After much hype the curtain on the 55 inch OLED TV by LG the LGEM9600 was finally lifted at the 2012 CES in Las Vegas in January. Sleek, smart, stylish and skinny, LG EM9600 is a winner already. Currently it is the largest OLED TV in the world and also the best as the LG EM9600 was declared the “best product of the year 2012”.LG EM9600 is not just a 3D TV, it is an OLED TV meaning that LG has finally got rid of the shortcomings of both plasma and LCD TV. Though OLED technology is not new as it was already being used in the displays of smartphones and monitors and small screen TVs it has only recently been incorporated in large screen TVs. The LG EM9600 will be available for sale in the second half of 2012.

What is OLED?

OLED or Organic Light Emitting Diode as the name implies comprises of organic (carbon) compounds and give off light when electricity is passed through them. OLED has an edge over the LCDs as unlike LCD display; they do not need LED backlights and offer great off axis viewing angles. Similarly the OLED is more power efficient making it better than the plasma display. A perfect picture is not the only advantage of the flat panel OLED TV, its other benefits include fast response rate, infinite contrast (the contrast ratio is 1 billion to 1), wider viewing angle, immersing blacks and vibrant lively colors. Another advantage of the OLED is that the displays can be made extra thin; a fact evident from the 4 mm depth size and the super thin bezel of the LG EM9600 TV.

Vivid Colors

The exceptional colors and the wide range of hues of the EM9600 would put an artist’s palette to shame and are due to the 4 color pixel and the color refiner. The four color pixel includes the fourth color white along with the traditional blue, red and green. The result is a more colorful and wider palette visible to the human eye. The color refiner has been added for improving and refining the shades and tones. Color refiner also ensures color consistency when the screen is viewed off axis. The 1080 p resolution performs the rest of the magic in recreating brilliant true to life colors on the screen.

Passive 3D

LG has retained its passive 3D technology in the new EM9600. This type of 3D requires the use of polarized glasses when watching 3D content. However the glasses are relatively inexpensive and lighter and do not require batteries or synchronization or charging as compared to their active shutter counter parts.

The LG EM9600 is a complete package as it includes Smart TV connectivity, a built in mic and the Magic Motion remote which operates in four modes.

Drawbacks of OLED TV

It is quite costly to manufacture OLED panels and so price is the biggest drawback of the OLED TV. The price of LG EM9600 is stated to be US $8,000 but the manufacturers are hinting that the price is most likely to slash down to half ($ 4,000) by the end of 2013.

Conclusion

Referring to it as the technology of the future, LG unveild its 55 inch OLED TV the LG EM9600 on 6^th January 2012 in Las Vegas. Winning the best product of the CES 2012 title the LG EM9600 is all set to revolutionize home TV viewing. This super thin TV can be adjusted in narrow places and is stunning enough to compliment any décor. The best feature of the EM 9600 is its true to life image quality together with an array of amazing colors and a wide viewing angle. This super thin and super cool state of the art TV comes with a super expensive price tag and will be available in the market by September 2012. However LG promises to cut down the price by fifty percent by the end of 2013.

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I’ve been using an amazing computer program from DVBlogic in my home for just over a year that has transformed the way we watch tv within our household.  I have a very connected home and since 2007 all of my music, videos, dvds, blu-rays and photos have been stored on a central machine.

Now with DVBlogic DVBLink I’ve been able to add live and recorded tv to this equation, which are now shared not only within my home but also online, allowing me to watch any of my shows through a browser or on my iPad or iPhone 4.

Initially I had DVBlogic running on a Windows Home Server, but in the last year my ‘server’ machine has been running Windows 7 to reduce costs as I ditched WHS when I realised the new version would still not have Media Center integrated (I now have one machine storing the files and connected to my main TV, rather than one machine storing the files via WHS and a second running Windows 7 Media Center connected to a TV).

The diagram below best shows how DVBlogic works:

My ‘server’ is represented by the PC on the left, which is connected to my main TV.  Within this machine I have 4x Hauppauge  WinTV-Nova-HD-S2 TV cards each taking a feed from my Satellite.  DVBLogic’s TVSource product uses these cards and makes both the SD and HD channels available within Windows Media Center with full support e.g. guide listings, live tv, pausing tv, scheduled recordings etc etc.

My Four TV cards allow me to watch or record up to four channels at once.  There’s no limit on how many cards can be added and DVBLink TVSource even allows different types of cards to be mixed i.e. Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial TV channels can all be used together as DVBLink intelligently merges these channels.   TV cards that aren’t directly supported by Media Center such as DVB-C cards can also be used via DVBLink TVSource.

The real power of TVSource is unlocked though, when it is combined with DVBLink Network Pack which is depicted by the right-hand side of the diagram above.  Network Pack allows the tv cards on your PC to be shared with other devices including other Windows Media Centers. Without Network Pack if you wanted to watch live TV on other Media Centers, then each media center needed to have its own tv cards installed.  Now, TV cards installed on one PC are shared with other PCs.

In my household for instance, we have 4 Media Centers each running W7MC.  Network Pack serves up 4 virtual tuners for each of these machines, so across my home we can record and watch up to four shows at once.  So in room 1 we could be watching BBC1 HD and recording Sky 1, in room 2 my daughter could be watching BabyTV and in room 3 I could be recording the football – i.e. up to four channels streamed from one PC to the others.  Network Pack also manages tuner sharing so if two or more rooms are actually watching the same channel at the same time, only one tuner is used rather than two.  Using Recorded TV Manager 3, any recordings made are copied over to the ‘server’ allowing them to be watched from any machine at a later date.

UPNP enabled clients such as Sony Playstation 3 and almost any internet connected device such as ipads and iphones are also supported. Streaming live tv requires a reasonably powered PC, but if you find your PC struggling then there are settings available to reduce the picture quality.   The software is so fantastic that you can even use the online service to schedule recordings that you’ve realised you’ve forgotten or are going to miss because you are running late.

All of this costs just over 40 euros; an amazingly low price for such a great piece of software that is constantly being updated by the developers.  If you have more than one PC in your home or just want to be able to watch your TV online then investing in DVBlink is a no-brainer.  If you’re not sure if DVBLink is right for you, then you can try the product out free for 30 days.

More: DVBLogic

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Technicolor has brought out a fairly interesting media targeted platform called MediaNavi. This brings to you the newest possible ways to make living rooms the most exciting place in your house. It is at the moment in the shape of a tablet that connects and shares applications that have been provided by the manufacturing company itself. It can even connect to mobile phones and supported set-top boxes to share information between devices. Its aim is to provide an immersive and online TV experience through one single platform that will compliment every other entertainment platform that you might be using. It was launched earlier this month at the CES2011 in Las Vegas.

Technicolor, as you have most commonly heard of it, is the same company that since 1914 has been processing Hollywood movies. So who better than them to give a brand new twist to viewing films and enjoying them. MediaNavi is programmed to be a smart remote control app that will learn the choices of its user and will perform accordingly. The Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Technicolor mentioned that MediaNavi provides one with simple and seamless interaction between the consumer and their IPTV by getting their smartphones and set top boxes in the mix. And this interaction will also be social.

The company is currently developing MediaNavi apps for iOS, Android, Windows CE and WebOS in order to fulfill this promise. To further work on the viewer experience, Technicolo has joine hands with TalkTalk in the UK. Both the companies have started working towards the future integration of MediaNavi in to consumer devices. The most interesting feature of this product is that MediaNavi logs you in simply by recognizing you through the tablet camera and then it can also switch on a channel of your choice. So all you have to do is look in to the tablet and the two things that you do everyday are done!

Simply put, it is an enhanced remote control that not only changes channels for you but also navigates the varied forms of media especially via set-top box or the BBC iPlayer. It will automatically put forward the channels that it thinks you would like to watch or the sites you would like to browse through without you making the slightest effort to search for any of it. It will also provide various other content suggestions from different sources based what it has learned about you. Apart from this, there are many other apps that will keep you busy throughout your stay at home. Soon, it will also tell you who you should vote for and order health food for you because it thinks you need to lose weight to achieve your optimum BMI. Okay, so they are not really planning to do that but if this thing really learns so much about your tastes, it might as well expand its horizons a bit.

The MediaNavi library will show you what apps and/or lists are available at the moment along with the ones that you have stored on the device. It includes Live Guide, which shows you the channels that are on right now, as well as content available on the TV content from friends and authority sources. All of this goes hand in hand with social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. MediaNavi is definitely an ambitious project because it seeks to unite a market that is essentially one of the most fragmented ones in the consumer electronics segment. However, if it does succeed, it will add yet another gadget to your collection to marry all your other gadgets in to one viewing experience.

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Samsung has high hopes for this year. They are targeting a 15% growth in the sales of flat-screen TVs in 2011 to 45 million units and hope to more than double shipments ofthe pricier LED sets. Also, it’s going to want us to keep using those special glasses for 3D sets.

Samsung plans to increase its sales of 3D TVs by four times this year, reaching up to 8-9 million units. Simultaneously, it also aims to promote Internet enabled TV sets to push up margins as severe price competition keeps profits razor-thin. In addition to all this, Samsung aims to sell 12 million Internet-enabled TVs in 2011, which sport access to its own TV Appstore, video-streaming site Hulu and social networking sites such as Twitter. The 12 million would make up 27 percent of its total TV shipments this year if achieved.

Like most other TV manufacturer, the recession made Samsung take quite the hit in sales and revenue. As a result, the company failed to inspire consumers with newer models. On the other hand, all the major competitors, from LG Electronics to Sony — showed improved versions of 3D and “smart” TVs at the CES2011 held earlier this month, hoping to grab a bigger slice of an emerging market where no single player has emerged dominant so far.

The fight over the connected living room, which enables viewers to hook up TVs to the Web and hence access shows and software stored in the cloud as well as on personal computers, is not short of aspirants with technology heavyweights from Google and Microsoft to Apple all joining the fray. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
At the CES in Las Vegas this year, Samsung booked the biggest show offering a showcase of a wide range of products from smart phones and tablets to PCs and cameras. It was mainly focused on Internet enabled and 3D TVs, betting on the global the Smart TV market to grow to 30 million units this year. It is expected that 21 percent of all TVs shipped in 2010 had internet connectivity and the segment is expected to grow at double-digit rates over the next four years, swelling to 122 million units by 2014 as estimated by research firm DisplaySearch.

The market for 3D sales wasn’t good for Samsung owing to the high prices and having to use heavy glasses. Samsung plans to bring in better and improved models this year. Samsung, which controlled more than 50 percent of the global 3-D TV market last year, is pushing for the active-shutter technology, which requires special glasses with batteries, chips and switches to synchronize with the 3D content on the TV sets. Some producers, led by Japan’s Toshiba, are introducing glasses-free 3D sets also, while LG Electronics is placing a bet on a new display called Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) that makes glasses much lighter because they do not need to be electronically activated.
Samsung’s Yoon said that in the current scenario, striving after glasses-free 3D displays is not a practical move. Especially for larger displays sets. It makes viewing angles impractically narrow and takes more away from the TV experience than it gives. Hence, according to him it will actually be a deterrent to the growth of 3D TV sets.
However, the general tone in the consumer is that they do not want to use special glasses while watching TV. Also, people with corrective glasses have a tough time with 3D content because the 3D glasses are obviously not designed to be worn over existing glasses. So it remains to be seen what actually becomes of the hardly a year old market.

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A couple of months ago YouTube made the news when they announced that they now supported full, 1080p HD video on its site. This was great news for many people, as nearly all PC’s and Laptops now a days come with HD screens and with YouTube being built into more and more HD TV’s it was welcomed by the masses.

But now, last Friday, YouTube announced that it’s player now supports 4k. Now most of you probably have no idea what that is. Well the resolution of full HD is 1920×1080 pixels, the resolution of a video shot in 4k is 4096×3072 pixels. So it’s nearly 4 times the size of standard HD videos. It’s even bigger than iMax, which projects films in 2k with a 2048×1080 resolution.

YouTube have even put up a special playlist of 5 videos that you can watch in their original 4k quality which you can watch here.

However I don’t think any of you will be able to enjoy the full experience of 4k just yet anyway. Firstly, you need a mega fast broadband connection to even consider streaming the video in the first place. I have a 7 mb connection and I couldn’t get decent playback when I tried to watch them. Secondly, how many of you have displays that support 4k resolution? Very, very few of you, I think would be the right answer.

In order to watch 4k video properly, you need a 4k compatible projector or a super large screen with a resolution of 4096×3072 pixels, neither of which will you find cheap, in fact you’ll struggle to find them in your local electronic store.

What’s more, streaming 4k video still means it has to be compressed like standard HD and since they’re so much larger, you’ll be watching playback at a much lower bit rate than the original. So once you blow up the video onto the big screen, you can notice compression artifacts fairly easy.

So it’s great that YouTube are looking to the future and gearing up for 4k, but could you give us a chance to all catch up to HD first? 4k videos are only going to choke up our bandwidth and nobody has the right gear to experience them properly. You wont notice any difference between them and standard HD unless you blow them up a million times and look at them through a magnifying glass!

The ideal screen size for a 4k video is 25 feet wide, and 4k cameras cost 100,000′s of dollars and so do the projectors which are the size of a refrigerator. I don’t think we’re ready to experience 4k just yet somehow.

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Sony’s wildly expensive XBR8 televisions hit in 2008, and showed us all that LCD could finally reach the lofty heights of image quality attained previously by plasma. Sure, LCD performance and image has improved as time has gone by, but the predominant factor in the XBR8′s visual excellence was the addition of LED backlighting.

Samsung, LG and Toshiba got on the bandwagon in 2009. Samsung offered a mixed bag. Their top of the line 8500 series was outstanding, but their lesser LED sets were not impressive. This was due to them being side lit instead of back lit. Side lit LED sets have a very sexy, thin profile, but they are incapable of the feat that makes LED sets so attractive in the first place: local dimming.

In an LED backlit television, the LEDs are arranged in a matrix behind the panel. Dimming individual LEDs is what allows these sets to attain previously impossible black levels and dark detail reproduction. We are talking inky black, which in turn really makes the colors pop. It really was the final hurdle for LCD, and these sets heralded the dawn of a new age of inexpensive LCDs with videophile imaging.

Why not just get a plasma? Best image quality, I mean the things look like liquid running good material. Prices are down. Screens are bigger. They wear out fast, that’s why. If you live in a house with a spouse and children, chances are your tv is on a lot. In a world where my tv was in a sealed room and only got used for movies, I would own a plasma. That’s not my world. My tv sees a lot of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network duty during the day, and when I get home and the kids are sleeping I want to enjoy my toy and pop in the latest Blu Ray or stream some HD content off the web. LED LCD is just the thing.

What about DLP? In 2010 DLP is dead. Dead as in door nail. Mitsubishi is the only manufacturer still offering DLP sets. Yes, you can get a huge screen dirt cheap, but the image doesn’t cut it anymore. Five years ago LCD was not ready for TV duty, and technologies like DLP and LCoS kept rear projection alive. In 2010 it’s no contest. LCDs have improved exponentially, while DLP is still the same old DLP.

what does LED add to the equation?

1. They’re green. LEDs consume very little power.
2. They’re durable. LEDs run a long, long time before failing. Also, their light output doesn’t suffer appreciably while they wear.
3. Local dimming. The star of the show. The reason that LED LCD can offer incredible blacks, dark detail and eye popping color.

Both the LG LH90 series and Toshiba’s SV670U series were universally lauded as being darn close to the best that plasma or LCD could offer. This was great news for consumers, as both of the 55″ models in these two series were under $3000. 2010 promised to be a great year for someone in the market for a new TV, because generally technology gets better and cheaper with the passage of time.

However, at this year’s CES I was stunned. The manufacturers showed LED sets all right. The problem was that, with the exception of Vizio, the matrix backlit models all occupied the upper stratosphere of their model lines, with the televisions they are offering for 2010 that occupy the price tiers that most of us will be looking at were side lit. They decided that we value lifestyle over performance. Unbelievable.

