Mike Garcen's blog

Well, it's that time again, 2012 is almost completely behind us. As with every year, there is a lot that's happened in the home theater world, some good, some not so good. We'd like to take a moment to reflect upon everything that happened and narrow down some of our favorites--what did we love most, what disappointed us most, and for 2013 what are we looking forward to. Hope you enjoy!

Congratulations go out to Rob Wright, winner of the Ceton InfiniTV 4 USB Tuner, and Jace, winner of the Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe tuner!! I'll be sending an e-mail to both of you to confirm shipping address. 

Thank you to all who participated! Hope everyone had as much fun with the responses as we did reading them!

THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED!!! THANK YOU ALL WHO PARTICIPATED AND GOOD LUCK!

Two contests at once, has Missing Remote lost their minds?!?! Yep! But our loss of mental capacity is your gain!

For those of you that are still slacking, you still have time for the Father's Day sale from Ceton! In honor of Father's Day Ceton is currently running a save $30 when you buy two InfiniTV4 (USB or PCIe) over at Amazon.

Generously, they've provided us a USB external model to help you (or your dad) have an awesome way to celebrate paternity via a give away here at Missing Remote. Thanks Ceton!

HOW TO ENTER

We have made some changes, so please READ all the rules.

Another year is about to conclude, and I wanted to take the chance to highlight some of our most popular articles throughout the year. Real life sometimes gets in the way of reading the site, so hopefully this will help if you might have missed a certain special review or guide. Feel free to contribute what YOUR favorite article has been.

Here are the top 10:

1. How to Enable Concurrent Sessions in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 RTM
   No real surprise here. Still our most popular guide to date, showing you how to get multiple logins at the same time on your Windows 7 box without having to kick off a user.
    
2. Intel Core i3-2100T and DH67CF Mini-ITX Motherboard / Intel Sandy Bridge: Core i5-2500K and DH67BL Motherboard / Intel Core i5-2400S and DH67GD Micro-ATX Motherboard
   I combined these reviews from Andrew since I think they deserved to share the top spot. Sandy Bridge was truly revolutionary and was great news for all us HTPC enthusiasts. Even 11 months later, these boards are still solid.
    
3. How to Watch TV without Cable
   Examining all the various non-traditional cable TV options available for watching your favorite television programs, without having to pay a fortune.
    
4. Beginner's Guide to HTPC Software
   Taking a look at what software exists for use on your HTPC as your media center. This category is more than alive as some of these interfaces have become so beautiful you almost want to just sit at the home screen and drool. Maybe that's just me.

Now 3 years strong, our tradition continues. In the first year of our list, we saw some good, some bad ideas. Year two was a lot of the same. Let's see how everyone feels about our staff's wish list for 2011 Christmas time!

Andrew van Til (Babgvant)

In my case it reads a little better backwards

1. The AVR-3311 didn't find its way under the tree last year (or the months that followed), mostly because with the the AVR-1909 still performing well it was smarter to add surround sound to the secondary viewing location via Mike's choice - the Yamaha YSP-2200.  With more 3D Blu-ray titles trickling out, and my kid's increasing demands to "watch it in 3D" it's getting more cumbersome to connect up another HDMI cable to the TV on movie night so I'm hoping to solve the HDMI 1.4 problem this year.
2. For that reason my wish list is just getting a number bump to the 125W Denon AVR-3312.  With support for Audyssey MultEQ XT, 0.05% THD, and built in Ethernet providing IP control, firmware updates, DLNA and access to some audio over the top services it's has all of the good stuff that put the AVR-3311 on last year's.  Adding in an extra HDMI port and a slightly more modern look; I can't complain too much about the wait.

George Schmauch (Skirge01)

Boy did I struggle this week. Partly due to a busy schedule, but I'm sure partly due to just a terrible overall week of picks. Bunraku is one of the few that I saw, and it was pretty bad, simply tried to be too many things. I think I saw part of Water for Elephants, but I'm not a fan of Vampires who try to eat elephants (read: joke).

