PattayaPete

Quoted me 1500 baht for a small unit and 10% discount on contract.  I will say he fixed a long standing problem that the unit in the bedroom made a rattling noise (very annoying).  Previous guy tried but couldn't fix it.

I have quite a few units some of which are not used much so we agreed some done 3 monthly and some done once a year.  For me a failure is a catastrophe so happy to over service the main units.

TLDR: Nick is offering a home handyman repair and Air Con service. It is called Pattaya Home Improvements, website here: https://pattayahomeimprovement.com/

The story.

I first met Nik many years ago.

I’d always wanted to have a Home Theatre but could never find anyone in Pattaya with the know how to set up what I wanted. One day I saw an ad for a new home theatre store in Pattaya run by a farang. I got in touch with Tim and eventually built the system I wanted. Although Tim the farang did all the planning, Nick the Thai and his team did all the work which included laying cables installing an automatic screen in the ceiling and various other complicated bits.

I was a very happy chappy for many years but then, as always happens with these things, something broke. I called Tim . . . no answer.  Further research revealed that the shop had closed and Tim was back in England. Damn. Through a bit of luck I managed to get Nick’s number so I called him. He came over and sorted the problem for me. Since then I have called on Nick a few times to sort out audio and video stuff I wanted done. Nick is one of the few Thai’s I have found that really understands this stuff and best of all he lived in the USA for many years so speaks perfect English.

He recently sorted something out for me and offered to clean our ACs. Although I have used an AC guy for many years he was a hassle to deal with, spoke no English and was so busy that if something urgent required attention you just had to wait. Nick did good work and I did sign a 12 month contract whereby he will come back every three months and clean again. I’ll see how that works out but it will be good to forget about it and just let Nick take care.

Bottom line is Nick has always done good work for me. Not the cheapest (not overly expensive either) but quality reliable work. He has now set up a business to formalise the work he was doing for many other farangs. I have no hesitation in recommending him. Here is the website . . .

https://pattayahomeimprovement.com/

I found this fellow in my kitchen today.  I tried to catch it for release outside my property but could not.  Best I could do was scare it out the window so it is now in my garden.  Should I be worried about that?

This thread is like a time warp.  Ponzi, intrinsic value, tulips blah blah blah.  The world moved on from these uninformed but oft repeated memes, years ago.

I got into bitcoin in 2013 when the price was $35.  It had risen meteorically from a few cents and people were lamenting then that it was too late to get in.  The price today is $2148 for one bitcoin!  Bitcoin has been my best investment ever, in a lifetime  of investing, by orders of magnitude.  

From a purely speculative point of view there are only two outcomes for bitcoin.  A huge price increase to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands or total collapse.  There are no other options.  So from a purely speculative point of view you should invest a modest amount that you are prepared to lose.  If the upside plays out you win big and if the down side plays out you lose your modest investment.  Do be aware that a bitcoin can be divided into very small pieces so you can easily buy $1 or $5 or $23.25 worth if you want.

From a scientific point of view, how and why bitcoin works, has intrinsic value and is undoubtedly the greatest invention since the internet itself is a fascinating story.  Understanding takes a bit of effort but the effort is well worth it.  A google search will lead you to endless resources to facilitate a decent study of the concept.  If you really understand bitcoin you will be blown away by the sheer brilliance of its invention and the great beauty of its form.  

So either put in the effort to properly understand how it works or speculate without knowledge.  In either case I predict you will be a big winner.  Alternatively, parrot the ponzi, Chinese, tulip memes and sit on the side line and continue to miss out.

The bitcoin naysayers always make me laugh, then shake my head sadly.

For the last 8 years we have watched banks commit fraud, launder money for terrorists and drug cartels and almost destroy the world's financial system. As politicians kowtow to the bankers in exchange for "campaign contributions" a derivative mountain of crap has been created by banks which hangs over the world like the sword of Damocles threatening everyone's financial well being. Nearly every major bank in the world has admitted to these crimes and been fined, in some cases billions of dollars.

Meanwhile the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, The Bank of England and the Bank of Japan have engineered financial policies that have enriched the top 0.01% while impoverishing the rest of us. Politicians all over the world have changed banking rules so the next crash, which appears imminent, will be financed by the people with money in the bank. It's called "bail ins" and it means your money is not safe in any bank, regardless of claims that it is "insured".

The above claims are not controversial or conspiracy theory or crack pot ideas. Google any of them and you will find all have been reported on by the mainstream financial press and respected economists. The problems are well documented and understood.

