BrettRoby.com Welcomes You

November 22^nd, 2010 → Long time no update

It's been months since I've done anything to my home theater and am kind of getting that itch. The thing is, I don't really know what to do! I suppose I could go for building a stand for my subwoofer, since it could definitely use one...

I recently picked up the Bourne and Back to the Future trilogies. They're now amongst my favorites of the collection. I pre-ordered BTTF back in June or July when it was officially available for purchase. Its release day was October 26th, so I got it on the 28th or so.

...and the beat goes on...

July 3^rd, 2010 → Server Project = "DONE"

Well, that only took about four months longer than anticipated! No but seriously, the Ultimate Roby Network has been completed. It has been functionally completed since early January, but there were some aesthetic things I wanted to correct for a while now but didn't have the time to do due to my little league and web design commitments. This weekend, I finally got us and installed a new doorbell — one that doesn't look like it was from the 1950s — and it's got a nice look to it that matches our new Time Capsule.

Additionally, I was able to find a really nice mount from Monoprice that cost me about $11 shipped. The pricing at that place is just ridiculous. The mount is used to keep the server monitor tucked away, and to clean up the look in general. I had been using the the monitor with its built-in stand, and then just setting that on the server itself. It just looked kind of messy, so I needed to fix it. Well, that's done now. There's really nothing left for me to do surrounding this project other than to get more storage space in the server by adding hard drives. I'll be doing this periodically, and probably starting with a 1TB drive sooner rather than later, as I'm running out of space.

Pics to come soon!

March 6^th, 2010 → #50!

Wizard of Oz - Three-disc Emerald Edition. What a great way to hit the big five-oh!

February 8^th, 2010 → Blu-ray #49

Terminator Salvation was picked up today at Best Buy. I had some rewards points saved up, so I bought an XBOX points card and a Blu-ray. I figured T4 was a good choice. I've got my sites set on Blu-ray #50; I think I'm going to go with Wizard of Oz for that one.

February 5^th, 2010 → Stop. Server Time.

What a journey this has become. After tons of problems with trying to upgrade the processor in my server, I have kind just pulled out the white flag and given up. Fortunately for me, I found a guy through the Blu-ray.com forum who offered to help me get it back up and running for free; all I had to do was pay for shipping to and fro. He also overclocked the cpu for me, which was a nice little bonus. Now the server is back home, fully up and running, and the new network overhaul project can continue. I should have pics up soon of the whole thing.

December 22^nd, 2009 → Server Cabinet Project

Nothing doing on the home theater front lately...except my latest project, of course! I have decided to take what was once a catch-all junk cabinet and transform it into a dedicated server area. As part of this overhaul, I've also decided to really kick it up a notch as far as my network is concerned. As such, I have upgraded my router from my trusty standard Linksys wireless-G router to an Apple Time Capsule. For those who don't know what this is, let me tell you something: they're awesome! It's a wireless-N router with gigabit ethernet...and a built-in 1TB hard drive! The software that comes with it enables users of any computer on the network to back-up files to it, in the background, automatically, every day. It's quite cool. I have also picked up an 8-port Netgear gigabit switch to keep the gigabit network theme going, and all my terminations are handled by inline keystone couplers.

The computer acting as my server for the time being is a Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Door (MDD) tower. I have installed OS X 10.5 Server edition, and it's running like a top. It's only got 1.5GB of RAM, but I'll soon be upgrading that to its full capacity of 2GB. The processor is the original single G4 at 1.25GHz, but I recently picked up a replacement cpu card that has dual 1.42GHz G4s on it! I can't wait to install that, as the operating system will run a ton better — which is exciting because it runs well as-is. I also plan on picking up a PCI SATA controller card for this MDD once the holiday season passes and my checkbook has a minute to cool off a bit. With the SATA controller I'll be able to add a ton more storage to the server; right now it has IDE interface, and it's hard to find high-capacity IDE drives these days. I've got a 500GB external also acting as a secondary backup, just to be extra extra extra safe; after all, all our family photos and videos are on there!

Pics forthcoming (of course).

September 14^th, 2009 → Polks = done

I've finally figured out what I was going to do for my center channel mount, after a great deal of deliberation. My wife and I decided to go with a shelf that matches the rest of those in our living room. Its style and color really go with the decor of the room, and I'm really happy with the end result. I wish I would have done it sooner, because it's what I had in mind all along; I just wasn't quite sure that I wanted a shelf (as opposed to a cubby hole type setup).

Real pics to come soon, but for now, here's one.

August 29^th, 2009 → Slick Custom Shelving

Thanks, Ikea. I swear, our house is something straight out of an Ikea showroom. My latest project involved some custom Ikea shelving in the living room — a design of which I'm quite proud.

