Microsoft Wants to Invade Your Home, and that’s a Good Thing
As much as I can’t stand that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition show, I wouldn’t mind if Ty and his buddies came to my house and whipped it into shape with a few sledgehammers and new furniture. There is one thing that I never see the Extreme Makeover team do: connect all electronic devices in the household together, seamlessly. In other words, all the electronic devices (TV, PC, etc.) are all wired or shared together seamlessly in a true Digital Home Makeover. It appears that Microsoft wants to fill that homeowner’s need with the launching of their Digital Home Makeover Contest. To enter, you have to make a video of yourself creatively explaining why you need a Digital Home Makeover. If you win, your dream will come true, and Microsoft will come to your door. They will then apply their Windows Media Center and Extenders for Windows Media Center to make your home completely connected. By connected, I mean that every room will have full access to your digital material. If you are drooling over this, you had better hurry and make your video, submit it here , and enter by April 18. You won’t have to wait too long to see if you won, because the winner will be announced on April 30. Source Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames , check out our analysiss. [ Microsoft Wants to Invade Your Home, and that’s a Good Thing copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
$380 – Amazon.com: Onkyo HT-SR800 7.1 Home Theater Entertainment System (Black): Electronics
Amazon.com: Onkyo HT-SR800 7.1 Home Theater Entertainment System (Black): Electronics
Best 1080p Home Theater Projectors Compared – Best in Class Awards
Read more: Best 1080p Home Theater Projectors Compared – Best in Class Awards
Coolest Trashcan ever …
And around $100, it may be the most expensive too! But come on, it’s R2D2, man! The only thing that would make this cooler is if it doubled as a trash compactor with swiss army knife attachments. From Urban Outfitters : “Remember when Luke and Leia and the gang were stuck in that trash-compactor aboard the Death Star? And the walls were closing in and there was some kind of gross muck monster down there and everything? Well, remember how R2D2 hacked into the computer system and stopped the contractor from crushing everyone, saving the day like a little robot hero? Pretty awesome, right? But you know what the moral of that story was? R2D2 knows how to handle some trash!” It’s the perfect addition to that Star Wars themed room you have. Especially if it’s a home theater . Made of durable vinyl construction, the R2 trash can is 24-inches high, and you open R2’s head by stepping on his center “foot.” A removable interior bucket makes taking out the trash easy – although, come on, why doesn’t the “well put together” astromech droid empty himself? But it doesn’t really need to be just for trash. This R2 unit can also become the coolest drink cooler of all time. Just fill with Ice and the drink of your choice. And if you can attach R2 to iRobot’s Developers Kit Robot , you’ll have R2 serving bar like from Return of the Jedi! Gotta have one of these. Available also at ThinkGeek . Hat tip: Like Cool Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames , check out our analysiss. [ Coolest Trashcan ever … copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Mac Mini + XBMC = The ultimate media center?
A couple of years ago (it doesn’t seem that long ago…) I waxed lyrical about the advantages of using a modded Xbox with XBMC as a living room media adapter. Unfortunately technology moves on and my trusty Xbox just didn’t have the horsepower to play back high definition content. The next gen consoles can do it but they still aren’t as flexible as I’d like (although kudos to Microsoft for finally enabling DivX playback on the 360 ). So what do to? The Mac Mini stepped in to fill the gap nicely; the new Core Duo models are fairly powerful, it’s tiny and it’s almost silent running. It’s also surprisingly good value for money – I can’t build a PC that ticks all those boxes for the price of a mini. It seems like the developers of the original XBMC software had the same thought and they’ve been porting the media player software to OSX. Over the past month or so I’ve been watching the OSXBMC project with interest and it looks like it’s finally become solid enough for general use. XBMC (the Xbox Media Center) is a front end application for playing back video and music. Think Front Row++. Unlike Front Row it doesn’t force you to have your audio/video files in the iTunes managed folder structure, and it also plays back just about anything you can throw at it including .ISO/VOB and FLAC files. Front row can do some of this with perian , but XBMC seems more efficient to me. In my testing it played 720p .MKV files from a LAN share with no dropped frames and can also handle 1080p content, although that’s pushing the mac to the limits of it’s ability. I’ve never been able to do either of these with Front Row/Perian. Although I said it’s solid, it still has it’s roots very much in the Xbox world. That means that there are some menu items on the main interface that are just not applicable to the mac and others that behave slightly oddly. If you don’t mind a bit of experimentation though it’s well worth a look. Get the software from here , and the FAQ here Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames , check out our analysiss. [ Mac Mini + XBMC = The ultimate media center? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
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