DarqByte

I should have added this on to my last post, but I’ll make a new one instead.

So yesterday, as part of DaCold, I felt crummy when I woke up. I didn’t want to have to deal with going to church and potentially coughing the whole time there, feeling awful, not being able to pay attention to Mass, and maybe getting people sic. So I stayed home.

When I got out of bed, I decided to just put my glasses on and didn’t wear my contacts. The nice thing about my glasses is that they’re much, much sharper than my contacts.

About midday I thought to myself “Man, I’m seeing life in HD right now…”

Haha.

Alright, so this last November I finally got an HDTV. The only thing that was in high definition on it was the XBox 360 because all I had to do was switch the output on the console. Everything else wasn’t in HD.

Until today.

After a week of gathering the requesite pieces together, we’re now running HD satellite via DirecTV. We’re not all the way there as we’ve got some issues with some of the local channels (and we’re not sure why), but other than that, we’re all golden on HD satellite. And it’s awesome. A really good indicator of how HD satellite looks is a basketball game… The reflections on the floor, the crowd, the players… All good stuff.

Not only are we running HD satellite now, we’re also now using a Logitech Harmony remote control for the entertainment center. Why, you ask? Because 6 remotes sucks. We didn’t have anything resembling a universal remote in the bunch, it sucked.

I got the remote with the money I made by spending awhile fixing a friend’s laptop and removing all of the malware that was on it: viruses, adware, spyware, etc. With that money I got a Harmony remote while I was off getting the HD satellite receiver from Best Buy. The verdict?

Just absolutely awesome. It controls everything we have, and I mean everything. Well, not the Nintendo Wii, but that’s expected:

1. Samsung HDTV — I thought it may not work on this because the TV model is relatively new, but nope, it’s good.
2. HD satellite receiver — I figured this would work, but thought maybe some of the functionality of the original remote would be lost; nope, it’s good.
3. Sony A/V receiver — I didn’t know what to expect here, but it is solid.
4. Toshiba DVD/VCR — DVD/VCR combo players often have very specialized remotes because they are multifunction devices, but lo-and-behold, it controls it 100%!
5. Microsoft XBox 360 — I figured this would work without fail since custom remotes came out for it when the console released, and I was proven correct.
6. Nintendo Wii — Nope! But that doesn’t matter anyway.
7. DLO HomeDock — This is the A/V dock for our iPods and I could have sworn the remote would not control it… Holy shit. It does.

We’ve got the remote setup for particular activities, like swapping to watching TV, movie on the XBox, music on the HomeDock… It’s great.

One issue I ran into was that it was having trouble controlling the input to the TV for the activities. While on TV, switching to the XBox 360 wouldn’t go correctly on the TV. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get it working, but my God, was the software great. It stepped me through questions that enabled it to know the exact sequence of signals to send to the TV to select the proper input for the 360. Just awesome.

I got temporarily more excited about the remote than I did the HD satellite! But man, loving life. Now the only 2 things I have left to upgrade in the entertainment center are the DVD/VCR combo (with a Blu-Ray player) and to get an HD A/V receiver with multiple digital audio ports. Joy! But those two upgrades are a ways out.

Man… I really didn’t think I’d walk away from this Christmas as loaded as I am. I’ve seen and heard lately that a lot of retail analysts think the discounts and sales that retailers had this year to combat the weak economy are some of the biggest in over a decade and probably won’t be repeated again for quite some time. Good thing this appears to be the year of my big HD jump.

So just about everybody is aware that I shelled out the money for a nice new HDTV on Black Friday. And what a nice TV it is, let me tell you. Totally satisfied with it. Well, the TV isn’t the only thing that makes the HD experience. Right now, the only thing I’ve got in HD is my Xbox 360, and honestly, it’s totally awesome in 1080p. Just great.

Two things in the entertainment center that need to be upgraded to reach HD status are the DVD player and the satellite system. Well, after some Best Buy gift cards and some Christmas money, I’ll likely be getting a Blu-Ray player in the near future to upgrade the DVD system.

All that’s left there is the satellite system, which shouldn’t be too bad to upgrade to HD, and I want to have it done by the SuperBowl, since Laura wants to have a SuperBowl party and I think the game should just be in HD. That won’t be an expensive upgrade. Probably cheaper than the Blu-Ray upgrade, actually.

