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Foxblocker Filters Out Fox News

March 31, 2005 by 63 Comments

Fox Blocker

oh yes folks, just what you’ve always wanted. the foxblocker is a little piece of metal that screws into your coaxial cable on the back of your television (or cable box) and will block out the news channel, FOX News. this is a very interesting concept because in theory, you could start to daisy chain these together and filter out whichever stations you wanted. i think it’d be fun to see these made into “nickelodeon blockers” or something to that effect. whatever will make your little brother cry.

it’s available now for $8.95 from the official website. thanks to off the hook for informing me.

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24-channel Audio System

March 6, 2005 by 11 Comments

leamon sound device

roy leamon just wasn’t satisfied with 5.1 discrete audio channels, so he went to work hacking together a 24 channel sound system that he calls the lsd (laemon sound device).  the 24 seperate speakers are controlled over firewire by a mac g5.

it’s a bit difficult to imagine what is possible with this system.  you could realistically have a seperate sound source for each instrument in your recording.  you could move a single source around the room in a way that a 5.1 system can only attempt to imitate.  there are a lot of possibilities.

this one is not for the faint of heart or light of wallet.  though it’s constructed from off the shelf components, roy estimates that it would take $12-15k to reproduce his system.  that figure just shattered any hopes that i had of being a true audiophile.  this is probably ok — i don’t have the skillz to juggle 12 turntables anyway.

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Do It Yourself Lcd Projector

February 6, 2005 by 37 Comments

diy lcd projector

do your friends really want to watch the game on that puny tv of yours?  wouldn’t they rather spend the afternoon helping you make a 6 foot xga projection system?  i figured so, and so did sine~language, who sent us this link last night to a tom’s hardware article on building a sweet video system out of an lcd monitor and an overhead projector.

more recently, tom’s posted a follow-up with recommendations on flat panel monitors to use for such a project.  also worth checking out is an alternative lcd projector design we talked about earlier.

these projectors seemed really large to me at first glance, but they take up much less space than a normal 32 inch tube.  that, and you can’t easily roll a tv of reasonable size into a closet and reclaim your room.  i guess you know what i’ll be doing instead of watching the super bowl.

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Get Your 2005 Media Center PC To Join Windows Domains

January 6, 2005 by No comments

diy mce

Some hackster by the name of Rafael has figured out way to get PCs running Windows XP Media Center 2005 to join Windows domains, which basically means you’ll be able to hook up to a corporate network. Also handy if you want to remotely administer all forty Media Center PCs spread out around your expansive mansion (or at least make it a tiny bit easier to get one past your IT admin at work).

[Via Digital Media Thoughts]

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