Raffaele Rialdi pointed out that attempting to run RTF Host from Compact Framework 3.5 Power Toys on an emulator produces the following error:

This is caused by RTF getting confused because the default CoreCon transport on the emulator is DMA (DeviceDMA.dll). Here are the steps to add emulator as a manual Tcp connection. Not that many will need it, but it is useful for a demo

1. Start Emulator using Device Emulator Manager.
2. Configure Network and Storage card folder
3. Copy to storage card folder the following file: "C:\Program Files\Common
Files\microsoft shared\CoreCon\1.0\Target\wce400\armv4i\TCPConnectionA.dll"
4. In File ExplorerNavigate to \Windows\Corecon1.1. If you don't see it
there, connect to the emulator from Studio
5. Launch ClientShutdown (you should see a guid-named folder to appear)
6. Copy \Storage Card\TcpConnectionA.dll to \Windows
7. Go to \Windows and delete DeviceDMA.dll (if you can't, you forgot to
launch ClientShutdown)
8. Go back to \Windows\Corecon1.1 and launch ConmanClient.exe
9. Launch RTF Host. Enjoy

Cyberlink was kind enough to let me evaluate the latest version of their PowerDVD Ultra product - about a year ago. Yet I procrastinated. Now, a year later I found myself in posession of a brand-new Media Center machine (does the phrase "Dude, you are getting a Dell" sound familiar?), which is connected to a brand new 1080P Samsung LCD TV. I've slightly upgraded it with an LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Reader and realized, how close I to being finally able to watch HD DVDs on a Media Center machine (instead of Xbox 360). This is where I remembered about Cyberlink generous offer.

After a painless 100MB download (you can buy all of the Cyberlink products electronically, directly on their web site, and depending on the speed of your connection, you will get to install it in 5-10 min), I ran the setup and was shortly rewarded with the activation dialog. I am not big fan of software activation (Windows or any other), but as far as the activation experiences go, this one was seamless and easy.

PowerDVD comes with a companion application called BluRay Advisor (there is also nearly identical HD DVD Advisor). This application checks your system for being ready to play HD content. The last time I ran it a year ago, I got a message saying that my display card was underpowered, my CPU - barely sufficient (P IV 3.6GHz) and my TV entirely unsuitable due to the lack of HDCP support. This time I had a green light on every item, except the video driver - the Advisor did not recognize the driver version and indicated the status as unknown.

My TV uses so called 10' setup, meaning that normally there is no keyboard or mouse connected to it (well, there is a Media Center keyboard, just in case, but I rarely use it). Earlier versions of PowerDVD did not fare well with the Media Center remote, but the current one does not seem to have any problems. I was able to control it perfectly well, except of going into settings and such. For day-to-day needs, such as watching DVD MCE Remote gives you all control you need.

PowerDVD fully supports HD DVD menu system. My experience with it did not differ from Xbox 360 one.

There are few minor annoyances - nothing critical, but I have to mention them:
 - when starting playback, Vista pops a message saying that the application is not compatible with Windows Aero and that Windows will switch into basic mode.
 - I was not able to figure out how to select the disk to play. The machine has a regular DVD drive, an HD DVD drive and a DVD changer. By default the player picks the first of them. I'm sure there is a setting somewhere, but I wish it were more accessible. As it is I have to open Computer window and select the disc I want to play
- The status overlay that's shown in the upper right corner when you are controlling volume, is way too small. From the couch it is nearly impossible to read.

I want to emphasize, that the above list is of really minor issues. The application is very good in every way and does the job of playing DVDs and HD DVDs nearly perfectly. The picture quality is superb, there are no artifacts or playback delays, missed frames and other unpleasant occurences that might mire your viewing experience.

In conclusion I wanted to mention the auto update feature. It is not something new - Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and quite a few others have it. Nevertheless it is gratifying to know that you don't have to check the web site for updates constantly (and who doesn't love updates) - it's done for you.

This one has been actually gleaned through a usenet post, but needs a wider coverage

Trying to use dwAlphaConst member of DDOVERLAYFX structure to specify overall overlay transparency results in E_INVALIDARG error

As explained here, there is a clever bug in the parameter checking logic that results in the API soundly rejecting any combination of dwAlphaConst and dwAlphaConstBitDepth, unless dwAlphaConst == 1 << dwAlphaConstBitDepth. This is not fixed as of WM 6 AKU4. Interestingly enough the actual value of dwAlphaConstBitDepth seems to be ... ignored, once the parameter check is done. The bit depth used is always 8 bit.

