Alright, it is that time to upgrade.

I’ve had my stereo since I was in 8th grade, and it is mainly geared towards audio. I want to gear it towards a HT only system. I plan on using my current receiver, which is a Denon AVR 3300, as a stereo only to push 2 bookshelves via my computer/CD player.

The speakers are fine. They consist of all Definitive Tech speakers, two bipolar towers for the fronts, with built in 10 inch subs, and a center channel with a built in sub, and two bipolar surrounds. The speaker department is good to go.

TV is good to go for now: It is a 34inch Sony KD-34XS955 CRT 1080i HDTV. Besides it being 200lbs and interlaced, the picture is gorgeous. For now it stays, but I want the receiver to be more "future proof" for HD, so when I upgrade to a larger plasma 1080p (Most likely) it will all be good.

So, the speakers are good till they die, and the TV is good for now, and will upgrade a few years down the road.

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So the receiver I’m looking into must do the following:

-Needs power as the def techs need some power to scream. 130×7 watts seems legit.
-4 or more HDMI inputs.
-HDMI upcoverting and MUST be capable of unaltered HDMI repeating!!! I was going to go with an Onkyo 805 or 806 until I found out they don’t do this and there are audio-syncing issues. NOT GOOD!
-Will be a HD theater system… aka the main sources for the receiver and tV will be HD formats, mainly a future blu-ray player and I already have an xbox360 for hd gaming and will also get a PS3 (gaming/blu ray). This is also why capability of unaltered HDMI repeating is huge.
-Will also have non-HD formats like a Wii. Good upconversion needed.
-This it needs to have all the lossless audio formats and renderers.

I’m going to move my current Denon DVD player, Receiver, and Record Player as an audio only system for my stereo.

So I know you get what you pay for, but what models have these requirements? I’m assuming only the top of the lines ones as what I need is pretty much everything, huh? I don’t care about radio or satellite this etc etc.

I’m in college so this is a big investment and I want to do it right, but I don’t know what is out there now! I was going to get an Onkyo 806 or older 805 until I found out about their issues with the video processing. I want to avoid this, as yes, they have what I need on PAPER, but in reality the receiver isn’t up to the task. That sucked when I found that out because an 806 can be had new for 600 bucks! Dang it!

Please shoot me some options towards which products do what I need. Name them all off, and I’ll try and do my best! And as always, the best budget the better winner, lol.

Thanks! Please ask any more questions you may think are required to help me more. I tried to add all I could think of, hence the lengthy post, but you get the idea.

Chris

Hello AVSforum, just bought this TV at CC for $900 and I could use some help, or rather just some questions answered because this TV is going back. Lugged it home, set it all up, fired up Fallout 3 on Xbox 360, only to find that whenever I pan the camera or even move the character all the objects in the game world blur like crazy and have that terrible green trail behind them.

Other games are the same way, I tried Halo 3, Dead Space, and COD, they all have the blurring an green trails, Dead Space probably being the worst. In Dead Space and Fallout it honestly hurts my eyes, and is so distracting I can’t play my games.

I’ve tried messing with every setting on both the TV and Xbox, and every other suggestion I could find, nothing helps :(. The TV looks phenomenal in movies and when sitting still in a game, but 90% of my TV use is gaming. And it doesn’t help that for the first 100 hours of use of this TV the same game with HUD should not be played for more than 2 hours straight.

I have heard that the more sensitive your eyes, the easier it is to notice (the phospor trails anyway, not sure about the blurring). And I already know I have extremely sensitive eyes, so is this going to be a problem with most plasmas for me? Should I bother with another? Now I see that’s its hard to tell if a plasma is good for me, because 50 people could say a TV is great, but my sensitive eyes may see the trails.

I swapped my CRT with this set, not an ancient CRT or anything, but probably one of the last 1080i HD CRTs made. It’s a Sony, and is honestly the best TV I’ve ever owned. The only problem I;ve ever had with it is, since it is a 4:3 TV (yep, square HDTV), when playing widescreen things, it doesnt get the zoom right and cuts off things on the sides of the screen, say half the ammo counter in Brothers in Arms. Not nearly as annoying as these green trails tho.