Yet, despite this bitcoin is laughed at by ignorant people who have no understanding of the beauty and brilliance of the bitcoin system. With no serious research they parrot the claims of tulips, ponzi and fraud while continuing to use the fraudulent, ponzi creating, derivative loving banks. The share ignorance of it is breathtaking.

Will bitcoin save the financial world? Probably not as we are now too deep into the muck of the world's financial quagmire. Even as I write this many major banks have set up bitcoin departments and blockchain study groups to work out how they can subvert the bitcoin system as well. Subversion through control is what they are researching, not destruction. They know crypto currencies are the future but they want to control them. They will fail but cause plenty of damage along the way. Bitcoin itself will survive the next financial crises with ease and will provide some protection to people holding bitcoin (as will gold and silver).

Laugh it off at your own expense, I don't care. I've done the research and I understand why bitcoin is a revolution that could save all of us from the criminals that control the system now. With the internet the information is available to anyone who wants it. Do the research or return to your bubble of ignorant bliss. Your call, naysayers.

But everyone tells me drugs are ok,

you could probably learn a hell of a lot more from the "full story" rather than the "shock value" in the report, one would be the full effects of drugs in society.

This is not a story of the effects of drugs on society. It is a story on the effects of making drugs illegal and therefore dealing in drugs highly profitable for the lowest scum in society. Why do people always confuse cause and effect. The cause is the law the effect is death, destruction and mass incarceration.

The drugs thing always comes up with bitcoin and always makes me laugh. The total value of all bitcoin is presently around 10 billion dollars. Keep that figure in mind as you read what congressional investigators have to say about money laundering with dollars . . . . . .

"There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: "Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States".

If illegal dealings are a reason to shut something down then the US dollar has to be top of the list.

If you missed it, HSBC bank was fined more than 1 billion dollars last year for laundering 3 billion dollars of Mexican drug money. (Justice Department spokesman comment "If we arrested someone at HSBC Bank they would loose their Banking Permit and that could potentially bring down the banking system") ie - Too Big To Jail.

Bitcoin is strictly amateur hour when it comes to money laundering, the banks and US dollar have that business well covered thank you very much.

We have been told for decades that a small amount of inflation is a good thing, 2 or 3% perhaps. Why is it a good thing? Well primarily because it allows governments to reduce the value of their debt. For the rest of us, this means our money loses value and so encourages us to spend now rather than to save because our money will be worth less tomorrow than it is today. Considering nations in the past have been built and thrived on peoples savings but now are built and decline on debt, we can see where this path has taken us.

The idea that a deflationary currency like bitcoin would cause hoarding is unfounded. People have to eat and have somewhere to live, they want stuff like cars and computers and phones, and they want to impress their neighbors. To get these things they need to spend money. However if they can save and the value of their money increases they may well hold for a bit longer so they can buy a better thing tomorrow. They will still eat today, live somewhere today and buy stuff today and perhaps save some today to buy something better tomorrow.

A deflationary currency will send the message that you can be better off, you can get ahead by being thrifty. It will damage the credit card pushers and the pay day loan pushers and the banks. The banks now account for approximately 20% of GDP. That means banks are skimming 20% off the top of most transactions to provide a service that in most cases is unnecessary. Since the 1980s real wages have been dropping as the banks and financial institutions and large corporations have diverted an ever bigger share of the economy into their own pockets. This is all tied into finantialization of the economy.

Bitcoin provides a way that the ordinary person can fight back. A deflationary currency is a key to that fight and is a crowning attribute of bitcoin by design. It is not a structural flaw, it is a structural triumph. People who have been raised in our current inflationary, money printing forever paradigm have trouble getting their heads around this. Bitcoin although limited to 21 million whole coins can be subdivided currently to 8 decimal places into a unit called a Satoshi. With our 21 million coins we can have 21 million to the power of 8 Satoshis which is a very large number. The eight decimal places is an arbitrary limit which can easily be increased. As the bitcoin economy grows the value of a Satoshi will grow. Most people will never own a whole bitcoin but they may have a few thousand Satoshis. You can buy 1000 Satoshis today for 6 cents. Probably the world's greatest bargain.

In a deflationary economy banks can go back to providing services for its customers like secure storage and real loans to real people instead of the never ending derivative spiral and other non-productive financial games they play today. The transition will not be easy and certainly bankers will fight to keep the crap system we have now. Another strength of bitcoin is that it will co-exist with the old economy and so the transition will be done voluntarily by people choosing to adopt it. The old system can carry on for as long as the bankers can bamboozle the uninformed into accepting their inflationary, fractional reserve paradigm.

