If you’ve wondered how you can get your windows to connect to a VPN server without having to pay Microsoft Terminal Services Licenses then you’re in luck. There is a linux solution called Poptop. I’ve tried Openssh and Openvpn either solution requires installing a windows client and not reusing the existing vpn connectivity interface offered by Windows. I have confirmed this working on Windows 7 connecting to Ubuntu. My Ubuntu is a small virtual machine running off another server costing little overhead. Please note however that the encryption used is not secure enough. Microsoft client supports pptp using 128bit strength which is the point of failure. Not fault of microsoft per se. they support stronger encryption that, at this time, does not exist in a free open source solution that we can use.

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

There doesn’t seem to be a perfect way to trans-code seamlessly out of the box from MCE. I have used MCEBuddy in the past but once Microsoft introduced WTV I had to go back to MCEbuddy developer for updates which was behind and not without it’s own problems/bugs.

There are strings attached to this process. you’ll need a thumb-drive and the process will require you to transfer the files from thumb-drive back to your computer unless you’re comfortable playing off the thumb-drive and not tight on space. I do this to archive The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live. I’ll post later on how you can use wmv to stream to your Windows Mobile phone through the internet.

Step 1 Prepare drive
format the drive and decompress the following file into your thumb-drive. It is the files that were created from my Mobile Phone when synced with WMP. They contain the re-sized resolution and compression necessary to compress a 1.5 gig 1 hour lowest quality SD recording into a WM6 Resolution compatible WMV file approx 150megs. reasonable loss of quality for me, however if you wish to have better resolution, you may need to modify the files or grab a zune hd profile sync of WMP.
File:
WMP Sync XML Information (from htc touch paired with Win7)

Step 2 Sync
stick in thumbdrive, open WMP, remove previous sync partnership and then create one again. At this time you can specify what tv shows you want synced, by default windows media player will attempt to add everything, music, tv, video, the works. I just have 3 last episodes of Conan, SNL, and Falon. Sync should now be working

Step 3 Archiving
Now that videos are transferred, it’s time to do some cleanup. copy the files from your thumb-drive over to your hard-drive ideally from a folder that MCE can see. Recorded TV is probably not best place to put it because that folder is technically only for WTV files and you can’t be sure if files will be cleared up to save space. avoid deleting recordings from the thumb-drive, WMP will try to transfer missing videos upon next sync. Instead, delete tv recordings from MCE or in the recorded tv folder.

That’s it. All this is done without the aid of third party software. Not ideal, but it does work. I’ve investigated on possible ways to fake a shared folder as if it was a usb removable storage. However, so far, I was unable to locate one. It is unfortunate that WMP and MCE doesn’t offer an way to trans-code the file without introducing a secondary device to sync with.

Hope this helps someone out there.

It’s been a couple of weeks now using the Viliv S5 on Win7 RC. So far I’ve been unable to make the touch screen rotate along with the screen to portrait mode. I tried moving back to the original windows xp but it was missing tablet pc options. I went as far as trying to install a hack to get tabletpc components however it lacked some language file so I gave up there. I tried installing from a tablet pc 2005 disk only to find that I get blue screened during install. I already knew this ment that I needed sata drivers as these windows disks predates sata support in motherboards. As well, I tried using eeeRotate which bundled a mouse rotator. That totally made my touch screen go erratically. For now, we’re stuck waiting for Viliv to come out with an updated mouse/Video driver to fully support screen rotation.

Finally the S5 has arrived! I was lucky enough to get the first batch from Dynamism. My choice on an Atom portable bottomed down to a choice between the Sony Vaio P (which I got my hands on at the CES 2009 earlier in the year) or the Viliv S5. Netbook vs Umpc. I missed my old Samsung q1 and the subsequent replacement to the Asus R2H left a very bad impression in the future of UMPCs. Regardless, my choice was for the Viliv S5. a smaller UMPC with haptic feedback. First thing off, I will backup the existing OS and replace it with Windows 7 RC. As well, I will attempt to install a Hackintosh build.

CBC Vancouver
CBUT-DT
Digital Channel 2-1
Assigned Frequency 58

GLOBAL BC
CHAN-DT
Digital Channel 8-1
Assigned Frequency 22

CTV BC
CITV-DT
Digital Channel 32-1
Assigned Frequency 33