In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on an XBMC bender. I recently setup an older system as a file server, put a crap load of storage in it, and threw some movie ISOs on there. Then I installed XBMC on my main rig. The rest is history. I was fine with the wireless keyboard and mouse, but The Fiance says we must use a remote control.

My lucky day happened last week: woot had a woot-off AND they had some MCE remotes on sale. I bought two. They’re some crappy Pinnacle ones, but at newegg they run almost $40 and I got both with shipping for less than $35.

Trying to get it to work was another issue. Out of the box Vista will recognize this remote, but XBMC wouldn’t hear anything. Works great on Windows Media Center though. So I ended up trying a program called LMRemoteKeyMap. Pretty nifty, but I didn’t feel like learning all about xml, codes, remotes, and commands. I felt like being lazy.

So then I ended up with another program called IRServer Suite. Now this one worked out of the box. Every function works as advertised. The only change I made was to get the giant green button to act as the Windows key (so I can press start). Others have made it automatically open up XBMC, but for now I just wanted start to work.

Basically you’ll just open the Translator program and follow along to have it automatically do your work for you. See how lazy I’m being?

I might include some screen shots eventually.

Since my memory isn’t what it used to be (they say the memory is the first to go), I have decided to put down the keyboard controls for XBMC. This is for DVD playback. Long story short:
I have a server with a ton of ISO’s of movies
I have a decent computer hooked up to
A very nice HD TV via DVI-HDMI cables
XMBC allows me to play any movie I want, whenever I want.

x – stops the movie, returns to movie list
s – brings up shutdown window
p – pause / play
space bar – pause / play
r – rewind
f – fast forward
up arrow – next chapter
down arrow – previous chapter
right arrow – fast forward 30 seconds
left arrow – rewind 30 seconds
t – show title and real life time
i – info on data stream
o – status on chapter number and time
s – subtitles on/off
m – menu

The people I work with always seem to find ways to make me think, search, and try. Although, as of late, it’s become quite hard to “stump the IT person”.

Guy came over and had a foreign movie that he wanted a duplicate created. Foreign to me is anything outside of the US of A. PAL happens to be outside the US of A. This DVD was created in the US of A, but then banned. So this copy was converted to PAL. I want it back!

Before I get too far into things, this is for WINDOWS OS COMPUTERS! I know there are plenty of Linux applications out there to do the same things (or at a minimum “very similar things”), but since I work on Windows machines all day, I decided to make it easy on everyone. You have a *nix post you want up here? Send it to me.

So basically you’ll need a few things (besides the obvious):
DVD Ripper – any should do, I use DVDFab though
VOB Blanker – free program
DVD Shrink – another free program

1. Rip the Movie (not to ISO format)
2. Open VOB Blanker, search for the IFO file
3. In the middle of the screen, find the chart with your VOB file listed
4. Right-click on the VOB file and select Video Attrib
5. In the window that opens up, select NTSC instead of PAL (or the opposite if you need PAL instead. Do the math)
6. On the bottom of the main window press the giant PROCESS!! button.
7. After about 10 minutes, your movie should be finished. Burn the movie – I used DVD Shrink to do this

It tested fine so far, and I’m not aware of any complications. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you.