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I found an interesting article related to my 1080P Does Matter post (as well as my Home Theater Calculator.)  It gives some additional perspective on the resolving power of the human eye.  One key difference I noticed is that it states the resolving capability of our eyes to be 0.01 degrees, where as I’ve used a figure of 0.0167 degrees (0.6 arc-minute vs 1.0 arc minute.) This is not a huge difference; both are estimates based on the average eye.  I’m just glad that the values are so close. The figure I found most interesting was the total resolution capability when taking everything (eye, eyeRead More →

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I haven’t found a better solution than Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition for playing movies / videos in my home theater. I’m getting ready to upgrade my Home Theater PC from MCE 2005 to Windows Vista. While this is still my plan, it looks like there may finally be a viable non-Microsoft alternative: Linux MCE. I’m running Ubuntu on my desktop PC / file server, I’ll give this a try and see how close it is to Windows on features, ease-of-use, and reliability. Because of the Digg effect, it appears the linuxmce.com site is temporarily down; if so, the home page can be accessed throughRead More →

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Let’s face it, the thermostat that is installed by default in most dwellings is pretty basic. If you have a digital display that’s the “upgraded” version; and all it does is replicate the functionality of the old rudimentary mercury switch / rotary knob designs. An advanced thermostat with scheduling features can save quite a bit on your energy bill, but can also be an interesting gadget to occupy your time. Since my energy company is offering a rebate for anyone who upgrades to a scheduling thermostat, I decided to pull the trigger. The features I identified as necessary for a new thermostat are: Scheduling ofRead More →

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Easier than Building Yourself: Buy a Replacement battery from ProntoWizard.com You can order replacement higher capacity (900 mAh) battery packs from ProntoWizard.com. These battery packs have almost twice the life of the standard battery packs. They are fully assembled and ready to use. My NiMH Battery Pack Replacement Procedure I attempted to replace the NiMH AAA batteries within my ProntoPro battery pack. The procedure is the same for both the standard Proto with AA batteries and the ProntoPro with AAA batteries. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the battery pack to work with the ProntoPro, perhaps due to it producing lower voltage than the PhilipsRead More →

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I use Windows Media Center 2005 to play back video over my network. Mostly I play the original VOB (mpeg) files from DVDs. But occasionally I have an Xvid file AVI file. It will play if FFDshow is installed, but there is no way to fast forward or rewind and there is no support for “post processing” – which can greatly improve image quality. I found out about a plug-in for Windows Vista Media Center that apparently solves these problems and add even more features, such as support for MKV files (the replacement for AVI), subtitles, and bookmarks. I’d be even happier if it supportedRead More →

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I’m a long-time Philips Pronto user and I’ve been somewhat frustrated by the unresponsiveness of the Pronto development team. I noticed that Logitech just released the Harmony 1000 remote. Since they are are much easier to program than the Philips Pronto remotes, I decided I may want to purchase one, and I started researching. Unfortunately, the Harmony 1000 remote has two substantial shortcomings that are causing me not to buy it: 1) You can’t configure “soft” buttons to be on a specific screen. So you may have to scroll between screens much more frequently because the two buttons you use the most are not displayedRead More →

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Last week, I received an e-mail from a friend asking about a home theater quote. I looked over the component list and was impressed with the quality components and the reasonable prices — until I saw the following line item: HDMI Cable – 5 meters – $129 I pointed to him to an equivalent $8 HDMI cable from MonoPrice.com – and that was for the “premium” version. Since HDMI is a digital specification and the specifications for the electronics that produce the signal are quite high, the cable resistance and shielding have very little impact. However, I’ve never been able to quantify this. I justRead More →

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I’ve long championed the use of AccurateRip for bit-perfect audio extraction from CDs. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) has been my program of choice for years because it offered the best extraction quality and the largest feature set. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty difficult to configure, which lead me to create my EAC configuration guide. The only other option was dBpoweramp Music Converter, but it was not as accurate as EAC, it didn’t handle Compilation CDs (i.e. Various Artists CDs) well, and it didn’t handle queued ripping very well. But now things have changed. Spoon over at Illustrate has just released dBpoweramp Music Converter version 12. ItRead More →

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My wife and I had a group of friends over last Monday night to watch the latest episode of Heroes in our HD home theater. We were all looking forward to watching the newest episode of our favorite show. But it was cold that evening and many of the local schools were on a two hour delay the next morning. The local NBC affiliate decided that a cancellation crawl at the bottom of the screen was necessary to communicate this information. But they can’t overlay a HD broadcast, so the showed a letterboxed standard def version on the HD channel. Our guests were disappointed andRead More →

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With the Super Bowl just hours away, I finished mounting my new Mitsubishi LT-46131 Flat Panel LCD TV. I’m only watching off-the-air HD right now as I have yet order a second HD satellite receiver. As is my history for all things related to home theater, I couldn’t simply sit it on the table or even mount it flat against the wall — I went all-out with a Chief PNR articulating arm mount with an in-wall PAC500 housing. Since those model numbers mean nothing to pretty much everyone (including myself a week ago) here are some pictures. Please note: I still have some drywall workRead More →