My Media Players!

I am now enjoying my media room! And my wife is both happy and unhappy, she is happy because I always want to be at home, unhappy because I could lock myself inside the room for hours just being a couch potato (my wife can only withstand 2 movies in a row). Anyway, I have been revisiting my old DVD collection and boy-oh-boy does my collection look much better now when I play them on my Pioneer DV-600AV, its an upscaling DVD player, which turns your old DVD (480 line resolution) to 720p or even 1080p resolution making it very close to HiDef, it does it by upconverting the dvd standard image thru interpolation. Its a very nice player.

But of course, the purpose of me wanting my very own media room is to take the HiDef plunge and I willingly did so by choosing HDDVD, as I mentioned a few articles back, its a dead format but its damn cheap right now, so Bluray has to wait. My player is the Toshiba HD-A3 player which I got from a Pinoy DVD member for a song! And I am very happy with it, bought a lot of HDDVDs from Amazon (its always on sale) and sometimes from the pre-owned market here in the Philippines, would you believe I got the KingKong HDDVD for only 300 pesos! That's what you call a bargain, and the PQ (picture quality) and SQ (sound quality) is just awesome compared to your standard definition DVDs (upscaled or not).


And to round up my stable of players is the Popcorn Hour A-100 Network Media Tank. Its categorized as a media player, but its basically a computer hardware that plays all kinds of video and audio files straight from a hard disk, or even a usb flash drive. Its an awesome piece of equipment. For its small form factor, you could never thought that it can do all the stuff it was advertised to do. One of the "in" thing now is to turn all HiDef materials into HiDef files and they put all this content into an AV container, and the most popular today is the Matroska container or .mkv behind the AV files they are containing. And these HiDef .mkv files plays flawlessly from my Popcorn Hour A-100. The PQ is excellent, the SQ is still the same as old DVDs with its Dolby and DTS sound, but in general its acceptable.

The funny thing is out of the three media players I have, the Popcorn Hour A-100 is the most often use device in my media room right now. You can get it locally from http://myhdworld.mutiply.com/ you can talk to the guys there and they are very accomodating and their service is fantastic! I will try to post some screen shots as my next article to show you the difference in Picture Quality among the different media players I have. As a fellow Pinoy DVD member says "I am now in HD Nirvana!"

My Media Room!

After our house renovation ended a couple of months ago. My guess is my wife's centerpiece would definitely hands down the kitchen and our master's bedroom, but for me, it's definitely our MEDIA ROOM! It really took some convincing for my wife to agree in giving me a standalone room just for my toys. After a compromise (room can be used as a guest room), I got my own MEDIA ROOM!

It will take a long piece to write and tell the story about the room's evolution, so I decided to just post pictures upon pictures of it, as they say "a picture's worth a thousand words".

The Renovation

The room still needing a coat of paint! Old stuff still cluttered all over.

The old parquet floor also got a much needed rehab!

The Furnitures

The Molave Daybed, handcrafted from Nueva Vizcaya.
The old Tangile bookshelves from my parents, repainted to be used as a dvd rack!

The La-Z-Boy, no Media Room should be missing one!

Sabre TV Rack, got this pre-owned! looks like new.

Sigma Rack, for my AV eqipments!

The EQUIPMENTS

The centerpiece of the room, my new Toshiba 37" LCD TV!

The speakers, Wharfedale Atlantics, also pre-owned, bought it for a song,
not seen in the picture are two surround speakers to complete the set.

Toshiba HD DVD Player HD-A3, although the loser in the hidef contest,
I got it cheap, HD DVD are cheap too!

Pioneer DV-600AV, an uspcaling DVD player, upscales
standard 480i DVDs to hidef resolution of
720p/1080i/1080p through interpolation.

Popcorn Hour A-100 Network Media Tank, a harddisk based media player,
plays all sorts of video & audio files including MKVs (for hidef content!).
All I need now are hidef MKVs!

Hyundai Premiere 98+ Karaoke Player, for those singing moments!

Onkyo TX-604G, a 7.1 HDMI based AV receiver, the power plant
that make everything works!

These two US Audio subwoofers, an 8 incher and a 12 incher provides
the oomph factor in movies and music! there are better ones,
but these babies will do fine..... for now!

The Nintendo Wii, need I say more.

No Media Room is complete without these networking stuff!

The universal remote to control them all! The Logitech Harmony One!

The Almost Finished Product (90%)

Front part of the Media Room.

The viewing area, back part of the Media Room.

The DVD cabinet, now full! Look at Stitch.

The customary movie posters for effect.

Well, that is all for now, I hope some of you can find inspiration from this place, I know some of you might have bigger or better place, then good for you. The most important thing is to enjoy all the hardwork and money put into projects like this. I know I do! Ciao!

HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray

As the title goes, its about the next generation video format. And I have to say it was confusing at first. On one side is HD-DVD (High Definition DVD), a format that is supported by Toshiba and was the natural evolution of the dvd format. While on the other corner is Blu-Ray which is a format being supported by Sony.

