PowerDVD 9 10% off Halloween Promo
This October, Cyberlink have a great Halloween offer with 10% Off their best selling products: PowerDVD 9, PowerDirector 8 and Power Producer 5.
This offer applies to both full and upgrade versions of these 3 products so now is a great time to be upgrading your HTPC with software that can do true Dolby and DTS TrueHD bitstreaming!
Purchasers in the US ONLY will receive an additional incentive of 3 Weeks Free DVD rentals at BLOCKBUSTER.com. These store wide specials will end on November 4th.

Power DVD 9 10% Off Coupon
PowerDVD 9 Ultra, Deluxe, Standard ,Upgrade - 10% off
Coupon Code: pao4jevmn
Date: From 08/01/09 to 08/31/09
PowerDVD 9- 10% off coupon: pao4jevmn

I have been using the fabulous Power DVD 8 for a while on my HTPC mostly due to the ability to hardware decode High Definition content like h264 using only your Graphics card – utilising next to no CPU cycles. This method works with Xp & Vista Media Centre and Open Source HTPC frontends such as Mediaportal.
Now is the time to upgrade!
PowerDVD offers the best HD and Blu-ray playback around! Use TrueTheater to up DVD quality for viewing in an HD display. Navigate easily with Fancy View, flipping through your movie titles and previewing content. There are plenty of other useful interactive features for die-hard movie fans and the casual viewer alike. PowerDVD 9 is truly the way HD and Blu-ray were meant to be enjoyed!
Specs
Spectacular High-Definition Playback on your PC
- TrueTheater™ Technology for maximizing your DVD Playback: Just when you thought DVD movie quality couldn’t get any better, PowerDVD 9 DVD Playback Software introduces TrueTheater™ technology that radically enhances your viewing pleasure.
- Watch Blu-ray movies like never before: Enjoy the best video quality and an enriched movie experience with interactive features and next-gen movie navigation. Display advanced content such as crew commentaries and access online content and games.
- Play more HD video formats like MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), MPEG-2 HD, WMV-HD, and SMPTE VC-1 files with the world’s no.1 Blu-ray/DVD playback software, PowerDVD; redefining the high-definition landscape in movie experiences.
- PC friendly for enjoying smooth high-definition playback on both powerful or energy-efficient computers or notebooks! PowerDVD ensures the best quality for playing all your favorite movies on any type of home PC: desktop or notebook. This way, you are guaranteed a high-definition experience on a variety of hardware platforms.
Blu-ray Disc Interaction
- The new universe of Blu-ray Discs not only delivers the best video quality ever, but innovative ways of interacting with the movie itself.
- Explore your favourite Blu-ray movies: animated menus, web-enabled features like downloading trailers, instant messaging functions, uploading videos, and lots more with BD-Live and Bonus View.
High-Definition Home Theater Audio
PowerDVD 9 Blu-ray/DVD playback software envelopes you with lossless high-definition audio, bringing movies to life in your living room.
- New support for HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) 1.3 allows simultaneous lossless transference of high-definition audio using one hassle-free cable.
- TrueTheater™ Surround imitates a multichannel surround sound for conventional stereo speakers and headphones while providing audio expansion and effects for up to 8-channel audio systems.
- Check out below the vast array of supported audio formats & audio technologies
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Supported Audio Formats
DTS-HD* (7.1 channels)
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Dolby TrueHD (7.1-channel)
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DTS-HD (5.1 channels)
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Dolby Digital EX (7.1-channel)
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DTS-ES*
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Dolby Digital Plus (7.1-channel)
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DTS Neo:6*
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* Only available via Advanced Audio Pack |
Supported Audio Technologies
CyberLink TrueTheater™ Surround
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Dolby Pro Logic IIx surround sound
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Dolby Virtual Speaker
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Dolby Headphone
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The Web browser OS?
After what seems like years since the rumours surfaced of a Google powered Open Source Operating system, Google has finally unveiled their plans. Unlike The Google Android system, GCOS will be initially be targeted at netbooks with scope to move to higher end platforms.
Google Chrome OS
In fact it is a web browser based OS meaning you can have the GCOS experience in any compliant web Browser:
At its heart, the new Google Chrome will be running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.
Find $10,000 with Microsoft IE8
In a refreshingly to the point Internet Explorer 8 promotional stunt, Microsoft has buried $10,000 somewhere on the internet. Be the first to find it and you keep it.

How?
Visit the IE8 $10,000 competition website and follow tengrand_ie8 on Twitter:
- To enter the competition, the entrant must follow clues released by @Tengrand_IE8 on Twitter and on www.tengrandisburiedhere.com. The clues section on www.tengrandisburiedhere.com is only viewable in Internet Explorer 8. These clues will lead the entrant to the hidden webpage.
- The hidden webpage can only be viewed in Internet Explorer 8. The entrant must have download Internet Explorer 8 to successfully view the hidden webpage. Upon discovery of the hidden webpage, the entrant must register his/her details, via the hidden webpage 'Claim' button.
- The first successful registration received via the hidden webpage by the Promoter will be adjudged the winner of the competition.
Convert a gpt protective partition
I recently put a 64 bit Vista formatted Drive into my XP HTPC box and found it was unreadable and could not be formatted. Computer Management displayed the drive as a GPT Protective Partition. Unfortunately Windows XP cannot read or write this type of filesystem let alone mount the drive. A GPT disk uses the GUID partition table (GPT) disk partitioning system.
Your Options are:
- Run the DOS command line "cmd" in Start - Run
- Type DiskPart” at the prompt.
- “list disk” will show all disks on your machine and find the Disk number you want to convert.
- Change the focus to the required disk by entering the following “select disk X″ where X is the disk number you require to convert.
- Entering “clean” command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors or if you are using Windows Vista or 2003 server enter "convert mbr"
or Using the Windows interface
- Back up or move all volumes on the basic GUID partition table (GPT) disk you want to convert into a master boot record (MBR) disk. If the disk does not contain any partitions or volumes, skip to step 2.
- For more information about backing up volumes, see Related Topics.
Open Computer Management (Local).
- In the console tree, click Computer Management (Local), click Storage, and then click Disk Management.
- If the disk does not contain any partitions or volumes, skip to step 5. Otherwise, right-click the any volumes on the disk and then click Delete Volume.
- Right-click the GPT disk that you want to change into an MBR disk, and then click Convert to MBR disk.
Windows XP Disc support Windows FAQ.