After much delay (sorry!) we finally have another contest to announce! To help remind everyone how fun it is to post user submitted news to the site, we are going to give away the ASUS AT3N7A-I Mini-ITX Motherboard we reviewed recently! See below for the rules.
1. The contest ends at 9:00 pm pacific time on Sunday, October 25th.
2. Each VALID news submission gets an entry. You must include a Related COMMENT and article QUOTE with your submission!
3. To be considered valid, the following rules apply.
Subject: Audio/Video, HTPC, or Home Automation
Age: 1 week or less from date of submission
Link to news article must be included with comment
Not already posted at MissingRemote.com
4. The winner will be notified via email that is on their MissingRemote.com account and a posting on the front page of MissingRemote.com.
5. MissingRemote.com will be giving away (1) ASUS AT3N7A-I Motherboard.
6. You must be a resident of the US to claim this prize.
This is pretty significant news--any time one of the biggest players in a set category of products changes its ways, it makes you wonder all sorts of things. Not sure exactly how this one will pan out, you can't believe that Nvidia would abandon the PC industry which made it the giant it is today.
{joomsay link=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353939,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121 [PCMag]}"We have said that we will continue to innovate integrated solutions for Intel's FSB architecture," Sherbin said in an email. "We firmly believe that this market has a long healthy life ahead. But because of Intel's improper claims to customers and the market that we aren't licensed to the new DMI bus and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we'll postpone further chipset investments." {/joomsay}
It's just passed the midway point in August, so I figured I would catch everyone up with what's been going on at MissingRemote to entertain your weekend in case you missed anything.
We had some fantastic reviews and guides posted by our crew:
Our forums have been jumping as as usual. For those looking for any sort of assistance with anything home theater related or even off topic, make sure to register and visit our forum today!
We've also been making some changes to the site design. You'll notice some new banner ads, feel free to click them if something interests you, as it does help maintain this site alive. Also we have affiliate accounts with Newegg and Amazon and you can get those links on the right side of the home page as well. We always welcome comments and suggestions, so feel free to pass them along via our forum!
Finally, beginning with this post I will be dropping the ShadyMG moniker from my posts. I just feel it's time as the ShadyMG nickname hasn't actually been used for a while. Don't worry, Mike Garcen is just as interested in all this as ShadyMG was!
I, of course, do not have to remind you about our ongoing community news contest. For each news submission, you gain one entry into the contest where the prize is a 3 month gift card to Netflix. Yes, even bloggers can submit their own news :). We love original content from blog. A great example, and thanks to Brent for contributing, is his submission of the TV turning 83 yesterday. Check out the Community News page here.
With the introduction of BoxeeTV for Windows we now have another very
potent player in the home theater world. But what is a current Vista
Media Center user to do--on the one hand, they use Media Center for all
their live and recorded TV...but on the other, they would love to be
able to access all the wonderful internet television portals which
Boxee brings to the 10'.
his new weekly feature is one part good information and one part
advertising. The below movie links are links to Amazon.com and if you
purchase these movies by following these links you are supporting
MissingRemote.com. I hope this new feature is genuinely useful and the
advertising is non-obtrusive.
One of the most popular articles ever at MissingRemote.com has been our guide on how to enable Concurrent Sessions for Windows Vista.
For those unaware of what it is, Concurrent Sessions allows you to
Remote Desktop into a system that someone else is on, under a different
user account, and access the system without kicking the user off. I,
for example, use the feature to have MCE running on my Television, and
then I remote into my main user account to access all my files without
interrupting my MCE session.
Those of us who have the privilege of having a significant other also
have the distinct joy of ensuring our media system design meets their
specific requirements. This has been referred to in the past as the
"Wife Acceptance Factor" or WAF. I'm not talking about whether it's a
720p or 1080p display or what RAID level the drives are running, but
rather something much more important. Let me give you an example; "Why
does it go to that screen when I click this doohickey?"
Everyone and their dog has had a chance to download Windows 7 beta. For
various reasons including promises of fame, fortune, performance and a
few crazy folks like us are trying out the Media Center portion of
W7MC. I have had a few weeks to play with Media Center with most of my
use focusing around Music, Movies & TV's. Here is the good and bad
of Microsoft's Vista Redu. Enjoy the pictorial and video fun of W7.
The wonderful world of HTPC's can be very baffling to someone who has
never dabbled in the confusing realm of codecs, drivers and programs.
So I decided to dedicate part 2 of the HTPC basic series to helping
people understand the wide world of HTPC's. I will briefly cover
several topics including software, hardware, audio/video codecs and
other.