The smart people will just opt out of the old system and pick up the new.

Your graph is nice but it ignores the fact bitcoin has been through at least 10 bubble phases and always recovered. Some of the highlights when it went from a few cents to a dollar then fell back to less than a cent. Then it went to $30 and fell back to $15. Then it went to $220 and fell back to $60. Then it went to $500 and fell back to $250. Then it went to $1200 and fell back to $450. Presently its at $600. All this in 3 years so nobody is saying bitcoin has not been volatile. Those that have ridden the wave though are pretty happy with the outcome.

It is still very early days for bitcoin and you can expect more volatility. Some of us have made plenty of money along the way, buying the dips and selling the peaks. However for most people buy and hold has proven to be a successful strategy. People like to make fun of the $1200 high saying somebody lost money at that point but in reality it only reached that peak for a few hours. For 99.9% of its life bitcoin has been worth considerably less than it is today. True, some people buy the highs and sell the dips but those people really should not be involved in any sort of investment.

Eat Me restaurant in Bangkok accepts bitcoin. http://www.eatmerestaurant.com/

You can find other Bangkok merchants here: http://www.bitcoinrealmthai.com/city/bangkok#

I first got into bitcoin early last year when the price was around $30. I've been buying steadily since then and also accept bitcoin for payment at my business, The Pattaya Beer Garden.

How do I pay in BTC at the Pattaya Beer Garden. I use Electrum as my wallet and don't (at present) have a mobile app for it.

Computer based wallets like Electrum are very good for storing your bitcoin and spending it on the internet. However if you want to pay a merchant at a physical business you will need a wallet on your smartphone as well. I'd recommend blockchain.info to get a wallet for an Android or Iphone. Like a cash wallet it is not wise to keep much in value there, just the spending money you need. Unlike a cash wallet you can backup your smartphone wallet so that if it is lost or stolen you can still retrieve the bitcoin.

Yes at the Pattaya Beer Garden just tell your server you are paying in bitcoin and she will organize the transaction with you (it involves a tablet she will bring to your table and your phone wallet).

Once you have a phone wallet, you simply scan a QR Code at the merchants and press send. The money will be transferred from your smart phone to the businesses wallet and you are done. No need to disclose any personal information or your account number and no risk of your identity being stolen as it can be with credit cards.

Interesting, I've always viewed them as the new gold. Will look more into it. I love investment ideas. alt=w00t.gif>

Its Pie in the Sky !! Gold has a physical presence what the hell does this imaginary coin have....??

You tell me that and am happy to rethink Bitcoin.

This is the old intrinsic value argument which can be somewhat circular and never really be resolved. For example what is the intrinsic value of a dollar. Most people will say it is guaranteed by the government (not really true since 1971) and some will say it is backed by the might of the American military (more accurate) but its history of losing value is well documented. It's lost 96% of its value since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. It's real value is that people believe in it even with all its faults.

A standard answer for the intinsic value of bitcoin is that the network that supports it is now the most powerful distributed network in the world by several orders of magnitude. This network consisting of millions of nodes distributed throughout the world is made up of millions of computers throughout every country in the world. Anyone can run a bitcoin node and hundreds of thousands of people choose to do so. This network provides the security of bitcoin and because of its distributed de-centralized nature can not be closed down. This network can not be attacked or reproduced without spending millions and millions of dollars. It has many more attributes which I won't go into here but that network is what provides faith and security of bitcoin. Really in one respect its the same as fiat currency, enough people believe in it to give it its present value.

And who certifies the records of who has what bitcoins. And who honors them?

The bitcoin ledger is the true strength behind bitcoin. It is called the blockchain and it the most significant invention in computing since the invention of the internet itself. Bitcoin is only the first application enabled by the blockchain. This ledger is held on the millions of computers mentioned above. The way it is secured and verified is so clever and so secure that you can be assured your ownership of bitcoin is far more secure than your ownership of any other asset. As I said in my first post, most people do not and will never need to know how it works. However if you have an interest in finding this out it is a fascinating and inspiring story of human inventiveness.

If you want a simple introduction to the subject this youtube video is very good.

I first got into bitcoin early last year when the price was around $30. I've been buying steadily since then and also accept bitcoin for payment at my business, The Pattaya Beer Garden.

