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
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
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
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
A few years back when blu-ray was just starting to come about, Richard Weber wrote in an article entitled “The Age of Blu-Ray” detailing some of the main benefits of blu-ray technology: “Do you remember how awesome it was when you upgraded from you old VHS tapes to DVDs? The picture was way clearer and [...]
Tags: 1080i, 1080p, blu-ray, hd, high definition, home theater, media, movie, netflix
Posted December 13, 2009 by vidkun under General, Hardware, Movies, Software