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A little known fact about EA's Origin is that many games you've purchased elsewhere, either at retail or on Steam, can be registered and used through it. The problem: EA doesn't have a list of titles that support this. Until that happens, we've started our own, and welcome submissions to see it grow.
Connected media streamers, like the pair from Roku and NETGEAR that we reviewed recently, focus on providing access to IP content but generally cannot handle local media well enough (if at all) to be a viable unifying solution. Until we have enough bandwidth, and services able to deliver quality audio/video services over the Internet, those devices act as a supplement to players like the Dune HD Smart H1 that we will look at today. Locally cached content includes a diverse set of file types and formats, so H1’s support for disc-less Blu-ray, M2TS, MKV, and all of the codecs commonly found within is an essential starting point.
Codecs? File types? Oh my! If you have ever tried to watch a video you downloaded from the internet only to find it unable to be played (or maybe just audio but no video), then this is the guide for you! We're going to try to do our best to cover most of the more common file types that are out there, and what they mean to you and your home theater experience. Before we get into the details, let's cover the basics of the terminology. Codec is an acronym for compressing\decompressing. This technology is used to execute an algorithm to compress or decompress video or audio. An example of this is playback of your PVR recordings on your HTPC; when the file plays back your PC is decompressing, or decoding, the MPEG-2 or H.264 video and MPEG-Audio or AC-3 audio contained in the file.
That is where wireless repeaters or "range extenders" come into play, they allow you to extend your wireless coverage to distances greater than your access point at home can do on it's own. Lately the trend from many consumer network manufactures is bringing to market these range extenders. Today we were able to review one of the new 802.11N range extenders from Netgear, the Netgear Universal WiFi Range Extender WN3000RP.
I was speaking with a friend of mine who's new to the Home Theater PC space and he brought up a great point--after saying how much he loved the new site design, he admitted to being a bit overwhelmed by some of the content that basically assumes you know some of the standard knowledge about this world of HTPC. I agreed, and thus this beginner's guide was born. For the sake of your sanity, we will break these guides up into small categories to hopefully make it easier to digest as well as continue to evolve.
Some of our recent enclosure reviews (SilverStone TJ08-E, Fractal Design Define Mini) have featured external USB 3.0 ports requiring a connection to a 19-pin header required by the USB 3.0 specification which poses a problem for most motherboards to date. While SilverStone was kind enough to provide an internal USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 adapter with the TJ08-E, it would be ideal to take advantage of the USB 3.0 capability. Enter SilverStone’s EC01 PCI Express card providing a 19-pin internal connector capable of supporting two USB 3.0 ports.
Those of you with older television cabinets or mounted televisions know the difficulty that comes with hiding your equipment out of site while still being able to control it. Radio frequency (RF) has its benefits but requires a special remote control as well as IR blasters for each individual device you are looking to control. Sewell has developed the InjectIR device for those users who don’t want the complexity of an IR setup but still want to be able to control their hidden devices.
Using wireless routers has become the norm. With all of today’s devices connected people often complain about a poor signal or bad performance. There are many things you can do to improve the performance of your router. We will start with the free, easy tips that anyone can do and work our way into more advanced solutions that cost money.
Home automation (HA) covers a wide spectrum of capabilities and devices, spanning the gap from placing a light timer on the fish tank to a complex system that manages many of the mundane aspects of lighting, HVAC and scheduled activities in the house or business. Historically these highly integrated systems, capable of things like automatically dimming the lights when watching a movie, were constrained to high-end consumers due to hardware cost, complexity, and the locked-down dealer relationship between OEMs and custom installers (CI). While this works for both groups, it is blocking for those with a more limited budget – which is where the Mi Casa Verde Vera 3 and VeraLitecome in. As a fully functional Z-Wave HA controller, it offers the same feature set and capabilities that more expensive options provide, but in DIY (do-it-yourself) friendly format where managing devices and scenes entails a quick browser session instead of a wallet thumping from your local CI.
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