When I initially saw the announcement from Elgato that they have released the HDHomeRun under their own brand name I was immediately curious as to what this was all about. After all, the SiliconDust HDHomeRun has been one of the most popular tuners for home theater PC (HTPC) users since 2006. What Elgato is offering is the 3rd revision to […]
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When selecting the perfect chassis to serve content to the audio/video stack a different set of attributes is required than what is typically demanded from a home theater PC (HTPC) enclosure. The ideal server must be able to scale to support multiple hard drives, keep everything cool and not sound like a shop-vac in the process. With eight 3.5” hard […]
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The quest for the perfect home theater PC (HTPC) case is always a challenge even in today’s world where there is a healthy amount of chassis to choose from in all shapes and sizes. While some people prefer an HTPC chassis which stands out in their A/V stack there are plenty of people that want something quiet, subtle and most […]
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When you use a picoPSU in a case with space for a full ATX power supply unit (PSU) two questions can’t help but come up: how to plug the giant gap in the back, and where to mount the external plug. In the past I’ve just cut the back off a broken standard PSU and drilled a hole. While certainly […]
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Over the last several weeks we had the pleasure of testing the new Intel Mini-ITX Media Series Motherboard, dubbed the DH61AG. This is what I consider to be the first truly HTPC-centric motherboard. Since the first integrated graphics processing unit (iGPU) with HDMI output was introduced we have heard boards coined as the “the perfect HTPC board” or “HTPC nirvana.” […]
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When home theater computers first came to market almost 10 years ago, the television tuners that were available were few and far between, all internal, and featured a whopping single tuner. How times have changed. Now, dual tuners are a given and hybrid tuners seek to accomplish the duty of one-size-fits-all for all customers. The Elgato EyeTV Hybrid is one […]
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As we can see from the video Boxee provides an excellent first experience with the device with friendly retail packaging and includes an HDMI cable so most users will be able to get started when they bring it home. Device Love it or not, the Boxee Box is certainly unique–sure to stand out in any environment. How desirable that is […]
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Rewind two years ago to 2009–Hulu was really starting to gain momentum and attention, as well as some other fledgling TV streaming services, but all required a keyboard and mouse for use with your Windows Media Center HTPC. Then, SecondRun.tv was released and not only made it possible to control and watch Hulu.com content, but did so in a very […]
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If you have an HTPC and are a sports fan, and your cable company supports it, then you most likely have heard of ESPN3.com. This fantastic website from ESPN provides a lot of the content that is available on the cable channel to be streamed live to your system for free. Editorial shows like SportsCenter and Around the Horn are […]
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Spring is here, so as usual it is time for CyberLink to release an updated version of PowerDVD (PDVD) making this number 11. With PDVD 10 already a solid product we were not expecting a revolutionary shift in the Blu-ray (BD) playback software, so the rather evolutionary changes brought to the updated application including better 3D support, a richer media […]
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