At an ever-increasing rate, the router is becoming the most crucial piece of hardware in home entertainment and home control, not only for providing streaming audio and video from the interwebs, but also as the central communications hub for modern home automation systems. Add to that the fact that most of us use Wi-Fi to more »

Windows Blue, the oft-discussed follow-up to Windows 8 (or fix, or last-ditch attempt, depending upon your point of view), now has an official name. The OS update is now officially known as Windows 8.1, according to CNET, and is expected to arrive on store shelves by the 2013 holiday buying frenzy season. Mind you, I more »

The biggest problem with media servers is disc space. Eventually, no matter how big your hard drive, no matter what you do, you’re going to fill up your storage drive and have to add more storage space. Media boxes like WDTV or Roku can take external hard drives, but there’s always a catch. Like anything, you more »

Fortune has a brief but interesting new piece  exploring the increasing prevalence of the internet as a source of entertainment on living room TV screens, with a few facts and figures that, when taken together, reveal just how how much trouble the traditional linear cable industry is facing. Intriguing figures taken from a report by Diffusion Group entitled Defining the more »

Time Warner is pretty infamous for terrible service on both the TV and internet side. So terrible, in fact, that its legend has even reached into the 24th century, endangering a certain captain’s will to live.  With the threat of gigabit Google Fiber coming Time Warner’s way in Austin, TX, the company has decided that the best more »

Cyberlink’s PowerDVD is one of the most popular packages for Blu-ray and DVD playback on personal computers, and the newly released v13 has a ton of exciting features sure to be of interest to HTPC fans. Via TWICE: The software also includes improved “TrueTheater” picture quality enhancements offering “better-than original” images, even for Blu-ray Disc more »

Vizio isn’t just about televisions anymore; the company first introduced all-in-one desktops last year that that can double as a TV for a dorm room or bedroom super-smart TV experience, and the line has just been updated — along with the company’s tablet PCs and Thin + Light notebooks — to include touchscreen monitors perfect more »

Perhaps the coolest thing about Raspberry Pi — the itty bitty little $35 computer that fits in the palm of your hand — isn’t its size. Or its price. The coolest thing about it is the way it has inspired users to tweak it, hack it, and put it to use in all sorts of more »

I don’t need to tell you that the computer is playing an increasingly more important role in every aspect of the home these days, from A/V entertainment to productivity to gaming to home automation. Heck, I have friends with multiple PCs scattered around the home, each with its own dedicated role: at least one each more »

The fabled six-strikes system of punishing people who pirate copyrighted material on P2P networks is coming into reality over the next couple days. The first few offenses will result in scoldings and educational videos, while further offenses will see progressively longer periods where your bandwidth is choked to the point where piracy is impractical. ISPs more »