Episode 19 - The Real Home Theater Podcast: $1mil cables, Low Cost HD-DVD, Microsoft

[eugovector]

Here's the place to comment on the latest Episode of The Real HT Info Podcast. Good or bad, I want to hear about it.

Episode 019 (10/11/2007)
«» News: Snapstream PVR Software, $1mil cables, and more.
«» Digital Life: Microsoft Media Extenders, and the $199 (sorta) Venturer HD-DVD Player
«» TV shows I like: Boston Legal, Dexter, and more.

[EasyCompany506]

TV shows - Boston legal is a show that when you watch it, you love it. But for some reason I can't plan my viewing around it. Thanks to the wife I always end up watching each week, so thankfully she controls the remote.
other shows I love. Smallville, The unit, Heroes.

HD DVD question. Everyone points out the price of HD DVD vs Blu-ray. Yeah it's $199 or $299 for an HD DVD player and as of Nov 2nd a 40GB PS3/BD player will only be $399, but what do you get for $200? Do you get 1080P, what kind of connections do you get and how many? what is the load time? I would like to hear more on the specs vs a high price model to see if it's worth the savings. granted I still don't plan on buying HD DVD, but others might.

As alway Marshall, I love the music picks each week. Why not post a top ten albums list.

[eugovector]

I would never watch TV if I had to do it in real time. My hours are a little crazy, so if it weren't for timeshifting, and I had to watch on the network's schedule and not mine, it wouldn't happen. I'd wait for the dvd, no commercials anyway.

Do you hear me, Mr. Bigtime NBC/ABC/CBS/Everybody else? Let me watch on my schedule without criminalizing it.

For the HD DVD, it was way bolted down so I couldn't look at the back. I'll google and see what I can find. I know about 15 second load time to menu. For the rest, I would guess 1080p (have to run an HQV disc to find the quality, but it should be on par), HDMI 1.3, Digital Audio out. Don't expect 7.1 analog audio out.

As far as a top 10 albums, I could do a movie list way easier (Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption...it goes on from there. Albums that could make my list would be:

Elvis Costello - My Aim is True
Hum - You'd Prefer an Astronaut (Personal more than critical favorite)
Ani Difranco - Not A Pretty Girl
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's
Paul Simon - Graceland
...and others I'm just not thinking of right now. It's funny, there are some potential top ten artists, like:

Dar Williams
The Mountain Goats
Aimee Mann
Mike Doughty

...that I don't know if they would necessarily make my top 10 album list. Can you have a top 10 artist who doesn't make a top 10 album?

[eugovector]

Venturer Press release from August says 1080i, but we all know that new firmware could have pushed it to 1080p. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[wbassett]

Great podcast as always Marshal.

You mentioned the new 'feature' on the Fantastic Four Bluray disc, and I can say it does play in some players without any firmware update needed. I just spoke to my brother who picked up a Panasonic BD player a couple months ago and he said it played fine. I suspect it might be a problem with older players and people that haven't done firmware updates since they bought their units. Is that an acceptable answer? No. I'm definitely not defending Fox or making any excuses for BD, but the disc does play fine in some players but seems to choke in others. I haven't picked it up yet since I wasn't that impressed with the first movie and planned on just getting it on SDVD. My brother did say though that he bought both SDVD and the BD version and he said the video quality is night and day difference between the two. Just wanted to pass that along.

The Venturer HD DVD player... their MSRP is a bit high at an estimated $249. That's close enough to Toshiba's MSRP on the A2 that I am sure people are going to feel more comfortable paying the little bit extra to get a name that has a higher consumer reliability image. Now, we all know there is a difference between MSRP and street prices, but again, Venturer and the resellers of these players must chop that price down to $150 almost immediately because the street price for the A2 is once again not much more than $199, in fact for those that don't mind buying online, the Shack's Electronics store has it for $214 new right now. I agree that they will settle in at $199 now with a big sale on Black Friday and then six months down the road the prices will start to drop.

Has Walmart officially said they won't be carrying these players? I've read a few news articles that said Walmart pulled the plug on them. I'm not too happy with a few Walmarts right now anyway. They finally started getting High Def movies, and one of the SuperCenters (it's an hour's drive though) is starting to get a bigger selection of both BD and HD DVDs but nowhere near what Best Buy carries. My local Walmarts though... they are 'hiding' their high def movies! I knew my local store had them but when I stopped by to check out if there were any new releases, I scoured the DVD isle and couldn't find one, so I asked. They are locked up in the PS3 case! Even the HD DVD discs were locked up there, well if you can say 'discs'. They had two HD DVD titles and around eight BD titles.

[eugovector]

Yes, reading through some internet reports, it seems like some blu-ray players are able to play the disc with no problems, but it's not for lack of applying the latest firmware. Even in cases where the latest firmware was applied, the discs still would not play.

I think the venturer will have to plummet in price to $149 if they expect to sell any. If wal-mart were putting them in their stores, people would buy one simply because it is there. People at Target may still do the same, assuming target keeps the other HD-DVD player at $300-350.

Theres still a lot to be said for having your products in a B&M. Some people still aren't hip to Internet sales, as was proven by my trip to Best Buy yesterday. DDR2 RAM, LCD Monitors, Audio Cables, Movies and music, all twice as much if not more than you could buy off the internet, were being swallowed by the hordes on a Saturday. Me, I was just trying to kill some time while my SO and here friends were buying bridal shower gifts.

I did get a chance to check out the sony DAV-IS system http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9722252-1.html

This is the one with the golf-ball sized speakers. Wow, what a joke. Basically, all the sound was coming from the subwoofer. Just buy a pair of traditional speakers, and hide them under your coffee table.

[jr1414]

So, was there ever a determination about those $7000 cables? A million dollars to tell the difference, I'm interested in hearing the reslults...

[eugovector]

The short version was that James Randi pulled some crap about Michael using his own cables, and then Michael threw crap right back and none of us get's the find out the results. I suggested we all just pool our money and buy some Pear Cables, but before that could happen, this did...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=941184

Long story short, in a semi-flawed test, a self-proclaimed audiophile with some crazy nice equipment couldn't tell the difference. My take...

If you are a normal person (total system cost less than $30K not counting the room) then you don't need fancy cables. If you have not treated you room, you sure as *heck* don't need fancy cables. And if you own fancy cables, you shouldn't even read anything I have to write...

The cables are not the weakest link in your system, and if they are, I'm jealous.

[jr1414]

Thanks. That was a grueling 11 pages to read to get to whichever side of the argument you want to be on. I think the bottom line is, as you said, the cables are not the weakest link in your system, and if they are, I'm jealous.

Oh, and for the record, I was never in the market for a $7,000 pair of speaker cables....