Looking to control your PC with an infrared remote that's not the size of French baguette? Look no further because SnapStream Media just let their FireFly Mini remote out of the bag. We've had one of these in the HDBeat labs for our upcoming BeyondTV 4 review and we're quite impressed with the size and functionality of the remote. Compared to the XBox 360 Media Center remote the FireFly Mini is noticeably smaller; to the point where it could fit in a pocket. Don't try that with the Microsoft Media Center remote unless your pants pockets are a like a foot deep!

Shipping for the $29.95 remote starts today and the remote controls your PC, Beyond TV and even WMCE via the included USB-IR dongle. Read on for the full press release.

In case you missed it, Engadget ran a great interview with Joe Belfiore on all things WMCE, Vista, HD-DVD and more on Thursday evening. Stephen Speicher got a chance to chat with Joe and the first part of the interview provides the Microsoft insight into topics we've been bantering around as late. Joe provides clarification as well as rationalization on the costly CableCARD certification process for both large and small OEMs. Microsoft's dealings with the satellite television industry get some attention, which is good news for you DIRECTV subscribers. If you were looking for Microsoft's involvement and reasons for Managed Copy (required in HD-DVD, but optional in Blu-Ray), that's in there too. All in all a great first part to the interview with something for everyone interested in high-def.

There were several groans when we heard the CableCARD 2.0 certification fees for Windows Vista; that cert effectively put a nail into the DIY crowd's coffin. Perhaps a conceptually simple but slick workaround could do the trick, thanks to eHomeUpgrade. The thought here is, why not get a barebones or base certified system with the minimum specs, then hack it pieces and add the high-powered horsepower and hardware on your own. It's a small consolation at best, but it might get folks to have that terabyte of storage, triple-tuners, a QuadHD GPU or whatever else you can dream of. The one issue that jumps to mind is how Vista will handle hardware additions. Last year, we mentioned that Vista itself could limit or restrict hardware changes.

My bad! I said in this week's podcast that I found a way to change the pre-and post-record settings on a WMCE machine so you don't miss any of your favorite HD shows that run overtime. I goofed, but only a little. Now that I'm reviewing what I was gossiping about, I see it's really a method to increase the pause buffer. The standard pause is 30 minutes, but you can boost it all the way up to two hours with a sweet GUI-app that mods the registry entries thanks to TGB member, isomies. Our read link takes to you The Green Button forums, but if you want to skip all of the hoo-ha, you can download the application here. It certainly comes in handy for those high-def recordings when the phone rings and you get stuck with a long-winded telemarketer; just watch out for that disk space.

[via Chris Lanier]

We stumbled upon a great report of SkyHD's next and future plans for the high-definition service prepping to launch this year, and one interesting tidbit grabbed our peepers. Not out of the gate, but sometime after launch, SkyHD consumers can text or SMS a command to their set-top box to set a recording. The example given was an SMS of “24.Sky1.Sunday” indicating to record the show "24" on the Sky1 channel this Sunday. No deets on the service charge, but we'd expect it to be nominal. We use the MSN Remote Record service over the web as part of Windows Media Center on our box and while that works well, not everyone has an Internet connection every time they suddenly remember to record a show. Folks typically do have a mobile phone however, so we would spread some HDBeat luvin' if someone could find or develop an SMS recording service for WMCE!

If building your own Windows Media Center doesn't sound appealing, why not consider one out of the box? At $1,499 HP's Digital Entertainment Center z556 will cost you almost $600 more than the HD WMCE box we built, but it does offer more. The z556 has two more tuners than our system as it adds two SDTV tuners to complement the ATSC. No cable or satellite support in the z556, which is unfortunately much too common in the retail systems. On the flip-side, the z556 looks more at home in your home entertainment center with it's component look and feel.

An Intel Pentium 4 running at 3.0 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GPU is also under the hood; specs that are close to what we cobbled for less. PC Mag gave the z556 four out of five stars, mainly because it does the basic job of recording your OTA high-def and because it's $500 less than last year's overpriced model. We say: do it yourself if you can; there are plenty of good spec'd out systems from our very own readers.

Nothing earth-shattering here as Vista is still in beta, but there's some basic information on WMCE functionality and the beta build hardware requirements so we thought we'd let you know where things are heading. Any computer that meets the Vista hardware requirements will run the Media Center functions. According to Microsoft's MCE Hardware Requirements doc that beta testers can view for this February CTP build [disclosure: I am a beta tester], the only officially supported graphics cards are ATI's Radeon X-series or 9800 and NVIDIA's GeForce FX or 6-series. Again, these are the cards that are supported for beta testing, so don't panic or purchase new cards.

There's a plethora of TV tuner cards that are supported in this beta build; a full listing is below, but a good portion are not  DTV tuner cards and of course, it's way to early for any CableCARD 2.0 support. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't add Windows Media Extender support yet in the Vista beta code available, so we won't be testing connectivity and HD streaming with our Xbox 360 just yet either.

