Jamie Balfour

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Find out more about me, my personal projects, reviews, courses and much more here.

Jamie Balfour'sPersonal blog

Jamie Balfour'sPersonal blog

Today I am going to review the BlueLounge CableBox in my blog. Firstly, it is nothing more than a box with slots for wires to go through. And it's aim is to tidy up wiring. They cost around £25, which is a bit steep for nothing more than a box.

However, and this is a big however, the CableBox, despite being nothing more than a box, is getting a 8/10 from me because of the fact that has worked how I wanted it to but because it's expensive for what it is.

It's easy to see how it has changed my wiring system (I am still in the process of tidying my wires, but you can see how the BlueLounge CableBox has changed it all so far!).

A little update on this: Ikea have since released their own much cheaper models, and whilst they are not quite a nice in design as the BlueLounge ones, they offer a much better value solution.
bluelounge
cablebox
box
cable
blue
lounge
tidy
wires

This TV capture card is a very feature-rich DVB tuner. It also features composite video and stereo RCA audio connections to allow capture from a camera or other AV device in standard definition. The main reason I chose this one, however, was the fact that it supports Windows 7 x64 which seems rare in most TV cards these days. Also, this card is just PCI 32 bit, not PCI-e so I can leave them free for more expansion such as SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 when they come along. I still cannot wait to test this on my television and LCD monitor simultaneously with my Media Center remote.

hauppauge
tv
win-tv
digital
radio
recorder
review
1300
hvr

This enclosure was one I purchased about 2 weeks ago to make the transition of data from my older computer to my new one a smooth ride.

CiT35M17SE

I originally only purchased it because it was the only option with FireWire and USB on it without a hard drive included and intended to use it only for this task then get rid of it.

However, after discovering its true potential, I have actually discovered possibly the best priced enclosure out there. This enclosure comes with short USB, FireWire and eSATA cables and the power adapter.

More importantly, it comes with a free eSATA backplate for those who do not have eSATA. I discovered, and this to my amazement, that FireWire far outperforms eSATA on this drive gaining around 90MB/S (even though it claims to be capped at 400Mbps) on FireWire and around 55MB/S on eSATA.

None the less, this was a significant improvement over my previous drive that had only USB 2.0 which can only transfer at 35MB/S.

For more information on this enclosure search for the CiT 35M17SEF.

esata
usb
sata
firewire
cit
color it
enclosure
hard
disk
drive
external
fast
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