Reason #4,298,583 why Mrs Hose rocks

Because she conspired with some of my other family members to get me this for my birthday. Took a bit to install, but got it done and it’s fantastic to listen to radio without having to listen to commercials! This is what annoyed me the most about free radio–I can’t count the number of times I would flip between the two or three radio stations I listen to and all of them would be on commercial. Sure, sometimes I would flip to a CD, but I would get bored with that since I would know what was coming up. Even on shuffle I knew what the potential next song could be. And since my stereo doesn’t have a tape player I didn’t have a decent way to listen to my iPod in the car (I’ve tried the FM transmitters and they don’t work well enough).

Luckily, the Sirius receivers have a really kick butt FM transmitter–music sounds like it’s coming from the CD player or over the free airwaves. Truly awesome gift and one that makes my hour or so daily commute (that’s combined, not one way) so much easier to handle.

Darn you, Gillette!

The only thing worse than a company who consistently comes out with newer, more expensive products is a company who consistently comes out with newer, more expensive products that actually work better than the previous versions. Darn you, Gillette!

Heck, I remember the days when I shave with one blade at a time. Then the revolution to 2, then to 3, then they skipped 4 altogether thanks to Schick, and now 5?! I happened to pick one up recently, just to see if it was worth the hassle of switching. It is.

But I still haven’t tried any of the powered versions. Just makes me too nervous to have multiple blades vibrating against my face. This will probably not scare the future generations who will shave with giant rotating drums covered with 100+ blades, but for now I’m good.

That is until we have the 6-blade razor.

TiVo back in black!

Good news for a Friday! TiVo won $73 million in a patent infringement suit against EchoStar. It’s all over the Web, but I read about it first on Engadget, so they get the link.

This is good news, since this might end up being a larger revenue stream than subscription services soon. There are a lot of DVRs out there that could be infringing…

Greatest Invention Ever

The person who invented the baby wipes warmer should win a Nobel Prize or something. Pure genius.

Remember when I thought something like TiVo was the greatest invention ever. And that was only last month!

Home Theater…done?

Not that a true home theater is ever really done, since it’s just waiting for the next upgrade or tweak, but at risk of bringing down the Gods of Technological Glitches, several dozen Gremlins, and even Murphy himself, my home theater is done.

Is it perfect? Hells no. (Squirrel, please!) Biggest issue is the projector alignment, which due to me being a complete novice, is a little bit off from the screen. Satan, thy name is RPA mount, a supposed universal bracket that can install the projector to the ceiling and let you adjust it an infinite number of ways to get the perfect alignment. Maybe I haven’t figured it all out, or maybe I did it wrong, but I just can’t get the image to be perfectly square on the screen. Oh, it fits, and fits pretty well. But the problem is that while the top edge of the picture matches the screen exactly, the bottom does not. And not uniformly–the bottom right corner of the image hits the bottom right corner of the screen. But the bottom left corner of the image drops about 2 inches below the bottom left corner of the screen. The result is that if you have an image with horizontal lines on it, on the top they’re perfectly flat, but by the bottom they have a slight slant.

It’s slightly noticeable if you don’t know to look for it. It’s definitely noticeable if you do know to look for it. But the problem here is that to get a professional to come out and remount the projector or fix the whole thing is estimated to take 3-4 hours at $100/hour. I like my home theater a lot, and I figure it’s about 80% as good as it could be with professional work–so now the question is whether I want to spend $300-$400 to get it to 100%. I’ll have to see if it’s worth it as I start watching movies. If it really annoys me, maybe it will be worth it. It’d be a shame to come this far only to have it not be 100% or as close as possible. But for now, I’m happy with a bright image, good sound, and a whopping 92 inches of goodness staring me in the face.

Besides, those extra hundreds could be put towards the next step: a better receiver. One that can handle 7.1 audio and not just 5.1. And multiple component inputs. Turns out my receiver doesn’t even handle one, but I bought an inexpensive switcher at Radio Shack that will hopefully do the trick. I haven’t even hooked it up yet, nor the HD cable box I got last Friday. Too hectic. Never thought I’d see the day where I fail to connect my HDTV source for going on 4 days, but such is life.

Oh, and the problem of what movie to break in the theater with has been solved thanks to an excellent Chanukah gift by Mrs. Hose: Batman Begins. A movie I initially gave only an A, but which grew on me more and more after I saw it and ended up being on my Top 10 list of 2005 movies (select Hose’s list to see it). Schweet!

