Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

Last year, Slysoft got a lot of criticism for changing to a subscription model for AnyDVD HD. The software is great and I use it all the time but it is expensive, especially with having to buy subscriptions.

Slysoft does have frequent sales but they just announced a new sale that is way better than any they have had before. Until December 31, you will get lifetime free updates for the price of a 2-year subscription and still take advantage of an additional 20% discount. This is an awesome price for this software.

If you are thinking about ripping blu-ray movies to a hard drive, I would definitely take advantage of this deal.

I finally made the plunge and bought an Epson projector for my basement and built a Windows 7 machine for use as a dedicated media center. First off, the projector looks fantastic. Very happy. Second, I have entered the world of converting blu-rays to MKVs. My initial impression: awesome.

Using a guide from Avsforum.com, I have converted my entire blu-ray library to MKVs using AnyDVD HD, eac3to, and mktools. The video quality is superb and is still 1080p. I have converted all the audio tracks to flac, including TrueHD. Lossless compression!

I installed MediaBrowser on the Windows 7 machine along with the Shark007 codec pack. To my surprise, the whole thing actually worked. No external player, no copy protection, and no crazy sound card just for TrueHD playback.

Using an ATI 4670, the picture looks great and the audio is sent to my Onkyo receiver as LPCM, all over one HDMI cable. 5.1 sound and everything.

I have no idea if this will actually work on an extender but right now I could care less. One thing at a time. Plus I think Divx is working on an MKV solution that will work with extenders.

Now I need to set-up a remote. I got a Harmony 880 that hopefully will do the job. Is this ready for the mainstream? No way. Is it ready for nerds? Absolutely.

When I bought my iPhone, I debated about getting the 8 GB model versus the 16 GB one. I ended up with the 8 GB even though I was nervous it would not be enough space for my music collection.

Since owning my iPhone, my consumption of music has [...] Continue Reading…

It looks like Pandora is going to survive after all, albeit with some concessions due to royalty issues for online radio. From the Pandora blog:
The revised royalties are quite high - higher in fact than any other form of radio. As a consequence, we will have to make [...] Continue Reading…

Blu-ray movies are expensive, especially when you buy them from the big retail chains like Walmart, Target, or Best Buy. Personally, I think Amazon has the best prices on Blu-ray movies. You can find most new movies for $19.99, and sometimes cheaper. Just be aware that [...] Continue Reading…

Dell recently discontinued their line of XPS 420 computers. Why is this interesting? The 420’s were the only computers to come standard with the version of Vista that supports digital cable tuners (i.e. it came with a digital cable product ID). I would suggest verifying with the seller that [...] Continue Reading…

So you want to watch Blu-ray movies on a computer? Then PowerDVD Ultra 9 is the program for you. The latest version of Cyberlink’s media player, at a cost of $99, is all about high definition movies and Blu-ray, plugging the hole left Vista’s lack of native Blu-ray support. [...] Continue Reading…

I was recently contacted by Best Buy’s PR folks to review a webcam under their in-house label, Rocketfish. The Rocketfish Webcam, retailing at $62.99, has all the expected features of a high-end camera, including a built-in microphone. Features include:

* Up to 8.0-megapixel still image capture [...] Continue Reading…

Why is it sooo hard for someone to come up with a way to support lossless high definition audio codecs on a computer? It seems like we have been waiting for years to have someone support Dolby TrueHD. Blu-ray drives are under $100. But you still cannot “hear” HD [...] Continue Reading…

My recent purchase of an iPhone has caused me to restructure my Sonos system, adding a ZoneBridge. Since I now use the free Sonos app for the iPhone, I sold my Sonos controller on Ebay for about $150. I was always hesitant to add more rooms to my Sonos [...] Continue Reading…