success stories
Mr. Ryan – Movie & Music Enthusiast On A Budget

Problem: Mr. Ryan was spending a fortune on his cable subscription, DVD rentals and music CDs.  He also wasn’t very
happy with recording television using a VCR since the video quality wasn’t good.  

Solution:  His brother-in-law suggested that he consider using a media center product.  It would allow him to record all the
premium movies he was already paying the cable company for and he could even burn them to DVD.  This would save him
a fortune in DVD rentals.  Since he was already receiving digital music through the cable company, he could even record
music and burn it onto CDs.  Since he enjoys late night television programming, he could record these shows and watch
them at a reasonable hour instead of being tired all of the time from staying up late.

Mr. Ryan purchased a Media Made Easy Dual Tuner Kit and installed it in his existing computer.  With two tuners he could
make all of his recordings and still watch something on live TV.
do it yourself media center kits
Benefits:
The Lynn/Schwab’s – Wireless Composite Video For Every Room In Their
Home Without All The Clutter

Problem:  Ms. Lynn wanted less electronic boxes and cabling in her den and Mr. Schwab wanted a digital entertainment
hub that would serve all of the rooms in their house.  How could both of them achieve their goals?

Solution:  Since the Lynn-Schwab’s don’t have an existing wireless network and their televisions are all standard definition
displays, Mr. Schwab chose to use A/V Mage wireless audio/video units to stream entertainment throughout the house.  
With a small receiver in each room instead of a stack of components, Ms. Lynn is much happier. They purchased a Media
Made Easy Standard Definition Media System.
SDTV systems
Benefits:
The Yorgan’s – Cleaning Up The Living Room & Improving Recorded Television By Upgrading From
TiVo

Problem: The Yorgan’s recently upgraded their TV to a Philips 42 inch Plasma screen.  When they had it installed they
decided to buy a TiVo box too.  They were pretty happy with both purchases but there were some nagging issues (and one
big problem).  

The big problem was that their living room was bursting with electronic component boxes.  They had two large stacks of
them and weren’t too excited about taking up valuable space by installing a large entertainment center furniture piece.  In
fact they purchased the plasma display so they could get rid of their big TV and put something slim on the wall.  Mr. Y was
thinking about putting the components into a cutout space in the wall, since there was a space there.  The problem was
that with two satellite set top boxes, a radio tuner, surround sound receiver, Plasma screen receiver, 6 disc CD Player,
DVD/VCR Player & TiVo there was no way they would all fit.  Not to mention all of the remote controls (one for each unit)…it
was enough to drive a person crazy.  
The nagging issues were with TiVo.  They could only save their programs to VHS tape.  They had to play the whole program in TiVo while they recorded to the VCR.  It was all
manual and took forever.  The finished product didn’t look so hot.  Upgrading to a TiVo with DVD recording was going to be expensive.

Their TiVo also didn’t let them store very many shows (especially at a decent quality setting), hence their attempts to back shows up to tape.  Worst of all is that their TiVo unit
didn’t let them watch one show while recording something else.  Mr. Y was always turning off the recordings of Mrs. Y – Not a happy situation.  Again upgrading their TiVo to fix
these problems was going to cost even more money. How could they improve their video recording options while reducing all of the clutter in their living room?

Solution:  Their son told them about Media Made Easy.  They replaced most of their components with a Media Made Easy Apollo SDTV Media System.  Now all the remaining
components fit neatly into a niche in the wall below their plasma display.  With dual tuners they can watch one program while recording another.  With more storage Mr. Y doesn’
t get into trouble by deleting Mrs. Y’s recorded programs.  Mrs. Y can now burn her shows in digital quality on durable DVDs.  

Benefits:
Mr. Bartoli – Audiophile Looking For An Easier Way

Problem: Mr. Bartoli loves all types of music.  His passionate hobby has cost him a lot of money over the years and it has
also created an enormous collection of albums, tapes, CD’s and DVD’s.  He was using a large disk changer but was still
finding it a hassle to have to constantly handle all of the discs – let alone the tapes and records.  He also wanted other
digital media center features like recorded television.  How can he simplify his music management without losing his existing
investments or sacrificing audio quality?
HDTV systems
Solution: Mr. Bartoli purchased a Media Made Easy HDTV System with 800GB Storage.  Upon the recommendation of the MME staff he decided to burn his 700 music CD’s to
one of the 400GB hard disks and leave the other disk dedicated to other digital media (DVD’s, pictures, recorded television).  Using WMA lossless ripping each CD was
compressed to around 411MB without losing any of the digital information.  Now he never has to mess with a sticky CD case again.