Am I ignoring Vizio? No. They have become a big player in LCD television in a few short years. Their prices are excellent. Their TV is very good for the money. For me, they have to prove that their quality is on par with the established brands before I include them in the same conversation as Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp and Mitsubishi.

The fact of the matter is that the average consumer is not terribly informed, and won’t be going into the showroom with the same critical eye that I do. Chances are that people will only get to see these sets in the showroom with a cable or satellite high def feed. Frankly, I would be hard pressed to find all the fatal flaws in a set under those conditions. People will notice the sexy form factors, so perhaps the manufacturers know exactly what they’re doing.

If you’re like me, you want the very best possible image and audio you can afford. Don’t be fooled by all these new sets coming out in 2010. Yeah, they’re pencil thin. They have built-in internet crap like YouTube and Netflix. They also have inferior image quality than the 2009 models I mentioned. As for the internet stuff, I guarantee that your next Blu Ray player will have that built-in, so it really doesn’t matter if your tv doesn’t have it.

If you can afford one of the higher end LG or Toshiba sets, then more power to you. If your budget isn’t quite as ambitious, you need to get out there right now and see if you can get one of the LG xxLH90 or Toshiba xxSV670U sets while they are still available. At this writing the 55″ LG can be found out there for around $2500, less if you’re lucky. This set has been discontinued, so once they’re gone, they’re gone. This set has a matte screen, so if your viewing room is bright this may be the better choice for you since the Toshibas have a glossy screen that is very sexy, but also very reflective.

The Toshiba 55SV670U is currently selling for as low as $1799. This set has incredible performance for that price, and you should take a hard look at it if you’re in the market for a new television. Just do it quick, because it may not be long before these disappear now that the 2010 models have been announced.

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I’ve been Christmas shopping since the middle of October. The upside of that is that I am almost finished. The downside is that I keep finding cool new stuff or really great deals and I am spending more on Christmas than I really should. That’s ok, a guy could have worse problems than spending too much on the people he loves at Christmas.

Enough of this altruism. Since I’ve been spending so much time taking care of everybody else, I figured I better get my list in to Santa so I have something under the tree with my name on it.

Dear Santa,

I’ve been really good this year. If it isn’t too much trouble I would very much like some or all of the following:

1. LG 55LH90 55″ LED LCD Television My 52″ DLP is now five years old and it’s time to move on. The 55LH90 offers incredible color and blacks and dark detail that were previously unattainable in big LCD displays. This panel offers picture quality that can only be bested by televisions costing much more, and I already plan to buy one right after the holidays. You can save me about $2500 bucks here Santa, I’d appreciate it.
   
   

   LG 55LH90 55\

2. Motorola Droid While I’m still waiting on the rumored HTC Dragon before I get a new plan, I wouldn’t be averse to settling for a Droid now. I’m sure I could make do. This is the wireless phone that made me itch after five years of not owning one.
   
   

   Motorola Droid

3. Camangi WebStation While I have a laptop, a 17″ laptop isn’t really the thing for anywhere around the house web use. A tablet would be really handy for checking Woot while watching a movie with the wife, or reading windows7news.com while using the bathroom. I know I asked for a Droid, which could do the same thing, but a larger screen would be nice. Thanks Santa.
   
   

   Camangi WebStation

4. The Internet Is A Playground David Thorne is the funniest guy on the web. 27bslash6 has been one of my favorite sites of late. If you haven’t been, go check it out. I like it so much I want the gear. Especially his book, The Internet Is A Playground. I would really like this book for Christmas Santa, and I wouldn’t complain if you threw in a 27bslash6 t-shirt or two.
   

   The Internet Is A Playground by David Thorne

5. I Got Flamed by Theo de Raadt t-shirt Dear Santa, even though this t-shirt is of my own design and may appear to be a selfish request, I am indeed collecting all of the available pseudoexpert.com merchandise. I only have the coffee mug at this time, so any of it would be welcome, but especially this t-shirt. I have actually been flamed by Theo de Raadt, so I feel I would be qualified to wear the shirt. Also, I feel that $31.45 is a bit steep for a t-shirt, and I may not get one unless you help me out. Thanks Santa.
   

   I got flamed by Theo de Raadt t-shirt

Thanks Santa, I really appreciate it.

It’s a great year for tech and internet minded people like Connected Internet readers to look forward to some really cool presents and stocking stuffers. From all of us at Connected Internet, thanks for reading and have a great Black Friday and a safe holiday season.

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When I’m at home and relaxing, I love watching films and TV shows streamed off my Windows Home Server.  We have 3 media centers around our flat that display the media on our TVs.   The old laptop that had we’d been using as a media center PC in our bedroom was struggling to play 1080p files, so I decided to build a new Media Center PC as cheaply as possible.   Doing this also freed up a laptop that I gave to my wife as she’s just quit her job and is going to work with me full-time from next week, so she needs a dedicated rather than shared machine.

Imagine my surprise, when my new Media Center still stuttered when playing 1080p mkv files and ripped blu-rays.  It was better, but there still was a stutter.  This didn’t make sense as my new system had a better CPU, a AMD3 Athlon X2 Dual Core 240, whereas my other Media Center PCs had slower CPUs (4200+ and 4600+) so it had more than enough power.

I started wondering if it was my wireless 802.11n connection on the new PC, because the other PCs are on a gigabit lan.  I was correct – when I connected the new PC to a wired connection everything worked fine.  I was stunned as my biggest files were only around 20-25Mbps, which theoretically should be well within reach of a 300Mbps (theoretical) 802.11n router.

After some investigation I realised that there is too much congestion on the 2.4Ghz band that early 802.11n routers use and I really needed a 802.11n router that utilised the 5Ghz band if I wanted to attain wireless speeds high enough to stream HD 1080p files.   The free 802.11n router that Virgin Media gave me with my 50Mbps service just wasn’t good enough for the job.

I’ve just ordered a D-Link DIR-855, which still seems to be the best 802.11n router on the market a year after launch.  According to reviews the DIR-855 has been able to stream two 1080p videos and also has Q0S to ensure that my media files get priority.  To help this it’s a dual band router, so I can use the 2.4Ghz for internet use/other networking and the 5Ghz band exclusively for my media center.

The D-Link DIR-855 is pricey at £200 for the router and matching card, but I think it’s worth it as I’m certain it will last me at least 5 years as I’m not going to be streaming anything bigger than a blu-ray or a 1080p mkv file and these will around for at least another 5-10 years.   Whenever I buy kit now I try to futureproof, as I’m tired of endless replacements.  For instance, I think I’ve gone through around 8 routers in the 10 years I’ve had broadband.

The new D-Link DIR-855 router arrives this week, so I’ll let you know if it doesn’t deliver.

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Mozy, an unlimited backup provider, just pulled together an interesting graphic to illustrate just how big a Petabyte is.  In total Mozy store 15 Petabytes, and they’ve calculated that one Petabyte equals:

• 13.3 years of HD content
• Nearly all of the photos on facebook (1.5PB in total)
• How much data google processes in just under an hour

I’ve pasted the Mozy graphic at the end of the post with There’s a hugh graphic at the end of the post will all the cool stats Mozy have pulled together.

The post made me wonder, how long will it be before users need Petabyte Hard Drives?  Bill Gates once (although he now denies it!) that the average computer wouldn’t need more than 64KB of ram, and he’s a pretty clued up guy.  My total data storage has gone from:

• 1994 My first PC: 200MB HDD 1MB Ram
• 1997 2nd PC:  8GB HDD ?? Ram (can’t remember)
• 2001 3rd PC: 512MB 40GB HDD
• 2005 4th PC: 2GB RAM 2x250GB HDD
• 2008 Current PC: 4GB RAM

Now, I haven’t added the storage for my current PC because I now store all my files on a Windows Home Server, which currently has around 6.5TB of storage:

In my server are 8 HDDs in total.  I added the eighth just last week, a 1.5TB drive because my other 1.5TB drive was throwing up errors and looked like it was going to fail.  So I purchased another drive to ensure I had enough space to copy all my files in case it died.  That’s makes my real storage level around 5TB.,

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue increasing my storage at a rate of around 5-10x every couple of years.   I really think that going forwards I will start moving my files to the Cloud; I’m already storing 250GB of my documents, photos and music with Sugarsync who offer a min 2GB of storage for free.

Do you think user’s will continue requiring bigger HDDs, or do you think going forwards users will store their data in the cloud?

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Hmm, so much for my 3-1 Barcelona Vs Chelsea prediction last night! It was still an amazing game though.  I’m not sure which way the 2nd leg is going to go, but in the Man Utd Vs Arsenal Champions League game, Man utd will definitely come out on top.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a Sky Sports subscription, then you can watch the Champions league game free online by following this guide: How To Watch Champions League Football Online

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Looks like the boys behind Blu-Ray are up against a wall.

This morning, I was browsing PCMag and discovered deplorable sales performance last quarter for Blu-ray. For those unaware of the monicker, Blue-Ray is that spanking new the HD disc format touted to revolutionize the industry. Well… almost.

Marketers looked forward to sales of Blu-ray players after Blu-ray killed off HD DVD in February 2008 in the most stupendous format war since VHS killed Betamax.

Sadly, the follow-up punch wasn’t there. Demand for DVD players outstripped Blu-ray players by a factor of 10, despite some Blu-Ray players selling for less than $200. Worse, consumers have found greener pastures in the convenience of digital downloads and digital hard drive recorders. I’m no soothsayer, but I feel Blu-ray may very well perish as buyers, like myself, leap from DVD to downloads.

CD and DVD put an end to the chore of rewinding betamax tapes. That’s what killed betamax. Now the convenience of downloads and the superior availability of flexible digital content may be a killer reason folks just won’t get hot about getting a new player. The computer IS the ultimate player. With free download sites, DSL and Draft-N wifi… any PC can be the ultimate entertainment system. Who needs Blue-Ray??

According to Reevo.com, there are three other reasons Blue-Ray may fail to make the cut.

1. Enhanced DVD players
DVD players are still outselling Blu-ray players by a monstrous margin. With a basic DVD player now costing just $40 (equivalent to the cost of a new release Blu-Ray disc alone), and newer high-end DVD players capable of upscaling a standard definition image to near-HD, the gap between DVD and Blu-ray has shrunk to the point that shoppers see no reason to upgrade. I know I don’t. (aside from having empty bragging rights)

2. Inflated Blu-ray and disc pricing
Blu-ray prices remain high. Over 6 months, the average price of a Blu-ray player was $400, more than four times the average DVD player at $40, and has remained largely flat month-on-month, with a small increase in average price from July to January. Average DVD player prices have dropped by 20% from July to January. Blu-ray disc prices are also high, costing $40 for a new release, compared to $40 for a new release on DVD and an extensive back catalogue priced very cheaply.

At epinions.com, reviews of Blu-ray players raise frustrations regarding slow loading times and an inability to play certain file formats.

Slow to read the BluRay discs but is this a feature of BluRay?
Still a bit slow to load discs
My granny is faster than this.

3. Can’t beat free downloads!
Remember Porter’s five forces? A product often hits demise when Substitutes enter the fray. Right now the format competes with cheap downloads through services such as Apple’s store which offers quality content for rental or purchase at a lower price than Blu-ray discs. Peruse their content and note that many cost less than $5. How can BlueRay compete with that??

Blue-Ray’s Dead is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

As 2008 is coming to a close, we look back and should be proud of what we witnessed. In the end, I think it was once again the year of the cell phone, particularly the iPhone. With the release of their 3G phone, GPS and their App Store, the iPhone took the Blue Ribbon by far, with Google’ Android phone taking a distant 2nd place. We saw the takeoff of electric cars from Tesla, we saw Facebook taking the forefront in Social communication and we saw thousands more Web 2.0 websites hitting the dance floor.

I am only naming a few for 2008, because the real subject of my post is 2009. What are some of things we have to look forward to in 2009? Here are the Top 3 on my radar…

1. Where will the iPhone go next?…and What will the competitors bring?
There is no doubt that the iPhone is well on it’s way to becoming easily the most popular smart phone on the planet. It’s ease of use, it’s feature rich environment, it’s Microsoft Exchange sync ability, and it’s incredible internet speeds, are making it the must have phone of 2009. Competitors such as the Blackberry Storm and Google G1 have hit the shelves with lukewarm reviews. From all indications, they aren’t that much closer to the iPhone, as they are to a lame Windows Mobile phone. Of course the Nokia fanboys will probably argue, but I honestly think the App Store is the real killer here.

2009 will see the iPhone bring turn-by-turn directions, a larger landscape of 3G coverage, possibly 50,000 more apps and hopefully somehow, much longer battery life. Some expect a completely new phone to come out in 2009, but most do not. We’ll likely see several different firmware releases over the course of the year, with many additional feature rich capabilities.

We will continue to see lackluster competitors show up in 2009. Google release their second version of Android, more providers will continue to pick-up their cellular phone operating system, but they still won’t come close to the iPhone. The marketing, the look, the ease of use and the coverage will take the iPhone above and beyond its competitors. Unless Apple completely screws it up with one of their firmware releases, I don’t see it faltering, anytime soon.

Long live the iPhone…

2. More streaming/VOD movies
The fact is, with the release of Netflix streaming capable devices, it won’t be long before there are many online streaming competitors that release many different pieces of hardware with Blu-Ray and DVD capability as well. We are already seeing it with the XBOX 360 and Roku Player, and it won’t be long before the PS3 has the same. I think at some point in the next five years, we may see ALL movies in streaming form. This will be the only fool proof way of protecting DVD piracy. We will continue to see boot-legged feature films from the theater, but those will never have the affect that DVD pirates, overseas and otherwise have on the industry.

I may be completely off on that, but there is no doubt that streaming movies are well on their way to becoming the best way of watching films.

3. HDTV slowly becomes SDTV
With the kill of over the air broadcast analog television in February 2009. Our definition of standard definition television is slowly becoming the black-and-white television of old. Soon we will begin to see all forms of television communication in high definition form. Commercials, news, cartoons, and of course sports will ALL be available in HDTV. High Definition will become our present day definition of Standard definition, and we’ll vomit at the look of ‘old school’ television. Of course, the old version will still be readily available in all forms, due to lack of capability with older TVs, but I foresee every arena having some type of HD available in 2009.

Long Shot Honorable Mentions
The Death of Blu-Ray – Five Reasons why I think Blu-Ray is dieing
-The cost of the players
-The cost of the movies.
-The non-savy movie watcher, who just doesn’t understand the difference.
-Streaming HD
-The picture difference between a standard DVD and Blu-Ray, is almost inconceivable.

I know it’s a small list, and I know a lot doesn’t regard the web, but these are three big items I foresee being huge topics in 2009.

What are yours?

3 Technology Related Items to Look Forward to in 2009 is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

2008 saw television prices come down and a couple of display technologies pretty much get shown the door. The picture is much clearer this year for someone making a decision for a new television purchase. I’ve laid out my thoughts on the competing technologies already. Times have changed, and one of my recommendations is no longer a viable option. This holiday season what should you be looking for if you are in the market for a new TV? Read on…

LCoS is gone, with JVC and Sony both bailing in favor of LCD. LCD rear projection is gone. Plasma is going. DLP is on life support with only Mitsubishi and Samsung still in the game. This makes the choice of technology a lot easier than it was a year ago. The cause of all this extinction via natural selection? LCDs have continued to get cheaper, better and bigger. At this point in the game there are only two viable options: LCD and DLP.

Why not plasma? Plasmas have gotten cheaper to, right? Yes they have, but manufacturers are getting away from them. There is no argument about the crystalline image produced by a plasma television. The durability of this technology is suspect, and they are a bad choice for gamers due to being more prone to burn-in than any other display technology. The bottom line is, if you spend a lot of money on a television, you want the option to keep it for a while, and plasmas have a relatively short lifespan in comparison to LCD and DLP.

Why LCD? Well, they have gotten a heck of a lot better. The manufacturers love them because they make a bigger profit selling LCD displays because the technology is cheap. They last a long time. They look good. LCD comprises the majority of what is available to the consumer who is out shopping for a new set, and with all the improvements LCD has seen in the last couple of years I don’t have a problem recommending them.

