NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver v1.9792
NGO HQ :: Monday, January 22, 2007
“The NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver is a modified version of the NVIDIA ForceWare driver. The main purpose is to satisfy the users with better performance, image quality and compatibility. The NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver can enhance your experience in games, multimedia and general usage. This project is especially suited for enthusiasts and gamers that want to have the best gaming experience. This driver includes NVIDIA’s old Control Panel. We’ve preferred to include the old Control Panel over the new one due to flexibility and performance reasons. The Driver has support for all GeForce/Quadro cards – including mobile series (Go) as well. This driver has a special compatibility mode option that provides better stability, and workaround for some known bugs.”
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Review
Virtual Hideout :: Monday, January 22, 2007
“With all that being said, I would feel confident in anyone using the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE who wants to build a HTPC system, or for the user who may have a dual monitor setup and wants to have live TV on the second monitor. The ease of setup and use through MCE also makes getting the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE a plus.”
Oppo Digital DV-981HD Upscaling DVD Player
Missing Remote :: Monday, January 22, 2007
The output of the Oppo is generally nothing short of spectacular, with a recent well mastered DVD one really can sit back and almost forget that this isn’t actually high definition, just a good fakery. 1080p native upconversion is a boon to all the influx of new 1080p TV owners that are sure to come as the prices plummet during 2007. The fact that the player can play just about any optical media (short of the next gen formats) is a major plus for anyone looking to unify their various devices. The only negative is the macroblocking issue. However, this is dependant on the content and even the calibration of the display being used. Most people wouldn’t even notice it.
Logitech Harmony 720 Universal Remote
OCIA :: Monday, January 22, 2007
“Simple and easy to understand commands make programming the unit a breeze. For those users who require more complex commands, you have the ability to adjust even the smallest factors such as delay time between macro commands. Logitech has an extensive database that should cover most any brand and model of equipment that you may own. The Harmony 720 can accommodate up to 12 different devices (far more than the average user would have).”
Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones
Modders Inc. :: Monday, January 22, 2007
One of the main issues a person will find with an MP3 / iPod® player is the cord that always finds a way to get caught on something. With the latest headphone from Logitech that is no longer an issue. The Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones allow you to have even more flexibility with a range of up to 33 feet and battery life that lasts up to 6 hours.
Converting Videotape Into Video Files
PC Stats :: Saturday, January 20, 2007
“A while back we reviewed the Power Color X1950 Pro Extreme card at Driver Heaven, which proved to be a very good performing mid-sector card with quiet and efficient cooling. Now the time has come to its Sapphire counterpart The Sapphire Ultimate X1950 Pro. As you may have noticed, the VCR is a dying technology. DVD players are now equivalent in price, and their disks have practically crowded VHS tapes right off the shelves of your neighborhood video store. Give it another three years and you may be hard pressed to find a new release on tape. So what happens when your VCR finally breaks?
The Silent XFX Fatal1ty GeForce 7600GT
HW Upgrade :: Friday, January 19, 2007
With a completely passive cooling system and coming factory overclocked, the new video card by XFX for its Fatal1ty series proves to be one of the more interesting video cards based on the NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT currently available for sale.
Silverstone CW01-WD MediaPC/HTPC enclosure Review
Xtreme Computing :: Friday, January 19, 2007
“Silverstone and Western Digital in perfect harmony, you have to see it in action to see the effect it has. Also on a plus the chassis was doing a good job on the thermal side as well with the CPU running cooler in this than in the desktop case it used to be in, that kept the CPU at 34, in the CW01-WD that dropped to 28 at idle ”
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
Hardware Secrets :: Friday, January 19, 2007
“Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are two new optical storage technologies that fight as the successor of DVD. In this article you will learn everything you need to know about these technologies, including the motivations that lead to the creation of both. Is it really true that DVD has its days counted?”
Gigabyte H971 Home Theater PC – HDMI, C2D and Loads of Style!
Tweak Town :: Friday, January 19, 2007
“The newest HTPC design to come out of Gigabyte is the “H971” and it improves on the now somewhat outdated H663, in quite a few ways. The new version is a little bigger and implements a new style which is modern and subtly sophisticated, brings support for Core 2 Duo through the use of the Intel G965 chipset, adds in HDMI and HDCP support by means of a GeForce 7600GS graphics card and generally just brings it more up-to-date with the technology you’d expect this year.
