Smart Home Blog

LG announced its new stylish BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player. It can play high definition Blu-ray discs and up-convert standard DVDs to 1080p. But this is not a reason to pay $500 for BD300. The most interesting feature is possibility to use that player as a Netflix client (Netflix is the world’s largest online movie rental service, with more than eight million subscribers). So, using BD300 Netflix subscribers will able to stream more than 12,000 choices of movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the TV for no additional charge. Sure it possible to use Roku to watch rented movies from Netflix. But it’s good idea to have combination DVD/Blu-ray and network player in one.

LG’s BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player will be available in US this September. So, movie fans, don’t miss it!

[via Engadget]

HDTV becomes a standard de-facto in home entertainment area. Technology of wireless transmitting data is also very popular (who likes those annoying wires!). So, it’s time to develop a comprehensive new industry standard for multi-room audio, video and control connectivity” utilizing the aforementioned Wireless Home Digital Interface technology. Currently a special interest group includes AMIMON (WHDI creator), Motorola, Samsung, Sony and Sharp. New standard will be based on WHDI – Wireless Home Digital Interface, the key ingredient of which is a revolutionary video-modem that operates in the 5GHz unlicensed band to enable robust wireless delivery of uncompressed HD video (including 1080p).

Hope that new standard will make life of producers, installers and consumers easier.

[via Engadget]

MyMote is another cool application for iPhone. It transform Apple’s phone into smart MythTV remote control. Unlike a bunch of web based iPhone applications MyMote is developed using Apple iPhone SDK and it can be downloaded from the App Store without any charges. Unfortunately the applications is not approved yet. But you can get an ad hoc distribution of a development snapshot here.

The MyMote is an open source application. So, you can get its code, improve it or make a donation to its author for his excellent work.

[via MythTV News]

UI2 with overlay and resolution 1080p

Yesterday I made a few shots of ASUS P2-M2A690G. It’s really great. I found that there are actually two sound cards. One uses analog and digital outputs and another – HDMI. That means it’s possible to send audio and video via one HDMI cable!

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Yesterday I got barebone ASUS P2-M2A690G for testing as media director for LinuxMCE. That box is priced just in €100. But it’s really good: integrated ATI RadeonTM 1250 with HDMI output, S/PDIF-out (Optical) audio, slim form-factor and nice looking design.

Additionally I had Desktop Athlon 64 X2 5400+ and 2GB RAM. Installation of processor and memory took about 15 minutes (thanks to well thought-out internal design). By the way I like the quality of P2-M2A690G assembling. All wires are tied up into braid and placed around case. So, internal space looks very clear.

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