It’s going to be very interesting over the next few years as OEMs begin to finally produce truly innovative new PC form factors focused on specific user scenarios. Neowin.net points out that a British OEM, Scan … Read more
AnandTech has a very deep article on Windows Media Center Edition 2005. They didn’t think much of the earlier versions of MCE. Some quotes: “Media Center Edition continues to be the coolest looking highest performance PVR/DVR (with … Read more
Via Ethan Zoller, the Media Center 2005 SDK is now on MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/mce. Via this I also discoved Michael Creasy’s blog which focuses on MCE. Cool.
GamePC – Symphony Arrives : Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 GamePC.com reviews MCE 2005 and loves it. “…MCE is still (in our opinion) the best home theater product currently on the market by a very … Read more
Buy.com is now taking pre-orders for the Linksys WMCE54AG “Wireless A/G Media Center Extender”…aka Bobsled. I am so incredibly proud of this device. Way back in 2000 I sat down with Don Gray and Bob Atkinson … Read more
According to the press release, “…Dilbert’s Ultimate House”(DUH). DUH is a virtual web-based home that the famous icon of the workplace Dilbert, his fans, tech geeks, the environmentally conscious, and those who just plain love the … Read more
In Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image The Register reports that Silicon Image has a new RAID chip that they think they can sell to PVR vendors. Not sure how this differs from their existing SATA/IDE … Read more
news.com reports on a new PC form factor: Helmet PC aims to score with football fans. This thing would make a fantastic home server (see my mini-ITX post)…as long as you used a Seattle Seahawks helmet … Read more
Billie Jo Murray, who runs the Windows Server Customer Experience Group, is now blogging. If you have feedback about Windows Server’s documentation and customer programs head over to her blog and let her know.
I recently built a really small and quiet home server that ran Windows Server 2003 based on a mini-ITX motherboard. It turns out you can build a great system in a very small package. The only down-side is … Read more
Many, many enthusiast/geeks like myself have huge storage needs. I currently have the following data on my home network: 200GB of WMA 9 Lossless music (“backups“ of my CD collection). 30GB of WMA 9 128kpbs music … Read more
Use High Quality Drives “Enterprise” class drives, typically with SCSI or Fibre channel interfaces, are tested more thoroughly at the factory (and have longer warranties to prove it). The problem is these drives are significantly more … Read more
ExtremeTech has a great new article titled New Strategies for Personal Mass Storage. I’ve been working on a longish post/article on personal storage that I hope to have done in a week or so. This ExtremeTech … Read more
I forgot to mention a key (pun intended) command that MCE Controller supports in the 1.0.3 documentation. The “key:” command allows you to simulate any alphanumeric keyboard key press. For example “key:3” is the same thing … Read more
Multiple people have asked me for a sample that illustrates how to talk to MCE Controller from Crestron using SIMPL Windows. Ask no more: On the MCE Controller site, I’ve added a SIMPL Windows sample program … Read more
When I built my house a few years ago I installed several video cameras for security monitoring. Until recently I was only capturing still images from these. I archived the still images and published the most … Read more
My 802.11b wireless network drives me nuts. I bought a new Linksys G AP because I was experiencing drop-outs with my 4 (that’s right 4) other APs. I set the new AP up (in B mode only) is less than 10’ … Read more
If you have a network with lots of storage that includes a Windows 2000 or W2K3 Server the Distributed File System (DFS) is your friend. This very cool technology makes it easy to move around where … Read more
Ravi posted an article on www.hageeks.com on the topic of “thin media clients vs. thick media clients“. He’s got the right general idea but fails to talk about the other end of the equation: The thing … Read more
Premise Systems has been sold (to an unannounced, but apparently BIG, buyer) and they have released preview versions of both thier Hardware and Services Development Kit (HSDK) and MiniBroker that are .NET based. I’ve spent some … Read more