Here are the things you want out of your new LCD television:

• Resolution Most of the sets being sold now are 1080p, which is what you want. However, you may still stumble across some 720p sets, especially in instances where the price seems too good to be true. 720p was fine a couple of years ago, but hold out for a 1080p set. Blu Ray is 1080p, as are many PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Cable and Satellite HD is 1080i, which converts to 1080p better than it does 720p. There’s just no excuse to buy a 720p set when you don’t have to break the bank for one that is 1080p.




• Contrast ratio The higher the number the better. Higher contrast ratio means blacker blacks and whiter whites, and that translates into superior dark detail and better color reproduction.




• Response time This isn’t really much of an issue anymore. Pretty much anything 8ms or better does away with motion blur. The lower the number the better, but if you get a significantly better deal on an 8ms set than that 4ms sitting next to it, I probably wouldn’t let that scare me off.




• Refresh rate North American and most Asian televisions refresh at the rate of 60 frames per second, or 60Hz. That is because that is what broadcast/cable/Satellite/game console sources send out. The only issue with that is that motion pictures are recorded at 24Hz. DVD and Blu Ray players utilize an algorithm that converts that 24Hz material to 60Hz material that your television can digest. This isn’t perfect though, and many of us notice the imperfection of the conversion. The answer? Many new sets are 120Hz, a number which is divisible by both 60 and 24. What this means to you is that your 120Hz television reproduces everything you throw at it without any mathematical band-aids to make it work, and what you see on your screen is what you were intended to see.




• Brightness You can always turn your television’s brightness down, but you can’t make a dim television brighter. Dim TVs are hard to see in a sunlit room. All of the televisions you look at will probably have similar brightness specs, but keep it in mind anyway.

Reading editorial reviews is always a good idea, but ultimately the most important yardstick should be your eyes on the television in a showroom and not someone else’s opinion. Go look at the sets once you have some in mind, and let your eyes tell you which one is right for you.

On the subject of DLP: Toshiba has left the game, leaving only Samsung and Mitsubishi. Why consider DLP at this point? Big screen for low dough, low maintenance cost and no chance of burn-in, ever. In fact, for 99% of DLP owners, the only problem they’ll ever face is a burnt out projection lamp, which is a $99-150 part, and easily replaced at home by the owner. That’s a sight less expensive than a new backlight would run you for an LCD (but an LCD backlight will run a lot more hours before replacement). I always felt that DLP offered the closest to plasma liquidity with the fewest number of caveats, and even though LCDs have bridged the gap, getting cheaper and technologically better, it’s hard to argue that DLP shouldn’t be included in your search when you can get a 65″ for around $1500. I have looked at the Mitsubishi 60″ and 65″ DLPs, and I wouldn’t mind getting one for myself, much less recommending them to anyone. Samsung has LED lamps in some of their DLPs, which should extend time between lamp replacements exponentially. Also, Mitsubishi is now shipping their laser DLPs, and while they are around the $6-7k mark now, prices will come down before too long and laser DLP may be what we all will want in the near future.

I’m a little nauseous that the television I bought for $3k four years ago will only cost me half that to replace, but at the same time that makes my next television sale to the wife less of an obstacle. Television buyers this holiday season have a pretty clear picture in the showroom, as most of the displays they will find sport the important features I mentioned above, and prices are lower than ever.

Now, work on your business presentation, get the boss (wife) to sign off on a new TV, and go forth!

Holiday 2008 TV Buying Guide is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

The format war ended last January, time enough for most of the wounds to heal and those of us who joined the red side to get over it and go Blu. The holiday season is hurtling toward us, and if you’re like me, you’re already well into your gift shopping. Got a techie or two in your life? Looking for some low dough presents for that new Blu Ray owner? Here are some of my picks for Blu Ray stocking stuffers to help that someone special get their Blu Ray library started:

1. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight C’mon, this is a no-brainer. Batman Begins was one of the best of the HD DVD stable, and it’s just as good on Blu Ray. This year’s hottest movie, The Dark Knight, gets released on December 9th, just in time for the holidays. For once something lived up to the hype, and it continued the Batman Begins tradition of bringing the real Batman that comic book enthusiasts have loved for years to the silver screen. Gotta have ‘em both!







2. Band of Brothers Stephen Spielberg’s companion piece to Saving Private Ryan. Blu Ray release on November 9, around $55 online. This was one of the most important moments in human history, and on a personal note, my father hit the beach on D-Day with the 35th Infantry Division and saw some of the hottest action in WWII before getting knocked out of the action in Germany by some shrapnel. The Greatest Generation? You better damn well believe it. We owe everything to the men and women of that generation who participated in the war effort, and we owe it to them to never, ever forget their sacrifices. Damn good show, and needs to be in your collection.







My Dad, second from left in front holding helmet. Love and Miss you Dad.




3. Firefly This is included for two reasons. Mainly, because Serenity is so great, and while the TV series never quite got into gear, by the end you could tell that it was all going to gel and great things were coming. Firefly is one of those stories that is really beloved by it’s few fans, and it deserved better than it got. Here’s the whole series, for less than $60. Here’s hoping that if they ever do a television or cinematic adaption of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series it gets more of a shot than this labor of love from Joss Whedon.







4. Ultimate Matrix Collection Ok, we all were disappointed with the second and third movies in this series. Hopefully like me, many of you found out that it wasn’t all that bad once you watched it at home once or twice, and grew to appreciate the ambitious story the Wachowski Brothers were trying to tell. The HD DVD version of this trilogy was demo material, and I’m sure the Blu Ray set will be just as impressive. It’s no Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but those aren’t available yet. About $75 online.







5. Harry Potter Years 1-5 If you take yourself too seriously to enjoy these movies, I pity you. The books are great and so are the movies. J.K. Rowling created a classic tale that’s right up there with Narnia and Lord of the Rings as far as I’m concerned. We have to wait til summer for The Half Blood Prince, but the first five are here on Blu Ray now. Limited Edition gift set about $100, $12 or so less for the standard set. A classic for the kids and the adults.

This was a great autumn for Blu Ray, with lot’s of good releases. The price on Blu Ray discs is still too high in most stores, but thankfully the internet prices are more in line with what a DVD sells for. Wanna keep it under $20? Why not a Blu Ray? Got a little more to spend? Look at some of the box sets I mentioned. I already gave my list of Blu Ray titles I need to my wife. Hope I find some in my stocking!

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Not to be outdone by Everton, I figured a post about my home AV setup would be just the thing in a week where I am very pressed for time.

You would think that a guy who has a website devoted to hi-fi and home theater would have an incredible amount of money invested in very esoteric and expensive equipment. That would be the case if I did not have two children, a mortgage, two car payments, and a wife who keeps me firmly grounded in reality. I make a good living from my day job and am blessed to work in an industry where the worse the economy gets, the better our business and my job security is. I don’t make six figures and won’t until the tail end of my career, and raising a family tends to eat what income you have, so I have to be creative about my AV equipment.

Two pieces of advice. One, while more money generally does buy better gear, there is quality AV gear available at all price points. Two, don’t be afraid to buy good gear second hand. People who buy quality components almost always baby their equipment, and the stuff you buy secondhand is usually in like-new condition. Audiogon is an online marketplace for used hi-fi gear. It is not uncommon to find a $5k piece of equipment for $1-1.5k, and I have no problem recommending this approach to someone whose desires outstrip their budget.

The GEAR

• Amplifier: B&K Reference 7250

  The B&K Reference 7250 is a five channel 200 watt amplifier. Functionally identical to the current B&K Reference 200.5, the only thing the 7250 lacks over the new iteration is balanced outputs. The 70 pound heart of my system. This amplifier has a torroidal transformer as big as a shotput, and a sixpack of capacitors that are the size of those small V8 cans, and it produces 75 amps of peak current capacity (this spec slaughters just about every other solid state amp out there and also makes it a good idea to keep kids and pets away from the back of your component rack). This amp provides 200 watts at 8 ohms and 375 watts at 4 ohms. As solid state amplifiers go, the sound it produces is deep and warm.

  

  B&K Reference Amplifier

  If you’ve never had an adequate power supply, all I will say is that you are missing something. I don’t care how good you think your AV receiver is, it’s power supply cannot compete with a dedicated amplifier. Pop in Blade 2 as a demo. The scene early in the movie where the euro-vamps are sitting in a room with the radio on and Blade proceeds to break the door down and puree them has a lot going on in it aurally. It sounds good no matter what equipment you have. Now play it with an amp that has the power reserve handle the dynamic transients. The difference is astonishing and will convert all skeptics. The ambient noises of the scene achieve a three dimensional reality, filling your room with sound that is not a reproduction, but something that is occurring in your space. When the door crashes in and the bullets start to fly, the fragments of wood land at your feet and you duck for cover. A quality amplifier gives a good system a reality that it would otherwise never achieve.

  If I never replace this amp I won’t feel cheated, but of course I have a short list that I would upgrade to in a heartbeat:

  

  Conrad Johnson MET-150

  

  Cary Audio 7.250

  

  Ayre V-6xe

• Processor: Denon AVR-988

  I had been holding out for a long time, waiting for HDMI and advanced audio codec support to make it to the mid-fi separates that I can afford. I finally caved and bought yet another AV receiver, because I needed something that could handle HDMI and more seamlessly integrate my components. Amazon is offering the AVR-988 for half it’s usual $1199 price tag, so anyone looking to upgrade their AV receiver and get a lot of features for a great deal should act soon before they are all gone.

  I still want a pre/pro. I have no need for the power supply in an av receiver since I use an amp, and on top of that the separate processors generally use much better components and hence sound better. For what I paid for the Denon AVR-988 I really cannot fault it at all, and it will hold me over until the right processor at the right price comes along.

  The AVR-988 will upscale all your video sources over HDMI, and on the audio end it uses a Hammerhead SHARC processor on the digital end and a full host of Burr-Brown DACs for analog conversion. It also features Audyssey MultEQ to make room equalization a no brainer. It really is a hell of a piece of equipment at the price, and I heartily recommend it.

  

  Denon AVR-988

  I still want a bonafide processor someday, but most of the manufacturers I would consider still aren’t making what I need. Out of what is currently available, here is my upgrade short list:

  

  Cary Audio Cinema 11A Processor

  

  Primare SP32 Processor

Next week I will finish up with the video and control portion of my system and round out my wish list. In the meantime, there are several resources available for those of you who are interested in this stuff but don’t really know where to start.

1. Ecoustics Links to editorial reviews on audio and video components. Reviews are subjective, but I would pay a little more attention to what somebody who does it for a living has to say over some schmuck on a web forum.
2. Audioreview.com Owner reviews. Again, use common sense, but reading what people who bought the component you are looking at have to say is a good idea.
3. AVS Forum The largest AV web forum. Filter out the noise and there is a lot of knowledge and experience there. Tends to be more mass market device oriented and a little less so on the higher end, but a good all around resource.

Michael’s AV Setup, Part 1 is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

If you are using more than one remote to control your home theater it is time you started thinking about a good universal remote. A good universal is indispensable, and if you’ve never had one, shying away from the expense and sticking to whatever your cable or satellite provider gave you, it’s time to wake up. Last week in Part 1 of this roundup we looked at some offerings from Philips and Logitech. This week we’ll finish up with Logitech and move on to the meat and potatoes from Universal.

Logitech Harmony 510

Logitech saw their market and went and took it. They appeal to the mass market user that wants to upscale their control. Logitech makes good universal remotes at attractive prices, and they’re in most of the big box stores where we buy our televisions. For the average user the Harmony series represents a huge leap forward in control, and the line is incredibly successful.

Home Theater Master MX-500

The remote on the right, the venerable Home Theater Master MX-500, controlled my home theater until just last month. It’s the best thing going in the $70 ballpark for the last five or so years, and was included as the OEM remote in such pieces as Sunfire’s Theater Grand Processor, Emotiva’s DMC-1 pre/pro, and B&K’s Reference 50 pre/pro. No software configuration, programming of the MX-500 was manual. This remote is built for combat, and the fact that mine survived the first three years of my youngest son’s life unharmed can attest to it’s build quality. That, I feel, is one of the key reasons I place remotes from Universal at the top of the heap: the build quality is excellent, and you needn’t be afraid that dropping one once on your hardwood floor will do it in. That isn’t the case with all remotes, so it bears mentioning.

My pleasure with the MX-500′s performance led me right back to Universal last month when I felt it was time for an upgrade. Despite the fact that I am the AV editor for Connected Internet, and have my own audiophile and home theater website AV Enthusiast, my home setup is rather modest. I have a wife, two kids, two dogs, a cat, a mortgage and two car payments. I love the hobby, but like most people, I don’t put my hobby ahead of my family. I have gotten really good at getting maximum performance out of minimum dollar, and in another couple years I will have my system to the point where I would have to spend more money than a family man with slightly above average means can justify to net any substantial increase in sonic fidelity.

My main reason for upgrading was that I wanted to simplify the macros that controlled various system tasks. I can handle a slightly complex, unintuitive control scheme, but my wife didn’t appreciate it. I glanced at Universal’s website to see what was new since the last time I was in the market for a remote, and a little homework led me to my choice.

Universal Remote MX-810

The software is intended to be foolproof and easy for anyone to use, whereas the MX Editor is more arcane. Universal’s professional series remotes aren’t intended to be purchased in a big box store or off the internet. Universal’s market is the custom installer, and that’s where Universal wants you to get your remote from. Like most software that sets out to be dummy proof, it isn’t, and getting the MX-810 to do exactly want you want requires some menu searching. It is all there however, so don’t despair. I would have liked to see the ability to manually program the MX-810 in addition to using the PC software, but that feature doesn’t exist.

Beside the fact that the Universal Remote Wizard software isn’t going to convince any Harmony users, the MX-810 delivers in all the places that Universal Remotes always have. The button layout is fantastic, and you will be captaining the MX-810 in a dark living room like an old pro in no time at all. There are actually less buttons on the face of the MX-810, which is a blessing in this case. All the commonly used functions are there as hard buttons, and more esoteric actions are relegated to the color LCD (not touchscreen but hard buttons also). This achieves absolutely intuitive control for novice and advanced users, and is the best hard button layout I have come across. The fact that my wife took right to it and thought it was an improvement is testament to the fact that Universal got it right.

The MX-810 also allows users to upload their own graphics. They don’t encourage (or make easy) making your own themes, but after looking a stock theme over and uploading my own graphics I was able to make a couple themes that were very slick indeed.

Like all Universal remotes, build quality is above average. Form factor is great, with a nice feel in the hand, and button placement becomes second nature very quickly.

Drawbacks? No cradle, but at least Universal has included an AC adapter. Recharging is as simple as plugging the remote in overnight every fourth night or so. The MX-810 also lights the LCD and hard buttons every time you pick it up, contributing to shorter battery life. You can adjust the backlightling, or turn it off if it suits you. I like it, and can live with charging the remote twice a week as a consequence.

The software (PC only, no Mac support) is not as polished as it needs to be for Joe Sixpack, but even though Universal obviously made this remote to compete with Harmony, it isn’t going to sit alongside the Harmonies at the big box stores any time soon. I think this remote was an experiment for Universal. They already have a similar, manual programming-only remote out, the MX-450. They have also released a new version of the MX-810, the MX-880, which uses the installer-preferred MX Editor software. Personally, I hope Universal doesn’t abandon the idea. If they can smooth out the rough edges of the MX-810′s wizard software, this remote really is a Harmony killer, and the mass market needs the chance to experience the superiority of Universal’s offerings. The Universal Remote MX-810 has an MSRP of $399, but look a little online and you’ll find reputable sellers offering it in the $240 ballpark.

Now that I have expressed a preference, I will say that if you buy a remote from the three manufacturers I have covered, you won’t go too far wrong. Forget the whizbang looks and gadget sex appeal, decide how much you want to spend, and find the remote in that price range that will be easy to set up and easy to use. Your remote is the single most used component in your home theater. Buy one that will do the job you need it to and not draw attention to itself and you will be happy for the next four or five years til the upgrade bug bites you again.

