassin has been around for a while, making it nearly criminal that we've not featured it before now. With a powerful, cohesive story, gorgeous music, and some truly jaw-dropping imagery, this is probably one of the finest machinima I've ever seen. It especially finds its power with convincing fight choreography, second only to BLIND for being some of the best we've ever seen. The mix of modern and fantasy architecture gives The Assassin a unique feel, and it would be interesting to find out more about the world. Ultimately, though, DTB created a spectacular movie, and you should take the time to watch it. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
How to tweak ShowAnalyzer to 100 percent commercial detection accuracy
If you you've ever used any automatic commercial skipping technology you know that it isn't 100 percent accurate. We remember our old ReplayTV 4080 had a button on the remote just to disable the feature when it incorrectly identified part of our favorite show as a commercial. You'd hit it and then rewind, so while nothing was lost, some are so annoyed that they'd just assume skip them the old fashioned way. Well unlike the ReplayTV, when you use ShowAnalyzer to detect commercials on your HTPC, you can tweak your settings to 100% accuracy. Until recently this wasn't actually possible because while ShowAnalyzer has been tweakable for a while, one set of settings would fix one show, and make another worse. Well in the latest beta you can set rules that allows you to tweak the settings per channel or even per show. So while there is nothing automatic about gaining 100 percent accuracy, it is actually kind of fun to try. You can even share your specific settings with others, you know, to show everyone how smart you are.
How to import HD movies into Windows Media Center
The upgraded Movie Library in Windows 7 Media Center is very appreciated, but while it's better than Vista, it still doesn't do everything we want. Our main point of contention is that although it is possible to play more file types, it still isn't possible to fast forward or rewind them (you can skip forward, back, and resume though). The other issue is that connecting the HTPC directly to a HDTV is for the birds, and codec support on Extenders is very limited. The good news is that with a little help from our favorite Media Center utility and our new best friend, we've devised a very easy way to convert just about any HD movie to DVR-MS (Media Center's native format). This is pretty easy to setup, lets you have full trick play capability on extenders, and the results are good enough to please even our discerning eye.