Just to put things into perspective, what is the real big deal about the formats, as a lot of people were saying format wars were never good, because it is always tough to choose and usually confusing. And this one was no different, it started quite heated with a lot of movie studios supporting each side, Paramount and Dreamworks on the HD-DVD side while Sony Pictures et al were on the Blu-Ray camp. Warner Bros. was fence sitting by releasing movies for both formats. Sony was really in a fighting mood because they have gone into format wars before and were usually on the losing end (remember Betamax and MDs), so they went into this with a lot to lose, and it made them more focus on winning, and finally after less than two years, February 2008 to be exact, Toshiba conceded defeat and announced that it will discontinue HD-DVD by stopping its player production. So how did Sony do it?

This is my personal opinion. First, they made their very strong PlayStation 3 console Blu-Ray capable, by doing so, they have the cheapest Blu-Ray player in the market, imagine having a Blu-Ray movie player with a next gen HD game console to boot! Even though initially slow in sales as a game console, losing to XBox 360 and Wii it definitely outsold the stand alone HD-DVD players in the market. By the end of 2007, Sony has roughly around 9 million PlayStation 3 sold to roughly less than 2 million of HD-DVD players globally. With the player population secured, Sony went to work with content. That for me is reason number 2 on how the war was won, before 2008 started, both camps were even steven in terms of studio support. But come 2008, Warner Bros surprised everybody by declaring themselves Blu-Ray exclusive and with that one announcement (believed to be worth $400 million on Sony's part), spelled the eventual death of HD-DVD camp.
I am writing this on my blog because I am initially from the start a PS3 Fanboy, and as such, have hope from the start that Blu-Ray must win the war. But now that its over and I know that it has already won, what's the first thing I did? I bought myself a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player, you might think that I am nuts to this, but I got the player for a song! And movies are selling for cheap too (locally, around 700-1000 pesos and on Amazon, as cheap as $10 per title). I know it won't last long, but that is the point, I am trying to get all the HD movie goodies I can get before the format totally dies and when it eventually dies, that is the time I will shift to Blu-Ray as my de facto HD movies standard!

And what happens to the player? as I said, it will be for my HD-DVD back catalog movies and the nice thing is this Toshiba HD-A3 player upscales ordinary DVDs to 1080i glory (HD). Not bad, rather than getting an upscaling DVD player which I would have paid the same money for. So for now, I am format neutral but buying HD-DVD content. Sorry Blu-Ray, my monies with them first, see you by the end of 2008!

My Birthday GIFT!

Its my birthday yesterday, yep, just turned 38! And I am feeling good about myself. And I owe it to myself to get me one mean gift, something I have been longing to have and the best thing is my wife agreed I could have one! (believe me that's IMPORTANT)

Hehehe, still don't know what I am talking about... it's definitely not a tattoo or body piercing for I am not a self-mutilating type of person. What I got is something more techie, something that will give me ends of fun... it's an LCD TV!

I went to Shangrila mall and went to Listening In Style, its a home theater audio and video shop where you can buy all your home entertainment device and gadgets from. Its got branches in Alabang (D-Cinema), SM Megamall (Listening Room), Trinoma (Theater Works) and Gadgets In Style also in Shangrila mall. Its got the lowest price on LCD TVs as far as I know, and I think that's saying a lot, I researched and researched before I decided on the brand and the price point which I think that is both acceptable to me and my wife. And this place supplied my LCD TV at 10 grand less than any other appliance store in the whole city. So if you are in the market for an LCD TV, just go to any of their shops in the Metro, or you can go to their website http://www.listeninginstyle.com.ph you can't go wrong!

Back to my gift. What I decided to get was a Toshiba Regza C3500E LCD TV, I got myself a 37 incher, just right for my planned media room. I got myself an LCD because me and my kids are into video gaming, me and my wife also plan to use the set as a HUGE computer screen for those net surfing moments and still sneak in those movies and cable tv shows on the side hence the reason we passed over the plasma tv option (although if you are really into movies and cable TV, I would suggest to get a plasma instead).

Why the Tosh, well its got great specs, its got a pair of 1.3a HDMI (the latest), its 1080p capable, its got the famous Meta Brain Pro chip for those image processing chore, its got a newly designed jet slit speakers were Tosh and Onkyo developed together, elegant piano-black finish and a hosts of standard features like multi system, lots of inputs and stuff. So overall its a great set. I know, the Sony Bravia line is the way to go, but sorry, I don't have enough moolah to buy those, my family's got to eat. And besides, there was this article that did a face-off between a Sony Bravia U, Samsung R8 and this Tosh, and the Tosh blew the reviewers away with its performance and price point. What I saw in the shop was a great machine and showed great pictures (BTW, beware of showroom screen pictures, they look great, right? That is because those sets are hooked up either through Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players or they are directly hooked up to a hard drive showing off high definition material). That is why I still can't get you my personal opinion about DVD movie, HD movie, cable tv, computer and video game image just yet, I will be writing that in the near future for you guys who are interested.

But for now, I am in tech heaven. A great gift to myself for my birthday... But come to think of it, the only thing missing now is my PLAYSTATION 3!