Step by step…

Home theater update. The walls are painted. The screen was put up before my artificial Thanksgiving deadline. Put it together and installed the beast without assistance, which is an accomplishment for a seriously unhandy person like myself.

Then the problems began. First, I uncovered the conduit I’d ordered when we had the house built several years ago. The room has 5 conduit. All 5 terminate in the media closet. One has its other end in the floor, near the screen (for video game systems), two end in the wall at the screen (for when I had the big screen TV, and I thought of running another for maybe motorized curtains in the future), the last two terminate in the ceiling for the projector. I figured both would be used for video cabling–component and S-video, then figured I wouldn’t use S-video so I could use one for power. Yes, it would have been smarter to just install an outlet in the ceiling, but you try building a house 2000 miles away.

Anyway, I uncover the two plates for the ceiling conduit. One has twine, the other does not. So pulling cable through one is going to be a serious problem. Fine, whatever. I then go to the closet. For some reason, I’d never checked where the twine for the ceiling conduit terminated–turns out it’s a teeny, tiny hole that not even a phone wire would go through. Sigh. I get out my drywall saw (wait a minute–how the heck do I have a drywall saw?) and cut a 3 inch square hole around where the two twine stick out. That one sentence makes it sound simple and easy and fast. It was none of those three things. When the last piece of drywall makes its way to the floor and I let loose my latest string of expletives (which I believe involved a goat having illegal relations with several Home Depot employees) it did not take long to discover that I now had a 3 inch square that twine disappeared into–but no conduit ends. One seems to run to the right, one to the left, and there’s no telling where they actually exist.

Not wanting to cut more than I needed, I tied the two pieces of twine to the cords I wanted to run, figuring I could run at least the one that’s pulled through. I climb the ladder and pull–nothing. Pull harder, nothing. Pull really hard, the gray pipe that comprises the conduit starts to come through the box in the ceiling. Thinking this was a bad thing, I stop.

Now, I’d had serious issues with the two conduit that terminated in the screen wall about two years ago. Turns out the electrician had forgotten to pull the twine for one of them through the wall before drywalling was complete, so there was no telling where it was. And the second one wouldn’t budge at all. They had to come out and cut out most of the bottom part of the wall to find the hidden conduit. And they also discovered the one that was pulled through also had the twine itself wrapped around the pipe and tied into a knot, making it impossible to actually pull any cable through with the twine. Given these serious problems, I should have been doubtful when I asked them to check the ceiling conduit and they said both worked just fine. But I let it go, and then 2 years later I’m stuck with this.

To top it all off, when I call the electrician about these current problems, they first agree to come out. Then the morning of their appointment they call and say they’ll only come if we pay them. I’m not paying them one cent–I’ll pay someone else and sue them if I need to, so I refuse. We have a number of colorful telephone conversations which are too frustrating to recount, but at the end of the series they came out with a new tactic–deny they ever installed the conduit in the first place. So while I gather proof from the home builder to sue their butts, I have an electrician come out to take a look at the conduit.

The one that had the twine pulled through also had a large plug of plaster inside the conduit. That’s why it wouldn’t budge–but he removed it and it worked. Sweet! Then he used some contraption to hook the twine from the other conduit and got that one to pull cords through as well. Closer!

So now the only thing left to do is mount the projector to the ceiling. Simple, right? I mean, I bought a mount with the projector, so it should be at least as easy as the screen. Um, no. Reading the manual for the mount is an exercise in frustration. See, the main function of the mount, in my mind, is to attach the projector to the ceiling. This is the pivotal function. So it makes sense that the manual lists three different ways you can attach the mount to the ceiling. Problem is, they don’t tell you how to decide between the three. While this is probably a simple decision for someone who isn’t, say, surprised by the fact that he even owns a drywall saw, this is not a simple decision for me. Having my projector come crashing down during installation is not an experience I care to have.

Once I figure out this manual thing, then it’s the actual installation. Hopefully the next update will describe my successful efforts, as opposed to my mental breakdown over the scattered pieces of my projector.

Keep your fingers crossed. And if you happen to come to my theater, bring a helmet for now.

TiVo makes me happy!

