Mini Display Port to HDMI now available

You can now get a mini Display Port to HDMI from Monoprice

Click here to read more

or you can buy it here

Another new reason to cut cable

Should you not want to mess with Torrents, Hulu, is growing by leaps and bounds. ABC might be close to being on Hulu.

Click here for the official link, or read below:

It seems another network’s shows just might be ending up on Hulu sometime soon. In fact, Disney is supposedly discussing the move to show their ABC TV shows on the website. However, other Disney-owned shows might make it over as well.

TV shows like Lost might be making their Hulu debut soon. But Disney Channel shows and other Disney network programming could be shown as well. There’s no word on how close Disney and Hulu might be to making a deal, but the company is much more interested than before, now that Hulu has jumped in popularity.

Should this deal go through, Hulu would then have three of the four major networks on their web video service. This could make the site a more viable option than even iTunes. However, Steve Jobs is on Disney’s board of directors, so we’ll just have to see how this one turns out.

More about cutting cable

Macworld just posted a new article on cutting cable. You can read it here.

Stark: The new Aeon skin

Is looking SO amazing....look at the interface here...

Sharing the Screen

While thinking about keyboard ideas for the mini, I ran across a thread where someone noted they just share the screen of the mini onto their desktop/laptop and don't even use a keyboard with the mini.

I never really messed with share much, but, it really is so cool. Just go into the mini, open preferences, check the option to share the screen and that's it. Go to your laptop/desktop, on the same network, and connect to the mini, click share screen, and it will ask you for the mini's login and password and you're there! Now you can conduct all mini maintenance without sitting on the floor with a keyboard plugged in, or far away on the couch.

Here's a pic to see it in action :)

Plex and the Harmony 550 Remote

In researching remotes, and based on emails from people in response to the blog, it seems the Harmony remote is the way to go. The main ones are the 500 series, 800 series and the Harmony One. For cost, and from positive ergonomic reviews, I think I will go with the Harmony 550, which is well reviewed at rogermj.com's blog here. The nice thing it is seems last December, Logitech added Plex as an officially supported device, so it looks like the way to go.

I'll report back when I have it up and running...

The new Aeon skin is coming soon

The new Aeon skin preview pics look amazing. Right now they're calling for a March 30, 2009 release for the XBMC and shortly there after for the Plex (what us mac mini users / mac users will want).

Right off the bat, I see a much improved Movie preview section. Looks like they're bringing in some of the best parts of the standard Plex skin and making it look even better. I see fan art incorporated and best of all, i HOPE that trailer link works!






Here is a music screen shot:



I'll keep the blog updated when released!

The Software: Plex and Aeon

Now that the hardware is setup, its time for the software. Personally, what I did, was to download and test all this on my desktop before I went out and purchased the mac mini.

I guess before we get into the players, we should talk a bit about the actual video files. For me, the two things I am interested in are regular DVDs and TV shows. I have a Blue Ray player, and for that, I just plan on buying the Blue Ray DVDs and playing them in the player when I want. Since I only plan on buying the really good stuff, its not a big deal (things like Planet Earth, which, if you have a BR player, should be the first thing get!).

The DVD file: DVDs are easy. You just need one free program: Mac The Ripper. (Interestingly enough, the official site seems down or was shut down), but google is your friend and the latest version I know of was a 3.x - 2.6 is a pretty easy find as well). Anyway, running Mac The Ripper will create a "Video TS" folder (aka "rip" the DVD) and in this folder will be all the DVD audio and video information from the DVD. It will name the folder whatever the movie is and you're done. The process takes about 15 minutes. You can play this with Front Row which comes built in to OS X Leopard. However you must do one more thing. Front Row only plays movies which are located in the "Movies" folder. What I recommend doing is having an external drive where the Video TS folders reside. The right click on that drive and "make alias". Drag the "make alias" into the Movies folder and that's all you have to do. Now press CMD+ESC or hit menu on your remote if you have a laptop and Front Row will start. Your movies are there. To make things look good, I would search google images for the movie poster and move that image into the Video TS folder. Rename this image as "Preview.jpg" and now Front Row will show the movie poster when you scroll through the movie names.