There are many reasons why I believe bitcoin will succeed and become a viable world currency. In the past year millions of dollars has been raised for bitcoin startup companies and a lot of very smart people have become serious investors. The number of places you can spend bitcoin is rapidly growing with such notable new additions in the past year being Dell Computers, Expedia.com, Overstock.com and of course The Pattaya Beer Garden along with tens of thousands of other businesses. Bitcoin has become much easier to buy and sell and even Thailand now has two bitcoin exchanges where you can buy or sell bitcoin for baht.

There are very good philosophical reasons for wanting bitcoin to succeed. Anyone who understands how the banking system now works, fractional reserves, bailouts and a thousand other ways in which banks leach money out of our capitalist system will be attracted to bitcoin. The way governments create fiat currency and the way fiat currency always devalues (constant inflation) is another reason to favour bitcoin.

However the best reason to get into bitcoin right now is to simply look at the upside and downside.

The downside is that bitcoin may fail. It is a new and experimental currency and it has a lot of powerful enemies like bankers and some politicians. Bitcoin can not be "closed down" by anyone but it can be made illegal or at least very difficult to transact at the point where bitcoin meets fiat currency. We have seen this happen in several countries, including Thailand. However in every case so far bitcoin has survived and even thrived. Currently Ecuador is the only country that has outright declared bitcoin illegal and that just recently. Other bastions of democracy such as China and Russia have attempted to close down bitcoin but have failed and reneged on their negative positions. If bitcoin does fail then obviously its value will go to zero.

The upside is that millions of people have come on board. Venture capital has flowed in to bitcoin in vast amounts and the infrastructure is being built as I write this to make bitcoin a viable and superior world currency. Once it has sufficient momentum it will become unstoppable. We are not there yet but we are closer everyday. Bitcoin makes payments so simple, cheap and quick that its superiority is self evident to anyone who cares to investigate. If bitcoin achieves critical mass then it is a given that its value will increase dramatically. It's supply is strictly limited by the protocol that means if more people want it the only way the can be accommodated is for the price to go up. If the user base expanded to that of say Visa or Mastercard the value of a bitcoin would have to increase many multiples of what it is now.

So if you buy a bitcoin today at around $600 the downside is you may lose that $600 but the upside is you could make many thousands of dollars. You don't even need to buy 1 bitcoin. You can buy a bit which is 1,000th of a bitcoin for 60 cents. Owning a few bits really is a no brainer.

People say bitcoin is hard to understand and hard to keep secure. There is some truth to this. If you really want to understand how bitcoin works there are many resources on the internet that will explain it. However for most people it's a bit like the internet. Do you know how the internet works? How the TCP/IP protocol transfers packets of data with multiple redundancies built in. Probably not, and why should you unless you are interested in techy stuff. You just use it and it works. Well bitcoin will be the same. If you want to know how it works it is a fascinating story and you will be awed by just how clever it is. For most people though its utility is what will count.

The bitcoin protocol is 100% secure and has never been broken by hackers. This means all transactions are 100% safe. Safer say than internet banking and much much safer than a credit card transaction.. However once a transaction has occurred and you own bitcoin then it is more difficult to keep them safe. Not because bitcoin is insecure but because the place most people keep them like a smart phone of home computer is likely very insecure. It is easy for people who understand computer security to keep their bitcoins absolutely secure but not so easy for the average person.

A lot of work has been done and is continuing to make security easy and transparent for the average person. Wallets like Electrum really do make it fairly easy now. For people who do not trust themselves to secure their own bitcoin then websites like coinbase.com will hold your bitcoins very securely. The only problem with coinbase is that you have to trust them not to steal your bitcoin much as you have to trust your bank. For people with a small holding, coinbase is a good solution. If you want to own more than a few thousand dollars worth it is probably worth putting in the effort to understand a good secure wallet like Electrum and keep your bitcoin yourself, offline.

So, don't miss out on what promises to be the most exciting technology since the invention of the internet. Invest a little today even if just 100 or 1,000 baht. You will have a fascinating time working out how to do it and although you may end up losing those few baht you more likely will end up multiplying them many times. Oh, and feel free to drop into the Pattaya Beer Garden and buy a beer with your bitcoin.

I use my video card to bitstream the audio to my amp via HDMI. You need an amp than can accept bitstreams and a video card that can send them. Doing it this way means the audio signal is sent directly as the digital bits that were recorded and your amplifier does all the work of turning that bitstream into sound.

Computers are not designed with the same precision as high end audio products so the sound if you allow the computer to do any processing of the the audio will always be inferior.

