The new TV aka Blog # 1

I was doubly inspired by Castlemonster when he put up a blog on his new gaming set-up. It inspired me not only to blog but also to resolve a situation that has been bugging me for months.

I don’t have the same issues that Castle does since we don’t have any kids, and I normally don’t log on to live until after my wife goes to sleep, but I had other issues using the main TV for gaming.

My wife and I moved from Minneapolis to Denver about a year ago and had a new house built that was completed in December, and soon after I had a big new HDTV delivered. It is a 50” Sony SXRD, and overall I’m really happy with it. This was pre-360 for me and meant tracking down an HD adapter for the 180, which isn’t something I could find at BB, CC, TRU etc., but you can pick them up new for less than $20 on eBay. Unfortunately, I eventually figured out that this TV has a 50 ms “upconversion” delay in video processing, which is enough to really mess with my shooting skills. That isn’t a handicap I’m capable of dealing with. When I got the 360, the only game I had was Oblivion and the delay doesn’t really matter with that game, so I played that on the big TV for a long while.

For shooters though, it was down to the unfinished basement I went. At first this was with a 19” TV that I had used for gaming for a long time on the 180. After having seen Oblivion and Halo in HD though, I could hardly stand looking at the fuzzy screen. When I moved to COD2 I brought the 360 down and switched to an unused 17” PC CRT monitor I had sitting in the basement anyway. This required a 360 VGA adapter for $40 from BB, but I was gaming in HD, although I was sitting about 3 feet from the screen. I don’t have the VGA adapter for the 180, so that was still 19” of 480i blurriness.

What about the sound? The VGA adapter has a toslink port as well as analog RCA connections, but neither works with the monitor speakers. Always trying to do something for nothing I plugged the analog sound into the 19” TV and it wasn’t much but at least I could hear, watching the 17” monitor and listening to the 19” TV.

Fast forward about 3 months to Castle’s blog from Friday. I didn’t want to spend a $1000 but man that sure looks sweet. His blog pushed me pretty close to the edge. I’ve been scanning the ads every Sunday for months looking for something 27” or so that I could use for HD gaming. Add that to my wife and me getting the basement picked up in advance of an in-laws invasion and the scene was set.

My wife doesn’t visit the basement very often, other than to look for a box or some paperwork, and she never really paid any attention to the gaming set-up. The basement only has 3 outlets, none convenient to where the 360/180/Monitor/TV were. Also, as I was hooking all this stuff up it never occurred to me that I really should just go buy a power strip. I had at least 4 extension cords along with controller cables, HD cables, a play and charge cable, three headsets, a 30’ Ethernet cable, a 360, a 180, a TV and a monitor, and plenty of leftover dust from when I built the workbench.

This, she said, has got to go.

“Do you really need all these cords?” Yes, I need all of them…but I said that if bought a power-strip I could get rid of most of the power cords.

“GO!” she commanded.

I mentioned that there was a 27’ widescreen LCD Monitor/TV on sale at Office Depot for $499 that I wanted to look at while I was out.

“Just buy it.” she advised.

Looking at the display in the store left me lukewarm, but I decided to reserve judgment until it was hooked up to the 360. I toss it in the back of the car and I just need to stop at Costco for coffee, pot-stickers, edamame and the power-strip (I forgot to get it at Office Depot) and I’m done. No power-strip that I could find at Costco, so one more stop at Home Depot. Now, which power strip…585 Joules, 705 Joules, 2250 Joules, price range $7-$65…I picked out the black one, $9.

Got home and got the boxes hooked to the TV and then spent some time running the Ethernet cable through the ceiling/floor joists as well as running power from the least conspicuous outlet.

I hooked the 360 up with the HD cables (component) and thought it was just OK. I hooked it up using the VGA adapter and maybe I’m delusional, but I think the VGA looks a lot better. I’m not sure I understand why. There’s no HDMI support but there are two sets of component inputs along with the VGA, so the 180 is hooked up HD as well. The TV also has decent speakers, and I’ll think I’ll hold off on the surround for a bit. The surround I have upstairs is pretty impressive so I’m spoiled, and I haven’t thought much of the HTIAB systems I’ve seen. The headphones Castle mentions are a possibility, but my hearing is already going (really bad tinnitus) and some say headphones are a leading culprit in hearing loss.

Tooling around a couple maps on Halo and COD2 seemed pretty damn crisp. I haven’t actually played on Live yet, but that’ll change, and I’ll probably spend most of my free time in the basement just like in That 70s Show.