Oh, there's quite a buzz going on about Viiv and the buzz continues to get louder as more info surfaces. There's apparently a "Supports Intel Viiv" logo that we're just starting to see and that begs the question: what will wear this badge o' honor and more importantly, will this be a sticker that you as an HD-project tinkerer actually get? We doubt it; it seems pretty certain that like CableCARD 2.0 certified Vista systems, a Viiv cert will be OEM-based as well.

Is that really a bad thing though? Not that we have a solid understanding of the Viiv platform (does anyone?), but it appears to simply be a way to put consumers at ease when mixing components and hoping that they work. If all of the components are Viiv-able, then your overall system should have no DRM challenges. If you cobble your own boxes together, you're on your own; which you realized when you started your little homebrewed high-def science experiment, right? If our interpretation of Viiv is right, then mainstream consumers should be happy. For the more technically astute, is Viiv really adding anything?

We weren't so impressed with Netgear's 85Mbps powerline solution (pictured), so we'll give them another shot with their 200Mbps attempt. Netgear nabbed DS2's chip for their up and coming 200Mbps Powerline HD solution. The theory is that any electrical outlet in your home can be used as a blazing fast Ethernet port with the equipment and 200Mbps is more than enough for multiple high-def streams. No product until the second quarter of 06, which is fine with us; we're still smarting over our failed attempts to stream HD, or SD for that matter, with the last product iteration. For now, we'll keep streaming our HD over 802.11a.

We placeshift our HDTV with an Xbox 360, so this was interesting news to us. SageTV's newest beta (4.1.7 for you Sage-a-maniacs) now supports placeshifting via a client called "SageTVPlaceshifter".
Don't be disappointed in the name, what did you expect since the names "Orb" and "Slingbox" were already taken? We're guessing that you're not shifting HD content with this first version, but we all know that's where things are headed. Does anyone know the patron saint of "bandwidth" so we can light a candle?

[via eHomeUpgrade]

This might only apply to the "hands-on" crowd, but I think even the non-DIY readers could benefit. We posted earlier today that PC Mag just built an HD WMCE box for a shade over two-grand and it's very easy to spend more or less depending on what features you're looking for.

HDBeat reader Buzzcut commented on that story: "I'd also be more interested in a story about the CHEAPEST HD MCE box possible. Can it be done for less than $800 with a HD tuner card and a reasonable hard drive (at least 250 GB)?"

To basically answer that question, we'd say yes. Our sub-grand machine does the trick for us and you should now find the same parts for less than we paid in December. Our total cost was around $950 back then, so $800 isn't a stretch, but we'll research that one for sure. While we do that, how about a little high-def homework?

Let's open up the comments for you to spec out an HD WMCE machine. If you want to go all out and spend several grand, that's up to you. If you want to tackle Buzzcut's requirements, that's fine too. Who's up for a little PC spec'ing?

We've built an HD WMCE PC, then Engadget built one; so what happens next? PC Magazine is building one; wow, we feel like such trend setters. Ah, who are we kidding, do-it-yerselfers have been building PCs since the 1980's! PC Mag drops over two-grand on their high-def system, which is much more than the $950 we spent, but in fairness to them, the do have more RAM, double the hard drive space and multiple tuners for their high-def content. Additionally, their case choice of a SilverStone LaScala LC17 looks more component-like and less PC-ish. If you're interested at all in building a high-def capable home media center, this is another good article worth the read.

[via Wired@Home.blog]

While we struggle to shoot high-def content via WiFi, start-up company Itiva is laughing behind our backs with their Quantum Streaming technology. Itiva demonstrated their method by pulling down a 720p movie trailer in just seconds over a 5.5 Mbps pipe; considerably smaller than the 19.39 Mbps we're using to fling movies. Even better yet, the trailer started playing as a stream instead of waiting for the full download. Itiva believes their new approach can download a 1.5 hour high-def movie in less than ten minutes, which is less time than standing in an actual movie ticket line for less res.

Itiva takes the content and breaks it down into smaller HTTP-based pieces called "Quanta" that can be cached by ISPs to speed up the perceived download rate. With some public applications of the technology coming within the next month or two, this could be just what Hollywood needs.

So wouldn't it totally blow if you recorded an over-the-air program only to later see a "Restricted Content" error message when you decided to watch it? It hasn't happened via ATSC yet (that we know of), but it just happened to Ed Bott with some HBO recordings. Before we throw everyone in a tizzy, there's no new evil DRM at work here. Turns out there's some old evil DRM at work here: within WMCE, if you change hardware, the DRM system may not exactly work correctly. We mentioned this concern last year when discussing Microsoft Vista, but we didn't expect it to bite us in WMCE 2005. If you do something radical, you know, like update your WMCE with a new graphics card, you might want to check out the workaround.

MythTV, a Linux-DVR alternative to WMCE that supports HDTV via over-the-air, just announced a sizable upgrade. Version 0.19 has an abundant list of features and fixes, so we won't bore you with the full list; you can read it while you download the latest and greatest version.

Actually we'll share one just because use a similar function on the Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Extender: a popup keyboard so you don't have to use the remote for text input. And then there's the new support for DTS passthrough audio. Don't forget the signal monitoring support. Oh wait, we said we weren't going to hit you with the list...

[via eHomeUpgrade]