Cool tips n tricks related to smartphones, tablets and computer

You may know that windows 7 uses its own set of media codecs to decode certain type of audio and video formats. This can be a major hindrance for folks who watch videos using windows Media Player or windows Media Center, as the default decoder is a little bland when compared to third-party decoders such as ffdshow, CoreAVC, MPCVideoDec etc. Although you can use a few registry tweaks to force windows to use third-party filters, we understand that not everyone wants to risk playing with windows registry editor. Win7DSFilterTweaker provides a simple solution to this very problem. It has been developed to force windows Media Player or Media Center to use your favorite DirectShow decoder. It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of third-party DirectShow filters including LAV Video, ffdshow, MPCVideoDec, CoreAVC H.264, DivX MPEG-4, Gabest MPEG-2, Bitcontrol MPEG-2, MONOGRAM AAC and so on.

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There are numerous applications available out there that let you assign custom global keyboard shortcuts to a specific media player, so that you can easily play or pause a media file, control volume, etc., even if your media player is not active, but what if you want to assign hotkeys to not just one, but a number of different media players that you use? Meet MPH (Media Player Hotkeys) – an application that is designed to configure a single set of hotkey combinations for multiple media players including VLC, windows Media Player, KM Player, Winamp, Media Player Classic and so on. Apart from using hotkeys, you can use mouse buttons and scroll wheel to perform different tasks as well.

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Back in May 2011, we covered Miro 4, a powerful media manager application with iTunes-like functionalities. What makes Miro different from other media managers is its ability to sync media files with android-powered devices. Now, almost after one year, Miro dev team has finally released Miro 5. It brings various backend changes to the actual software. The obvious mainstay of the update is HD video downloading from Vimeo feeds and an addition of eMusic in the Stores section. It now offers better and faster device syncing and file format conversion, a new album viewing mode to categorize the music by artists or albums, and lastly, the app can now look for information about artists and songs from numerous online sources. More to follow.

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Media center applications have become a popular phenomenon among HDTV enthusiasts. While the concept of  “media center” might have been brought to mainstream market by Microsoft with their windows Media Center application, there are a few other media center applications that have become quite popular such as QVIVO and XMBC. MediaPortal is another media center/HTPC application that let you access all your media collection from one place. It is an open source program that provides ‘10-foot user interface’ to play, pause & record live TV, play videos/DVDs/music and view photos. The application supports a number of plugins and skin packs. The default UI of the application offers an eye-candy blue theme that supports navigation via keyboard, mouse, gamepads, compatible remote controls and even smartphones. More to follow after the jump.

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windows Media Player is widely used to not only manage huge music collection, but also to create and share music playlists across the Homegroup users. Although windows Media Player provides an easy way to organize music playlists, share media files with network users and automatically manage music files in pre-defined categories, it doesn’t come with an option to automatically download and display lyrics of songs. If you’ve been looking for a lyrics plugin for windows 8 Media Player, give Lyrics Plugin a try. It’s lightweight lyrics plugin for windows Media Player that also supports the latest version – windows Media Player 12. Unlike other media player lyrics plugins, it doesn’t require following a lengthy process to integrate the plugin; just run the installer and it will automatically add the plugin to windows Media Player.

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SPlayer is an open source media player that claims to be (in a lot of ways) better than other popular free media players such as Storm player, QQ Player, Realplayer and KMPlayer. The application supports many file formats and also calls itself to be the lightest of all. Some of the key features of this player include auto-matching subtitles, GPU usage optimization, startup speed, optimized CPU utilization, ease of use and a simple yet elegant interface. The player uses various optimization engines to present fascinating picture and sound quality, such as ShaderEngine, LiveColor and SmartAmplify technologies. The application is available as both installable amd portable versions for on-the-go usability. Does it live up to all the hoopla its creating? Let’s find out.

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Okay, you grabbed your favorite movie off the internet that you were waiting to watch for quite a long time, and now you think the audio quality is not as good as your ears deserve it. Maybe something messed up during the encoding process, or your audio equipment is not properly configured. If the issue belongs to the latter category, then try out AC3Filter. It’s a powerful application to properly optimize your PC’s audio output. This utility is an excellent DirectShow filter, designed for real time audio decoding and processing that can decode AC3/DTS/MPEG audio formats. The application supports a wide variety of available media players such as Media Player Classic, ZoomPlayer, PowerDVD, WinDVD etc. You can tinker number of different settings from the application’s configuration console. Some of the key features include Multi-channel audio output from all sources on SPDIF, automatic gain control, clipping, Dynamic Range Compression, and Dolby Surround/Pro Logic/Pro Logic II.

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Streaming media across a number of different devices connected to your home network is fun. With the advent of WiFi being integrated into nearly every device, such as laptops, iphone, android, Blu-ray players and even LCD TVs, people love to sync media files across their entire local network. Home Media Center is a server application to stream media files such as photos, video and music to UPnP / DLNA compatible devices. You can quickly and easily generate a local web host address, which can be used to get access to the files placed on your media center using a web (HTML) and UPnP interface. Supported output media files are MPEG2, WMV and WebM. More to follow after the jump.

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It’s been rumored that sooner or later apple may come out with a television with unique capabilities, but until then there’s the apple TV device for viewing movies, music, and photos on a TV.

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If you often download videos and music files instead of purchasing them in iTunes, you have to then manually add them to apple’s native multimedia behemoth. It isn’t difficult, but if you keep downloading media and neglect adding it to iTunes, you get clutter, and lots of it. A much simpler way of doing so is by pasting your media files directly to the Automatically Add to iTunes folder. By adding files directly to this folder, iTunes indexes them and they appear in their respective category when you launch the software. Bear in mind that this means the file is copied to iTunes, and not just indexed at its original location.

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