Is a “Black Hole” an Ideal Home Theater?

Everyone seems to have different preferences for lighting in their home theater, but there are a lot of people who like having a “black hole.” I’m not one of them as I prefer an extremely small amount of light in my viewing environment. An interesting article over at CE Pro explains that viewing in total darkness causes the eye to […]

Read more

AC Ryan Playon!HD Mini 2

Media players are turning into a commodity these days. Are you going to go cheap or pay extra for more capabilities such as streaming from a premium service? This appears to be on the lower end of the media player market with very little in the way of added services and benefits. If you’re in the market for a media […]

Read more

Blu-Ray Releases – March 29, 2011

After getting ripped apart for my picks last week, the pressure was on me for this week. Luckily there are a TON to pick from (or is that a bad thing).  Do I go with the Scream trilogy? Nah. The Resident I heard good things about, but haven’t seen it yet. Tangled actually wasn’t awful, but about as predictable as […]

Read more

Installing Pace RNG110 Set Top Box FireWire Drivers

rng110.jpg

As anyone who has used a set top box (STB) with infrared (IR) blasters can attest; while they work most of the time even a minuscule failure rate is not acceptable with spouse acceptance factor (SAF) on the line.  So when something besides IR is available to execute channel changes is available, the additional reliability is a welcome addition.  So […]

Read more

WHS helps control salt water aquarium

I know this isn’t fully related to Home Theater, or HTPC’s but it does sort of revolve around Windows Home Server and another hobby I am verry passionate about, Saltwater reef tanks. A user at at The Home Server Show, has taken his love of both hobbies and has tanken it to a whole new level. By integrating a saltwater […]

Read more

CordChoppers Episode Tracker MCE Plugin

CordChoppers

I love how creative developers get when it comes to working around annoying situations. In this case, they have created a Media Center plugin that monitors feeds from CordChoppers instead of trying to get the streams direct from Hulu and other sites. And don’t forget this plugin is available with MadeForMediaCenter, the utility that lets you install plugins for Media […]

Read more

ASRock Core 100HT Home Theater PC Review

ASRock

We’ve reviewed the previous generation of ASRock HTPC SFF systems in the past, and we were pleased with their price/size/performance. It’s good to see ASRock continues to develop this line, and while this isn’t brand new, you always learn new things from different reviewers. Plus it’s been a slow news week 🙂 Streaming HD Content from Netflix was a slightly […]

Read more

Control your home theater from anywhere in the world

Ether IR

Here’s a pretty cool project going on, completely open source with all the information available to help. The idea is simple enough, use an IR to Ethernet module to connect to your AV Devices from across the internet. His project, called Ether IR, is an Internet-enabled IR repeater. It consists of an Ethernet-connected module with an IR LED mounted on […]

Read more

Corsair 430W ATX Power Supply for $14

Corsair CX430

A lot of people like to use the Corsair CX430 ATX power supply for their HTPC because it offers a decent value at its normal sub-$50 street price. I noticed Newegg is promoting an exceptional deal on this power supply for the weekend. The price is $39.99 – $20 rebate = $19.99 with free shipping. For the weekend, there is […]

Read more
1 2 3 4 9