Music

I generally don't listen to new music - I listen to old music. Mostly popular oldies of country and of rock persuasion but in my music folder you'd find everything from Leadbelly to Led Zepplin, a lot of Beatles and a smattering of classical. And one opera tune, The Phantom of the Opera (by Sarah Brightman and some guy). There's also O' Holy Night by The DiGiallonardo Sisters, who I'm sure you've never heard of but would challenge you to hear their version and not buy it.

Anyway, I'm vacuuming the carpet today listening to a shuffle of songs when up comes MacArthur Park (by Richard Harris) which humorist Dave Barry includes in his Book of Bad Songs. I can think of no reason to disagree but I really do like the song. When I started writing this entry I really intended to examine the lyrics in detail but have suddenly decided to go have a piece of cake.

Grande now offers Tivo

Grande is now offering the Tivo Premiere DVR to their Midland-Odessa customers for $12.99 over the top of a current receiver. You must have a Grande Internet package with at least 8Mbps service - one step up from the basic Grande internet service - and you can see the Grande Bundle prices here.*

I'm a big fan of DVRs and think the Tivo Premiere is the best DVR available. If you're currently using a non-Tivo DVR I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the Tivo user interface and if you're properly geeky, the additional features offered by the Tivo Desktop software and the iPad app will likely make you a fan-for-life. A second Tivo Premiere (another $14.99 per month) also means Mult-Room Viewing is in play.

Obviously I'm a Tivo fan-boy but I realize a Tivo, or any other DVR, is a totally unneccessary expense to some people. I doubt though that those people would even be reading this.

*Bundle prices apply to the first year only and increase $10 per month after the first year and another $10 per month after the second year.

Tivo news - software and new hardware

TiVo is finally pushing out a software release that people seem to like. Tivo Community forum members generally have given the update a thumbs-up and that is a tough group to please. The 20.2 update to the Premiere boxes goes a long way in finally updating the HD menus and supports Multi-room Viewing (MRV). MRV allows you to record a show on one box and stream to another, and apparently streaming works while the recording is in progress. (Prior to MRV - and with the older TivoHD's - the original recording had to be complete before it could be "transferred" to another Tivo but the show could be viewed while the transfer is in progress. Transferring is also prohibited with DRM'd content.) The 20.2 update should reach all Premieres subscribed directly with Tivo within the next week but it's my understanding that Suddenlink Tivo subscribers won't see it for a few months.

Tivo also showed a new piece of hardware at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which allows Tivo users to stream content to, and/or watch recorded content on, iOS devices through their home network. The device looks to be about the size of the Apple TV box. Tivo users have wished for the ability to stream to portable devices but the transcoding to do so apparently requires more processing power than available on current Tivo boxes. Slingbox-like-devices do already provide a workaround of sorts and Tivo Director of Marketing Jason Wong hinted in a recent interview that future Tivos will probably have transcoding built-in so the add-on box may be just a temporary thing. Of course, temporary could be a few years...

BCS Game - Even my provider went to sleep

I was disappointed in the BCS title game between Alabama and LSU. The almost-complete lack of participation by LSU made it hard to get real interested and I can only assume the feed to/from Grande became bored to death. I lost the signal (and most other channels) for most of the second quarter.

The most excitement for me came when the signal returned at half-time and a graphic showed the score Alabama 0, LSU 9. Since Alabama lead 3-0 before I lost the signal I spent 3 or 4 seconds trying to decide if, due to some weird BCS rule, points were taken away from Alabama for some infraction, or if my memory was getting worse than I previously thought.

At least it was better than watching a Dallas Cowboy game.

Avatar 3D

Our New Year's Eve movie was Avatar 3D. The Blu-ray disc was a promotional bonus with a recently purchased Panasonic player and I was eager to watch a 3D movie on our new Samsung TV. Although we had watched a few shorts/cartoons using the Samsung's built-in internet application, this was our first full length 3D movie.

Avatar is one long, weird movie but I was very impressed with the 3D version. The visual effects are pretty amazing and some scenes, such as those showing the characters using holographic computer displays, really benefited from 3D. I'm not sure that a regular movie, say True Grit, would benefit from 3D but Avatar seemed pretty well-suited for it. We paused the movie a couple of times for short breaks (we were also doing a couple loads of laundry) but I don't think it would have been a problem had we watched straight through - at least no problem for my eyes - my rear end probably benefited from the breaks more than my eyes. I did, however, have some really weird dreams last night.

Although I originally thought the Blu-ray disc included only the 3D version, the 2D version is on there, too. But, I'm guessing I won't ever watch the movie again or any sequel. It might seem odd that as an amateur astronomer I'm not much of a sci-fi fan but that's the case and Avatar was just a bit too weird for me. I would still recommend the 3D Avatar movie for a 3D experience, though. It was compelling, to me, that the production of the film (according to Wikipedia) made use of 4,000 HP servers and 35,000 processor cores and each minute of final footage occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage. I might not be a fan of sci-fi but I am a geek.

I saw 3D Toy Story at the local movie theater and have seen a couple of 3D IMAX films (International Space Station was great). In comparison, I found the Samsung 3D glasses (model SSG3100GB) at least as comfortable/non-distracting as the movie glasses and we experienced no problems whatsoever with them - no flickering, loss of sync or such.

A Blu-ray Player

I finally selected the Panasonic BDT210 as my Blu-ray player and gave it a try on Saturday night with the Blu-ray version of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rented from Redbox). The verdict? It looked and sounded really, really good.

The BDT210 was on sale at Best Buy last week so I took the bait. Also, these players come with a coupon redeemable for a copy of Avatar 3D and people are reselling the BD for around $100. By the time I get my copy of the BD (8-12 weeks according to the coupon) the price will probably be closer to $19 but we'll see...

