My Old TV

Sunday, 19 January 2003
11:59pm
A
bout two years ago, I bought my first DVD player. The image quality blew me away. It made me want to get a better TV. So about six months later, I did. I got a 30" widescreen direct-view TV from Samsung, and boy, did it ever look good. 16:9 TV's can see about 1/3rd more lines of resolution on DVD's that were anamorphically encoded when compared to standard TV's, and boy, did it really show. I was blown away. But since this TV had progressive scan capability, I went out and got a progressive scan DVD player, and was again, blown away. I gave my old DVD player to my sister.
This TV had built in Dolby Pro-Logic decoding, and had a way of allowing you to use the TV's built-in speakers as the left and right speakers, while using external center channel and surround speakers. To take advantage of this, I went out and bought a cheap center/surround speaker package. I mean, really cheap. I mean like, $50 for all three speakers. And I was pretty happy. Shortly after, I replaced the center channel speaker with one from Bose.
But not long after doing that I realized that I was looking at this fantastic image, but the sound just wasn't up to the same standard. After much research, decided to get a proper 5.1 receiver, and main speakers from Paradigm. I figured, I'd use those as the main left and right, the bose center, and the crappy old surrounds. For a subwoofer I was using a crappy old Aiwa one that I got back when I was living in the dorms. Better than nothing.
The only problem was, the quality of the Paradigm main speakers completely eclipsed the sad performance of the Bose center channel. Within a day or two I returned back to the high-end audio store I bought the main speakers from and got a matching center channel speaker. Ahh, much better. I sold the crappy Bose speaker on e-bay... not saying it was crappy, of course... I just said "it didn't match my other speakers," which was quite true. Some time after that, I added an HDTV receiver to grab these HDTV signals that just fly around the air that are free for the taking.
And that's pretty much the setup I've had for the past year or so, and I've been pretty happy with it. Even with the crappy surrounds and subwoofer, well, the crappiness of the surround speakers has not bothered me one bit, actually. There isn't a glaring problem like there was with trying to match up the Paradigm mains with the Bose center channel. In fact, I was at a point where I was starting to feel like my audio system was too good for my TV.
You see, being a home theater enthusiast is like being a car enthusiast. Once you start modifying your car, it never stops. And that's how it's been. So, last week, I ordered a new 50" DLP projection set from Samsung, through my sister's friend who got me a killer, and I mean killer discount. We're talkin'... I could buy another HDTV set with the money I saved kind of killer.
And I'm taking delivery of it tomorrow. And I can't wait. And being the geek that I am, I used a computer simulation thingy to plan how I was going to rearrange all the furniture in the living room to accommodate the larger TV. I seriously had a blueprint of where everything would go that was accurate to the inch, taking into account the optimal location of the speakers for proper imaging. Well, tonight, Jeff helped me out with the rearranging.
First, I did a little TV decomissioning ritual. I decided that the last thing I would watch on this TV (which has brought my such joy in the time I've had it) would be "All Good Things..." the final episode of ST:TNG. Yeah, I'm a nerd. But I wanted it to be something fitting for the occasion, and Jeff, being a nerd himself, was happy enough to watch it with me, while Cami cowered in her room to hide from the geekiness of it all.

We started out with me unplugging stuff, and then Jeff helped me move the old TV off the stand to a temporary location. The thing weighs like 130 lbs, and moving it really sucks. Then I finished unplugging the rest of the stuff so we could slide the stand (with all the components in it) into its new position.

About two weeks ago when I was contemplating whether or not I wanted the 43" or the 50" version of this TV, I made a paper mock-up of the 50" version using the dimensions listed on Samsung's website. I wanted to see if it would actually be too big for our living room. Here is me with the paper mockup with the TV stand in the new position.
That strange looking contraption on top of the speaker on the left is actually the UHF antenna I am using to receive HDTV. And yes, that is quite a bit of junk on the coffee table. It's all the random stuff I found in the corners of the room. Here's a little twentysix.net factoid -- those sticks I'm using to keep the shape of the paper mock-up are actually the "light sabers" I used in the making of my Return of the BryBry light saber video.

I repatched all the cables, and set everything up. These cables here are the ones that will go into the back of the new TV. Basically, when it arrives, all I'll have to do is get it up on the stand, plug these in, and plug the TV into the wall, and everything will be all set up in a matter of seconds, since everything else is all properly configured (except for my right surround speaker which isn't hooked up yet cuz I need to get a longer speaker wire for it).


Jeff got me a little gift to celebrate the arrival of my new TV -- the Deep Impact DVD... which is kind of a joke that you might know about if you are a fan of the cartoons on Homestarrunner.com, which if you haven't been there before, I highly suggest you check it out!
Anyway, I hope the delivery goes off with a hitch, as I've been so excited about this TV that I literally have not been able fall asleep at night since I received the call on Friday from the freight company to schedule an appointment for delivery. Ben says he'll help me unpack and set up this TV when it gets here tomorrow. I suspect that Netflix will be seeing a lot of action from me in the next few weeks ;)

Friday, 24 January 2003
3:10am
Y
es, it's 3:10 am. If you're wondering why I haven't been updating it's because I did indeed receive that new TV on time, and I have been completely enthralled by it since then. It's quite an amazing piece of machinery, and the technology is so crazy that I think it's amazing that it even works at all! If you are unfamiliar with DLP technology, head on over to DLP.com and check out the demo on how the technology works. I guarantee you will be completely blown away by the mind boggling technology.

That's me, at 3am, showing my approval. By the way, that's a gigantic guileless.net up there on the screen. I hooked up my laptop to the thing. Last night I watched the HDTV broadcast of the Tonight Show, and although the resolution really wasn't that much more than my old TV, the sheer size of the new one made it look like Drew Barrymore was actually sitting on a couch on the other side of my living room. If that don't make me happy, I don't know what will :)
Anyway, it's late, so I'm gonna cut this update short, but if you wanna see more pics and info on this amazing device, head on over to this page.