Anyone here into dedicated Home Theaters??

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BT Tech @ May 2 2007, 05:49 PM) [snapback]434310[/snapback]</div>

You ain't whistling Dixie there, bucko! With my eight feet of image, I can really tell the difference. It's almost 3-D, at least some of the scenes in A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM. I got DREAM GIRLS in the mail today; can't wait to see it.

As someone else said, they worry about Blu Ray going away. I wonder about that as well. BUT, as a fan of SONY® gear, I have met this disappointment before. I had a Beta machine. I still have a pro level Mini Disc machine. Heck, I even have a turntable...

 

I'm a bit embarrassed to write this after PriusEnvy mentioned he has 6 TB of HD content in his house, but perhaps for comparison purposes ... ;-)

Gear includes a Yamaha receiver, big JBL speakers, and a 50" Panny plasma. OTA broadcasts get close to zero attention in my house. It's all about movies.

Standard DVD's meet my quality requirements for sound and video, so my interest has been focused on circumventing my pet peeves about discs: easily scratched, not put away by my kids, or not in the house when I want to watch.

Solution: A media player with attached video library. I have mulled over using a PC with linux, a DVD player with external HD that can play DivX, or bringing out of slumber an old(er) Macintosh notebook.

I first tried the DVD player approach with external HD, but encoding to DivX takes hours per movie, and the Phillips USB direct player has an abysmal interface that makes DOS look good. That is going back to the store.

Linux is attractive, but I am a neophyte, and worry about solving glitches. In addition, my Shuttle PC only has one PCI slot that would have to be used for a DVI video card, leaving me to set up an external WiFi connection.

So the Mac wins for now. I'm going to add an external USB adapter for AC3 5.1, a wireless keyboard (the new logitech DiNovo looks pretty darn spiffy) as the 'remote', and a pile of dual USB2/firewire external hard drives that grow with my library. The notebook has DVI output already, so a long cable to the plasma will take care of that until I find good reason to upgrade to an HDMI receiver.

Rather than re-encode, I'll just rip the movies to VOB on the external HD on our Dual G5, and then connect the HD to the notebook. VLC for playback.

 

Brian,

Do you happen to know if HD drives connected in series require all the upstream drives to be powered on to access a drive in the middle ? That would be a huge waste of energy if so, and would prompt me to connect to a switch instead.

Might be a better idea anyway, since it seems HD case manufacturers are cutting corners by only providing one output.

A 4 TB raid for HD movies should last you ... through 2007 if you are careful !! LOL

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ May 3 2007, 07:34 AM) [snapback]434707[/snapback]</div>

A fairly common solution to this problem that requires no PC for playback is a streaming network player plus a NAS. I have a Mediagate MG-35 (non-HD) and an IOData LinkPlayer 2 (HD capable) right now, and am going to pick up a TViX M-4100SH, which adds the ability to play back high def H.264 (aka AVC aka MPEG-4.10). My LinkPlayer 2 can only handle high-def MPEG-2, MPEG-4.2 (DiVX) and VC-1 (WMV9).

If I had no requirement for high-definition, I'd seriously consider XBMC (Xbox Media Center, not Xbox Media Center Extender from MS). It seems to have some nice ways of presenting your content (DVD covers, connects to IMDB, etc.) http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=635294

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BT Tech @ May 3 2007, 09:25 AM) [snapback]434791[/snapback]</div>

Oh yeah, I remember those! A 5000 receiver with outboard 8VSB modulator so your ATSC tuner could "tune" your Dish Network receiver's output.

 

Looks like I missed a few days of conversation here...

Looks like we have a few old-timers here when it comes to recording HD. I also had a couple of DISH 5000s with modulator feeding several Hipix cards dumping to several servers. In addition to that I was one of the original users of the 169time system and have a large number of movies on D-VHS tape. I was lucky enough to kick the habit by relocating to Europe for a few years (an HD desert until recently). Now that I've returned, I get a chuckle out of seeing the various PC HDTV solutions that I have in storage in addition to the various D-VHS recorders from Panasonic, Mitsubishi and JVC, waiting for some purpose in life.

Brian,

I spent some more time with the JVC RS-1 and must say that I am glad that I changed from the 9-inch CRT. Convenience aside, the RS-1 has significantly better visibility of detail (much sharper image), much better uniformity (even with my CRT's zone-based light output adjustability, I could not get this level of eveness), much higher output (CRTs have a trade-off: beam spot size versus greater output with blooming) and overall color (even though I had color filtered C-Elements, I could not achieve the same level of satisfaction. In any case, this is just my opinion. I would suggest that you contact Alan Gouger and see if you can arrange for a demo and decide for yourself.

Regards, Peter

 

Does anyone besides me think that the whole Monster Cable market has gotten way out of control?

