Blogs

Oct 16 2006

Blog - 100 Members!!!!

By Alan Cooke

John just informed me that we have reached our 100th member!! Before you ask the questin; Matt did not register 42 times. We will save that 007 type strategy for our 500th member. Thats about it, no contests or anything like that. You could enter that lil contest we have going on right now.

In other news, you may have noticed that we have a new member to our fantastic team. Mike has joined our team helping on the news front and will be helping develop a new portion to the site. I won't let the cat out of the bag quite yet :). 

 

 

Oct 09 2006

Blog - missingremote version 1.0

By Alan Cooke

As I mentioned in a forum post earlier today, after 1 week of being live we are officially releasing version 1.0 upon the masses. As with any 1.0 version, the majority of the work was getting all of the widgets and sprockets to work together in a harmonious manner. In this, was getting SMF and Joomla to work together, and more importantly look alike. John was the man responsible for most of this hacking  programming and it was quite the chore to get some of this to work.

The basic features we started out with is the news, navigation and of course the forums. For version 1.1, we plan on implementing a gallery for everyone to post pictures of their setup. Its always fun to brag :). If we hit a fat advertising contract, or I win the lottery, I would love to implement an Ajax gallery+virtual home theater setup. I think that is a little ways down the road though. However, we are always open to suggestions for site features :).

We have a few people helping out around here to keep the unruly forum crowds in control. Tony (crim) and Brett are moderators that will lay the smackdown if you get out of line. Mike (shadymg) will be posting news from time to time and will back me up when I am out of town.

If you know me from HTPCnews.com, you will know that I REALLY appreciate it when people submit news. So much so, that during the contest, it is worth a second entry :D.

So in wrap up.

Site Suggestions = good

Submit News = good

Forum spam = bad

 

Oct 08 2006

Blog - Snapstream Contest Details

By Alan Cooke

Only a week old and here we are having our first contest!!  First off, I would like to thank Snapstream for sponsoring this contest!, without their generous sponsorship this contest to give back to the community would not be possible.  Head on over to this thread for further details on how to enter. Place your entry in this thread.

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The Grand Prize (the only prize) in this contest is a bundle of products from Snapstream that will have you in PVR heaven. It is a complete suite of products that will your turn your ordinary PC into a Media Center of epic proportions.

How to Enter:

1. The first step is to register at missingremote.com. After that, click on the Snapstram advertising banner above and find something you like at Snapstream.com. Copy and paste what you find in the contest thread, and that is your entry. Suggested things to look at would be clicking on buy on their main menu and looking at one of their bundles, or head on over to their forums and take a look at the plugins available for use. Be original.  If I think you have copied and pasted an entry from another person, your entry gets deleted.

2. If you have registered at missingremote.com prior to entry, you are automatically entered once. You are free to enter a second time as stated above.

3. If you submit a news item, you are entered. You are free to enter a second time as stated above in number one.

Contest Length:

Contest closes on October 31st, 2006 at 11:55 pm PST. Currently the contest is open to USA residents only.

Prize Details: 

 

Beyond TV:

  • No Subscription Fees. Ever.
  • Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows
  • Search for shows by actor, director, or title
  • Intelligent Electronic Program Guide resolves conflicts
  • New! Record HDTV from free, over-the-air digital TV signals
  • New! Record in DivX, MPEG-2 and WMV formats
  • New! Search for movies and sports, as well as by other categories
  • New! Play and pause FM radio stations
 

 

Beyond Media:

  • Access all your photos, music and videos from one, user-friendly interface
  • Access movies on-demand with SnapStream Spotlight
  • Access weather information and Caller ID
  • Have fun with photo slideshows
  • Watch DVDs with Dolby 5.1 channel surround sound
  • Sort and browse your music by genre, title, artist and keyword
  • Seamlessly integrate & access Beyond TV
 
 

Beyond TV Link:

  • Watch live television on computers without TV tuner cards
  • Enjoy the Beyond TV experience on your wireless laptops
  • Get the Beyond TV experience on older, less powerful PCs
  • Enjoy all of Beyond TV's features like SmartSkip™ and instant replay
  • Watch the same recorded or live show simultaneously in different rooms
 

FireFly Remote:

  • Advanced radio frequency (RF) technology that works through walls
  • Comfortable and cutting-edge industrial design
  • Beyond Media Basic, free bundled software for photos, music and videos
  • Fast access to movies, TV shows, music, and photos with media buttons
  • Compatibility with more than 80+ 3rd party PC applications
 

