Welcome to my living room! Crappy pics inside :( (1 Viewer)

[jrussell]

Last August my wife and I found out we were expecting. Well what better time to start looking for a house and get out of our apartment, especially with the way the market has been. So we began searching and must have looked at over 50 houses before finding one that wasn't in the best shape but just felt right!


We knew we were getting a fixer upper before even stepping foot inside. The home was built in 1948 and we purchased it from the original owner who didn't really take care of anything in the home. Hardwood floors were in really bad shape, doors and windows had been painted shut, the sub floor in one of the bathrooms needed replacing.... the list goes on. For the price, we couldn't pass it up.


When we moved in the first order of business was to get my daughters room ready for her when she gets here. I wont bore you with those pictures today. Well since doing that we also redone the kitchen and the dinning room. They both needed alot of updating. The living room got put on the back burner for now. Well the weekend my daughter was born I decided that needed to change. I wanted to be able to take some time away from the house and relax with my two girls. Well that gave me a great reason to redo the whole thing.


The first time we walked into the house I noticed 2 things. One the nasty hardwood floors and second was a door in the best spot for a TV! Well thankfully there were 2 doors to use to enter the bedroom behind this wall ) Wife is saying no to the blinds lol.


My goal when putting this together was to have something that is simple to watch tv with but will still get down when watching movies. I must say it does both very well. Even better now that I went into the Yamaha HTR-5960 and set the speakers up correctly. Plenty of mids out of these little Nanosat speakers, more than when I heard em on display and the highs can be shrieking high The sub gets down low and nasty loud when its called upon.


Over all I'm very happy with how it has turned out. After all, its a living room we use everyday, not a HT. Sounds great, user friendly, and looks good in the room. Just cant wait to get that 60" here hahaha


~Jason

 

[winniw]

Thanks for the narrative Jason. I have been following your project with interest and wondered how it was going. Hmmm, no 60" yet, huh?

That's pretty cool that you bought the house from the original owner. It's looking good. I'm waiting for more good news. : )


Nick

 

[jrussell]

I only have one bit of good news to add. The new display is being delivered tomorrow. Since I'm home sick from work today, I might just stay home tomorrow also and enjoy the new tv haha

 

[Adam Gregorich]

I agree with Nick it looks good. Our first house was a project house too. At the time it was a PITA, but I look back fondly on everything we did to it. Thankfully it was mostly just cosmetic and no sub floor work. Can't wait to hear about the 60"!

 

[jrussell]

Got it mounted and connected tonight and must say I am impressed. Colors look good and picture is nice a crisp. Havent touched any of the settings. From what I have seen on AV forums, you really should wait till there are between 100-200 hours on a plasma.


Looks smaller in this picture than it does in person haha. The wife said "Holy hell thats big." haha. She does like it though [/url]

 

[Jim Mcc]

You should not wait until you have 100-200 hours on it because the out of the box settings are usually set too high(contrast and brightness). You should calibrate it right away, and then check it again after 100-200 hours. Do you have a calibration disc?

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Looks smaller in this picture than it does in person haha. The wife said "Holy hell thats big." haha. She does like it though . The 32" we had in the bedroom has been flaking out and I just picked up a 42" Panasonic plasma to replace it with. I'm bracing for those comments as well.

 

[jrussell]

I sure dont Jim and to be honest, I dont think I would know how to do it anyway. Ive never calibrated anything lol.


Factory settings are as follows. Dont know how much help this is to anyone.


Brightness - 50

Cantrast - 70

Sharpness - 0

Color - 0

Tint - 0

Color Temp - W30


Dynamic Contrast - Off

Dynamic Color - Off

Noise Reduction - Off

Gamma - High

Black Level - Low

Color Gamut - Standard

Edge Enhancer - Off

Originally Posted by Jim Mcc

You should not wait until you have 100-200 hours on it because the out of the box settings are usually set too high(contrast and brightness). You should calibrate it right away, and then check it again after 100-200 hours. Do you have a calibration disc?

 

[winniw]

Jason, if you decide to get a calibration disc, I would recommend Disney's WOW. It walks you through the entire process and is a fantastic product overall. I know that many people revere the Spears & Munsil disc, as it does go deeper but I think that one is for hard-core hobbiests. Probably ninety to ninety-five percent of the people will be perfectly happy with WOW and it has an audio testing section that is really nice and NOT included on the S&M disc.


