Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

I was upgrading AnyDVD HD to the latest version and saw the following message from Slysoft:
As of January 1st 2011, SlySoft will discontinue the ‘lifetime’ licensing option. This is being announced well in advance to give everybody a final opportunity to acquire SlySoft products with lifetime free updates or [...] Continue Reading…

HTPCs are full of surprises, like the annoying EDID issue if you connect to a TV through a receiver.  According to Wikipedia:
Extended display identification data (EDID) is a data structure provided by a computer display to describe its capabilities to a graphics card. It is what enables a modern [...] Continue Reading…

Perusing various media center websites and forums, I am struck by one thing: people make their HTPCs too powerful.  Playing 1080p movies is a fairly easy task for most modern video cards.  You do not need some crazy system to provide a smooth experience.  All that extra processing power [...] Continue Reading…

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 [...] Continue Reading…

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. [...] Continue Reading…

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…