Sick :(

That would sum up the entirety of my entire last week. I was out of the office and in the recliner napping on and off all day long (tv running of course) and... well that was about it from tuesday - thursday. I literally didn't have any energy to do anything else at all. Friday things picked up a bit, I finally had energy to start doing laundry which was great, and slowly since I've been feeling little bits better. Now I'm finally finishing up the task of cleaning up the house and removing all the "sick" from it. I don't know why, it really feels so great to do a post sick clean up, makes me feel like I'm doing something proactively to finish off this flu. Well, hope everyone else has had a better week than mine. Talk to you guys later.

Ugh, bluray :(

That's right folks, the service people at best buy fail miserably. With in days of finally getting my bluray player back, the picture started dropping yet again. Seriously, I think all these people did was update the firmware, scratch their heads (perhaps other area's of their body) and say "Hmmm, well that must have fixed it"! God I'm annoyed. When I call them today I'm going to ask about just getting a replacement model. At the rate we're going I'll never be able to watch bluray movies.

On a more positive note, I did get my Onkyo TX-SR605 in, the receiver is amazing. I'm still in the process of getting it all set up. One disappointment, it seems like my HD DVD player only streams stereo PCM over HDMI (model HD-A2). Or at least that is what I'm experiencing right now, I'm pretty sure it's just the HD DVD player because I tested with the (frustratingly broken) DB-P1400 Blu player and I got surround to work (excellently) using DTS-MA, TrueHD and 5.1 PCM.

Oh well, hooray for consumer electronics? :P

UPS...

...knows the fastest way to get to Raleigh from Cincinnati.

2/12/2008 8:17:00 AM IN TRANSIT TO GREENSBORO, NC US

2/12/2008 8:16:00 AM DEPARTURE SCAN SOUTH CHARLESTON, WV US

2/12/2008 6:52:00 AM ARRIVAL SCAN SOUTH CHARLESTON, WV US

2/12/2008 1:35:00 AM DEPARTURE SCAN CINCINNATI, OH US

2/11/2008 5:54:00 PM ORIGIN SCAN CINCINNATI, OH US

2/9/2008 5:23:00 PM BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED US

Home theater upgrades galore

Yeah, I know... it's a mixed bag on my blog. Some times I write about what's really going on in my life, other times just new gadgets. This is one of those new gadget posts. I've decided to go ahead and upgrade my audio receiver in my Home Theater. I managed to find thee receiver I've been wanting for $200 off of what you get it for anywhere (Onkyo TX-605SR, $300 refurb $500 normal).

This bad boy is just the thing I need to complement my set up. It's got 2 HDMI 1.3a inputs (for my HD DVD and Bluray DVD players), plus optical and digital coax inputs for my HD DVR and X-Box 360 (I still have my optical switch, so I'll add on my TV to that for the Wii). The absolut coolest thing about this receiver, it works with all of the new advanced audio codecs found on my HD DVD's and Bluray discs, TrueHD, DTS-HD/MA and 7.1 PCM over HDMI.

Eventually I will need to upgrade my speakers as well since the onces I have are fairly low end small bookshelf speakers (yamkaha). But I've already found some Polk speakers ($700 for 5.1) that I'll eventually be replacing what I have with. Till then, what I've got will work pretty well.

Super Bowl Sunday

Super bowl sunday was a blast here in NC! I had a bit of a get together, with people showing up at 6pm. In all I had 7 house guests then there was the roommate (lori) and my self. Included among my guests here were Joe and Laura and their cute as a button tot Eddy (almost 2yrs old). There was beer, there was pizza, there was making small fry's giggle and of course there was the main attraction featuring the NY Giants beating out the NE Pats on my 50" HD screen.

We did have one snafu during playback. I have my DVR set up to automatically tape star trek, which Sci-Fi channel had a marathon going... Now, in theory this should not be a problem. in a "perfect" world my DVR would quietly tape Star Trek. But oh no, not my Scientific Atlantic DVR. Nope, it decided that the super bowl ended at 10pm (which it didn't) and that I would rather be watching star trek than the big game! Just imagine, the cry of 9 people in unison shouting "NNNNOOOOOOOO" as what was "OMG 10 seconds left in the game can the Pats pull it out!" because Captain Jonathan Archer grabbing a phase pistol so he can save enterprise crewmen! Yeah, it was that bad. Fortunately I was able to change the channel back with 1 second left in the game, and we found that there was no miraculous turn around.

On a personal level, I was glad to see the Giants win. I'm not really a fan of either team, but I do like seeing the underdog come out on top. Well, I hope everyone else had as good a super bowl sunday as I did.