HardOCP has up a thermal paste shootout looking at many factors in usage and testing for ten different types of thermal paste and and also cheese…yes I said cheese… HardOCP We take 10 high profile thermal pastes used for mating heatsink surfaces to CPUs and other components and subject those to over 1200 hours of testing to find out which […]
Read moreJust got back from Tahoe and saw a few tasty tidbits in my inbox. For those looking at buying SageTV extenders, Sage is running a March Madness Sale (until end of month). Enter the coupon code MMAD09 when checking out to get the indicated discount. (Coupon expires April 1, 2009) – $20 off SageTV HD Theater (only $179.95) – $25 […]
Read moreNew on the SageTV scene is the first custom user interface for the HD Theater extender. This UI is designed exclusively for use on the extender in stand alone mode and is based on the Sage Pro theme for SageMC. This theme (stv in the Sage world) does a great job of cleaning up the look and feel of the […]
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After tearing down the HTPC, I started putting things back together with my brand new parts. This is actually going to be retrospective look at building my HTPC since it’s been up and running with minimum required functionality for the last couple months or so. This build was designed to be the main HTPC in the family room. I planned […]
Read moreThe discussion, here, about larger storage setups caught my attention this week. Large storage setups for many simultaneous users have considerations beyond your standard small home server. Some of the major considerations are hard drive choice, disk configuration, sufficient throughput for your application, backup, fault tolerance. – Hard Drives: If you are planning a large 10TB+ array of discs, you […]
Read moreI find myself spending much too much time on airplanes. This past year I earned status on one airline, and almost on a second. My fiancee is travelling so much that she is going platinum on multiple airlines. With all this time spent in the air and on the road we’ve gone through quite a few of the many options […]
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I know everyone here probably already knows I’m a SageTV user, and I have been for the past many years. But today I had one of those moments that reminds me why I love SageTV, and in particular it’s developers. The development team’s dedication to providing timely, friendly responses to inquiries is probably one of my favorite things about this […]
Read moreATI Catalyst 8.11 released today . Biggest improvement seems to be for linux folks with: New Display Enhancements This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for display scaling to resize the display devices that support TV timings (480i/p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) through either digital (DVI or HDMI) or analog (component) interfaces. There are also a few bug fixes in […]
Read moreI’m annoyed right now. Intel apparently can’t deliver a motherboard that has working hardware acceleration of their new X4500HD graphics chip. It works on all the third party motherboards just fine. They updated the bios and broke hardware acceleration of all the blu-ray formats. Classic case of hardware company that can’t write software. They need to fix whatever it is […]
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Hooray! The last of the parts for my new build arrived last week. I have spent the last several months planning this build. The goal was to upgrade to a machine that ran Blu-ray and recorded in HD with ease, while also building an HTPC that was even quieter than my prior build. Music playback is also imporatant, but that […]
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