• The net result of this bug is that the allowed values for the dwAlphaConstBitDepth/dwAlphaConst and the resulting opacity are
  1/2 - 0.78%
  2/4 - 1.6%
  3/8 - 3.1%
  4/16 - 6.2%
  5/32 - 12.5%
  6/64 - 25%
  7/128 - 50%

Not using DDOVER_ALPHACONSTOVERRIDE gives you of course 100% (opaque overlay). In my experience anything under 5 (12.5%) is too small to be useful, but YMMV. Here is the code snippet:

XML-based device configuration is a powerful mechanism of configuring Windows Mobile 2003 and newer devices. There are four ways to provision your device with new settings:

1. Call DMProcessConfigXML on device. It can be done from native or managed code.
2. Build a CAB file containing _setup.xml with provisioning XML and run it on the device
3. Send the xml configuration via WAP push
4. Use RapiConfig tool shipped with WIndows Mobile SDK (under Tools)

But what if you wanted to perform configuration from your own, PC-based installer? Granted, you could use method 2 and copy the cab over to the device, then invoke wceload etc. Or you could write your own RAPI dll and use CeRapiInvoke. Or perhaps even launch RapiConfig to do this for you. Fortunately there is an easier way. As one could suspect, RapiConfig does not use a complex approach. Rather it benefits from an undocumented but handy RAPI call that is the desktop version of DMProcessConfigXML. It is exported by ordinal (25) and has the same signature as DMProcessConfigXML. Unlike DMProcessConfigXML, the pointer returned by it in the 3rd parameter needs to be freed using CeRapiFreeBuffer.

#pragma comment(lib, "rapi")

STDAPI CeRapiInit();
STDAPI CeRapiUninit();
STDAPI CeRapiFreeBuffer(LPVOID);
typedef HRESULT (__stdcall *CeProcessConfigType)(LPCWSTR pszConfig, DWORD dwFlags, LPCWSTR* ppszConfigOut);

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
 if ( argc != 3 )
 {
  _tprintf(_T("Usage: rapiconfig <config file> <out file>\n"));
  return 1;
 }

 CeRapiInit();
 
 CeProcessConfigType CeProcessConfig =
   (CeProcessConfigType)GetProcAddress(GetModuleHandle(_T("rapi.dll")), (LPCSTR)25);

 HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(argv[1], GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL);
 if ( hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )
 {
  _tprintf(_T("Unable to open %s\n"), argv[1]);
  goto Exit;
 }

 DWORD cbConfig = GetFileSize(hFile, NULL);
 BYTE* pBuffer = new BYTE[cbConfig];
 if ( !pBuffer )
  goto Exit;

 ReadFile(hFile, pBuffer, cbConfig, &cbConfig, NULL);
 
 LPCWSTR pOut;
 LPWSTR pIn;
 pIn = new WCHAR[cbConfig + 1];
 ZeroMemory(pIn, (cbConfig+1) * 2);
 mbstowcs(pIn, (LPCSTR)pBuffer, cbConfig);
 HRESULT hr;
 if ( FAILED(hr = CeProcessConfig(pIn, 1, &pOut) ))
 {
  _tprintf(_T("Unable to process: %d\n"), hr);
 }

 HANDLE hFileOut = CreateFile(argv[2], GENERIC_WRITE, 0, NULL, CREATE_ALWAYS, 0, NULL);
 if ( hFileOut == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )
 {
  _tprintf(_T("Unable to create %s\n"), argv[2]);
  goto Exit;
 }

 WriteFile(hFileOut, pOut, (wcslen(pOut) + 1 )* 2, &cbConfig, NULL);

 CloseHandle(hFileOut);
 CeRapiFreeBuffer((LPVOID)pOut);

Exit:
 if ( hFile != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )
  CloseHandle(hFile);

 CeRapiUninit();
 return 0;
}

I came across this picture while reading fark.com. It fairly well reflects my feelings about ... many things that happen in everyday life while working with people, companies, service providers etc.