Anyone else experiencing this. Started about 2 pm and am getting wild voltage swings from 190 volts to 250 volts. Never experienced this before so not sure what could be causing it. I'm worried about all my electronics being fried.

I had a premium service with 3bb that ran at 4mb and cost 2200 baht a month. Recently decided to "upgrade" it to a non-premium 16mb at half the cost. They made the changes in the office on their computer and gave me a new login and password. I went to my computer, changed the login and password and voila. I now had a terrible service. Max speed was about 1 mb although often would drop to .01 mb. Disconnects every couple of minutes. Basically unworkable.

Many calls to their tech service failed to resolve the problem. The last visiting tech told me it was because the internet shared our phone line and I should get a new dedicated line. I knew this was BS because the service worked fine until I changed to the new package.

The problem for me is that our internet is located at the back of several buildings and far from the phone company box on the street. I had to pay for a tech to run the line from the street box to the computer as the phone company would not do it. To put in a second line would be a pain and unnecessary.

In the end I decided to bite the bullet and pay someone to run a second line as there is no point in arguing with tech support. The guy I got was a phone company tech who did it in his spare time (for a hefty price). Once the new line was run in he swapped the existing service over to it. Still a shared phone and internet service.

Guess what! The internet now runs at 16mb or better and never disconnects. It would appear the old wiring for some reason happily supported the 4 meg service but completely crapped out at faster speeds. I don't know why this should happen but I'd recommend anyone having similar problems to check your internal wiring. That may be where the problem lies. Don't expect the internet tech support people to correctly diagnose this though.

Pawpcorn

It does sound like the dream site BUT when I go there I get redirected to an American site - www.axstv.com. No subtitles there.

Did you post the corect url?

I am a movie fan and have hundreds of movies which I keep on an HTPC. My Thai wife has picked up the addiction from me and also enjoys watching movies. Although her English is OK she prefers movies with Thai subtitles as she otherwise misses stuff.

I buy Blu Ray or DVDs. Some have Thai subtitles some do not. Thaisubtitles.com is a site that has Thai subtitles available for download that can be added to movies (if you know how). Unfortunately the selection there can be a bit odd. They rarely have what I'd call quality movies but more your shoot'em up action style stuff. Also a definite lack of older titles. Also as the subtitles are created by the members translating English subtitles and is a group effort the quality of the translation can be variable.

I often end up buying a second copy of a movie I already own just to get the Thai subtitles. I have become quite good at ripping subtitles and adding them to movies I own. It's not that complicated but it is very hard to learn as subtitles come in many formats and the process differs depending on what format you have.

Native subtitles on DVD and Blu Ray are image files and not generally shared because they can not be manipulated the way text files can be. However it seems to me for non-Thai speakers wanting to add Thai subtitles, these "image" files have a great advantage in so far as you do not need to understand Thai to deal with them.

So, my question is how many people are there like me and would there be enough interest to set up a Thai subtitle sharing site dealing in "image" type Thai subtitles. That's vobsub and pgs subtitles for the technically minded. Given my experience and the number of movies I own with these subtitles I thought I might set it up myself. The I thought there is probably no interest in this so I would be wasting my time.

I started working on the site but the feeling that no one would be interested kind of slowed me down. My reason for posting here is to see what interest there is. The bare bones of the site exists now at www.toozer.com/ThaiSubs

If there is some interest in this then I will finish the site. If this is something you would be interested in let me know by posting here or better joining the site and posting a positive comment. This is absolutely a free site with no advertising.

If you are interested but feel the whole thing would be too technical, express an interest anyway. I am happy to write comprehensive guides to the whole process.

True broadcasts all channels with PCM sound and also Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus on the HD channels.

PCM stand for Pulse Code Modulation and is a digital loss less format. It can contain two channels (stereo) or surround channels (5.1 surround sound). True do NOT broadcast PCM surround, it is always stereo or mono. Actually I don't think any broadcaster transmits PCM surround as it is bandwidth intensive.

The PCM sound can be encoded with Dolby Digital Pro Logic. True does this on some channels. Dolby Digital Pro Logic is a way to emulate surround sound and does a pretty good job of it. It is not as good as the true surround sound of Dolby Digital, but it's not bad. To receive the surround sound you need to have an amplifier or TV that can decode Pro Logic. If you don't then you will just get normal stereo.

As PCM is a loss less format it should sound the best however the DD Pro Logic will not be as convincing as a true surround format like Dolby Digital. CDs you buy in the shop are encoded with PCM stereo sound.

