Given the positive conversation I had with SIGMA DESIGNS at CES I was a little surprised to see a rumor floating around that the SMP8910 had been suspended. If true, this would be a major setback for those waiting for Dune HD’s Pro media player so I fired off an email to find out. Fortunately, my contact at SIGMA was […]
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When we dropped in on Onkyo during CES I was impressed with InstaPrevue and MHL, but a little disappointed in my ability (or better said, lack thereof) to pry any details from them regarding the 2012 lineup. Given the vague answers received, I was a bit concerned that those features wouldn’t make it into enough of their products to really […]
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With AMD’s Trinity APU/IPG coming in the near future it is great to see what OEMs are planning to do with the part. No word on price or timing, but Arctic has released a picture and some [subject to change without notice] specs for their next generation small form factor (SFF) HTPC built on the CPU/GPU combo. I think it […]
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Netflix has provided over the top (OTT) video streaming via its “Watch Instantly” service for quite sometime, but until yesterday there was little to fundamentally differentiate that service (besides convenience, and the need for high-speed Internet) from a trip to the video store or the mailbox. Introducing original programming changed that – moving the company in a more interesting, welcome, […]
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When we were at CES, CyberLink was showing a beta version of PowerDVD 12. There were some advancements in the product versus its predecessor, PowerDVD 11 – most notably automatic refresh rate switching, but the best part was that they gave me a copy to bring back and test on a variety of systems to provide a preview of what […]
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I’ll admit that this wasn’t what I was hoping for when I saw the message from Dune HD in my inbox this morning (give us the VUDU already :)), but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested. Home automation is a natural next step for home theater geeks (if you’re here, this likely includes you) once the consumption problem has been […]
Read moreI saw the new UI that comes with 1.5 while at CES and found it to be a big improvement over previous revs. Besides that, the biggest feature “get” is probably support for live ATSC via the optional dongle, but those still having issues with HBR audio will have to wait however. Full release notes on the click… Boxee Box […]
Read moreThose who know me, know that I’m not a big fan of advertising. Of course “the why” isn’t nearly as simple as it would first appear however. The fundamental problem with advertising isn’t with the message per se, but the delivery – as an onerous chore, forced upon us in some sort of arcane moral obligation for “free” content. While […]
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I often find that that good networking kit is neglected when it comes to building an solid connected home theater, with low-end network interface cards (NIC), routers and wireless access points (AP) creating a sub-standard experience. It’s also an area where we haven’t done as much as we should to spread the word through guides and reviews – something that […]
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One of the more frustrating things about the market for media streamers is how little file support has progressed over the last couple years. Of course that’s not all bad, because generally most things work and there’s still a lot of work to do on the UI but it was refreshing to see an actual HDMI 1.4 (yes, they are […]
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