Clicking the read more will take you too all of the videos we have put up :)
Building upon their previos beta release that added EVR support, 6.5.2 adds a few bug fixes to make your EVR experience a better one. They also snuck in multi-threading for transcoding. *Hint - Click the SageTV logo for the link.
Here is a poll that could be very useful to HTPC software makers everwhere. Over 1100 people responded to a poll that asks what content they should add next. HBO, Pandora, Netflix, Joost, and ustream.tv were the winners.
My Movies for WHS now supports Flac lossless and Media Center extender firendly DVD rips.
WHS mobile, a plugin that allows you to control your home server using a WinMo phone, has reached version 1.0
Sick to death of coverage about Windows 7? In case you aren't check out more coverage about Window 7's new taskbar.
HotHardware has the scoop on AMD's Maui HTPC platform. The platform includes a 780G mobo, low power Phenom, and an onboard amplified soundcard. I am slightly skeptical of an onboard amplifier card.
The HD Guru has a list of solid TV deals that are due to hit this Thanksgiving in the US. The one that struck my eye was a 37" Panny 720p plasma for $500.
This was a quick test of the new icons and Daily Button Format :)
The other day, I heard about this little phenomon called bittorrent. I decided to check it out, actually I was interested to see if there was a plugin available for Vista Media Center. This let me to the TVitty plugin which integrates into VMC. tvitty is a plugin distributed by a company who has a small library of content available via bittorrent.
If you are not satisfied with their content, you are able to add other types of feeds, legal I am sure, to expand your reach through the tubes :).
Welcome to another edition of The Daily Button :). While I have your attention, I thought I would throw out a question to you folks. Does it make sense for MissingRemote.com to get involved in some of the social networks? Do you really want to see a twitter update of me laughing out loud at Who's Line Is It Anyways? ;)
HTPC & Extenders
SageTV has released a minor update to their beta which enables DVXA to work with EVR. I hope they put this behind them and concentrate on UI development
I guess I was asleep at the wheel, but Brent (Geek Tonic Blog), is reporting that Media Portal will now join the ranks of SageTV & Media Portal to have support for the HD PVR.
It seems off you would want to integrate BTV with Vista Media Center (Why not switch over?). Check out this thread at the BTV forums and read more about it at The Geek Tonic
Given the already steep drop in TV prices in the last year, I am surprised that companies have to cut prices more due to the slow economy. However, the HD Guru is reporting that Mits and Sony are going to slash a couple of hundred dollars of most of their TVs.
Vudu's XL2 to make the move to the Home Installer market. Of course that means it will not be cheap and you can not buy it through a retail channel.
Regardless of the economic situation, saving a few dollars always makes sense. Here are few tips that should help the HTPC novice in the planning stage, or even the seasoned HTPC pro save a few dollars on their digital lifestyle.
Going through the list of suggestions in my head, I am pretty impressed by what is available in terms of free or reduced cost options. Keeping this in mind, for the most part, the level of entertainment you are used to should remain fairly consistent. What changes is how you get your entertainment. Along with reducing your content cost, I will also talk about reducing your hardware costs.
Welcome to another fantastic edition of The Daily Button. Second only Google in popularity on the Internet.
Content
Would you watch a show just because it is in HD? Yah, guilty as charged here. S&V has a list of shows that look good in HD and some actually fulfill in the creative department.
This is a huge month in movies for my household. TinkerBell is out on Blu-ray! It is rather amusing to see a site like Secrets Of H& HIFI review a couple of Disney cartoons but they do it and do it seriously.
An interesting study from the Canadian Press, their study shows that DVR use cuts in DVD purchases and not TV viewing. Makes sense to me, if I have a hard drive full of quality shows I won't be as anxious to run down to the Red Box or Walmart to buy a movie.
In light of the recent Xbox/Netflix HD announcements, Roku wanted to let folks know that they will be offering Netflix HD as well .
When you call yourself the HD Guru and people agree, you might want to take notice of what he has to say. This week he is pissing off a host of people by telling folks NOT to buy an upconverting DVD player for your HDTV. Why not you ask? Well with the price of Blu-ray players falling below $200, they are a bit more future proof and can upconvert your standard def DVDs.
Via EngadgetHD, the folks at DBStalk are lucky enough to get a sneak peak at DirectTV's upcoming HR23-700 HD-PVR. Overall, they think the new HD-PVR is worth the price of admission.
Are you looking to add a little Christmas flare to your HTPC? Check out MP's PurevisionHD Xmas skin:)
Hardware
The TechReport & Hardocp has reviews of the Core i7 up. Another nice speed bump from Intel, another complete system you have to buy to upgrade your computer. Additional Core i7 reviews can be found at Benchmark Reviews and Madshrimps.
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