A bit underwhelmed...

[Davemcc]

I also watched Passion of the Christ over the weekend on Blu-Ray which certainly didn't help my mood.

Maybe this will cheer you up...Jesus wins.

 

[mperfct]

I gave my post some considerable thought last night. I have been pretty grumpy the past 2 or 3 months due to the finance mess,
but I have to say I stand by what I said.

...snip...

Chris,

That's a great read and I see a lot of truth in what you say. A lot of us here are just lapping up the half-baked crap that manufacturers are churning out, and when something comes out that actually is done correctly, it gets a product-of-the-year award.

My last upgrade is going to correct a screen moire issue I've been having then I might just unplug from AVS indefinitely. Pixelitis is very contagious over there...

Warmest regards~

Chris

 

[STRONGBADF1]

I tell you what... I was all excited about getting back into shooting. I used to shoot IPSC (competetive handguns) in college and was actually getting pretty good. Graduated... life kicked into high gear, the company I had started in college started growing and the rest is history.

Recently I thought I'd get back into... primarily 3 gun comps, but unfortunately, I picked the absolute worse time because my new found interest came about just as Obama was about to nab the democratic nomination. From there, everyone lost their mind and figured all the gun control and bans would come back.

Basically, everything has skyrockected price-wise, availabitlity... especially for ammo is very limited and you pay through the nose for each pull of the trigger.

So now I have a handgun I bought just for comps, a new AR, and a shotgun and I can't even get ammo to practice. So I have about $6K in hardware sitting in my safe.

I'm feeling a bit stymied as of late. I also watched Passion of the Christ over the weekend on Blu-Ray which certainly didn't help my mood. I don't know that I needed to see that in hi-def. I'm still feeling disturbed from the flick on top of everything else.

A friend of mine wants to buy a hand gun. He's never had the need to buy one but wants to get one now just in case.

I've never seen Passion of the Christ...now maybe I'll skip it.

I've been pretty bored and agitated myself lately. Between work and being tired of winter ( yeah I know, PA isn't like Canada...) I need some change. The new speakers really helped but I need some warmth and the economy to turn around or I'm gonna kick my boss in the shin. (all he does is complain and it's put the companies mind set in the toilet.)

Anywho, buy the wife a nice "role playin'" outfit. That should help get you in a better mood for a little while anyway.

Take care,
Doug

 

[Phaselinear77]

could be a whole lot worse

By the sound of it, your company must be doing OK. You've picked up some nice equipment and your HT rocks. Heck, I can't afford to buy back the Wilson Accu-comp I sold when my IPSC competition slowed down. No longer own my custom A-R, and my dillon RL has been idle for way too long. Just finished a year of seminary grad school and am paying student loans while trying to figure out how to afford a center channel and sub for my family.

My suggestion to you: study a little Two-Kingdom doctrine/theology in the order of M. Kline (Kingdom Prologue and the earlier Structure of Biblical Authority). It will make sense of the whole cult and culture thing. I'm loving it.

 

[itschris]

By the sound of it, your company must be doing OK. You've picked up some nice equipment and your HT rocks. Heck, I can't afford to buy back the Wilson Accu-comp I sold when my IPSC competition slowed down. No longer own my custom A-R, and my dillon RL has been idle for way too long. Just finished a year of seminary grad school and am paying student loans while trying to figure out how to afford a center channel and sub for my family.

My suggestion to you: study a little Two-Kingdom doctrine/theology in the order of M. Kline (Kingdom Prologue and the earlier Structure of Biblical Authority). It will make sense of the whole cult and culture thing. I'm loving it.

I have to say that I do feel very lucky. We're considered by many to be one of the few companies that people point to and say "they know how to do it right." We're highly regarded these days and we've weathered the storm. Things are bad, but not horrible as of yet. Executive Management has done a fantastic job steering us through this mess and dodging bullet after bullet. I think we'll be okay, but it's been a very tense, stressful few months. All of us on the Sr. level have been heavily engaged in decision making and have been heavily relied upon for ideas and supporting work.

The Passion of the Christ got to me on two levels... first... ignoring the faith-based aspect of it all... it's just a brutal, sorrowful depiction of what life was probably like back then... and now in the middle east. I guess when I see that, you think that was "stone age" but it happens now in other parts of the world like the Middle East where it's excepted to stone women, cut peoples' heads off, and let young girls burn to death in a burning schoold because "they shouldn't have been there in the first place learning."

On a faith level, it reminds me or should I say, brings to light that I don't think enough about God, my faith in God, and what it means to me. It's all too easy to get caught up in the day to day stuff, and it becomes too convenient to ignore your faith until bad things are on the horizon and suddenly you feel the urge to pray.

When things start to take their toll, you have a tendancy... or at least I do.. to retreat to your "happy place" which for me is my hobby world of things I have and things I like to think about or wish I could have, etc. It's a nice mindless distraction to think about what it would be like to have a Ferrari F1 Fiorano sitting in my driveway in black and in gun-metal silver. HT is one of those retreats but lately there's not a whole to excite me as I've stated.