It started out as a two-shelf arrangement; something I put together earlier this year to welcome my growing collection of Blu-ray discs. The wife and I decided to expand on that, and eventually get rid of our DVD shelf, seen here in one of the before pics. I then went on to install a third shelf, raising the height of the original two and lessening the gap between them. Here's a picture of that → {pic here}.

Considering the aforementioned growing collection Blu-ray (and Wii) titles, we decided that this was cool, but not quite enough...and we were tired of the look of the DVD shelf. We ended up removing the DVD shelf, and then going with a staggered pattern of long and short shelves that now basically fill up the wall.

Example #1 shows how it looked just after I installed all the shelves. In example #2 you can see how it looks when it's all filled up. Don't worry — the location of the phone and oscillating fan are (were) only temporary; those cords will not fly in my theater.

...but if you know me, you know that wouldn't be enough. We (I) decided to add a power outlet so that we could charge our HTPC keyboard and Wii remotes. Hence, we have a modification to the modification project.

Here you can see me clearing out the shelf to prepare for my big task; this image is a close-up of the shelf/area where I'd be installing the new outlet; yonder you see the new outlet installed; and finally here you can see what it looks like "completed" (I say "completed" like that because it's never truly done). I also added some framed Led Zeppelin LPs, as you can see Houses of the Holy to the right of the new shelving unit if you look closely enough in that last picture. That was a temporary location for those frames. I've since installed those permanently, a little bit farther over to the right. Pics of that to come later.

August 19^th, 2009 → I hit the big four-oh!

It's about dang time! I picked up The Dark Knight (on Blu, of course — DUH!). This is one of very few "blind buys" I've made in my collection, but if it's anything like any of the reviewers have said — i.e. "the best Batman movie ever" — then I'm OK with the paltry $12 I paid for it. I am not at liberty to reveal my source. Let's just say, though, that if this source is able to produce this kind of bargain consistently, I may never buy elsewhere again.

This is Blu-ray title #40. Now I'm officially over the hill.

July 22^nd, 2009 → Yeah.

I still really need to post pictures of my new speaker setup, but I have yet to take pics that do justice to this soundstage; hence, I have not posted here. I have been able to test the new 7.1 setup fairly well so far, but not as much as I'd like, as I've had a ton of other things going on in life that have kept me from watching too many movies (or television in general). One thing I will say, though, is that the sound coming out of the speakers and filling the living room is AWESOME. I haven't listened to a source with true 7.1 audio yet, but I've listened to plenty of 5.1 through this setup, and it is far better with the additional speakers. My receiver does a nice job of processing the 5.1 into a pseudo-7.1 by way of Dolby Pro Logic IIx, or PLIIx for short, which an industry-leading technology. It sounds fantastic. What it appears to do is take the surround left and right tracks, and somehow mix them into the rear channels. Basically what happens is you're much more spatially involved with this mixing process. I don't know how they do it, but it works so I'll leave it at that. I can't wait to get a movie with 7.1.

July 20^th, 2009 → Bonanza Relapse

Oops.

OK, so there was a hot deal at Best Buy — one I "could not" pass-up. They were running a special for the Kill Bill series Blu-rays: $14.99 for Volume 1 and $9.99 for Volume 2. I was resourceful enough to combine that deal with an online coupon from Miramax for $5 off each Kill Bill, meaning an additional $10 savings! This means that I bought both Kill Bill movies for about $23!

June 30^th, 2009 → Bonanza on Hold (for a minute)

Well that didn't take long. I was able to find Ocean's Eleven on eBay for a scant $9.99 + shipping; the total was something like $12.

I've got several titles on the wish list that I really want, but I think I'm going to hold off for a copule weeks or — gasp — possibly a full month before resuming. I've got a ton of epic titles anyway. I really want the Bourne trilogy.

June 24^th, 2009 → Seven-day Blu-ray Bonanza

Over the past week, I have picked up some outstanding Blu-ray titles. Most of them were on a good/great deal, but one of them wasn't. That one was Ghostbusters, which was like ~$19 shipped. That's not a bad deal, actually, now that I think about it; it's just that it wasn't a "great" deal like I usually get.

OK, so here goes...I bought the following this week, starting last Wednesday: Ghostbusters (~$19 shipped), Incredible Hulk (~$16 shipped), The Matrix 10^th anniversary edition digibook ($14.99 + tax at Best Buy), Ocean's Twelve (9.99 + tax at Best Buy), and Ocean's Thirteen ($14.99 + tax at Best Buy). It's time for a new shelf to hold all 36 of my Blu-rays!

