Woot! – Turtle Beach Ear Force X41 Wireless Headset for Xbox 360 Just $79.99

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by MegaZone

Turtle Beach Ear Force X41 Wireless Headset for XBOX 360 Today’s Woot! deal is a refurbished Turtle Beach Ear Force X41 Wireless Headset for Xbox 360 for only $79.99 + $5 S&H. You get support for Dolby Digital 7.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Pro Logic IIx for the best sound whether gaming or watching video on your Xbox 360. These have an MSRP of $199.99 and sell new on Amazon for $139.99, so this is a substantial savings.

Posted in Gaming, General Tech | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Virgin TiVo Wins Stuff’s Home Cinema Gadget of the Year

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by MegaZone

Virgin Media TiVo Beating out the Onkyo TX-NR609 receiver, EchoStar HDS 600RS Freesat PVR, Panasonic DMP-BDT310 Blu-ray player, LG HX976TZW home theater in a box, D-Link Boxee Box, and Yamaha YSP-2200 sound bar, Virgin Media’s TiVo won Stuff magazine’s “Home Cinema Gadget of the Year”.

Allow us to present Stuff’s First Theorem, a formula tells us that as TV gets ever more overrun by idiots making fools of themselves to amuse cretins, you need a really good PVR to cut through the rubbish. Virgin’s TiVo is that PVR: it learns from your viewing habits, suggesting and recording shows it thinks you’ll like. And most of the time it gets it right. With super-smart search features, three tuners and 1TB of space for recordings, the only barrier between you and a perfect night’s viewing will be your own good taste.

Via Stuff.tv

Posted in Cable, DVR, TiVo | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Win MegaZone’s Old Stuff Giveaway 3 of 3 – Slingbox PRO & HD Connect

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by MegaZone

Slingbox PRO This is giveaway three of three, as explained in the first giveaway post. This is my old Slingbox PRO and HD Connect. Note, this is the PRO, and not the PRO-HD. The PRO does not stream in HD. With the HD Connect dongle you can feed it HD content via component video but it is down sampled to 640×480 for streaming. The PRO also doesn’t work with the iOS, Android, or Windows Phone SlingPlayer clients – they only work with the PRO-HD and SOLO. (The clients require H.264, the PRO encodes as WMV9.) So what is it good for? Well, it works just fine with the Windows and Mac OS SlingPlayer, and it works with the older mobile clients – Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, and Blackberry. And it works with the SlingCatcher, if you have one of those.

Slingbox PRO HD Connect With the HD Connect the Slingbox PRO supports up to four simultaneous inputs. There is an internal NTSC tuner which supports analog cable, composite video, S-Video, and component video (via the HD Connect dongle). It is in the original packaging and I’ve included all of the types of cables it came with. They might not be the exact cables – who can keep that straight and tell one cable from another? – but you should have what you need.

So how do you win? Leave a comment on this post. You have one week. Comments made before 00:00 EST Monday 11/14 will count as entries. Please, one comment per person. I’ll contact the winner based on the email address used on the comment, so make sure you use a valid address.

Posted in Sling Media | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

Win MegaZone’s Old Stuff Giveaway 2 of 3 – D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by MegaZone

D-Link DSM-330 This is giveaway two of three, as explained in the first giveaway post. This is the D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player, it handles all DivX and most Xvid files (.divx and .avi files using DivX with MPEG-1 Layer 2 and Layer 3 or AC3 audio), MP3 and MP3 playlists (.pls, .m3u and .m3u8), and JPEG and BMP images. It is designed to connect to DivX software running on a Windows PC and it has Ethernet and built-in 802.11g WiFi. The DivX software supports third party plug-ins and services.

I was sent this a several years ago as a potential review unit when it was a new product. But, to be perfectly honest, I thought it was kind of clunky and I decided I wasn’t really the target market. I was never a big DivX media user, and it really felt like the product was for that kind of user. Since all other video formats need to be converted to DivX for playback it is really best for someone who already has a lot of DivX or Xvid content. Since I didn’t feel like I could do it justice with a review I offered to return it, but they didn’t want it back. I kept it hooked up for a while, but eventually disconnected it to make room for another device and it has just been sitting here.

The DivX Connected software is still available for download, as are plug-ins and themes. There’s also a DivX Connected Community. It is in the original packaging and I’ve included all of the types of cables it came with. They might not be the exact cables – who can keep that straight and tell one cable from another? – but you should have what you need.

So how do you win? Leave a comment on this post. You have one week. Comments made before 00:00 EST Monday 11/14 will count as entries. Please, one comment per person. I’ll contact the winner based on the email address used on the comment, so make sure you use a valid address.

Posted in General, PC | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Win MegaZone’s Old Stuff Giveaway 1 of 3 – TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by MegaZone

TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter Perhaps unsurprisingly I’m a bit of a tech pack rat. I tend not to get rid of old gear once I stop using it, unless perhaps it died. Even then sometimes I have trouble letting go. But whenever I have something that’s still working, but I just don’t need it anymore, I tend to file it away ‘just in case’. Well, since my fiancee moved in a year ago I’ve been cleaning out a lot of the old stuff to de-clutter a bit. I donated or freecycled some of it, but I put some items aside thinking they might make for decent giveaway items when I finally relaunched the blog. And so here we are.

This first round has three giveaways. First up is a TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter. I used this for a long time but eventually I ran wired Ethernet and ‘retired’ this adapter. I kept it ‘just in case’ I needed it again. But I don’t see that happening so I figure I should give it away to someone who could use it. This is TiVo’s official 802.11g USB adapter for Series2 and later models.

So how do you win? Leave a comment on this post. You have one week. Comments made before 00:00 EST Monday 11/14 will count as entries. Please, one comment per person. I’ll contact the winner based on the email address used on the comment, so make sure you use a valid address.

Posted in DVR, TiVo | Tagged , , | 15 Comments