Strap yourself in – if you’ve been looking to build or buy a stylish HTPC system for your lounge room that will last you for many years to come, read on. We’ll take a close look at the Gigabyte H971, what’s inside the system, how it looks on the outside and how it actually works as a home entertainment system along with what it is capable of doing – such as, if it can playback HD-DVD movies.”
HIS X1950Pro 256MB AGP Video Card
3dgameman :: Friday, January 19, 2007
“The HIS X1950Pro 256MB AGP Video Card is a welcome addition for anybody who still has an AGP setup. The new standard is PCI Express, but that would mean replacing motherboard, memory, and other computer hardware. This can be very expensive and certainly is not within everyone’s budget. The cheapest option is simply replace the video card. This product has all the current technologies and will support the very latest games. Watch the video to find out more and check out the bloopers at the end.”
EVGA 680i SLI overclocking article
Hardware Overclock Austria :: Friday, January 19, 2007
Hardwareoverclock Austria has reviewed the EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. We have tested them with intel’s E6600 and Kingstons 1200 MHz memory to find out the overclocking performance.
CES 2007: D-Link & Creative
Think Computers :: Thursday, January 18, 2007
“D-Link has a large booth at CES and they are showcasing a number of products. The first of which that I was able to get a look at was D-Link’s DSM-510 which was released 5 weeks after development was completed because the engineers were so happy with it. Also Creative had a lot of products but most of them were product demos so it was a bit difficult to be able to talk with someone about a particular product, but I was able to talk about Creative’s Zen Vision W portable media player.”
SPARKLE Presents New GeForce 7300 GT Graphic Card to AGP Market
Sparkle :: Thursday, January 18, 2007
Based on NVIDIA’saward-winning GeForce 7 GPU series, SPARKLE 7300 GT AGP 256MB/512MB DDR2 graphics card comes equipped with powerful GeForce 7300 GT chip to deliver an entire realm of fantasy gaming experience to your desktop. By encapsulating the advanced DirectX 9.0 and shader model 3.0 rendering architecture, SPARKLE 7300 GT AGP 256MB/512MB DDR2 graphics card delivers stunning, high-definition video and ultra-realistic gaming effects at mainstream price points without compromising performance. SPARKLE GeForce 7300 GT AGP graphic card features high core speed at 350MHz with extreme 256MB/512MB 128-bit high speed GDDR2 memory. In addition, SPARKLE 7300 GT AGP 256MB/512MB DDR2 graphics card is optimized for the upcoming Microsoft® Windows Vista® operating system.
Blu Ray Burner Pioneer BDR 101A
Overclock 3d :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
We take a quick look at an early Blu Ray Burner from Pioneer. Capable of impressive capacities, is Blu Ray the storage media we’ve all been waiting for?
XFX 8800 GTX XXX Edition Graphics Card Review
Legit Reviews :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“XFX raises the bar in gaming performance with their overclocked 8800 GTX XXX Edition video card. With an extra speed boost over the standard GTX you can be sure you’re getting the absolute best gaming experience any single video card can provide today. With the launch of the GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition, XFX delivers an 8800 GTX with obscene performance worthy of the title XXX…”
ForceWare X Vista 100.30B x86 & x64 Drivers (8800 series only)
Hardware XL :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“Props to laptopvideo2go for finding these drivers. The most anticipated driver ever has finally been released/leaked or whatever you may like to call it. GeForce 8800 Users can now finally put their card to the test on Vista, which isn’t out yet but I’m sure that won’t stand in their way from trying it out anyway. I myself have installed the drivers just a few hours ago and it looks to be working very wel. Graphical wise it’s a big improvement, but controlpanel wise it still lacks some options.”
PowerColor X1650 XT AGP Review
Technic 3d :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“The PowerColor X1650 XT AGP arrived Technic3D. As good is the Graphic Card X1650 XT AGP really against NVIDIA 6800 Ultra and 7800 GS Graphic Cards? Technic3D will see that in the following Review.”
Noiseblocker Coolscraper 120
Driver Heaven :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Noiseblocker is a German company specializing in silent computer cooling solutions. We have tested some of their products in the past, which we found to be of high quality albeit somewhat expensive. Since Noiseblocker is a rather new company, their product line-up is still small. Noiseblocker mainly focuses on designing and building some of the best quality computer fans around, but also produce other cooling related products, such as CPU coolers and accessories. Today we will take a look at the second revision of their CPU coolers, the CoolScraper 120 V2.
Sapphire Ultimate X1950 Pro PCIe
Driver Heaven :: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A while back we reviewed the Power Color X1950 Pro Extreme card at Driver Heaven, which proved to be a very good performing mid-sector card with quiet and efficient cooling.
