Making My Netbook Sing. And Dance. And Play Movies.

I’m sure I mentioned before that I really like gadgets and a few months back I bought an eeePC 1000HA for under $400. This is one of the very first Netbooks to have the Atom processor and a 160GB hard drive instead of the paltry 4GB flash drives in the early models.

I really wasn’t impressed with the device out of the box since it comes shipped with a stripped down version of Windows XP for the operating system. My initial experience with it was pretty lousy since the OS crashed hard when I tried to rearrange items on the desktop the first time I powered it up. A few more times of use were met with similar frustrations and overall sluggish response from the interface that even the addition of another 1GB of memory couldn’t help.

So, what’s a geek to do? Strip off Windows and install Linux of course! Read more »

Will The Popcorn Hour NMT Replace My XBMC?

Not yet. And after the latest debacle with the June 18th firmware, maybe not ever. My old, original xbox softmodded to run XBMC is still more polished and faster than this little guy, despite the glowing reviews I read which led me to purchase the Popcorn Hour NMT in the first place.

As everyone knows, there is a disconnect between the PC world and the television world – especially when it comes to getting digital video and audio content into the room where the couch and the big TV are. Many products such as the AppleTV, Xbox 360 and my own shiny PS3 as well as various media extenders try and bridge that chasm promising to play all (or most) of your media library and bring it to your living room HDTV. Unfortunately, the two big players that are capable of making effective products, Apple and Microsoft, are hobbled by legal roadblocks and business partnerships, both internal and external, that would sour if the box they made performed too well (read: properly) and truly freed your media.

I had high hopes when I read the impressive feature list and got on the waiting list for this little box. The Popcorn Hour A-100 NMT (Networked Media Tank) is quite a capable media player especially considering its diminutive size. The fact that it doesn’t have integrated WiFi doesn’t bother me since I have Cat-5e runs from my living room and my core home network. When I took delivery of it I did a quick un-boxing to see what I got for my $200 and took the screws off to peek inside…

Not bad. I needed to supply a hard drive for many of the included features such as the BitTorrent, Samba media shares and uPnP and FTP services to work (for obvious reasons). I am more interested in its file playback and streaming capabilities, but what the heck…

So, I tossed in an inexpensive 320GB PATA drive that was on sale at Fry’s and fired it up. Read more »

Welcome!

Welcome to the revamped Torbettech site!

This is going to be a more technically oriented place than my personal site, where anyone interested in moving their media around, primarily in bridging the PC and living room divide, in this rapidly changing digital landscape can find ideas and answers. There are a few key technologies I plan to focus on initially, however as times and the paradigm changes, so will the techniques I outline.

I will also be working on a Wiki with technical information and reference material for broadcast television engineers and hope to have it up and running soon (in between work and my regular life).

Lastly, I will be creating a few unique products and items that can be purchased through this site with an emphasis on humor in the broadcast television engineering and tech fields.

So, bookmark this site and check back regularly or subscribe to my RSS feed to see what develops.

Enjoy!