When it comes to sleek small form factor (SFF) home theater PCs (HTPC) Intel pretty much perfected it with their Haswell based NUC systems–offering an excellent media experience in a chassis with built-in IR, the potential to add HDMI-CEC, and optional hard disk drive (HDD) all from a quiet, low power system. Seeking to build on this success they recently […]
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Haswell D54250WYB based Intel NUCs included a HDMI-CEC exposing Custom Solutions Header (aka HTPC Header) on board, but there were two pretty major issues with the implementation. The first, and most important, is that there just isn’t space in the chassis to put the adapter that was available. The second is that the 3.3V pin droops when current is drawn. […]
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The pace of innovation in the 802.11AC space over the last couple years has been breathtaking. With the iteration from AC1750 -> AC1900, the main improvement was realized in 2.4GHz bandwidth, and not focused on enhancing the speed of the primary 5GHz radio. The recent release of “Wave 2” 802.11AC chipsets has changed this by adding features like Multi-user MIMO […]
Read moreThis is some great news for anyone that’s ever tried using the HDHomeRun within XBMC (now called Kodi), as there’s now an add-on which adds some slick support for your network based tuners. Still no recording functionality for now, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. And just in time for the Tourney! No longer will you […]
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Chromecast has a new firmware out and it has released HDMI-CEC control commands. Google Chromecast has worked with HDMI-CEC since day one with the power and ability to change to the right input. Not all TV manufactures have HDMI-CEC turned on and Andrew Van Til has talked about it a lot with the HTPC and Intel NUC we have reviewed, but this is […]
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I hope you enjoy this writing. I had submitted this just the day before the news that SageTV was coming back to be open sourced from the founder Jeff Kardatzke. Who would have seen this coming? Not me, not our Editor in Chief Mike Garcen; really no one. Sage has stood the test of time. With many beginning to walk […]
Read moreSome pretty crazy news passed my way by our friend George S., linking to a forum post by Jeff from (formerly) SageTV, announcing that they somehow convinced Google to open source the SageTV code! What does this mean? It’s too early to tell, but given how involved software developers were in making SageTV a great experience, I have a hunch […]
Read moreKodi (aka XBMC) is catching fire by using the Amazon Fire TV as a client. As both a user of MCE and SageTV via cableCARD, I have been looking to find a replacement for those particular PVR HTPC systems that has extender capabilities due to no more or little further development from either camp in quite a while. MCE has […]
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Where in the past OEMs have happily sold wireless cameras, and the infrastructure to put them on the network, no one has tried to tie it all together into a consumer product that is reliable and easy to use. With the recent release of Arlo, NETGEAR has done exactly that, signaling a strong a desire to build a discrete brand […]
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