goon's Journal: good guys, bad guys. dvd rce. gnome saves the day

good guys
for the year and a bit I've been able to regularly catch up with an old show that I hadn't watched for some 20yrs. every friday afternoon, 1400 I could watch, pretty much add free on Channel 31 (which transmits from deep within the bowels of story hall). At the time it was last on tv I was at uni where I remember the 'absolutely positivly' t-shirts for sale in the story hall lobby.

bad guys
That was until the ABA decided to stop commercial transmissions. Well this was pretty much the end of friday afternoon episodes. Well so I thought.

• ... all this mucking around is because of rce ...

dvd & rce
I noticed my favourite haunt, minatour, you can get the box set for $450AUD which is a bit steep. Oh well. That's until amazon uk discounted it for £45 delivered. Hmm looking better. But then what do I play it on. Could try it on my ps2 scee3000 but hacks only apply to 1000 early models. (remember that ps2 are regionalised much like dvd players). That leaves either trying to see if DVD region X works. I could try to mod the machine but purchasing such chips is illegal in AUS. Didn't feel like laying out another 14 pounds so back to the drawing board.

I got the ps2 back in 2000 with the intention of using it for games, CD's and DVD's. But rce means I can't play anything but region 4. What happens if I want to get a region 2 dvd not released in aus?

This is where gnome, linux, some fancy hardware come to the rescue

gnome and xine: the good guys win
so what's left? Gnome. I recently had a hardware and software upgrade on the linux desktop machine. It has a dvd player. Why didn't I think of it before. Whacked in the disc. Loaded up xine, played around with the vision controls and whammo, no more rce.

The board has a late model NVidia graphics card so I'm now looking out for a suitable cable to run the signal to the tv. But cripes now I can do some coding while I watch my weekly episode. This week, 'Old Dog with New Tricks'. Only 2700min left to go.

This is why I like linux :)