Maximum PC multimedia RSS Feed

MSI Unveils New Gaming, Multimedia Laptops

Andy Salisbury — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:29:14 -0500

Just recently MSI introduced two more additions to their army of laptops with the GT729 and EX723.

The GT729 has been aimed towards gamers, packing a Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB of RAM, a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850, WiFi, a 17-inch LCD, 2 megapixel webcam, optional Bluetooth, HDMI and VGA outputs, three USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, audio in/out ports, an ExpressCard slot, up to 500GB of HDD space, a Blue-ray drive and your choice of a 6 or 9-cell battery.

The EX723 is working its way towards the multimedia types, packing nearly the same stats as the GT729 with a few exceptions, including the GPU, which will be a GeForce G110M. It’ll also have a storage cap of 320GB and a 1440x900 17-inch LCD.

No word yet on pricing or availability.

Image Credit: MSI

Adobe Media Player 1.1 Brings Sony Movies and Much More TV to the Desktop

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:09:38 -0500

CNet reports that Adobe has rolled out a new version of Adobe Media Player. Despite the modest .1 increment in the version number (Adobe Media Player 1.0 users are offered the update the next time they start the player), Adobe Media Player 1.1 has undergone substantial changes in this new release, with improvements in speed, user interface, and content.

AMP 1.1 Adds a Better, Faster User Interface

AMP 1.1 takes full advantage of widescreen displays, moving Quick Picks and Featured Networks to the right side of the display. It's also uncluttered the user interface, adding quick tab-based access to the most popular categories (My New Episodes, Comedy, Drama, News, Lifestyle, and Nature). To access all genres and all content, click the Catalog link.

The Catalog page displays networks, genres, and recent shows in a widescreen format, and genres are now color-coded to indicate the number of programs:

Ghostbusters and More - Movies, that Is

Adobe has now partnered with Sony Pictures, making movies like Ghostbusters, Jerry Maguire, and Men in Black available in AMP 1.1. Keep in mind that movies are not found in a separate genre listing, but are placed in appropriate genre listings - consequently, you might be better off using the Search tool to find your favorites. Movies are divided into parts and include commercials, so the experience (in my view) is a bit like watching a movie on AMC.

Playback speed on a Wireless-G network seems faster than with the original 1.0 version of AMP.

More TV, Too

AMP 1.1 also adds more TV shows, including favorites like 48 Hours, The (original) Love Boat, and Beverly Hills 90201.

Better Access to More Content

RSS feeds and favorites make it easier for you to access more than 600 series and movies (over 25,000 episodes).

Thumbs Up? Thumbs Down? Feedback Wanted!

If you've already tried Adobe Media Player, what do you think about the new improvements? If you're a newcomer, do you think you'll keep checking in for new content? Let us know.

Acer Aspire X1200: HTPC and Multimedia Power In a Small Package

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:09:13 -0500

Big Features, Small Form Factor

The Acer Aspire X1200 offers an amazing range of features for a system that has a diminutive form factor of 10.6 x 4.0 x 14.4 inches:

Nine USB 2.0 ports (five front/four rear)
PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot
PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
14-in-1 multi-slot card reader (includes support for Compact Flash as well as smaller form factors)
IEEE-1394a (FireWire 400) port
SuperMulti DVD (DVD+R/RW, -R/RW, RAM) DL drive
Front stereo audio and microphone jacks
Rear 7.1 audio and microphone jacks
HDMI and VGA video
PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports
eSATA port
Gigabit Ethernet port
56Kbps fax modem
4GB DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8200 chipset with PureVideo HD Technology and DirectX 10 support

Power for HTPC and Multimedia Users

The Aspire X1200 is aimed squarely at the home theater/PC entertainment crowd. It's small enough to fit inconspicuously beside your home theater system and HDTV, and by adding a TV tuner, you can turn it into a full-bore entertainment system.

Configurations

The X1200-U1520A ($449.99), available now, includes a 320GB SATA II hard disk, Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1, and uses the AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz CPU.
The X1200-U1510A ($459.99), available now, has the same configuration as the U1520A version, except it substitutes the AMD Athlon X2 5000+ 2.6GHz CPU.
The X1200-B1581A ($699.99), available on July 13, has the same configuration as the U1520A version, but substitutes a 500GB SATA II hard disk and adds a 22-inch widescreen LCD display.

