Home again, mplayer accelerated repo update

So I am back home in Vancouver, for the next three months at least. You don't realize how much you miss a fast quad-core desktop with dual 20" screens until you have to work on an Atom with an 9" screen for a month! Wish I could get something around the size of the P with a bit more power. I wouldn't mind paying for it. Sigh.

My partner bought me a 23" monitor for Christmas, which was very nice. There's no way I can actually attach three monitors to my desktop, though, so I had to think of something else to do with it. I decided to set it up as a second TV in the bedroom, so I went out and bought a second HD cable box. Just had the usual trials hooking the thing up - had to power my server machine down as it was plugged into literally the only socket I could actually use to plug another powerstrip into, bought a cable I didn't need, found out my amplified coax splitter's completely useless as it doesn't handle internet signals, just all the normal stuff - I finally had the new 'TV' all hooked up, hit the big power switches, and....blank screen. Disaster. Finally I twigged that Shaw's HD TV signal is 1080i, and guessed the new Acer monitor can't handle a 1080i signal. Google reports another guy who figured much the same thing. It took 10 minutes for me to realize I could just use my partner's monitor as the 'TV', and let him use the new monitor - his monitor is a Samsung 22" which can handle 1080i input. So I set it up that way, so ironically he's now using the gift he bought me :). The new cable box can actually function as a PVR with an external hard disk, too, which is neat. Of course Shaw sells an external hard disk with a price markup labelled as a 'PVR expander' and keeps fairly quiet about the fact that it's just an eSATA disk and any old eSATA disk will do, but hey, what more do you expect. So I'll try and find an IDE -> eSATA enclosure (they're quite rare as it's not a very common need, but Netlink seems to have one) so I can reuse an old 250GB IDE disk I have lying around.

In Fedora news, I updated my system to Rawhide today. It's boringly functional - actually, it made my scanner work, which it didn't seem to in F12. The only exciting bit is that Evolution seemed completely broken at first (with 2.29.4) and is still slightly broken (with 2.29.5) - it forgets how wide the side pane is supposed to be every time it starts up, and doesn't seem to count the total messages in the Inbox. But that's pretty small beans for Rawhide. C'mon, people, break stuff!

I have also done an update to my accelerated mplayer repository for Fedora. New versions of mplayer-accelerated and vdpau-video. I'm not entirely sure what's changed in 'em (Gwenole doesn't provide a changelog and I can't be bothered diffing).

I will be working on an update to the official RPM Fusion mplayer package today and tomorrow, as well. It's due a version bump and could have VDPAU support built in, and there's several bug reports I could look at too. So expect that reasonably soon.