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 moreIf you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you will remember when I posted that my old frontend died on me. A little more recently, I shared the death of my HD server/development system. Today, thanks to Autoboy, I am pleased to announce that I once again have my old frontend system running again. He was able […]
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 […]
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Not too many years ago, getting into the home automation game was a cost prohibitive and something best left to the professional installers. I am not here to say you are going to duplicate a $10,000 custom install job. Well, let me say that I may not duplicate a custom $10,000 job, but based on some of the DIY jobs […]
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Recently I posted a blog about how my development/HD server system died on my after my UPS beeped briefly. Well, I decided that it was worth a quick look to see if it was the power supply or not. I knew it would be a quick test, so I came up with the following test rig. PSU Test Rig Believe […]
Read moreMusic is one of the features which Windows Media Center does really quite well–the layout is fun, easy to follow, useful and attractive. That being said, the features are quite minimal. You see the information which you provide via tags and little extra. Boxee adds a splash of innovation into their Music abilities, as you can see from the video […]
Read moreMost people that are aware of Boxee think it’s primarily used for television watching–mainly all the internet TV portals for watching full episodes on demand, which I covered a bit during my first impressions look. The Photos area of Boxee however is equally powerful. Again, if you have seen Boxee on AppleTV or other previous device, you will notice very […]
Read moreBoxee has been out and available for Apple, AppleTV and Linux for quite a while now, and it has gained a lot of buzz. While those versions recently entered out of private alpha and into public alpha, an equally impressive announcement was made with a private alpha release of BoxeeTV for Windows! The interface is almost identical from what I […]
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The story of my mission for getting video resume in Media Center is a long one, but I will condense it for your sanity. Ever since the original Portable Media Centers were released–remember, those brick sized devices before IPods ever existed–the one and only feature I clammored for and missed from those devices were Video Resume. By video resume, I […]
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My previous tango with Movie Collectorz was only a few short months ago. It won my heart with a dual purposed approach that includes a MCML based Vista Media Center plugin (that works in Windows 7) and an excellent cataloging program. Since then, Movie Collectorz has grown into an integeral part of my Media Center setup. The combination of the […]
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