Where Are All the Women, or: Don't Girls Buy Blu-rays? Seriously! (1 Viewer)

[FoxyMulder]

Personally, I am tempted to ask the reverse.

Be right back, just going to put my dress on and apply some makeup, after all it is Friday evening here.

Having trouble finding my heels, very useful as a weapon should i find myself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

 

[bruceames]

The only prominent female poster I've seen on the various HT boards has been Towergrove (whom I consider a friend). I do think that more women are interested in HT than what is represented on forums (percentage-wise) , it's just that most of them are not comfortable hanging out in a virtually all-male forum. They are content to lurk to get the info they want, or ask their questions as an anonymous newbie and then resume their lurking. I wouldn't feel comfortable on an all-female board (but I guess that would depend, lol).

 

[CraigF]

Hmmm, the most frequent female poster I've ever encountered on any audio-related or A/V board, and one of the few I was specifically thinking of above, is named Elizabeth. And yet this is the first time I've ever encountered Elizabeth S here. Same person I wonder, or coincidence?

I don't recall the Elizabeth I'm more familiar with ever mentioning A/V gear before, or at least she never gave it much shrift, she's more of an audio person. There are plenty of females in professional positions in the audio world who post a bit in the audio forums. So it's not like they're not around. Bit of a detour from the BD-buying thing...

 

[Josh Steinberg]

My girlfriend has a film school background, so she's always been very into movies. When we first met a few years ago, she had what I considered to be a pretty good Samsung LCD (plasma wasn't her first choice for reasons similar to why plasma hasn't been my preference), and she had a PS3 for Blu-rays that she had bought because it was the best Blu-ray player on the market, and then took up gaming afterwards.

I'd hate for my observations to be taken as actually understanding the difference between men and women, and I hope I don't accidentally wander into sexist territory, and apologize if I do. I feel like the big difference between my girlfriend and I in this tech stuff isn't ability (she's just as capable of plugging an HDMI cable from a device into a receiver as I am), it's content, and it's the "good enough" threshold. I think at the end of the day, both of us care more about content than technical presentation, but the level of what she'll accept as "good enough" is more forgiving than mine is. She buys her new movies on Blu-ray and has since getting that PS3, but doesn't feel compelled to re-purchase DVDs she already has on Blu-ray most of the time. I feel like there's stuff she would have eventually upgraded for the right price (especially if there were good bonus features), but it turns out that I had Blu-ray copies of just about anything she would have wanted to upgrade, so it hasn't really come up.

I think she would have been content to stick with my 50" plasma as our primary viewing screen (or even her 40" LCD, which just became the bedroom TV), but was also excited about the idea of me getting a projector. When we were looking at apartments, one of our considerations was finding a place that could accommodate having a projector in the living room. We've only had it for about a month, and I'm not a gamer at all, but she was very quick to start checking out games on the projector. She also had no problem figuring out and remembering all of the different inputs in the receiver. But she also wasn't terribly interested in being around when I was running Audyssey or setting up the projector. (Though to be fair, that may be because she knows I can get a little grumpy doing that stuff and probably is just avoiding being around a cranky version of me. And it really is a one person job doing that stuff for the most part.)

At the end of the day, I feel like a pretty lucky guy to have met someone who's totally okay with me setting up a 100+ foot screen in the living room and who shares my enjoyment of watching good movies at home. We both laugh a little at how ridiculous the whole thing is, since we can both remember enjoying movies on VHS on 19" or smaller CRTs as kids and college students, but it's great.

And to what Elizabeth S was saying above, we both love the passthrough feature on our receiver - not everything calls out for surround sound, and we're perfectly happy to watch Craig Ferguson on the TV speakers. For our AVR you can't switch which input goes in when it's off, so you just have to quickly turn it on with the remote, select a different input, and then flip it right back off. It's one extra step we'd both be happy to not have to deal with, but it's not that big of a deal.

 

[Mike Frezon]

There are more women amongst the HTF membership than just Elizabeth S and TowerGrove...although they are certainly two of our most prominent recently. There is also Krysten (who I believe has a joint membership that she shares with her husband.

And there have been many others over the years.

You know the saying: "Vive la difference!"

it's funny how this image might serve to spotlight so many areas of difference between men and women. But, in terms of HT, it might be considered rather upside-down by some:

 

[Sam Posten]

Very cool conversation and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all of our female posters, you guys rock! The thing that leaps to my head is this: we don't make it easy, and you only have to follow things like the "yes all women" conversation to know just how different the experiences between the sexes are around the net. I consider myself a pretty decent guy and even I made a huge gaffe by publicly questioning whether one of our posters was really female IRL. DERP! Continued apologies on that!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

2. Remember the wise words of Robert A. Heinlein: “Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

I started living with cats 20 years ago, but it hasn't helped me understand women.