I should have had faith. Not a week has gone by that I said why TiVo made me sad, now they’ve done something right. They just announced today that the new version of TiVoToGo will support PSP and iPod. Finally! There’s a serious reason to get an iPod–I use my shuffle at the gym every day while I watch the TVs posted on the wall that are usually showing crap. It might take some getting used to looking down at the iPod on the treadmill tray, and hopefully the screen would be big/bright enough to make watching worthwhile, but I’d love to be able to catch up on shows from my TiVo, or watch some movies every once in a while.

Now that’s a reason to sell the old iPod and get a new one. Sweet!

Inch by inch

The journey continues, with an actual end in sight? Painters called last night to move to tomorrow–they were supposed to be there today but had a funeral. Which I suppose works out since I still need to remove some items from shelves, but it’d be nicer if they were done given the hassle they’ll cause since the Airport will have to be unplugged (it’s located in the theater, and I can’t use it in the media closet because of all the interference in there).

But I did pick out a color last week. Sherwin Williams’ Indigo. Nice deep blue. Getting excited about seeing it. Course, then I’ll need to install the mount and the screen. Wanted to install that hardware before the painters came, that way they could paint over any mistakes I made. But wasn’t in the cards for yesterday as I ran 2 errands, installed a shelf in the bathroom, moved bulky things out of a closet, cleaned out my car, moved a filing cabinet upstairs, sorted a pile of miscellaneous junk, and put up a few things on Craigs List. One of which is the TV I have in the theater right now (well, had, as I move it out yesterday). 53 inch rear projection Sony. I searched on ebay, found a similar one (slightly lower model) for $300, so listed at $400. As of this morning I think I have 10 people interested in it–not sure if I give it to the first person or tell them I have lots of interest so they should make an offer…but I don’t really like that last one. Guess I have to reward the first person to email, if they want. I try not to get attached to things, but I’ll be a little sad to see the TV go. It’s getting replaced by something better, but that was a great TV.

Also unpacked the frame for the screen. Left the actual screen rolled up and wrapped–hopefully it’s in perfect shape like the frame pieces. Should be cool to see when it’s done–just laying out the bottom piece and realizing that’s how large the screen is going to be across…it’s impressive.

TiVo makes me sad

Don’t get me wrong, I love TiVo. I think there’s little doubt that TiVo has revolutionized watching television. But it makes me sad because I just don’t think they’ll be around a year from now.

I think existing TiVos will work, the service will keep going, the units will happily chug along. But unless something huge happens, I don’t see them being independent a year from now. Maybe someone will buy them. Maybe they’ll be in bankruptcy and someone will swoop in and gobble them up. But things aren’t good.

Maybe it’s because TiVo was just the first to do DVR the right way, but the technology itself is easy enought to implement, even in a bad way. Replay TV came out about the same time. They even had better searching at the start, but TiVo quickly adopted the search ability and their easy to use interface and deals with other content providers helped it take the lead. But perhaps they got a bit full of themselves, refusing to make large deals (outside of DirecTV, which was big) and forcing other companies to realize they could get 90% of TiVo’s functionality for 10% of the price. Now we see a host of other DVRs out there which may not be as nice as TiVo in terms of interface or features, but they record and playback shows and are a lot less expensive.

I thought TiVo was headed on the right track when they announced a deal with Netflix. But now that’s dead, since none of the studios would let it happen. So maybe that’s why TiVo is delivering a free movie to TiVo subscribers who sign up. Sure, it’s a not a great movie (Red Trousers–behind the scenes of asian martial arts actors or something like that). But maybe this pilot will provide TiVo with some much needed data–like how many users are interested and that their content protection system works (because you just know the movie will erase itself after a few days). Then TiVo can go to movie studios or other content providers and say, “See? This works!”

I hope that happens. Barring that or TiVo coming out with a super-fantastic standalone HD-DVR that blows everyone else out of the water, I am not optimistic.

Ever closer

An update on the home theater. The Carada Screen came in on Wednesday. Wow, they’re incredibly fast. The projector is here. The room is going to be painted either next Friday or the Monday after. In the meantime, I need to at least unpack and inspect the screen. Probably make sure the projector works as well. Just haven’t had a lot of free time–probably won’t be able to do it until Sunday. But Sunday should be a lot of fun.

Now the big decision has to be made. What movie do I first show when the theater is complete?