June 17^th, 2009 → Monster Upgrade Forthcoming

I just found an unbelievable deal online with some great new speakers for the home theater. They're the Polk Monitor series, and boy oh boy did I score here. I picked up two Monitor 60 towers for $119 each, and a matching center channel — the acclaimed CS1 — for $79 to shore up the front speakers of my sound stage. The Monitor 60 towers are normally $300 each, and the CS1 center channel is normally $200. That means I picked up $800 worth of speakers for only $320! Anyone who knows anything about audio knows that Polks for that price is, like, beyond a good deal. This is borderline heaven-sent.

I will be moving my current front left and right speakers from their position to about 10 feet from the TV — toward the sofa whence we watch television — and these will now become the surround left and right. The current surround left and right speakers, which are behind my sofa, will become the rear surround left and right...That means 7.1 people!!! The center channel will eventually go up to the bedroom setup, along with a pair of matching Sony slimline speakers that I picked up on eBay for a killer deal a while back. That'll give me a nice 3.0 setup for starters up there in the bedroom, which would be a nice upgrade to the stereo sound I have now coming from the TV's native speaker set.

Pics and a review of the new sound field to come soon...

May 25^th, 2009 → Hot eBay Deal

All right, so I finally did it: I purchased Wall•E to replace our DVD version, which has been scratched to heck by the kids. I found this smokin' deal on eBay for $19.99 with free shipping. There was an option to submit a best offer, but I didn't feel like haggling; for that price and free shipping, it was hard to pass-up as-is. Three-disc version for only $20?! Yeah, I'll take that...

I cannot wait to watch this one with the kids. I've seen it on Blu in stores, and it is a phenomenal showcase for the power of Blu.

I'm not sure what my next kid move Blu is going to be, but I'm thinking Sleeping Beauty or possibly Home Alone.

May 23^rd, 2009 → Night at the Museum in Blu

Talk about a great movie to not only enjoy with the family but show off the killer system as well...wow, Night at the Museum is definitely one of those. I mean, for a movie that isn't exactly touted as a special effects monster, it was pretty awesome both in audio and video. Plus, it's just a good ol' funny movie. Watched it together as a family in anticipation of the Night at the Museum II, and it definitely didn't disappoint on any level.

My sub definitely got a workout from this one. I think I have some new enemies in my neighbors!

May 18^th, 2009 → Two More Blus!

Well, I said that my next Blu was going to be Wall-E. I lied. I purchased Terminator 2 — Skynet Edition and Wayne's World from Amazon today for a decent price of less than $40 shipped. Apparently this version of T2 is of superior picture quality to the original Blu release from 2006 and comes with a lossless audio track to boot. For $19.99, that was hard to resist. It comes with a nice new cover, too. There's a Japanese version that apparently comes with "definitive" video that is better than this latest release, but its current price is a whopping $75 shipped from Amazon Japan. Although it is a steelbook release and — according to reports — far superior video quality, I'm going to put my money on the one I just bought being "pretty damn good."

May 3^rd, 2009 → Tommy Boy Blu-ray!!!!

The long-awaited Blu-ray gift from my wife has finally come to fruition...and we have Tommy Boy! This is definitely one that was high on the list of titles to own, so I am extremely stoked she picked this one. I know it's not one of those movies that you'd use to show off a Blu-ray and home theater system, but it's a great movie and I've always wanted to own it. Why not own it in the best possible format to date?

Next up is Wall-E, I think. Our DVD version has finally reached a point where it's scratched to the max and virtually unplayable, so I'll get the Blu-ray/DVD version and give thd DVD to grandma.

April 27^th, 2009 → Hot Rod Blu-ray

Well I have officially received my second Blu-ray gift. I went to my mom's for dinner and cake, and my sister got me Hot Rod! I showed her my Blu-ray wish list and collection and fortunately she picked a winner. Good job, sis!

April 26^th, 2009 → Top Gun Blu-ray

Well I have officially received my first Blu-ray gift. My brother and sister in-law came over for a BBQ to celebrate my 31st birthday. They came bearing gifts of meats and Top gun! I can't wait to watch this one. Talk about serious 1980s action here. Still a fun flick, and a good one to have in the collection. They snooped my Blu-ray wish list and collection and found it on there. I know my wife got me a Blu-ray, but since she's out of town and didn't make it back in time for my birthday, I don't know what she got. I'm sure it's something good, though.

April 18^th, 2009 → Bedroom HDTV!

I finally upgraded the television in my bedroom to HDTV. Man, this is a smokin' set. I also got another HD DVR and appropriate OTA tuner, so the setup is similar to what we have in our primary home theater in the living room.

