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The main component in playing HD content on a media centre PC is Cyberlink PowerDVD. There aren’t many (if any) alternatives at present and it is a seriously flawed piece of software (possibly due to the lack of any serious competition).

So What’s wrong with it?

Due to the flux in the HD-DVD and Blu-ray specifications, and the various implementations of these by the disks coming onto the market, updates to PowerDVD are relatively frequent. This could usually be considered a good thing but unfortunately, it has introduced something of a lottery as to what will play with a particular version; fix one thing and break another seems to be the norm.

Not to mention that during one seeming minor release (somewhere between 3319a & 3319f) the ability to play HD content from the hard disk was removed.

Never fear though. Such restrictive measures and bugs are like red rags to the resourful bulls out there.
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A new job and it’s time to set up a development environment again. Unusually, this time there is little definition as to what that environment should consist of.

Being a Java development role that includes some support of existing applications, it’s not exactly a clean sheet; Java, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, JBoss, Oracle ect. all the usual suspects are present… looks like another job for eclipse et al.

And since it’s eclipse and there’s no point in duplicating the information, here is a useful link to 10 Eclipse Navigation Shortcuts Every Java Programmer Should Know.

Eclipse Plugins
jadclipse for class decompilation
findbugs

Tools
XML Marker

Firefox Plugins
Firebug
XPather
IE Tab