Back in April, I published a blog post about Western Digital’s WD TV Live earning the Compatible with Windows 7 Logo and bringing Windows 7 awesomeness with support for Play To. Today, Western Digital has announced a new addition to their WD TV line of media players – the WD TV Live Plus. The WD TV Live Plus also carries the Compatible with Windows 7 Logo and brings all the benefits of WD TV Live including support for Play To in Windows 7 and adds instant streaming of premium content with Netflix (Netflix subscription required). For more on WD TV Live Plus, click here and see this page for a comparison of Western Digital’s WD TV media players. I continue to use the WD TV Live in my home today and find it an impressive way to stream content such as videos and music to my TV in my bedroom.

Audio junkies and gamers listen up – imagine a device that could easily “upgrade” any stereo headset to 7.1 Channel Dolby Surround Sound. Turtle Beach is lifting the covers on a device that does just that. Today, Turtle Beach is announcing their Ear Force DSS product – a surround sound processor that takes in audio from an analog stereo source (like a stereo headset) and upgrades it to Dolby Pro Logic IIx for virtual surround sound (7.1 Channel Dolby Surround Sound). With any stereo headset, you can use the Ear Force DSS to get 7.1 Channel Dolby Surround Sound while watching movies and TV (or Internet TV) through Windows Media Center, Blu-ray movies, or playing games all on your Windows PC. Turtle Beach makes some amazing headset products that the Ear Force DSS serves as a perfect complement to such as the Ear Force X31, X11, XLC, Z1 and PX21. The Ear Force DSS and Ear Force headsets are perfect for gamers looking to have impressive audio capabilities while gaming – and work not just with Windows PCs, but also with Xbox 360’s (and PlayStation 3’s) as well.

Turtle Beach sent along an Ear Force DSS for me to try out this weekend. I was traveling this weekend so it actually worked out to be a great weekend for me to try out the Ear Force DSS. I brought along Turtle Beach’s Ear Force X11 headset with me. And of course I had my Dell Studio 15 (“The Goat”) with me too. I didn’t bring any movies or TV shows to watch but I’ve been really into Batman: Arkham Asylum lately. I had Batman: Arkham Asylum installed on my laptop and intended to do a little gaming this weekend. Incidentally, Batman: Arkham Asylum has Dolby as a partner – even better! I didn’t want to bother those around me so I connected up the Ear Force DSS and threw on the Ear Force X11 headset.

Wow. With the DSS, the sound coming out of the headset while playing Batman: Arkham Asylum was amazing. In particular, Mark Hamil’s voice as The Joker truly stood out in the game, with the creep-factor amplified. I also found I could hear a lot more of the background sound effects than I was used to hearing. And the audio for explosions and weapons fire and throwing batarangs were enhanced within the game thanks to the built in bass boost.

The DSS is a pretty small, basic device. You connect it to your PC (or Xbox) to power the device. It also serves as a USB pass-through where you can connect a USB device to the USB-in port and it will connect the device to your PC as if it were physically connected to your PC. There are several display lights on the top of the device that tell you what the device is doing. You’ll notice in my photos above that the light for “PLIIX” is lit up. This means the device is processing the audio input to Dolby Pro Logic IIx. There is an output volume control and an input audio control. You can also control the level of bass boost (I mentioned bass boost above). And there are 2 buttons: a power button on the side and a Dolby Bypass button on the top. The Dolby Bypass button lets you turning off all audio processing – and is a good way to hear what the audio would sound like without any processing by the DSS. I used this to see the difference between having the audio processed or not while playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. I really did see a difference too!

Admittedly, as I wrote this blog post I also enjoyed listening to music from my collection in Zune with the Ear Force X11 headset and the DSS. The audio in this situation was also very impressive.

Again, for someone who wants impressive high quality audio when playing movies, TV, or games on your Windows PC, the Ear Force DSS is the perfect device to let you hear everything you want to hear (and maybe more).

