Stargazer's Garage

I just bought Kill Bill Vol. 1 on Blu-ray and now this is my current favorite song from one of the coolest movie walk-throughs ever: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyasu Hotei.

I've seen the High-Definition displays in the stores and to be honest, I thought the HD television channels looked great, but not awesome--at least not awesome like the examples shown in high-definition DVD format. I was always worried that maybe spending extra money on an HD PVR to watch just a few shows in HD wouldn't be worth it. We already have a PVR that's been great for us. I didn't think we needed a duplicate. That changed. I am now converted. I am a true believer.... I bought a Motorola 3416 HD PVR (160 gig) on the weekend and installed it on our 37" LG LCD TV. Connected through HDMI, the picture is really, really good on the standard definition channels. That was the biggest surprise. Reading on the forums, a lot of people complained about how bad SD shows were. I found the opposite. The regular channels are actually improved and sharper looking with the new Motorola. And the high-definition channels? Just amazing. It looks so real that it seems "unre...

We had a problem with our brand new 52" Sony KDL-52W3000 LCD TV yesterday and it was a doozy: the picture just died. There was no video displayed from any of the inputs: TV (cable), Video1 (STB), or Component (DVD). Sound came in no problem and the menu showed up fine, but the screen was all black. I did a factory reset and the initial setup, but the problem was catastrophic.... Actually the only way that I could get a live picture was to turn on "Picture & Picture" and watch it on one side of the screen. In the picture above, the live image is the large one behind the frozen, garbled image. When the P&P size was increased or decreased past the mid-size point, it would freeze and show the corrupted image. The only way to get rid of it was to turn the TV off and on again. At least, the P&P screen was still bigger than our old CRT TV. It not all bad news, though. I went into Best Buy last night to arrange an exchange and had it scheduled for this Thursday. Aft...

A couple of weeks ago we retired our old cathode ray tube television, a 27" Sony KV-2781R that was built over 21 years ago in May 1986. It was still running strong (much better than our old Panasonic ) but because this year was my big "four-oh", my wife decided to mark the occasion with a new flat-panel TV .... I went through a very thorough decision process choosing a new TV. I already have a 37" LCD in the bedroom and was looking for a 50"+ for our living room. I was sure that I wanted a plasma, until I did more thinking about what my actual needs were. Reasons why I wanted Plasma first: - deep black levels - vibrant colours - wide viewing angle - cheaper than flat panel LCD Reasons why I changed my mind about Plasma: - 50" was too small, 58" was too big--nothing in between - potential reflections on screen (lots of lights in our great room/kitchen) - going to connect Wii: possible burn-in risk (minimal, but don't want risk) - not as bright as L...

Yes, it's true. Old has been dumped for new!

I can see clearly now! I finally got our new LG 37LC2D-UE LCD television into it's permanent spot in our bedroom and connected all the wires I could to get the best picture possible.... At first I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have enough of the correct inputs because I don't have a full blown home theater receiver. Our reciever only has audio inputs. The TV itself has two HDMI inputs, but I don't have any devices using HDMI. Component video (colour is separated into 3 different signals) was the best that I would be able to do. However, the TV only had two component inputs and with the 400-disc DVD changer, DVD/HD PVR, and the Sony PS2, I needed three inputs. Luckily, after finding this very helpful article by George Graves, " Getting More From Your HDTV " I was able to make it work without spending much more additional money. Since I already had a standard video switch box, the only new cable that I had to buy was a new component video output cable for o...

Well, it finally happened: we bought a new TV. This is definitely not a common occurrence because the last TV we bought was a 19" Toshiba I picked up from London Drugs about 8 years ago. The reason for this momentous occasion is the (imminent) death of the main TV set in our living room: a 32" picture-tube Panasonic GAAO. In it's glory days, it was a wonderful set and it's definitely seen a lot of use. Being at least 15 years old, it has probably outlasted it's lifespan. I noticed for awhile now that the sound coming from the set was getting harder and harder to hear. I would turn it up louder, but I still couldn't understand what was being said. I thought there was something wrong with my ears. I turned it up so loud that the garbled noise filled the entire 3 floors of our house. The problem finally visualized a couple of weeks ago when the screen started to sputter and pop for a few minutes whenever we turned the TV on. Now I think that 15 years is a pre...