Review Horizon

A new year, a new top 10 list that tries to offer a comprehensive view of the top 10 best media streamers for 2012.

If 2011 was a year in which the media streamer boxes sales experienced a consolidation and media streamers like WD TV Live, Boxee Box or Apple TV exploded in sales, 2012 is a year when beside commoditization of the boxes at prices under $100, the manufacturers will fight quite hard to ensure access to content. From new technologies designed to put a media streamer in every TV sold in 2012 – see the Roku streamer USB stick that should add streaming content to every HDMI-MHL compatible TV on the market to new Google TV boxes from new manufacturers, everything is gearing up toward a complete online experience from your big screen TV. We are here to help you make an informed decision, whether you are trying to stream local / networked content or you just need to access as many web services as possible.

As in 2011, In terms of pure streaming, Roku deserves to be again on the first place due to its excellent implementation of web clients and the support for all important premium clients such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video on Demand, etc. HBO GO and many other additional channels fond their way to Roku Boxes and their prices are Read More…

Nook Tablet is together with Kindle Fire one of the most eagerly awaited gadgets of the year. Barnes & Noble’s previous tablet, the Nook Color held an important record – the best selling tablet after Apple’s iPad and that is a not an easy feat considering how crowded the tablet market has become. It is obvious though that pricing correctly sells, and the original Nook Color was priced correctly, the HP Touchpad has been priced correctly ( ) during its fire sale and the current Nook Tablet is also priced correctly at $249. However, it is $50 more than Kindle Fire. Is it worth the extra money? How does it stand against its main competitor from Amazon? These are only some questions we’ll try to answer in this Nook Tablet Review. Read More…

We were fortunate enough to get on of the CoolerMaster’s best looking cases for a review – the CM Storm Trooper, a high grade full tower gaming case with an ambitious design and a price to match ($189.99 retail). On paper, CM Storm Trooper has everything a serious gamer would ever dream to have – a really spacious interior capable of accommodating 8 to 13 drives depending of the chosen configuration, an advanced cooling system, enough space for ATX XL size motherboards and the heftiest graphic cards available plus a well designed cable management system so everything looks nice and clean. Can it provide all it promises? Let’s get into some details in Review Horizon’s CoolerMaster CM Storm Trooper Review. Read More…

RAIDMAX has been on a roll recently launching a plethora of good looking cases on a budget (check our Raidmax Helios Review) and their latest addition, Seiran (MSRP $79.99) is even more ambitious than the other members of the family, at least in terms of specifications. Beside the good looks though, more important is the provided space, ventilation system, motherboard form factors that it can accommodate, overall sturdiness and the degree of finishing, etc. We’ll try to cover all these questions and more in our Raidmax Seiran Review and help you make an informed decision, so read along. Read More…

Kindle Fire was one of the most eagerly awaited gadgets for this year and Amazon certainly created a lot of noise around it, raising the expectations through the roof. While using the term iPad killer is really inappropriate after so many wannabees, most of the analysts expected Amazon to release a tablet significantly cheaper than iPad but capable to offer the same kind of synergy between various media services, eBooks and applications, Amazon being one of the very few companies that can rival Apple in such offerings.

Amazon Kindle Fire was released just a few days ago and the question hot on everybody’s lips is how and if it can compare with iPad, with other Android tablets and with the Nook Tablet, its main competitor. Nobody really doubts of Amazon capability of selling millions of Kindle Fires, but to be Read More…

Today’s computer run faster and faster and with the speed comes increased heat dissipation. The latest CPUs featuring 4, 6 or more cores are power hogs and, especially if you overclock them, the need to keep them happy and cool is stringent. Our latest review will get into details about one of the most popular CPU Coolers on the market today – the Hyper 212 Evo by Cooler Master.

