News and Reviews

I'm going to raffle off the ASRock E350M1/USB3 motherboard/CPU combo I initially used in my TiVo repurposing article. I've replaced it with a more powerful one, which I used in the SmallNetBuilder TVersity review. This would be a great motherboard for use in building a Vortexbox.
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Reprinted verbatim from ecobee's press release.



May 7, 2012: To kick-off the launch of their new residential product, the ecobee Smart Si thermostat and to preview their latest commercial product, the ecobee EMS Si thermostat, ecobee Inc., makers of the award-winning Smart and EMS thermostats, announced today that they will be embarking on a 7-week long Road Trip across the United States beginning in May.
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PlayLater is a DVR for online videos from MediaMall Technologies which allows you to watch your favorite online shows and movies offline, anytime, on your time. It sounds great, but before you jump on the bandwagon, read on.
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I first came up with the idea of recycling old car audio equipment to build a garage stereo after building a work bench in my garage and liking how uncluttered everything looked. The old stereo was a cheap bookshelf system that took up a lot of real estate and just looked dumb. I knew the car stereo system from my teenage youth was up in a closet at my retired parents' home, so when they came out to visit I asked them to take it along. A few hours of magic and I knew I could have a unique system for the garage.

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If you have any questions on setting up a whole house audio system after reading this article, just visit the forums and I'll answer almost immediately.

Part 1 of the series is the hack version of whole house audio that can be put together basically for free. In Part 2 I'll explore how to do a more professional home audio solution without the need for satellite devices, and it will be done for right around $1000.

It's attractive to want to listen to your music in any room in the house. With the apparent death of the CD (that should get some comments about music quality) in favor of purchased downloads through iTunes and streaming of services like Pandora, wanting to listen to music stored on the computer without burning a CD is a reasonable request. Today I want to show you how to do this pretty much free, with stuff you have lying around the house.

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