Smart Home Blog

Sony recently announced its new 1080p TVs Z-series with support of Yahoo! Widget Engine to pull down Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube, Slacker and other web-based content directly to the TV. Thanks to Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) it’ll be possible to playback video files from PC or NAS via local network. Welcome to TV 2.0!

There will be following models available in two sets. The first will contains 52-inch KDL-52XBR9, 46-inch KDL-46XBR, 40-inch KDL-40XBR90 and 32-inch and the seconds one – KDL-32XBR9, 52-inch KDL-52Z5100, 46-inch KDL-46Z5100, and 40-inch KDL-40Z5100. All of therm sport 1080p panels, BRAVIA Sync, four HDMI inputs, an Ethernet jack and an Energy Star 3.0 sticker.

The new Z-Series of Sony HDTVs should be available this Spring. No any info regarding the price.

Started thinking about DVB-S(2) card for the new LinuxMCE hybrid core. After visit to the DVBShop I found two variants which seem suit for me – Technotrend Budget S2-3200 HDTV-S2 and S-1500. The last one is 100% working solution for Linux and LinuxMCE with VDR 1.6.0. But DVB-S becomes the history and now DVB-S2 seems more perspective. Especially for the coming HDTV. So, S2-3200 in that case will be better solution then S-1500. But from other point of view it’ll need more work to bring it up under VDR 1.6.0 and Kubuntu 7.10.

Well, currently I rate both cards by 50%. But the S2-3200 is tipping the scale little by little. I think that it’s more perspective solution. And it’d be good to experiment with it a bit

After Roku released Netflix Player and opened codes of its software people started thinking about using it as MythFrontend. Amazing functionality – decoding MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, H.264 and support HD content (1080i/720p), nice design and, of course, good price can make with Netflix Player the same as was done for Hauppauge MediaMVP. It isn’t a problem that the player is designed for Roku IPTV service. MediaMVP was also expected to work in the Microsoft environment. But now it’s full-featured front-end for MythTV. Well, let’s see.

[source: MythTV News]

Nice and clear looking stand for media center designed by Reynold Rodriguez. It isn’t so easy to find a good furniture to put there all parts of home theater including wall mounted plasma or LCD.

[via Unplagged]

I already wrote about project “Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone”. It give possibility for all owners of iPhone to access and manage their Asterisk voice mail messages. Now it’s time to add to that cool gadget watching videos recorded with MythTV.

The new software allows not only streaming recorded video from MythTV back-end to the iPhone but also browse recorded shows, look at show details and even control your other (PC based) MythFrontend with a web-based remote control.

The MythTV for iPhone uses the same approach as Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone. There is no iPhone native application. Instead of that it uses customized web interface. So, theoretically, you can access to your MythTV back-end from any place where is WiFi access.

MythTV for iPhone can be downloaded from the Google Code Project. Also you can find there detailed instructions howto install, configure and use that software.

Live demo after jump.
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