Cooler Master is a name well known to the aftermarket connoisseurs earning numerous design awards for their products. One of their newest products, Hyper 212 Evo is part of the Cooler Master’s 212 series of CPU that have quite a history, with the first member of the family to surface about 4 years ago. While the initial design sporting heatpipes is still followed, the new Hyper 212 EVO model is quite improved in both cooling capabilities and mounting design. How does it perform in the real word? Let’s proceed with the review: Read More…

As I said in my previous article when I reviewed Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, both me and my wife decided we need larger screens than the ones our current iPhone 4 smartphones have, we were eligible for an early upgrade offer from At&T and it really made no sense paying again for iPhone 4S upgrade over the iPhone 4, so we looked into AT&T’s new 4G LTE capable smartphones based on Android OS, especially since AT&T run a pretty cool promotion. We got to buy the HTC Vivid for only $99 and I choose the Galaxy S2 Skyrocket for myself, the HTC Vivid going to  my wife. We got to play with them for a couple of day and the experience is described in detail in this review. Beside references to the Galaxy Skyrocket, I’ll also compare HTC Vivid to my previous iPhone 4 so you can make an informed purchase decision overall.

In case you don’t know, HTC Vivid is one of the two LTE sets AT&T  just launched. LTE is the new 4G communication standard AT&T is upgrading its network to, it stands for Long Term Evolution. With the current technology LTE should achieve download speeds of 20+Mbs, enough for pretty much everything including 1080p streaming. LTE sets owners report download speeds in excess to 50 Mbs / second, a quite impressive jump over the 3G technology and while LTE is not yet deployed in all AT&T markets, in the areas the technology is deployed you should be in for a treat.

The latest LTE sets should also help position AT&T as a solid Android provider considering that iPhone exclusivity for so many years helped it build a somewhat opposite image. Will they succeed? I guess time will tell.

HTC Vivid Unpacking

It looks like AT&T decided to customize the boxes to look more AT&T-ish than anything else, in an obvious effort to set their brand. The boxes Read More…

If you are interested in a dirt cheap Surveillance DVR (Digital Video Recorder), the lowest price I have ever seen is this Night Owl NONB-4DVR 4 x BNC Compact H.264 Digital Video Recorder with Smart Phone Access at Newegg. They have it right now for only $69 but it doesn’t include the hard drive. In my opinion this is actually a good thing since you can get a SATA drive for really cheap nowadays.

Obviously, at this price you can’t expect HD quality, but for $69 you can’t really go too wrong. Just remember! It doesn’t come with a hard-drive so you’ll have to get a SATA one separately. Has a mouse, remote control and you can connect it to your TV for instant 4 in 1 camera viewing. I got one myself so expect a review quite soon. there is tax in California, of course so expect it for $75.06 shipped.

Yesterday I had the pleasant surprise to find a package in front of my door – the new Roku 2 3100X has arrived. I unpacked it immediately so I can put it to the test – here is the Roku 2 XS review summing my impressions. I also own the previous Roku (review here)  box for more than a year, so I knew what to expect. I knew the software would be similar, so I was mainly interested in the new box responsivity and of course, the new gaming platform Roku just launched.
A bit of history on the side – Roku was the first company to release a dedicated streaming box and they are now at the 3rd generation. While weak for local content, they have arguably the lagest selection of streaming choices with content from Netflix to Vimeo and UFC to FoxNews. Private channels can be added as well to support Plex, YouTube, PlayOn, etc.

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If you haven’t heard of Roku up to this point, they hold the title for the first dedicated Netflix capable media streamer in the world. As weird as it might sound, back in the day not every media streamer was Netflix capable . Now, of course we live in different times, and Netflix is the largest movie streaming company in the world so Netflix streaming clients can be found everywhere, from stand-alone media streamer boxes to connected Blu-ray players and connected TVs, smartphones, tablets, you name it.

Roku obviously didn’t stop with Netflix, their boxes have the most streaming channels available in any media streamer box (see here our Roku review). The new version of this loaded box found its way to FCC and is currently in beta testing, so that means you’ll soon be able to find it in stores. FCC website lists three new models - 3000X, 3050X, and 3100X. Hardware wise, the new boxes are even smaller than the current version (44.65mm x 44.65mm) and built around a Broadcom 2835 SOC. The good news, they now feature a MicroSD Read More…