items tagged with homecinema

   My list of BLU-RAY is growing: 32 titles

Will try to keep that list up to date, especially for all my friends that
come by and enjoy seeing movies in my home cinema.

1. Buy a dedicated embedded appliance (Hauppauge, Pinnacle, linksys others) they are cheap but firmwares update is dependent of a company, and not all movies may be correctly played on them.
2. Mod a device, XBOX (powered by XBMC) and/or XBOX360 (soon possible with I.C.E mod chip??) and run a dedicated Linux HTPC on top of it.
3. Buy a dedicated Media Center PC but then It is full of DRM, and I am blocked in a Microsoft world....expensive, noisy (for the least expensive model)
4. Build a customs PC, with selected and dedicated hardware and run on top of it, Microsoft MCE 2005 or Linux MythTV (www.mythtv.org) or MediaPortal  (www.team-mediaportal.com)
5. Buy a dedicated powerful appliance, for example a Dreambox (www.dream-multimedia-tv.de), but I would rather wait on the Dreambox HDTV model
   

• The Linux HTPC How to: The purpose of the Linux HTPC How to is to help educate people who are interested in learning about or building their own media computer (aka HTPC).
• MediaPortal is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC in a very advanced Multi-Media Center / HTPC. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more. You get MediaPortal for free, as Open Source software. This means anyone can help develop MediaPortal or tweak-it for their own needs

I've probably found my next projector, if only price is right...

Texas Instruments DLP® Products Demonstrates Innovation Leadership with New Prototypes Including Lamp-Free
Projector DLP unveils the world's first 3-D Front Projector and shows the first DLP Pico chipset product
Texas Instruments at InfoComm DLP® Products introduced the industry's first home theater lamp-free projector
that utilizes a PhlatLight™ LED light source and a BrilliantColor™ chipset. This technology demo delivers a superior
1080p picture for which DLP technology is known, while eliminating maintenance costs such as lamp replacements
and filter changes required by some competing projector products. Multiple DLP customers have plans to develop
DLP lamp-free LED-based projectors, including Optoma, with units expected to ship in late 2008. Similar to the
deployment of DLP Product's now popular BrilliantColor technology, the solid-state, lamp-free innovation will first
be incorporated into home theater units and proliferate through corporate and education product lines thereafter.

Benefits of Lamp-free projectors

• LED are coming from Luminus (120'000 hours lifetime or 13 years!),
• With DLP chipset, more light can reach the screen resulting in a 50% increase in color gamut range producing more
  than 200 trillion colors!
• Contrast ratio expected in excess of 500,000:1.
• 30% lower power usage
• No cooling  or FAN, no dust and cleaning required
• hundreds of euro in savings from lamp purchases.

Visit http://www.luminus.com/ and http://www.dlp.com/

Below are some pictures of my first home cinema setup

1. The flat LCD TV is a samsung LE61B 32 inch (82cm), located below on pictures
2. The projector is a Panasonic PT900AE, 720pp, light in ECO mode and I use a normal white wall.

Windows desktop (simulator run only under windows)

Simulator www.reflex-sim.de in fullscreen!!!

Appreciate the difference of size.....And here How the projector is attached to the wall:

Big but cheap (45euro), a Panasonic fixation cost 560CHF A lot of space bellow, for a XBOX360, a PS3, a dreambox or linux mediacenter...(planned)

Note: The picture quality do not reflect the terrific colors and quality of this projector. (Camera Sony DSC700 2.1MP 1998)

• Gizmodo first look
• Hands-On With Microsoft's True Ultimate Keyboard
• The Real Microsoft Ultimate Wireless Keyboard Gallery: