August 19, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published a instructional guide on building a MythTV digital video recorder system using off-the-shelf PC parts, Linux, and the MythTV open source software.

June 15, 2005

DivX Networks today released the DivX 6 video encoding format, featuring enhanced performance, video quality, and editing capabilities. DivX was originally designed for computer video but is now being used more and more for consumer electronics. The most visible new feature of DivX 6 allows video editors to create enhanced menu pages and chapter titles.

June 11, 2005

Tom's Hardware has reviewed three moderately priced home theater projectors. They are the Mitsubishi HC2000, the Optoma H79, and the Sony VPL-H51. These projectors have native 1280 x 720 resolution and are compatible with HD signals like 720p and 1080i. The Mitsubishi and Optima use DLP technology while the Sony uses three LCD imaging units. In terms of brightness the Mitsubishi HC2000 comes in at 700 ANSI lumens, the Optima H79 at 1000 ANSI lumens, and the Sony VPL-H51 at 1200 ANSI lumens.

June 9, 2005

PC World has published an article containing dozens of TiVo tips and tricks, some well known, others not so well known. These include a number of navigation shortcuts, advanced commercial skipping, sorting of recorded shows, sound system control, adding unlisted channels, enhanced TiVoToGo functionality, replacing the internal hard drive with one that is larger, and many more. The article also contains links to a number of TiVo enthusiast sites, which contain even more TiVo tips and tricks.

June 4, 2005

Sharp Corp. has said that it will begin selling the world's largest liquid crystal display television set, containing a 65-inch LCD screen. The Aquos LC-65GE1 is full-spec high definition LCD panel with new back-lighting technology that enhances color output, and is priced around $15,000.

June 1, 2005

ATI Technologies has announced that their new Radeon R520 graphics processor features hardware accelerated H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) decoding. The H.264 compression format is used on forthcoming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie titles, and is twice as efficient at compressing video as MPEG-2, the current standard.

May 22, 2005

The Register has published a review of the ATI X600 All-in-Wonder Pro, a 3D graphics card designed for multimedia and home theater applications. Features include an ATI RV380 GPU running at 400 MHz, an ATI Theater 200 chip, a digital TV tuner module, bi-directional PCI Express x16, and 256 MB of DDR RAM at 300 MHz. Video output connectors include VGA, DVI-I, D-SUB, S-Video, and composite video. The card accepts RF and analog cable TV input. The Theater 200 chip features hardware anti-aliasing, automatic gain control, stereo audio processing, horizontal and vertical video scaling, adaptive 2D comb filtering and support for PAL, SECAM and NTSC broadcast standards. Software includes ATI's Multimedia Center suite, which handles TV channel selection and scanning; pausing, recording and scheduled recording of live TV broadcasts; tuning, pausing, recording and scheduled recording of live FM radio broadcasts; and video capture in MPEG 4, Real, Windows Media Video 9, and DivX file formats.

May 11, 2005

ExtremeTech has an article showing you how to build your own home television server, which lets you centralize recording, storage, and distribution of video over your home network. With a home television server you can watch what you want, when and where you want it. The typical home television server can: receive broadcast video; provide full personal video recorder (PVR) functionality, including pause, rewind, fast forward/reverse, and selection of shows to record; compress recorded video allowing for storage of many hours of content; record video on a server for playback on multiple networked clients; play recorded video, MP3 audio, and DVDs; provide a client user interface suitable for use on a television screen, from across the room, via remote control; and create DVDs from recorded video or other sources.

May 6, 2005

In a major blow to the MPAA, a federal appeals court has thrown out FCC rules that required digital television equipment to enforce copy protection through the use of what is known as the "broadcast flag". The court said that those FCC regulations exceed the agency's authority because television receivers do not broadcast signals. Therefore, the only way to get the FCC to enforce such a regulation is to have a law passed specifically allowing such authority.

May 2, 2005

Ultimate AV magazine has coverage from all three days of the Home Entertainment 2005 conference. See what's new in high-end LCD and plasma displays, projectors, HDTV hardware, sound systems, home theater PCs, projection screens, and more.

April 27, 2005

DirecTV has launched their new Spaceway F1 satellite. With the launch of an additional satellite in June, DirecTV will have capability offer 1,500 local HD channels and 100 national HD channels. DirecTV will initially offer local HD channels via the Spaceway F1 satellite to 12 regional markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Houston and Tampa.

