Digital Video Recorder or Home Theater PC?

Subscriber Bill DePierri wrote recently to ask about using a PC to record television. I’m already doing that with my home theater pc, which Bill has seen: Terry: We recently got a Cox DVR. It is pretty clunky with little flexibility. This got me to thinking about your comments about your PC-based DVR’s, especially since [...]

HTPC Software

Rather than focus on the standard features of SageTV, which have been covered in many reviews and on the SageTV site, I’ll show some of the modifications I like. One features I really like about SageTV is the ability to use different menu layouts and even additional functions. Don’t get me wrong, the SageTV program [...]

Home Theater PC – the hardware

Simply, it’s standard PC, including an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, an Abit AN-7 motherboard, a cheap video card with S-Video Out, hard drives, DVD drive and three Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 TV encoding cards and one PVR-150.. My HTPC case case is a standard Antec tower case. This is not designed for the HTPC service. Tired [...]

Followup – NBC’s new Heroes

After watching the first episode of NBC’s new “Heroes” show, I wasn’t too impressed. The second episode was a lot better. This show seems to be pulling itself together quickly, with major plot steps quickly. We learned in episode 2 that there’s a world-changing event happening in a month (we also learned exactly what it [...]

Battlestar Galactica – Sci-Fi Channel

The third season return of the Sci-Fi Channel’s dark, haunting remake of Battlestar Galactica is almost here. There’s a big time jump between seasons, though. The SciFi Channel is running a series of mini “webisodes” on their web site so that we can learn what’s happened between seasons and make the transition successfully. That’s really [...]

How to choose the best for your home theater system

Watching movies is a neat escape from the stressful lifestyle we live in. Watching movies in a wide screen and surround sound take you far away and into the movie scene you are watching. You watch it as if you were there in the movie scene. Of late, we can only experience this escape in [...]

New Star Wars TV Series to come!

BBC News reports that a new Star Wars television series is on the way. BBC Radio 1 interviewed producer Rick McCallum who said that the writing team would be meeting soon to start the project and that filming would begin in 2008 — to be ready for TV that same year! The series will be [...]

Under the Tuscan Sun

Just finished watching the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, which my Home Theater PC recorded for me over Valentine’s weekend. While this was definitely a “chick flick” (that is, full of emotion and low on action), I recommend it for rental, viewing on television or purchase. Why? The photography in the movie — whether the [...]

Terry’s Home Theater content

The new <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=862&amp;entry_id=166" title="http://www.terryshometheater.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryshometheater.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Terry's Home Theater</a> site has:<br /> <ul style="margin-bottom: 5px; list-style: none;"><li><a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=863&amp;entry_id=166" title="http://www.terryshometheater.com/home-theater-systems.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryshometheater.com/home-theater-systems.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Home Theater Systems</a> — the first step in building your home theater is the audio system</li><li><br /> <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=864&amp;entry_id=166" title="http://www.terryshometheater.com/wireless-home-theater.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryshometheater.com/wireless-home-theater.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Wireless Home Theater</a> — would you rather get [...]

Home Theater PC presentation

Had a lot of fun today at Cajun Clickers. At 9am, I lead the Web Design SIG (special interest group). We had 7-8 people attending. Topics included the free, open-source WYSIWYG <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=562&amp;entry_id=125" title="http://www.nvu.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.nvu.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">web design program Nvu</a>, tutorials for Nvu, comparing Nvu and FrontPage, images in web pages, when and why [...]