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Crazy, Stupid, Love I haven't seen this movie, so I know it's an odd recommendation, but everyone I've talked to has mentioned it was easily worth watching. Then again...everyone I asked was a female, and all of them said the same thing--"Ryan Gosseling was in that, right? Yeah, I saw it. Good movie. He's hot." So...I'm going to base my recommendation on the fact I enjoy Steve Carrell instead.

Oh how I wanted to pick Wrong Turn 4 just to get a reaction from you guys, but alas I played it conservative this week. Jurassic Park Trilogy, just in time for the holidays...although you can save some money and watch Terra Nova that is basically the same thing, right? Dazed and Confused is a classic if you've never seen it. And Attack the Block was mildly entertaining, a UK film of a gang who gets attacked by Aliens...okay, it was kinda dumb, but I've seen worse.

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Captain America: The First Avenger Really a no brainer given the competition this week, but I'll admit that my expectations were quite high going into Captain America, and it did somewhat disappoint. The first Avenger, I honestly was not a fan of these comics growing up so the story was new to me. The movie is quite long, but I found it to be entertaining. Although I didn't buy the CGI for one second when he was a whimpy kid, his head was WAY too big for the body. The action sequences were decent, but I think he's just not as compelling a superhero as some of the others. Just my opinion...

Sorry for the hiatus, had a busy travel schedule recently, but I'm back on the regular now! And what a...decent week to return to. A couple good animated films are out there. Fans of the TV show V will be happy to see that released. Most interesting of the week was Red State from writer/director Kevin Smith, from Jay & Silent Bob and Clerks fame--an interesting film with a ton of subplots and even more violence, about a religious group bent on killing a few folks--it's out there, I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. Which leaves....

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Bad Teacher  I didn't have the highest expectations for this one, starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Segal and Justin Timberlake, but maybe that's why I was pleasantly surprised by it. Of course it's entirely predictable, but there were definitely enough funny parts for me to make it a recommendation...again, just temper your expectations beforehand.

After a couple good weeks it's calming back down a bit. A couple great TV shows on Blu-ray, Mike & Molly and season two of Modern Family, two of my favorite comedies on right now. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a classic for some, I wasn't all that impressed with it.

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Bridesmaids Pretty easy choice given the other options--starring what felt like most of the Saturday Night Live cast, this raunchy (and I mean RAUNCHY) comedy about a group of bridesmaids as they prepare for their friends wedding day. This is from Judd Apatow, the same director of SuperBad and Knocked Up, so you know there is some great humor although some of it is quite bad. Think Super Bad but with an all girl cast instead, but using the same number of profanity and dirty jokes. I heard some people didn't approve, but I laughed through a lot of it!

Poor Thor, if it was most any other week you would have been the easy pick, but alas not this one. For those not in the comic book "know," Thor is a movie based on the same-titled comic book about a guy who's a god in his world but gets shipped off to Earth as punishment (is it that bad?!) where he gets to date Natalie Portman, poor guy. Then battles ensue--it was a fun movie and will look awesome on BD. Then the other notable one is Spartacus--Gods of the Arena, the prequel to the Spartacus TV series which was just awesome.

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Probably the easiest pick in the history of these weekly blogs. If i have to tell you what Star Wars is...then you probably are between the ages of 0-2, or just came from a rock. While I don't agree with all the changes Mr. Lucas has made to the originals, and I wasn't a huge fan of the new ones, it's hard to argue that this isn't a must have in anyone's Blu-ray collection. I mean, it's Luke "friggin" Skywalker people!

Scarface was an easy pick so I wanted to change it up, but it really is one of the great movies of all time, with a young Al Pacino as Cuban druglord. Fringe and The Office are great TV shows of course, and then a few decent films sprinkled throughout as well. Everything Must Go stars Will Ferrell but there was not many moments of humor in this dark comedy.

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Hanna I was not sure what to expect going into Hanna, but I was pleased with the results. Hanna is the story of a man raising his daughter to be essentially a spy from the get go, and it takes time to develop and explain why exactly so many people are after them. If you like watching 13-year old girls kick some serious action then you will love this movie. She's no Hit Girl, but it's still fairly entertaining although the plot is a bit thin and the acting is not stellar, but there were some nice twists and I was enjoyed throughout.

