Posts from — April 2007

nVidia recently released their 8500 and 8600 chipsets which feature full H.264 Decode acceleration. The H.264 encoding is used on all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks which will allow for minimal CPU usage while watching.

As more HTPCs become Blu-Ray and HD-DVD ready, requirements like H.264 gpu decode will become a requirement in order to retain the low heat and low noise operation expected of this class of PC.

In a recent Electronic House Article, write Ben Hardy talks about MythTV as the “free” DVR.

Additionally, Ben mentions the “Hard Way” of getting MythTV buy building your own and also talks about MonolithMC offering an easy out.

Monolith owners don’t need to worry about the every-changing face of MythTV, either: each unit automatically checks for updates to the application and will alert the owner in the event of an operating system update.

The ever-wise Guy Kawasaki points out Trend Hunter a great “cool hunting” site.

This kind of thing really makes you marvel at web 2.0. When you can get thousands of people together to spot trends and point out things before the masses discover them, I’d say thats a pretty impressive achievement. I completely agree with Guy in that this site could end up being a web 2.0 powerhouse. Anything that brings people together to develop relationships and share new info is going to be something that has the ability to grow and flourish.

That being said, I think the MonolithMC is pretty trend-worthy so you can check out our Trend Hunter spot here: MonolithMC on Trend Hunter

-Matt