I went to buy an HDMI cable for my new Toshiba HD-DVD player, and figured they would be nearly thirty bucks at Circuit City, so I was reluctant to go. The first sales person pointed me to the $160 and $109 cable and said those were the only ones they had. I went back to check in the Computer Department, and they said only the TV department had them, so I headed out the door.

On my way out, a greeter asked me if I had found everything I needed and I said "No, I was dissapointed with the price for their cables." So, he sowed me a $60 cable.

When I got home, I ordered one from Amazon for $4.95 plus $4.95 shipping. It still has gold plated ends, but I don't even think those are realy necessary. Amazon had some cables starting as low as $1.95, but then, you realy do get what you pay for, right?

I didn't pay any attention to what it was, but Circuit City had one cable that was $299.

I am an electrical engineer, and believe me, the electrons don't need to be pampered that much.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(NoMoShocks @ May 7 2007, 11:50 PM) [snapback]437335[/snapback]</div>

I am a sound engineer, and I agree. I find it all relative. I have three HDMI cables. One from my SONY® AV into my Projector. One from my SONY® BLU-RAY player, that plugs into the AV. And one from my DirecTV DVR, that also plugs into the AV. None are Monster Cable. All are different. One has gold plated ends. And I have switched them from device to device, just to see if there was any visible difference. And with my 'expert' panel (my wife and friend) viewing, but not knowing which cable did what, they could not tell one from the other.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BT Tech @ May 8 2007, 10:25 AM) [snapback]437581[/snapback]</div>

Yes, I have purchased TOS-Link optical cables from Monoprice. They were $1.99 instead of $29.99, and they work just fine. I am not hearing any "digital clipping?" at all. About every three or four hours of listening, I can detect a "1" or "0" that gets missinterpreted in the left rear surrond channel, but I just chuckle and think of all the money I have saved.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(NoMoShocks @ May 9 2007, 02:07 AM) [snapback]438116[/snapback]</div>

Digital Clipping...I wonder if that is the sound that every now and then I hear from the BLU-RAY player. Not too often and it could be a glitch on the discs...hmm.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BT Tech @ Apr 29 2007, 08:29 PM) [snapback]432240[/snapback]</div>

Sorry to jump into this thread, I was looking for another subject and I read "Home Theaters" and start fallowing the pages.

First of them all: High Definition material is DIGITAL!!.

LICOS technology is a thing of the past and a dying architecture, if any company has one on sale, is because they can't get rid of it. It has a low resolution an a lot of technical operational problems.

If your decision path is DLP, look for 3 LCD imagers and 1080p resolution, true native HD resolution for HD-DVD and BlueRay, plus will have HDMI connectors for pure digital pictures.

Color wheeled equipment are also a thing of a past technology, you will find this equipment in lower branded stores like Radio Shack's, mail shopping networks and Wallmarts and alike on SALE now to.

CRT front projection equipment will never provide you true digital signal source because these work with an ANALOG signal processing, internally these use signal up converters/doublers to increase the frequency of the signal source to finally downgrade all that processing and channel it through analog components showing a smooth finished texture through an ANALOG Cathode Ray Tube.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mrbigh @ May 28 2007, 06:54 PM) [snapback]451237[/snapback]</div>

Amazing...so much misinformation, in so few sentences.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusenvy @ May 29 2007, 01:18 AM) [snapback]451330[/snapback]</div>

Curious. You care to elaborate?

 

I just want to add myself to this HT list. I have the following :

1. 42" Dell HDTV Plasma (this plasma sucks)
2. Sunfire Ultimate Receiver 7.1
3. Front Speaker - Martin Logan, Rear Speaker - Bose Accoustic 3, Side Speaker - Boston Acoustic bookshelf
4. Sunfire True Jr. Subwoofer
5. Xbox mod with 300Gb Harddrive (retired)
6. MCE - Dell SC420 with Hauppauge tuner and ATI HDTV (retired)
7. Comcast HD DVR
8. Toshiba Progessive DVD player with upconversion. DVIX compatible. Zone free (retired)
9. Sony PS3
10. TVIX HD M-4000 SA with 400Gb SATA. Additional 2 @ 500GB external USB drive.

 

I'm not a fan of Monster cable. Anyone try DIY speaker cable ?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BT Tech @ Jun 4 2007, 05:38 PM) [snapback]455199[/snapback]</div>

Brian, so you run the regular cable over your HT setup?

Maybe for HT, regular cable will satisfied the listener. For audiophile, these cable are craps and do not produce crispy clean signal to the speaker.

These DIY cable have the same quality of some high grade speaker cable such as MIT/Monster. But not in appearence.

Beside speaker cable, there are also DIY interconnect cable and power cable.