The floods in Thailand last year displaced over 12 million people and left large swathes of the country underwater, including factories that produced a large percentage of the world’s hard drives and hard drive components. Western Digital, the hard drive manufacturer most affected by the flooding, has been working to restore production and between their reconstruction efforts in Thailand and […]
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The release of the first beta of XBMC 11.0 “Eden” turned out to be a great Christmas present. I’ve been using it regularly since its release, and other than some issues with building a library from a SMB share, the Eden beta has been quite stable. The interface is faster than ever and the new horizontal layout is a welcome […]
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The Xbox 360’s fall update brought a whole slew of new video playback options, but as it turns out the update also brought with it a nasty bug affecting the system’s RGB colorspace output during video playback. The result was a washed-out image and more visible compression artifacts. It took awhile, but Microsoft is finally acknowledging the issue and has […]
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Folks using Media Center Master for managing metadata can look forward to an update the next time fire up the program. Version 1.34 has been issued via auto-update. There’s no sign of the usual changelog post in the MCM forums, but evidently the update fixes an issue accessing NZBMatrix.com which will good news for premium MCM users who use NZBMatrix.com […]
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We had the opportunity to review Fractal Design’s Arc Midi case last month and came away generally pleased, particularly with the case’s versatility and value. It would make a solid foundation for any HTPC or home server build. I am continually surprised with how many drive bays Fractal Design manages to fit into their cases without sacrificing accessibility. Our friends […]
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The ever-popular aTV Flash (black) from FireCore has been updated to version 1.2. The update brings a number of new features as well as a raft of bug fixes and system improvements. The biggest new feature is a video zoom function that can be accessed through the Playback Menu to allow users to stretch just about any video to fill […]
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Time Warner Cable launched their live TV streaming app for Android phones just about a month ago, and today the company announced that iPhone and iPod Touch owners can get in on the action as well. The iOS app is actually an update to the previously iPad-only app. It offers Time Warner Cable subscribers live TV streaming over their home […]
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Gaming PCs and HTPCs come in all shapes and sizes, and it is not at all uncommon for the lines to cross, but Alienware may well have come up with one of the more exciting line-crossers in quite awhile with the freshly minted X51. The Alienware X51 is a small-form factor gaming PC that could easily pass for a gaming […]
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It has been easy to beat up on Netflix over the last several months. The company was a golden child of the Internet during its rise over Blockbuster and with its forward-thinking transition to streaming media provider, but we are all aware of the gaffes the company has committed that have taken the shine off that luster. Though the company […]
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When CNN launched a little over 30 years ago, the idea of a 24 hour news channel was revolutionary. Today, news channels represent a major cog in the subscription television machine. It should therefore be no surprise that YouTube, which seems intent on positioning itself as the Internet equivalent of 1000 channels and nothing to watch, would want a news […]
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