I have a lesbian friend whom I met in law school. She said the cats may help, but that she can't understand women most of the time either.

 

[Elizabeth S]

HDMI passthrough is fantastic, not needing to actually switch the receiver on to view the image is a very useful feature.

I think the Yamaha Aventage line is very classy, may be worth trying to get it off Amazon, generous return times and they may have a good sale in the Black Friday deals in November, i'd even suggest going for a 1030 since it's the sound quality that counts.

Yes, Amazon might be good, too -- just a tad inconvenient if it comes by UPS for me.

I'm still researching and will look at the differences between the 1030 and 1040. I've actually been mulling over a receiver for a while -- I was too slow to act when the 1020s were on clearance.

BTW, I like 映画ファン. I could only read the katakana part but looked up the other.

 

[FoxyMulder]

I'm still researching and will look at the differences between the 1030 and 1040. I've actually been mulling over a receiver for a while -- I was too slow to act when the 1020s were on clearance.

The specs for both.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/aventage/rx-a1030_black_u/

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/aventage/rx-a1040_black_u/

Looks like similar features on them. I believe 映画ファン translates as movie fan unless Google translate has let me down.*


*I have a feeling it let me down.

 

[Elizabeth S]

This is actually the only forum I post with my real name (as requested). On other A/V or blu-ray boards, my gender is not identifiable by username. For the most part, I don't see a reason to indicate I'm not a guy. We're just talking blu-rays or something.

 

[FoxyMulder]

This is actually the only forum I post with my real name (as requested). On other A/V or blu-ray boards, my gender is not identifiable by username. For the most part, I don't see a reason to indicate I'm not a guy. We're just talking blu-rays or something.

I have always in the past had people thinking i am a woman because i used the name FoxyMulder instead of Fox Mulder so i'm used to being a woman, it used to take forever getting my hair just right but that's less of a problem since i started losing it.

You can check the Yamaha Aventage 1030 does 4K at 50/60p, i know the 1040 does it, it's moot if you aren't interested in 4K.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Having trouble finding my heels, very useful as a weapon should i find myself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

You can do a "Single White Female" on them!

I don't think 4K is important to me.

 

[FoxyMulder]

You can do a "Single White Female" on them!

I don't think 4K is important to me.

Nah, if a zombie apocalypse ever happened i'm following the cat to safety, from what i gather after watching television shows like The Walking Dead, cats have all scarpered somewhere safe and are probably living in perfect harmony with the dogs.

No problem then as the 1030 model does 4K passthrough too, pretty identical feature set and should be cheaper.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I can't believe there is actually HT stuff being discussed in this thread!

 

[ROclockCK]

I can't believe Malcolm still wears heels.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I think I heard that Kelly Ripa kills a shark with a stilletto during Sharknado 2.

But don't hold me to that.

 

[Persianimmortal]

Guys, I hate to quote rules and regulations in an otherwise amusing thread, but Rule #30 of the Internet clearly states: There are no girls on the Internet. It took some pretty serious lobbying for this rule to be waived for sites like Facebook and Instagram, but unfortunately if Elizabeth (and anyone else, that includes you Malcolm) is actually female, and is posting on this forum, then you are doing so in flagrant violation of the Rules of the Internet.

 

[FoxyMulder]

Guys, I hate to quote rules and regulations in an otherwise amusing thread, but Rule #30 of the Internet clearly states: There are no girls on the Internet.

That explains why many of them are incognito.

 

[DaveF]

In grad school of physical sciences, it was about 20% women. It seemed to skew higher for hip-boots-and-wader sciences like molecular biology. But overall, science and engineering was decidedly male oriented. Professionally, I've seen similar ratios. And personally, it seems guys are more interested in fiddling with hardware bits than women. It seems no surprise that a site like HTF is male oriented, especially the hardware and media sections, with their focus on feeds and speeds.


But I wonder if a site, such as Good Reads, which is dedicated to the content -- unless book people get all hot and bothered by the printing technology, glue choice for binding, and fight over whether it's properly read in print or e-ink -- is evenly split between men and women.

This thread makes me wonder if it's surprising that the Movies and TV sections are male-dominated? Those aren't gadget sections for gear heads. They're about the content, stories, characters, plot arcs. Stuff that I don't think of as male-oriented.

 

[schan1269]

Maybe I know women more into tech than most.I follow Emily Morse(when she has to, she can deal with hardware...and no...I don't mean that as a joke) and she has had to run her own production before live on air.Gloria Brame does her own site hosting.Both women(and others like them) have mentioned various movies before and the need for a great visual and audio presentation.