Trinity is just around the corner, but there’s no reason not to take a look at its aging sibling Llano with a builder’s guide for HTPC since most of it should carry over to the new platform. All told, it looks like they did a pretty solid job with it except for the cases, where there is a serious lack […]
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We haven’t had a chance to take a HTPC-centric look at IVB’s HD 2500 so more traditional gaming-style reviews will have to do – stepping into that space AT takes a look at the GPU. Unfortunately, there’s no look at its capability with respect to madVR, but since they found that The 2500’s performance is tangibly worse than last year’s […]
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There’s nothing wrong with advertising per se, but I find the broadcaster’s posturing around DISH’s recent feature enabling automatic commercial skipping for Primetime TV highly objectionable. While DISH has deep pockets, and the pugnacity to put up a good fight, it shouldn’t have to go it alone – with Public Knowledge starting up a campaign to lend us a voice […]
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Not long ago it was easy to lean primarily on a traditional remote control – universal, of course — relegating the keyboard and mouse to the audio & video (A/V) cabinet, closet, or other locale of last resort –dragging it out just for occasional maintenance or troubleshooting. However, as over-the-top (OTT) content providers such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and […]
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I’ll forgive you if you need a few minutes to check for flying pigs (I certainly did) after discovering that a major MSO has enabled [limited] automatic commercial skipping on their best DVR. Now it’s not quite the same as we in the HTPC community have grown accustomed to since it only applies to PrimeTime Anytime content viewed after 1AM […]
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With six drivers, four amps and Aperion Audio’s reputation for quality speakers the ARIS looks like a great way to push music around the house using DLNA. The PR (after the click) does not specify what codec/containers or DRM schemes (if any) are supported though – although the W8 “certification pending” is promising because I’ve heard that it supports “protected” […]
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If I’m honest I don’t really get these ASROCK’s NVIDIA + Intel HD Graphics SFF HTPCs because there really isn’t much that adding a dGPU nets you outside of slightly better gaming performance. That said, I am glad that ASROCK continues to develop new machines for this segment and that these systems are beginning to look a lot more like […]
Read moreI wasn’t expecting much when sitting down for Dish Network’s CES 2012 press event, but that skepticism was amply dispelled after the Hopper/Joey whole home DVR system was announced. Obviously, Dish wouldn’t be the first company to say one thing, and release something bearing only a cursory resemblance to the initial promise so it was critical to wait until someone […]
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Last year Intel’s Sandy Bridge “TOCK” married the graphics processing unit (GPU) and CPU on the same die, making it a first class citizen in the system and introduced a true integrated processor graphics (IPG) solution. With HD audio bit steaming introduced in the previous generation, full hardware acceleration of VC-1, AVC (H.264), MPEG2 as well as 3D Blu-ray (MVC) […]
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I use ARCTIC’s PWM fans in most of my personal systems because they’re quiet and they do a good job cooling the PC so it’s great to see the lineup expanding to include options directly targeting always on systems – like the file server. Full PR after the click.
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