That should read "Windows Updates in Windows Vista and 7 are now done within the OS . . ."

Windows Update in Windows Vista and are now done within the OS primarily and there is no Microsoft Update website for these OS's. This is what happens when you attempt to navigate to the update site on Windows 7:

IE8: http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/2002/ie8windowsupdate.png

Firefox 3.5: http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4264/ffwindowsupdate.png

I agree. They're just trying to pretend that they didn't knowingly turn a quality service into shit. BBC was known for having some of the better HDTV streams.

The fact is that you need 16+ Mbit/sec to maintain consistent quality in fast-paced scenes using the commercial hardware encoders used for TV. You can get away with lower bitrates for Blu-Ray encodes since you typically are not using the entire area (1920x800), it's a two-pass encode, and the encoder can test with different settings to get the best result, for each source.

Comcast's HDTV quality was horrible and their On Demand HD was pretty much unwatchable. In fast-paced scenes, the green was filled with huge blocks. Scene-group 1.1 GB HDTV encodes were far superior.

So far, nothing really can touch a quality Blu-Ray source, and the high-quality encodes available from private trackers are transparent in many cases while using avg bitrates of 12-15 Mbit/sec at 1080p - often lower than HDTV.

These are the Reference frame limits in Level 4.1

Resolution | no. ref
-----------|---------
  1280x544 | 12
  1280x720 | 9
  1920x800 | 5
  1920x816 | 5
  1920x1080 | 4

If none of the resolutions above match your source, use the following equation to work it out for yourself:

                          8388608
                __________________

                  (width x height)

However, I've seen Level 5.1 encodes with 16 ref frames at full 1920x1200.

Well, on my Core i7/Core 2 Duo systems, running a variety of decodeds (ffdshow, MPC's internal decoder, and CoreAVC), and in fact every system I have used, that is the case.

If you want to check this, get the Blu-Ray source for Defiance, and I can send you an x264 encode of the first few minutes of the film - lower bitrate, but much higher CPU usage because of the settings used. In that case, the encode was also 4.1 but it used much more aggressive (higher quality) settings.

No, those aren't the only differences. For one, you are limited in the number of reference frames you can use at a given resolution at 4.1. For example, at full 1920x1200 I don't think you can use more than 4 or 5 reference frames at 4.1, but I've seen 5.1 encodes that use 16 reference frames for animated films that achieve very high compression ratios while maintaining transparency.

4.1's maximum maximum allowed bitrate is not the constraint. Doom9 or Wikipedia can provide much more detailed information about the differnces between levels, but I know from HDBits that the # of reference frames is one of the big differences.

You're on Windows 7 so you're using VirtualPC 2010 which supports XP Mode. MS removed Hyper-V, so now VirtualPC has no support for Linux/Unix based-OS's. If you were on XP, you would have VirtualPC 2007 which can be used to install Linux. I know Ubuntu 8.10 worked on VirtualPC 2007. So, you have to specify which version you're using.

As for VMWare server. I installed 2.0.2 on Windows 7 x64 without issue. Did it complain about unsigned drivers during the install process, or simply fail to work? The install seemingly went fine here. I see two new VMWare network adapaters, which presumably required the installation of a driver.

I noticed the quality of HDTV increased dramatically when going from Comcast Cable to Verizon FiOS. Also, FiOS has pretty much every network show on demand for free, with limited commercials.

Yes, it IS possible to get higher picture quality out of a lower bitrate, but not with all else equal. For example, you can get higher quality with CPU-intensive settings using H.264 5.1 Profile than you can with H.264 4.1 (what Blu-Ray's/HD DVDs use), at the same bitrate. You're giving up CPU cycles in decoding for lower video size. This is why x264 can produce near-transparent encodes of Blu-Ray movies at about half the size. x264 uses much more demanding settings.

x264 at 20 Mbit which high-quality settings is far more demanding than a 40 Mbit H.264 stream from a Blu-Ray.

Great, I'll try that then!

Let me describe how it works in Windows 7 as my request may not be clear. From my reading on the topic, I simply don't think it's possible from the GUI.

Windows Explorer has a "Homegroup" and a "Network" tab which is automatically populated with available networked machines. When I resume my laptop from standby, within about 5 seconds I see "Jason (Jason-Laptop) pop up in the Homegroup and Network section.

See an example below:

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/322/homegroup.png

In addition, I can aggregate folders with the same type of data into a single "Library". For example I have a Television and a Movie library on my desktop. The former contains 3 folders spanning 3 hard drives while the latter contains 2 folders spanning 2 hard drives. Rather than showing as Television1, Television2, Television3, Windows 7 merely shows the single library. If you drag a file to the library, it copies to the default directory (specified when you create the library). I doubt this is supported in any OS other than Win 7.

I did the latter:

Mount your shares the usual way.

Go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and drag your shares into the Login Items.

The problem with this solution is that the Windows system is not on 24/7. It's on perhaps 12 hours a day. So, when the OS X machine logs on, and can't connect, it spits out numerous error messages annoying said Mac user. This resulted in me quickly disabling that option.

Would the result be different using the /etc/fstab method?

Does anyone actually use Quicktime for video playback in Windows? The first thing I do after installing iTunes is to disable the Quicktime plugin in Firefox. The WMP plugin is far superior in functionality and is less annoying, to boot.

Yeah, it was weird.

But there is also the issue that you must actually mount a Windows share. This requires manually mounting the share each time you want to use it, or doing so when the machine turns on. The problem with the latter solution is that it wont' work if the shares aren't available 24/7 as it will lead to numerous errors about being unable to mount the shares.

I don't really understand why OS X and Linux treat shares this way. In Windows, you can access shares simply through a desktop shortcut, or by "\\hostname\share" or "\\IP address\share\". In addition, all computers which have enabled file & print sharing automatically show up on the network.

Homegroup makes the process even easier as it automatically displays any member of the homegroup, allows sharing of libraries rather than simply folders, and allows remote searching of the host's index - allowing for instant searches including full-text search of documents.

Is there any way to access a Windows share without mounting the share? Alternatively, can a shortcut be added to the desktop to mount the share, rather than the "Go > Connect to Server --> Mount share" method. I honestly can't see my roommate doing this manually.

When I "Right Click, Get Info, Open With, Change All" it changes the icon of the individual file to a VLC icon, and will in fact play with VLC. However, it doesn't change the default program or icon for any other AVIs.

That's why I believe the problem is the one I posted above.