So this is great, with a few small flaws. One, you have to manually find the posters and insert them, and two, there isn't a way to input the movie description so you can read about it. The other flaw is that Front Row will not play .avi files - which brings us to the TV shows. What I was doing with the Apple TV was actually using another program called Handbrake to convert the Video TS folder into a Apple TV format file, and then drop it into iTunes. There, in iTunes, I could add the artwork and movie description and sync right up with Apple TV. It was a good system, but no DVD menus and of course, several steps. But, it did have 5.1 surround and looked great. (*Note - You don't need Handbrake for Plex or Front Row - only for Apple TV)

As mentioned before, one of the two goals is to stop paying for cable. Basically, its like cutting your phone land line and going only cell phone. Who has a land line anyway, lol :) The only reason I can think of having cable is if you're a sports person. I was planning on selling my Tivo, but it occurred to me next summer I will resubscribe to cable for the World Cup and will need Tivo to record all the games. But, sports aside, the reality I just don't need cable. I never watch local news (and if I did, you can buy an antenna for $100 and get HD local over the air for free), I never watch shows I don't record, and I don't channel surf.

The HT Guys just had an episode of their podcast talking about this as well, and one of them did calculations on purchasing shows from iTunes instead of paying cable, and he ran some numbers and if you're not watching like 100 different shows, its basically cheaper to cut cable and buy the shows from iTunes (although they did address the sports thing, which can be a deal breaker, I know). Definitely check out their site and podcast. They're always running a top 10 TVs to get, and the podcast is a great combination of news, listener questions and witty banter lol - I've listened to many podcasts, and delete most because they're just bad, but these guys are now part of my must listen to and I'm looking forward to more great episodes from them

So, where does that leave me with TV? Here's what I record on Tivo:

Lost, 24, House, Top Chef, Celebrity Apprentice, Survivor, Hell's Kitchen, Heroes, BSG, and I wish Top Gear (which I now watch all episodes of thanks to TVRSS which I'll talk about below)

All of these shows you can watch for free, most in HD, for free on Hulu or the networks web sites. Total commercial time is 2 minutes for most and never more than 3 minutes. And a note about HD - I know , there is always talk about the quality of cable HD versus "online HD" and iTunes HD, etc.. I'm not obsessed with it. Yes, cable HD looks awesome on my TV, but not $1,000 per year awesome. The video content from these sources into the 46" Samsung DLP looks very very good. Definitely better than standard TV cable signal.

I consider those a secondary source. The primary source are from Torrents. Torrents refer to a way of downloading files over a peer to peer client. To download them, I use a Torrent client, and in my case, I'm using the new Vuze. Although some people say it is a bit resource heavy as it is java based, I haven't found it to be a problem. I also like the new interface and the channels it has for outside content all free - from things like new footage of the Apollo landing to the animation of the US Airways Hudson crash, comedy, movie trailers, Leaning Channel type content - it satisfies any channel surfing needs you had with cable, and really, better, because its on demand surfing! And yes, its free :)

Ok, so you've got this great client to download torrents - where do you get the shows from? TVRSS.net. If its on TV, its here (alomst everything mainstream, at least). Go to search, put in the TV show name, under quality put in HDTV and search. You can see all the episodes come up. When you download them, they are free of commercials, so no skipping required, and are in .avi format. But you don't want to have to go in and find each new show and download, which is why you right click on "search based RSS feed" and "copy link location" and now you have an RSS feed to that show with the parameters you set (in this case HDTV). Now open up Vuze, go to subscribe, then to RSS, and paste in this RSS link you've copied from TVRSS. It will populate, rename the Feed to the name of the show you found, click auto download new on the top right corner, and that's it. Go back, find more programs, add to Vuze, and now, every time you start Vuze, it will automatically search the RSS feeds for new episodes and start downloading them. There it is - a DVR, for free, no DVR fees, no cable fees, no commercials, nothing. A big shout out to my main man John for showing me the light! He is doing this on PC and using Micro, which he said has a way that he can set a timer for when the torrents run. So as not to interfere with regular surfing when he's awake, he has his set to only run from like midnight to 7am or something like that, so download bandwidth is while he's sleeping. I might run a mac automator script to do something like that, or just start it before I go to bed at night.