I have a ways to go before the project is complete, but I'll be posting pics in a couple week. Still to come are a Blu-ray player, a small form factor computer, and a custom shelf to hold it all.

This is largely intended to be a surprise for when the wife returns from vacation, so hopefully she won't see this post while she's away. I doubt she will, though; she never looks at my site.

Stay tuned for pics and a complete wrap-up of the project.

March 28^th, 2009 → Target has a deal!

There are some great deals at Target right now on just about all James Bond titles — $14.99 for all the old ones from the 1960s - 1980s. I went ahead and picked up Goldfinger at the suggestion of my brother, who knows the Bond series like the back of his hand. I'm going to be crazy-busy this week, so I probably won't get to it for a while, but I wanted to jump on the deal while it was still valid.

March 20^th, 2009 → Fixed!

It was the mainboard. The guys showed up with the proper part, swapped it out for the old one, and put the TV back together all in less than 30 minutes.

You can see the old one in the hands of the technician on the left, while the technician on the right is about to install the new one. There's a somewhat blank/empty space on the lower right quadrant of the back of the TV where a white cable is kind of floating. That's where the mainboard goes. It's got all the inputs on it (HDMI, component, etc.).

It was pretty cool that they came out in their official Samsung van and everything; I thought it would just be some goobers from Joe Schmoe's TV repair shop.

Certified techs ! Also cool was they removed their shoes before entering my house.

March 19^th, 2009 → Pacification

Since I am going through HD withdrawals, I went ahead and purchased Iron Man on Blu for under $20 shipped from eBay. That might be one my all-time deals so far, as you can't get that for under $25 (before tax) from any brick and mortar store around here, even on sale. Go me!

A couple other titles arrived over the past few days, too: Night at the Museum (love it), and Short Circuit (loved it as a child). I can't wait to share those two flicks with the kids. I have a feeling my oldest will love Short Circuit.

March 19^th, 2009 → Trials and tribulations, part two

t-24 hours until TV repair.

We were "forced" to watch Lost in — gasp — standard definition last night on our 4:3 tube-style CRT in the bedroom. Definitely nowhere nearly as enjoyable of an experience as that of when it is viewed in our home theater. I am such an HD snob. It's sad.

March 13^th, 2009 → Please support me in my time of trials and tribulations

Not to be blasphemous or insensitive to the "real world" issues going on right now (economy, war, etc. etc. etc.) ... but ... hey, this is my home theater thread, where we're anything but that for the most part.

My TV went out last night!!!

Thankfully it's still covered under warranty. I just got off the phone with the authorized service provider for my area, and he said it's a matter of one of the logic boards going out; he's going to replace them both free of charge, fortunately. Unfortunate is that this won't happen until mid- to late-next week, meaning I'll be sans home theater for a week! What am I going to do?!

The semi-ironic thing about my TV going out at this exact time is that my wife and I do Netflix rentals, and we always rent Blu (duh) and watch the movie through our home theater on Saturday night, which is our default (and mandatory) date night. Well we only have one Blu-ray player, which is hooked up to my HDTV, but this week we rented a movie in DVD format because it wasn't available in Blu from Netflix. This means that we'll at least get to have our date night — kinda — as we can still watch the movie on our master bedroom TV.

Please pray for your fallen comrade.

March 3^rd, 2009 → Today was a good day

2001: A Space Odyssey, Superman, and Superman II: Richard Donner Cut arrived today via Amazon.com. I got pretty good deals on all of these, and I can't wait to watch them! I'm especially curious to see how 2001 looks in remastered high-def; and I cannot wait to view the Richard Donner version of Superman II. I haven't seen that before, but have read the reviews.

January 28^th, 2009 → Harmony One Remote!

Wow. For those of you who have a lot of gear, and 16 remotes to go along with your home theater, you need the Logitech Harmony One remote! I get nothing from Logitech for saying that; and I'm giving you this pointer for free. Granted, it's not a cheap remote — I got it for $160ish after $20 coupon from Amazon — but for what it does, you will not be disappointed in your investment. This remote literally eliminates the need for all other remotes in your setup. This is no lie! We used to be able to "get by" with two remotes, but even with that setup I was missing the access to certain features of my television. With the One, I can do anything and everything I want with all of my components. There are absolutely zero shortcomings or any regrets with this remote.

January 15^th, 2009 → Just a Couple Pics...

January 10^th, 2009 → Everything is a GO!