Dolby Digital is a true surround format. It contains 6 discreet channels often described as 5.1. They are Left, Centre, Right, Left Rear, Right Rear and LFE or Bass channel. To fit all this information into the signal it has to be compressed and so it is a lossy format. That means the sound you get is not exactly the same as the sound that was recorded. Similar to what MP3s do to CD tracks.

So Dolby Digital will not have the fidelity of a PCM signal but will have real surround sound. Most people can not hear the difference in fidelity so if you like surround then it is a good choice. Of course you will need an amplifier that can decode dolby digital to actually hear the surround channels.

Dolby Digital plus is a newer version of Dolby Digital and it improves the accuracy of the compression process making it less lossy than vanilla Dolby Digital. Once again you need an amplifier that can decode Dolby Digital plus to decode the signal.

Bottom line - if you are listening through your TV speakers or a stereo amplifier PCM is the best choice. If you listen through a multi channel home theatre amplifier Dolby Digital Plus will be your best choice if your amp supports that format (only newer ones do). If not then use Dolby Digital.

I have a PC hooked up to the main TV running Media Portal which I think is better than XMBC. Also have a an unraid server on the network with about 20 terrabytes of storage. An unbeatable combination. I have a media player hooked up to the bedroom TV but still prefer the options a full PC gives on the main TV.

I am no expert at flood control BUT it seems to me everyone is missing the point in attributing blame. It has been quite clearly reported that the rains this year have been no heavier than in previous years. In other words the problems we are experiencing now are not a result of nature but as a result of mismanagement.

From what I have gleaned from reports the problem was caused by retaining too much water in the dams up north. Someone was betting the farm on less rains than normal and the extra water retained being used for irrigation and power generation. As it turns out this was a bad bet.

What I have not seen reported is who made this disastrous decision. However one thing is clear and that is that the decision was made recently. Previous administrations are not to blame.

I had problems for years trying to add Thai subtitles to existing videos. There are lots of different subtitle types and lots of ways to edit them and lots of ways to add them to the movie. You problem could occur at any stage of the process. What was always causing me problems was the Thai character set and encoding it correctly.

Here's what I do now and it always works.

Download the subtitles from wherever. Thaisubtitles.com is a good place.

Load them up in subtitle workshop to confirm timings are OK. They often are not but subtitle workshop has lots of tools to fix that. It's a free download form http://www.urusoft.net/downloads.php?lang=1

I then use mkvmerge (another free download) to combine movie and subtitles into an mkv file. However there is a trick and it took me a long time to figure it out. If the subtitles are Thai then you must select the right charachter set. To do that click on the subtitle in the tracks, chapters and tags window. Make sure it is highlighted. Under that window, click on the format specific options tab. Select charset and choose windows-874 as the encoding - its almost at the bottom of the list. Go ahead and make your mkv file.

These files play with the correct subtitles in all players I have tried, including VLC.

I spent along time researching and trying various options to achieve this. IMHO by far the best solution is to set up an Unraid computer and use that as your media storage. Virtually any PC can be converted to this option and it's free to cheap depending on the options you choose.

It can be a bit techy to get it set up initially but there is a very friendly and helpful user community with a lot of experience and a willingness to help.

Once you have it running you can update, upgrade and add software including auto backups and web servers and mainly its all free. Your box will never be out of date (as dedicated NAS inevitably become) and you can add disks as your storage needs grow. My one is up to 15 terabytes now and I still have capacity to add another 15 terabytes if I ever need it.

Full details on the lime tech website at http://www.lime-technology.com/

I am still quite happy with lastpas, perhaps even happier than before. If you study and understand what lastpass are doing with security then its clear if you follow the one single most important piece of advice they give then you won't have a problem. That advice is to have a STRONG master password. Any data stolen from lastpass is gibberish without the master password. Lastpass do not store or even know or even have any way to work out what that master password is. Only you know and in my case the only place it appears is in my brain. My brain can't store much but it does have room for one crazy and very strong password.

The only way any data MAY have been compromised is if someone had a weak master password. That is then cracked by trying every possibility of password or a brute force attack. If your password is fairly simple like say "dog" it would be cracked quite quickly. If your password was say "xz$76&tYEz1a" then even a supercomputer trying a brute force attack would not get it right in a million years of continuous operation.

The company did the right thing in releasing this information even though most people are wildly over reacting. The problem is that no matter how much you say it, some users will have weak passwords. That is out of lastpass's control but if some data is compromised because of a users stupidity, lastpass will still get the blame. Kudos to them for being honest even though it will no doubt hurt them and no sweat for me with my un crackable master password.