Last month Onkyo announced four audio video receivers (AVR); while the video features were interesting none offered advanced room correction. Today we received word that the specifications for two more mid-range AVR are now available (the actual devices will show up in May), with the TX-NR818’s MultEQ XT32 addressing that gap. We’ll have to see where the reviews end up, […]
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Redbox knocks out one kiosk rental competitor and another one springs up in it’s place. The Morgan Freeman-backed Digiboo movie rental service has launched with kiosks in a handful of airports. Digiboo plans to expand to 7000 kiosks over the next three years, though presumably not just at airports. The basic concept may be similar to Redbox, but there are some fundamental […]
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March seems to be turning into the month for hard drive technology announcements. Last year, Samsung was showing off the first 4TB hard drives. This year, Seagate is showing off the technology that they expect to take hard drives up as high as 60TB. That technology is Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), a system that uses lasers to flip the bits […]
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It seems like the world of home theater has become an endless stream of new cables and connectors over the last couple of decades. It is impossible to predict exactly what the future will bring, and let’s face it, most of us do not have the wherewithal to continually update the wiring in our house to accommodate every new video connector that […]
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Part of the promise of UltraViolet has always been to make it possible for consumers to buy a movie once and play it anywhere by storing a digital copy in an online account. In the last couple of weeks, talk had come up that the studios backing UltraViolet were looking into ways of allowing consumers to convert any of their […]
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Plex for Google TV has been updated with a fancy new look. The app’s home screen has been overhauled to make moving through media categories and finding new media easier. The new home screen also makes it easier to access the most recently used online content channels. Plex has always had a clean look and the new Google TV home […]
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It has been a little more than a month since Amazon signed a deal to bring some of Viacom’s properties to its Prime Instant Videos service. Evidently, Amazon has been busy courting other content providers, as Amazon today announced a licensing agreement with Discovery Communications that will bring shows from networks such as the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC […]
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I tend to be very conservative about adding plug-ins or new software to my Windows Home Server. Indeed, on my v1 box, I’m not sure I ever installed anything other than Squeezebox Server, and I have not installed too much else on my 2011 box. That being said, one of my favorite add-ins for WHS 2011 is Home Server SMART […]
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By now, we’ve all become accustomed to the movie industry’s efforts to continue to enforce traditional release windows and exclusivity deals. One of the vagaries of these deals often comes up in relation to streaming and digital distribution systems, where movies can seem to arrive later than one would expect or can come and go, seemingly at random. One of […]
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Television shows can be profitable based on ad sales during an initial run if the ratings are high enough, but the real long-term value is in distribution and syndication, selling the rights to replay a show on another network and in other markets. Tapping into this revenue stream is the primary reason so many cable networks have raced to join […]
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