Chain Reactions...

So earlier this month Walmart and Toshiba ran a promotion on a $99 HD-DVD player. Specifically the HD-A2. Coupled with the "5 free HD-DVD disc promotion", I felt like this was too good of a deal to pass up so I talked it over with Shannon and she decided that this player (and a copy of Transformers on HD-DVD would be my birthday present (and part of of my Christmas present).

So I still remain in the Blu-Ray camp, and where possible I will be purchasing Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD, but in-a-sense I'm future-proofed... depending on which side of this format war things come down on.

So... now to the meat of this post.

One of the reasons I've been a bit reluctant to explore some of the newer formats is that I was a relatively "early adopter" of HD and Home Theater... and unfortunately none of my gear supported digital connections like DVI or HDMI. I had mentioned before that it would be a chain reaction if I was to buy one thing I would end up wanting/needing all new gear. Well that time has come.

It all stated when I was perusing posts for this weeks "Black Friday deals". Specifically Best Buy is going to run a promotion on a 65" Mitsubishi 1080P DLP set. So I cracked.

Ironically I ended up not buying it from Best Buy, but rather Amazon.com due to their bundling of the free Mitsubishi TV stand. So I now have a Mitsubishi WD-65733 HDTV coming.

Then I started talking with Shannon about our current setup with both a DVR and a TiVo... she decided to purchase me a TiVoHD as my Christmas present. This will greatly simply my Home Theater wiring as I will have only one box to setup instead of two. This arguably also eliminates the need for my Iscan Pro Line doubler to upconvert the 480i S-video signal from the TiVo as the TiVoHD can upscale to either 720p or 1080i.

Then we started talking wiring problems. If you've seen my wiring diagrams, you know that I have to use multiple levels of switching: anyone wanting to use my Home Theater needs to worry about switching inputs on a Video Switch, the Receiver and on the TV. To make matters worse only the new TV would support HDMI. Neither my Video switch nor my Receiver can accommodate HDMI. This initially left me with two options:

1. Run three 20' HDMI cables from my component Rack to the new TV to accommodate the PS3, HD-DVD Player, and Tivo.
   
2. Purchas a cheap. HDMI switch and use short cables for the devices and 1 longer cable.
   

The problem with option 1 is that this would consume all three HDMI inputs on the TV leaving me no room for expansion. As soon as I bought 1 additional HDMI device I would have to buy a switch and this would render two, potentially quite expensive cables obsolete.

Option 2 is less then desirable as well. It turns out that Passive HDMI switches have lots of compatibility problems with various devices. The state of the market today is that you simply have to buy one to try with your hardware to see if it would work. This is less than desirable as all the good, cheap switches can only be purchased online and I don't really want to have to deal with return shipping if it doesn't work. On top of that.. the good, cheap switches don't switch audio!. So I would either need to unplug some devices or continue to use my old "video switch" as an audio switch... but this now means switching four devices.

A 3rd option entered into the picture... a new Receiver.



The Denon 3808CI (which is the same series as my current receiver... just a several model years newer). Can accommodate 4 HDMI devices. It upscales all video connections and sends that signal out over HDMI. This means that I can have 1 cable running to my TV. It supports The latest High-Definition Audio standards like DTS Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD which is used on both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. It has about twice the power of my current receiver. It can even connect to a network and stream .mp3 files from a media server all on its own! Better still... I can use the PS3 to play SACD discs over HDMI into the player.

This means that I will now have:

1. 1 level of switching... in the receiver... no more changing inputs on a switch box or the TV.
   
2. 1 device for "watching TV" instead of 2. Plus the ability to transfer for shows from my old TiVo (which will be moved to the office).
   
3. High Defintion Audio/Digital Audio from the sources that support it.
   
4. Much, much simpler Wiring as HDMI caries both Audio and Video over a single cable.
   
5. I will be able to disconnect the following devices:
   
   
   
   1. SACD Player
      
   2. Audiotron mp3 player
      
   3. Cable box
      
   4. Video switch
      
   5. Line Double
      
   6. VCR... (actually we are unhooking it because we just don't use it enough... we kept it hooked up because there wasn't really a reason to unhook it, but disconnecting the "analog" TiVo means its time).
      
   
   

Arguably I could also unhook the old DVD Player but as it's the only thing I have that can play DVD-Audio... I'm going to leave it hooked up as a DVD-Audio only player. The PS3 or the HD-DVD Player will be used to play movies.

