Tuesday, December 09, 2008

My Birthday Present! - Roku Netflix Player

Got my Roku Netflix box today. Pulled it out of the box and set it up very quickly.

Longest part was finding my old video distribution box so I could convert the video to old fashioned coax.

Unboxing the device






Mary and Mao helping out

My "wiring closet". Router (white). Network Storage (640GB) behind it.
My old video distributor is under the Roku box. It feeds me the signal on Ch. 79

Imagine what I am watching first!

Screen for my main Kubuntu box on the left and TV to the right.
I couldn't get a good Netflix stream going on the Kubuntu Box (running XP in VirtualBox) so pulling it off onto its own platform made sense.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway

Check out this Giveaway at one of my favorite tech newsletter/blogs

Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway

50 sites are awarding an incredible selection of HP equipment to lucky winners. Jake adds "Most of us don’t really need 4 computers at home, but we all know a person or an organization who could really use some help. For my giveaway, I’m asking you to tell me about who you would share some of this great hardware and software with and why."

I would find a way to support "Our Chinese Daughters Foundation" http://www.ocdf.org/

(Ha! I HAVE more than 4 computers at home, but they are getting pretty old. The Dell Mini I am writing this on is more powerful than most of the other boxes I have. Those machines are mostly single purpose machines - i.e. podcast aggregator, DVD burner, Pop email for those mailing lists I subscribe to but don't have time to read. It would be nice to join the 21st Century with more than my netbook.)