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I moved home back in June to a bigger 3 bed flat from my old 2 bed flat, where the 2nd bedroom had to double as guest room and my office.  The extra bedroom is now doubling up as my office and a games room/2nd reception when my mates come around, which means we can have a proper guestroom for when parents and friends come to stay.

The move to a bigger place provided me with an excuse opportunity to upgrade a lot of my Home AV setup.  I’ve had a few requests to list what new AV toys I’ve purchased and how I’ve set them up, including one from Dollarman who’s actually seen it all in action!  I hope this post will help you with any future purchases you might be thinking of making.

Front Room AV Kit

TV: Panasonic TH-65PX600

The majority of the old AV setup from my old Front Rom is now being is being used in the office/games room, so I had a completely blank slate to work with in the front room.  When buying new kit, you should match it to your viewing/listening habits.  In my case I watch a lot of HD content (TV shows and movies) and listen to music, all streamed from my Windows Home Server, so I needed a TV that would support full HD, a PC also able to handle full HD and HD audio (more on this later)  and a receiver that was a good all-rounder.

My front room is fairly big at around 20×20, so I knew I needed a big new TV.  My last TV was only 42″, and even though I was using it in a smaller room it didn’t feel big enough.  I was going to buy a cheap 60″ LG TV, but I just happened to be in John Lewis when they were putting a 65″ Panasonic TH-65PX600 on sale, knocking off £5,500.  Although this still made the TV 50% more than what I was going to pay for my cheapo LG, I knew I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to buy such a high quality 65″ 1080p TV.

I was a bit disappointed when I got to the till and discovered that the Panasonic 65″ TV didn’t come with a pedestal stand, which would cost me an extra £800.  I declined to buy it from John Lewis as I was certain I could find one online for cheaper.  I had a major result, when I found one advertised for £45 on a site where they had clearly missed a ’0′ off on the price, saving me over £400!.  I quickly whipped out my credit card and jumped in my girlfriend’s car (the stand was too big for my car) to pick it up before they realised their mistake!

My good fortune got even better when John Lewis finally delivered the TV, as the stand they’d wanted to charge me £800 for was attached!  I guess they realised the stand was worthless on its own and decided to give it to me, or maybe they didn’t realise it should have been removed.  Either way, I now have 2 stands and I’ll be putting one on eBay when I get the time.

AV Receiver: Yamaha RX-V1800

The next important new piece of kit was a new receiver capable of upscaling everything to 1080P.  After checking out a few reviews I went for the Yamaha RX-V1800, even though it didn’t come out top in the reviews.  Why?  Well, even though it didn’t deliver the best audio quality it was slightly cheaper than the alternatives, that also had heat problems and clunky user interfaces.

The Yamaha has been an absolute joy from day one.  Apart from one problem with setting up the subwoofer (I overruled the automatic setting with the recommended speaker setting, which wiped out all my sub bass), it’s been a doddle to use thanks to YPAO Automatic System Calibration.  With YPAO you just attach the included mic and position it near your usual listening position.  The Yamaha then plays a number of test tones from each speaker to measure room acoustics, speaker quality and distances and makes all the necessary adjustments.  It couldn’t be more simple, and I’ve hardly touched a setting since.

The receiver also has enough inputs for everything you can think of, so I only have one HDMI cable going from my receiver to my TV, with everything sources pumping out/upscaled to 1080P.

Speakers: SVS 6.1 system (3xSCS-01, 3xSBS-01 + 25-31 PCi subwoofer)

I’ve always wanted a good set of speakers but I’ve never lived in a place big enough to accommodate them until now.  I set myself a £1k budget to buy a 6.1 system (my room layout makes 7.1 difficult).  After doing my research it became clear that the best system available for under £1k was a SVS system.  I’d never heard of SVS before, but every review I found gave a glowing recommendation.

After contacting a dealer they recommended that because of the size of my room I needed a bigger subwoofer, so I upgraded to a SVS 25-31 PCi subwoofer.  This sub is an absolute beast and is nearly 3ft tall, but luckily I’ve hidden it out of sight behind my TV.  There’s no hiding the bass though which is simply immense.  I’ve never heard anything like it, and it makes my previous sub look like a tweeter.  The sound isn’t overpowering, just deep and warm.

I also upgraded my speakers, adding replacing the front SBS-01 speakers with the better SCS-01s, so that the front is all SCS-01s and the back SBS-01s.  The mistake I made was paying a premium for the extra SBS-01 as to get my 6.1 system I had to break up a pair of speakers.  What I should have done is taken the pair and put the spare speaker in storage, as in the future I might be able to accommodate it

Stands: Atacama nexus speaker stands, Atacama Elara 64 AV Unit

The Panasonic 65″ TV is a real beast at 95KG, and finding a stand strong enough to take the weight which was also wide enough was a major challenge.  Eventually I found the Atacama Elara 64 AV unit.  It’s not very pretty, but it does the job well enough and has very good ventilation.

My speakers are on standard Atacama Nexus speaker stands which seem to do a decent job.

PC: Thermaltake Mozart VC4001 Chassis, 4200+, DFI Lanparty, HD 3870 XT 512MB, Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 soundcard

My PC is essentially my old main PC in a new chassis.  I went for the Mozart case as it was one of the few HTPC cases that could take a socket 939 motherboard.  It has turned out to be an inspired choice as the built in IR receiver means I can control it from my Harmony remote, including turning it on and off.

The HD 3870 is more powerful than I need, but I wanted a card that runs quiet rather than sounding like a jet plane taking off.  I opted for the Auzen Prelude card because Auzen are going to launch a HDMI extender for it, that will allow it to support HDMI 1.3 as well as HD sound formats like Dolby TrueHD.

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It isn’t just gearheads who have lots of av equipment anymore. Everyone that sees high definition and hears multichannel sound wants to know what they need to do to have that experience in their home. More and more equipment is ending up in mass market users’ homes as people chase better sound and image. One problem with this that we all share: no one wants half a dozen remote controls sitting on an end table.

That’s where universal remotes come in. Universal remotes are available in a staggering variety of functionality, from $10 candy bars that are barely suitable for controlling a TV and a DVD player, to units that more closely resemble tablet PCs that will control everything from your home theater to your lighting to your home security system. For the purposes of this article I am concerned with units that will unify a home theater with a handful of components running off IR commands, although adding RF to the equation is trivial and will appeal to some.

First off, just forget about the cheap universal remotes from Sony, Philips and the like. These units are adequate for some whose needs are minimal, but for those trying to elegantly command a multi component home theater system they come up short.

Second, I am not going to talk about the ultra high end units from RTI, Philips and Universal Remote. You guys either already know this stuff, or the installer you’re paying does.

So, for us Joe Sixpacks with home theaters that are comprised of four to eight components, what are the best options?

Philips doesn’t have as big a presence in the North American market as they do in Europe. Their universal remotes are around in some of the big box stores, but American readers may be forced to go online if they have their hearts set on a Philips. The Philips Pronto line has been around for awhile and has a huge following. The Pronto line is characterized by large LCD screens and minimal hard buttons. Pronto users have a lot of freedom in configuring their GUI, provided they take the time to learn the intricacies of Pronto theming. They have a lot of sex appeal, but I’m not a big fan of remotes that force me to look at the remote when I use it. Personally I find it more intuitive to let my muscle memory deal with an assortment of hard buttons and look to the LCD display for less frequently used tasks. Philips makes Pronto remotes that fall in both categories.

Philips Pronto TSU7500

The Philips TSU7500 is the latest iteration of the classic Philips Pronto remote. This remote will do whatever you want, and is certainly capable of doing a lot more than what the demands of this article call for. The big plus and the big downside are the same feature. That big, beautiful LCD looks great, but it’s a pain in the butt to look down at your remote every time you need to do something. Expect prices online to range from $590 to $1000. High, but you’re also buying a hobby as it will take you a while to get comfortable with setting it up and customizing it.

Philips TSU9400

New this year is the Philips Pronto TSU9400. A new form factor, the 9400 utilizes an iPod-like jog wheel, but retains the previous Prontos’ reliance on the LCD. The 9400 is a more hand-friendly footprint, and there is no denying that it is the sexiest thing going in universal remotes with it’s crisp 3.5″ color LCD and included charging cradle. Again, users will have to decide if they are comfortable spending so much time looking away from their TV to stare at their remote. A TSU9400 will set you back around $550.

Philips Pronto TSU9200

The Philips Pronto TSU9200 is a Pronto version of their former top of the line Prestigo remote. The TSU9200 receives an upgrade over the former in that it works with a new “lite” version of the Philips PC editing software. The TSU9200 also inherits the iPod-esque jog wheel from it’s big brother, the Philips Pronto TSU9400. Initial response from end users is that Philips has a lot of work to do to polish this remote and it’s software to the level where it competes with Logitech and Universal, so users may be cautioned to wait and keep on eye on future iterations of this unit instead of abandoning a proven performer for it at this time. Poised very much to compete with similar offerings from Logitech and Universal Remote, the TSU9200 is perched at the crowded $230 pricepoint.

Logitech is a familiar name for both PC users and home theater nuts. Their Harmony line of remotes has it’s fans and it’s detractors, mostly based on the PC based configuration of this remote. It makes setting the Harmony remotes up easy, but also makes working around problems tough as the setup is not as flexible as a manual programming routine or an editor based software configuration.

Logitech Harmony One Remote

The Logitech Harmony One is the latest and greatest in the Logitech Harmony line. Sporting a wealth of hard buttons, a color LCD touchscreen, and an included charging cradle, the Harmony One is targeted squarely at both enthusiasts and the mass market alike. The Harmony One has a much nicer hard button configuration than previous Harmonys, and the form factor sits nicely in the hand. My only real beef with Harmony remotes is that they are a little flimsy compared to the competition, so if, like me, you have a three year old in the house, you may want to consider that Logitech remotes probably won’t suffer that kind of abuse for long. The Harmony One sits at the attractive $200 price point.

This wasn’t supposed to be a two part article, but once I started I realized that there were enough attractive options to justify not oversimplifying the choices. Next week we’ll complete the roundup with another remote from Logitech and then on to offerings from Universal Remote.

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After one of the longest home purchases ever thanks to the difficulty in getting mortgages at the moment, I finally moved into my new home last Monday.  Packing for the move and unpacking after the move effectively took me out of action every evening for the last two weeks as I couldn’t get the time off work.

The next time I move home I will insist on getting time of work as the stress levels were unbelievable, and I’ll also make sure I do the following:

1. Warn the rest of the Connected Internet team that I won’t be around for a few weeks
2. Upgrade at least one of the team to admin so that they can catch all the spam
3. Make sure that the new place has broadband installed on day one
4. Buy a decent tool to strip speaker wires
5. Make sure that I have spare cabling as mistakes are bound to happen!
6. Put an ‘out of office’ message on my email to stop people chasing me and sending the same over and over and over again…
7. Buy a spare mobile battery
8. Plan in advance how all my AV kit is going to be connected, as it’s really annoying being short of a cable or two….

As part of the move I’ve made a number of upgrades to my TVs, hi-fi and computers, including my new awesome AV rig pictured below:

I haven’t actually watched a full movie yet as I’ve been trying to get all the settings just right..  I haven’t quite worked out how to get the best out of my speakers when playing music, but for movies the bass in particular is immense.  Expect more details about my various upgrades over the next couple of weeks

And before you ask, no I’m not watching a porno – it’s a scene from 300!

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I’ve just found a great page that plays an MP3 encoded at both 128kbps and 320kbps and challenges listeners to spot the better quality file. It’s an interesting test, and it’ll be interesting to see if Connected Internet readers can spot the difference. Don’t forget to come back and let other readers know how good your ‘ear’ is.

I could tell the difference, although I had to listen to the files on a decent set of speakers. Where you tend to listen to your files should determine how you encode your files. If disk space is at a premium and you only listen to your tracks on an MP3 player through a pair of generally poor speakers, then 128kbps files should be ok. However, if you listen to your files on a decent hifi, or intend to in the future, then you will benefit from the higher bit rates.

This is the situation I find myself in. When I got my first iPod back in 2003 I started encoding my files at 128kbps so that I could fit as many tracks as possible onto my 15GB iPod. However, I realised too late that in the future I would probably have a bigger device, so I should encode my files at the highest quality possible so that I wouldn’t have to spend many hours ripping my CDs again. So, I went back and re-ripped all my CDs at 320kbps.

This has served me well for 5 years, although I’m currently in the process of re-ripping my CDs in a loseless format (I’m using FLAC via MediaMonkey). I have a very good stereo system connected to main media center PC, where I can clearly hear the difference between even 320kbps and loseless files. Once I’ve completed this (it will take a few months…) I intend to put away my CDs forever and then turn my attention to ripping my LPs by purchasing a USB turntable.

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Marriage. Like death, it is inevitable. Ultimately you will encounter that one “right” person and make the leap, or maybe you will simply reach that point where it dawns on you that if you don’t hurry up and pair off with somebody you are going to grow old and die alone.

We are all selfish creatures, to one degree or another. Marriage will drive that last trace of selfishness out of you like nothing else. It’s like going from a dictatorship to a democracy, and those who aren’t prepared to learn the subtle arts of compromise and diplomacy are headed to divorce court. As Connected Internet’s primary focus is technology and the internet, I have compiled a short list of Tech And Internet Don’ts For The Newlywed Or Soon To Be:

1. Don’t spend all day blogging You know how you used to wake up on your day off and sit around in your sleep pants all day with a cup of coffee and work on the blog? Yeah, well that’s over. Something about sitting in front of the computer all day long while the spouse waits for you to take a shower and go out and do something fun with them tends to piss them off. Save yourself some headache and don’t wait for them to make that observation to you, or pretty soon every time you hop on the computer for even a minute you’ll be hearing about it from them. Learn to schedule your internet time so that it isn’t competing with your spouse. Ultimately it’s much easier to rearrange your web time than to placate an angry spouse. Always satisfy the aspect of your life that can nag you to death and make you unhappy first.
2. If you must blog, make some money doing so Frankly, even if you schedule your internet time in such a way that it isn’t a threat to your spouse, they will still think all the time and effort you expend on the internet is ridiculous. The easiest way to win this argument is with filthy lucre. Nothing helps a spouse understand your internet endeavors like cold, hard cash.
3. Don’t make major tech purchases without getting a green light from accounting first This is so bittersweet. You’ve worked for years and are now getting to a place where you’re comfortable and have money to indulge yourself in ways you weren’t previously able to. You’re also married now, so for God’s sake don’t come home with a new Power Mac or big screen television before you’ve made your business presentation to the significant other and at least gotten a reluctant approval. Spouses have a tendency to think that money would have been better spent on home improvements or new furniture. Oh, and if you’re thinking about coming home with a new SUV as a “surprise”, it sure will be, for you when you spend the next week trying to get back in your spouse’s good graces, or worse, trying to get them to come home because they were so pissed with you that they went to mom’s or a friend’s place.
4. If you’ve made a tech purchase recently, don’t even think about another one for a while If you were fortunate enough to get accounting to sign off on a new media server or laptop, don’t present another sales pitch for a while. Better to get your money together and get new vinyl flooring for the kitchen, or put that privacy fence up in the back yard first. Your success with accounting will increase if you strategically place your requisitions between the bullet points that accounting has presented at your board meetings.

Don’t ask me how I know these things, just save yourself some trouble and take my advice.

Marriage isn’t for everyone, and it has a detrimental effect on technology and the internet. It does have a way of making you smooth out your rough edges and become a better person, so in the end the price paid is worth it for most of us. If you encounter one of the common by-products of marriage, children, you may find yourself in the camp that realizes that perhaps technology and the internet really aren’t so important after all in the grand scheme of things.

Valor James Lankton, my favorite bit of tech

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Until I started having to cope with High def file formats like h.264 and mkv I was perfectly happy installing one of the many codec packs to allow me to play my media files. The problem however with the latest file formats, is that they can be very CPU intensive, so if you don’t have a very modern PC you will struggle to play certain media files unless you have very good codecs installed. I was also having problems outputting digital audio to my amp.