This is a lot of money and we financed the whole mess... but we got 18months no interest on both the receiver and the TV. The receiver will be here this week but there's no point in wiring everything up until the TV gets here... and it looks like that won't be till the end of the month. I look forward to my new Wiring Diagram. :)

Oh... and I would be totally remiss if I didn't mention that I'm married to the best wife ever! :)

Be kind to your fine feathered friends

Bird bath and feeder next to landscaping, originally uploaded by arwild01.

Second post of the day...

So the birds (finches, mostly) have been eating like crazy from our feeder and I've got the pictures to proove it:

You can see that Birds actually are eating it!, originally uploaded by arwild01.

This next picture was taken exactly one week later...

These birds are hungry!, originally uploaded by arwild01.

What's really interesting is that we were getting some unique weeds right under the feeder. I decided that what was actually happening is that some of the bird seed was being dropped by the birds onto the ground, and then those seeds are germinating.

So we decided that a strategically positioned bird bath under the feeder would catch most of the seeds. We went to Iron Plus here in Humble, which is a really neat shop. The birdbath wasn't exactly cheap, but its made out of some kind of stone with a petina on it. If you look closely at this photo of it you can see some remnatnts of seeds already in the bowl and this was taken just about an hour after getting it. So its already doing its job. Besides, it adds another interesting element to our landscaping.

New Bird Bath, originally uploaded by arwild01.

Here's More...

Panoramic of backyard showing pathway between house and garage, originally uploaded by arwild01.

As I hinted in my last post.... we did more landscaping this weekend. Before I go much further I need to give a serious "Thank you" to Matt Chanda and Jonathan and Angela Finley who came over to help (and we proceeded to abuse their assistance).

Anyway, the day started by first loading all of the piles of sod that were on last weekends photo into the back of Chanda's Truck. Then we dug up the sod under this new bed. Chanda, Finley and I went to the Atascocita Landfill to empty the truck. With us in the cab, his half-ton truck weighed over 8900 pounds! The maximum weight capacity of the truck was supposed to be 6400 pounds so we were over by a full ton! Fortunately, his truck didn't appear to be any worse for wear.

We then went to Dirt Cheap Mulch and bought another cubic yard of garden mix to put down. We unloaded the dirt, ate lunch, and then the girls started putting the plants in the ground while Chanda, Finley and I proceeded to dig up the privet in our front flower beds so we could replace it with a sweet olive tree.

Front of house, no privet, originally uploaded by arwild01.

We ultimately replanted the privet next to the other two, installed edging, mulched, and put hoses back down before all was said and done.

I'm happy to say that for all intensive purposes we are finished with this project. We've got some more sand to put down on the pavestone (in the crevices) and we might want to lay some more blocks on the far side of the garage (where we are now keeping the garbage cans), but the major work is clearly done.

New Bed, originally uploaded by arwild01.

Now we just need to keep watering everything and hope it all takes root. There are more photos in our Flickr photo set. As I've said before, you need to have a flickr account and be marked as a "friend" or "family member" for you to see all of photos. If you don't have access but would like to, send me an e-mail using the link on the right and I'll send you an invite.

Landscaping in the back yard, originally uploaded by arwild01.

"Before"

DSC01396s, originally uploaded by arwild01.

I thought a good "Before" picture was warranted for some of the landscaping work we did. This picture was taken right before I closed on the house so it's pretty old, but it does show you how much we've changed things (and it was also conveniently taken from about the same spot as the second picture below.

We were busy this weekend...

IMG_2648, originally uploaded by arwild01.

The gardening continues. We built beds on the house side of this area (including laying the pavestone the bench is setting on and if you look closely, you can see another bed against the fence line.

New View of our patio, originally uploaded by arwild01.

This is another view of our patio area. This is all pretty much "done" for now, but I keep thinking that and we keep coming up with more things to do.

Another shot of the Birch, originally uploaded by arwild01.

Here's the birch tree I planted myself (with the assitance of Shannon)... it's about 15 feet tall. In the background you can barely see some of the other plants in the yard.

More to Come?, originally uploaded by arwild01.

There's clearly some more to come. If you want to see more check out our set on flickr. To see most of the photos I'll need to have you marked as a "fried" or "family" member in my address book. If you don't have access, send me an e-mail and I'll send you an invite.

