Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC: Bringing Everything TiVo To Your Desktop
As part of a strategy to penetrate the globe, set-top box maker TiVo has teamed up with CD/DVD-burning software provider Nero to bring TV recording to your computer. Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC will go on sale October 15 in the United States, Canada and Mexico and next year move to Europe, where with the exception of Britain TiVo is non-existent. The package comes with a TV tuner that plugs into your computer and a remote; the interface and functionality is exactly the same as the TV experience. Problem is it'll set you back $199, $99 if you already have a TV tuner, and require a $99/year subscription for TiVo updates. Geez, sounds like Vista might be a better option.
TVTonic Olympics: Customize Your Olympic Event Viewing Using Windows Vista Media Center
While it's a bit of a disappointment the TVTonic Olympic plugin only works in the United States thanks to NBC's exclusive coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it looks to be a worthy installation if you want to customize your Olympic viewing schedule. When you install the plugin you get the regular TVTonic functionality that allows you to subscribe to "video podcasts" or web TV shows via RSS feeds, manageable through Vista Media Center. In a nutshell, it automates the collection of new web TV material you like and brings it all to one place where you can view it at your pleasure.
With the Olympics beginning August 8, Vista Media Center now has an Olympic icon under its Online Spotlight. With a simple installation of TVTonic Olympic, which only requires a remote, you'll be able to narrow down your Olympic viewing by sport and even by actual event. Because NBC typically covers the Olympics in 4 hours time slots, TVTonic Olympic can save you all kinds of time and allow you to watch your events of choice whenever you want.
The TVTonic Olympics plugin is free, so if you're a Vista Media Center user, live in the United States, and want a little control over your Olympic viewing you might as well give it a try.
Samsung Pushing Out New MediaLive Windows Media Center Extender For 2008 Samsung HDTV's
TV makers must consider web video content these days when designing a television from a consumer point of view. As so-called "lean-in" media consumption continues to grow in popularity the TV maker who builts the most "connected" TV set will win the flat panel wars. Samsung's already on top and their latest announcement confirms they have no plans on losing the flat panel crown anytime soon.
The company's new MediaLive media center extender, available next month, enables Windows Media Center users running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate operating systems on a PC to quickly and easily stream digital content from the computer to 2008 model Samsung HDTV's using an HDMI-CEC connection via either a wired or wireless home network. The MediaLive extender supports all types of multimedia codecs including AC3, H.264, JPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMA, and WMV bringing virtually any audio, video or photographic content straight to your bigscreen.
MediaLive simply mounts onto the back of your 2008 Samsung HDTV with an included bracket, connects to an HDMI-CEC port and then to your PC with a RJ45 connected LAN cable for wired home networks or via a wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n receiver built right into the extender. Navigation is simple thanks to a Windows Media Center interface on your TV screen and an included remote, or thanks to CEC, your HDTV's remote.
MediaLive also gives users access to a bunch of online entertainment services including Vongo, MovieLink, Showtime TV, XM Radio, and FOX Sports and current news updates from Reuters and NPR. Sound interesting? Samsung's MediaLive media center extender will cost around $200 when it comes out next month.
Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive Brings High-Def Web Video To Your Home Theater
The new Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is a 500 GB portable external hard drive that delivers high-definition content from your PC straight to your HDTV. Capable of storing 2 million photos, 9,250 hours of music, or 750 hours of video (MPEG-2), the Iomega ScreenPlay is a perfect example of how companies are leveraging the popularity of LCD and plasma TV's to bring peripheral devices to the forefront.
About the size of a typical paperback book, the ScreenPlay has a 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM NTFS file-formatted hard drive, and is easily connected to most newer model TV's through HDMI, composite, component, or SCART (RGB) connections. The drive gives you the ability to choose video settings from a standard-def 480i to an upscaled 720p/1080i, and supports a variety of codecs including MP3, AC3 (Dolby(R) Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD) and JPEG. All Windows PC transfers use the USB 2.0 interface and a remote control is included.
Priced at $209.95, the Iomega ScreenPlay is now available in North America and will see an international release in May, priced at 180 Euros.
Vismara Design Incorporates Art Deco Into Your Home Theater
The number of ways designers attempt to incorporate flat panel TV's into home interior decor are becoming to high to count as HDTV continues to penetrate the mainstream market, but this Art Deco and Baroque framed media center, from Vismara Design, is one of our favorites as of late. Maybe not techie enough for some of you, but it definitely has a sense of old-school class and style, although apparently Crave doesn't agree with us.
Creston DVPHD-Pro In "How To Watch 8 1080p Video Sources Simultaneously"
Engadget HD's Ben Drawbaugh got a close look at Crestron's DVPHD-Pro digital video processor at the ongoing EHX 2008 conference, and we must say it looks impressive. At at a price of $50000 plus an extra $8000 bones for a touchscreen the DVPHD-Pro should be nothing but extraordinary. The processor has an eight input, 1080p HD video switch with RS-232 and USB control, allowing you to eight 1080p sources on the display simultaneously! If I only had the money to integrate the DVPHD-Pro into my home theater system, I'd never miss a favorite TV show again.
