With the increasing reach of over-the-top (OTT) content on tablets and mobile phones, content consumption can follow us around the home in a way that a fixed location TV never could. Holding onto the mobile device isn’t always convenient, whether it’s because more than one person is viewing or because you’re elbow deep in cooking, carving (my father often watches […]
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When Amazon first released their FireTV player there was not a ton of excitement for the AppleTV competitor. Sure it looked the same, provided similar features, and cost the same ($99), but for most consumers the features were too similar to create a buzz. With the release of the FireTV Stick however, Amazon has now targeted the very popular Google […]
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There is a point in scaling out a home theater where a good universal remote control becomes an essential part of the experience. Yes, you can get by with the pseudo universal that came with the AVR, but then you have to train your family, and worse the babysitter, how to use that in a productive way. They need to […]
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We met with the folks at Silicon Dust during our week at International CES 2015, and among the things we talked about were the antennas they were using to pull in a signal. They are manufactured in the USA by HD Frequency. While we were not able to meet in person with them at CES, we did get a […]
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There are many different types of home theater PC (HTPC) enclosures; with most falling somewhere in the spectrum between a throw-everything-including-a-big-O’-GPU-in-the-box and the small-silent-discrete varieties. Supporting only Thin-ITX motherboards the $160 Perfect Home Theater (PHT) T-ITX-6 is firmly located in the latter category. That’s not to say that expansion is strictly limited to just an optical disc drive (ODD) however, […]
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Back in April, we took a look at the 5-Bay NAS N5550 from Thecus, which was one of their first NAS units including an HDMI port to allow hybrid functionality by combining the reliability of a NAS with some of the features of a dedicated HTPC (home theater PC). With conventional hard drives reaching 6TB these days, support for five […]
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It isn’t safe to call it a glut, but we are increasingly spoiled for choice when it comes to 802.11AC routers. Choice is never a bad thing so it was great to see D-Link bringing an AC1900 (1300Mbps 5GHz + 600Mbps 2.4GHz) entrant, the DIR-880L, into the fray. At $175 street ($209 SRP) this wireless router/bridge is $10-$20 cheaper than […]
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For me, the most interesting thing about 802.11AC Wi-Fi comes down to bandwidth. While it can’t quite deliver the same speed and bullet-proof reliability as a full Cat6 wired installation, its capability comes at a fraction of the cost and much greater flexibility; dropping in an AC1750+ router + media bridge enables the same kind of “heavy” media consumption possibilities […]
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Ditter is a company you’ve probably never heard of located in Shenzhen China, the ultimate home of most electronics. If you google the brand however, you’ll find a lot of forum chatter surrounding their affordable line of XBMC-compatible media players available for sale from a number of sources. We received the U20 model—which uses an Allwinner A20 dual core 1.2GHz […]
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Even with a fancy new 802.11AC Wi-Fi router, it is almost impossible to avoid having a few dead spots in a house. Unfortunately, those corners where the wireless does not quite reach reliably also makes a great place to put a bean bag chair for some casual web browsing or over-the-top (OTT) media consumption. Now that this market has matured […]
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