Like Dave Zatz and Matt Miller, I made the leap into the netbook pool with a new MSI Wind. Technically, I guess I really made my wife take the leap. She has been in disparate need of her own personal laptop as I am just too overprotective of and particular about my ThinkPad T61. What [...]
Joining the Netbook Frenzy – MSI Wind
Live.com 25% Off Ebay Buy It Now Items
I think Microsoft should be given credit for single-handedly stimulating the economy. Consumer spending is down, most of the Black Friday deals are lame, but I’m purchasing things that have been on my Wish List for years. Why? Because I can get 25% cash back if I purchase an Ebay Buy It Now item and [...]
The State of 24p Playback on a Home Theater Computer
To get the best video quality playback possible for movies in a home theater, it’s necessary for the refresh rate of the source component to match the refresh rate of the display. One of the most common problems stems from the fact that most movies are 24 frames per second while most televisions are 60 [...]
The State of Blu-ray Lossless HD Audio in Home Theater Computers
Note to readers: this information was current as of early 2010. Since then, ATI, Intel, and Nvidia have all released video/audio solutions to allow bitstreaming of the original Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams with the use of playback software such as Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre. The below content, from early 2010, is for historical [...]
Some Facts about HD Video Compression Codecs used in Blu-ray
I just finished reading an interesting article by Amir Majidimehr (former Microsoft VP, video compression) in Oct 2008 issue of Widescreen Review. I was surprised that there are 4 different, incompatible versions of MPEG-4! Here are some facts from the article; I recommending picking up a copy of the magazine for all of the details [...]