By mainly trial and error I have managed to find the perfect mix of codecs that will allow you to play all media files, even if you have a older CPU. If you also have your PC connected to a digital amp, then this guide will help you output digital audio vai your SPDIF or coaxial cable.

Stage I – Uninstall Old Codecs

Go into control panel/add&remove programs and uninstall all your old codecs

Stage II – Install FFDShow

FFDSHhow is a free codec for decoding/encoding just about every video format out there. I use it for everything apart from h.264 and mkv, which I will come onto later. Once you’ve downloaded the latest version (I tend to go for the latest ffdshow tryout version), install ffdshow and select the following during installation:

• Untick H.264 as we will be using something else for this codec
• If you have your PC connected via SPDIF to your amp then during installation when it asks what codecs to install scroll down to AC3 and DTS and select the SPDIF radio button

Stage III – MKV and H.264 files

There are two ways to go about this. If you want to save your hard-earned dollars then install Haali Media Splitter to to add MKV/H.264 support. If you want to further reduce your CPU load then buy CoreAVC which is the fastest MKV decoder in the west. It only costs a few dollars and is well worth it in my opinion.

Optional Stage IV – Vista Media Center Support

If you’re a user of VMC then you need to make some registry changes to make sure that VMC knows which codecs to use. If you purchased CoreAVC then copy and paste the following text (all of it) into Notepad:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mkv]
@=”CoreMedia.MKV”
“PerceivedType”=”video”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ts]
@=”MatroskaVideo”
“PerceivedType”=”video”
“Content Type”=”video/x-matroska”

If you are just using Haali Media Splitter then copy this text into Notepad:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mkv]
@=”MatroskaVideo”
“PerceivedType”=”video”
“Content Type”=”video/x-matroska”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ts]
@=”MatroskaVideo”
“PerceivedType”=”video”
“Content Type”=”video/x-matroska”

Save the file to your desktop and then doubleclick it to add the necessary entries to the Windows Registry.

Optional Stage V – Check All Is Ok

Everything should be working ok, but it is worth using Graphedit to check that your PC is using the codecs you want i to . Download, install and run Graphedit and select ‘File/Render Media File’ and choose the file you want to check. Graphedit then displays a nice graph of which codecs would be used to play the file. If you see anything in there that wasn’t installed as part of this guide, then go back to Stage I and remove the offending codecs and recheck with Graphedit.

If you complete all of these stages correctly then you should be able to play all the current formats available on any PC built within the last 3-4 years.

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Affordable big screen televisions and high definition have changed the average person’s attention level when it comes to their home video and audio components. It’s hard to walk by a large high def display at an electronics store and not want that experience in your home, and the masses have jumped in head first.

Once you’ve augmented your home video capabilities, the thoughts of many turn to improving the audio experience. For many of us, the audio end of the home theater experience is even more important than the visual experience. After all, the driving motivation behind better audio is music, and even less musically obsessed individuals are sure to figure out that their new system changes their level of aural interest once they hear some of their favorite music on more capable equipment.

Just throwing money at better equipment doesn’t guarantee satisfaction, and some care needs to be taken to make sure that you are giving your equipment the initial attention it needs to provide you with the best performance it is capable of. Here are some tips that will help you squeeze the best performance you can out of your new audio equipment, for both movies and music.

Last week we started out with proper loudspeaker placement. Now we need to calibrate:

2. Adjusting loudspeaker output You need a tool for this step. An SPL (sound pressure level) meter measures the decibel output of an audio source. Relatively inexpensive SPL meters can be purchased from Radio Shack in the States, or off Ebay. Set your SPL meter to “C” weighting, set the range to the 75 dB ballpark and position the meter in the location you listen from. Using the test tone function of your AV receiver or pre/pro, adjust the volume until the loudspeaker is producing approximately 75 dB. Now start with the left front loudspeaker and work your way around the room. Your AV Receiver or pre/pro will allow you to adjust the output level of each speaker while you are playing the test tone. Adjust all loudspeakers to match output at the listening position.

Now the subwoofer. The subwoofer provides the lion’s share of movie theater impact when you are watching movies on your system. Standard rule of thumb is to set the subwoofer output +5 dB louder than the rest of your system. This is a balancing act and only your ear can tell when you have the right level. You want impact for movies, but you also want the sub to seamlessly integrate with the rest of your loudspeakers for music. If you listen to music and it’s glaringly apparent what the sub is doing, it’s too hot. What you are after is music performance that produces strong, realistic bass output, and gives no indication that there is a subwoofer involved at all. A well integrated sub does not draw attention to itself, it just fills out the lower registers and disappears into the room the way your loudspeakers should.

Despite your labors, some rooms are just hard to get right. Hardwood floors, windows, open entranceways and fixed objects in the room will all conspire against you. Area rugs and heavy drapes are your friends in these instances, and there are also many room treatments available online that may help your room be a better instrument.

The labor you’ve undertaken will produce an aural environment that will allow you to enjoy the maximum benefit from your audio system. Even as someone who has had a lifelong obsession with audio, I still close my eyes and smile every time I listen to well recorded music in my room. Hearing sounds that are in the room during movies is intensely more satisfying than hearing easily localized sounds emanating from the four corners of the room. This is also a good time to mention that not everything you play will produce this sort of audio nirvana in your space. Good systems make poorly recorded material sound even poorer. Fortunately, modern movies with any kind of budget tend to have good sound.

To me, nothing in life is more important than family. However good food, good liquor, travel, music and film don’t suck. Get the most from your enjoyment of music and film and set your system up to deliver the goods.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Home Theater Audio, Part 2 is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Affordable big screen televisions and high definition have changed the average person’s attention level when it comes to their home video and audio components. It’s hard to walk by a large high def display at an electronics store and not want that experience in your home, and the masses have jumped in head first.

Once you’ve augmented your home video capabilities, the thoughts of many turn to improving the audio experience. For many of us, the audio end of the home theater experience is even more important than the visual experience. After all, the driving motivation behind better audio is music, and even less musically obsessed individuals are sure to figure out that their new system changes their level of aural interest once they hear some of their favorite music on more capable equipment.

Just throwing money at better equipment doesn’t guarantee satisfaction, and some care needs to be taken to make sure that you are giving your equipment the initial attention it needs to provide you with the best performance it is capable of. Here are some tips that will help you squeeze the best performance you can out of your new audio equipment, for both movies and music.

Ok, first and foremost I just want to touch on in-wall and in-ceiling loudspeakers. In-wall and in-ceiling speakers are great for those whose wives dictate what can and can’t go in the home, and for those who are trying to recreate the interior design of James Caan’s character’s home in the 1975 movie Rollerball.

For those of us not living with those restrictions, just stay away from in-wall and in-ceiling speakers. They make two fatal compromises for convenience’s sake. One, they either don’t have any enclosure to speak of, or the enclosure they have is inadequate. Think of loudspeakers in terms of stringed instruments. Enclosure space is a crucial part in the equation that determines the sound they produce, and in-wall and in-ceiling speakers ignore this function for form’s sake. Two, room placement is very inflexible. You do not want your sound emanating from a flat surface, and you can’t position flush mounted speakers so they can “breathe”. Loudspeaker placement is crucial to good sound, and the only options you have for placing this type of speaker is choosing the location to cut the drywall to mount them.

The room your system is in is a very important variable in your system’s sound. Open door space or the lack of, ceiling height, flooring surface and objects in the room all affect your system’s performance. Some rooms sound great with little to no effort, some rooms require a little work to realize your system’s potential, and some rooms require a lot of work just to get acceptable performance. There are two mandatory steps we need to take to integrate our audio system with our room, and some optional tweaks that can assist in difficult spaces.

1. Loudspeaker placement I really can’t stress how important it is that you take the time to play with placement in your listening space. Inches can mean the difference between merely adequate and “holy crap, the musicians are in the room with me”.

Start with the left and right soundstage, or your mains. To begin setup, forget about 5.1 altogether and pop in a cd you are fond of in stereo mode. The hard and fast rule is that your loudspeakers should sit anywhere from 7 to 15 feet apart. Experiment with this distance. What you want is a stereo image that places the musicians in the room with you. If you can localize specific sounds to one speaker or the other, keep trying. A singer’s voice should sound like it’s emanating from the space between the loudspeakers.

You will also need to experiment with the distance between the loudspeakers and the wall behind them. Some speakers don’t mind being close to the wall, others will want breathing room, lots of it. If the bass is boomy, you are too close. If the bass is anemic, you’re too far away. Space between the loudspeaker and wall will also affect imaging, so pay attention to what happens to the musicians location in the space of your listening room while you make these adjustments.

Once you have the speakers set at a distance that produces the best sound to your ear, play with toe-in. Start with the loudspeakers parallel to the wall behind them, and move them incrementally until each is pointed right at your listening position. Some speakers like to point straight ahead, others right at you, and more often than not they do best somewhere in between.

Your rear speakers are less finicky about placement, and depending on your room you may be limited in your placement options anyway. Just don’t forget if you are using bookshelf speakers to use stands that place those speaker’s tweeters at approximately the same height as your mains, and give them enough room away from the wall so that their ports can breathe freely if they have rear facing ports. Placement behind the seating position is best, but if the seating is against the back wall of the room, you’ll be ok having the rears in the corners.

For the subwoofer, corner loading works best. Try to position the sub in the left or right front corner of the room, and play with it’s proximity to the two adjacent walls until you find the position that produces strong, but not boomy, bass output.

I know this may sound like a lot of work, but trust me, the difference in the quality of sound filling your room will astound you in a well set-up room. It’s worth taking the time to tweak.

Now that we have your loudspeakers in position it’s time to calibrate. Check back next week for Getting The Most Out Of Your Home Theater Audio, Part 2.

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I’m in the middle of a house move that is taking forever to finalise. At the new pad I was intending to install network cabling and ethernet ports in each room, as in the past I’ve found that WiFi connections just aren’t good enough to stream HD video.

However, I’ve been reading up on new 802.11n 5GHz wireless routers and I think it might be time for me to give WiFi another chance. Rather than using the already congested 2.4GHz band like early 802.11n routers, these advanced routers are able to unlock their full potential by using the less congested 5GHz.

Going WiFi has its attractions, particularly when I don’t fancy spending a weekend running lengthy CAT6 wires between rooms. I’ve got my eye on the D-Link DIR-855 which is coming out in May. The DIR-855 is actually a dualband router and outputs 2.4GHz & 5GHz wireless signals at the same time. The beauty of this is you can use the slower 2.4GHz network to surf the web and for visitors to connect to, with the faster 5GHz network saved for streaming HD content. In tests, the DIR-855 has been able to stream two 1080p videos at the same time and if this is true, this will more than meet my requirements.

The D-Link DIR-855 also features strong QoS which will be important as in the new pad, I’m not going to install a fixed line phone as it’s going to cost me a ridiculous £120 to install the phone line. I refuse to pay this amount, particularly when this money can pay for more than 10,000 inclusive minutes with the excellent Voipfone, which includes international minutes. I will also save money with Voipfone as I can route my Mobile calls via the VOIP line (once I work out how to do it!).

What wireless network/router are you currently running? Have you found the performance to be disappointing? Are you planning on upgrading to 802.11n this year?

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Windows Vista Media Center is a very good media center, and best of all it’s free. One nice feature within Windows Vista MCE is the media-only mode which gets rid of the windows minimise/close buttons in the top right so that your full screen is dedicated to your media.

Unfortunately there isn’t an option within MCE to enter this mode automatically, but after some digging around yesterday I found a way to enter media-only mode at startup:

1. Find your MCE shortcut and right-click and select ‘properties’
2. in the target link you should see’......\ehome\ehshell.exe‘
3. Change this to ”\ehome\ehshell.exe /mediamode‘ and MCE will now start automatically in Media-Only mode

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I’ve been beating myself up a bit this week as I thought I’d wasted my money on a Auzentech Prelude 7.1 videocard in my new media center PC, as it wouldn’t help me play the new HD audio formats like Doly TrueHD and DTS HD, that offer superior sound quality over older Dolby formats.

However, after doing some research today I think by accident I’ve purchased the correct card as Auzentech will be launching later the Auzentech HDMI X-Tension extension card that will connect to my Auzentech Prelude card, allowing it to support HDMI 1.3 and Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD.

HDMI 1.3 is the latest HDMI format that supports the new lossless audio formats, as well as providing automatic audio syncing and better image quality.  At the moment only hi-spec HD-DVD (hang onto these soon to be collectors items!) and Blu-ray support HDMI 1.3.  Luckily I also purchased a HD 3870 video card that has a HDMI output, so the video from the GPU will be connected to the X-Tension and added to the audio from the Prelude card and sent to my receiver via a single HDMI cable.

I can’t wait until the X-Tension card comes out for my prelude soundcard so I can access the better quality soundtracks on my discs.  The new setup I’ve purchased to play my discs is just crying out for it’s first run.  I’ve got an amazing new Yamaha RX-V1800 to plug my new Media Center into, as well as a SVS 6.1 speaker system with upgraded front speakers and crazy SVS subwoofer…..

Luckily I’ll be one of the first people to move into my new block, otherwise I think the other neighbours will boot me out!

Auzentech HDMI X-Tension First Card To Support HDMI 1.3 And Dolby TrueHD is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

I pulled forward yesterday building a new media center, because my main PC died.  I’m moving into a new flat soon with a bigger ‘office’ that I’m also going to use a games room, hence the need for a second media center PC to go with my current media center PC in the front room.

Although Amit is right that buying more than you need with PC components can turn out to be more expensive as newer parts are always faster, I haven’t found this to be true for myself, because I don’t play a lot of games, which I think is what drives the need for a lot of real PC component advancement. Because of this, in order to build my 2nd media center PC what I’m actually doing is upgrading my main PC, and then using the replaced parts to form the nucleus of my media center PC, which won’t be used as often and will be doing simpler tasks.

Main PC Upgrade

• Processor: Upgrading from AMD 4200+ to Intel Q6600
• Motherboard: Upgrading from DFI Lanparty to Abit IP35 Pro – NEW
• Memory: Upgrading from Crucial 2GB Value memory to OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz SLI-Ready DDR2 – NEW
• GPU: No change – X1900XT flashed to X1900XTX
• Soundcard: No change – X-Fi Xtreme Music
• Cooling: No change – Swiftech GPU&CPU watercooling
• Chassis: No change – Gigabyte Aurora
• PSU: No change – Seasonic S12-600

Although I was pretty much set on gettng a Asus P5K SE motherboard, when I did some google searches I came across this Overclocked Q6600 Bundle from Overclockers UK.  Although initially I wasn’t planning on doing a lot of overclocking with the new rig, what I liked about the bundle was that the components had been put together because they complemented each other, and because Overclockers even supplied a written guide on how to overclock the given components, it would be easy for even novice overclockers like me to achieve.  It would also allow me to finally put my Swifttech CPU&GPU watercooling to better use.

The guide promises that the rig will allow me to overclock the 2.4Ghz Q6600 safely to at least 3.3Ghz, which would make it as fast as an intel QX chip that cost at least £400 more.  I’m hoping to get a bit more than this as I’m sure my watercooling will outperform the fan-based CPU cooler in the bundle.

I’ve stuck with 2GB of ram for now as this is what is recommended in the guide, and because I’m going to install a 32-bit operating system which can only see 3.5GB of ram.  Once I’ve overclocked the machine I’ll purchase the extra ram if I think the machine will benefit from it.

New Media Center PC

• Chassis: Thermaltake Mozart VS4001SNS – NEW
• Processor: 4200+ – from Old PC
• CPU Cooling: Coolermaster Hyper TX2 – NEW
• Motherboard: DFI Lanparty  from Old PC
• Memory: 2GB – From Old PC
• GPU: Sapphire HD 3870 XT 512MB – NEW
• PSU: Antec Neo 550 – NEW
• Soundcard: Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 – NEW

My original plan was to use the new components to upgrade my current HTPC (Antec Fusion, 4600+, 7950, X-Fi Xtreme, 2GB) , and to use the replaced bits to build the new machine.  I’m actually going to use this machine in my main room rather than my current PC because of the chassis which is very cool. I can’t transplant the current HTPC into the Thermaltake chassic because I won’t be able to get the DFI Lanparty ATX mobo into the Fusion case which can only accommodate a mATX mobo.

