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In: Tech
With: 36 Comments

I recently purchased a 3rd Generation Apple TV and a 22″ Samsung 1080P LED-backlit LCD TV to act as a digital photo frame for my house. I thought I’d found the perfect setup because Samsung TVs have 3 separate timers to turn the TV on and off, so it would only be on when we are home (morning and evenings during the week, during the day on the weekends.) I have over 10,000 photos in my Aperture library, and I was looking forward to seeing them instead them just sitting on my computer. After going through the Apple setup instructions on my Mac (in iTunes,Read More →

Sticky
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In: Home Theater
With: 270 Comments

I have 3 Panasonic DMP-BDT 220 Blu-ray players and all of them stopped connecting to Netflix at the same time. Although Panasonic seems to be particularity bad, all set top boxes and TVs seem to have occasionally have Netflix connection issues.  Here’s my list of the most common methods of solving those issues. Option 1 – Hidden Menu within the Netflix App to Deactivate your Device: this should work for any device as Netflix requires every manufacturer to include it. Please note that this does not deactivate your Netflix account itself, just your device, requiring you to log on again. Open the Netflix app on the device OnceRead More →

Sticky
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In: Home Theater
With: 193 Comments

4k resolution televisions are now widely available and potential buyers are wondering if the extra resolution is worth it. In some cases it is, but in most, it’s not.  The details below can help you decide. 4K (and 8K) Resolution Defined The older 1080p HDTV standard has a resolution of 1920×1080 (2.1 million) pixels. The UHD resolutions are multiples of this base 1080p resolution. 4k resolution is named for the approximately 4,000 (4k) pixels that make up the horizontal resolution across the image. More specifically, the resolution is 3840×2160, which gives 8.3 million total pixels – 4 times that of 1080p. (4k is sometimes calledRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 41 Comments

Western Digital MyBook Elite external hard drives use hardware-based encryption chips to (optionally) encrypt drives using 256-bit encryption. This is OK for security, but horrible for data recovery.  It is impossible to access (decrypt) the drive if the enclosure circuit board fails, even if the drive itself is fine.  For this reason, I highly recommend not using the hardware-based encryption unless you have a solid off-site backup plan, such as Backblaze. What if the Enclosure Fails? If you’ve enabled the hardware-based encryption, the data on the drive is completely inaccessible without the encryption chip in the Western Digital enclosure. So a simple failure of theRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 52 Comments

If you want the absolute best sound quality from your digital music files, they need to be bit-perfect rips from CDs stored in a lossless compression format. I recommend using dBpoweramp Music Converter (dBmc) to do this. This page describes how to configure dBmc (version 12 or 13)  for the most accurate bit-for-bit perfect backup of an Audio CD (compact disc). First, you will need to install the following dBpoweramp files: Install dBpoweramp CD Ripper and Music Converter.  You will need to use either The PowerPack Version ($24; 3-week free trial) or the Reference version ($36; 3-week free trail.) I use the PowerPack version. InstallRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 35 Comments

I’ve been an iPhone user for almost 2 years and have resisted hacking it because it provided almost all of the functionality I needed. In fact, that is still the case, but I finally was pushed over the edge when I needed an Internet connection for my computer for 5 minutes and wound up driving for 30 minutes to get one. So to enable tethering, which I will use about 5 minutes every 2 months, I jailbroke my iPhone. Along the way, I found a lot of other great functionality from third-party apps downloaded via Cydia, a third-party alternative to the iPhone Apps Store. TheseRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 6 Comments

I was performing a search on Google Images and noticed a picture of my flat panel TV install, which I detailed in this post. The funny thing was that the image wasn’t hosted on my server. I was surprised that the installer not only was using a copy of my image, but was also claiming to have performed the installation.  Here’s a PDF of the webpage. This demonstrates questionable ethics, by the web designer if not by the company itself. Update: An employee of the business contacted me.  Their web designer used the photo without permission from the business owner, who didn’t monitor the siteRead More →

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In: Life Reflections
With: 0 Comments

The Album: For the past couple of weeks, I anticipated the arrival of the latest Dave Matthews Band album: Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. For the first time since I was in college, I sat down in a dark room and listened to an entire album, start to finish, with no interruptions. For the first time in 11 years, I think Dave Matthews Band has released a great studio album. The album starts off with a beautiful, haunting saxophone solo by LeRoi Moore. I was overcome with sadness, realizing at all that was lost musically and otherwise, when he passed away last year. ButRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 11 Comments

I’ve created stand-alone clips for demos in my home theater.  Instead of switching discs and skipping chapters, I’ve created/edited video files that are stored on my media server and played-back using a Home Theater Personal Computer. I think the ideal demo scene is comprised of the following: lots of action some setup before the action so viewer isn’t lost or thrown-into the action too abruptly some humor and of course, great audio and video Here are some of my favorite demo scenes. Most are edited clips taken from my Blu-ray disc backups, but some are (still) standard-def versions from DVD backups. Serenity: Firefly takes onRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I’ve been a TiVo user since 2001 and I’ve owned 7 TiVos. It’s a great product because it is extremely easy to use yet offers an impressive array of features.  However, I think TiVo can offer even more functionality without compromising, and perhaps improving, the simplicity of the user experience.  Here are my ideas: Seamless multi-room experience: I want every TiVo in the house to display the exact same recording content even though it’s distributed across multiple boxes. Single Season Pass / To Do List: I don’t want to manage Season Passes on each TiVo, I want them to talk to each other and comeRead More →