The Ear Force DSS will be $89.95 (MSRP) and is available starting today from the Turtle Beach Web site. It will also be available soon at other online retailers and major US and Canadian retail stores.

Manual Removal of W32/Banload.AENO Trojan » AvMsUpd.exe

W32/Banload.AENO is a trojan. The trojan will infect Windows systems.

This Trojan Copies its files to Windows\media folder as hidden files…

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Back in June, I blogged the first of 6 blog posts dedicated to tips and/or tricks for Windows Media Player in Windows 7. I had originally intended to post the remaining 5 blog posts over the course of 3 weeks. However, that didn’t quite happen. I intend to post the remaining posts, starting today with the 2^nd blog post, but won’t commit to any specific timeline.

Windows 7 introduces Jump Lists as one of the many enhancements to the Windows Taskbar. And Windows Media Player takes advantage of this feature for quick access to your digital media.

Here are a few tips for working with the Jump List for Windows Media Player:

• You can drag most items off of the Windows Media Player Jump List and onto the desktop to create a shortcut that can be used on any computer to do that query and return local items.
• Doing a search on a view and double clicking one of the result items will log the search query to the Jump List. For example, can go to all songs and search for ‘NOT genre:Christmas’ and you’ll get a Jump List item of all your music with no Christmas music (see above screenshot).
• You can pin any file Windows Media Player will play in the Jump List by directly dragging and dropping the file onto the Windows Media Player icon on the Windows Taskbar.
• Clicking “Play All” or playing a stack view from File Explorer will log to the Jump List.
• If you go to Organize, then Options, and then Player - the last option in Player settings “Save recently used to the Jump List instead of frequently used” toggles what shows on your Jump List.

Hope you enjoyed these Jump List tips for Windows Media Player!

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Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Media Player in Windows 7

Geeks and IT Pros often have to burn an ISO image (.iso file) to physical media such as a CD or DVD to test out and install software. We have made it easier to burn ISO images in Windows 7 by natively supporting the ability to burn ISO images directly within Windows without the need of a third party tool.

To burn an ISO image in Windows 7, all someone needs to do is simply right-click on an ISO image and choose “Burn disc image”.

This launches Windows Disc Image Burner, giving you the option to burn the ISO image to either a CD or DVD.

If you check “Verify disc after burning”, it will verify the ISO image burned correctly. Choosing to verify a disc you burned will require additional time so if you’re in a hurry, you will probably want to ensure this option is unchecked.

I often burn ISO images to a DVD-RW so I can re-use the media. What’s great about Windows Disc Image Burner is that it will detect that a DVD-RW has content on it already and prompt you asking if you would like to erase the disc and burn new content to it. This ensures you don’t accidently erase and burn over something important that may be on that DVD-RW disc. This is awesome because it lets me re-use DVD-RW media.

If you haven’t already discovered this feature in the Windows 7 Beta, you should give it a shot especially if you are burning ISO images quite a bit.

S1 Digital has reportedly unveiled a tempting new desktop solution, the P5 Media Center which boasts of a custom designed, living room friendly chassis with silent headpipe cooling technology. If you think that is neat, wait until you find out what is inside.

The P500 can be equipped with up to 4 CableCARD HDTV or 2 ATSC/QAM and NTSC tuners. Standard you’ll get 3TB of RAID-5 storage, a Blu-ray drive (profile 2.0), Gigabit Ethernet, 4GB of memory, a Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz processor, ATI All-In-Wonder 3650 (with HDMI / DVI / Component / VGA video outputs), and a slick Logitech DiNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard / media center remote.

With all that power under the hood, S1Digital says the P500 is capable of supporting “up to three zones of audio and video streaming (via Extenders or other Media Centers).” Starting Price: $5,999.

Now that is quite a piece of machinery for a reasonable price made for multimedia freaks looking for a reliable desktop solution. As if that wasn’t enough, S1Digital’s close partnership with Autonomic Controls enables S1Digital’s Media Centers and Servers to be controlled via Crestron, AMX, RTI, HAI and PC based touchscreens over IP or RS232, including full two way feedback.

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