Beginner Guides
There’s a lot of talk these days about folks wanting to cut down on their bills and configuring their homes to be able to watch TV without a cable subscription, or “cutting the cord” as it’s called, for a number of reasons. All which seem to be related to a feeling that maximum value is not being derived from a […]
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Selecting a graphics processing unit (GPU) (aka video card) that has exactly the right feature set for your home theater PC (HTPC) can be a time consuming task if you’re starting your search from scratch. In the ever-changing landscape of home theater and HTPC, AMD, Intel and NVIDIA respond by implementing new features in their GPUs to keep up with […]
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We recently covered some recommended parts for Building a Home Theater PC and today we are taking that one step further by taking you through the process of how you can build your very own HTPC. The process is not going to be identical to what you will experience as parts will vary depending on what you select, but hopefully […]
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It seems in this day that every company under the sun has their very own media player with various features, but how can you differentiate them? We’re here to try to help! I was at work when a buddy of mine asked me which Media Player device he should buy in order to play all his content. I thought for […]
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We have covered a number of Beginner’s Guides in our effort to help out newcomers to the world of home theater computers. Topics covered include the basics, video resolutions, codecs and how they affect you, media players, frame rates and more. So hopefully you have read and enjoyed those as now the fun part begins–building an HTPC! There are a […]
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Continuing our series of Beginner’s Guides for HTPC and Home Theater, this guide offers ten basic tips for getting your HTPC up and running smoothly. Most of these were learned the hard way, hope that sharing means you don’t have to 🙂 1. Dedicate a physical drive for recording TV: Recording and scanning big TV files for commercials hits a […]
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We hope you’ve been enjoying our series of Beginner’s Guides for HTPC and Home Theater. As part of the series, we’ve previously discussed video resolutions and how video information is displayed on a screen for a frame of video in our guide, Video Resolutions for Beginners. What we didn’t delve into much was the rate at which video frames are […]
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In continuation of our Beginners guide series, this guide is all about controlling your HTPC. One thing that sets a “computer connected to your big screen” and it being a HTPC is how we interface with the system. Controlling your HTPC is all about the hardware and software combination you are using. Depending on if you are using the plethora […]
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Continuing our series of Beginner’s Guides for HTPC and Home Theater, this guide will take a closer look at Video Resolutions–what it means, why’s it important and how to make your picture as good as possible for your particular environment. What does 1080p/720p/1080i/480p mean? The numbers 1080, 720 and 480 refer to the lines of vertical resolution in the picture […]
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Codecs? File types? Oh my! If you have ever tried to watch a video you downloaded from the internet only to find it unable to be played (or maybe just audio but no video), then this is the guide for you! We’re going to try to do our best to cover most of the more common file types that are […]
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