Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Media Browser LogoMedia Browser 2.5 (Hydra)

Published by & filed under Media Browser. Last updated .

Today Media Browser 2.5 code­name Hydra) was released right on sched­ule.

The most sig­ni­fic­ant change is the rolling out of the (much faster) SQL data­base as stand­ard for all installs.  There are vari­ous oth­er per­form­ance enhance­ments and a fix for dropped net­work shares caus­ing metadata refreshes.  There are a few oth­er smal­ler but nice enhance­ments, like screensaver sup­port.
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0MCEBuddy LogoMCEBuddy — v2 Beta 14

Published by & filed under Misc Media Software, News. Last updated .

MCE­Buddy 2 Beta 14 has been released.  It’s the first release in a long time that is a com­plete pro­gram.  It also includes offi­cial x64 sup­port.  There are still some major issues remain­ing, but with­in those lim­its it should be an excel­lent solu­tion for con­vert­ing wtv files and strip­ping adverts from them.

0Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case LogoComparison of HTPC GPU’s

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware, News. Last updated .

Anandtech has an excel­lent art­icle com­par­ing 4 bot­tom end GPU’s for HTPC’s.  The art­icle is extens­ive and does a good job of explain­ing issues of fram­er­ate tim­ing, cadence detec­tion, tele­cin­ing and pull­down as well as com­par­ing the 4 GPU’s.  As we don’t believe in rein­vent­ing the wheel — we recom­mend any­one build­ing a HTPC setup read the art­icle before set­ting out.

0AMD Vision Fusion Premium LogoFusion E‑450 coming

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware, News. Last updated .

Semi­Ac­cur­ate has news that AMD are to immin­ently release a new Zacate mem­ber of the Brazos plat­form.  Accord­ing to pre­vi­ous inform­a­tion on Anandtech and Hex­us the E‑450 is clocked at 1.65GHz (up from 1.60GHz) and has graph­ics clocked at 600MHz (up from 500MHz).  It will also reportedly sup­port high­er speeds of DDR3 memory, and fea­ture some kind of turbo.

17Via Mini-ITX 2 LogoDual-Tuner Mini-ITX Build?

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware. Last updated .

After dis­cus­sions on a recent art­icle I wondered if it is pos­sible to build a set-top box sized HTPC with dual-tuner cards inside.  To achieve set-top box size means going Mini-ITX, but with the release of a range of Mini ITX AMD Fusion boards this is the easy part.  Mini-ITX nor­mally only includes 1 expan­sion slot, so to include 2 tuners requires a cre­at­ive solu­tion.
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