Now the time has come to its Sapphire counter part The Sapphire Ultimate X1950 Pro. We will see if this card lives up to the “ultimate” moniker.
Point of view`s Turbulence g21 speaker set 
DNR Hardware :: Monday, January 15, 2007
“We got blast away by this Point of view speaker set. We did not think much of it at first but where thrilled with the warm bass and good sound. Want to know more? Check the review and see what we found out.If your looking for a 2.1 speaker set this is definitely a good one to look for.”
Jays D-jays earphones
RBmods :: Monday, January 15, 2007
Jays is a fairly new company on the headphone market and they have started to compete with bigger companies like Koss and Sennheiser just to mention a few. One of the owners is Jens Nylander which is also the owner of www.jensofsweden.com a company that sells mp3 players. Who would know earphones better than him? Well I am hoping he has put his knowledge along with his collagues to use and manufactured nice earphones, as today we will take a closer look on these earphones in several ways in our daily usage of earphones.
ATI Theater 650 TV Tuner
Viper Lair :: Monday, January 15, 2007
“The ATI Theater 650 is easily the most advanced dedicated TV tuner we’ve had the chance to look at. Image quality is excellent and the product is extremely easy to install. Setup under Windows XP is about a couple minutes, and after a reboot you’re almost ready to go. It takes some configuration depending on your video feed, but we did not have any installation quirks under XP or MCE. Those of you eyeing Vista on the horizon will be happy to know the card is fully supported by the upcoming OS.”
PowerColor Radeon X1950PRO with Arctic Cooling
Tweak Town :: Monday, January 15, 2007
“PowerColor seem to be following in the footsteps of HIS with the team up with Arctic Cooling to help their cards stand out from the norm. The good news is while we quite often see high price tags affiliated with cards using aftermarket cooling, PowerColor have been able to keep the price low without sacrificing any quality.
With a straight out comparison against the Gigabyte Zalman cooled GeForce 7900GS, we will see if our thoughts can finally change for the better on the Radeon X1950PRO or if it will continue to let us down.”
Blu-Ray and HD DVD together on one LG Drive
PC Stats :: Monday, January 15, 2007
Blu-Ray and HD DVD together on one LG drive Thu: 01.11.07 | 4:06P | Business / Industry| PermaLink BY: C. Sun
LG certainly makes an impression with its 100″ High Definition LCD TV!
The first drive is LG’s GBW-H10N Blu-Ray burner capable of burning BD-R Single layer discs at 4x with a storage capacity of 25GB per single layer disc. The drive has a memory buffer of 4MB and comes with an IDE conenctor. The second drive is LG’s Super Multi BLue Blu-Ray rewriter & HD DVD ROM drive, unfortunately no specs on the drive were available.
Xbox 360 HD-DVD: 92K Sold
NPD Group :: Monday, January 15, 2007
According to NPD’s figures, the hardware sold 42,000 units in November and 50,000 in December.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier said that the life-to-date figure indicates a 2 percent attach rate to the Xbox 360 install base. The firm reported last night that life-to-date Xbox 360 sales in the US stand at 4.5 million units.
CES 2007: Sony VGX-TP1 Media Center PC
Digitral Trends :: Friday, January 12, 2007
Sony is going to be releasing in march a “Digital Living Machine”, the Sony VGX-TP1 PC. You will be able to bring all your content, movies, TV and pictures, into your living room. You’ll be able to record TV to the hard drive or burn it to DVD as well. Live TV content can also pull data from the Internet and provided added information, like stats for a football game. ”
Experience 1080p HD content now – Truly Kick Ass Quality Awaits!
Tweaktown :: Friday, January 12, 2007
“These next generation movie formats bring six times the quality of that of regular DVD. How can this be achieved? It all comes down to the media used to store the movie data. HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs are able to store much more data than a regular 4.7GB DVD disc. In fact, the storage capacity of a double sided Blu-ray disc is 50GB and HD-DVD is 30GB – even for the latter, that’s over six times the capacity available from the previous DVD standard! That allows film studios to sell movies at much higher resolutions up to 1920 x 1080, which are progressively scanned, for amazing life-like quality and extreme clarity. If you’ve ever experienced true HD content on a large display, it’s easy to become highly immersed in the scene and it really feels as if you are there in the same environment. In comparison and even when HDTV’s do their best to upscale content, DVD quality feels like looking at inferior piece of junk. Forgetting about the whole DRM and HDCP debacle, it’s awesome technology.”