I’ve opted for a HD 3870 card rather than a EN8800GT card because it will run quieter and cooler.  It’s definitely over-specified for my needs now and will handle 1080p without breaking a sweat, and it in fact supports resolutions up to 2560×1600.  I can’t wait to see what the picture quality on my new TV will be like.

It includes a HDMI connection, but I will be using the digital output on the Auzen Prelude card to transmit the sound to my new receiver.  To be honest I’m not sure if I need the additional quality in the Auzen card, because the audio will be handled directly by the receiver, but in the future I might be using the card in a standalone PC so I’ve spent the extra pounds.

I’ve nearly completed all my upgrades – I’ve just got the speakers to purchase (SVS system) and the receiver (current plan Yamaha RX-V1800) and I’m done.  All I need now is the keys to the new place so I can start enjoying the new kit!

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I’m really not having a good time with my PCs at the moment.  Last week my Windows Home Server died, taking with it a lot of my music and photos. Now my main PC has died and won’t boot into Windows.  I don’t know why all my bits and bobs are all failing at the same time, as my laptop is playing up as well.

I’m really annoyed as I’d decided about 5 mins before the latest crash that I was going to bring forward the PC upgrade I was going to do in April.  My plan was to order a new processor, motherboard and memory with the old components going towards a building a 2nd media center for my new home.

If I can get my PC working again I’m going to do a full backup of all my files and strip the whole machine down. In fact, I think I’m actually going to give all of my PCs a full rebuild as they are all running a bit slow and have picked up a lot of crap over the months. I’ve tried installing a WHS backup with no joy so far, and I’m now trying the repair option on the Windows Vista installation CD.

I’m thinking of the following spec for my new PC. It’ll be interesting to see what people think in particular of the mobo selection, particularly PC experts like Zath and Kline. I’m not going to bother with much overclocking; I just need a nice stable and cheap motherboard.

New PC

• Processor: Intel Q6600 – NEW
• Motherboard: Asus P5K SE – NEW
• Memory: 2GB Value memory – NEW
• GPU: X1900XTX – OLD
• Scard: X-Fi Xtreme Music – OLD
• Cooling: Swiftech GPU&CPU watercooling – OLD
• Chassis: Gigabyte Aurora – OLD
• PSU: Seasonic S12-600 – OLD

I’ve gone for an intel processor for the first time because pound for pound they are much better than AMD at the moment.

New Media Center PC

• Chassis: Thermaltake Mozart VS4001SNS – NEW
• Processor: 4200+ – OLD
• CPU Cooling: Coolermaster Hyper TX2 – NEW
• Motherboard: DFI Lanparty – OLD
• Memory: 2GB – OLD
• GPU: ASUS EN8800GT – NEW
• PSU: Antec Neo 550 – NEW
• Scard: Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 – NEW

Even though my other media center has a better CPU (4600+) and I could put the new soundcard and GPU in that machine, I think I’m going to put the new components in this HTPC and use it in my main room because the Thermaltake case is much cooler. I think the new soundcard will go well with the new SVS 7.1 speakers I’m planning on buying, and the more powerful EN8800GT graphics card with the new 1080P plasma I’ve already purchased.

Any thoughts on the new components before I whip out the credit card?

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I’m in the process of buying a new home and I’m hoping to move in next month.  I’ve been making a list of new ‘toys’ to buy as I’m going to upgrade my AV and home network and one of the items on my shopping list is a new big plasma.

I’d picked out the TV I thought I was going to buy and I was just browsing around John Lewis, when I saw a Panasonic plasma TV that had just been reduced.  It was outside of the budget I’d set, but it was being sold for 65% off the ticketed price so I had to check quickly if it was a good deal, particularly as other people were eying up the TV at the same time.

I whipped out my Nokia N95 went online and within 5 minutes I had:

• Verified the spec of the Plasma TV
• Checked that the price was a good one, and even though it was end of line and other stores were discounting it, the John Lewis price was still half that of the others
• Read a handful of reviews to see how good the TV rated
• Made a quick post on AV-Forums to see what the users thought of the TV, and I even got a few instant replies via email

Because everything checked out, I purchased the TV and it’s going to be delivered next month. If anyone ever says to me again that the mobile internet isn’t useful, I’m going to give them this example!

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Today in Barcelona at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, Dolby Laboratories released Dolby Mobile, that promised to bring rich, vibrant surround sound to mobile phones and portable media players. At the same time Dolby also showed aacPlus, a high-quality, highly efficient audio compression format designed for download, streaming, and broadcast applications on mobile phones.

“Entertainment can sound better on mobile phones and portable media players,” said Francois Modarresse, Vice President of Marketing, Dolby Laboratories. “We developed Dolby Mobile to help create products that stir the senses and excite people’s imaginations so the industry can deliver on the promise of mobile entertainment.”

I would love to hear this technology. One area that has always surprised me with mobile phones with mp3 players is how bad the speakers are. My Nokia N95 is the first phone I’ve owned that has decent speakers, but even still the playback quality is no better than a cheap mp3 player, even through a good set of headphones. Hopefully, Dolby Mobile could improve the next generation of mobile phones.

Although, I hope Dolby Mobile doesn’t increase the strain on mobile batteries!

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I’m a big fan of XMBC, the great open source media center for Xboxs. But, I stopped using it over the last 12 months because my needs had out-stripped the capabilities of the Xbox, which can’t support native HD content. Because of this, I now use PCs running Windows Vista Media Center for my media needs, with all my content held on a Windows Home Server.

I was thus pleasantly pleased to learn that two teams of developers are working on porting XBMC to OS X and Linux, providing much needed HD support. Previously the XBMC had worked miracles in terms of squeezing as much functionality as possible out of the power-challenged Xbox. I can’t wait to see what they can achieve if they are given more powerful hardware to play with.

Unfortunately, the timing of the work is too late for me. I’m in the process of buying a new house which has a second reception room that I’m going to use as a ‘den’ or ‘games room’ for when my mates come round. This means that I will need a new media center for the new room to watch DVDs and to play music. I can’t find a good out-the-box media center that has wide enough codec support e.g. FLAC, .mkv etc, so I’ve decided to build another media center PC. Maybe overkill, but I can’t find a better way to deliver the support I need.

Rather than build a new Media Center PC from scratch, I’ve decided to bring forward a few months the planned upgrade of my main PC, and to use the old parts to build a new media center PC. I’d really appreciate some reader advice (that includes you Zath!) here as I haven’t had a lot of time to do my research.

The spec of my current main PC is:

• Gigabyte Aurora case (pictured)
• Water-cooled AMD 4200+
• Seasonic S-12 600 PSU
• 2GB memory
• 1x250GB SATA II
• DFI Lan Party Socket 939 mobo
• Water-cooled X1900XTX
• X-Fi Xtreme music

And the spec of my current HTPC is:

• Antec Fusion case (pictured)
• AMD 4600+
• 1×250GB SATA II
• Hauppauge TV Card
• Nvidia 7950 GPU
• X-Fi Xtreme Music

What I intend to do is leave the X1900 card and the X-Fi Xtreme card in the main PC, and use the CPU, PSU, mobo, HDD and memory together with the 7950 and X-Fi from the current HTPC to build a new 2nd HTPC. I’m going to pack all this into a Aplus CS-GL-3 Case, which is nice and cheap at 40 pounds and also can hold a ATX card so I don’t need to buy a new compact mATX mobo.

As you can see from the pic the case is pretty ugly, so if anyone can find a better looking cheap HTPC case that can hold a ATX card, then please let me know.

To replace the ‘borrowed components’ from the main HTPC which will go in the main reception and hence needs the best components, I need a new graphics card that will support 1080p with ease, and a new soundcard that will support the latest digital formats. I’m thinking of getting a Asus EN8800GT and a Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1. I’m not sure if the EN8800GT is a dual slot card, but if it is I’ll just take the TV card out of the HTPC to make room as I never use it. I’m really excited about the prospect of getting the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 card as it will support Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive and DTS NeoPC.

The spec of my new main PC is where I’m a bit stumped for ideas. I basically need to buy a new CPU, PSU, Mobo, HDD and Memory to go with the remaining Gigabyte case, X1900XTX graphics card and swiftech water-cooling to build a new PC. I’m thinking about building a PC around a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450, but I’m not sure which mobo to partner it with. I’m not a big overclocker, but I wouldn’t mind a mobo I can have a quick mess around with. I’m also not convinced that I need DDR3 instead of DDR2 memory, given the extra cost.

Any tips on the other bits (CPU, PSU, Mobo, HDD and memory) that I need to buy?

XBMC Coming On OS X And Linux. Plus, I Need Advice With New PC Spec is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

The worst thing that could ever have happened to my Windows Home Server occurred yesterday – my personal files were deleted! I have no idea how this could have happened. I’m sure it wasn’t human error as I can’t see how I could have done it, as one file was left and I can’t see how I could have managed to delete all the other files and folders from my personal folder, but somehow managed to leave one behind.

I’ve been worrying a bit recently about how my all my files are all on one machine, and about what I would do if my Windows Home Server ever died. Although WHS offers a good backup solution for PCs connected to it, there’s no backup of the server itself. Luckily, none of the files I’ve lost are majorly important (I think!) and funnily enough the one that was saved is the only important one, and all my music, videos, DVDs etc that are stored in other folders all appear to still be there….

Duplicating important folders on WHS in case one of the drives go down isn’t good enough, especially in my situation where the actual files got deleted somehow. So, I’ve just installed JungleDisk that automatically backs up WHS to Amazon S3. The service only costs 15 cents per gigabyte, which is very cheap in my view. My 130GB backup is going to cost me £12 per month, which I think is a good price for an automated service – well worth it as I don’t want to risk losing my music, photos or files.

I’ll let you know what I think of the JungleDisk WHS service next week.

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I’ve had my Windows Home Server for around a month now, and although I’ve been very impressed with it, there are two areas where it could be better.

The first is that it can’t act as a Media Center to record TV, so that Media Extenders can be connected to it. I’m in the process of buying a new house and if the WHS box could act as an Media Center, connecting up the other rooms would be a lot easier and cheaper.

The second drawback with WHS, is that it can’t stream files remotely. To play a file remotely requires it to be downloaded, which can be lengthy. Luckily this drawback has been fixed partially by the release of WebGuide for Windows Home Server. WebGuide for Windows Home Server enables you to remotely access, listen, watch and stream your music, photos and videos stored on your home server while away from home.

WebGuide for Windows Home Server provides the following functionality:

• Integrates with Windows Home Server remote website via homepage link and single-signon.
• Access your photos with thumbnails, “zoom” and exif-data.
• Browse your music library and listen to it via the web.
• Stream your videos/movies at multiple resolutions and bitrates.
• Mobile access to your music and videos from Windows Mobile devices.

Installing WebGuide was relatively easy as the service is added just like other WHS addons, and once I made a small change to my router I was able to access my files remotely. I haven’t been able to access my music library for some reason, but photos and videos are working fine. I’m sure I’ll be able to crack the problem with music when I get a chance.

To learn more about WebGuide, click here.

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I decided to buy a new set of speakers for my bedroom t go with my laptop Media Center, as my bedroom is actually the biggest room in my house, so I needed something with more power than my TV speakers.

I plumped for some some small PC speakers to plug into my laptop that wouldn’t take up much space. I’ve never actually purchased PC speakers before, as the set I received with my first PC back in 1998 (Altec Lansing ACS495) are so good I’ve never replaced them, so I went online and did a bit of research to see which PC speakers were best.

Eventually, I decided to purchase some Acoustic Energy AE26-06B AEGO M 2.1 active speaker system speakers. Nearly every site gave them top marks and rightly so, as they are amazing sub £100 speakers.

The packaging for the Acoustic Energy AE-26-06B tells you that they mean business. Quality speaker wires are included, with proper speaker connections, rather than the flimsy wires that most PC speakers have. The main speakers are really sleek and small which made them ideal for my bedroom, but the sound quality is amazing. They give the much more ‘expensive’ Tannoy speakers in my front room a serious run for their money, and fill the room with a very rich and warm sound.

What is really amazing with the speakers is their power. I’m not sure what the actual wattage is, but even when I’m blasting out my music I never have the volume higher than around 1/8. In fact, I have to keep the volume control on the units themselves quite low, so that I’m able to adjust the volume using the laptop’s remote.

The subwoofer is extremely high quality as well, although it can be a bit boomy. There are 3 bass levels, and I’ve managed to reduce some of the boom by setting the sub to the middle setting and tweaking my equaliser. I probably could remove the boom by experimenting with the position of the Acoustic Energy AE-26-06B subwoofer, but I’d rather it stay hidden than potentially placing it in the middle of my bed!

I’m glad that I purchased these speakers as I think like my Altec Lansing speakers, I will find a use for them for many years to come. If you are looking for a set of compact speakers for a spare room, a iPod dock or a PC then you should check out the Acoustic Energy AE26-06B AEGO M 2.1 active speaker system .

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The main reason I went to CES was to see what new innovations and wonderful technologies would be gracing my home over the next year. Sadly, much of CES appeared to be a ‘lot of the same’, but there were some saving graces. Let’s take a look at some of the more promising of the technologies, and also some of the ‘wtf’… I know I said I wouldn’t cover the LCD/Plasma madness, but, this should be suitably different..

You cannot walk 10 feet at CES without seeing walls of big screen TVs. So, what can you look forward to? Mostly, a lot of the same. Look for more 120hz tvs. But, there were a couple worth mentioning. Panasonics 150″ Plasma (pictured below) was certainly impressive. Not quite sure if it has any practical merit, but it was pretty.

Equally impressive was Samsungs UHD (4x 1080p resolution) that showed that HD may not stop at 1080p. I’m unsure if blu ray or HDDVD support the higher resolution, but it seems that tv makers aren’t stopping at 1080. Good news for PC integration in your living room.

Pictures obviously do neither justice. But, I feel both of these are a ways off, and the technology I am rooting for is the OLED technology. Lower power, and super sexy-thin to boot. Sorry for the horrible pictures, but check out the thickness (left) of this sony OLED.

(Sony Vaio UX series does not take very good photos, despite being a $2000+ dollar UMPC)

Apart from that, there were some other little things dealing with LCDs that appealed to me

A small taiwan (?) company was marketing LCD tvs that were different looking than others in the market. Forget black bezel, they manufactured wood bezeled tvs.

Maybe not for everyone, but certainly quite different. Another small company made housing for large lcds that stored themselves under your bed when not in use. It was motorized and on the press of a button, would pivot up. Kind of neat to watch, but probably not practical.

I seem to remember seeing something similiar featured in Vanilla Sky (only that came out of the floor).

The winner for ‘most WTF LCD’ goes to the monster truck with lcds in the wheel wells. Yea, seriously, wtf.

Ugh, thats a bad photo, but you get the point. I doubt that thing will ever see road use.

Most pretty use of existing technology goes out to Hitachi (I think) who made this pretty screen with 36″ LCDs.

Screw 10″ photo frames, this is the real deal. They all connected together into one coherent image.

And on a similiar topic, LCDs showed their heads in places you didn’t really expect them. An overseas company came up with the idea of.. well if you are proposing, might as well make it.. special. LCD screens showing a slideshow or video in a ringbox.

I guess whats a $40 ring box when compared to a multi thousand dollar ring.

And, in the ‘best of CES’ section of the floor, they had this little gem. Just what your fridge needs, an LCD.

Attach a USB drive and have a slideshow of family photos. I think it also could control fridge functions, etc.

And as a final little wonder, there is this. A super micro projector using LED lights. Low throw, low voltage, no heat, long bulb life… just not sure of the purpose of it. Its battery powered (or use 5V), and small enough to fit in your pocket.

