A day in the life II » hdtv

Starting to get used to the HDTV

Malcolm — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:27:12 +0000

It was an effort. First I had to get everything hooked up properly and set the proper settings per input channel (some are in game mode most times, though Beautiful Katamari looks best in the TV’s super-saturated, super-postprocessed Vivid setting, and it’s not so time-sensitive/reaction sensitive to really sweat the little delay in display).

During this time, the TV and its associated stand was about 3 feet closer to us than it would finally be. That was way too close. As misia said, it felt like we both had to lean waaay back in the sofa to not feel like we’d fall into the screen.

Now that most of the cabling is settled (for now, until my cable management crap arrives, anyway, and I am still in want of a basket to bolt on the back of my rolling stand and put the big-ass transformers of the XBox 360 and the Wii in), so the TV is rolled back to its regular position, 2-3 feet closer to the wall opposite the couch. It’s much more tolerable that way.

For the first 3 or 4 days, though, the HDTV felt wrong somehow. I guess I was just too used to the old TV and the space it took up. The new TV is much bigger, much wider and has a much more grandiose presence (partly, I suspect, because of the cost associated in my psychology).

But I’m getting used to it, as is misia, I think. We’ll see how it goes in the long run.

More on HDMI cables – cheap vs. expensive

Malcolm — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:12:30 +0000

From ckd, a link to an Ars Technica summary that points (as well to other discussion and original content) to a forum post by an electrical engineer about cheap vs. expensive HDMI cables, as well as a discussion about HDMI 1.0, 1.1 and 1.3 compliant cables.

The summary:

As HDMI is a digital data transfer medium, there is no difference between a $15 cable. There may be an argument for higher cable quality with analog signals, but for digital signals, as long as the signal is carried, there is no difference expressed due to quality of cabling.
HDMI 1.0, 1.1 and 1.3 are about capabilities for devices at either end of the cable. An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable is an HDMI cable. Companies advertise cables as HDMI 1.3 compliant in order to part you with more of your $$.

Follow-on Purchases. Deals?

Malcolm — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:14:08 +0000

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.

HDTV arrived

Malcolm — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:21:55 +0000

It looks huge. It is huge. It is gigantic for our living room.

I am engaged in advanced cable management tactics just so I can push the damned thing back another 2 feet.

But lest I sound like I am complaining, I’m not. It is in fact just right, only it’s just friggin’ huge.

The newly arrived Hannukah XBox 360? Beautiful. HDMI cables? Even the cheap ones are freakin’ expensive.

Query: Power Conditioning?

Malcolm — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:31:40 +0000

I’m being told now by co-workers and other well-meaning, well-wishing geeks that now that I have an HDTV (or will soon), I should invest in power conditioning/surge protection and possibly even UPS for the thing.

Is this just a load of hooey, or is it something I should be concerned about? Honestly, having a central point of power with 10 or 12 outlets might not be a bad idea for me as my current “solution” is two daisy-chained relatively cheap ($20-$30) surge protector power strips.

Opinions?

Edited: On further talking with geeky folks I know, it sounds like it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to buy a computer-wise UPS (technically, these are actually SPSes, since the UPS part isn’t always on, but kicks in during stress) that would support the total load of my devices, because UPSes automatically also do power conditioning. There’s a decent looking APC UPS for about $200 (Heck, looks like it may be $40 lower at Circuit City) that looks good.

An amazing evening

Malcolm — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:24:46 +0000

Yesterday evening was a great deal of fun.

misia had conspired with my friend Rob (and apparently half of my neighbors and about all of my friends) to surprise me with a Halo Edition XBox 360, a copy of Halo 3 and a copy of Beautiful Katamari (as yet, I have not tried it). I was taken completely by surprise, first by the games (“Dude! I don’t even have an XBox 360 yet!”), then by the XBox 360 itself, which was out of sight and I didn’t see until well after I saw the games (“Oh!… Oh wow!… Thank you!”). misia really got me, and Rob had worked hard yesterday while I was doing all of that money/HDTV stuff to keep me from buying an XBox 360 myself (he was my ride to Tweeter to buy the HDTV).

I understand that a number of misia‘s friends knew this was in the works. For weeks I’d been getting bounced from private posts where misia was apparently asking opinions and gleefully plotting about what she should do on her journal, and she’d explained she wanted to keep me from having to see her kvetching about renovation, or something, put me off rather slyly. There were other incidents too, that were part of it, like when she asked me to show her how things were hooked up “so that she could reconnect if the housecleaners disconnected them”. I didn’t suspect a thing, but that question was really asked to make sure she could connect the XBox 360 and have it ready for me when I came home last night, so the controllers would be charged up, etc.