I know phosphor trails aren’t an issue with LCDs, but I’ve heard about the blur. If that is going to be a problem with most LCDs for me I’ll just keep this CRT as long as possible.

I will be returning this to CC today, and Im probably going to get the Sony KDL40S4100 as replacement, which is on sale for the same price. This TV any good? It looked fine in the store, but If its not Ill just get a refund and keep the CRT

This post is regarding a subwoofer design that I came up with probably as much as 15 years ago when I was in a very different situation than I am in now. I didn’t know that much about subwoofer design then, (all I learned was from reading a few books on speaker design at the time) and know even less now. I started the project, but never finished. The subwoofer was designed to be a built-in project to a newly-built house (at that time). It would have been located in a formal living-room/parlor and would have supported the bass-end of a Yamaha Clavinova and also the bass-end of a multi-room audio output from a central audio-video stack in the family room. The subwoofer enclosure was to be part of a very nicely built-in/custom-finished corner-hutch/cabinetry/furniture arrangement that was situated in back of the Clavinova in the corner of the room. The sub-enclosure would have been physically attached to the corner-wall of the room at the base of the floor.

Anyway, I have been separated from my wife and that house for quite a few years and the project has lied dormant; the subwoofer as well as the final steps in completing the cabinetry. My youngest son is home with his Mom for a while after a two-year stint in South Africa before returning to college. I thought this would be a good project to finally finish; for father and son to work on, and it would make his mother happy as well (no, we’re not getting back together nor is this my wish; I just want to finish unfinished business).

Here’s a bit of a warning: the design may make no sense; I honestly don’t know. I thought it was very novel and progressive at the time, but know even less now than I did then, and that wasn’t a lot. I welcome comments, however critical, but probably will not make any significant changes in the basic form of the enclosure (I just want to finish the project after all these years). However, I would make some minor alterations in the original design (ie; possible alterations in driver choice and/or placement), if they could significantly improve the performance of the final product. However, as said, I don’t think I will be making any changes in cabinet design, at this point.

That said, here are the basics of the design: It is a sealed box system, triangular in its base with the hypotenuse of the triangle being the base of the front baffle of the sub, the baffle firing forward from a corner of the room where the sub enclosure is built-in. It has two sealed compartments in a push-push isobaric design. The upper compartment houses a down-firing active sub, completely sealed within the enclosure, outputting to the lower compartment. The lower compartment houses a front-firing active sub which outputs to the room. A rudimentary drawing and photos of the unfinished enclosure are included at the end of this post.

The subs I have recently chosen for this project are the Boston Acoustics G512-4 single coil sub. Although they are designed for smaller sealed enclosures, I hope they will fit with my original enclosure design OK. They are affordably-priced and well-reviewed subs and have hefty surround excursion capabilities that I think will fit well with my design. My original design included some pretty cheap Eminence 12" dual-coil subs (from Parts Express back in 1993?) that had speaker specs/parameters that matched the size of the aforementioned enclosure. I still have them in the box and they have been sitting there for many years, but I thought that if I’m really going to complete this project, I should use some of the more contemporary subwoofer drivers that are available today and have much more excursive/bass capability.

The original design included a very complicated self-designed car amp/AC/DC power-converter/supply system with an outboard crossover and all other kinds of conversion and relay-assisted transmission in-between. It was designed to be used with amplification from the central stack or with local amplification, depending on the flick of a relay-based power switch. I looked at it today, and still don’t fully understand it or my design at the time (it was complex, but I know it worked quite well back then, in testing, and evidently made sense to me at the time). However, in completing this new system, I was thinking of going with something a bit more simple; Niles SWA-500M, a Niles subwoofer amp that can take a full-range speaker level input and split it to power a locally amplified passive sub and pass a cross-overed speaker-level signal to a normal-range speaker (that is the kind of sub amp I needed back then and they were few and far between; I guess that’s why I ended-up with such a complicated original design). I may actually stay with my original design; it was pretty jimmy-rigged and, I thought kinda awesome; but, that depends, of course, on it’s final performance with the finished sub.