I think that just about wraps up this issue of CES 08 at connectedinternet. Let me know if you’d like me to dig up any information on any of the things youve seen here, or if theres anything else you’d like me to cover from the show.

CES 08: Part 4 – The future of LCDs and Plasmas is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

This was actually one of the more enjoyable things to see at CES. Everything from fake roombas to fake nanos. Let’s take a look at some of them.
I don’t know what it is about companies that makes them think that making an almost exact replica of another product is the way to make a buck, and I honestly thought most of this was limited to the blackmarkets of China, etc, but it showed up in full force at CES. I actually enjoyed spotting them quite a bit. My first example should look a bit familiar to most of you…

Nice fake nano. Overheard cost/unit to be something around 11GBP for a 2GB and 15GBP for 4GB. I’m sure the UI was wretched though.

They do love their apple knockoffs at CES. There were *many* vendors with stuff like this.

More stuff continues on the next page where we look at some audio knockoffs…

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Vista Media Center doesn’t allow you to watch DVDs on your hard drive. There is a way to hack the registry so that a DVD Library is added to Vista Media Center, but only a list of movies is displayed with no thumbnails or data like genres, movie ratings, actor bios etc.

I discovered My Movies 2 yesterday and it’s a brilliant free addon if you are a Media Center user like me. Once installed My Movies 2 allows you to index your movies with automatically downloaded data from the My Movies WebService, and then browse movies, actors, directors and much more.

The program is very easy to setup. All you have to do is download the relevant version and install it, and My Movies adds itself automatically to the MCE interface. My Movies 2 will then automatically add movie information based on either the folders you’ve added to your MCE library, or by manually adding the folders where you’ve stored your movies.

It does a very good job of automatically finding movie details. If mistakes are made or if a match can’t be made, then the brilliant Collection Management tool makes it a doddle to find movie details to add to the database. Once this has been done, you are left with a very rich DVD library inferface within MCE.

One very nice feature is that the service works with Windows Home Server, so you can have one database stored on your WHS box that all your various machines can access. To do this I installed the Client/Server version of My Movies 2 on my WHS box (you may have to add SQL Server Express to the firewall exceptions) and then installed the Client versions on my Vista MCE machines.

My Movies 2 is a great application and a must-have if you user MCE to watch your DVDs. Best of all, it’s free!

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I wrote a three part series on the Format War when I first started writing for Connected Internet, describing what the two formats were about, and what I thought were hits and misses by both sides. My ending verdict was for HD DVD, and I still feel that it has more to offer than the competing format, Blu Ray.

However, all that became irrelevant as of this afternoon, when Warner Bros. announced that they would only be supporting the Blu Ray format after May 2008.

Today’s announcement comes as a bit of a surprise as the largest consumer electronics tradeshow, CES, begins on Monday January 7 in Las Vegas. Warner Bros. is scheduled for the two hour HD DVD Promotional Group’s conference on Sunday January 6. In addition, HD DVD stand-alone players outnumber Blu Ray stand-alone players, and while Blu Ray software sales have led during 2007 because of all the Playstation 3′s out there, HD DVD has held approximately 40% of HD optical software sales, which is a big enough number to justify the battle playing out a while longer.

Well, speculation can stop now, Warner Bros. has effectively ended the Format War.

Warner Bros. accounts for approximately 20% of all home video sales, and is the one company that neither side could afford to lose. Speculation has run rampant the last few months regarding a move to exclusivity, to one side or the other, but Warner had as recently as the last week made statements to quell such rumors. Such is business, they made their move today.

What does this mean for HD DVD? The end, quite simply. Universal and Paramount are the only exclusive studios. Paramount’s support of HD DVD was purchased essentially, and they are locked into HD DVD exclusivity until February 2009. Universal has always been the cornerstone of HD DVD as far as studio support, but my guess is that they will see the business sense of publishing on Blu Ray come this time next year.

So all of you who have been on the fence about HD optical can get off now: go buy a Blu Ray player.

For those of you who, like me, have started libraries of HD DVD titles, they still rock and I am keeping mine. I’ll be waiting a bit and then looking for a Blu Ray player after the Blu Ray specification has solidified a bit more and prices have come down. As long as you purchase a player that is Profile 1.1 you will be able to enjoy the interactive extra features that Blu Ray has begun to offer.

R.I.P. HD DVD. No new technology ever won because it was better, only because it was smaller, cheaper or more convenient. In this case, the outcome was decided for you by big business. In the end Warner is making the right decision to back one side, any side, and get people to start buying HD optical players and software. Perhaps this will speed up adoption, and perhaps the Format War was bad for HD.

Not much consolation for those who adopted HD DVD, but in the end it’s the movies that really matter, not the hardware we use to play them.

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I’ve been dying to talk about the HP Media Vault Server, ever since HP showed it to me in October in a workshop. This low-cost NAS server is a linux based alternative to more expensive Windows Home Server boxes. In fact, that meeting with HP was the inspiration behind me deciding to build my own Home Server, particularly as I didn’t manage to score a free server as I was hoping!

The MediaVault mv2100 and mv5100 series come with either a 500GB or 2 500GB or 750GB drives installed. Also included will be two USB 2.0 ports for additional capacity, RAID 1 capability, gigabit Ethernet, and DLNA / UPnP networking (as well as direct-attached mode). The pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but it will be very competitive.

Networking my pad in 2008 will be a big project for me this year, as I’m looking to move to a bigger place. At the moment I’m researching home cabling as I want to put an ethernet port in every room, and I’m starting to evaluate what are the best ways to put media extenders/HTPCs in key rooms.

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I’m an audiophile and invest in the best possible Sennheiser cans. Escaping to a realm of unreal music crafted by geniuses like Enya, Yanni, Tchaikovsky, and yeah- the occasional Josh Groban helps me recharge my batteries.

After a bit, my girlfriend said I was being selfish. In a joking way of course….

‘Joey, share your music!!’. She’d poke my sides each time I’d retreat to the lazy boy and pop on the cans. I wondered if she really wanted to hear my music or if she suspected I was listening to erotic porn.

After the thirtieth poke, I decided I may as well let the music resonate throughout the walls and into the house next door.

‘Yuch’, that’s what I first thought when I heard the Ipod playing Enya’s Shepherd Moons through my standard Creative speakers. The sound was void of soul. I never knew digital music can sound cold and harsh when pumped through standard gaming speakers.

After firing some inquisitive emails with audiophile buds, Richard came over and plugged in a retro looking setup called The Fatman (a creation of TLAudio). It had these funky vacuum tubes that I last saw in my grandfather’s Aiwa stereo system.

‘That’s better than my 5.1′ sytem???’ I mumbled.

‘Just you wait.’ Then he hit play and the Nutracker Suite came on.

The soundwave floored me. I was in tears. Goodness…. now here was full sound that positively resonated with more warmth and richness I never thought possible..

I quickly disengaged the Ipod from the Fatman’s retro looking harness and reconnected it to my Creative system. Nutracker again came on.

Huh…. ?? it sounded hollow. And crappy.

Fatman DID sing the same tune… but more sonorously. One crooned with the vibrance of Elvis Presly… the other croaked like Mr. Weasely.

There was no comparison!

Check out its specs:

* iTube 182 Vacuum Tube Amplifier
* iTube Docking Station
* Brush / Glove for cleaning
* Audio cable to connect Docking Station and Amplifier
* Banana Plug speaker cables
* Aux source audio cable for connecting CD player
* Video cable to connect docking station to TV

* Integrated Amplifier (single-ended class A)
* Source Inputs: 3
* Max Output Power: 18W x 2
* Frequency Response: 20-20KHz (±1.5dB)
* Distortion: d 2%
* Signal to Noise Ratio: e 86dB
* Input Sensitivity: 230m V
* Input Impedance: 100K ohm
* Output Impedance: 4 ohm/8 ohm
* Size (LxWxH): 382mm x 290mm x 157mm
* Weight: 14.2KGs
* Tubes used: KT94 (KT88,KT90,KT100) x 2, 6N3(5670) x 4, 6E2(EM87) x 1

Im planning to go out and buy my own. Can’t wait!

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Over the last 2 years I have amassed a quite substantial media library as I have ripped all my CDs and DVDs. The problem I have in sharing this media collection around my home is that no single machine within my home has enough storage. An even bigger problem I faced was creating an easy way to access my files both within and outside my home.

Initially I used NASLite-2 to power my home network, but I switched to Windows Home Server last week and I’m glad I did as it is amazing program.

Last month I completed the first step in solving my problem by building a cheap home server running NASLite-2 that would hold all my files that could be accessed around my home. This worked fine for a few days, but I discovered that whilst NASLite-2 provided a simple way to store files, it didn’t provide an easy way to create a remote access solution.

A more concerning failing of NASLite-2 was its speed. Transferring files took an eternity, and when I compared the speed to my eventual Windows Home Server setup it was 3x slower. I’m not sure if it was because of my hardware setup that NASLite-2 was too slow, but because it is such a bare bones solution it has limited expansion and configuration options, so there was nothing I could do to improve my speed.

The lack of expandability in NASLite-2 is the main reason I rebuilt my server using Windows Home Server, as I didn’t want to risk being stuck in six months time with a service that I couldn’t expand or modify. With WHS I’m confident that I won’t be left in the lurch in the future, and already there are dozens of useful WHS addons that have been released.

Windows Home Server Installation

Released in October, WHS is aimed at households that:

• have more than one PC that want an easy way to share, backup and remotely access pictures, videos, music and other files
• want additional security and automated backup options
• a home server that is easy to expand as household demands increase

Windows Home Server isn’t designed to run as a main PC or to run other applications, so the minimum requirements are very low:

• 1 GHz Pentium 3 or equivalent
• 512MB ram
• 70GB HDD (WHS itself only takes up about 20GB)
• Network card

To install Windows Home Server a DVD drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse are required but these can be removed once WHS is up and running as the server can be controlled via other PCs connected to your home network or over the internet.

My installation went very smoothly and took around 40 mins in total. Initially I thought was given the wrong CD as in many places the installation wizard said it was setting up Windows Server 2003, whose code WHS utilises. The only place where I had to intervene other than choosing a server name, password, entering my key etc was to manually install my network card.

Once I’d got the server up and running I removed the DVD drive I’d temporarily connected and turned my attention to setting up my PCs to work with my new server.

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My shameless begging for a copy of Windows Home Server has finally paid off and I’m in the process of installing it as I write this post.  I knew that somebody would eventually send me a copy!

Over the last couple of days I’ve discovered some problems with my NASLite installation that has made me decide it’s time to move on and build a more advanced Home Server using Windows Home Server:

1. Limited extension and upgrade capabilities
2. Slow transfer speeds
3. Complicated RAS configuration

I can live with #2 but #1 is the one that concerns me the most.  Although NASLite is a very good NAS platform, that’s literally all it can do.  This is why I’ve found it hard to to setup RAS as it’s not designed to do this.  I’ve decided it’s time to move on before I get too attached to NASlite, especially as it’s now holding all of my files, as I have no idea how easy it will be to upgrade in the future.

Moving to Windows Home Server fully is going to take me a while as I have to transfer all the files off my NASLite installation onto a second PC, and then back onto the Windows Home Server box.  So far I’ve wiped one HDD so that I can install WHS, and I’ll have to keep switching HDDs in order to boot the different OSs in order to move files back and forth.

So far the installation of WHS is going well (3o mins to go) – I’ll let you know how I get on when it’s all up and running.

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I love it when I read a post that makes me decide to do something totally differently. CyberNetNews are doing a series of daily giveaways of useful software, and yesterday they were giving away three copies of MediaMonkey Gold the reknowned music player.

I don’t know what possessed me to read the story, as I thought I was happy with iTunes, but when Ryan started that MediaMonkey provided full iPod support I had to check it out. I’m glad I did, as not only has MediaMonkey helped me to finally break free from Apple’s iTunes/iPod stranglehold, it’s also provided to the solution to the problems I was having building a lossless music collection.

I have a very big music collection of around 20k tracks that I’ve accumulated over the years. Although at home I listen to these via my Vista Media Centers, I was still using iTunes to manage my playlists and my iPods. The problem this was creating was that now that I have tonnes of storage available on my home server, I want to re-import my CDs in a lossless format, but if I use the format available within iTunes I won’t be able to play my files on my Media Centers (I did manage to find a way to play the files but without the metadata which was a waste of time).

The beauty of MediaMonkey is that it provides support for both ripping and tagging various lossless formats such as WAV, FLAC and APE. FLAC in particular is an open format, so I’ve chosen it as my lossless format as it provides the greatest compatibility. Although FLAC isn’t supported by MCE out of the box, it only took one search to find a way to play FLAC in Windows Media Center. Much better than the hours I’d spent trying to play AAC files in MCE……

I think Apple should hang their heads in shame after looking at the iPod sync options available in MediaMonkey. Not only can you control easily what parts of your library are synchronised e.g. albums, artists etc, but you have full control over how much is synced. The most important option for me though are the conversion rules that can be created. If I were to sync all my lossless files, even with 160GB on my iPod Classic I wouldn’t get far. With MediaMonkey I can create rules so that when big filed are sync’d, they are converted on the fly to a smaller format, so that they can all fit onto the device. Brilliant!

What was even better with the move away from iTunes was the ease with which it was done. All I add to do was scan my music directory, and MediaMonkey added my info. Because my music was so well tagged, nearly all my iTunes library info was available. The info that was missing e.g. playcounts was added at the second pass automatically by MediaMonkey using a very cool wizard (an option was available for WMP in addition to iTunes).

There are so many options available in MediaMonkey I’m going to enjoy managing my music collection again. The interface is so much quicker to use, and I love the inbuilt tagging tools and album art import. It’s also considerably faster than iTunes – when you have 20k files iTunes is a real drag to use. I can’t wait to have fun creating new playlists faster, listening to my new lossless music tracks and also messing around with MediaMonkey plugins.

V3 of MediaMonkey is out soon and I really can’t wait!

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Over the last week I’ve been writing a series of posts tracking the progress of the Home Server I’ve been building. My original plan was to install Windows Home Server on my £130 home server, but because the WHS trial disc was taking a while to arrive, I thought I’d try installing a cheaper alternative.

I discovered NASLite-2 after about 15 minutes research on Google, and I’m amazed by how much it does for a mere $29.95. Within 15 minutes I had installed NASLite-2 and I now have an amazing NAS server that delivers everything I need for a fration of the cost of WHS.

What is NASLite-2? Well, it’s a Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server Operating System designed to transform a basic computer into a dedicated SMB/CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP and RSYNC file server. It can be booted from a HDD, Flash drive, CD-Rom and other options. This means that files saved on your server can be accessed via just about every method known to man. The software is ultralight, with the ISO only 6.6MB, and can be installed on anything as slow as a 200Mhz Pentium with 64MB of RAM, so that old PC you have lying around could suddenly become useful again.

Installing the HDD version onto my PC was a doddle and only took about 5 mins. Installation requires a monitor and a keyboard, but once finished these can be removed and the server can be managed via telnet. Options available include formating discs, setting free space alerts, monitoring traffic levels etc, with each installed drive having unique settings.

Below are some sample screens from the admin screens, which I have to say are very easy to navigate:

Once you’ve setup your network settings, you literally only need to connect the server to your network and away you go. The network drives appear automatically on each PC connected to your network, with each available drive listed seperately as well as a ‘Shares’ folder that shows all available storage via a single share.

Performance is extremely good. Because NASLite-2 deletes all files on each new disc that is added, I had to spend some time copying all my files onto my server. At one point I had 3 PCs transferring files to the server, and to try and test out the load I was streaming music and DVDs to 4 PCs and 2 consoles at the same time as the incoming transfers. Some of the files stuttered initially but once they got going everything was fine.

I think NASLite-2 is going to be one of the best software purchases I’ve ever made, particularly when running in tandem with my new £130 Home Server. In fact, my new server will actually cost me less because I’ve put my 1TB Lacie drive up for sale on eBay, and I should get around £100 for it!

