Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

Kaleidescape wins DVD Ripping Lawsuit

One of the main appeals for media centers PC is the ability to store all of your movies digitally on a hard drive, eliminating the need to place a DVD in a player. Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ripping a DVD is technically illegal. One brave company, Kaleidescape developed a media center interface […]

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Xbox 360 Elite geared towards high definition

Microsoft announced this week the release of the Xbox 360 Elite. For $480, you can buy a supercharged version of the Xbox 360, with a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) cable and a 120 GB hard drive. These features are not geared towards gamers, but rather are an attempt to make the Xbox more attractive as […]

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HP exiting media center market

It looks like my overview of HP’s z565 Digital Entertainment Center was just in time. HP has announced that they will no longer be focusing on their Digital Entertainment Center line of products. From CEPro: The company instead will focus its energy on MediaSmart, the new brand of TVs with digital media adapters built in […]

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HP z565 Digital Entertainment Center streamlines home entertainment

With the release of Digital Cable Receivers, Microsoft will be relying on OEMS like Hewlett-Packard to deliver quality Vista-based media centers that are approved by CableLabs. Hewlett-Packard over the last year has begun to release some very cool media center-based products, like the TouchSmart IQ770 and the HP z565 Digital Entertainment Center (at present without […]

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Movie studios win lawsuit against Cablevision about network DVRs

According to the Associated Press, several prominent movie studios won a lawsuit against Cablevision, who has been experimenting with network-enabled digital video recorders (i.e. Tivo-like devices). Cablevision was attempting to allow their customers to store recorded content on their servers, which would enable the company to offer Tivo-like services without the capital expense of providing […]

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Apple TV versus Xbox 360 as Media Centers

Apple released the Apple TV this week, with the usual hype surrounding the launch of any Apple product. The Apple TV is Steve Jobs’ first attempt at moving video to the living room. At $299, the Apple TV is an expensive device for streaming video. Gizmodo made the inevitable comparison for the Apple TV with […]

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Velocity Micro shipping media center with CableCard support

Media Center PCs with CableCARD support have yet to hit the marketplace. It appears that Velocity Micro might be the first company to release these long awaited computers. EngadgetHD pointed out that a Velocity Micro employee was over at AVSForums.com and stated that Cablelabs certified PCs will be shipping within the week. I took a […]

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Amazon Unbox on Tivo underwhelms

Amazon.com has entered into the digital download arena with their Unbox service. Video download services are a dime a dozen now and Unbox is certainly nothing special. However, Amazon is looking to distinguish their video service by integrating it with Tivo. From Amazon.com: Unlike most digital video-to-TV services, Amazon Unbox on TiVo is not an […]

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Review: Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote

I recently purchased a Logitech Harmony 550 remote for about $80 from Amazon.com (note: the Logitech website says it retails for $125 but it can be found for much less online). I had heard about Harmony remotes the last couple of years but always thought they were expensive. After reading a post at Zatznotfunny.com, I […]

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Sony VAIO Digital Living System VGX-XL3: Great design but needs more than one tuner

Home theater computers that will support CableCard digital receivers are right around the corner. Most of the announced products to date have been from smaller manufacturers like Niveus or VidaBox. Sony is also preparing their own version of a Vista-based media center computer, named the VAIO Digital Living System VGX-XL3 . With a great overall […]

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