Home Theatre

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jethro's picture

News from around the Web

Windows Phone Website – if you use a windows mobile then there are plenty of resources here. If you don’t you probably should!

Insert the date and time in your OneNote notes. Shortcuts are:

  • To insert the current date and time, press ALT+SHIFT+F.
  • To insert only the date, press ALT+SHIFT+D.
  • To insert only the time, press ALT+SHIFT+T.

Explanation of trusted documents feature in Office 2010

Outlook 2010 has some cool calendar features

Windows Media Centre Hints and tips from Missing remote

jethro's picture

Mission: build a HiFi media centre PC

Objective - build a Media Centre PC that out put HD sound and video utilising the HDMI digital format. Must be able to record 2 channels simultaneously (the Olympics is coming up!)

Budget - there wasn’t one – though there's only so much you can spend doing this.

Parts

  • Zalman HD160XT Plus Home Theatre Case Black
  • Zalman 500W Noiseless Power Supply with Heatpipe
  • Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU Heatsink
  • Intel S775 Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz CPU
  • ASUS S775 P5Q Core 2 Motherboard
  • Integrated HD Sound Card
  • Integrated Gigabit Network Connection
  • DDR2 4GB Geil 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 Kit
  • 1TB Seagate 7200rpm 32M Serial ATA HDD
  • 1TB Seagate 7200rpm 32M Serial ATA HDD
  • Pioneer BDC-S02BK Blu-Ray Reader/DVD Writer Combo
  • ASUS ATI 3850 256M PCIe HDMI Video Card
  • Hauppauge HVR-2200 Dual HDTV + Analog Tuner PCIe
  • Microsoft Media Centre Keyboard and Remote
  • Logitech Cordless Mouse
  • Powerware 5110/500VA Line Interactive UPS
  • Vista Ultimate 32 bit

Construction

jethro's picture

Ultimate PC

The Vista team at Microsoft have built a website called UltimatePC beta. Unfortunately its a flash site so while it looks sexy its hard to get around it and even harder to find the links leading out of it. So we have done that for you here.

They are promoting the New HP Blackbird Gaming PC as the ultimate PC. I had a rig like this 2 years ago and my current rig is almost exactly the same. I think of it now as pretty ordinary and am waiting for the next step up in system performance, but I suppose for most people its pretty good - and dang expensive. Basic specs, Quad core extreme CPU, 2 GB RAM (not enough!), 2 8800GTX video cards, Raptor hard drive, sexy case with some excellent thermal cooling solutions and Vista ultimate. starts from around USD$5K, though with the USD fallen in a hole lately that's good for the rest of the world.

jethro's picture

RIP HD DVD

Huge breaking news for all Home Theatre lovers, Microsoft X-Box 360 and Playstation 3 owners, DVD movie purchasers and of course the retailers.

 

HD DVD is dead! Long live the Blu-Ray!

Sony and the Blu-ray High Definiton format has won the latest "VHS v Betamax" fight.

The headlines are starting to roll out in the news stories, Microsoft pulls out after Toshiba concedes race to Sony, etc. Just do a google news search for HD DVD or Blu-ray.

In our case it means we are even less likely to own a Xbox 360 as we are to buy a PS3.