Social Media Center Boxee in Action
That short video presentation demonstrates all features of social media center Boxee in action. Enjoy!
Fashion HTPC case
HTPC case AVC-S1 produced by Korean company GMC doesn’t look like a PC at all. It supports Micro ATX motherboards. The aluminum front panel of AVC-S1 sports 16 X 2 VFD display, menu navigation jog button and enter button. Detachable internal 3.5″ drive cage allows to install HDD easily. The AVC-S1 has four expansion slots for low profile cards. Additionally it can be equiped with IR receiver and remote control.
The price of the GMC AVC-S1 is about €150 which is very reasonable for such kind of HTPC cases. By some reason GMC products are not available in Europe but I found a lot offers in Russia. It looks a strange a bit for me.
Stylish HTPC and NAS cases
American company A-Tech Fabrication offers interesting cases for HTPC and NAS. The stylish aluminium cases include integrated HeatSync cooling system for CPU and video card. That system uses side panels as radiator. So, it doesn’t need coolers with fan. Also, cases are equiped by HDD Isolation System to eliminate noise from vibrations.
The price is not so cheap as we’d like :). For example, the price of the case on the picture is $749 + additional options.
P. S. I was really surprised when I found the suggested dimensions for the expansion cards to use with A-Tech Fabrication’s cases. Usually the proper hardware can be found by testing only.
Boxee is “social” media center software
Recently I found information about new HTPC software - Boxee. The Boxee is a first “social” media center. it plays media from your computer and other devices in your home network, as well as connect you to various Internet sources that allow you to stream or download movies, tv shows, music and photos.
The Boxee was started in 2007 and is based on the XBMC open-source project. Currently two alpha versions of Boxee are available - for Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X. The Windows version is planning later this year.
There are no sreenshots or details on the project’s site. I sent request for alpha testing but didn’t receive invitation yet. Will share my experience when get and install it on my PC.
New release of XMLTV
A few days ago new version of XMLTV was released. The changes of v. 0.5.52 are following:
- tv_grab_uk_rt: lots of improvements.. should upgrade
- tv_grab_re: better season/episode number handling
- tv_grab_be: responding to source site changes
- tv_grab_fr: better title detection
- tv_grab_huro: now generates stop times
- tv_grab_na_dtv: responding to source site changes
- tv_grab_pt: responding to source site changes
- tv_grab_za: improve episode tags
- not working, removed: tv_grab_il, tv_grab_nl_wolf
- some bugfixes and polish.
XMLTV is used in the PVR software such VDR or MythTV to get and parse EPG data.
[via MythTV News]