I think the industry is at a "catch up" phase where they're putting out a level of stuff that allows everyone to get into the game and get caught up to the level we're at prior to moving on to the next stuff. And honestly, I don't know that there's a whole of tolerance for too much stuff too fast. For instance, if 4X suddenly came out tomorrow, I'd probably be pissed that I spend all this money to get me to 1080P.

 

[Nemo128]

To me, this has been a good time to experiment with things.

My last project was the Linux modding for the WDTV, which went great. I never thought streaming my TV shows and movies could be so clean and easy in a tiny lil box.

My next project will be to integrate true PC gaming into my living room properly. The whole HTPC really irritates me sometimes. Some people think, if you stick a PC in a HT setup, it's an HTPC. There's so much more to it than that. Anyone can shove a thin client in a cabinet or prop it up next to their TV and call it an HTPC, but to do it cleanly and integrate it seemlessly takes some thought.

One of my ideas involves using the Gyration air mouse as a controller in games rather than a normal mouse. It'll add a whole other dimension to the idea of FPS and RTS games on the PC. Keyboard on your lap in the living room, not cool. Two small handheld devices for control (kinda like Wiimote + Nunchuk) for PC gaming on home theater, that is pretty cool.

Another is building a multi-touch overlay for the plasma so the woman can use it for working in CAD on the TV. Multi-touch panels are awesome when they're large format. Think CNN's interactive display for production applications. Sure, the panels can be bought for upwards of $100k, and 50" overlays are ~$5k, but if I can build one for some hundreds, it would be an awesome addition to my toys.

I think, when you hit the wall, you just have to find other avenues for your creativity. I buy books whenever I get bored enough for example. Or do some research on what's going on in my other love, the car industry.

Buy an HD camcorder and make your own family movies for BD to share with far-away family. Learn a new craft or hobby, like taking up tai chi or learning to cook your favorite restaurant foods.

This is my long-winded way of saying, when you're underwhelmed with our AV craze, just take a break from it and dive into other interests. In enough time, the craving for AV will hit again.

 

[MidnightSensi]

I find when I take a break and stop buying stuff and moving gear around, I end up using the stuff more and enjoying it more. Then when I really use things for a long time, I realize what I actually want to upgrade. It's not always something obvious.

I also go into "wire management" fits...and do things like buy cables the exact length of my run, terminate my network cables myself for the perfect length, buy cables that have 90s or 45s on the ends so they seat perfectly in my rack. Right now my rack is kind of a mess, and so there might be some "cable" purchases coming up soon.

DIY is another route to go, its fun to build stuff and hear it. You also learn a lot along the way, which is pretty cool.

Well, if your HT is all setup, then it’s time to get excited about new movies & music – the reasons you got all that equipment I the first place

Werd.

Sit back, relax, maybe take a b-hit if thats your thing, kick on some tunes, maybe a movie, whateva whateva. It's fun to be into the gear, but, there is only so much stuff to check out right now.

 

[CraigV]

DIY is another route to go, its fun to build stuff and hear it. You also learn a lot along the way, which is pretty cool.




.

Agreed. My results varied, but it was worth the effort, and I did learn a lot.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

HTPC's... the lossless audio is still not really here... or at best it's a mystical kind of thing that requires too much time to really even consider. There's still not a single comprehensive software solution for HTPC... you still need add-ins for this and that and have to have this run in the background, blah, blah, blah.

HTPC is what I'm currently into.

In fact, I just ordered a new custom-built desktop w/AMD X2 2.7GHz, 4G RAM, ATI Radeon Graphics, HDMI/DVI/Optical Audio, Blu-ray Drive for $455.

I can now back-up blu-ray movies using AnyDVD HD/ImgBurn/BDInfo/TsMuxer.

I can now playback Blu-ray movies right from the PC - no blu-ray players, no blu-ray discs - by just using the blu-ray ISO files on my External HDs & Virtual CloneDrive & PowerDVD 8.

I have all my CDs stored on my HD as WAV files - 100% uncompressed music.

So both 1080p HD Movies (Blu-ray) and Uncompresssed Music (WAV) easily playback on my HTPC. No problem whatsoever.

 

[westcott]

I agree with the original post. I bought a Oppo Digital for the master bedroom and the picture looks great but the macroblocking is really bad with my Panasonic plasma. It will probably have to find a new home. Just nothing to get thrilled about. I was hoping to start a SACD and/or DVD audio library but not if I am going to sell it.

On top of all that, I just got an email from NetFlix telling me they want to charge me $4 a month more for BluRay discs. I declined and pulled my subscription to BR. There were not that many titles I am interested in and the ones I did want to watch seemed to take forever to show up.

I went to Fry's to buy my first BR disc for demo purposes and the prices are still WAY too high for my liking. $25 or US$30 for top feature films is still way out of line if they hope for BR to grow into a mainstream product. I would love to work on my video library but not at these prices.

Hope the recession does not last too many years because it is going to take a really great product to make we want to spend any of my money in this economic climate.