Ok, so now you've got your DVDs and your TV shows , you need a nice, easy, good looking interface. We've talked about Front Row, but that doesn't really quite cut it for me. My first step was to try Boxee. Based on the XBMC (XBox Media Center), Boxee is a front end viewer like Front Row which can play lots of media including Video TS folders and .avi's. I had heard so much about it on podcasts and on forum it was the natural place to start. Also, since at the time I had an Apple TV, it made sense, since there was a hack which allowed Boxee to be installed on the Apple TV. I only got as far as installing it on the desktop. To be honest, I just didn't like it. I spent about 20 minutes with it and just wasn't to keen on the bubbly looking interface and more importantly, I couldn't get it to read my Video TS folders, get the posters, meta info, etc.. and in that time it crashed a few times as well. The reality is that I've got things to do, and don't really want to spend a lot of time hacking and figuring things out (which I like to do, and have done a lot of, but...) I just want this to work and work easy. So I kept looking and found Plex.

Plex is also based on XBMC and in my opinion, is just a million times better than Boxee. In less than 15 minutes, my movies were showing up in the movie section with poster art and movie info meta data and my TV shows were found and pulled up as well. They all played and I was good to go to start really getting into it Plex - and the interface looked awesome to boot. This was definitely the way to go.

Plex has excellent support in the form of a great wiki and user forum, all on their site. The few questions I had were SO easy to find on the wiki, it was a breeze setting things up. After spending a little time with it, I was able to easily navigate the settings and configurations.

Basically, you go into the Video section, and Add a Source. In my case, the "Movies" folder (which recall is an Alias dropped into the public folder) and the "TV Shows" folder, also an alias in the Public folder. From there, follow the wiki instructions, and you selected IMDB for the movies and TVDB for the TV shows, and a few other one time configurations, and now, Plex goes in, reads all your files, and pulls all the artwork, fan art, director, year, movie / show description and displays it in the Movies section and TV section as you browse your content. It is SO cool. As a kicker, when you go to TV shows, and you select "House" for example, it will start playing the theme music to House.

Once I did this , I added a really nice skin called Aeon which just has great wow factor on the screen. You can set up background pictures for the movies section, TV, weather, etc. In my case, I have set up a "folder" so I drop in about 10 or so high res photos (which you can get from the Aeon site, or from google) and it will scroll through them smoothly when you menu over the different categories. Here are some pics to see:








You can see I've limited my menu items to Music, Weather, Movies, TV shows. They also have Apps, Games, and a few other things. Also this is the Aeon skin. The Plex skin is also nice and they both offer a a little different way of displaying the movie or TV info. Also, you can select about 3 or 4 ways of showing the info as well. But in the example above with Volver, Plex found all this on its own. It went out behind the scenes, pulled the DVD poster, the year of the movie, director, IMDB fan rating, movie description, etc.. If you remember with Front Row, you have to do that all yourself and copy/paste it into the folders. Also, with the Plex main skin, it will show fan art of that movie behind everything. Like here, you see Dash from The Incredibles. It would be nicer to see Penelope Cruz for ex, so its less confusing, and maybe there is a way I haven't found yet, but you get the idea. It does pull all the information for TV shows too. Episode number, episode name, description, fan art, theme music, etc.. its really nice.