For more information, see Acer's press release.

Feedback Wanted

How about it? Are you looking for a low-cost PC for home theater use? Are you already using a PC with these components? Share your thoughts.

(personal note: I'm almost done with my book on Windows Vista Media Center, and I'd love to have one of these in my living room instead of the hulking full-tower PC I'm using for WMC right now)

Figure courtesy Crunchgear

Easy Media Creator 10 Is Ready for YouTubing, HD Video, and Windows Vista

Mark Soper — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:52:21 -0500

I've been using Roxio's Easy Media Creator ever since it was known as Easy CD Creator from Adaptec - and that's been a long, long time. Although I've made plenty of CDs and DVDs on my Windows Vista laptop, the limitations of Microsoft's CD and DVD burning tools are beginning to grate on me. So, I'm looking forward to giving Easy Media Creator 10 Suite, now available from Sonic's Roxio division, a try. It's the first digital media suite certified for Windows Vista, but it works with Windows XP as well.

Goodies Galore Support Today's Favorite Technologies

Easy Media Creator 10 Suite features a new mobile phone photo playback feature, camera phone picture fixup, one-step video uploads to YouTube, internet radio or PC audio capture from the Windows Vista desktop, CD ripping from multiple drives (perfect for systems with both a DVD-ROM and rewritable DVD drive), iPod support, HD video edit and capture, support for Vista media folders, support for Blu-ray and HD DVD and much more.

Keeping Track of Your CD and DVD Collection

I just moved to new offices, and while a lot of stuff hit the dumpster on the way out of my old office, I carried hundreds of CDs and DVDs full of various project files with me to my new digs. I'm looking for a way to easily catalog my collection and help me figure out what's duplicated. Easy Media Creator 10 can catalog the contents for me, and make the catalog available even when the disc is not in the drive. I suspect I'll be able to thin out my media collection pretty soon.

Better Audio Playback

The DVD playback feature in Easy Media Creator 10 now supports Dolby Digital EX 6.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, enabling you to get the most out of common surround sound setups in home theater systems and PCs configured for high-end audio.

Still a Boatload of Essential Features

In the past, I've relied upon Easy Media Creator's disaster recovery backup feature, photo importer, and CD burning with support for ISO images. These and other essential features remain. You can compare version 10 to versions 9 and 8 here.

Standard or Deluxe? Your Choice

If you are planning to use Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 Suite to capture video from analog devices, you can order the Deluxe version from the Roxio website. It includes a Dazzle DVC 100 external video capture device (the hardware portion of the Dazzle DVD Recorder). It connects to a USB 2.0 port. It supports S-video and composite video sources and stereo audio. The standard version of Easy Media Creator 10 Suite is $99.99 (current users get a $20 rebate back), but the Deluxe version, normally retailing for $149.99, is $119.99.

The Competition's Coming Soon

If you're a Nero fan, Nero 8 Ultra Edition is coming in early October, but you can check out its features now.

Using Nero 7 to Burn HD

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:20:59 -0500

Nero is known for releasing multiple incremental updates to its software in between releases of full-fledged versions, and a newly added feature to Nero 7 (a free upgrade to owners of the suite via Nero’s website), should be of particular interest to HD video camera owners.

With the update, you can use Nero Vision 4—one of the suite’s video apps—to burn high-definition content to a standard DVD. This is welcome alternative if you want to author high-def home movies that don’t require the full 25GB of expensive Blu-ray media. I say Blu-ray media because the DVD you create with Vision is only playable in a Blu-ray player, including Sony’s PS3. Still, it’s a nifty trick.

The secret lies in AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition), which uses an MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video codec, and which when combined with audio in an MPEG-4 Transport Stream can be played without modification in a Blu-ray player. I experimented by burning a 4GB MPEG-2 HDV file to a DVD, and the results were impressive. The 17 minute high-definition video played from the disc without any glitches in both a stand-alone Blu-ray drive and a PS3, as promised. And the quality looked just as good as with the original.

HD DVD loyalists aren’t necessarily out in the cold. Corel’s new media-creation suite will offer a similar feature for those folks. And Pinnacle and Ulead are also joining the HD-to-DVD party. So everyone wins.