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This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (293c3ca8-add1-47ab-a008-88b81c45bb17 - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Caster Communications, Inc. at 401.792.7080
S1DIGITAL INTRODUCES FIRST BLU-RAY DISC CHANGER FULLY INTEGRATED WITH MEDIA CENTER
S1Digital continues to grow its digital entertainment ecosystem with the introduction of a Blu-ray Disc Changer. New Rochelle, NJ – February 3, 2010 – S1Digital, the leader in digital entertainment solutions, today announced the launch of the S1Digital Blu-ray Disc Changer. The changer can hold 100 discs and seamlessly integrates with any S1Digiral Entertainment Server or Media Center. When connected to an S1Digital Media Center or any third party Microsoft Windows 7 or Vista PC that includes media center, customers are able to load up to 100 Blu-ray and/or DVD movies into the S1Digital Bly-ray Disc Changer. Using the included playback software, each disc will be scanned and metadata and cover-art automatically downloaded to the server. Once catalogued, users can view more information about the movie, or watch the movie by selecting the appropriate cover-art, which is all available on the familiar and easy-to-use media center interface. The changer is simple to use and enables almost instant access to movies without having to physically find and load each movie. (This feature is coming soon). “No other solution currently on the market integrates a Blu-ray changer with media center,” said Paul Heitlinger, President of S1Digital. “For customers that want instant and direct access to their movie discs, this is the only solution.” When connected to an S1Digital Entertainment Server or any third party Windows Home Server, customers can automatically archive their Blu-ray, DVD and CD discs to the server*. With the included software, every movie and audio disc will automatically be stored on the hard drive, catalogued and metadata and cover-art will be downloaded. As each movie or album is stored, it is immediately available on the customer’s home network from any S1Digital Media Center (or other PCs and certain media streaming devices) for playback. “A typical Blu-ray disc can take an hour or more to archive,” continues Paul Heitlinger. “With our solution, you simply load up the changer and hit go. You don’t have to load each disc one by one. The changer will automatically move from disc to disc so customers don’t have to worry about spending days manually storing movies and music.” The S1Digital Blu-ray Disc Changer is currently shipping and available for an MSRP of $1499 from http://www.s1digital.com/S1Digital_Blu_ray_disc_changer_p/bdc.htm. Dealer and reseller enquiries are welcome by contacting sales@s1digital.com or by calling (201) 402-1920. For more information on S1Digital, visit www.S1Digital.com. * Non copy protected discs only - copy protected discs cannot be legally copied About S1Digital Based in Rochelle Park, NJ, S1Digital manufactures and develops digital media servers and solutions for the home entertainment market. S1Digital provides a complete digital entertainment ecosystem with centralized archiving, storage and distribution of HD movies, live and recorded TV, videos, music, photos and more. As households increase the assortment of digital media they consume from many disparate sources, S1Digital’s Digital Entertainment Platform offers the best way to fully enjoy the home entertainment experience anywhere in the house. Press Contact: Caster Communications, Inc. at 401.792.7080 Lauren Simmen lsimmen@castercomm.com Amanda Nickerson amanda@castercomm.com For digital images log on to www.castercomm.com 
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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If you didn't win my review unit VidaBox is giving away one this month also. Just follow the banner below for your chance to win. 
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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The good folks over at VidaBox are letting me give away the Vcase3 chassis and Premium Wireless Keyboard that I reviewed over the past couple of months. To enter simply leave a comment below, comment as much as you like but I’ll only be counting 1 entry per person. “Mike’s Digital Home” is published to both The Green Button and The Digital Lifestyle sites, entries from both will be counted, still one entry per person. Because of shipping along with customs fees this contest is limited to the United States only. Comments up until 11:59 PM EST December 4th will count and I’ll contact the winners on December 5th. Good Luck!