I got my sub installed today after a bit of a challenging wiring task. The existing hole going from my subfloor to the crawlspace beneath my house was literally microns too small to fit the new cable due to the fat plug head shielding, so I had to pull all the routed cables out, and then push them all back in after I ran the RCA through it first. I had anticipated merely pushing the RCA through the existing hole without having to do anything major. That would have been too easy. I should have known better...

Anyway, for the good news: Everything is up and running and sounding spectacular. I performed the auto-calibration using the microphone that came with the A/V receiver, and it pumped out some pretty trippy sounds — something you might hear from Alan Parsons Project or Pink Floyd — and calibrated the sound field. I have never seen anything like it before, so I was somewhat captivated by the whole thing.

EDIT: I watched NFL playoffs today for the first time with my "dream setup" and it did not disappoint at all. Outstanding sound with amazing clarity and depth. This is probably due to the combination of the receiver and the speakers, but it's nice to have a good set of speakers; they're definitely a noticable increase in sound quality over my last set. The center channel on this new setup blows the old set away. There are three speakers in the center channel: two woofers and one tweeter. The old center channel had only one woofer. Looking back on that setup, it did a good job considering its minimalistic approach.

EDIT 2: I watched Iron Man on Blu-ray tonight. Man, oh man. I can't really say much more than this was pretty much the most awesome thing I've watched on my home theater setup to date. This will probably be overtaken by Transformers on Blu when I get around to buying that one, but until then, Iron Man is probably the champ. I would say that Speed Racer is a close second, but due to the awesome explosions and more "grown-up-ness" of Iron Man, I'm leaning slightly in its favor. I am definitely going to buy Iron Man in Blu for my library.

January 10^th, 2009 → Terminated

I bought each of the Terminators in one auction on eBay for $57 total. Yeah, they're in Blu-ray format. Talk about a nice package. That's $19 per title. Granted, I probably could have purchased them individually and paid less overall (T2 goes for really cheap if you look hard enough), but this was a nice "one fell swoop" type of deal and I'm pretty satisfied with the cost. They arrived today. Hopefully I can watch them soon. We've got Iron man in Blu from Netflix and we'll be watching that tomorrow.

Current library is now as follows:
• Batman Begins
• Michael Clayton
• Superman Returns
• Speed Racer
• Terminator
• Terminator 2
• Terminator 3

January 9^th, 2009 → DirecTV AM-21 OTA Attachment

Since I'm tired of waiting for DirecTV to provide us with local HD channels, I went ahead and purchased their AM-21 over-the-air antenna attachment for the HR-21 HD DVR that I have. In order to make this work, you need to have an over-the-air antenna already in your setup, or you need to go buy one. This setup is only for those of us who have DirecTV service, but are not "blessed" with the privilege to watch OUR local channels in HD (can you tell I'm a little bitter?!). The reason we don't have HD locals? I don't know; probably some bureaucratic B.S., but nonetheless, you can get them if you go down to Radio Shack and buy a nice little antenna; they sell a pretty killer one, seen here.

I had picked up my HD antenna a while back, but prior to this AM-21 purchase and installation, I had it wired directly to the television — this is what people do when they have DirecTV but don't get HD locals; or don't yet have the AM-21. This configuration meant that I could not record those local HD channels through my DVR. This also meant that I had to change the television source when I wanted to go from watching my DVR to watching HD locals, which is actually a pretty common thing. Think if you're watching ESPN or something, but want to have a football game on CBS (in HD through your local station) on your last channel. You have to change the TV source back and forth to go between those two channels. That is a hassle. With the AM-21 I can now record locals in HD, as well as use the HD DVR tuner to view those channels. This means that I no longer have to go back and forth between sources to view channels that DirecTV provides and local HD channels. Kind of a mouthful, but if you saw it you'd know what I was talking about.

So I got that all hooked up tonight. It only took about 15 minutes total. Most of that time was spent on rewiring a few components in my entertainment center because of the way the OTA was installed. All in all, it was a simple "plug and play" application, and it implemented itself pretty seamlessly. NFL playoffs are on tomorrow, so its functionality will be tested more completely at that time.

Oh and in typical Brett Roby style, I was able to finagle the DirecTV salesperson into selling it to me for half-price due to the "grave inconvenience they've cause me by not providing me with locals in HD." I'm so classic sometimes! Fifty bucks?! Nah — try $25. Booyah!

January 5^th, 2009 → The Speakers

My Sony SAF-1TH 5.1 surround sound system arrived today! I wrote about them in my last post (below, fifth paragraph), so I will not elaborate further at this time. I got these things for such an awesome deal, and they're a huge upgrade to what I was running before. Quick specs (and I mean really quick): 5.1 surround, powered sub, slim design.

