Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out? - Page 32

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

I'm looking for some land to do some shooting on. Shotgun ONLY, so we don't need miles of space around us. 12 gauge, birdshot through 00 buck. We'll be turning my failed subwoofer box into buckshot fodder, so we'll pick up whatever mess we make. I plan on making a picture documentary, but if anyone wants to watch you're welcome (I can't volunteer to let you shoot b/c it's not my gun, so you will have to ask the owner). I'm pretty sure he'd be amenable to letting the landowner partake out of gratitude, but still need to ask the gun owner to be sure.

Thanks!

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Also, I have made a request over at Outlaw Audio's Saloon forum regarding their RR2150 two-channel receiver. The link is at:

http://ubb.outlawaudio.com/cgi-local.../t/000098.html

I feel very strongly about this, and would appreciate it if any of you guys would go register and "chime in" in concurrence with my post, even if you are not interested in the product. I truly feel this will improve their product and it would help my cause if a few other people could pipe in and give their support for my post. I also mentioned one issue which Jonathan has raised about this product which may be easily correctable.

This is a very important time to do this, as they are changing manufacturing facilities for this one product and it's the best time for them to implement any changes before ramping up tooling and production again. I *really* want one of these receivers but can't buy one with what I consider a serious design flaw. Please help a brotha out and I'll be sure to return the favor in spades.

Thanks guys,


Mark

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Mark, I have family farm land in Rising Star, up 183, 27 miles norht of Brownwood, but that's a long trek for people around here, and especially you folks from Southeast of here. I hope you can find something convenient.

You may know that I am extremely pleased with my Outlaw pre/pro. I like their business model. If they were in the traditional paradigm, it would cost $3,000 and be one of the darlings of the snooty elites.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Gregg: sorry to be so slow in replying. For wire, I bought Belden 83802 (2 conductor, 12-guage stranded, shielded, teflon insulation). I think I bought it from Apex Jr.
VH Audio has some good-looking power cord wire, shielded and unshielded, cryo treated:
http://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html Also, check out their DIY power cord instructions.
15-amp male plug:
I bought Leviton 8215C Nylon Hospital Grade from Dealers Electric in Austin. In July '02 they were $5.15 each.
Wattgate basic plug from VH Audio, 5266i $12.99 each, 5266i CRYO $15.99 each (how many cryogenically-treated audio parts do you have that cost that little?).
http://www.vhaudio.com/connectors-ac.html
I also bought a couple of right-angle Bryant 52952 nylon plugs at either Home Depot or Lowe's.
Hubbell makes a good one also. You can find it on the 'net or at local electrical supplies.

15-amp female IEC connector:
Marinco 320IEC15, Parts Express # 110-400 $17.50. Probably several 'net sources for it.
Wattgate basic IEC, #320, $19.99 and #320 CRYO, $22.99 at VH Audio.

I have three partially-finished cords here, two with straight male plugs and one with a right-angle male plug. The opposite ends are not terminated - I don't have any IEC femal connectors on-hand. If you want to go in together and order some IEC's, I'll put one on one of these cords, and you can try it out.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Hey Hank

I'll chat with you about it on Fri.
Thanks
Greg

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Does anyone want a nice pair of dress shoes? My brother bought some size 11.5 Kenneth Cole's and wore them for a few weeks, but they were just a smidge too small. Shiny black leather, cap toe. They are in great shape, I have pics on the web if anyone is interested. If not they go to eBay.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Holy cow! I just got my Slappa 80 camel series hardbody CD case. These things are awesome! If anyone is in need of CD storage, I highly recommend them. They are having a 10% off sale right now and there is another discount if you are a member of the Home Theater Talk forum (gotta be a member there to find out the code). This is the nicest case I could have imagined for $25 delivered. Very impressed. The camel suede is cool looking, feels good and looks durable too (it's not a fabric, it's more like a textured plastic or something). Good stuff. Very swank.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Is anyone around central Austin during the work week? (Riverside area). I have a favor I need to ask. Thanks!