Like my other two recent purchases (the TV and the soundbar), my new Blu-ray player is loaded with complicated features and I struggled a bit with the audio setup. The player is set up to output 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound sampled at 96 kHz and my Sony soundbar will not handle anything over 48 kHz so it took some time with the user manual to find the right settings. It took quite a bit of reading and experimenting to get everything set up and I hope I don't need to change it for a long time because I will forget all the details within the next 5-7 days.

One other tidbit I learned about TV audio... if you drive your audio equipment with a connection from the TV you can get only 2-channel stereo regardless of the type of connection. Most all new televisions will output surround sound only when the source is over-the-air. If you are using a cable box, or other equipment such as a DVD/BD player, as the input source, the TV will "down-convert" the sound as per some licensing restriction. So, boys and girls, feed your audio equipment directly from the box/player for the best sound.

Fuzzy Football on NBC

Am I the only one seeing the picture go from a very soft, to a gradual sharp, focus on NBC?

I don't remember seeing this anytime except during the Sunday night football games. When the view goes to the wide shot, used just before the ball is snapped, the picture is very soft and then gradually becomes sharp. But not all the time. I tried last night to identify just exactly what was happening prior to the effect each time but too often I was distracted by the game.

A New TV and Soundbar

Although I've neglected the blog for a long time, there have been some TV equipment changes here at the house so I'll get into those in a moment. First, I'll offer some excuses. Skip to the fifth paragraph if you're interested only in the TV stuff.

We went to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque this year. We've been wanting to make it up there for several years but had put it off. And we have been to the Alpine balloonfest several times so that somewhat satisfied the need to see giant bags of hot air ascending to the heavens. We also had some living-quarters remodeling scheduled so we returned home from Albuquerque with just barely time to wash all the clothes and start moving stuff out of the way for new carpet and tile. As you might remember, I'm retired but the wife is still working. She decided that rather than retire, she would amass huge amounts of money to buy a new house or to remodel the current house. And since we decided to remodel, she had the advantage of safe refuge from 8-5 each day while tilers and carpeters had their way with my space. I survived the week-or-so and we now have nice new tile and "green" carpet that is really brown made from corn. Really. Made from corn.

The wife has also been steadily replacing furniture because, of course, one cannot have old furniture sitting on new carpet/tile. I'm not sure why but I really don't need to know why. I know I don't need to know because that's what I was told. And new furniture requires at least one new TV. That I understand because it was explained to me in detail... One piece of the new furniture is a TV stand which is 71-inches wide and requires a TV of similar size so that the TV does not look so small sitting on it. The viewability, or ability to provide quality entertainment has absolutely nothing to do with TV selection I now know. I offered a feeble argument that a television that size would make our modest-sized living room look like a drive-in theater but found myself looking through the selection of TVs on display at Best Buy.

Some people do not realize that an 80-inch television on display among ten or twelve 55 and 60-inch televisions does not look all that big. It will not look the same in your living room. Unless you have ten or twelve 55/60-inch TVs in it already. This argument I was able to win only after coming home and using masking tape on the wall to show the true size of a 80-inch TV. Genius, huh?

I was assigned to select a 60-inch TV and, after exhaustive research on the Internet, we ended up with a 60-inch Samsung TV that is Smart. I don't know exactly how smart our new TV is but I'll get in to that later. My research lead me to either the Samsung or a Sony for picture quality and the price difference made the final choice easy. Many people complain of "flashlighting" on LED backlit LCD televisions but with proper adjustment I see no flashlighting at all on ours. I copied the settings from several sources, particularly the AVSforum and CNET and was pretty pleased with the results except the sound. The only downside of a TV this size (or larger) is that any defects in the content are really obvious. I have some DVDs with 480i content that will just be unwatchable on this TV.

With our old Sony TV I used a receiver/amplifier with Radio Shack Minimus-7 speakers. These small speakers offer great sound in a very small package but the old JVC receiver seemed both out-of-date (not even optical output) and huge for this purpose so I set out to research my options. Hey, it's not my fault - She wanted the new TV and I was just trying to complete the setup. I eventually selected the Sony HT CT150 soundbar. Soundbars have become very popular for that gap between built-in TV speakers and Home Theater Surround Sound and the CT150 receives high praise from other geeks. I'm very pleased with the Sony soundbar.

Our Samsung is one of the Smart TV models but does not have built-in WiFi - it requires CAT5 or a proprietary wireless dongle. The smarts include apps for streaming content from Hulu, Netflix, etc. but I really couldn't care less about the networking feature in the TV because I have pretty much the same capability through my TivoHD. Yet, when I found a non-Samsung dongle at Newegg.com for less than $30, I ordered one anyway. (The Samsung dongle is $80, but the cheaper Rosewill uses the same chipset and is the only non-Samsung dongle that works with Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players.) My curiosity - no, my geekiness, require me to find out just how "smart" the TV is. I haven't received the dongle yet so I still don't know.

I've yet to decide on a Blu-ray player but am considering a Panasonic, a Sony or a Samsung. The Samsung or Sony would supposedly offer to integrate more seamlessly with the TV or the soundbar but the Panasonic seems to be rated higher for less noise and/or better upconverting of standard DVDs than the other two brands. All three brands apparently do 3D/Blu-ray playback very well but almost all the commentary in the forums focuses more on the networking ability of the players because, like TVs, new Blu-ray players are network compatible. My primary concerns in the differences of the models I've researched are the mechanical noise of the players, the DVD upconverting and the 3D ability so the Panasonic DMP-BDT110 is looking like the frontrunner for the money.

So that should just about catch us up. And by the way... Next time I'll vote to move.