When I was wiring my speakers, I noticed the back of my receiver has a pretty awesome array of outputs available; I mean I knew this already, but I really looked at it in greater detail today. If you look at this picture, you'll see that the speaker outputs have four binding posts for front speakers: "FRONT A" and "FRONT B." This will be nice for when I add more speakers. I can choose whether to add another set of front sound speakers OR a surround back channel. Depending on what the pros at Santa Cruz Television say will determine which I choose. Best case scenario: I choose both! Judging by the size of the room where my current home theater is installed, though, I probably won't need four more speakers and will just have to choose.

I completed about 90% of the install today, mounting each of the five satellite speakers (two fronts, one center, two rear surround), leaving the sub out of the picture until this weekend, as it'll involve a trip under the house to route a new RCA cable from my entertainment center to where the sub is to be located.

January 1^st, 2009 → A/V Receiver Installed!

After a good amount of work undoing the wires from the original installation of my home theater, and routing of a couple new cables, I got my receiver installed. It actually took quite a bit of work to complete the install — much more than I anticipated — but it was worth every second. I went with an awesome optical cable to get the audio from the Samsung to the receiver. I needed a longer than normal cable, and I didn't have one handy, so I had to make a run to Circuit City (on New Year's Day, no less) to pick it up. All they had that met my needs was this 10ft. Sony brand cable, and it cost about $30. That's not terribly expensive for an optical cable of that length, and considering it's a name brand and has some pretty killer shielding, it was a good purchase.

The new receiver has so many bells and whistles, and I'm super-excited about it; more so than I was before I purchased it and was reading reviews about it. In person and in use it is much more awesome than when reading about it online. The first thing I love about it is you're able to put a ton of inputs into this thing, while only needing one HDMI cable going out from the unit to the TV. I've got my camcorder hooked up via composite, the Wii via component, the DVD recorder/VHS combo unit via component with optical audio, the DirecTV via HDMI, and the Blu-Ray player via HDMI. Each of those signals are processed and sent out over that singluar HDMI out cable! I was able to pull a ton of wires out of my wall and simplify the setup quite a bit. The only thing that is not going to the receiver is the PC, which only has VGA out for its video. This receiver can't accept a VGA input, unfortuately. Not to worry, though: I'll be building up a new home theater PC soon, and it will have HDMI out. I'm still on 100% sold on the "upscaling" thing, as the standard-def sources still look pretty standard-def (such as the camcorder), but I'm not really worried about that because I got this thing for its ease of use, among other things. Upscaling, if it does or doesn't do it at all, is a bonus.

In conjunction with all the amazing processing this receiver can do, you can also customize each input's settings, right down to the name of the input. If you have a look at this picture, you can see that I have named the Blu-Ray input for the front display accordingly; from the factory this one is simply called "BD" on that screen. I named everything else, like for the Wii's input I labeled it "Wii" (and so on) so I'm all dialed in there. You can do all this with the on-screen GUI (you can't see the Wii in this picture because it's down on the next screen down — that's how many inputs this thing has!). This renaming capability makes it a lot easier for everyone to use when selecting the sources. The remote is also pretty good as a universal remote, although unfortunately it does not work our HD DVR. Kind of a bummer there. It does work the TV and each of the other components nicely, though.

Worthy of a quick note: this receiver does have a nice feature that allows you to mute the external speakers and route the audio to the TV only so that you don't have to listen to the louder speakers. This is good for late at night when you don't necessarily want the sub blaring. There's also a "night mode" button on the remote, but I haven't used this yet. I wonder how well that works, and what it does.

One mildly unfortunate thing that I discovered when installing the receiver is that it doesn't support my subwoofer, which is controlled by speaker-level input, as it is not a self-powered sub. But guess what...I ended up selling my old home-theater-in-a-box system, and that sub went with it. I then purchased a new set of speakers that will rock the home theater a heck of a lot more than anything I've had before. I bought the Sony SAF-1TH 5.1 surround sound system to replace all my current speakers. This system has a self-powered sub, which I've never owned before, and is going to be a huge upgrade in speakers for each surround speaker. It's an 8Ω speaker system, which means there will be less load on the receiver than my Bravia speakers (which are 4Ω impedance) that I have hooked up now. They also have a 100W power handling capability; I'm guessing the Bravias are much lower than that. I have posted my those Bravia speakers on Craigslist that I bought a while back, since I'll no longer need those. The new Sony SAF-1TH set is normally $400 retail, but I was able to pick them up from Amazon for about $160. Score! These should be here within a few days.