If you've been perusing the Forums today you will notice a couple of new additions. The first is probably an obvious one, a CableCARD forum. With the growth of number of tuner devices being released we want to make sure there's a clear home to ask any and all questions you may have about this technology.

The second is actually a group of forums, specifically for SageTV users. With the acquisition of SageTV by Google earlier this year, we saw the request for a new permanent home from its users. We have launched the SageTV Forum group with 5 sub-forums, and will expand as needed. We hope everyone finds this useful, knowing that MissingRemote is not going anywhere!

More improvements coming in the near future, so hope everyone is enjoying them!

Hi folks, just wanted to take a moment to update folks on what keeps the site alive, beautiful wonderful affiliate advertising. The Amazon, Newegg and any other product links you see throughout the site help support the costs associated with running this website (whenever you purchase something that you clicked through to the store from our site we earn a small percentage of that sale).

As we are now using Skimlinks our links have changed, so please update your bookmarks if you had saved them for Amazon and Newegg to reflect the new ones. Thank you to all for your continued support!

Just did the drawing for the Fractal Designs Define R3 Chassis and the winner is RKWRIGHT!

RKWright, you should have received an e-mail from me by now and have 48 hours to get in touch with me.

Thanks to everyone who participated and good luck with our future contests!

I'm hoping most of you reading this are familiar with MissingRemote.com, we are a website that caters to most of the folks on AVS here, and we do blogs, reviews, news and the like.

Thanks to our readers we have been growing lately and have the opportunity for someone who is interested in writing for the website. This is a partially paid gig (but it's not a ton, so you seriously will want to love this stuff). We are looking for someone passionate about home theater and home theater computer parts, but also someone that is technical and can put all that into words.

Here's what we are looking for in terms of commitment from this person:

1. Minimum 2 News Posts per week
2. Min. 1 Blog per Month
3. Min. 1 Guide or Review per month

So what will you receive? Certain articles you will be paid for, and then you will also have access to some very cool hardware units which you would review, and then possibly would keep. If you're curious what types of items we review, just click the "reviews" tab at the top.

How to apply:

• E-Mail mike (at) missingremote.com
• Tell me a bit about yourself, your history, where you frequently post
• Any links to any blogging or other reviews
• And then a writing sample of minimum 400 words. You can just pick a device in your home and basically just write a review for it, so we can get a feel for your writing and technical style.

Thanks!

THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING, THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED!! WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON!!

The prizes and giveaways continue, this time up, courtesy of the fine folks at Fractal Designs we are giving you all the opportunity to win a DEFINE R3 Chassis!

And since Fractal Designs rocks, this contest is open to US AND CANADA readers of the site!!

Congratulations to our latest winner, Stardog Champion, who won our latest contest for the Boston Bruins Stereo Headphones!

Stardog, you will receive a PM from me with additional information. You have 48 hours to reply and accept.

Thanks to all who participated!

THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED! Winner will be announced soon!!

The prizes and giveaways continue, this time up, courtesy of the fine folks at Coloud.com we have a set of their Boston Bruins NHL branded Stereo Headphones!

Here's some info on these cool looking (assuming you like hockey) headphones with an MSRP of $40:

The Coloud Twelve headphone is a thoroughly tested headphone model proven to work fantastically. It’s a one-size-fits all headphone with a neutral sound and a snug fit.

Features:

• Team logo printed in 3D rubber patches give headphones a unique feel
• Adjustable headband provides a perfect fit
• Features 3.5mm jack for maximum compatibility including iPod

HOW TO ENTER

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Facebook-Twitter contest to Win a copy of Cyberlink's PowerDVD 11 Ultra! The winner is....from Twitter, Louis Davidson!!!

Unfortunately Louis never claimed his prize...so we re-drew and the winner is, from Facebook, Candiss 'n Mark Terborg! So congratulations to you, and same deal, 48 hours to claim the prize or we will re-draw.

Congratulations Louis! Feel free to reply to this thread or shoot me a pm, I'll tweet this out of course as well!

And remember to follow us on Twitter and Facebook if you haven't already!