Home Theater, Part 3

So (three weeks ago) the DVR blew up Friday night, I called Verizon Saturday and they sent someone out Sunday afternoon. He brought a new DVR with him, plugged it in and it has been working ever since. I was impressed.

The console had a small hole about an inch in diameter for threading cables through. It worked, but it was a real pain. When I finally pulled the cabinet away from the wall I found that the back panel was cracked in two. I pulled it off, and cut out the section that was behind the shelves with the glass door, which happened to be where the crack was. From the weight of this cabinet, I suspected that it was all made out of particle board, but apparently not. The back panel, which is usually cardboard was 1/8" plywood. Some of the cabinet was particle board, like the interior partitions, but other parts like the shelves and drawers were solid wood. The drawers were even constructed using dovetails. On the other hand, the back panel was put on using a power screwdriver without bothering to drill any pilot holes. A real mish-mash of craftsmanship and shoddy production. But it is a good looking piece of furniture. Made in China, in case I haven't already mentioned it.

Now it is much easier to string the cables. We could get by with three foot long cables except for the fact that the console and the equipment and the TV combine to weigh about 300 pounds, and I do not want to have to move it anymore. I set the DVD player and the DVR on an ottoman in front of the console, plug in the cables into the TV, drop them in back of the console, and then pull them out the front and plug them into the back panels of the electronics. Now I just slide the electronics back onto the shelves, the cables fall out the back, the shelf slides off its' support brackets. Oh fudge. Start over. I may have to screw the shelves to the support brackets. Good, everything is in place.

The home theater amplifier/DVD player has a built-in five disk changer, which means it is really deep. It was a squeeze to get in the cabinet with the back panel in place. Only problem here now is that you can see the wall and all the ugly cables hanging down in the back, no panel in back of the equipment shelves to hide this stuff anymore. I take the piece I cut out and drop it down in back and it does a fair job of camouflaging the mess. Someday I may fix this, but everything is working now, so I will probably just leave it.

I finally got around to ordering the HDMI cables from Newegg.com. Not quite $20 for two, including shipping. Also ordered an S-video cable, but for some reason they couldn't fill the order. Not only that they wanted to ship it separately which basically means I have to pay the $8 shipping charge twice. And just to rag on Philips a little more, the $60 cable at Freddies was made by Philips, and the S-video cable that got canceled was also a Philips item.

So I replaced the component and composite video cables with the HDMI cables and now we can get by with one remote control instead of having to juggle them. Oh, wait, I haven't tried a DVD yet, or have I? But the power button on the Verizon remote turns on all three devices. I think the Verizon remote sends a signal to the DVR, and then one to the TV. The TV in turn sends a message over the HDMI cable to the DVD player to turn on. So it all takes a couple of seconds before the amp says "HELLO".

Only problem now is that my feet are in the way. In the basement, the player and the STB (Set Top Box) are above the TV. With this new system, the electronic boxes are below the TV, about the same level as the seat of the couch. When I put my feet up on the ottoman, they are almost exactly between the remote and the electronics. You might think that that should not be a problem, but I wonder if the glass might be attenuating the signal a bit. Oh, the price we pay for fashion.

We moved the old wardrobe upstairs by my bed. I run into it nightly. We still need one more little piece to go at the other end of the couch to support the speaker. We could just set it on the floor, but when the room gets vacuumed, it is liable to get clobbered. I would rather have it up off the floor than have to worry about it. I could just get a cardboard box or a concrete block, but that would be a little tacky for such a fancy room. Never mind that we are talking about a corner that no one except the housekeeper ever sees. On the other hand, it would be nice to have somewhere to set your drink, so we went looking at end tables today. We found several pieces that would work, from $15 to $250. I am hoping we can get by with the $15 solution. I do not need to keep spending large sums of money. Of course if it was up to me, we would probably be sitting on folding aluminum lounges from K-mart and using a Coleman cooler for a table, and the TV would be hanging from a lag screw in the wall. Okay, maybe two lag screws.

Oh yes, more on the DVR. It can handle two channels simultaneously. This means you can record two channels, or you can watch one and record another, or you can record two and watch one of the ones you are recording. It also supports HD recording. But wait, there's more! You can watch shows that have been recorded on the DVR on the TV in the basement, even though the there is no DVR in the basement. Of course this extra STB costs an extra $10 a month. This was the deciding factor in our neighbors NOT signing for Verizon FiOs TV. They have four TV's, so they would have been paying $50 a month for the DVR and the STB's, and that was just too much. This, of course, is on top of the all the shows that you are paying $45 a month for.

I still don't know how much this is going to cost me. There is the land line, the television service, internet access, long distance, the DVR & the STB, and HBO. And taxes. And fees. And other stuff. I expect the whole bill to be in the neighborhood of $100 a month, maybe $150. We shall see.