 DVICO Bundle:

  • DVICO FusionHDTV5 RT Lite ATSC TV Tuner (PCI)
  • FREE Philips PHDTV1 Indoor HDTV Antenna ($39.99 value)*
  • FREE high-quality RG-6 coaxial (6-ft) ($5.00 value)*
  

HDTV Antenna:

  •  High-quality "silver sensor" style indoor HDTV antenna from Philips (Model #PHDTV1). Includes FREE RG-6 coaxial interconnect cable.pad

 

Oct 05 2006

Blog - DirecTV, HDTV, and the Resolution Question

By Matt

99pr_01108_hiresIf you all don't remember way back in 2004 a DirecTV customer filed lawsuit saying that he had signed up for HDTV service and was soon getting sub-par results. He claims DirecTV is engaged in unlawful or fraudulent business practices by not delivering actual high definition signals. As most of us in the audio/videophille world know DirecTV started cutting bit rate and then scaling down the resolution of their HD feeds to squeeze more bandwidth. This quickly became known as "HD-Lite" in videophille circles. The drop in bit rate resulted in exacerbated MPEG2 mosquito noise, and posterization. DirecTV's odd 1280x1080i feeds resulted in a softening of the image as the horizontal detail was lost and then stretched back out at the satellite receiver to 1920x1080.

This fella's lawsuit finally came up on the docket on September 20th when a judge ruled against DirecTV's request for arbitration, meaning that this will at some point go to court and be settled by a battle of lawyers.

 

This lawsuit raises an interesting question: Just what constitutes high definition television?

Oct 04 2006

Blog - Welcome

By Alan Cooke

First off, I would like to welcome everyone to missingremote.com. I hate to use the term beta, but we do have a few bugs to iron out, but I am very happy with the first go around considering our limited time and resources. John (Bubba) did an excellent job pulling the server and site together. We hope to get everything working in short order and the focus on adding new features to the site. A few of the items we are contemplating is a gallery, news discussion in the forum rather then a comment system, and a small redesign to the forums.

If you would like to get involved with the site in anyway, please let me know. You can go through the contact page at the top to get a hold of me or email me alan <do not spam me at> missingremote.com. Further down the road, we will be looking for qualified A/V enthusiasts to do reviews for the site. :)

Our first contest will be announced this weekend. I have yet to finalize the details, but you can be sure something will be up this weekend. Monkey Boy has boldly claimed the prize before the contest even starts. Are you going to let this guy win?

 

I think thats about it. Again, welcome to the site!! Tell your friends!! Smack Lothar for not signing up yet, and if he has smack him anyways.

 

 

Oct 03 2006

Blog - SageTV

By Alan Cooke

You can take the Alan out of the HTPC but you can't take the HTPC out of Alan. Its probably fitting that my first post be about SageTV and their new beta. After having time to look through the new manual and some of the threads on Sage's forum, it has become apparent to me that this isn't the break through release Sage was looking for.

Sage has been taking so many small incremental steps in its product development its almost hard to notice new features. Its like watching yourself grow old. However, even though it is a small step, it is still their biggest step since they released version 2.0. The have made some nice improvements to their "Media Center" and Online Services portion of the software. All of the basic functions are now there, now that they have the stepping stones in place, hopefully they can use their incremental strategy to improve in these areas.

 

I would especially like to see more tie in with additional google services. Sure the video service is nice, but they have a whole slew of other products just waiting to be integrated. Their music platform has gotten a nice lift, although it is just finally gotten even with SageMC. In fact, a lot of SageMC users will have no reason to upgrade unless they want integrated compression and conversion of formats.

 

Would I upgrade? I know I am going to, its tough not to when one has the upgrade fever. I hope by version 7.0 I see more online services integrated, a new UI with sexy animations, integrated way to purchase movies and music, and of course the moon.

What about the PVR portion, well its still one of the, if not the best out there. Its as simple as that, their bread and butter is still good stuff. While I complain about online services and the like, what keep a lot of people around is its client/server architectures that allows you to stream your content anywhere in your house with Sage Client and Media Extender and anywhere in the world with Place Shifter.


Read our news posting for full release details. I remind you, this is not a news post, and is personal opinion. As always, my personal opinion is full of errors, factual inaccuracies, and a wicked desire to buy more electronic goods.

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