Category Archives: Home PC

Stuff that relates to home computing. HTPC, gaming etc…

pc engine – pfsense as router / firewall

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download (1)Just built a pfsense router on  a pc engine to replace my aging 7390 fritzbox…. Very very awesome and fast!

Perfect for UFB (ultra fast broadband) here in New Zealand – FTTH has arrived :)

I’m currently running these services on it (2 x 1GHZ cpu, 4GB RAM, 16GB msata SSD);

  • dhcpd – DHCP server
  • miniupnpd – UPnP server
  • ntpd – NTP server
  • squid – Transparent Proxy & Reverse Proxy
  • snort – IDS (Intrusion Detection System) / IPS (Intrusion Prevention System)
  • ssd – SSH server
  • unbound – DNS Server
  • ipsec – IPsec VPN (site to site VPN)
  • openvpn – Open VPN (client VPN)

Check these links for some great advise…

https://mateh.id.au/2014/09/build-awesome-apu-based-pfsense-router/

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/other/security/security-howto/31406-build-your-own-ids-firewall-with-pfsense

http://homeservershow.com/building-your-own-super-router-with-pfsense-and-untangle.html

Grab hardware here – http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm

IMG_5305

MediaPortal – Codecs

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SAF seems to be one of the best option out there, the author has a nice post here : http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/codecs-external-players-55/saf-v4-00rc1-standalone-filters-dxva-ready-mpeg2-h-264-vc-1-a-44614/

I was previously using the mega codec pack, but found lately there was some issues with it jerk zooming? – in dark scenes it was jumping in and out. I’ve gone through all the filter settings and ensured everything was disabled, but still the problem comes up. Installing SAF has removed these problems.

There is another codec pack to grab if your decoding HD tv – google – HD Pack 2.2

Updated : 26/11/2009

I’ve started to use windows 7 since it has some really good builtin drivers for my tv card. Media center seems to be alot more responsive than mediaportal has ever been. Also more stable. Hopefully things change as it matures.

PC Build – May be time to upgrade my rig soon

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This is my current gaming machine which i built earlier this year – i decided to have had a play with water cooling before i put anything too expensive into the case. :)

Its a Intel E8400 running at 4.14Ghz, i’ve only got 2Gb of ram and 2 x 120Gb HDD’s in raid 0

I’ll keep the case and water cooling setup when i move to i7. Probably just grab a 1366 mount kit for my fusion v2 waterblock.

Since these pics I’ve put anti-cink slinkys on all of the tubes (when the water was getting warm the tube was kinking).

I’ll probably drop the chipset cooling with i7 as well – keeping the cooling specifically for the CPU.

Encoding Vids – Atomic advice on mencoder

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One of the writers for Atomic mag spent some time upscalling his dvd collection to 720p. This is the commandline he used in the end to get a great clear result.

commandline ;

mencoder -sws 9 -vf scale=1280:720,hqdn3d=6:5:8,unsharp=17×5:1,pp=ha:128:7/va/dr/al – ovc x264 -x264encopts subq=9:b_pyramid:weight_b:8x8dct:me=umh:cabac:partitions=all:trellis=2:mixed_refs:direct_pred=auto:psy-rd=1.0,0.2:qp=16:threads=2:nodct_decimate:nofast_pskip:bframes=6:frameref=6 -oac copy dvd://1 -o output.avi

Of course it may change depending on what you are encoding, but its a good place to start. Check the atomic fourms (au) for more detail etc…