Like the Boxee Box remote control showed us, a remote for a media center (or HTPC) only needs a few basic buttons. Unfortunately the Boxee remote is not sold separately but the GlideTV Navigator might be a good alternative. It's a small remote control that fits in your hand, connects through a wireless USB dongle and let's you control all the basis functions of a media center. GlideTV themselves call it a 'couch mouse' and that could actually be a pretty accurate description. It (...)  read more

Asus just gave out a press release about what they already call 'the world's smallest desktop PC'. They will probably beat their own statement (if the rumors are true) with their own Asus Eee desktop. But although very likely to also be in a different price class, the Essentio has some impressive hardware specifications that just scream 'Media Center'. Everything inside the small, glossy, black box is focused on silence (23.9 dB when idle), high definition video (powerful video (...)  read more

If you ever used or planing to use a computer or an old no-longer-in-use computer in your living room as a media center (HTPC), you know silence of the machine is a big factor. You don't want anything that sounds like it could take off any second while reading a book. Cooling (fan noise) is one thing, but often hard drive noise is very noticeable too. A lot of hard drives are specialised in being silent and there are some smart tricks and tools to damp noise even more but it will still have (...)  read more

The Nintendo DS is mainly used for gaming and without an internal (reachable) memory watching video material on it seems impossible. But with some tools and the right configuration you can watch movies or recorded television from your media center with pretty amazing quality on the Nintendo handheld. For now this guide we'll focus on watching TV recordings from your media center like shown on the video (...)  read more

Basically the Mvix MV-5000U is a USB 2.0 3.5" hard drive enclosure, which means you can plug a standard computer hard drive (of any capacity) in a small enclosure and connect it to a computer with a USB cable to make it a portable hard drive. But the MV-5000U is a hard drive enclosure with a twist. On the back of its case there are all kinds of media output possibilities to connect it to your television or audio system so you'll be able to play all the audio and video files you put on the (...)  read more