Like many of you, my TV room has been experiencing an annoying phenomenon that I will call remote-creep. You all know what I’m talking about, it happens all the time. Here is the recipe.

Start with a TV and maybe a DVD player. Slowly add a game console, then a DVR, maybe some surround sound, another game console, etc. Then one day your wife will start complaining commenting that she doesn’t know how to watch a DVD or can’t switch it back to the TV. I had four remotes, and I was thinking of adding another one. I knew that wouldn’t go over well; not that I liked having to manage a pile of remotes either. Fortunately there is a better way…

Read more

After the announcement by CinemaNow that users could now watch leased bought/rented videos on their Xbox 360s I figured I would give it a shot. I am a Netflix user, but I have watched a few movies via the Xbox Live Marketplace (XLM) recently as well. I really like both services, and thought that CinemaNow’s larger library might be a good substitute for the XLM. I didn’t intend to do a write-up on this, but after my experience I thought it could be something that others could benefit from. I will be approaching this in two parts: first, the quality of the CinemaNow service regardless of the playback device; and second, the process to bring it to the TV.

Read more