Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

With Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra no longer playing hard drive based HD movies from ripped HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the only way to watch such movies is to “mount” an ISO image of the disc and then watch it using PowerDVD. Not an easy thing to do while in Vista [...] Continue Reading…

Dolby has announced a new certification for the home theater pc, called “Dolby Home Theater,” which includes Dolby Pro Logic II decoding to produce 7.1-, 6.1-, or 5.1-channel audio from a two-channel source. The certification also supports Dolby Digital Live, which converts any analog audio signal, as from a [...] Continue Reading…

Vista Service Pack 1 fixes several items in Media Center. This Service Pack is more an incremental step in the evolution of Media Center and not the next leap in features. Besides a roll-up of hot fixes, SPI adds the following features:

Adds support to enable new types of [...] Continue Reading…

A couple of weeks ago, I helped my cousin install a home theater projector in his basement. It actually took longer than I thought to set it up. After several hours, it still was not quite perfect. The picture looked great, albeit just crooked.

He had a [...] Continue Reading…

Over the last year, the clear leader in Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback on a computer has been Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra. Finally, this month someone else has thrown their hat into the HD realm: Arcsoft with their release of TotalMedia Theatre. According to Arcsoft, TotalMedia Theatre supports Blu-ray discs, AVCHDs, [...] Continue Reading…

One of the more interesting CES press releases that flew under the radar was Auzentech’s announcement of the HDMI X-Tension. Sound cards have always been the weak link in an HTPC set-up, especially with the lack of HDMI 1.3 and Dolby True HD/DTS HD support. The HDMI [...] Continue Reading…

I recently purchased a HDHomerun (about $170) to watch and record unencrypted television shows from my cable provider. My cable modem is right next to my computer so I just added a splitter and connected a coaxial cable to the HDHomerun and cable modem.

Setting up the HDHomerun [...] Continue Reading…

Sony announced the replacement to the VGX-XL3 media center pc, which is the dual CableCard TP25. The VGX-Xl3 was a sleek machine that looked like a high-end A/V component. It’s main flaws were the lack of an adequate video card and having only one digital cable tuner, [...] Continue Reading…

Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra. the only viable option for watching Blu-ray or HD-DVDs on a computer, has been certified by the Blu-ray Disc Association to support playback of BD-Video Profile 1.1 specification. From the press release:
CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra featuring support for BD-Video Profile 1.1 format allows the playback of [...] Continue Reading…

MediaPortal is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC into a media center PC. The latest version of MediaPortal has been released as a “preview” version. From the website:

MediaPortal II is a total re-write of the core application and plugin system. A new core framework allows [...] Continue Reading…