The Media Viking

So the majority of the parts of come in for my home theater PC build. I’m still need to get some more memory for it and some form of remote. A number of people have mentioned the Logitech diNovo Mini to use as a remote as well as a bluetooth keyboard and mouse if needed. Have you any of you had any experience with the diNovo Mini? What did you think of it?

This will be a rather short rant, but Sony has officially annoyed and pissed me off! Playstation 3 owners have been damn near begging and pleading with Sony for a firmware update that adds support for MKV files for…..well since the PS3 was first released basically. All of their pleading has been in vain and simply shrugged off by Sony in an apparent complete disregard for the desires of its customer base. However, they already have a firmware supporting 3D video out to beta testers.

Well it would appear as if set-top boxes are popping up left and right around here. The sad part is that they all only differ slightly, but none get it all correct. That said, the Mvix Ultio Pro Media Center comes pretty close from my initial impressions. It will stream your media from across the network or allow for local storage on a user supplied 3.5″ hard drive (up to 2TB). The Ultio also fully supports UPnP servers and integrates with PlayOn or Tversity so that you can stream your Hulu, Netflix, or whatever other internet content straight to it.

I’ve been caught up with a few mini-projects the last week or so, as well as a new show. As I mentioned before, I am researching and picking the specs for my new HTPC build. For pricing reasons, I’m now considering reusing an old Athlon X2 CPU, mobo, and ram to drastically cut down on cost of the new build. The release of the new ATI 5450 and 5550 GPUs has greatly swayed toward doing so. I mean come on. Full 7.1 HD audio bitstream support; passively cooled; all for $70? That’s a damn good deal! One that I’m not so sure I will be able to pass on. So as of right now, the specs are looking like:

It seems that one of the biggest struggles we face in the HTPC arena is getting our high definition audio codecs properly passed from our home theater PC to our ears with the absolute best quality possible. Typically this has been done via multi-channel LPCM over an optical connection to an AV receiver. Now that HDMI has come along and allowed us to take better quality video and better quality audio and send them both out across the same cable, there’s a whole new set of options (with their respective issues as well).

Hollywood has plagued us with two major trends over the past decade: increasing prices inversely proportional to the amount or quality of offering and a complete lack of imagination demonstrated by a seemingly never-ending release cycle of (usually sub-par) remakes. Now I know a lot of people out there (mostly in the “Hollywood biz”) are saying “well if you think they’re doing such a bad job, why don’t you come up with something new?” And quite simply, because I never said I could come up with anything new and fantastical, nor am I in the business of doing so, and much less so demanding that you pay me more while I give you less! So what does all of this have to do with Psycho Killer Clowns? Well, let’s move on to that…

This post will be continuing on from my previous post about new projects to start the year of right. I mentioned that I would be addressing the lack of proper audio equipment for my home theater setup. In order to do so, I have locked on to purchase an Onkyo TX-SR607 A/V Receiver. That will give me a more than ample introductory/budget receiver for really stepping up my current home theater experience. Yet, it leaves me now needing a decent set of speakers to complement my new receiver.

New Year

With a new year comes new projects (and after Christmas specials)! I apologize for the pause in updates. We took a short, unexpected vacation to get all prepared for 2010. Hopefully everyone had a safe and wonderful holiday and took time to be with family and friends. Well, now we are settled back in and excited to get things rolling again!

The end of 2009 has come, ushering in the need to make a list for everything. Whether it be your favorite vacations of the year, your most hated gadgets released this year, or your top 5 breakfasts of the year; everyone enjoys looking back in reflection and relegating just about every aspect of their life to a list of some sort. In keeping with this traditional fashion, here are my picks (in no particular order) of the top 9 blu-ray releases of this past year. They were picked based on the quality of the blu-ray release itself and not necessarily on the movie. Enjoy!

Engadget has a story noting that Netflix has just agreed to delay new releases from Warner Brothers for 28 days after they are released for sale before offering them up to subscribers. Netflix is expected to settle for similar agreements with additional studios soon as well. Now the rumor is that these agreements are in order to allow a much greater selection of titles to go direct to instant streaming, but that is not confirmed yet.