Here I thought the format wars would remain somewhat quiet this week until CES started up. Welp, I was wrong. Samsung has now dropped the price of its Blu-ray price to $899. This translates into price slashes from other retailers including a $330 price drop from Amazon. Amazon's price of $570 brings it much closer to to HD DVD and […]
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I know I preach over & over again how your HTPC can be used as your one-stop upconverter, but figured this was worth a news posting for those sans-HTPC, since it does only cost $80, not a bad deal. On our test 46-inch DLP set, the upconverted DVDs looked noticeably better than standard DVDs, as you'd expect. However, even […]
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I gotta be honest, I'm surprised to see another remake of this style of case from Silverstone. I remember the first LC05, and while it was a cool design, I don't remember seeing much buzz around it, nor anyone using it. Well, nonetheless, they've made some nice improvements to it & marked it with the cool name, LC09….just rolls off […]
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New year's starting off with some nice new reviews. Tweaktown has up the Gigabyte AVPC Center HTPC system, which I honestly can't decide if I like the look of it. One thing's for sure, it doesn't look like a computer, which is always a positive for WAF. So how does it stack up as an actual Media Center? The H663 […]
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Ok, so my first take on this somehow ended up blank. Anyhow, Zalman really falters on this case with so many vents & fans. It's a shame, as the aesthetics of the case are great, I personally really like the design & style, but you just can't release an HTPC case that clocks in at almost 40db!! The HD135 is […]
Read moreThis is the great thing about the TiVo, is even with all their innovations, the community around it helps & provides the rest while everyone waits for an official Mac software from the company. TiVoDecode Manager 2.0 features the following updates: On the fly MPEG4 encoding is supported on both Intel and PowerPC processors New option to automatically add MPEG4 […]
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I know typically I haven't posted any notebook reviews, but these are deserving I think, as they are Media Centers which also include HD-DVD players. Nice feature of HP's is the built-in IR sensor, versus the Qosmio which has an external box, which really is just annoying if you have to travel a lot with it. Our primary objective in […]
Read moreThink there's a discernible difference between the two new DVD formats? Well, this is only the first of I'm sure many articles concerning this as more players come out & prices go down. Tek Jansen of Games Central has posted an interesting screen-shot and interactivity comparison of Blu-ray and HD DVD. Tek has grabbed screen captures from several different titles […]
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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. […]
Read moreI have heard a lot of great things about Paradigm speakers, although of not had the luxury of owning a pair…. yet… As soon as the CFO of our house allows me too, I intend to investigate Paradigm's new line a bit further. 11 speakers ranging from 249 dollars to 1199 make up the line. Click on through the article […]
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