New HDTV!

Here's some pictures of my new tv, as well as my whole home theater setup.


Well I finally did it, I got that TV that I've been looking at for months! It took a trip to Circuit City where I didn't even plan on buying it, and a very good price matching discount from the salesrep to hook me on the deal. They price matched the Samsung 4051-D HDTV from Buy.com, bringing the total price just about where I would have paid online from buy.com. The rep even made another deal with me...he said I could get $150 off of any surround sound system, if I signed up for digitial cable. I held off on this for a few days, but then later returned to buy a surround system from Sony for $180. So I got a nice set of Sony 5.1 Surround Sound 800W speakers for $30! I hooked these up an noticed that the left rear speaker had static noise coming through. I returned this speaker to CC and the new one worked perfectly. I later called the Time Warner to have them install digital cable and the HD channels. I really didn't need to do this to make the deal work, but its something I wanted to do anyway. A few days later they installed the digital cable/hd channels. I have to say, I love the HD channels (the true HD channels). I've noticed quite a bit of non-primetime programming is still standard or digital cable brought into the HD range. These pictures are really a disgrace to HD stations and shouldn't be allowed at all. However, stations like Discovery HD and WXXI HD make it totally worth it. These stations often show nature in its finest HD detail, the pictures look beautiful! I can't wait to watch YES HD this coming April!

Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money (Jan 07)

Well I was just reading up on TomsHardware that the video card that I selected for my PC was actually a pretty good choice. They recommended that if you're going to upgrade you at least get a card that is three tiers or higher from your current card. I went from a Radeon 9500 Pro to a 9600XT which is no jump in tier at all. I'm okay with this cause I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a dead horse (AGP). So the three tier jump happened with my new system where I purchased a X800GTO. It is three tiers ahead of my current 9600XT. I do things right every once in a while. :-P

My New Video Card

I recently updated my dying Radeon 9500 Pro AGP 8x video card, with this upgrade Radeon 9600XT. I am trying to stretch my current system out for another year or two before I totally scrape it for an updated motherboard that accepts PCI-E and maybe a Core2Duo. But that's another story.

After 3 days this card has been running great.
Here's the specs...
Sapphire Radeon9600XT
AGP 4x/8x
Core 500Mhz
256 MB DDRII RAM
Memory 580-650 Mhz
Shader Units 4
Memory Bandwith 10.4 GB/sec

3DMarks 3733 -
My old card had 3659 when it was stable, I got up to 4252 with overclocking but I think this may have accelerated my video cards death. I have no plans to overclock my new card.

Skiing at Bristol

Yesterday, I went skiing with Ramon at Bristol. The weather was pretty good, except at the top of the mountain where it was very cloudy/foggy/snowy/sleaty. Either way, the snow was still pretty loose and it wasn't too crowded. I ended up doing most of the Medium difficulty trails and the all the Easy trails.
The trails I did were...
- Milky Way
- Nova
- Shooting star
- Sunset
- Infinity
- Southern Cross
- Eclipse
- NorthStar
- Lower Meteor

Sunrise and Sunset

I like to keep track of when the sun is going to rise and set. I like to know how many hours of sun (or lack of it since I do live in Rochester ;-P) we are expected. We gain 2-3 minutes of sunlight every day from Dec 21 to Jun 21. Here's some links to sites that list this info for our area.

Site 1
Site 2
Site 3

Adirondacks High Peaks

This is a site I stumbled on when searching for hikes in the Adirondacks. This guy and his friends are totally devoted to hiking the High Peaks in the Adirondacks. They go it seems every month, even the winter months. The pictures and descriptions of the trails are amazing. I really appreciate this site. It also makes me want to go back there very soon!

Top 5 Selfish Electronic Wants Right Now

Things that I would buy if I had the money, and didn't owe quite a lot on student loans. Maybe I can splurge a little after tax refunds (if there is any)...
1. Parts to build a brand new computer. Core 2 Duo, 1 GB of DDR2-6200RAM, Nvidia 7950.
2. If not the above, at least a working AGP Video Card for my aging Pentium IV system, that has a slowly dying video card on hardware that is not supported. Maybe the NVidia 7600.
3. Samsung 20.1" LCD Monitor.
4. Samsung 40" LCD HDTV 4051-D.
5. Hauppauge WinTV-PVR250MCE PCI Interface Video, on sale at
NewEgg

HDTV Buyers Guide

I really love the folks at TomsHardware. No matter what I'm looking for or whatever I'm interested in they always seem to have an article right then and there to help me out. Take for instance my new obsession lately has been gawking over a 40" LCD HDTV from Samsung model 4051-D (or 4041-D). I know I want this so badly, and its current price of around $1300, its not a bad deal for what your getting. Anyway this article basically reviews all different types of tvs and discuss what you should know before buying one. I found it to be very useful, so I thought that I'd share it.