Category: Home Theater - Page 3

Ovei offers luxurious environment in a pod

October 12, 2022January 29, 2009 by Staff

If I were to travel in space, I sure as heck hope that I get one of these Ovei pods instead of being frozen in a cyrogenic chamber as Lt. Ripley was in the film Aliens. After all, feeling like a piece of meat in a fridge is no fun, and the Ovei pod from … Read more

Slingbox SlingCatcher unveiled

October 12, 2022October 10, 2008 by Staff

Slingbox has just released yet another device for the living room, and this time round, this is a universal media player that will deliver broadcast TV, Internet video and personal content to the TV seamlessly. Fact of the matter is this – the SlingCatcher could eventually end up to be one of the more flexible Internet video devices released in recent memory. Slingbox did go as far as to describe the SlingCatcher being able to stream video from network TV sites such as ABC.com, videon content sites like Hulu.com and CollegeHumor.com, and community video sites such as YouTube.com. With a whole lot of videos for you to view, it makes me wonder whether you will have the time to watch all of them or not, or will it be relegated to certain dusty sectors of your hard drive in due time, ever waiting for “tomorrow” before it is viewed.

New Study Shows Consumers Prefer PS3 Blu-ray players

October 12, 2022August 4, 2008 by Staff

When surveyed as to whether customers would prefer a stand alone Blu-ray player over a Sony PS3 with same player, the majority preferred to pay less for the player and have a hi-def video game console tossed in for good measure. The study, conducted by ABI Research shows that more than half of consumers aren’t thrilled with the obscene price point of a stand alone alone player, preferring to add value to their purpose by going with the Playstation 3 instead. The study goes on to say that, although 23 percent of consumers are planning a Blu-ray purchase, even those aren’t in a hurry to get one, choosing to wait until at least 2009 before they take the Blu-ray leap.

The very retro M21 Flat Panel TV

October 12, 2022June 12, 2008 by Staff

If your flat panel TV is looking entirely too modern in your home, this prototype design might spark your interest. The M21 Flat Panel definitely looks more like one of the earlier TVs than the sleek ones offered today. Although I love how the flat panels look, someone that has a home that is overly … Read more

Mac Mini + XBMC = The ultimate media center?

October 12, 2022March 10, 2008 by Staff

A couple of years ago (it doesn’t seem that long ago…) I waxed lyrical about the advantages of using a modded Xbox with XBMC as a living room media adapter.

Unfortunately technology moves on and my trusty Xbox just didn’t have the horsepower to play back high definition content. The next gen consoles can do it but they still aren’t as flexible as I’d like (although kudos to Microsoft for finally enabling DivX playback on the 360).

So what do to? The Mac Mini stepped in to fill the gap nicely; the new Core Duo models are fairly powerful, it’s tiny and it’s almost silent running. It’s also surprisingly good value for money – I can’t build a PC that ticks all those boxes for the price of a mini.

It seems like the developers of the original XBMC software had the same thought and they’ve been porting the media player software to OSX. Over the past month or so I’ve been watching the OSXBMC project with interest and it looks like it’s finally become solid enough for general use.

LaserTV finally ready at CES

October 12, 2022December 31, 2007 by Staff

Laser TV

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas always rings in the new year with breaking news that make gadget geeks foam at the mouth and this year will be no different. Mitsubishi is set to announce at CES their long anticipated ‘Laser TV’ rear projection 1080p HDTV. Using three lasers rather than one, the new Laser TV concept will divide the colors into red, blue and green lasers to display what Mitsubishi claims is 90% of colors visible to the human eye. By contrast, LCD and Plasma TVs only display about 40% of the known color spectrum. The result will make for sharper, more colorful images. In addition, the new LaserTV technology holds the promise of more lightweight, thin, amd extremely wide-viewing-angles at an affordable price.

Panasonic brings monster 150 inch HDTV to CES

October 12, 2022December 26, 2007 by Staff

Panasonic 150 inch plasma

Every year, January is all about CES in Las Vegas. It’s the high tech Disneyland for the gadget obsessed. Everything with a circuit will be announced and drooled over. But already, the one item that’s catching everyone’s attention is Panasonic’s monster 150 inch Plasma HDTV.

Omaura debuts wall-mountable HTPC

October 12, 2022December 12, 2007 by Staff

Omaura TT

I’ve always wondered what I’d do with all of the stuff sitting on my entertainment center if I one day I purchased a large flat-panel TV and mounted it to the wall. The entertainment center would just look funny without anything sitting on it. A cool idea would be to mount everything else to the wall as well, the only problem is that most things will look quite odd attached to the wall. That’s why this “TT” Media Center PC from Omaura looks like a great solution.

Tiny projectors can fit almost anywhere

December 10, 2022November 21, 2007 by Staff

I’ve always thought it would be cool to add a projector to my home theater setup. The ability to have an entire wall as my screen is rather enticing. However, my living room really isn’t able to accommodate such a setup. What’s cool is that technology has gotten to the point where portable projectors are … Read more