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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Some of you voiced your opinions of the MSRP on the vCase3 and it looks like VidaBox listened. The new MSRP is $249.00, the $50 off coupon code (thegreenbutton) is still valid so for under $200 you could score this sweet case.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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Vidabox is currently offering $50 off their new vCase3 chassis, during checkout enter "thegreenbutton" (without the quotes) to take advantage of deal. When purchasing the chassis, you can also get a discount on their wireless keyboard and the Anyware IR remote+receiver kit.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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Earlier in the week I did an unboxing of this chassis, my initial impressions were high and after having built out a HTPC using the vCase3 my initial impressions were pretty much dead on. Anyone who has ever built a HTPC using other chassis such as ones from Silverstone or OrigenAE knows the pain of small tight spaces, having to remove sections of the case in a certain order in order to get all of your components in and if a hard drive should fail you’re in for about an hours worth of work replacing it. I’m extremely happy VidaBox realized how frustrating these scenarios were to those who want to build and maintain their own machines and has released a product sure to please almost everyone. For this build I picked up an Intel DP55WB microATX motherboard, an Intel Core i5-750 CPU, 4GB of OCZ PC3 12800 RAM, an ATI Radeon HD 4550 fanless low profile display adapter from Sapphire, an Asus Xonar XDAV Slim 1.3 sound card, and a Cooler Master ATX power supply. I used a 500GB hard drive and an LG HD-DVD Blu-ray combo drive I had laying around to finish it off. The build couldn’t of been simpler. For ease of installation and to keep vibration noise down VidaBox uses rubber vibration-isolating screws, you simply screw these into yours drives by hand and they slide and lock into place in the chassis.
  The rest of the build is pretty much the same as any other HTPC build would be. One of my favorite features of the chassis are these vibration-isolating screws and the way the drives are easily installed and removed from the chassis. One of the other big benefits to this chassis is ventilation. The way in which the chassis was designed guarantees any motherboard & CPU combination will have a clear shot out of the case for displacing heat, which in turn makes the fan run at a lower RPM which keeps the fan noise down to almost nothing. With the stock Intel fan that came with my i5-750 I have to put my ear on top of the chassis to hear it running.
 There are two things though I wish were incorporated into the design. The first being an integrated Microsoft IR Receiver. Most other HTPC chassis have some sort of integrated receiver, most however aren’t that great (like my built in imon ir receiver in my main system that I disable). I think a good standard internal Microsoft IR receiver was a missed opportunity to make this chassis even better then it already is. My other wish is while I do like the size of the chassis I wish it was a few inches taller to accommodate for full height cards. My next tuner purchase will be the Ceton CableCard tuner which is a full height card so it won’t work in this chassis. Despite these two things this is hands down the best HTPC chassis I’ve seen. If all the cards you want to use are available in half height configurations this is THE chassis for you!  
  The vCase3 is available now from VidaBox for $299, but keep an eye out for a black Friday deal that will knock a nice chunk off.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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In the coming weeks VidaBox will be releasing their new vCase Premium chassis for the DIY crowd. This half height chassis was designed from the ground up with HTPC users in mind. VidaBox took a little different approach to their case design then most other half height case’s I’ve seen in that while it is designed for Micro ATX or Mini ITX motherboards it also uses a full sized power supply and optical drive, can hold 3 hard drives and has a built in card reader, which pretty much means you can build a powerhouse of a machine in small chassis. Over the next few days I’m going to be building a pretty sweet DIY HTPC around this case and I’ll have a full review of how everything went, for now here are some unboxing pictures. 
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating VidaBox’s new Premium Wireless Keyboard. The keyboard arrived nicely packaged, and comes with a nice soft case for storing it away while not in use.  
The keyboard features all the media keys along the top that you’d expect to find on a HTPC Keyboard, along with a trackball. I have to admit when I first saw the trackball I was a little put off by it, I’ve never been good at using them. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy I picked up using it and how accurate. I would still personally prefer a track pad, but given the small nature of the keyboard I can see why the trackball was chosen. 