In less-exciting news, I also picked up some new cables from monoprice.com to break-in the new system properly. I was also able to find a 3ft. component cable for the Wii (from a differnt site) that will be nice, as right now I'm still using that 10-footer Monster brand that I bought for when I was running the cable through the wall. It's way overkill now, obviously. That will be here in a couple days. Hopefully I'll be able to sell the old one and get some good coin in return, as it's normally a $60-ish cable.

December 31^st, 2008 → A/V Receiver Arrived Today!!!

Oh heck yes.

My STR-DG920 A/V receiver came today. This beauty will probably be installed tomorrow, since I'll have all day to do it due to having the day off work and the gym being closed — I'll be home all day, so I might as well. As you might've guessed by now, I'm pretty pumped on this purchase. This will simplify my setup a great deal, and it should make it look and sound better, too. All non-HD signals will be "upconverted" to 1080p and sent out over the HDMI out to my TV. I really can't wait to see how this receiver accomplishes this. It should be a good day tomorrow.

Three quick pictures: #1, #2, #3.

December 26^th, 2008 → A/V Receiver Purchased!

I pulled the trigger today and went ahead with the A/V receiver I've been talking about for a while now, the Sony STR-DG920. This unit is so awesome it's not even funny. It should be here by the 31^st or so, barring any shipping hang-ups. I hope/plan to install it on the day it comes in, but I'm not sure just yet. I think I might want to get me some new surround speakers, as my current setup has speakers with 4Ω impedance. The receiver prefers higher impedance speakers, so I think it would be wise to upgrade those. Fortunately, I've been selling off some of my computer stuff around the house, so I should be able to buy these with minimal impact to the checkbook.

December 18^th, 2008 → Blu-ray^TM Player Installed!

I got my player installed today. The only reason it took a few days is because I was a little nervous about having to run the new cable — if you had any idea of the cabling that's running through my wall right now, you'd understand — and that I was quite busy over the past few days with the holidays and whatnot. Turns out, the install was actually much easier than I had expected.

Pics forthcoming. I don't have any now because our Christmas tree is kind of in the way of the TV and will "ruin" the picture!

December 12^th, 2008 → Blu-ray^TM Player Arrival!

My Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray^TM player arrived today! Yay! I plugged it in to my TV and made sure that it works, and so far so good. I popped in Speed Racer to check out how awesome the full 1080p signal is... and... wow. That's all I can say about that. I then played a standard-definition DVD to see how well the Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray^TM player "upconverted" the signal. As it turns out, it does do a pretty dang good job of upconverting. I thought that upconverting was one of those semi-imaginary things that doesn't really work, but I was wrong; Envy definitely looks better when played through the new Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray^TM player than it does when played through my pretty high-end Sony RDR-VX515 DVD/VHS recorder.

At any rate, the installation isn't complete at this point, as I think I'm going to wait until I pick up my STR-DG920 A/V receiver to finalize the entire home theater project. I've got a lot of cables that will need to be pulled, which means the TV will have to come down. So instead of routing an HDMI cable up through the wall — where I'd have to pull the TV down — just to hook up only the new Blu-ray^TM player, I'll wait until I have the new receiver and just take care of all the cable issues in one fell swoop so I don't have to pull the TV down two more times.

December 10^th, 2008 → Blu-ray^TM Player Ordered!

I just bought a Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray^TM player. This is really going to do some serious justice to my home theater setup. I've been waiting for the audio/video technology that Blu-ray^TM gives an end-user for a long time, and now that there are players that can do this and they're "so cheap," I figured it was time for me to jump in and buy one.

I saw this deal on GoSale.com, and I had to act. The promotion is for $100 your purchase off when you buy four Blu-ray^TM titles from a select group. So I bought one Blu-ray^TM player (the exact one I wanted), and four Blu-ray^TM titles. Each of the titles was less that $25. Therefore, considering the $100 discount, I actually spent less on the whole thing than I would have spent had I bought the player by itself! I'll probably sell one or two of the movies I bought, so there will be some more money coming back to me as well!

Install to happen this weekend, hopefully.

November 22^nd, 2008 → Entertainment Center Fan Mod!

As my home theater components have become increasingly power-hungry and heat-emanating, I have noticed that the inside of the entertainment center is very warm if the glass doors are kept shut while the components are on. This is especially true if two or more are going at the same time; it seems to be OK when one is on by itself. Considering that it is quite common to have both on, I decided to do something about the heat in there.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you...

With this modification, a few things had to happen. First of all, I needed to find some fans suitable to draw enough air from the inside of the entertainment center. This means that the fans would have to be somewhat beefy, at the very least. I was thinking something along the lines of a computer fan would suffice, or perhaps a bit larger. What I was able to find was a nice fan in a 3" diameter. I was originally going to install one fan, directly in the center of the entertainment center, but as I looked at the cabinet, I realized that the center divide goes all the way to the back wall of the inside of the cabin. Therefore, I had to use two fans, and install one on each side. This actually made for a cleaner install, as you will see later.

