After the DTV transition date (June 12, 2009) many people, myself included, had to retune their TV's and even HTPC's. If you haven't then you're probably getting programming from CableTV or Satellite service. But even now you may wonder why that was even necessary. This is because some stations changed the frequency they broadcast on. To see what changed if you live in Los Angeles area, read on.
Back in the day, when VHS tape was the prevalent format for movie watching at home, I can remember getting my rentals from Wherehouse Music, Blockbuster Video, or 20-20 Video. Over two decades later I avoid most rental sources because of time/cost/distance, and choose to use a few that still get me out of the house.
First up is the RedBox kiosk. You can find them around local supermarkets, Wal-Mart stores, McDonald's. For the mere cost of $1 plus tax, Dvd's can be rented for one night and can even be reserved online. Their competition DVDplay, and MovieCube don't yet offer online rental reservation. On Mondays you can even get a free rental code by subscribing to notices from RedBox sent via SMS to your cellphone. However, I prefer to get those codes from a website called InsideRedBox.
Unboxing/Screenshots
A few years back, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I came upon a wired ethernet bridge technology that seemed very promising. This introduction could have also been used for Powerline (electrical wiring) networking, HomePNA (phone wiring), but is actually for MoCA which is through the cableTV or coaxial wiring in a home.
And after spending a couple of weeks using it myself and installing it for others, I have to say that so far the NETGEAR MoCA adapter has been well received. Personally I enjoy having one computer running Windows Media Center on Vista (VMC) downstairs, while family are able to watch in different bedrooms HDTV recorded shows at the same time! Try doing that with high speed wireless-N...
So here it is... My first computer hardware related purchase of 2009: The Asus HDMI EAH4350 Silent HTPC Video Card. Right now Newegg has them for around $29.99 after a $10 mail-in rebate. What makes this card so special to me is it has no fan (silent), the price is not bad, has an HDMI connector on the card (adapter not required), can handle h.264 better than my mobo's built-in GMA x3000/G965 graphics chipset, and it can output 8-channel audio through HDMI.
It's the end of the 2008 year, and one of the products I look forward to seeing in 2009 is the Actiontec ECB2200. Based on MoCA technology it offers the capability of using the coaxial (CableTV) wires in a home to network devices. This comes in real handy if you have a Media Center PC and need to stream shows to other computers or Xbox 360 - Plenty Bandwidth!!! No word on a release date to retailers, but this might be appearing soon in the online store of Actiontec here. Happy New Year!
If you're looking around for a new place to live, or just want to see what's in the neighborhood, have a look at this "Best Places To Live" CNNMoney article here. There are quite a few resources that are linked from that article which alone is worth the look. Then if you're curious to see how many crimes happen in the area you're looking at, pay a visit to CrimeReports.com. It's amazing how many crimes and/or sex offenders there are even in a "safe" neighborhood!
OMG - I just got an email with a teaser picture leading to the one above. Notice it says fast full HD editing. 5.1 Dolby Digital Input AND output! I hope it is a newer (version 5.0) TMPG XPress, but it says new user-friendly interface which it has already. Add to that TMPG Xpress 4.0 will soon be faster through the nVidia CUDA enhancements. While the link is live, check it out here.
It would seem that by now Google would have the G-Drive (or whatever it may be called) online storage feature. But I guess that will have to wait. One possible option is a free service from Microsoft called SkyDrive. You can actually sign-up with the email address you have now, so Hotmail not required. And there's 5 GB of storage available. Public folder sharing is also available. What's not to love is there is a 50 MB per file size limit. That is the deal breaker for me. If I can't upload at least 1 GB of encrypted USB drive (in a TrueCrypt file container) I have to keep looking...
