Even with a fancy new 802.11AC Wi-Fi router, it is almost impossible to avoid having a few dead spots in a house. Unfortunately, those corners where the wireless does not quite reach reliably also makes a great place to put a bean bag chair for some casual web browsing or over-the-top (OTT) media consumption. Now that this market has matured […]
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I used to have one of Yamaha’s “sound processors”, and it was a pretty decent substitute for a discrete setup in the right room because of the effort they put into analyzing the room and adjusting the output accordingly. The problem of course was the price, not everyone wants an expensive “sound bar” so the introduction if the SRT-1000 is […]
Read moreI must confess to doing a double-take when reading a headline indicating that Hauppauge (yes, the TV tuner OEM) announced a Z-Wave enabled hub at IFA. Over at IFA in Berlin, Hauppauge has revealed two new smart home kits compatible with Z-Wave wireless technology, which allow you to control lights and electrical appliances in your house, among other things. The […]
Read moreUnfortunately, there’s still no substitute for plastic based delivery if you want the best HD home theater movie experience, so it is great news that the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced that the Blu-ray spec will be expanded for 4K content. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has taken the opportunity at the IFA 2014 trade show that’s taking place […]
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Fresh on the heels of their flagship Nighthawk X6 R8000, NETGEAR is bringing out the Nigthhawk X4 R7500 router. The main differentiator with this four-stream “AC2350” (1733+600Mbps) device is the inclusion of Mutli-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) making it an 802.11AC “Wave 2” device. With four AC streams available the peak theoretical bandwidth on 5GHz rises to 1733Mbps (from 1300Mbps in […]
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Visiting the Linksys booth at CES we saw a very large Wireless AC Gigabit Router they were showing off called the WRT1900AC. They designed it to look like the old WRT54G router that was very popular when released back in 2002 due to its open architecture which sparked the modified router software evolution such as DD-WRT, Tomato, and others which […]
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There are a lot of reasons to like Roku for its collection of content (aka Channels), simplicity, or [my favorite feature] the unified search, but would rather have the experience built into your Smart TV it looks like Hisense and TCL will be shipping models very soon that solve this problem for you. Just like our Roku players, Roku TV […]
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Utilizing over the Air (OTA) broadcast television has been growing in popularity recently as the move towards “cord cutting” and lowering utility bills has increased in importance. For Home Theater PC (HTPC) users, the options were always plentiful and simple—toss an ATSC or SiliconDust networked tuner card into your computer, connect it to an antenna, and voila—free high definition television. […]
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The BenQ W7500 projector is a work of art, or should I say can display any work of art; it is a beautiful projector and picture. This projector is built for your house and gets you man[or woman]-cave ready for sports, movies or gaming. Forget the theory that projectors should be for occasional use–you will want to use this projector […]
Read moreSlingbox is at it again, with a less expensive model in their M1. Now, while the hardware is less expensive, Ben points out that the desktop application is free but the tablet/phone versions cost $15 each. Overall, it’s not a revolutionary release for Slingbox, but it’s good to see they are still producing new products. Like all Slingboxes before it, […]
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