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Hey guys. Anybody broke down and picked up a HD-dvd or Blu-ray player yet? I'm leaning toward Hd-dvd since I will get a PS3 later. The Best Buy displays just don't float my boat but thats not surprising.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Nope, I'm waiting till they get the bugs, and the price of the players start to drop and/or there is a way to play them over my HTPC. So far, I'm unimpressed by the launch of either format. The image quality, however, is awesome.

Speaking of awesome, my IN76 just arrived! Now I have to get it hooked up to the HTPC and we'll see how much better HDTV looks over it vs ye ol Barco that could only resolve about 550 lines.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

I'd imagine it'd kick the crap out of the Barco on video material, especially HD. Now film on the other hand, I am not so sure about. That will be the real test.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

People are getting the Toshiba HD DVD for $363. See here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=693291

In other news, I'm leaving Austin. I got a job in Dallas and I'm getting ready to move next weekend. I'm thinking about possibly getting rid of my Oppo 971 and Da Lite 92" High Contrast Matte White Model B with Constant Screen Return 1.1 gain screen. Send me a PM if you're interested with an offer.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Well being patient is not my strong suit and I had a 12% off coupon, so I picked up a HD-A1 at Best Buy earlier. I will try to get it hooked up to the Jcv 61" first and possibly update the firmware tonight. Don't know how much playing with it I'll get in since I have the big Golf sale at the shop tomorrow night but when I get a chance I'll post a brief review.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Count me in on the HD players when they hit $200. Right now there just isn't enough software to make it worth the jump.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

You ACTUALLY pulled the trigger? I figured we'd be at 4K res before you'd get something to replace The Hulk.

Congrats!

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

You've gotten a ton of words from Nils on the pro-BluRay side, so I'd like to throw in a bit of balance on the HDDVD side. This article says it pretty well:
http://projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm

Starting with Betamax, Sony has continually tried to dominate consumer electronics with their own architecture and they're still at it. Texas Instruments tried, and other companies should have learned the lesson. Remember T.I.'s PC/games? T.I. wanted to sell machines and software and would not share the architecture - no open systems for them. Result: they shut down the business.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Betamax was technologically superior too

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

All I know is I am ready for more movies. I have only watched 2 so far but its got me to go in and load my all the available hd dvd they offer at Netflix.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Greg;
I have had my HD-A1 since day 1 in April with zero flaws. I picked it up online at Value Electronics with free shipping, 2 movies and no tax for $499.00 I just recently got and updated the firmware to 1.4. Don't know why I did since I have not had any problems in 3 months. I have watched about 10 hd-dvds with zero locks or stutters. I have watched about 20-30 regular dvds and noticed a significant improvement in the upconversion. I suggest you try hooking the audio through the analog inputs for better sound. Can't wait for next Tuesday to pick up Tomb Raider, Sahara and Sleepy Hollow.

Ian B

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Good to here Ian. Right now I'm just hooked through HDMI straight to my RPTV, but tonight I'm going to plug it into the big system in the theater and watch a little "Blazing Saddles"

Just got back from Las Vegas and I stopped by the Sony Store in Ceasers. They had a Sony Blu-Ray player running in their theater on what I think was a 60" lcd monitor. It was playing a concert clip that looked alright but nothing jumping out at me. They had 1 of the Qudila(sp) projectors hanging in there but didn't have the screen down or running. Also what kinda caught me off guard was that the had no SACD's. They had lots of new cd's of their artist (some even dual disc). When I asked one of their sales reps if they had any SACDs I got a blank stare. I like SACD but it sure seems like it is well on its way out. Even the new Best Buy out here doesn't carry any SACD or dvd-audio.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Sony has pulled all support for SACD, Greg. Well actually they pretty much pulled support since day one, with how poorly of a job they did in introducing it to the market. SACD will probably survive though as the small labels and audiophiles love the format, so it will exist but you will have to go through online audiophile retailers to access the catalogues.

DVD-Audio on the other hand is basically dead in the water, no one likes it, and no one wants it.

