Tag Archives: Windows Media Center

I will admit it. I am usually a hold out. In this particular case, I held out as long as I could in fear that an upgrade wouldn't work the way I liked it to. For a long time I had been using a combination of WMC (Windows Media Center) and XBMC to front end my Home Theater PC. WMC handled my Live TV streaming with a cable card and an HDHomerun Prime, while XBMC did everything else. To be honest, XBMC had some level of PVR functionality built-in to handle live TV... but it was crap in comparison and a major headache to configure with my setup.

I have always had an HTPC as my home theater's centerpiece. The flexibility that an HTPC brings simply can't be matched by the likes of WD TV Live, Apple TV, or any Roku. I have the ability to spin a disc, play my enormous library of music and movies, and watch live TV. The only thing that had been holding my HTPC back from being adopted as the primary solution by my fiance was a keyboard and mouse. In order to rid my self of our cable box, I had to find a solution that anyone could use, including my technophobic fiancé.

Having recently reviewed the SilverStone Grandia GD08 and loving it, I was looking for a way to satisfy the one need SilverStone left me with.  The case design didn’t allow for a standard 5.25 inch bay device to be used due to the flip down panels incorporated to conceal your optical drives.  This, in turn, meant that installing the coveted …

If you have a large multimedia library you have probably been looking for a good way to keep everything organized. There are a number of software packages out there that can help, but which ones are the best? Hopefully, we can help clear up some of the confusion by shedding some light on some of the software packages that can …

Lately, I have been experimenting with various types of front ends for my HTPC from the likes of PLEX, XBMC, MediaPortal, and more.  For some reason though, they all seem to fall short, in their own ways, of Windows Media Center.  After tons if installs and uninstalls, I settled on using the MediaBrowser Plugin for Windows Media Center… but there …

For a long time I had resisted converting my DVD and Blu-Ray disks into any other format because I didn’t want to lose any quality.  I had lived by this rule for a long time, and thankfully companies like QNAP and Thecus came to my storage rescue.  However, the day has come where the cost of storing all the extra …