Manufacturer of high-end home entertainment servers, Kaleidescape, will release a Blue-Laser player sometime in 2009. What exactly is a Blue-Laser player? It's a device that will work with all of Kaleidescape's home entertainment servers that supports H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2 formats, and let's you copy Blu-ray discs onto your Kaleidescape server for storage and playback.
Kaleidescape licensed the DVD Copy Control Association's Content Scramble System which enables the company to bypass the copy protection on DVD's and as of next year, Blu-ray discs. Kaleidescape home server owners will be able to store roughly 33 Blu-ray movies on a 750 GB disk cartridge, allowing them to be stored, organized, and played back from the server rather than from the original disc.
Not surprisingly, Kaleidescape has no plans to support HD DVD unless it "becomes a more successful format".
Media Servers: LaCie LaCinema Premier A Better Storage Solution Than Media Server
Marketed as a "digital media hard drive", this quasi-media server, the LaCie LaCinema Premier is a decent storage and transfer solution for all your multimedia files. Manufactured in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB version, the Premier hooks up to your computer via a USB 2.0 port from which you can transfer your videos, music, and pictures. The inconvenient part about this is that when you're done, you have to disconnect it, move it to your television where you connect it via composite cable and view or listen to the content on your TV. Any content will be upscaled to 1080i if necessary. Strangely, given the popularity of HDMI, there is no HDMI support at all with the Premier.
The LaCie LaCinema Premier features silent operation, a plain but easy-to-use interface, and supports most audio and video codecs. Rather than a dedicated media server, we'd recommend the Premier as a multimedia storage or backup solution.
Available in February 2008, the Premier will be priced at $230 for 500GB, $329 for 750GB, and $460 for 1TB of storage space.
HP Blackbird 002 - Perfect Media Center Powerhouse
Sure it's more a gaming PC, but come on - look at it! It's a monster media center for watching TV in the making. The Blackbird features an aluminum casing, liquid cooling, LED lit interiors and back panels, an open BIOS to allow overclocking, and can be customized to include an array of various CPU,GPU, and RAM options. We think just playing some PC games on our 40" LCD TV has to happen with this thing. Wow.
Resources for Building your Own Windows Media Center
As more consumers are becoming interested in turning their PCs into Home Media Centers, we've gotten a lot of emails asking about Media Center resources. I ran across a website that will help you build a Windows Media Center from scratch. MCE-Components.com doesn't have tutorials on building a Media Center but is an online databases of ratings on how well a certain component works with Window Media Center as you can see from this screenshot:
My brother-in-law bought a new computer the other day with Windows Media Center. The funny thing is he didn't even know what it was until I showed him how easy it was to record TV right on his computer. So if you're looking for a PVR, should you look at WMCE or should you stick with TIVO? Digital105 has a nice little article that discusses the differences between WMCE and TiVo:
There are two basic ways to enter the world of the Personal Video Recorder (PVR): through a dedicated hardware unit, like a TiVo or ReplayTV, or through a software-based PVR that runs on your home computer, like Windows: Media Center Edition (WMCE) or MythTV. In this article I will compare the most popular form of each platform, TiVo and WMCE, to help you figure out which one would be best for you.
Both TiVo and WMCE have the same basic functionality: after you tell them which programs to record, they find them, and automatically record them from your television source (antenna, analog or digital cable, or satellite feed). They both have the ability to create a "Season Pass" (TiVo's terminology) for a show, which will record all episodes of a show, or just new ones if you prefer. These "Season Passes" are in kept in a prioritized list, which determines which program will record if more than one are on at the same time.
The article has some pretty decent points but it would of been nice if they also mentioned DVR cable boxes as an option too. In fact, cable DVR boxes seem to be getting bigger because they're so well integrated so well into your existing cable service.
There's not a lot of details about this NEC Valuestar all-in-one that contains HD TV, DVR and PC, but it looks pretty impressive. According to Gizmodo:
The NEC HD TV-PC will run you about $2800, but its basically a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 with a start-up time of only 2 seconds for TV mode after a complete shut-down.
It's definitely a sweet looking device and if it's really only $2800, we'd say it's quite a steal. We'll get you more details when they come out.
If you're looking for a media center and you're comfortable messing around inside a computer case, you'll want to strongly consider building your own system. Oreilly has a really nice tutorial that walks you through building a media center running MythTV, the extremely popular GPL home media suite for Linux.
The tutorial is a multi-part article and starts with the hardware and most importantly the TV capture card:
This one is easy. The HD-3000 from pcHDTV is one of only two capture cards for Linux, and the direct descendant of what was once the only card available. I purchased multiple cards so that I could build a multiple-tuner system. Furthermore, Jack Kelliher, the founder and CEO of the company, is deeply committed to open source software's role in television.
Overall, this is a excellent article to understand what's involved in building your own media center box.
Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC: Bringing Everything TiVo To Your Desktop
If you're looking for a media center and you're comfortable messing around inside a computer case, you'll want to strongly consider building your own system. 
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