So, once Plex is running, CMD F for full screen and you're set. I've only really glossed over Plex, and there is more I want to talk about, like controlling it via remote or keyboard, and the 1080 vs. 720, both of which I am researching now. But I wanted to get this post up. I do have the Mac mini hooked up to the TV, it is pulling DVDs and TV shows from the Desktop Mac Pro shared folder (from external USB drives plugged in). The Mac mini is currently wireless off the airport extreme N router, and plays both DVDs and TV shows without skipping or hesitation. DVD quality is excellent, and HD TV shows downloaded are very good - not quite as good as cable HD, but better than standard defintion. And the mac mini to TV hook up was basically done in about 45 minutes from out of box to playing content on the TV (including mac mini primary setup, software downloads, and plex configurations).

Oh and I need to talk about the Apps. Plex has an "App Store" which is all free, but you can download apps which include: Hulu, CNN, TED, CNet, CBS for March Madness (which in part addresses the sports at least for this), MTV Videos, You Tube, and a lot more stuff. All this resides in your video channel in the menu, and you just select it and start watching. Its great! A few notes about this - Boxee techincally doesn't do Hulu anymore - Hulu asked Boxee to pull it, but apparently there is a work around using an RSS feed of Hulu, but here, its the full deal with an awesome menu. CNN App has all the current videos news clips on the TV.

So I'll be researching remotes / keyboards and be back with info on the that as well as more info on the setup and other topics about this.

Late post addon - Just read this on engadget about Vuze "Today, Vuze has announced a new iteration of its online video portal application that integrates playback with iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 devices. So far as we can tell, no other competitor offers that much integration (read: direct Mac / PC-to-device transfers) across so many products" - good stuff !

Bringing the Mac Mini home :)

The Apple store had requested 48 hours to turn the RAM install, which was disheartening, but I was happily surprised when they called Saturday morning to say it was ready for pickup. It was a busy weekend, so I didn't get a chance to work on the project until Sunday. But let me tell you, opening up that little mac mini - it really is so cool! You don't realize until you have it at home and hold it - you want to show it off and will love having it part of your setup!

Like any mac, setup takes less than 5 minutes.I had set it up on my desk using my main monitor and keyboard to get things going. If you're new to mac, you turn it on, select English (or whatever language you wish), set up an account name and password, accept or decline Mobile Me, detect your wireless network and enter the password in for it, and you're at the Desktop ready to go.

After that, I downloaded Firefox, Plex and Aeon (which I haven't talked about yet but will get to soon).

Once you've done this, you only need two more things to connect to your TV - a DVI->HDMI connector and a mini Toslink cable.

The Mac Mini comes with a display port to DVI adapter, but you're going to need a DVI to HDMI cable, or a DVI to HDMI adapter if you already have a cable. This will allow the video portion of the signal to get from the mac mini to the TV. There is a decent amount of chatter about why the mac mini doesn't have an HDMI output, and best guess is that Apple is still wanting the Apple TV (which does have an HDMI) to be its living room portal and not the mac mini. *** NOTE : Not all DVI -> HDMI connectors are the same , see note below***

Now that you've got the video, you're going to need the audio. The mac mini does come with digital output, but a regular Toslink isn't going to fit, so, you'll need one with a mini input like this or if you just need an adapter you can pick up one like this here.

That's pretty much it. Your mac mini is hooked up to the TV and you're good to go on the hardware side. But before I get to the software side, there is an issue I'm becoming aware of. I am hooking up to a Samsung DLP 1080p TV. 108op is not an obvious screen resolution on OS X. Actually, before I go there, what I originally did was plug the HDMI into the Onkyo received (which has 4 inputs and an output to the Samsung TV). The display detect sets at 720. Looking at the display (the picture here is from the Dell monitor, but you get the idea), there is only an option for 1920x1080 interlaced. I unplugged it from the Onkyo and plugged it directly to the Samsung TV and got the same results. There is a blog posting about this issue here with a possible resoultion, but I haven't been successful with it yet. So I'll report back on this later. For tonight, I'm running at 720.

