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Lifeware’s LMS-810 Is the Baddest Media Centre PC Money Can Buy
7:42AM John Mahoney | In a show full of ultra high-end home theatre installations, Lifeware’s LMS-810 Media Centre piece still manages to be a standout. Taking what they came with last year and doubling it, Lifeware has crammed eight CableCARD tuners (two on board and six more in the external Lifetuner box on top) into a dual Intel Quad Core, 12TB RAID 5 box that can stream out to ten Media Extenders (here, Xbox 360s driving Samsung LCDs). The box can record from all eight of its HD streams while streaming to all 10 Extenders at once, so if you’ve been wondering what to do with your home’s 8 spare digital cable feeds, now you know. No price yet for a pre-Christmas release, but last year’s model with half as many CableCARDs was US$15k. galleryPost("lifeware810", 3, ""); More »
Computers
Sony VAIO RT All-In-One PC Is A 25.5″ Widescreen, HDMI-Filled Monster
9:00AM Benny Goldman | The VAIO RT is Sony’s beast of an all-in-one PC, a widescreen 25.5″ display with HDMI-in and -out ports, Blu-ray recordable drive and up to 1TB of hard drive space. It also comes loaded with 8GB RAM, a multi-card reader and a built-in digital TV tuner. Of course, you’re still stuck with Vista, but with all that power underneath you should do just fine. Unfortunately, the RT has a beastly price tag to match—it starts at US$3300—when it arrives this fall. Press release down below. [Sony] More »
Entertainment
Windows Media Centre Offers ‘Olympics on the Go’
7:39AM Sean Fallon | If you and your DVR are having trouble keeping up with all of the Olympics coverage, Microsoft is offering Media Centre users the opportunity to catch up with on-demand content. All you need to do is launch Windows Media Centre on a PC or laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate and scroll down to Online Media. There you will find a link to activate “NBC Olympics On The Go.” (Can also be activated via the NBC site). The content is said to be “up-to-HD quality,” whatever that means, so you should get a decent look at your favourite events. AU: Needless, to say, this won’t be working for Australians. [Olympics on the Go] More »
Gadgets
Media Centre Remote Control Gets Elegant: Amex RM-MP1
6:43PM Gizmodo US Edition | Amex’s new RM-MP1 Media remote is designed to work with your Windows media centre system and also to run your presentations in a business setting… and it’s rather elegant, compared to some of the offerings out there. That simple design conceals a touchpad mouse, laser pointer, multimedia controls and it functions via a wireless USB dongle. It’s just 10 x 3.8 x 1.3 cms in size, and comes in black or white. No info on pricing or availability yet. [Akihabaranews] More »
Software
Windows Media Centre Universal Remote IR Quirks Fixed
9:15AM Jason Chen | Windows Media Centre users who use universal remotes—not the default Microsoft IR remotes—have problem run into a quirk where only some button presses register. Here’s the deal: media centre receivers expect to see an alternating IR code for functions like channel changing or volume switches in order to eliminate IR “bounce”, which is apparently caused by IR signals bouncing off stuff and hitting the receiver twice. In order to turn this off and fix the problem for universal remotes who don’t support the alternating IR codes, just change a registry entry and you’re done. Hit up CEPro for more details. [CEPro] More »
Entertainment
DirecTV PC Tuner Photos Surface Online
7:23AM Adrian Covert | Scans of DirecTV’s PC Tuner showed up on the DBStalk forums, which supposedly has two coaxial inputs, one USB output, ethernet and USB inputs, Vista Media Center support, and a DVR interface that uses your PC’s HDD. No word on whether the tuner is HD or SD, but If this is the real deal, it looks promising. [DBStalk Forums] More »
Entertainment
HP MediaSmart SL4282N and SL4782N HDTV with Media Center Inside
6:23PM Brian Lam | The Skinny: MediaSmart 1080p LCD TVs are coming of age—both the $US1,900 42″ and the $US2,400 47″ of them will have built-in Microsoft Media Center Extender connectivity and an improved higher-contrast panel (2000:1). They have 3 HDMI ports, 2 component inputs, integrated Wi-Fi in A, B, G, and N flavors and Ethernet. Has ATSC and QAM Tuners and 500cd of brightness. One catch: Though you can rent movies without your PC, the PC still needs to be running, and there’s a bit of a delay. More »
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Moneual Lab Introduces WMC PC; For Those Who Like It Big And Frumpy
1:15AM Gizmodo US Edition | Windows Media Center is starting to gain momentum and jumping onto the bandwagon is Moneual Lab with their media centric, I*magine PC. The cylindrical, stupidly named, ridiculously shaped, WMC PC sports an Intel Core2Duo processor, Vista Premium, HDMI port, 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth, 7″ touchscreen and the option to include Moneual’s very own multimedia interface. Set for a release date sometime within Q4, the device shall set you back a cool $4999. Although Moneual are known for their eccentric designs, we are not too sure that having the privilege to set your WMC PC horizontally, or vertically, is really worth $5K. Also, it looks about as fat, round and unappealing as Kelly Osborne when she is feeling bloated. You like that don’t you? You dirty dog. [Cepro]. More »
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Life|Ware Shows Quad-Recording Media Center with Four CableCARDs
5:10AM Charlie White | Life|Ware rolled out what it says is the first media centre PC running four CableCARDs at the same time, and it proved to us that the whole thing actually works today at CEDIA 07. Its life|media Media Centre PC is the new top of the line for the company, and it’s packing an Intel Quad Core processor, 4GB of RAM and 4TB of storage for a cool $15K. The money shot? It can record four HD channels while it’s streaming HD video to four Xbox 360 Elite boxes running the media centre extender at the same time. And, it does all this without even breathing hard. More »
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