Is this the ultimate cool for your bijou Automated Home? We can just imagine the macro that tests the weather before wakening you and opening the motorised balcony complete with the smell of coffee brewing and warm loaf from the bread maker.  Check out the video after the jump for the full effect...

OSXBMC is free open source media player for the Mac.  It's a port of the popular XBox Media Center (XBMC) that was developed over a number of years by a large group of talented programmers.  With its "plays anything" philosophy, beautiful user interface and ability to pull info for your movies and music straight off the web, it provides an unrivalled experience.  If you've ever used FrontRow you need to check this out!  In our interview with the project developer - Elan - we find out where the project is heading, we get the skinny on the new remote control features about to be released and we hear what special additions are planned for the future...  

I’ve just got my thoughts together after visiting the NEC and I thought I'd share my general view that the show (or zone) was pretty disappointing.  As an installer with a business that's going ballistic it seems odd to be looking at a show that's shrinking, so I thought a bit of digging as to why was in order...

Marmitek have just released a new range of IP CCTV cameras. As usual you can monitor the pictures and sound on your own network or arond the world via the internet.  In the absence of a network some of the cameras can also record directly to a USB thumb drive.  The units include Marmiteks UltraView software that supports up to 16 cameras.  Four models are available, including wired Ethernet and wireless 802.11b/g devices.  Prices range from 100 to 200 Euro (around £80 - £160)...

Last week at the Smart Home Show we interviewed Chiu from Cytech (video of our interview coming soon).  In our chat he showed us some interesting products, amongst them the brand new Z-Wave UCM interface for Comfort...

The Windows Home Server Team Blog has an interesting piece on the running costs of a modern home server versus a regular PC.  They found the annual running costs to be around £25 versus £295!  This echoes our finding in a piece we wrote a couple of years ago on running a NAS versus a PC.  Even then (in a time with lower electricity prices) our more conservative comparison found then the NAS cost around £17.00 to run for a year compared to around £145.00 for a PC...

Chris Carey has created a front end for watching MythTV recordings on the iPhone.  Check out Chris' site for a live demo of the software and watch the video after the jump...

ITV's on-line TV service - Catchup - is now Mac compatible.  You'll need to install Microsofts Silverlight plugin, the Adobe-Flash-like addon that's required for it to work.  We've just tried it and as you can see from the screen grab above it's v1.0 but still classed as a beta...

Owning your own home automation installation company is a bit like being a kid in a sweetie shop. You get to play with all sorts of cool gadgets and gizmos.  Well the CM15 is finally here in Europe. Like many things Home Automation related it takes time to filter through from the States.  So does it live up to the hype and our expectations, or is it a lame duck and nothing more than a CM11/12 with a few go faster stripes on it...