Installation couldn’t be easier, I simply plugged in the included small dongle into my test Windows 7 HTPC and I was ready to go. There’s no software that has to be loaded, or any that even comes with the device for that matter, which is another plus for this device. The range on the keyboard is also great, I used it up to ~40 feet away from my HTPC and never had any issues with losing key strokes or accuracy with the trackball. To keep the size of the keyboard down there’s isn’t a dedicated number pad, so turning num lock on (which is a bios and Windows default) takes over some of the letters on the keyboard to use as a number pad. This threw me for a few after I rebooted as I couldn’t logon to my machine. After realizing that num lock was on and I was able to logon and turn num lock off Windows remembered my preference. If needed you can also turn most bio’s boot options to not enable num lock. If you’re looking for a small wireless keyboard with great range add this one to your list to check out and I guarantee it’ll end up being at the top of your list. After having the chance to evaluate it I would have no reservations in purchasing one.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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Today Microsoft announced a few new CableCard features that will be available in Windows 7 Media Center. The biggest (in my opinion anyway) is that Microsoft and CableLabs have come to a new agreement around how end users can get access to the technology. Previously the only option (other then a recently discovered hack) to use a Digital Cable Tuner was to buy a pre-configured system from an OEM, this left the DIY & smaller system builders out. Today’s announcement will allow end users and small OEM’s to add Digital Cable Tuners to their systems. To enable this functionality Microsoft will release a utility that checks the system to make sure the end user will have a good experience while using the tuners on their system, if the system passes the test it will enable Digital Cable Tuner support in Media Center. What that utility actually checks is unsure, my guess is it checks for an HDCP display and display adapter, along with CPU and memory. Another big announcement was the support for Switched Digital Video (SDV). Like other CableCard based systems the user will need to get a tuning adapter from their provider. The only bad thing about this is that the tuning adapters work in such a way that you’ll need an adapter for each tuner you have, someone like me who has 7 CableCard tuners this will add a lot of equipment to my setup. Last but certainly not least is the relaxed DRM we’ve been hearing about since the release of the 2008 TV Pack. This will allow shows that are flagged as Copy Freely to be played back other Media Centers in your home. This will allow users to share recordings from local stations, premium stations such as HBO or Showtime will still be encrypted. To enable all of these features updated firmware for ATI’s Digital Cable Tuner is required. Microsoft said this should be released before Windows 7 GA on 10/22. The full press release can be read here.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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So with the release of Windows 7 on horizon and it's new features such as Play to, homegroup, and even Media Center extenders (what's left of them anyway) good network connectivity between all the machines in your home is just one of the must haves in my opinion. Anyone that has read my posts on thegreenbutton.com's forums knows I'm not a big fan of wireless for extender usage or media streaming in general. For those that, in the past, had no other option as getting cat-5 to some locations just wasn't possible there's a new to consumers technology finally hitting the shelves, MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) which has Coax to Ethernet bridges. The first devices available are from Netgear, the MCA1001 coax to Ethernet bridge. It's being sold in a pack of 2 for around $189 US. I picked up two kits a couple weeks ago to test them out. I had my Media Center and Bed Room Extender hardwired, but not in the ideal way, I had drilled some holes through walls, ran it along baseboards, etc.. It worked and you really couldn't see that the cables were there as I colored matched them to my walls but my 2 year found them and he loves to pull on them. : ) So back to MoCA, I installed one device in my office which is where my servers (homeserver, domain controllers etc..) and where the Internet router is located. The next device that got plugged into the switch in my living room where my Media Center, Xbox 360, DNLA TV, and 2 HD Homeruns are located. 2 things I found out while getting this up and running. The MoCA devices do not work if they are downstream from a drop amp, so I had to rewire somethings to get them hooked up to the cable coming from the wall (I have a drop amp in my office and in the living room because of the amount of tuners I have). After that I found that my OCUR's wouldn't work if they were downstream from the MoCA devices, so I ended up putting in a splitter from the wall 1 leg going to the MoCA device and the other to my drop amp and everything was happy. I tested like this for about a week before moving on, I had no issues streaming HD content from my homeserver while others used hardwired extenders. The next step was to install a device in the bedroom for the extender there, that was a simple install just replacing the Ethernet cable from the extender and running it to the MoCA device, and hooking the MoCA device up to the coax in the bedroom. The extender came right up and is running just as good as it was when it was usually a traditional hard wired Ethernet connection. So anyone who is looking for a way to get good network performance that can't use a traditional Ethernet connection I highly recommend checking out these devices. I have in the past tried Powerline to Ethernet bridges and no luck what so ever so it's nice to see something that just worked out of the box, with the exception of my drop amp and OCUR issues which I imagine most people wouldn't see.
Cross Posted from My Media Center Blog
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