The factory settings look good but I would encourage you to try calibration to eek out the last bit of performance of your TV. You have put a lot of hard work and money into this system and I think that it is worth another $27 to get the absolute most out of it.


http://www.amazon.com/Disney-WOW-World-Wonder-Blu-ray/dp/B0045ASBLG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301459537&sr=8-1


It looks fantastic now. Congratulaions! Enjoy!


Nick

 

[Jim Mcc]

I agree, get the WOW disc. It's very easy to calibrate the TV. You'll also need it to set the speaker volume levels, unless your receiver has the Auto speaker setup like Audysey.

 

[jrussell]

Guess I will give it a go then and order the disk. As far as setting the speaker volume, is that something I can do with that disk also? Is it like the THX disk where is has audio and video calibration? And what exactally will setting the speaker level do? I don't really have a sweet spot where I turn the volume up to because with cox cable volume changes from channel th channel and my receiver is not able to control that. I end up listening to one channel at 30 (volume up) and another at 50 (turned down).

 

[winniw]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. The WOW set has two discs. You know the scenes that you see when you go TV shopping, that feature fields of flowers and close-ups of flowers, water falls, a fireplace and landscapes? Well, the second disc of the set, titled "Visions" has eleven different scenes that can be looped or played individually. It's a nice way to show off your TV to a visitor who doesn't have time to watch a movie... or just to impress yourself ; )


Jason, which receiver do you have? Doesn't it have room correction?


Nick

 

[jrussell]

I have a yamaha htr-5960. Works great but doesn't have hdmi and I think it was made before room correction was even available lol. I plan on getting a denon 1911 at some point and a blu ray player instead of using the ps3. The ps3 is a friends who is over seas for a few years and honestly, I dont play video games so there really is no reason for me to have it hooked up. I'm not going to buy the module for it for my harmony remote since it's not mine anyway.

 

[jrussell]

Well everything was going good for about 10 hours. If that long. In the middle of watching a movie, the picture went out. Can't even get the tv to display the on screen menus. With the tv on it still looks like it's off. Repair guy will be here Friday. Untill then, I have a $1500 paper weight.

 

[Jim Mcc]

That sucks. As far as the speaker question, in a multi speaker setup, you need to set each speaker to the same decibel level, and the cal. discs allows you to do this(Spears and Munsil disc does not). BUT, you will need a decibel level meter to do this. If you don't know someome with one, Radio Shack sells them. I have the digital version. I don't know if they still sell the analog one.

 

[jrussell]

Thanks Jim. I dont think I can adjust that on my receiver. Im gonna look online for the owners manual, cause I have no clue where my hard copy is, and check.


Good news is the TV people called and asked if they could come out tomorrow at 10am instead. Told the lady on the phone "Hell yea you can!" Think she could tell I was a little dissapointed having the TV and not being able to watch it but she knew I wasnt mad at her. ot her fault lol.


When it went out I called LG and the guy on the other end asked me to push the menu button. I did once again ( I had been trying everything I could think of before calling) and told him the TV still looked like it was off and nothing was displaying. He told me to turn the TV on before pressing the menu button. Really bro, you think I would know that. I told him the TV was on and he asked what I saw. Once again I said "nothing. It looks like the TV is still off BUT ITS ON!."


His next words to me put me at a loss for words. "Well it sounds like the TV needs to be serviced. Would you like to have the TV serviced."


"Um.... Yea. Id like to be able to use the damn thing. I could find a much better looking paper weight for $1500."

 

[jrussell]

Looks like this reciever is able to be calibrated. I just found a YPAO mic on Ebay and bought it. I had bought this receiver as a open box buy from BB a few years back and didnt get the mic.


Now that I bought the mic and the WOW discs will I need a SPL meter still?

 

[winniw]

Oh Jason, man, am I sorry to hear about the TV.

Yeah, I was thinking that you bought the 1911 already. You will not need an SPL meter, the YPAO is automatic.... that's the beauty of it.

 

[jrussell]

It's all gravy baby. Shit happens lol. Either it gets fixed or replaced. Just sucks putting it up there and having issues so soon after. By next weekend I should have the mic and the wow disc so I hope I have a working tv before that. Ya know, I've been rethinking buying the 1911 right now. I don't really need hdmi since components will carry a 1080 signal. With the receiver I have I would just need to get a few rgb cables and I'd be set. Don't think I would notice a picture quality advantage by going to hdmi's anyway.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Originally Posted by jrussell