When it comes to design elements in a home, men are usually on the outside looking in. And while many men are not overly concerned with duvet covers, throw pillows and the shade of yellow going in the bathroom, they still deserve and enjoy a say in the process, even if it’s just lip service. A better way to get men involved in the design process, however, is to give them a blank palate to work with…like a man cave.


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With CNET reporting that 123 million connected TV’s will ship in 2014, it’s clear there’s mounting demand for a single screen that can give us access to all of our traditional TV content and our web content at the same time. While many predicted 3D to be the driving force behind future video purchases, it is clear Internet connectivity means more to consumers than goofy glasses.


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Anyone who’s tried to install a video card in a computer knows it’s not a simple DIY project. In homebuilding terms, it’s akin to furnace or electrical work and not something for the inexperienced. However, fiddling with your computer’s internals can be a thing of the past with the new IOGEAR USB to HD Adapter.


A.K.A the GUC2025H, the new adapter connects additional HD displays to a desktop or laptop computer using a USB 2.0 cable, something all computers have (as opposed to HDMI). Throw in an HDMI to DVI Adapter and you’ve got a set-up that will complement almost every modern computer and TV combination.

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If there’s one thing Internet users like, it’s a good list. Whether it’s the top 10 ways to tell if your man is cheating or five killer iPhone apps for foodies, as Internet users, we’re drawn to random bulleted rankings like college kids to dollar drafts.

While scouring the Internet recently, we came across an interesting story by Geoff Morrison from Sound and Vision titled Seven Home Theater Myths Debunked that highlighted some obvious and not-so obvious beliefs people have about the gear and performance that makes up their home theaters or media rooms. Most people know that owning an HD TV doesn’t guarantee your watching HD content. You need an HD equipped source component (like a Blu-ray or HD cable receiver) and the necessary cables. File that under obvious.

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Tablets like the new iPad 2 and Xoom with their ergonomic, lightweight, portable, yet big and powerful enough design, are a mainstay on the personal technology front. Individual tablet users blend entertainment with productivity, but as the technology develops and competition drives prices down, the business and industrial applications are limitless.


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QR codes have in great part; as discussed last week, helped to educate and inform consumers beyond the ways traditional marketing and signage could ever hope to. They have made shopping interactive and fun, by simply using your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows 7, Blackberry) to scan a barcode and open a whole new world of available information. Here’s a guided tour to how these QR codes can work for you.

Start by scanning this QR code with your smartphone’s camera with the appropriate app (iPhone, Android, Windows 7 or http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/13962?lang=en):



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While the market is slowly making a rebound according to CEPro’s State of the Industry 2011, both existing and new homeowners are still looking to maximize their dollars. The funds might not be in their budget for lavish vacations in faraway lands, resulting in more families spending time together at home. In doing so, their meeting place often tends to be in the family room, on comfortable couches and in front of large HD televisions.


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AV products follow a hierarchy of coolness. You could argue a Kaleidescape or Sooloos server are at the cool end of the spectrum while products like HDMI cables, adapters and interconnects skew towards the necessary, but not worth talking about to your friends end of the spectrum. In between are all the myriad of output devices like projectors, HD TVs, speakers, Blu-ray players and more.

The funny thing about defining a AV coolness factor is that sometimes the most mundane sounding products actually allow other AV devices to improve their coolness factor, even adding new functionality that wasn’t there before. Case in point: IOGEAR’s new 2-Port Dual View Dual-Link DVI KVMP Switch may just look like a small black box with a variety of inputs and outputs, but take a closer look, and one can envision dozens of practical applications for this KVM product, both at home and in commercial settings.

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In the previous post, we made the argument that it’s time to redefine the meaning of TV because on-demand services , media center applications, gaming consoles, Internet connectivity and more are changing what can be managed and consumed with a TV. However, to benefit from all this magical convergence, proper AV accessories are required.

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Jim Louderback says that “…the average American household may have three TVs, but many, many more screens,” when contemplating a survey by Nielsen that revealed that the average American home has 2.93 TV sets. Consumers want to watch the programming of their choice, when they want and where they want. The use of digital video recorders (DVRs) and services like TiVo have illustrated consumers do follow specific shows, but don’t want to be confined to the original air date of those shows. Furthermore, the ability to stream content on-demand to PCs and other devices has opened yet another door for those who want to watch programming.

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