In my household, my Filipina wife is The Queen, and I am her (willing) Humble Servant. And now I am in trouble because of Muvipix.
Here is the story:
I am very protective of the hp desktops that I use for video editing, so much so that I only allow her to go online with them when I am present.
Recently, while attempting to work on her farm in Farm Town on (if memory serves) Facebook, she was informed that before long the antiquated browser that is on my machines (IE6) will no longer function.
Problem is, as some of you may know, I am EXTREMELY reluctant to make any changes to my machines, which are working very well, and quickly, with the Elements 7 package.
"Ok, then buy me one of my own," she said, "even an inexpensive one as I only need to check email and go shopping."
So, I bought her the cheapest hp that I could find; it has only one VGA output and a built-in GPU--although I did upgrade the RAM from 2 to 4 GB. After setting up the machine for her, I ignored it.
Recently, after upgrading my Codecs as suggested by certain members of this site, I discovered that, although my HD MPEG2s now play smoothly, I still need to use a workaround to be able to play both SD VOB and HD m2t files with MCE2005. I was willing to live with that UNTIL another extremely knowledgable member whose name I shall not state happened to mention in one of his many highly-informative threads that Windows 7 Home Premium also has a version of Windows Media Center and that it has more capability than MCE2005.
It was at that point that I remembered that my wife's inexpensive machine came with precisely that OS pre-installed (plus some other really nifty software, including a version of CyberLink).
You can probably guess what happened next.
Yup, I plugged the 1TB external HDD on which I am currently creating all my projects into a USB port on my wife's modest machine and lo and behold! her version of MCE (6.1.7600.16385) shows all my SD and HD videos neatly organized just like in Explorer AND plays the HD MPEG2s back on a 52-inch HDTV that is attached via the VGA port.
The result is that, while I am still creating them on my antique machines, I now prefer to play my projects on hers.
A recent conversation follows:
"Are you done yet?"
"Not yet."
"You've got five big machines of your own, and now you are going to take over my little machine, too."
"I found out on muvipix that yours might work better for playback."
"Then you and your friends at muvipix can buy me another machine for Christmas, and you must promise never to touch it."
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This is an almost-true story, but the names of the muvipix members (which begin with the letters B, C and S) have been omitted to protect the innocent.
[Computer under Xmas tree]
and