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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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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Having picked up a Sony Playstation 4 recently, I was a bit disappointed to find that while it wouldn’t play 3D Blu-ray (something the PS3 could do). Sony fixed that issue, along with adding some enhancements to general disc playback. I had a chance to check it out briefly (updated and threw in The Lego Movie while heating up lunch) […]
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I don’t usually post about BIOS updates, but it looks like there was a recent update for the D54250WYB, D54250WYK, D34010WYB, & D34010WYK NUC that fixes an issue with IR wake from standby when using OpenELEC. Update
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The recent SCOTUS ruling making the service Aereo provides illegal was disappointing, but not surprising given the stakes. I was discussing this with a friend who pointed out that “The micro-antennas didn’t fool anyone, it’s the same as cable tv”. Which makes an incredibly valid point because it draws focus to what is the real problem with Aereo — hubris. […]
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When GoogleTV first came out, it was an interesting idea but poorly executed. Refusing to give up on the idea Google has soldiered on and yesterday GoogleTV became Android TV, bringing their little-black-box OS closer to their main branch of Android which should provide greater access to the catalog of apps available through the Play store. Alongside this, it […]
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