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In: Home Theater
With: 3 Comments

I’m used to companies offering less than stellar customer care in this age of low-cost, low-margin business. So when a company goes above and beyond to take care of their customers, it gets my attention. Most early-adopters suspected that the High Definition Disc Format war would end and either HD-DVD or Blu-ray would one day become obsolete. Which is why I’m surprised that Busy Buy and Circuit City are both compensating customers who chose the now obsolete HD-DVD format. Best Buy will be giving a $50 giftcard to anyone who purchased a HD-DVD Player prior to February 23, 2008 (just go to BestBuyTradein.com and register.)Read More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I firmly believe in paying for the movies you own. By doing so, I believe you should be able to move them to your media server and play them back however you please. BD+ protection (DRM) prevented this with recent Blu-Ray titles, but latest version of Slysoft’s AnyDVD HD overcomes this limitation. Here is the update notification: 6.4.0.0 2008-03-19 New (Blu-ray): Removes the BD+ protection from Blu-ray discs! (for increased compatibility with titles released by Twentieth Century Fox 🙂 ) New (Blu-ray): Added option to enable / disable BD+ removal New (DVD): AnyDVD ripper no longer uses the Windows filesystem, it has now its ownRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 1 Comment

Update 8-Apr-2008: Chris Lanier just posted about the program MC Menu Customizer, which automates editing of the start menu. A great alternative to what is posted below! I recently posted about automatically launching plugins within Vista Media Center. I just came across another improvement that allows editing the order and contents of the Vista Media Center start menu. This, combined with automatic plug-in launching, goes a long way toward giving whatever startup experience you desire. Quoting bluebucket on The Green Button forums: I’ve found a way to edit the standard start menu items in Vista Media Center, but its a hack. Using this hack I’veRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 0 Comments

For me, Brian Binnerup’s My Movies plugin is the most important function of Vista Media Center. It’s so useful that I want it to be the default start page every time I turn-on my Vista Media Center PC. I couldn’t figure out how to do that, and this I came across this post on TheGreenButton forums. Here are the details on launching a Media Center plug-in from via the startup folder or from a key on your remote control. Associate Media Center Plug ins with the Media Center Application: Open My Computer or Explorer and navigate to: C:Program FilesMCEMy Movies Right click on the fileRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 0 Comments

I received a class action law suit notice a couple of weeks ago for my Palm Treo 650. Long story short: the settlement is worthless to the cosnumer and benefits only Palm and the Lawyers. Here’s a link to the official settlement site, here is my summary: You must provide proof that you sent your Treo 600 or 650 to Palm for repair and fill-out the claim forms. You wait for the settlement to be finalized. You then purchase a new Palm phone. You return your old Treo to Palm along with proof of purchase. You receive a $75 rebate. Here are the reason IRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 496 Comments

I recently needed to removed the drive from a Western Digital My Book External USB/eSATA drive enclosure. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an obvious process and this excellent article by Scott Cramer didn’t apply to the newer version (1 TB drive) enclosure I have. So here you go, the steps required to disassemble a new-style Western Digital My Book drive enclosure. 1. Locate the two rubber pads on the bottom of the enclosure near the front, curved surface. Remove these two pads. Depress the two tabs below using a small flat-head screwdriver. 1a. With a couple of credit cards, pry the back edge of the casing apartRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I was very excited to get my new TiVo HD DVRs due to the fact that I didn’t have to hack them, add a network adapter, and install MFS_FTP to pull shows (which was a ton of work for my DirecTV TiVos.)  Unfortunately, TiVoToGo show downloads fail on almost all of the programs I’ve tried to pull.  For example, for a 1 hour show, I can only download the first 1 minute (68 MB). At first I tried using TiVo Desktop (free download from TiVo.com) to download the programs and experienced the problem.  I figured it was an issue with that software, so I searchedRead More →

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In: Entertainment, Reviews
With: 7 Comments

I received my “private beta invitation” from hulu.com a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thoroughly impressed from day one. It has a great selection of shows, a near-perfect user interface, and fast, high-quality video. For those not familiar with Hulu, it started out as a joint venture between NBC and Fox to showcase their primetime shows and has grown beyond that. Here’s what I like about Hulu: Great show selection. Simple, easy-to-use, uncluttered user interafce Automatically resume playing a show right where you left off (even recovers from browser crashes) Full-screen viewing option Descent video quality: you will notice macro-blocking and the lowerRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 8 Comments

I’ve had two different home theaters; one with with a screen that cost about $50 and one with a screen that cost, well, much more than that. Here is a high-level overview of four options for a fixed, wall-mounted projector screen for any budget. Just add a front projector and you’re ready for a real home theater experience. Option 1: A Black Frame on a Painted Wall You could just point your projector at a blank wall, but having a border makes a huge difference and doesn’t cost all that much. This is what I did with my first home theater. The frame is simplyRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 23 Comments

I’ve been unimpressed with Windows Vista on my new Thinkpad T61 so I decided to give Ubuntu Linux a try, despite the fact that there are a few programs I would be missing (Slysoft AnyDVD HD for DVD decryption, TiVo Desktop for extracting files from TiVo HDs, Philips Pronto Edit for updating my Pronto, etc.) I pre-read this excellent wiki article atThinkWiki.com. As the article mentioned, I did have problems with a blank screen when the CD booted, but the optional Safe Graphics boot option solved that. The installation was very easy. For the first time in the 20 or so times I’ve installed Linux,Read More →