Just thought I’d log the recent purchases and rationale for them that I made to support my gigantic TV upgrade.

• APC BX1500LCD UPS (1500VA, 865 Watts, decent specs, enough outlets, and Circuit City is currently about $40 or 20% below retail - $159.99). Wouldn’t you know it that just as I looked for this one, I found an off-brand but much higher spec UPS For just $70 more? Tempting, but I’ll stay with the APC both for minimizing fuss and for trusting APC brand a bit more than a brand I don’t know. This purchase evolved from a discussion with my good friend daktaklakpak about UPSes and modern entertainment equpiment, all of which benefit from some UPS/power conditioning (all of my consoles now warn against sudden power loss during game saves), but we both agreed that you don’t have to sink 10 times the cost of this UPS into one designed for home audio/video. We are both equally suspicious of the intentions of folks marketing such things to folks willing to pay top dollar for undemonstrated “advantage”.
• While at Circuit City’s physical store to pick up the UPS I bought online (cool service, btw), I also picked up their least expensive 4′ HDMI cable on the floor. 4′, $49.99 (Jesus Christ!). Thanks to ckd now, though, I know where to get my next ones. The Apple store sells them for $19.99.
• Netgear FS605NA 5-port switch (really only 4 ports, because one is the incoming connection - $39.99). Both for cable management reasons (minimizing the number of cables that go from wall to rolling entertainment center) and because the UPS does surge protection for network cables, I decided to make just one network cable go to the entertainment center where I will have an onboard 4-port network switch. I can then pass that 1 network cable to the UPS, then take the surge protected one back to the switch and connect all my devices to that. Fortunately I already know how to make/shorten/crimp network cables and already have the plugs and tools required, so I don’t have to buy any more short network cables. I did need to buy the switch, though, and since I’ve already got Netgear exclusively, that’s what I bought, at Radio Shack (.com), both because they had a good deal and because I bought other things there too.
• 30′ of spiral cable wrap ($11.97). For cable management. I prefer this solution over the corrugated split pipe solution, because it’s easier and more elegant to branch cables off the main trunk with this solution. Also, you can wrap this around cable bundles of any thickness, you just lose length. With the corrugated split pipe, you have to know how big your bundle is before you buy the pipe.
• 6 mini extension cables - 8″ long ($19.98). Again for cable management, but for clearing up UPS ports or power strip ports. These are for plugging into power strips (things with closely spaced 3-prong outlets) and then plugging transformer blocks into the other end. The benefit here is that you don’t end up blocking off 2 or 3 outlets with one big-ass transformer block, but just one. 3 of these mini extension cables for $10 is about the cheapest I’ve found so far, which is why I bought at RadioShack.com.
• 6.6 ft Component/Stereo Audio/Video cable ($19.99) Mostly because I used two 3-wire cables instead of one 5-wire cable, and I hate having conductors dangling around unplugged. This is arguably (in a geeky way) also for cable management, but I’m not sure if even I would buy that. Mostly it’s because I wanted it, I suppose, to neaten up the place. At least I didn’t buy Monster cables, which are de riguer, apparently, and cost 3x - 10x as much, depending on how committed you are to the ephemeral quality of “quality”. I tend to be really skeptical about whether Monster cables (or any of the much higher priced premium cables) really are all that better than any other cables vis a vis picture and sound transmission quality.

In other news, I am having a devil of a time reaching the right Microsoft person so I can cancel automatic rebill for my old XBox Live account. I can’t even bring myself to be surprised.

Tags:   cable management · cat5 · cat5e · customer support · hdmi · hdtv · networking · ups · xbox live1 Comment