Monster is getting a very bad rap these days, I am not sure how longer it will be before it hits the general public. With news stories of them firing 120 people, its certainly not helping the cause. 

From the article:

Recent layoffs at Monster Cable have led to some bad local TV press for the company, inciting one San Francisco city supervisor to label Head Monster Noel Lee as "the Grinch."

The company is being accused of letting go long-time employees with small severance packages, according to the report from KGO, the local ABC television station in the Bay Area.

Ok, need a little faith from you all. If you can completely forget about the movie ITSELF, then the guys at Gizmodo say the features & extras make *gulp* The Fast & The Furious-Tokyo Drift, THE BEST HD-DVD to own. And there are a ton of images showing off the very neat features it has. Although, even with that....I don't know if it would make me ever want to watch it again.

While we can't vouch for the film itself, we can verify the disc's extras are amazing, including full storyboarding, technical specs on all the cars, GPS mapping of all the chase scenes, and the ability to watch some parts of the movie with repainted cars:

Read the rest & check out all the images Here. 

Take this article with a grain of salt. I'm not about to jump on the "No Difference" wagon, but they do bring up some good points which maybe some should consider when buying a new television. I'd be curious to hear from you guys if you've done side by side comparisons what have you noticed?

This is why I was immensely relieved to read that the Imaging Science Foundation, the industry's top name in digital video testing, qualification, and certification, recently proclaimed that the difference between 720p and 1080p is much less than one would suspect. In fact, resolution ranks fourth on an image quality priority list behind contrast ratio, color saturation, and color accuracy. 

Read the rest here. 

Can't really say I'm surprised. With what little benefits come with Vista Media Center, they need everything they can to get people to upgrade. I'll admit, if my 360 didn't extend MCE2005, I probably would have upgraded by now.

“The Media Center Extender Platform Adaptation Kit enables partners to build Extenders for use with Windows Vista. Because Extender technology is a superset of the PlaysForSure device program, these devices will also be able to connect to Windows Media Connect/Windows Media Player Network Sharing running on Media Center 2005 PCs. They will not, however, connect to Media Center 2005 as Extenders.”

Read the rest of this joyful news here. 

Networked Attached Storage is certainly becoming more mainstream over the past year. As the article mention, its no doubt due to the massive amounts of personal digital data everyone has. Everything from recordings, to family photos and downloadable movies. A healthy dose of competition certainly helps. In the past, anything labeled as an external storage device was marked up substantially over its internal brethren.

From the article:

I'm wondering, do most consumers really need more media storage capacity, or simply better utilization of the storage that they already have at their disposal? For those of us who have wireless access points, and/or wired home networks, an intuitive application to better manage the placement and update of available local hard-drive and remote/virtual 'shared folders' may be all that's really needed.

In the HTPC world, NAS certainly makes sense with the options now available. It keeps a lot of hot noisy hard drives out of an already hot system. 

I haven't had a chance to investigate Auzentech's X-Meridian suitability for HTPC life quite yet. For example, I am not sure if it will pass through sound unmangled or not. If you guys have, drop a line in the comments box and let us know what you think about it. While we wait for people's responses, head on over to ThinkComputers and see what they think.

From the article:

If you are an audiophile yourself or you are looking for that perfect gift for an audiophile then look no further. The Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 has all of the features you could ever want in a 7.1 card and with a MSRP of $199.99 it won't break the bank either. When paired up with a nice 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound audio system this sound card will definitely deliver. The Auzentech X-Meridian is the prefect companion for any mid range or high end PC that needs their audio to really shine to make it the perfect PC. Because of the X-Meridian's nearly flawless performance ThinkComputers gives it a score of 9 out of 10.

This really doesn't surprise me much at all. Sure downloading is easy, but so is Netflix-ing, and then you have all the "pirates" who will copy their Netflix movies. Can't do that with the DRM-heavy online movies. And it's not like you save all that much money to truly make it worth the effort.

But according to ABI Research, only about 5% of North American internet users that say they watch video on the internet have rented or purchased a downloaded movie. That's far fewer than the number of people who have downloaded movies for free from file sharing sites.
The most popular videos online are short clips, like those found on YouTube or news and sports websites.

Read the rest here.