So after my shock wore off enough to settle down, misia had also already made homemade pizza and cookies and had uncapped some ciders and Rob and I played co-op Halo 3 all night long.

A great big thank you to misia and to all who participated in this surprise. It was really pleasurable and wonderful and I’m really glad you all plotted against me.

Oh! Also, I wanted to say that the choice of the Halo Edition XBox 360 was perfect, because I did secretly want it, but never would have bought that particular edition for myself, thinking myself too responsible to drop $$ on a themed XBox 360 when a plain one would do just fine.

Unrelated: Apparently my post on LJ about WordPress as an alternative to LJ is high-ranked on Google for such related searches. Good thing it’s on SUP’s bandwidth.

HDTV Purchased

Malcolm — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:03:35 +0000

Sony Bravia 40″ XBR5.

Ordered for delivery from Tweeter. After consulting the both living and “stone” (written, online) oracles, I bought a 5 year extended warranty. Tweeter’s service/delivery is said to be decent. This seemed to me wiser than buying for less from Amazon and letting UPS knock the TV around some before dropping on my doorstep to get stolen.

I still intend to look into both an improved sound system (but the built-in speakers will do for now), as well as intend to get at least the XBox 360 if not also the PS3 soonish.

But first the delivery, which should be Friday, 12/7.

HDTV epic continues

Malcolm — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:56:47 +0000

It’s not entirely committed, but today I may go out and order that HDTV I’ve been going on about. And some accessories.

More news on that front when I have it.

In other news, reCAPTCHA is now installed on this blog. Woot. And it’s upgraded to 2.7 (last time I installed it was at version 2.6).

Seeking the Deal and the HDTV

Malcolm — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:09:59 +0000

I talked with my boss today. He’s an HDTV owner, who bought his probably 6 months ago, and is already experiencing “buyer’s remorse” (because of how quickly technology moves).

He thinks that since there may be deals that appeal to me and my purchasing priorities, I should just take advantage of them if I get a close match to what I’m looking for buying anyway. I’m a bit on the fence with that. I’ve been checking Amazon for various prices, of both bundles and of the actual HDTV model I’m looking at, and the price very recently dropped by $300, probably within the last week. I noticed this almost as I was strongly thinking about going for a bundle deal from Sony that would have cost in total probably $500 or so more than just buying the TV via Amazon and buying the bundled product alone from Amazon as well.

My boss thinks that you don’t normally see a large price drops except in increments of 6 months or more, and thinks I probably won’t see prices go any lower than they already are right now sooner than that.

I remain skeptical, but I also don’t really want to wait needlessly. I guess without knowing industry insiders I’m not going to know any better than I do now, but if anyone’s got any opinions to share, I’d love to have them.

More about HDTV investigations

Malcolm — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:50:53 +0000

I figure I can talk about this a little bit more.

I asked misia to help me evaluate the new Samsung 81F series (the 120 Hz refresh LCD flat-panel HDTVs with the new LED backlight technology) in contrast to the ones she already picked out as liking in our last window-shopping event, the Sony Bravia XBR4/XBR5 (another 120 Hz refresh LCD flat-panel, but without LED backlighting) HDTVs. This all boils down most of the research I’ve done, which is that with HDTVs, after all’s said and done, and all research i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, and you’ve totally geeked out on specs and features, what really ends up mattering is how the image looks, personally, to you, and the primary consumers of the images (so in my case, me and misia).

A couple of months ago, misia identified the Sony Bravia XBR4/XBR5 line as best looking among that stage’s lineup (without the Samsung 81Fs in the picture), and after due consideration, I agreed. These are top of the line TV sets. After this weekend comparing the Samsung LED backlight (promises a higher contrast ratio, i.e. deeper blacks), we both still think the Bravias look better.

Current prices are well over my initial estimate of investment in these techs, not quite 100% higher, but definitely up there. Still, after thinking about it, weighing the impact on our savings, etc., I think I’ll probably go for it.

We’re not buying immediately. There are some decent package deals up and available (toward my priority of getting some decent audio out of the deal as well) to encourage holiday buying, but I’ve resolved to stick it out and buy after this holiday season, per my original schedule.