By hooking up the HDTV System to his existing amplifier and speaker system using a toslink digital optical cable, he enjoys pure digital quality without any expensive
replacement of his existing systems.  His next step will be to digitize his old tapes and record albums so he can go completely hands-free.  He is also considering adding an
external hard disk for storing his DVD’s online too.

Benefits:
Mr. Hansen – Centralized Management For Videophiles

Problem: Mr. Hansen was tired of managing his movie collection spread all over the place.  He had a 200 disc DVD
changer, a DVR from his cable company and a bunch of videos on his PC.  He was outgrowing the DVD changer and the
DVR didn’t let him burn any of the movies to disk or a DVD.  Videos on his PC were stuck on his PC and never made it to
his plasma display in the entertainment room.  He was looking for a way to manage all of these content sources from one
system and deliver them to his plasma display not just his monitor.
Solution: When Mr. Hansen spoke to Media Made Easy, we asked him about his existing setup and suggested that he look into an HDTV System.  It would offer him
more options than his existing DVR and he could burn recorded movies to DVD.  We even suggested some authoring packages that our service department used for
creating DVD menus and slideshows.

We recommended that he network the HDTV System to his existing home Ethernet network for accessing the videos currently on his PC hard drive so he could maintain
his license rights on that machine.  The HDTV System would serve all of the networked content to his plasma display.

To augment his DVD changer we suggested that he purchase two 500GB firewire external hard disk drives for connection to the HDTV System.  In addition we suggested two
400 GB USB 2.0 external hard disk drives for connection to his existing PC.  These devices would be much more reasonably priced than the terabyte-sized internal hard disks
currently available.

With all of this suggested networked storage he could keep more than 350 movies online at any point (and with his existing 200 disc changer that would bring him up to a total
of well over 600 movies online and ready for playback!

Mr. Hansen decided to start out with a 800GB HDTV System and two 500GB firewire external hard disks filled with DVD movies.  We upgraded the standard video card offering
to the nVidia 7800GTX for an extra charge.  He has the Sony disc changer in use too.  When he outgrows this capacity he will eventually add more external storage.

Benefits:
home theater bundle
The Kennedy’s – Movie Junkies Achieve Home Theater On A Budget

Problem: “We had spent so much money on the room addition, that we needed to keep costs down on the home theater
equipment,” states Mrs. Kennedy.  “We knew what we wanted but we also needed it to look at home in the new room.”  
The room was setup to serve as both a family game room and as a home theater so they needed a bright display that
looked good from any angle.  Mr. Kennedy wanted a really large display but Mrs. Kennedy didn’t want some giant piece of
furniture taking up all the floor-space.
Solution: Media Made Easy suggested that they purchase the LCD Home Theater Bundle.  It combined an enormous flat panel display with a brightness to work in any
light environment.  After comparing the pricing at a big computer maker’s website, they placed an order with Media Made Easy instead.  They figure they saved around $1,200
on equipment alone and ended up with a much larger display than the one offered by the computer maker.  Mrs. Kennedy is also pleased because the HDTV system looks so
much better than a desktop computer would in the room.

Benefits:
The Sato’s – Getting A Laptop To HDTV

Problem: The Sato’s were interested in turning their laptop computer into a media center machine.  The problem was that
they also wanted HDTV since they live in the Seattle area and can get a lot of over-the-air HDTV programming.  

Solution:  The Sato’s request was actually quite common.  Although many companies provide USB DVB terrestial products
for laptops in Europe, there aren’t any offering USB media center products to do the same here in America.  Rather than try
and recreate the wheel, Media Made Easy put together a Cardbus expansion module with dual NTSC standard definition
tuners and dual ATSC high definition tuners.  This module plugs right into their laptop’s Type II CardBus expansion slot and
acts just like the PCI tuner cards are in the laptop itself.
We also suggested that they add a large external USB hard disk drive for storing their recorded television files.  The Sato’s laptop already had DVI video output but rest assured
other PCMCIA video cards could have been added to get them HDTV resolutions for their LCD television display.

Benefits:

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