An ANZAC Weekend Summary

On Friday night Anisha and I had takeaways from Nandos, afterwards I took Anisha to the Airport for her Quantas flight to Wellington.

On Saturday I Installed the latest version of Joomla onto nztechie.com. The EasyApplication installer which IXhosting provides will only allow you to install into a sub directory and not the root directory of your web server. The install went without a hitch and I rebuilt the site as it was when it was working.

I have decided to drop the whole online photo gallery as it was quite a lot to maintain, and there is a limited audience due to a logon being required. Looking forward, I may build a Windows Home Server (WHS) and use its built in capability to share photos.

Nanna, Granddad, Scott, and Amber came over on Saturday for a visit along with Charlene, Nick and Carlos.

On Sunday I went with mum and dad to have a look at some potentials places to rent in the near future. We looked at places in Mount Eden, and the City.

In other news, Anisha and I went 50/50 on the entertainment book. Kyle at work was selling them to raise money for a hockey club. The total cost was NZ$65 for the book.

Joining the New Zealand Freeview masses

This evening I completed my setup of Freeview at home. I now have complete terrestrial digital freeview reception.

When I bought my slimline HP media computer recently I took note of the TV Tuner capabilities. I picked a PC that was capable of picking up terrestrial digital. However, despite the fact that Windows Media Center has support for terrestrial digital, Microsoft does not have an update a present to support the the variant used in New Zealand.

The Internet is full of rumours stating that Microsoft will release an update to support terrestrial digital in New Zealand. I believe the Microsoft will eventually release an update in the future.

In the mean time, how did I receive terrestrial digital television on my PC? Mix the following and bake for 1 hour to get sorted:

- Mediaportal
- MediaPortal TV Server
- MediaPortal SVN
- H.246 Codec
- LATM AAC Audio Codec

Mediaportal is simply an open source alternative to Windows Media Center. I used the 'bleeding edge' nightly builds of the Mediaportal SVN to achieve Freeview playback.

To decode the Freeview video I installed the CoreAVC h.264 codec. An alternative is to use the h.264 codec which Cyberlink bundles with its PowerDVD software to enable Blu-Ray playback.

Audio New Zealand also has a funky audio format which can be decoded with the LATM AACCodec. The good thing is that a codec (a.k.a Monogram ACC Decoder) is included with the Mediaportal SVN builds which can decode audio.

If I get a chance I will do my own write-up on the setup of Freeview for New Zealand conditions. There are however a number of guides explaining the process on the web.

With my present setup, I find the Video and audio quality excellent and the changing of channels to be swift. My next project is to associate channel Icons with each channel and to implement and EPG. By leveraging my existing media PC setup I have avoided having to fork out $NZ400+ for a set top decoder box.

I have also written a quick guide for computer savvy people on how to setup MediaPortal to work with Freeview in New Zealand. It is available at:

Configuring MediaPortal for Freeview NZ [Quick Guide]
http://tech.nztechie.com/2008/04/configuring-mediaportal-for-freeview-nz.html

Additional Information: Freeview|HD is broadcast on a digital terrestrial network and received via a UHF aerial. It will be available in the Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Napier, Hastings, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. That’s 75% of New Zealand homes.

MediaPortal
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

CoreAVC
http://www.coreavc.com/

Actions Paintball

Anupam from work organised an outing today for a game of Paintball. The event was not an official event sanctioned by the bank.

I invited Nigel along to play with all the others that came. We went to Actions Paintball which is based in Swanson. This is the first time I have ever played Paintball. Due to not playing before I was not completely sure how many paintballs to purchase at the beginning. I started with a Starter kit which included 100 paintballs and cost me $40.

I also purchased an extra 100 paintballs at the start for $18. After a break in the game I ended up purchasing a second "reload pack" to keep me going. I purchased 300 paintballs in total. At the end I had used approximately 250, so I did not order too much.

We split into two teams. Overalls were provided for $4 each. Andrew Kyle's overalls had a big whole in its bum. In my Team we had myself, Sam Look, Andrew Kyle and two of his friends, Sam Look, and Chris Hacking.

We played a series of scenarios which included 'capture the flag' games. Of particular note in our team was the excellent efforts of Sam Look and Chris Hacking. They were excellent at pushing forward and were the key to winning many of the games.

After Paintball Anisha and I went to Kim and Nigels place for lunch.

Additional Information: Paintball is a high adrenalin action-packed team sport. Actions Paintball offers to both the social & tournament player excellence in competitive Paintball.