UPDATE: So, it turns out, and I don't know why, but I've always assumed that my TV (which I inherited :), was a 1080p TV. Turns out its not - it is 720. Which explains why I was having issues. So at least now I'm not obsessing about it. BUT, I did read very useful information that not all DVI to HDMI connectors are the same. Turns out there are DVI-A, DVI-D and DVI-I. To get full 1080, you must use a -D or -I cable or adapter. Read more here.

Time to get into the software of it, so I'll start a new topic for that...

The 2009 Mac Mini

For quit a while now, I've been hearing and reading about people using the mac mini as a Home Theater set up. Most notably by Adam Christianson on The MacCast podcast (definitely worth listening to - lots of great Apple news , Q&A and interviews).

So, as you may or may not know, the mac mini was updated about a month ago and comes in a 2.0 or 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. You can choose 120GB or 320GB hard drive and up to 4GB of RAM.

Today I stopped by the new Apple store in Greensboro, NC (finally open) (which is really nice, and I've heard the largest in NC) and purchased the 2.0 with 120 GB hard drive an added 1GB of RAM (for a total of 2GB RAM) for $50 and left it with them to install. The MacCast actually just had a bit about installing RAM into the mac mini on your own and the general consensus seems to be that you run a high risk of voiding your apple care if you do this. Bottom line, for $50, I just can't see saving any significant money by doing it myself, and I've got better things to do than pry open a new mac mini with a putty knife lol. It should be ready in a couple of days.

So why add the extra RAM and not upgrade the hard drive and the processor? Well, on the RAM - (and I'm not an expert and please feel free to correct me if I speak out of turn here) - from what I've read, it seems that with the new setup with the Nvidia graphics, the RAM gets split between the processor and the graphics card and with the 2GB of RAM the video will jump from 128MB to 256MB. (Also, people report the most you can get to the graphics is 256MB, so there doesn't seem to be a need to go above 2GB for this purpose, at least. Of course, if I'm wrong on this, just let me know.

The processor and the HD: Again, just based on other people's reports, some people claimed to have good luck with 1.8GHz and 1080p and others said that it was a little studdery (is that a word?) but that 2.0 GHz was definitely working well especially with the new Nvidia graphics card.

As for the hard drive space of 120GB versus 320GB, for me, at least, I have a TON of hard drive space , both internal and external, on the Mac Pro. What I am doing now is pointing the external drives which house the movies and TV shows to the public shared folder so the mac mini (and laptop) can access files from the Mac Pro desktop (which I'll talk about in a future post). A big part is to keep the cost down. I only really plan on using the mac mini as a video hub. Maybe some light internet surfing, but that would be about it. So really, there is no need for excessive hard drive space on the mini.

So lets take a look at some pics of the new model, and if you want to see and read more, click here for all the official specs and pics.









So that kinda covers the mac mini and what I'm getting and why. I think next is going to be all about the software. After that hooking up the mac mini to the Samsung TV and Onkyo.

This is how it starts

My good friend John was in town this week, and we were talking about our respective Home Theater setups. I already knew he did a lot of torrents and was using a server (Vista based) to transfer over his TV shows to an MVIX , which then played on his TV. What I didn't know about, was that he had this system automated. I had wrongfully assumed that he was manually searching and downloading these torrents and I was being very slick with my Tivo setup. Clearly, I was wrong lol.

Basically, he has Mico set up as his torrent client and he has it setup with RSS feeds of tv shows he gets from TVRSS and he has it set to auto download new episodes. The more we talked the more I started thinking this was the way to go, and that my Apple TV isn't going to cut it.