My Gaming News

So first off, I'm super excited that Nintendo decided to use Virtual Console to bring some titles to us that have never been commercially released in the United States before. This is bloody brilliant. I've also heard it suggested that we could even one day see "new" titles developed directly for virtual console. I'm not sure we'll see that or not, but to be able to play the real Super Mario Bros. 2 (and not the re branded Doki Doki Panic) is really cool.

On a personal gaming note. I took advantage of Toys 'R Us's recent "Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale" to pick up Guitar Hero 2 for the PS2, Heavenly Sword for the PS3, and got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for free. This clearly violates my "I only buy games for $20 or less policy", but I can explain...

Metroid Prime 3 is a game that always got an exception to that policy. I would gladly pay the full retail price of $50 for that game. Likewise Guitar Hero 2 needs a custom controller. Given that the game retails for about $80... I was willing to spend $50 for that game with the controller. Finally, Heavenly Sword was worth $20 to me. So all told I was willing to spend $120 for the three games. Well, Guitar Hero 2 was $20 off for $59.99 on top of that sale. Heavenly Sword retails for $59.99 and that meant Metroid Prime 3 was free. So I was willing to spend $120 for the three games and I spent exactly $120 for the three games. Given that their full retail price for all three right now is $189.97 (a savings of $75.76 when you could sales tax)... that's not too shabby. Especially considering that Heavenly Sword had just come out that week (and Metroid Prime 3 hadn't been out real long either). BTW, it appears that Toys R Us is going to turn around and have this sale again!

I have not touched Heavenly Sword or Metroid Prime 3, but I have complete Guitar Hero 2 on both easy and medium. I'm going to spend some time completing 5-star ratings on all the songs before moving on to Hard.

I've also finished Enchanted Arms. I think it took me somewhere between 45 and 50 hours. I may go back and spend some garbage time playing around, but for the most part I'm done here.

As far as I'm concerned Metroid Prime 3 is the next "real" game I'm starting. Guitar Hero is something that's really fun that I can pick up and put down. That said, I'm finding myself picking it up a lot.... and I haven't started Metroid Prime 3 yet. Hmmmm....

One last aside, I hooked the PS3 back up in the study to play Guitar Hero 2. I did pick up Pelican's PS2 to USB adapter. My initial thoughts are that it didn't work too well, but I didn't realize that I need to "calibrate" the game for my television and if the adapter is introducing any delay, I expect the game's built-in calibration mode should compensate for that. The fact that you have to switch the adapter from "menu" mode to "Right Hand" mode to play (or "left hand" if you are actually playing left-handed) is super kludgy and Pelican admits that Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs will not ever work. So on the whole not real great. That being said.... this adapter does let you use PS2 controllers and since I only have one SIXAXIS that might be useful for multiplayer PS2 games. Also, Guitar Hero 1 is supposed to work perfectly (GH2 is the only one that's so difficult to use) and finally, I will need this adapter if I ever get around to playing my couple of Taiko: Drum Master.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (err... Monday after work)

IMG_2603, originally uploaded by arwild01.

So Shannon saw that Houston Plants and Garden Centers was having their annual fall clearance sale... she didn't find any plants there she liked, but she did find some crape myrtles on sale at Lowe's. So Monday she planted one of them in the front flower beds while also ripping out some of the flowers we had and replacing them them with some mums and fire bush.

However, Monday after work we went crazy and built a new flower bed. We dug out all the sod, installed plastic edging, added dirt, mulch and planted 3 more crape myrtles. We literally worked into the night. I dug up the sod so I didn't feel too bad letting her dig the holes for the plants while I held the flashlight :)

Tuesday she purchased the rocks to line the edge of the patio. They were only about $2 at Dirt Cheap Mulch.

Now we have something to look at outside our bedroom window.

IMG_2616, originally uploaded by arwild01.

I had to get photos of the results. The first photo above also gave me an opportunity to use my new wide-angle lens for my digital camera. I also went ahead and got some photos of our other landscaping. You can see that our Knock-our Roses are really growing.

Our flickr site has more photos, but their only accessible to flickr members we've marked as Friends and Family. If you don't have access, send me a note (My e-mail address is available on the sidebar to to the right) and I'll send you an invite to our photos.