Back to Sony and related to Hank's post above, I think Blu-ray is screwed as well, almost before it ever gets off the ground. You know when we went down to Bjorn's for the HD-DVD presentation, I was extremely impressed. Last week I finally went out to a Best Buy and Fry's to see what displays they had set-up for both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Neither store had an HD-DVD player set-up. Fry's didn't have single HDDVD in the store, and Best Buy had like 7 titles. Not good, but still have hopes for HDDVD based on what I saw at Bjorn's. Blu-ray on the other hand had a poorly set-up Samsung 40" screen playing a collection of clips at Best Buy. It was in brightly lit part of the store, so I couldn't really judge the quality, but it wasn't that good looking as is. Of course an average consumer probably would have never known that there was anything special what so ever about this particular display as there wasn't much distinguishing it from others in the store. Then my greatest dissappointment was at Fry's where they once again didn't have any Blu-ray titles for sale, oh and Best Buy only had like 5 titles in Blu-ray. But the biggest shock was when I asked a sales associate if they had any Blu-ray or HDDVD demo set-ups available. His response was along the lines of "Yeah we have a Blu-ray player, but we aren't advertising it and we plan to not bring any more in." I stated amazement and asked why? He replied because it sucks! So he takes me over to the rear projection DLP Samsung set with the Blu-ray player attached and pops in the House of Flying Daggers Blu-ray disc. OMG, here was a pretty nice TV, with a device connectted that is suppossed to be 1080i or 1080p or something. All around this set they had an HDTV feed that was providing one of those two resolutions for the other TVs. And in Fry's you know they have the lights off in the TV area, so can't blame ambient light. The picture produced on this set-up was one of the worst pictures I had seen in quite some time. I think the quality of the picture probably rivaled a first generation non progressive DVD player. The HDTV feed next to it reminded me exactly of what we saw at Bjorn's from HDDVD. But this Blu-ray picture just stunk. I imagine you could of grabbed a $30 chinese DVD player from the floor and beat the picture of this thing. Horrible! So mix this less than stellar picture quality with a lack of support, a competing "visually superior" product, and the fact that they are reporting an 80% failure rate on Blu-ray drive production and I think you are looking at soemthing that may collapse on itsself within a short amount of time or the other option might be that perhaps Sony just goes bankrupt. That's my prediction, Sony filing Bankruptcy due to the Blu-Ray disaster!

Anyone else see a brighter future for the format?

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Hey everyone, I'm looking for a pair of B&W DM602's (possibly 603's). I listened to the DM602's at the one local dealer and loved them, but $600 is more than I'm willing to spend on speakers for casual record playing.

Anyways, I've seen some good deals on EBay but prefer to deal locally, if you or anyone you know is thinking about upgrading or just getting rid of some 602's, let me know.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

John, your best bets for used 602's locally would be audiogon or to call around to the high end stores and see if anyone took in a pair on trade.

Scott, I'm really surprised at the Fry's experience. I haven't seen Blu-Ray in a store yet, but speaking from a purely technical viewpoint, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference between the two formats if they were setup side by side showing the same movie with the same mastering. I think something was awry in the Fry's setup or the player was a lemon.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Jonathan, read my linked article, which talks about the codec used in blu-ray, which may be temporary. Also there's the rumor that there's a firmware error in the first BR players and that an upgrade is on the way. I don't know about the credibility of the rumor, but obviously something is wrong.

BTW, I sent you an e-mail via this forum at noon today regarding Chinese tube amps.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

I've tried Audiogon with no luck so far. I didn't realize av stores really did trade-ins but that sounds like a good idea. Have any ideas where I might look around? I've heard A&B TV around on forums, what are some other places that do trade-ins or that are just good av stores in general if I end up buying something new, besides B&W?

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Audio Systems on Keonig is a good place to look.

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

Hank,

If you see this message, could you elaborate please? Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention lately, but what is this all about?

Re: Hey Austin Texas Buddies? Can anyone help me out?

don't forget the ... chirpping crickets...

It is slow...