All I need to do is find a good RAS solution that allows me to access the NAS server over the internet. There are many out there that will let me access one of my PCs, but I need one that will allow me to access the server directly.

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All the bits I purchased for my Home Server turned up last week. I didn’t manage to put them all together until last night, as things have been hectic recently (apologies for the lack of posts this month as a result).

Now I need to decide what OS/NAS software to run, and I’m having second thoughts about whether Windows Home Server is right for me.

I managed to put my server together in under 45 minutes as the case was really well laid out, and the Foxconn motherboard that I purchased had a very user-friendly layout that meant I only cut my fingers twice trying to connect all the cables!

Everything booted first time which was great, and after a few BIOS tweaks I think I’ve reduced the fan noise down to an acceptable level, even with the stock fans. This is very important to me as my home server will be in my front room and on all the time, so I don’t want something that sounds like a banshee.

I was a bit frustrated at first that my 120 day evaluation copy of Windows Home Server hasn’t arrived yet, but this might have turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I decided to have a quick look on Google to see if I could find a cheaper alternative to WHS that I could install straight away and evaluate while I continue to wait for the WHS disk to arrive.

I think I might have found one in NASLite-2. Although not quite free at $29.95, NASLite-2 is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server Operating System designed to transform a basic computer into a dedicated SMB/CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP and RSYNC file server. It can be booted from a HDD, Flash drive, CD-Rom and other options.

Although not as user-friendly as Windows Home Server (e.g. hot swapping drives, auto-backups, sharing etc), a NASLite-2 server would deliver against my network storage requirements and remote access, and although admin control (via telnet) so I can stick the box in a corner of my flat. I’m sure I’ll be able to cobble together a backup solution using existing software and tools on my PCs.

I’ve already purchased my copy, so I’m going to hopefully going to have time to install the NASLite-2 software tonight. Does anyone have any experience of NASLite-2? If so, got any tips to share? Or, would you recommend a different application?

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I was bored yesterday, so I spent some time buying components for my Home Server. I set myself a budget of £250 for the system and I ended up spending just over £130 which I’m very happy with. Here are the components I purchased:

Case: Foxconn TLM397 £28 (pictured above)

I went for this case as it had a lot of expansion slots (2x 5.25 External Bays, 2x 3.5 External Bays and 4x 3.5 Internal Bays) so there’s plenty of space for internal HDDs and external drives. It also has a 360W PSU which will be more than enough power as I won’t be running a graphics card. I didn’t need anything sexy as I’m going to stick the box behind my sofa. I just hope the fans are quiet…

Motherboard: Foxconn 6150BK8MC-KRSHN2 £60

I spent a bit more on the motherboard than I would have liked, but I was determined to get a micro ATX motherboard with Gigabit LAN for lots of streaming capacity and also one with 4 SATA II sockets. I also wanted a Socket 939 so I could use some of the ram in the study PC which has 4GB of RAM which is overkill.

CPU: AMD 64 x2 4200+ £45

After doing some reading on various Windows Home Server forums I decided to go for a dual core CPU as apparently the single core machines are ok for backup and file transfer, but struggle with streaming multiple HD graphics files. I went for the 4200+ as it was only £12 more than the 3800+. It’s the same CPU as I have in my main machine (HTPC has a 4600+) so I know it’s more than powerful enough.

Memory: 2x1GB DDR400 Free

Will take 2GB out of my main PC which doesn’t need 4GB anymore (I don’t think it ever did!)

HDD: 2×750 SATA II drives and 1TB Lacie External HDD – Free

‘Borrowing’ from HTPC. I have a 400GB in the study PC which is unused which will replace these drives. Hopefully the prices of 1TB drives will come down by the time I need one.

OS: Windows Home Server – Free

I’ll be starting with the 120 day demo. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a full version out of Microsoft for free.

Overall I’ve specified a very powerful machine, which will definitely last a very long time. It’s probably got too much power, but for only £130 I’m not going to lose any sleepless nights over the cost. I really think I’ve built a system for the future, that will power my home for at least 5 years, maybe even more.

The bits should all arrive this week so I’ll let you know in part III how I get on with the construction. Hopefully I’ll have everything working smoothly before I go to see my parents over Christmas, so that I can test out the remote access to the full.

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WordPress is a fantastic tool for managing your blog. Whether you just want to get a theme up and start writing, or if you want to get elbow-deep in css and customize your site’s look and layout, WordPress makes it exceedingly easy to do so. A certain amount of flexibility has to be sacrificed to achieve such ease of use, and WordPress, great as it is at what it does, is not the answer for every web site.

Enter the CMS. Content management systems abound, and offer layout and user management features either impossible or difficult to implement in WordPress. My search for a CMS began when I started feeling claustrophobic in WordPress, and also didn’t want my non-blog site to look so, well, bloggish.

After looking around to see what my options were, I decided on Joomla, which is an evolution of the established CMS Mambo. Last time in Migrating From WordPress to Joomla, Part 1 I set the stage, now let’s find out how my migration from WordPress to Joomla went:

First off there is, at this time, no script or tool that will import your existing WordPress content into a Joomla installation. This would be daunting if your existing WordPress site had been around for a while and had loads of content. In my case, the site I was moving had only been around for 2 1/2 months, so the amount of content to be transferred was manageable. Since there was no automated migration path, I had to write completely new content pieces for my Joomla site, copy my old WordPress content, and paste in the Joomla content editor. Ad nauseum.

The first problem that I ran into was that the default wysiwyg editor in Joomla preserved incoming html and style information as text, which meant that all my inline html and css were visible in the article now. Ok, I never liked the wysiwyg editor in WordPress, I wouldn’t use it in Joomla either.

Switching to the Joomla plain text editor, I transferred all my articles over and edited the created dates so they would remain the same as they had been. That done, I immediately saw that the Joomla plain text editor, unlike WordPress, required line break tags for new paragraphs to appear in the finished articles. I switched back to the wysiwyg content editor and put line breaks back into all of my content. Phew, I’m not terribly bright, but thank God I thought to do all this stuff before I went live, this is a pain in the %$#.

I should mention that there are several third party wysiwyg editors for Joomla. I found and fell in love with Wysiwygpro, which is insanely nicer than what WordPress or Joomla give you. It’s commercial, but it’s so nice that it’s worth considering even though there are serviceable free alternatives. There is also a WordPress version of it in addition to the Mambo and Joomla versions. In addition to providing a graphical interface for browsing your image directory (nice), Wysiwygpro allows you to retain or strip style info from content you’ve copied from an outside source. Nice touch that would have made my migration a little easier.

Ok, now my content is there and looks like it should. Hmmm, I need to add to my category structure to allow for some more specific grouping. Huh?! What do you mean Joomla doesn’t support more than one tier of child categories??? No, I must be missing something. No, you can’t do child categories in Joomla. Grrrrrrr. God *%@#@ mother $%^$# those &$%@!

Ok, the way that Joomla organizes content is by Sections and Categories. A category can be a child of another category in a menu, but to have a genuine parent-child relationship you need to use both section and category, which you need to assign to content during content creation anyway. It’s different than WordPress, and it tripped me up for a minute. The only major drawback I can see is for sites with lots of content that have arcane category structure. Joomla limits you to a single parent-child relationship, so if you need a three or four deep category structure, you will have to figure out how to divide up your content some other way. For my purposes I could have a parent Audio section, and within that division I could have Loudspeaker, Receiver and Separates categories, but I didn’t see a way to do sub categories. If I wanted to go Audio>Loudspeakers>Subwoofers I was out of luck, because Joomla limited me to two-tier relationships. Ok, limiting, but not a deal breaker.

Content ready, I found that working with my Joomla template was pretty easy, and had Adsense and Analytics up and running in no time. I had been using an external click tracking service for my one private sponsor to be a good Google citizen and for click auditing, and was happy to see that Joomla not only tracked clicks with it’s built-in banner functionality, it did a search engine friendly redirect to the advertiser so there was no offending paid link on my pages. Nice.

Now I had to make my urls search engine-friendly. The default url structure in Joomla is http://yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=7&Itemid=26. Joomla has SEF urls built-in, but they give you an equally meaningless http://yoursite.com/blogsection/view/7/26/ url structure. We want to turn that into http://yoursite.com/section/category/item. Fortunately there are several third party SEF url solutions available for Joomla, and I had my urls SEF and usable in no time flat.

Ok, I had things pretty much working the way they should. It was time to move my test subdomain to my root directory and go live. I went through my mental check list to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything important before I proceeded, backed up my web site just in case, uninstalled WordPress via Fantastico (now my heart rate is starting to increase a little) and moved the Joomla install into public_html. I hand edited Joomla’s configuration.php to reflect the new location on my web server, and voila, my new Joomla site was live!

I gingerly poked and prodded my new Joomla site, expecting weird behavior and lots of work. To my delight the move only created two problems for me.

First, the SEF urls I just set up were no longer working, and everything but my home page resulted in a 404. Obviously this appeared like a huge problem initially. I disabled SEF urls, and everything worked, so at least my content was there while I ran down the problem. I never did figure out what went wrong, and ended up uninstalling and reinstalling the SEF url component I was using, which fixed the issue.

Ok, I still had one significant issue to fix. My RSS feed was useless. The feed ran off the site’s front page. My content wasn’t on the front page, never saw the front page unless I deemed it necessary to put it there, therefore, my new content wouldn’t get syndicated. Hmm, that’s a problem.

Looking into this a little I saw that the Joomla RSS feed only ran off the front page content, period. Well this sucks, I have no feed. My feed! My feed!

Not wanting to lose the three readers I had I did some investigating.

Fortunately there was a third party solution that allowed me to assign what went into my feed. Ok, now I have a feed, but this piece of $#@! is stripping all the html out of my feed, so all my content is one big paragraph with no images and looks awful. Again, not wanting to lose my three feed readers, I persevered, and after editing a couple .php files, I had a fully functional feed with pictures and line breaks, just like the big sites.

After the work spent getting ready for the move, I was treated to a relatively headache-free migration. The problems I did run into were overcome quickly. I was pleased, to say the least, that I didn’t break anything and that the move was as easy as it was.

How do I feel about the grass now that I’m on the other side of the fence? It’s green.

I’m really happy actually. Joomla gives me a web site that is closer to the vision that I had for it than it was when it was a WordPress site. Nothing’s perfect, and for every area where I think Joomla crushes WordPress, I could give you an example of something that I think is implemented better in WordPress. Joomla gave me the ability to have a web forum that exactly matches the style of my web site, which will be really nice if my three RSS subscribers ever sign up for my forum.

The nicest unexpected surprise is the effect Joomla has had on my pageviews and time spent on site. Both have exploded since the move. The frontpage adds a pageview, but I am getting a lot more per visit. Either WordPress gave my visitors the impression that I didn’t have too many places to go, or Joomla makes it look like I have more content. The numbers are great: +57% increase in pageviews/visit, and +33% time spent on site/visit since the move to Joomla.

So if you are looking at maybe going to a CMS, give Joomla a look. Great features, great community, lots of extensions available, and it makes a great looking page. I would advise holding off until 1.5 is final, because 1.0 and 1.5 aren’t completely compatible, so if you go now, like I did, you may have another headache in a month or two when it’s time to upgrade to 1.5. Oops. Oh well, looks like I’ll be back next month with Upgrading from Joomla 1.0 to 1.5.

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I’ve decided to build a proper home server as at the moment my files are scattered between different machines (pics of my home setup as requested below) and I want to centralise them, as well as creating a proper remote access solution. I’m not sure yet if Windows Home Server is the right OS yet, so I’ve just ordered a copy of the 120 day Evaluation Kit to mess around with to see if it’s the right platform for my needs.

I need to start shopping for my Home Server components. The minimum spec is quite low so I should be able to keep the cost quite low, so the element I think is going to be finding a good case. I really like the small form factor of the HP MediaSmart Server, so I’m aiming for something as small with space for 4 hard drives.

I think I need to buy the following components:

• Nice compact case with space for 4 HDDs and energy efficient PSU
• Basic mobo with integrated graphics for setup
• Basic CPU

I’m going to put the 2x750HDDs I currently have in my HTPC (I’ll put a 400GB I’m currently not using in the HTPC) in the new server which will give me more than enough storage when combined with my external 1TB Lacie drive. I will add another 1TB HDD when the prices start to fall. I’m hoping this will allow me to build my home server for well under £250, which I think is acceptable.

Any suggestions as to what case and mobo/CPU combo to go for?

My Home Setup

I’ve had a few requests for details of my home setup, so I took some quick pics – apologies for the poor quality in some!

Front Room

In the shots you can see the following:

• 42″ Hitachi HD Plasma
• HTPC: Vista Premium, 4600+, 2x750GB SATA II, 7950 GPU, X-Fi Xtreme Music (replaced a modded Xbox)
• 1TB Lacie External HDD
• Panasonic SAXR70 Home Theatre Receiver
• Tannoy 5.1 EFX speakers+Sub+rear speaker
• Xbox 360
• Playstation 3
• Netgear WNR854T Router
• Telewest TV Drive
• Harmony 885 Remote
• Couple HDMI switches

I built the HTPC about 6 months now and it is brilliant. I love how it looks like a AV component and the display is ace showing info about what’s playing and a good graphic equaliser.

Study

• PC: 4200+, DFI Lan Party mobo, X1900XTX, X-Fi Xtreme music, Altec lansing speakers (10 years old), 2xsamsung 19″, 1.1TB storage, water-cooled CPU&GPU
• Lexmark WiFi printer
• In the shot you can also just make out my work HP laptop.
• Desk items: iPod 160GB classic, TomTom 720cradle, VoIP fone, Powerball

This is my main PC which I do all my work on. It was the first PC I ever built and I’m very proud of my handiwork, particularly the watercooled CPU and GPU.

Update: I completed my Windows Home Server which I keep in the study.

Bedroom

• 32″ LCD
• Modded Xbox running XBMC – broken at the moment, hence the bits you can see scattered around where I’ve tried to fix
• Acer T5500 Laptop – currently using as Media Center. Will replace with new freebie laptop I should be getting this week
• VoIP phone

That’s the lot!

Building a Home Server Part I is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Over the last year my home AV setup has changed dramatically, from a single CD player to a fairly advanced connected home. As the number and complexity of components has increased, I’ve realised the importance of buying good cables and storage units.

Picking the right cables, particularly cost effective ones can be quite difficult, which is where sites like Clearly AV can help, by helping customers find cost effective AV cables and storage.

I’m stunned by how many people purchase expensive AV components and then don’t invest in decent cables. One of my cousins for instance has a very expensive TV which is around 60 inches, but I was stunned to see that he had it connected by a bog standard aerial cable.

With modern devices and TVs there are normally a number of connection options that can be used, and it’s not always a given that a DVI connection is better than say VGA, but it is generally true that digital connections are better than analogue.

Whatever connection you finally settle upon, Clearly AV have a wide range of audio visual cables available. There prices are also very competitive, and they don’t take advantage of customers by charging outrageous prices for cables that won’t provide any discernible improvements in quality. For instance their most expensive HDMI cable is only £128, which is very competitive for a 20m cable.

If you’re still not sure what type of cable you should plump for then free technical help is available. There’s a very helpful search engine in addition to FAQs, but what really makes Clearly AV stand out in my view is they actually have a customer service phone line. One of my many frustrations with many online retailers these days is they just don’t provide good customer support, and being able to talk to a live person is very rare these days.

Clearly AV also a wide range of TV wall brackets and other storage solutions. This is another area many users tend to overlook when they buy their kit. I recently feel into this trap by buying a storage unit that had really crap cooling. I only realised how bad it was when I built my HTPC and I could actually see the temp – basically the air wasn’t flowing at all. Generating good airflow is vital to extending the life of your expensive toys.

Hiding your numerous cables can be quite hard and I think I might purchase some of the sexy aluminium cable covers for my new pad as at the moment I’m constantly tripping over my cables! Maybe Clearly AV will give me a discount in return for writing this sponsored review.

Clearly AV – One Stop Shop For Quality Audio and Video Cables And Accessories is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.