Posted 06/26/2008 at 06:07:21pm

http://snurl.com/2pjhd

See commandment #1: "Thou shalt not needlessly subdivide pages with little or no content into tiny little nuggets of data requiring the reader to click a dozen times to get only a few hundred words of data per page. You can get away with it, maybe, if you have many huge graphics, but 1,000 words fit just fine on a single Web page."

The orange & red seem a bit overpowering.

I like the 'My Comments' feature.

Keep up the process of refinement!

Posted 06/02/2008 at 05:40:32pm

Time to review a box that uses the Sigma Designs SMP8635 chip. The Popcorn Hour A-100 seems to be a good contender - I'd like to see Maximum PC do its worst and throw multiple video codecs at the device to try and stump its playback abilities. The SMP8635 chip seems to offer the most compatible embedded solution currently available for video playback.

Posted 05/23/2008 at 10:24:12am

Where's the follow up post on Handbrake mentioned in the podcast?

Posted 10/04/2007 at 11:22:17pm

This 2 year-old device is to be used for playing video. Not some low-res junk off Youtube, but XviD, MPEG2, & MPEG4. There are plenty of other superior devices for managing an audio collection, and a presentation program will do a much better job of viewing still images with background music & effects. How relevant are still images with fading backgrounds while listening to Yanni in a device that is supposed to be hooked up to your TV? Back to video... What is relevant is how well this device can playback your DVD(in ISO or VOB format) & HD video collection via component or composite cables to your old TV, new HDTV, or a projector. Where are the comments on video quality at different resolutions? Where is the test suite of different types of video file formats to be played? Which formats are not supported? What about H.264? Which chip is used for playback? (Sigma Design EM8621) How does that chip compare to other chips that are being used in similar devices being reviewed? More specific technical info on supported video formats & playback quality would be helpful. The unreviewed MG350SHD is the SATA HDMI version. A newer, more 'Maximum' device would be the DVICO, Inc TVIX HD 5100SH.

Posted 08/31/2007 at 10:24:50am

Butters, thank you for continuing to post the backissue PDFs!

Posted 08/24/2007 at 08:16:24am

I agree that there should be a lag between PDF & print issues. I'd recommend a month or two is all, though, especially since articles are written for the latest issue about 2 months ahead of time. I agree that dated Best of the Best pieces are great for buying/recommending yesterday's great hardware! I just recently threw away my Maximum PC print copies that were older than 3 years old. I'm still going to miss the howto & tutorial articles, though. Thanks for the PDF archives, and Keep on Butterin'!

Posted 08/13/2007 at 09:22:16am

"we wouldn’t buy any device that requires us to trust that analog streams will remain unregulated by content providers"

Not sure I follow the logic - does this infer that HDCP should be supported because it's unavoidable?

Posted 07/25/2007 at 12:49:28pm

I sent an email to input@maximumpc.com back in January of 2005 requesting "web access to the all issues of the magazine in PDF format". Thanks for listening & putting the interns on the task!

Posted 06/01/2007 at 01:15:38pm

An ethernet cable offers you a method of transport, just like the firewire & USB connectors on the forensic dock. The problem lies with the PATA or SATA controller sending write requests to the drive. The dock intercepts those requests so the drive is not modified.

Posted 06/01/2007 at 12:55:45pm

Have you been able to get streaming to work similarly with VLC instead of TinCam? It'd be $19 cheaper.