posted in Gadgets by martin on 22 July 2004
Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR 350 web site
So now that I have MediaPortal running on my PC-under-the-TV I wanted to see if adding a TV capture card would provide me a PVR to rival my beloved Tivo. I was also keen to have a remote control to control MediaPortal instead of using the wireless querty keyboard that clutters up our lounge. The recommendation from the main MediaPortal developer was to go for a capture card that included an onboard MPEG encoder such as the WinTV-PVR 350. I did a bit of looking around and Amazon seemed to be offering the best price at
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 06 June 2004
Mediaportal Homepage
Ever since I built a PC to connect to the living room TV, I have been looking for a simple way to use it for traditional home entertainment. Although I can stream MP3s, videos and photos across our home network to this PC, it
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 20 May 2004
I was interested to read that PC Pro magazine has this month published a review of the top 18 portable MP3 players. The market leader is by far the Apple iPod so it was a surprise to see the iPod not even making the top 5. Although the iPod generally scores well on looks, style and ease of use, it falls down on price and battery life. Some of the other models now available have a battery life that is around 2 - 3 times as long and cost considerably less. This is in addition to the scare stories that appeared recently about the iPod
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 19 May 2004
AOC
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 09 May 2004
[Krups' Artese 2 web site]
I confess, I have become a bit of a coffee snob. For literally years I tried to perfect the art of making great coffee without much success. I
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 29 April 2004
[Belkin's Pocket Hub web site]
Although my laptop has two USB ports I?m finding it?s just not enough. (It?s likely that my next laptop may have just one USB port - but that?s another story). My wireless mouse, Palm Tungsten and Pocket PC all require a USB port. Then there?s my ?Flash Drive? (just what is the right term to describe those things?), my MP3 player, my digital camera ? the list goes on.
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 22 April 2004
I have been drafting a couple of 'blog entries on a few new toys I have been playing with and decided there was something missing. No decent review would be complete without a rating system. My subjective waffle may be fine for me but without a clear, concise and quantative rating how can anybody see what's good and what's not ?
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 15 April 2004
Well it may as well be with all the effort I've put into to getting something I actually like. I've spent a fair amount of time looking at other peoples 'blogs, searching the web and trying out different systems. I even considered building my own, but in this day and age that would be stupid.
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posted in Gadgets by martin on 01 April 2004
This is the start of my new weblog. I'm hoping to use it to share information, news and my research into the various gadgets that come my way. I'm a real sucker for small (and sometimes not so small) electronic gizmos that do cool and interesting things. I often spend weeks researching every magazine article and web site before I finally make a choice. This blog is a big step for me. Will I have the motivation to keep it running? Who knows, but there's only one way to find out.
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