Call it the September surprise. But with all the Mac geeks focused on what Apple has up its sleeve for the “It’s Showtime” event on September 12, the entirety of the Mac rumormongering underworld completely missed the posting of several new iMac models and Mac Mini speed bumps on Apple.com this morning. (more…)

TV capture cards are brilliant. Just slap a card in your PC, hook up an antenna or cable and you’ve got television programming playing on your PC. You can even buy cards that display HDTV if you like. Yep, no doubt about it. The hardware engineers who make these cards are pretty darned brilliant.Which makes you wonder way they choose to work with such total nobs when it comes to software. Someone’s got to say it – the video capture software that comes bundled with capture cards is dreck. No, really. Total, complete, garbage. Which is why it’s so important that there’s an application out there like Beyond TV from SnapStream Media. (more…)

HD – not since compassionate conservatism has a term so overused been so little understood. HD, or High Definition, is the Holy Grail of home entertainment. We all want it, although most of us couldn’t define it beyond “It makes the picture look really sharp.” And so we’re ill-prepared for the onslaught of terminology, claims and battling standards that await us in those neon blue temples of technology. (more…)

Part I in our Geek 101 users guide on HDTV focuses on the available live sources for HD content.

So, let’s say you’ve decided to invest in an HD-capable setup for your home theatre. What’s your first step? You need to figure out where your HD content is going to come from, that’s what. Sounds simple, right? Not so much. (more…)

In Part II of our continuing series, The Geek Beat asks the question: Does HD content have to be live to be fresh? Although the options are few and there is at least one major standards war brewing, it still true that some of the best HD available in what you can buy on a disc or record on your own. (more…)