A New Year Brings New Projects

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 [...]

Tags: hdmi, home theater, htpc, intel, Linux, media, media server, vdpau, XBMC, xvba
Posted January 16, 2010 by vidkun under General, Hardware, Projects

Blu-Ray Comes to Linux, Finally!

For the Linux fans out there, today is a great day! Up until now, blu-ray playback support in Linux has been very complicated and quite an aggravating experience. First you would have to hope you had the right BD-ROM drive and that there was a hacked firmware for you to flash it with. Then you [...]

Tags: blu-ray, Linux, makemkv, media player, media server, os x, Software, streaming
Posted January 4, 2010 by vidkun under Guides, Movies, Software

PopBox Takes on Roku and Boxee Box

Syabas Technology has said today that it will be shipping a new set-top box in March and is rumoured to be offered around the $130 price point. Targeting the internet streaming media arena, Syabas’ set top box, dubbed the “PopBox,” is aimed at competing with Roku’s offering and the recently announced Boxee Box by D-Link. [...]

Tags: 1080p, Boxee, home theater, Linux, media server, netflix, Roku
Posted January 4, 2010 by vidkun under Hardware

Patriot Box Office – The Promising New Set Top Device

The world of set top devices just took a great leap forward in the evolutionary process! Patriot Memory has released their set top media player they call the “Box Office.” Although it still hasn’t reached the point of being the best all-around device for the home theater, it has taken two giant leaps toward becoming [...]

Tags: 1080p, blu-ray, dvd, hd, hd-dvd, hdmi, media, media player, media server, movie, streaming
Posted December 30, 2009 by vidkun under Hardware

XBMC 9.11 Released

XBCM has released version 9.11 of their Xbox Media Center with a whole slew of updates, changes, and tweaks. The most noticeable difference is the new default theme. XBMC switched over to the new Confluence theme as the default with the recently updated PM3.HD set as the secondary default. As part of their cleanup, XBMC [...]

Tags: blu-ray, hd, high definition, home theater, htpc, Linux, media, media server, streaming, XBMC
Posted December 28, 2009 by vidkun under Software

Extreme Media Server

I’m always interested to hear about people’s “extreme” projects, whether it be an extreme media server or some interesting computer mod. The home theater does not need to be relegated to a dry or boring niche of nothing but HD televisions, HTPC’s, and Onkyo audio receivers. Media has be stored somewhere and with the growing [...]

Tags: high definition, home cinema, home theater, htpc, media, media server, streaming
Posted December 21, 2009 by vidkun under Hardware, Projects