Apple TV 3rd Generation

Like many I sat and watched live streams of the iPad 3 media event on the 7th March 2012, and sat at drooled at the new shiny. In addition to the iPad 3 being launched there was the announcement of the 3rd generation Apple TV. It’s selling features at the event was a new shiny UI and the ability to output 1080 video (instead of the 720 from the 2nd generation) Although the 1080 did sound appealing, I spend the best part of a month encoding all my media to 720, and didn’t plan on re-encoding all the blurays to … Continue reading Apple TV 3rd Generation

Xbox Live “Metro” Dashboard

Being a Software Tester and a Gamer, I obviously jumped at the chance to become a beta tester for the new Xbox Dashboard. Earlier this week I got the “Time for an update” message, and knew it was time to play. As always with the Xbox updates, it just worked, took very little time and before I knew it, I was presented with the new dash, and I have to say, Microsoft have really impressed me. So, what to expect when this goes live to the public ? First screen you get is, Download a profile, Create a profile, or … Continue reading Xbox Live “Metro” Dashboard

Apple TV 2nd Generation

So today my Apple TV (2nd Generation) turned up, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Anybody who knows me or has been reading these my post, will know that over the last couple of years, I’ve become an Apple fan boy I’ve gradually replaced my MP3 player, my phone, my PCs and even my entire network with Apple products, and as time has gone by, I’ve organised my entire music collection to be “iTunes friendly”. I’ve been toying with the idea of an Apple TV for a while now, and very nearly bought one of the 1 generation … Continue reading Apple TV 2nd Generation

PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade

Around Christmas time I bought a Sony PS3, with a 40Gb hard drive, feeling this would be more that sufficient. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself having to delete demo, audio and video file, just so I can install games. Last weekend I bought Ghostbusters (blog coming soon), but was unable to play the game as it insisted on installing content to the hard drive before I could play, so time for an upgrade. I browsed the web and found a pretty cheap “Western Digital 500GB 2.5″ Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm 8MB Cache – OEM Scorpio Blue” … Continue reading PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade

Belkin Powerline AV 200Mbps Networking Adapter (F5D4072uk)

Anybody who watches HD content, will know that streaming this across a wireless network is virtually impossible. My upstairs network is wired, however downstairs (my Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3) are all wireless. This has been fine for gaming, web browsing, and everything else I normally use the Internet for downstairs, however it’s just not quick enough to stream HD content. I’m a bit of a AV snob, and like the Video and Audio quality to be the best I can get. I like most people download TV episode from the web (just seems easier than recording via Sky, plus … Continue reading Belkin Powerline AV 200Mbps Networking Adapter (F5D4072uk)

Acer Aspire Easystore 2TB NAS drive

I’ve added to my toy collection, I’ve bought (as the title would suggest) a new NAS Drive. I’ve has for the pass couple of years a 500Gb Western Digital MyBookWorld, which as ….well ok, well, slow, unstable, and over heats all the time. I had quite a manual process to back this up too, I had to keep a machine on all the time, to run a scheduled task, to sync all the contents on the NAS drive to an external 500Gb hard drive, this was effective, however kind of overkill for a simple backup solution. btw, the reason I’m … Continue reading Acer Aspire Easystore 2TB NAS drive