I’ve visitied with WiSA a few times at CES, and will again in a coupe days, and each time I’ve been impressed with the technology and how far it has come year-over-year. Today they announced that LG Innotek has joined the association. As you can probably guess LG Innotek is an affiliate of the giant we know as LG – […]
Read more
We try to Tweet cool things as we find them, and don’t always have time to do a full write up immediately. For those of you who don’t use Twitter we’ve embedded the stream below. If you do have Twitter you can follow @TechButton(Kyle Button), @babgvant(Andrew Van Til), @MikeGarcen(Mike Garcen), or @JohnMcMahon_(John McMahon) and we will be the guys on […]
Read more
Details are a bit sparse, but it appears that the recent KB3004394 patch breaks content protection on Windows Media Center for all CableCARD / Digital Cable Tuners (DCT). Early word was that it affected all platforms, but Silicondust says it’s safe for Windows 8+. So if you’re running Windows 7 probably best to skip that one for a while.
Read more
If, like me, you’re not really sold on putting everything in The Cloud. Relying on remote storage for all of your security camera footage is a concern so it is nice to see D-Link address this with a local endpoint for its IP surveillance cameras. $350 is a bit pricey, but as a device targeted more towards the small business […]
Read more
Fractal Design makes outstanding cases for not a lot of money. No matter which one we review the outcome has always been the same – solid, well designed, and a great value. So it is great to see them iterating the focused-on-silence Define series with the new R5 which will only run $110-120 depending on whether you want a side […]
Read more
There are many different types of home theater PC (HTPC) enclosures; with most falling somewhere in the spectrum between a throw-everything-including-a-big-O’-GPU-in-the-box and the small-silent-discrete varieties. Supporting only Thin-ITX motherboards the $160 Perfect Home Theater (PHT) T-ITX-6 is firmly located in the latter category. That’s not to say that expansion is strictly limited to just an optical disc drive (ODD) however, […]
Read more
Back in April, we took a look at the 5-Bay NAS N5550 from Thecus, which was one of their first NAS units including an HDMI port to allow hybrid functionality by combining the reliability of a NAS with some of the features of a dedicated HTPC (home theater PC). With conventional hard drives reaching 6TB these days, support for five […]
Read more
It isn’t safe to call it a glut, but we are increasingly spoiled for choice when it comes to 802.11AC routers. Choice is never a bad thing so it was great to see D-Link bringing an AC1900 (1300Mbps 5GHz + 600Mbps 2.4GHz) entrant, the DIR-880L, into the fray. At $175 street ($209 SRP) this wireless router/bridge is $10-$20 cheaper than […]
Read moreThere was a time when the whole ZigBee v. Bluetooth (BT) question would have been kind of silly. BT was very capable, but its power characteristics made unsuitable for the types of devices that a Home Automation (HA) protocol like ZigBee is intended to address. That has changed significantly over the last couple years, with BT LE (Low Energy) taking […]
Read more
The rapid expansion of products in the Home Automation (HA) space this year has been amazing. As the “Internet of Things” gains ground, OEMs who have only dabbled in the past are focusing more on delivering holistic solutions. Today, NETGEAR becomes one of these vendors with their Arlo product line. Currently this only manifests as wireless video monitoring solution that […]
Read more