These fans came from my work, and are the exact same fans we use for pushing acid fumes out of our decapsulation system to keep the internal components from corroding. I figured that should work. The catch is that they're 24-volt fans, meaning I couldn't simply plug them in to the wall socket and expect them to work; I had to use a power supply to control the power going to them that inverted the 110-volt outlet to 24-volt current so the fans could run without blowing up.

Below is an image gallery showing the progress of the fan and power supply install. The power supply I chose, believe it or not, was the same power supply used in our decapsulator! As it turns out, there was an extra power supply in a former employee's pile of crap that he left behind when he — um — let's just say his tenure with Nisene was done. That's another story for another day. At any rate, the power supply I'd found was not being used, and it already had some wiring hooked up to it that made it a nice choice for this modification. I simply tore off what I didn't need, and hooked up what I did. Check out the images below:

Recap:

The first image (top left of image gallery) is how it looked before I started. Compare that with the last picture (bottom left) and you'll see that the mod was a "sleeper" mod — you'll never know by looking unless you have a super-keen eye that anything is different. If you look closely at the lower edge of the horizontal shelves in the last image, you can see a bit of the fans peeking through. That's the only way you can tell anything is different from before (without looking at the back of the entertainment center, of course).

I was able to hook up both fans to the same power supply, and each fan still has plenty of juice to blow more than enough. The only thing that kind of bugs is they're a bit loud. When the audio/video receiver is on, you can't really hear them unless your program goes into a quiet scene. I'm actually kind of thinking that I might see if I can cut back the voltage output a bit so I can slow the fans down. If you have a look at the second image from the left in the bottom row, you will see that I also installed a switch that allows you to turn the fans off if you so choose. That's actually a pretty big portion of the install because you don't need the fans going all the time.

June 14^th, 2008 → New Spekaers for the Home Theater!

I just picked up a new set of five surround speakers for the home theater setup. They're "only" Sony Bravia speakers that originally came in one of those home-theater-in-a-box setups, but they are a huge upgrade to what I had both in aesthetics and sound quality. These are a nice black color that matches very well with my setup, and they have a great rectangular shape to them. My last set had all silver, square speakers — those speakers did not match my setup at all. The installation of these speakers was a bit of work to complete, as we had to pull the TV down and route some new wires to maintain that hidden wire look, but the end result is magical.

Here's the pic! If you look closely, you can see that the Wii sensor bar is mounted on top of the center channel speaker. Stealth, baby, stealth!

Up next is the Sony STR-DG920 — a 7.1 channel surround sound audio/video receiver with four HDMI inputs, a sweet GUI, and a host of other features. I plan on pairing this up with a Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray^TM player. Stay tuned!

June 9^th, 2008 → Wii!

Oh yeah — WE GOT A Wii!!! I didn't get a chance to hook it up yet due to some stuff going on at home, but I felt that I should probably just buy one anyway since they're sold out everywhere. Here's what I bought: Wii console; extra nunchuk; Wii Play (multi-game that comes with remote); and kit that contains two rechargeable batteries with docking station, component cable, and wireless sensor bar. I wanted to buy Mario Kart, but they were out.

...and of course we have the obligatory photo.

June 4^th, 2008 → DirecTV Installed!

DirecTV officially installed at the Roby household! I have only just begun playing with the settings and programming, but I'm pretty stoked on the new setup. All of the standard definition channels — about 200 of them — are digital and are nice and clear, and we currently have 35ish HD channels, with a quota or allowance of up to 95 if they add them to the plan we purchased during the time of our contract. For the same price, our cable provider gave us about 75 standard definition channels in analog, which looked like crap on the new TV, and about nine or 10 HD channels.

When you do, be sure to go to Santa Cruz Television for complete sales and installation support.

May 24^th, 2008 → HDTV! YAY!!!!

The Robys have entered the HDTV world! You may not care, but dang, I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Check out a couple pics here and here. We went with the Samsung PN50A550 — 50" 1080p plasma. It's got a host of features that I absolutely love in a TV, and I've only just begun to see what this set can do. In that second picture, you can see the split-screen in action. Each of those screen sizes measure about 26" — or about the same size as the TV we have in our bedroom!

Needless to say, a nice video game console purchase will be following this purchase very soon.

Many thanks to Santa Cruz Television for hooking me up with some great pricing and professional installation. It's always nice to know family in the business. Check them out for great pricing on equipment and installation.

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