My current set up is:

Samsung 46" 720 DLP
Tivo Series 3 HD
Onkyo Surround Amp with 4 HDMI inputs.
Apple TV
Sony BlueRay (ver 2.0)
Mac Pro desktop in a different room
Airport Wireless N router
Netgear XAV101 plug in ethernet adaptors (for making an internet hardline connection out of a wall plug)

For movies, my system was to take the DVDs and use MactheRipper (which is excellent) to rip into Video TS folders and save them onto an external drive as backup. Then I would use handbrake to convert them to Apple TV format and insert them into iTunes. After that, I would do a quick grab of the cover art, and copy paste the movie info into the meta for movie in iTunes and I could access the movies remotely from iTunes via the Apple TV and be good to go.

It was nice because now you can scan a ton of movies, see the cover art and read about it and decide if you want to watch or whatever - people loved it. But, it was a bit of work and one that you might miss is that you just have the movie and not the actual DVD - which means no subtitle access, or extra features.

So the Tivo is pretty obvious, and works great. And now they have Watch it Now for Netflix, which is is nice so you don't need a Roku box or Xbox.

So why am I changing? A few reasons.

1. The Apple TV system is not perfect. Its good, but could be better. To many steps to get the DVDs formatted properly, missing all of the DVD, etc..

2. The money - I am paying $80/month for Digital Cable and the basic HD package which has the major networks and a few other things like HDNet. Plus, $13/mo for Tivo. Which works out to $93/month or $1,116 per year. Over $1,000 a year for TV?!?! DAMN! Yes, that's crazy when you look at it like that. Especially when you consider I pretty much never watch TV unless it has been Tivo'd. I don't like to, nor have time to, just sit around and surf channels for no reason, plus I have grown to HATE commercials and like everyone already knows, there is never anything on TV anyway. So why am I paying $1,000 a year to watch Lost, 24, BSG, Top Chef and a few other shows? Especially when you can watch any of them for FREE the next day on Hulu or the network web sites.

I'll tell you why - because no one wants to huddle around a computer monitor with a bunch of friends. Although I have a nice 24 inch HD monitor, the 46 inch DLP is still nicer and with better sound.

Yeah, from time to time my GF and I have hooked up her macbook to the TV and it works great, but still, yo uhave to go through the process.

Which leaves me at the 2009 mac mini - and which is where I'll pick up next time :)

The Thrill of using Projector compared to LCD Plasma TV

The price of Plasma Display Panel and Liquid Crystal Display has been going down pretty fast since a year ago. More and more Full HD displays are out in the market for as low as RM3000 (32" to 40") or less.

For movie and home theater hobbist out there, PLEASE THINK TWICE before you put your hands on those Plasma and LCD. I strongly ask you fellows out there to consider getting a projector if you are planning to upgrade your TV to plasma/lcd.

I am not saying not to get Plasma or LCD. What I am trying to say is to recommend fellow home theater people to consider getting a projector rather than upgrading to LCD or Plasma.

Some people are saying projector lamp is too expensive when needed to replace after 3000 hours or so. Well, I am asking people who is building a home theater to get a Projector. If you are still Astro or TV1,2,3 person, I suggest you stick to the old big box tv or get yourself a cheap plasma tv if you are not planning to watch Full HD movies.

Why spend RM7000 ++ for a 200hz 40" LCD where you can get a 80" projector screen + HD ready projector (1080p upscaler) for less than RM4000. You save RM3000 where you can buy 3 - 4 lamps that gives you up to 10,000 - 12,000 hours more. If you are watching 1 movie per day (2 hours average), your 3000 lamp hours projector can last for 4 years (3000 / 720 hrs per yr). But Most importantly is the THRILL you are experiencing when watching a 40" Full HD LCD vs a 80" HD Ready projector. No matter how crisp or clear your full HD LCD is, you will never get the WOW FEELING when watching movie.

Some of you might be saying ...I can go for a 70" Full HD LCD and get the same feeling ..but 70" Full HD LCD will cost at least 10 times more than a 40" ...around RM70,000 + perhaps? With this kind of money, I can build you a dedicated home AV room fully equiped with RM30K power amp with THX Ultra2 + great 7.1 speakers. Plus another RM20K more, I can get you a FULL HD Capable Projector + 120" Full HD screen that is gurantteed to beat any full HD LCD or Plasma out there. But the most important thing is still the WOW and Thrill from big wide screen and good sound system.