April 23, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published a multi-part article covering the happenings at National Association of Broadcasters 2005 Conference (NAB 2005). The focus of NAB 2005 this year was high definition (HD). The first part looks at new software from Apple, including Final Cut Pro 5, Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro 4, and new HD projectors from Sony. The second part looks at the Panasonic AG-HVX200 high definition 3CCD camcorder which can record in the following resolutions: 480i and 480p at 30 or 24 fps, 720i and 720p at 60 or 30 or 24 fps, 1080i and 1080p at 30 or 24 fps. Recording formats supported by the Panasonic AG-HVX200 include: DVCPro HD (100 Mb/s), DVCPro50 (50 Mb/s), DVCPro (25 Mb/s), and DV (25 Mb/s). The third part looks at new special effects available in Serious Magic's Ultra 2 software including chromakeying, HD Plus 90, virtual shadows and reflections. The fourth part looks at AMD audio processing, Gestpoint controls, Gyrocam, HDRadio, Jadoo Power Systems, Newtek's Tricaster, and the PNY Quadro FX540.

April 17, 2005

Beyond3D and Tom's Hardware have published reviews of the ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XT, a board designed for high powered 3D graphics and for high-end PC multimedia and video capture. The product is based on ATI's R420 graphics processor and ATI's Theatre 200 video capture and encoding chip. Features include Smartshader HD, Smoothvision HD, Hyper Z HD, VideoShader HD, and ATI's TV Tuner. Connectors include RF input for TV and FM Radio signal, a stereo mini-jack audio input, an A/V in connector, S-Video, composite video and stereo audio connections.

April 14, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published a review of four moderately priced 16:9 HDTV capable projectors, including the BenQ PE 5120, the Sanyo PLV-Z3, the Epson EMP-TW200H, and the NEC HT410. The Benq PE 5120 and the NEC HT410 use a 854x480 pixel DLP chip, while the Sanyo PLV-Z3 and Epson EMP-TW200H use true 1280x720 pixel tri-LCD imagers. All four projectors use scaling for 1080i images, while the Sanyo and Epson can display 720p without any scaling. These projectors have various combinations of HDMI, DVI, component YUV, VGA, and S-Video connectors, so it's worth checking out the review to make sure can get the video connection you need.

April 13, 2005

The Tech Reprt has published a comparison and review of three popular TV tuner cards supporting hardware MPEG-2 encoding. These cards are a critical component of any quality home theater PC (HTPC). For those building their own Media Center Edition 2005 HTPC, a card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding is a strict requirement. The article reviews the ATI TV Wonder Elite, the eVGA NVIDIA NVTV, and the Hauppauge PVR-150MCE L.P. See how these cards compare in terms of video quality, MPEG2 encoding, CPU utilization, and PVR features.

April 11, 2005

This TV tuner card features ATI's latest Theatre 550 Pro video processor, a DVD quality MPEG-2 encoder, worldwide stereo audio support, 12-bit analog-to-digital conversion, an advanced hardware motion-adaptive 3D comb filter, hardware noise reduction, FM radio functionality, closed captioning, integrated anti-aliasing filters, and many PVR functions. The card comes with the ATI Remote Wonder Plus, ATI's next generation RF remote control, which features cursor control, six programmable buttons, and several predefined shortcut buttons. The only thing this card doesn't support is HDTV signals, so if you want that, then you might want to look at ATI's more expensive HDTV Wonder card. Read more for the Bytesector.com review of the ATI TV Wonder Elite.

April 7, 2005

MTV is testing a new broadband content site called MTV Overdrive. The site features entertainment news, music, and videos. The content is sent to users as Windows Media with digital rights management. In addition, MTV is also working on a specialized version of MTV Overdrive just for Media Center Edition users.

April 5, 2005

ONDotnet.com has published an article showing you how to create .NET add-ins in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. These extensions can be written in any .NET language including VB.NET and C#.

April 4, 2005

2CPU.com has just published an excellent 21 page guide to building the perfect Home Theater PC (HTPC). The article discusses hardware considerations, HTPC cases and enclosures, operating systems and software, remote controls, set-top box control by the HTPC, and more. Capture cards discussed include the WinTV PVR-250 and WinTV PVR-350, the ATI eHome Wonder, the Adaptec VideOh! Media Center, the Prolink Pixelview PlayTV@P7000, the AVerMedia UltraTV Media Center PCI 500, and the AVerMedia UltraTV Media Center PCI 550. Several free and commercial HTPC software packages are also considered and thoroughly reviewed, including BeyondTV, SageTV, MCE 2005, and MythTV.

April 3, 2005

Cable box hardware provider Scientific-Atlanta has announced its new MCP-100 Media Center DVR with built-in DVD burner.