Convert your .ts PVR recordings to DVD format with ease!

If you’ve got a PVR (personal video recorder – a device that records TV programmes), you’ve probably get a few recordings lying on the hard disk that you really don’t want to delete. But now you’re reaching the stage where you’re running out of hard disk space and sacrifices are going to have to be made.

Well have no fear, because I’ve found a nifty little program that will convert the videos from your PVR into a DVD format ready for burning to DVD.

If you have a USB connection from your hard disk PVR to your computer, you’ll be able to copy the contents of it to your computer. Hook up your USB cable to it, put it into the necessary USB mode, and see what’s on it.

If you find various .ts files, you’re in luck. Because there’s a free program available called HDTV2DVD which will rewrite your .ts files into MPEG files for DVD burning. Even better – it will even organise the files into VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS so all you have to do is burn the two folders to DVD and it’s done.

The only thing you have to be aware of is that when you use HDTV2DVD on long programmes (eg. films which are more that 1.5 hours), you are going to struggle to fit it onto a 4.7GB DVD. You might need to get a dual layer disk.

There is an “autofit” feature which will effectively shrink the video into a size that will fit onto DVD, but it can really pixelise the image.

The one bug in HDTV2DVD that really annoys me is that the percentage done calculator is totally screwed up. By the time my 2 hour film had go to the end of conversion, the percentage done calculator was edging on 1,000,000%.

Other than that, it’s a really handy piece of freeware. I can’t seem to find any other program that will do the same job for free, so this one is a definite must have if you have a PVR.

Try it out and see what you think.

Fed up of constantly organising RSS feeds?

If you’re the kind of person who has tonnes of RSS feeds lurking around in your bookmarks, it can be a real pain trying to keep up to date with all the sites you know and love.

If you have this problem, Google Reader might be the answer to your problems. It’s a free service that you can dump all your RSS feeds in and it will look after them for you. To get the latest on all your feeds, you just go to the Google Reader site, log in, and all your feeds are together and ready for you to catch up on whenever you want to.

It remembers what feeds you’ve already read so you don’t waste time reading feeds you already know about. Also, another handy feature is being able to “star” posts that you particularly like so they’re easily accessible in the future.

It’s a really simple but handy idea. Best of all, it’s accessible anywhere in the world on any computer since it’s online.

I’ve known about it for ages, but I thought I’d talk about it since I find it so handy and use it daily. Check out Google Reader now – it’s free and so great to use.

WordPress 2.8 Beta 2 now available

In case you aren’t already aware, WordPress have been doing some work on the upcoming release of WordPress 2.8.

They’ve just served up beta 2 of WordPress 2.8, so if you’d like to try it, have a look here.

If you didn’t see GEEK!’s review of WordPress 2.8 Beta 1, you can check it out here.

That’s all for now. I’ll write up a review if it looks worth it. I haven’t actually investigated beta 2 yet, so it may just be bugfixes. Enjoy!

Poor wifi signals? Is it interference? (Quick fix)

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I was recently very bewildered since the wifi singal range on my router was still very poor even after adding a huge 9DBi antenna to it. I couldn’t understand why, but then I did some research and found some rather interesting information.

It would appear that if you use a cordless phone, you may be aware that most common cordless phones run at a frequency band of about 2.4GHz. Sound familiar?

Well, you may also be aware that both 802.11b and 802.11g wifi signals (as well as some 802.11n) both run 2.4GHz.

What a coincidence. Anyway, what that means is that if your router and cordless phone base are close together (ie less than 50cm apart), they can interfere with each other and therefore reduce signal range quite dramatically.

This was the problem I seemed to be having. So I move my router so it was about 100cm (the further the better, ideally) from the phone base, and the signal range increased hugely. It also put an end to the regular connection drops I got while using wifi.

So, a simple thought, but it really does make a difference. It’s not just cordless phones, but anything near a router that runs at a frequency of 2.4GHz or 5GHz. Bare it in mind.

Together with my 9DBi antenna, I now get fantasic wifi signal that I’m really pleased with. It made a huge difference, so definitely consider it before blaming a router or router antenna.

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