I know this design seems somewhat convoluted and may not make sense in light of today’s sub-design/components, but it was conceived 15 years ago by a relative novice. I attempted to post this in the Audioholics forum, where it may have been more appropriate, but realized since I haven’t had any prior postings there, (despite being a member for some time), I couldn’t post any pics/photos; without those, it wouldn’t have made much sense. I welcome any comments on the design, and bring on the pain! (Apologizing, in advance, for the length of this post)!

These are an illustration of the design and photos of the unfinished enclosure:

Thanks,

– da Choge

DICE Puts Faith In NVIDIA PhysX Technology For Mirror's Edge

Highly Acclaimed First-Person Action Adventure Game Utilizes NVIDIA PhysX Technology to Take Gamers on an Awe-Inspiring Adventure

SANTA CLARA, CA-NVIDIA-In the award-winning videogame Mirror’s Edge, DICE, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio, introduces players to a new heroine named Faith. Faith belongs to a network of couriers called ‘runners’ who use acrobatic moves to transport confidential information across the cityscape of rooftops and aerial skyways to avoid being detected. To deliver this never-before-seen sense of movement and perspective, DICE has turned to NVIDIA PhysX technology to give gamers an eye-popping experience on the PC.

“Faith’s world in Mirror’s Edge is visceral, immediate, and very dangerous; it is imperative that the gameplay reflect this level of urgency,” said Owen O’Brien, Senior Producer at DICE. “NVIDIA PhysX technology affords us the ability to bring a totally new level of immersion to the game, and by doing so, gamers can truly become part of the world.”

With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the world of Mirror’s Edge comes to life with real affects of wind, weapons impact, and in-game movements. Every-day objects within the game become part of the overall experience. Cloth, flags, and banners can now impact weapons and players; ground fog interacts with the player’s footsteps; explosions fill the air with smoke and debris; and weapon impacts are enhanced with interactive particles.

On the PC, PhysX technology harnesses the power of CUDA, NVIDIA’s general-purpose, parallel-computing architecture, to handle 10-20 times more visual complexity than what’s possible without a GeForce CUDA-enabled GPU. And unlike competitors’ solutions, which do not offer hardware-scaling capabilities, only PhysX technology leverages the best of both CPU and GPU architectures to deliver the ultimate, immersive, user experience. With over 100 million CUDA-compatible GeForce 8 Series and higher GPUs shipped to date, PhysX technology has the largest installed base of general-purpose, parallel-computing processors to run on.

“If you love intense combat scenes, fast-paced chases, and sky-high adventures then Mirror’s Edge is the game for you,” said Ujesh Desai, vice president of GeForce desktop business at NVIDIA. “Gamers will appreciate the greater freedom of movement, including sliding under barriers, tumbling, wall-running, and shimmying across ledges—all within an environment that is dynamic and immersive, delivered in part by our PhysX technology”.

Consisting of a robust physics engine, API, and middleware software, NVIDIA PhysX technology is interactive entertainment’s most pervasive physics engine and is already included in more than 140 shipping titles for PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360 computer and video game system from Microsoft, Wii, and the PC.

About Mirror’s Edge
Mirror’s Edge was awarded “Best Xbox 360 Game” at the GC Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany. It also received the Game Critics Award for “Best Original Game” at E3 in July. Mirror’s Edge shipped to retail stores worldwide on November 11th for the PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system. The PC version of Mirror’s Edge will ship in January 2009 to retailers worldwide. For more information about the game, please visit www.mirrorsedge.com.

3 years ago me and my girlfriend bought an old Grist Mill in Lancaster, PA. The first floor had a couple small dingy rooms and was basically destroyed with graffiti on the walls and in need of windows and doors. It’s come a long way. I built a 40 foot partial U shape bar in the center of the more than 2000 sq ft room. I also built an island by our coin op pool table that matches the bar. Here are some pics from the start of the project. I the bar 90% done now. This forum helped me out a lot during the build , especially seeing pictures of other peoples projects, so I wanted to share some of mine.

Let me know what you think. I’ll add newer pictures soon. These first few are pretty old.

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