Some of the pictures taken from a simple projection setup. Include a HDMI Projector that costs less than RM3000. Projector screen is custom made Fixed screen 73.5" 16:9 size. 5 meters HDMI cable. A little help from the upscaler engine found in the Marantz SR5003 AV Receiver. Player is 1080P Network Media Tank with 1TB Hard Drive running Bluray "Open Season" as shown in screen shots.

So, please think twice before upgrading your TV or lcd/plasma. Need further advice or enquiries, please stop by my shop to discuss on your ideal home theater setup.

1080P Media Players

I've been searching for 1080P Media player for months. Finally found one that has most functions and yet reliable (never hang). The size is small but enough to accomodate a 3.5" SATA hdd. I immediately pop a ntfs formatted 1TB hdd into the unit. Copied all my 1080p and 720p medias over.

Connect this NMT to my Marantz SR6003 via HDMI cable. Did some SETUP from the GUI and most importantly set the NMT to 1080P 60Hz output regardless if I am using a HD or Full HD display/projector. Graphic is flawless on my HD ready Plasma, Full HD LCD and HD/Full HD projector. Of course, the trick lies in the media file itself. I ripped a copy of my Bluray movie "Get Smart" using my PS3 (loaded with ydl). Copied the m2ts movie file that is 19GB over to my NMT. Play it.... n I got all the sound tracks where I can select using the remote control that comes with the NMT. It supports sub title but you need to use a remux tool to get the sub into another sub format and mux it back.

Quality: Full HD support is good enough even on Optoma Full HD 82 projector shooting at a 120" screen. Can't really see much difference between a high end pioneer bluray player that cost RM5000+. The black section is pretty good too although you might be able to notice slight noise if you stand 2 feet away from the 120" projected movie. On a 50" Full HD LCD or Plasma, you will not be able to tell the difference.

Sound: It supports DTS Master Audio and Dobly Digital TrueHD sound from the direct ripped m2ts BD movies. But I got some issues with several movies downloaded from the internet that were ripped, muxed and demuxed. So, I will not guaranttee it will work with all media but so far, I would say it can handle 90% of the medias.

Speed: Loading takes 1 minute from the time you switch the unit on to load a full 1TB HDD. After that, it only takes 3- 8 secs to navigate around the menu.

Remote: It supports fast forward up to 50x on DVD ISO rip and 8X on BD ripped. It also provides a SEEK function to jump into the scene if you know the timeline.

Other Functions: It supports online services such as online radio, youtube, RSS, torrent, etc.

I would rate this NMT 8.5 out of 10. Hopefully the next firmware will improve on the media supports and also improve on the loading speed. Otherwise, this is a 10 out of 10 product.

4 months of testing, I have never had a crash on this NMT and I've tested at least continously playing for 4 - 5 hours. No problem with heating as long as you are staying in a cool location (it has a built in fan too).

Need to grab yourself a unit? Contact Sound Fusion Sdn Bhd now for demo and details.

Denon Home Theater in a Box DHT390XP

Save your wallet without sacrifacing Sound Quality. Denon has introduced the latest HTiB (Home Theater in a Box), the Denon DHT 390XP retailed at RM2,599. The HTiB includes:

1. Denon AVR-390 AV Surround Receiver with HDMI (supports 1.3a Deep Color (30/36-bit)).

2. One pair Two-Way designs front speakers

Dual 8cm bass-mid drivers

2.3cm balanced dome tweeter

Large wooden cabinet

3. One pair Surround speakers

8 cm full-range woofer

Wooden cabinet

4. Two-Way designs center speaker

Dual 8cm bass-mid drivers

2.5 cm balanced dome tweeter

Large wooden cabinet

5. 100 Watt Powerful subwoofer with a large cabinet and rich sound