Category: Home Theater

  • HDTV Terminology Explained

    Reading Time: < 1 minute After last week’s HDTV home theater installation article, Operation Gadget got a number of questions asking for an explanation of the terminology used to describe HDTV. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d point to a few articles where much of that information already exists: Defining TV Jargon by…

  • How We Installed a Home Theater with DirecTV and Over-the-Air HDTV

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Home Theater with HDTV: We installed a 34-inch HDTV Flat-screen CRT, an A/V receiver, a DirecTV HD receiver, a HiFi VCR, and a DVD player. See how we did it in in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ] On Thursday, I installed a very nice HDTV home…

  • Building a Home Theater

    Reading Time: < 1 minute I will be building a home theater today in Central New Jersey. We can’t blog it, because there is no broadband connection there, but we intend to post an article about the experience later on tonight or tomorrow morning. Update: Here are links to the how-we-did-it article and a photo…

  • TiVo Distributed Almost 2,000 Free PVRs to Bay Area Comcast Customers

    Reading Time: < 1 minute In case you didn’t see the outcome of the TiVo giveaway in the Bay Area, The San Jose Mercury News reported that nearly 2,000 TiVo PVRs were given away to Comcast customers who had wanted Comcast PVRs but had not yet received them. More than 2,000 toys were collected for…

  • TiVo Offering Free PVRs to Comcast Customers in the Bay Area on December 17, 2004

    Reading Time: < 1 minute TiVo announced that they will give away TiVo units to Comcast customers who can get to TiVo’s headquarters in Alviso, CA tomorrow between 11:00am and 1:00pm Pacific Time. In order to receive a TiVo, you will need to bring: a Comcast cable bill for current service, a photo ID matching…

  • “Hacker’s Favorite DVD Player” in Stock at Amazon.com

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Martin O’Donnell pointed out this Tech Bargains article reporting that the Philips DVP642 DVD/CD/MP3/DivX Player is in stock at Amazon.com. Tech Bargains calls the DVP642: … currently the hacker’s favorite DVD player. Plays downloaded movies. DVD, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW, CD, CD-R/RW, VCD, SVCD, MP3-CD, MPEG-4, Picture-CD and DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x, AVI. ……

  • Toshiba SD-H400 is the Cheapest “TiVo Basic” Device Available

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Toshiba SD-H400 Combination Progressive-Scan DVD Player and TiVo PVR: Currently the least expensive device with TiVo Basic service. [ Photo: Amazon.com ] Some people who are interested in owning a Personal Video Recorder don’t want to pay for value added services from companies like TiVo. Earlier this year, TiVo rolled…

  • VCRs Pronounced Dead by Reuters

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Martin O’Donnell pointed out a Reuters article published last week that declared the home video cassette recorder dead. The article cites several reasons for the pronouncement: Dixons, one of the UK’s biggest electronics dealers, has announced that it will stop selling VCRs after selling them for 26 years, British police…

  • Roku Soundbridge M1000 is a Great Partner for iTunes, Except for Purchased Music

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Roku Soundbridge M1000: A great companion for your iTunes music library, except that it won’t play secure files purchased from the iTunes Music Store. [ Photo: Amazon.com ] Ever since I started building my iTunes music library, I’ve been toying with the idea of buying some sort of network audio streamer…