Category: Blog

The next generation optical disc formats, like standard DVD, are encrypted on disc, but unlike standard DVD, also require protected paths from the player to the display. With this comes a confusing new group of terms, many of which betray the idiosyncrasies of the next generation content protection requirements. The confusion has become obvious, especially when otherwise very technically literate websites start producing […]

By now I'm sure you all have heard about Windows Home Server (or, WHS for short), Microsoft's latest OS idea about bringing a server into your home to provide a central system to store & backup all your files spanning from multiple systems. When I first heard about WHS, I got excited. You see, several years ago, there were some […]

I was asked recently by some friends, "Why is concurrent sessions so important that you cry about it every time we talk about Vista?" (you can imagine, the friends I speak of are MVPs or MVP-related. For those unaware of the issue I'm referring to, there was a hack for Windows XP that allowed you to have a feature that […]

OK OK….   I got the not so subtle hint to crank up the MythTV bandwagon. The comparison isn't exactly fair as MythTV is a complete media convergence device and a TiVo3 only handles PVR duties.  Here's my non-complete list of features MythTV has that I doubt the TiVo3 has.  Of course, since I don't have a TiVo3 in the house, […]

So you just took advantage of some of the great deals out there for some dual core (or heck, quad core) cpus & motherboards. You took the time, carefully planned, and then assembled your full system. Then you go to make your purchase of Windows Vista, only to be faced with the decision: Should I buy the x86 (32-bit version) […]

For Christmas this year, I received a new power supply for my HTPC. But lo and behold, when I opened up my PC to swap power supplies, it didn’t fit. What was I to do? I could have returned the perfectly good power supply and swapped it for a different model which would fit…or I could go to the hardware […]

The HQV Benchmark DVD is probably the best and most objective video processing test available today. Unfortunately there are still subjective comparisons that need to be made to give a final rating. Of course reference images are given to compare against, and if you see something that has totaly failed it is obvious. The less obvious is when the scores allow […]

    While purchasing parts for my latest MythTV frontend client, I ran into a dilemma.  I wanted to take advantage of the upgrade path that an AMD socket AM2 system would provide, but I also really liked the performance of my tried and true Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu heat sink fan.  Unfortunately, this fan is not directly compatible with the AM2 socket.  […]