As more companies continue to battle for the Blu-ray player in your living room, so too do the features increase as the costs reduce. Samsung has the benefit of having a full line of products and are starting to leverage those between their different products. The trend is continuing. Blu-ray player competition is getting fierce and we all will be […]
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Not long ago it was easy to lean primarily on a traditional remote control – universal, of course — relegating the keyboard and mouse to the audio & video (A/V) cabinet, closet, or other locale of last resort –dragging it out just for occasional maintenance or troubleshooting. However, as over-the-top (OTT) content providers such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and […]
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I’ll forgive you if you need a few minutes to check for flying pigs (I certainly did) after discovering that a major MSO has enabled [limited] automatic commercial skipping on their best DVR. Now it’s not quite the same as we in the HTPC community have grown accustomed to since it only applies to PrimeTime Anytime content viewed after 1AM […]
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The last release of the Plex Media Server brought the beta platform to version 0.9.6 and added some pretty big features, including DLNA and Silverlight Smooth Streaming service support. The new release pushes the version number slightly higher to version 0.9.6.1 and does offer several new features including support for the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 and more streaming choices over […]
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When Apple announced the third-generation Apple TV back in early March, the company also announced that iTunes would begin offering 1080p movies and TV shows. A number of big studios were quick to begin hawking their even more high-definition wares, but two conspicuously absent studios were Warner Bros. and Fox. Fortunately, Warner Bros. has finally decided to get on-board the […]
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Comcast has announced that subscribers now have free access to more live sports content via the WatchESPN web and iOS apps. Unfortunately, the Android app is not currently supported. WatchESPN offers access to live streams from ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, and ESPNU, along with special content for college football and basketball. Comcast also expects the WatchESPN live streams to be available […]
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With six drivers, four amps and Aperion Audio’s reputation for quality speakers the ARIS looks like a great way to push music around the house using DLNA. The PR (after the click) does not specify what codec/containers or DRM schemes (if any) are supported though – although the W8 “certification pending” is promising because I’ve heard that it supports “protected” […]
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A few days before releasing the XFINITY TV app for the Xbox 360, Comcast posted a FAQ regarding the app. For many folks, the most interesting tidbit was Comcast’s announcement that XFINITY TV on Xbox Live usage would not count against Comcast subscribers’ bandwidth caps. Comcast’s reasoning was that all of the data transmissions were occurring on Comcast’s private network […]
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Google was looking to give their Google TV platform a boost at CES this year and at least one new hardware manufacturer pledging their support was LG. In particular, LG was showing off a Google TV-powered smart TV along with a special version of the motion-sensitive LG Magic Remote Control with a QWERTY keyboard. It has been a few months, […]
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Microsoft’s recent Building Windows 8 blog post regarding the availability of Windows Media Center in Windows 8 raised almost as many questions as it answered, particularly regarding the unexpected connection between WMC and DVD playback. To help sort through some of the questions that their blog post raised, the Windows 8 team has followed up with a FAQ that attempts to […]
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