That would leave our Nintendo Wii as the lowest-quality video output in our entire entertainment center. Joy! Well, there’s also the issue that I want to upgrade our sound system after all this is done. Our current audio receiver, in the move to the new entertainment center, suffered a broken digital audio port that the 360 plugged into. So now all of the audio is on RCA jacks, and once all of the HD upgrades is complete, I want to try to find a nice audio receiver that supports enough digital audio ports so the 360, satellite and Blu-Ray players can all use digital output. I don’t think the Wii supports digital output.

Anyway, why did I title this post “Christmas Gaming Indeed?” Well, that’s because I never anticipated my video game haul this Christmas. When I put together my Christmas list, it included a lot of big-ticket items, but particularly noteworthy were the video games on the list:

1. Gears of War 2
2. Dead Space
3. Fallout 3
4. Guitar Hero: World Tour
5. Need For Speed Undercover
6. Spore
7. Sonic Unleashed

That was the list when it all began. Spore and Sonic Unleashed eventually fell off of my radar thanks to different issues. So what happened to the other 5?

I got them all.

Holy crap! I just finished GTA IV and that game was a blast, it actually had a cathartic ending, something I’ve never encountered before in a video game. And now I’ve got five new games to play? Holy crap! That’s a nice predicament, not knowing which game to play and wanting to play them all. I’m going to be gaming for quite some time.

I’ve already begun on Fallout 3, because it came in the day before I wrapped up GTA IV. I won that one in a contest. And I’ve already played some NFS Undercover and Guitar Hero, from my Mom (and family) and my sister-in-law Julia, respectively. I got GoW2 from Laura and Dead Space from Mom & family as well. Just haven’t gotten to those yet. And I probably won’t hit those two for awhile longer anyway, because Fallout 3 will likely suck up most of the time that I’d give to those other 2 because it’s a lengthy single-player campaign. Dead Space is as well, and GoW2 has a good single-player campaign coupled with great online play.

Man oh man. I’ll be entertained for quite some time, yes. Merry Christmas!

The title of this post is a reference to “America, F**k Yeah!” from Team America: World Police. It’s become a somewhat theme song in DataX with my programming team at work.

Yes, you read that right. It said: HDTV.

I spent 3 hours, 15 minutes in line starting at 4:45am on Black Friday at RC Willey. They had a 40″ Samsung 1080P LCD HDTV for sale, monstrously below retail price. I’d done quite a bit of side work over the summer and had basically earned this TV. Thus, I bought it. Along with a nice TV stand and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. What can I say, Laura wanted it and I forgot to get it when it came out.

Man, this thing is totally awesome! It sucks that I had to wait 2 years to get one from when I first wanted one, but this one’s big, has great quality and was monster cheap for what it truly is. The Xbox 360 looks absolutely beautiful on it. Geometry Wars 2 looks really, really great on it. Truly amazing.

So we’re planning on when we’re going to upgrade our satellite TV to HD. We need to get a new dish as well as upgrade the receiver to HD, which’ll cost a little bit of money. And it’s more per month. But we’re going to get this in place by the Super Bowl, because Laura wants to have a party and I want to make sure the viewing is good. Even though she wants it for the food and socialization, haha.

So yes. My quest is over. I no longer have any big-ticket items I’m pining for… For now.

My Christmas list is too big. And it’s too expensive too.

Awhile back I built a website where you could create a wish list for whatever occasion you wanted to. It’s not bad, but I never ended up with the time or drive to really take it as far as it could have gone. That, and places like Amazon can do it much better if they integrate with their own site.

So I decided to get my 2008 Christmas list up on the site so I could at least record the items I wanted, then to invite people to it so they could see what I wanted. After I added everything I could think of, it occurred to me that my list is… well, it’s way too big.

I’ve got a lot of items on it given the number of people that are likely to buy me a Christmas gift. And not only that, quite a few of the items are expensive. Such as 2 HDTVs that are on the list. Yeah, just a little out of most people’s price ranges.

But in any case, at least I’ve got some things to shoot for. I’ve got 4 Xbox 360 games on the list, but with my 360 sent away for repair work, I can’t use it anyway. — Addendum: I just checked the repair process and it was delivered to my porch today… Last time they required signature. Oh well.

So yeah, if you want to be added my my Christmas list because you’re going to buy me either of the 2 HDTVs, let me know! Haha.