Busy Weekend Ahead

[Wolfshadw]

Hey Gang!

Got a busy weekend ahead and I'm looking for suggestions/ideas/gotchas that you might suggest or point out.

1) Pretty sure I've got this covered, but I want to run it past you guys anyway. My primary system only has an 80GB OS drive installed (nearly full). I've been meaning to swap that with a 320GB drive that I purchased months ago, but I just never got to it. I'm not a big fan of "format/re-install" as I usually forget something. I know Arconis True Image is like the Gold Standard and since they offer a free 30 day trial, I was going to go with that and just clone the 80GB drive onto the 320GB drive.

Any thoughts/comments? Anything I should lookout for?


2) The Home Theater is getting upgraded this weekend. I've finally broken down and am making the switch to 1080p and Blu-Ray. The Optoma HD20 projector and LG Blu-Ray drive are sitting in the living room just waiting for install. My main concern is, of course, playing Blu-Ray discs. In this thread, DDuk intimates that I don't need any software for playing blu-rays natively in 7MC aside from the LAV filters. Is this correct? If not, the "OEM" drive I purchased did come with what looks to be PowerDVD 9 (2 identical disks) and a SATA cable (Thanks, Newegg!).

I'm just looking for the cleanest, if not easiest, way to integrate Blu-Ray playback into my home theater. Suggestions/Ideas/Complaints?

Any bones you guys and gals can toss my way would be appreciated!

Thanks!
-Wolf sends.

[Fleadh]

considering mt HTPC has a 32 gig ssd and has 16 gig of that free I think you needs to clean your drive up and remove the clutter. That said a straightforward clobe to new disk is gine also.

Id clean the 80 gig one and use the 320 as a recording/live tv buffer drive.

Dunno about the lav filters, i use tmt5 and its integrates really well to wmc

[Wolfshadw]

Hey Fleadh,

Thanks for the post. I think I may have confused you, though. When I say, "primary system", I mean the system that I do everything on. This is the system that I game/test software/encode videos and everything in between on. My HTPC is a completely separate system (200GB drive 75% free). It does nothing but play and record media. Once the media is recorded, it's moved to the primary system (which has the 80GB OS Drive and a 750GB Media Drive) for re-encoding and storage. Also, in addition to the 320 GB drive that's just sitting around, I also have a 1TB drive for additional storage.

Concerning TMT, doesn't that actually minimize 7MC and start it's own program? When you finish playing a blu-ray, how do you get back into 7MC?

-Wolf sends

Edit:

Ok. Scratch Arconis True Image Trial for now. Clone Disk is not available with the trial version and I don't have a spare $50 to purchase it. Did some clean-up and managed to get back to 25% free space on the 80GB drive, though. Good enough for now.

[Ack]

Wolf - I've used the open-source clonezilla for a couple of years and haven't had any issues restoring an image. I haven't used it to clone one drive to another so I can't give a first-hand recommendation in that aspect. However my research on it turns up goods reviews. It seems slightly confusing at first but reading the screens and tutorials carefully, it's fairly easy enough. The only problems I've has are that the My Passport USB drive I use to save the images to doesn't get recognized every once in awhile. I have to start clonezilla over to get it recognized.

[Wolfshadw]

Thanks, ACK. I did look into Clonezilla, but I did not see where it would copy one OS disk over to another and then be able to boot off of that second disk. I make look at it again later today as...

Well. That was quick. Seems my new projector has a cooling fan issue. It overheated within five minutes of being on. When I turned it back on, I saw the fan start spinning and thought, "ok, just an odd glitch". A few minutes later, I started hearing a strange whine coming from the projector. Immediately went back to check the cooling fan and saw it sputtering, starting and then stopping. Back to Newegg it goes and the home theater upgrade is on hold!

RATS!

-Wolf sends

[makryger]

Ugh, that sucks.

[Wolfshadw]

Well, apparently, there's a missing step in here somewhere. I installed the LAV filters that DDuk mentioned in the thread I linked above, but when I drop in a Blu-Ray disc, I get a message which states:

CANNOT PLAY DISC

To play this DVD you must first install a playback application that supports Blu-Ray Disc.

Anyone have any suggestions? I thought that all I was going to need were the LAV Filters.

-Wolf sends

[dduk]

Well, apparently, there's a missing step in here somewhere. I installed the LAV filters that DDuk mentioned in the thread I linked above, but when I drop in a Blu-Ray disc, I get a message which states:

CANNOT PLAY DISC

To play this DVD you must first install a playback application that supports Blu-Ray Disc.

Anyone have any suggestions? I thought that all I was going to need were the LAV Filters.

-Wolf sends

I'm still using the LAV Filters to play back all of my blu-rays ripped into MKVs flawlessly. I haven't however tried playing back from a disk.

It might be that the filters only work when using MKVs. Or it might be a file association issue. Have you tried opening the disk in explorer and playing one of the files in the STREAM folder in Windows Media player after installing the LAV filters?