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Posted by Glitch on March 8th, 2010
I recently bought a new audio-video receiver to add to my home-cinema setup. After some period of research I have chosen the Denon AVR-1910 to do the job. This AV-receiver is a mid-range receiver that fits all my needs and was also selected as home-cinema receiver of 2009 by whathifi.com. Although I’m very happy with this machine, it’s functionality and the sound quality I have encountered a bug/failure when the receiver is used in co-operation with a Humax digital TV tuner. This post explains the issue and it’s work-around for future reference to people who run into the same problem.
Read more about the issue ...
Posted by Glitch on February 19th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to get BluRay playback within XBMC. At that time development on this issue had just started but I already predicted that this would continue. Now the next step has been taken. The original author of the script has created a plugin which makes it easier to manage your BluRay discs or ISO’s within XBMC.
Read how to install the plugin for BluRay playback within XBMC ...
Posted by Glitch on February 9th, 2010
I’m a Windows 7 user because some of the programs I use on a daily basis arent available under Linux (if so I would have switched to Ubuntu or Linux Mint a long time ago). Shortly after upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 I noticed that the operating system reported that there was a problem with my laptop battery and that I should replace it. I also noticed that my battery life was down to a mere one hour compared to the two and half hour of juice available under Vista. But I never gave much attention to it. Most batteries start to degrade after their first year and I certainly didnt link it to the upgrade to Windows 7. I thought my laptop battery was wearing out and since I’m mostly hooked up on the powernet I dont use it that much anyway. However only recently I read that a lot of Windows 7 users are experiencing the same issue and are complaining that their battery life is being killed by Windows 7. Microsoft has investigated this problem and has come with a statement.
Read more on what Microsoft has to say on battery life ...
Posted by Glitch on January 30th, 2010
There is a pretty weird problem with the ASRock ION-330HT. The machine will boot itself from time to time. I did some research together with other ION-330HT owners and I’m pretty sure we narrowed down the problem. If you experience the same issue and really dont know what is going on be sure to read on.
Read why the ASRock ION-330HT boots itself and how to prevent it ...
Posted by Glitch on January 22nd, 2010
A couple of days ago Boxee has announced they will be bringing paid content to their media center software. For those of you who dont know Boxee: Boxee is a fork of the popular XBMC media center software and is capable of playing all sorts of media when installed on a computer or HTPC. Compared the XBMC Boxee features some custom and proprietary additions and is more focused on social and online media.
The idea is that Boxee users will have the ability to buy content like TV shows and movies with a click of the remote. Content owners will be able to package and price as they wish, including pay-per-view and subscription. This could be a great step forward towards paid content as a countermeasure for piracy. I would love to see this in XBMC as well although I doubt this is gonna happen.
Read more about these plans on the Boxee Blog.
Posted by Glitch on January 21st, 2010
There are many people out there that have a Home Theater PC with Blu-ray drive (like the ASRock ION-330HT-BD) running with the mediaportal software XBMC. By default XBMC does not support original Blu-ray playback but it seems progress is being made on this from the XBMC community. A user named magnetism wrote a post on the forum of xbmc.org explaining how he fixed this issue. Below is a short tutorial as seen on the dutch site XBMCFreak.nl. Warning: from here on it is assumed you have basic knowledge of Linux and SSH.
Read the instructions ...
Posted by Glitch on January 19th, 2010
Did I mention already that I’m a gadget addict? Since a couple of months I own a HTC Magic smartphone running on Android 1.6. It’s my first smartphone but I’m very satisfied with both the phone and the operating system. It has actually become more than just a gadget and made my life a little easier here and there. One of the greatest things is that you can download all kinds of useful applications through the Android Market.
Below is a short list of my favourite applications. Go check them out if you own an Android powered phone and haven’t tried these applications yet. You can use the ShopSavvy or the Barcode Scanner to scan the QR-code and install the applications right away.
View my list of favourite Android apps ...
Posted by Glitch on January 9th, 2010
Until recently (end of 2009) I used an old Xbox together with the multimediaplayer software XBMC to view movies and listen to music. I had been using this setup for years now and with great pleasure. But now that HD movies have become widely available and because the old Xbox can’t handle this resource intensive high quality media it was time for a change.
My research focused on the Popcorn Hour C-200 at first which was just announced at that time. The C-200 is a digital media player that will play almost any kind of media and that allows a harddrive and/or BluRay player to be added to the setup. The hardware looked perfect but I read a lot of negative reviews about the firmware and software. Also the screenshots of the software did not look very nice as I was used to XBMC by now. In the end I could not image not having XBMC to control my media as this is just the perfect software for the job. Not only does it look good, it’s open source and freely available as well. So I looked for another solution for my home theater setup. It didn’t take me long to find the ION-330 mini-pc serie from ASRock. This system, and especially the HT serie that come with a remote, is the perfect hardware in co-operation with XBMC as multimedia software to serve as HTPC.
My XBMC Installation Guide for ION-330HT
I had to do quite some reading to get the perfect setup. I decided to gather all this information and make my own installation guide. This installation guide can be useful to get you up and running in no time and it’s pretty dummy proof.
But some of these steps can be quite challenging if you are inexperienced with Linux, SSH and computers in general. If this is the case, please ask someone with more experience to perform these actions for you. Although it’s not very likely that it will happen, I’m in no way responsible for damaging your system.
Want to know more »
Posted by Glitch on January 8th, 2010
If you own a Home Theater PC like me, a new gadget has been announced that might be interesting to you. Boxee, the company that develops on XBMC based mediaplayers has announced a new remote control that features a QWERTY keyboard. This can ofcourse be very useful whila managing your system.
At the end of 2009 Boxee already announced a co-operation with D-Link to integrate the software from Boxee with the mediaplayers from D-Link. It now appears they are taking it a step further with a new remote that will be supplied with the D-Link mediaplayers but will also be sold seperately. Below are a couple of screenshots and the link to the original post by Boxee.
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