I went on a semi electronics spending spree yesterday and the day before. I bought a new 32" LCD Vizio for the master bedroom and setup our other DirecTV HD receiver and DVD player from the Den last night. I am very impressed with this TV for the money; picture is very nice and so easy to setup and has 2 HDMI inputs for easy setup of the receiver and dvd player!!

I also bought the Sony Blu-Ray player at best buy yesterday. The player was on sale for $400 and you get 10 free blu-ray discs. 5 instantly in the store and 5 by mail. We watched Pirates of the Caribeanan and let me tell you these movies in 1080P is just FLAT OUT AMAZING!! The sound etc is just so dramatic. Anyone that is a big movie buff and likes home theater setups the blu-rays are the chit!!

I also bought a new Sony A/V receiver that should arrive by thursday and it has 3 HDMI inputs so I can run my Blu-Ray, DirecTV and xbox 360 all thru HDMI and get rid of 75-80% of my cables in my setup!! I am excited for this setup as my old Onkyo is about 9 years old but has served us well. Never had to get it fixed and will likely put it in the bed with our new HD setup there.

I also bought the Logitech Harmony 880 universal remote that will control all of my devices in the home theater including lighting etc if I decide to go that route. This remote is sweet, you setup activities so all you do is hit one button and it will turn on the blu-ray player, TV and switch all the inputs and set the volume to your preference. This will be nice for when the baby sitters come over or family is in and they have no idea how to work crap now they just have to hit one button on the remote and its all setup for them. I will even setup the directv channel icons on the display of the remote (holds 16 of them) for all the popular channels so they don't even have to know the channel # anymore just hit the button on the remote.

Thought I would share all my fun the last couple of days ; trying my part to keep the economy going over the holidays.

Happy New Year!!

 

Congrats!

I bought a 42 inch Sony Bravia HDTV a few months ago and right before Christmas bought a PS3 which has Blu-Ray built in.

 

nice dude. I got myself a 26'' Vizio before I left for college in the summer and I know exactly what you mean when you hook it up to an xbox, it just rocks.

 

I have a 57" Mits DLP 1080P that is in our den that I have our xbox 360 hooked up with HDMI and its ROCKS!!

For the price of the Vizio I am very happy with the picture quality and ease of setup etc not to mention it only weighs 28lbs or so which is SWEET!. Similiar 32" LCD panels were 200-400 more then the Vizio but for the master bedroom its perfect as we have the highend set down stairs in the den for viewing Blu-ray, football games etc.

 

i know this will sound silly but...what is blu ray? actually...i know what it is so i guess my question should be - why go blu-ray instead of dvd? dont they have hd-dvds? is blu-ray better than those?

 

DVD is the standard right now. HD-DVD and Blu-ray are competing to be the next-gen format, kinda like VHS vs. beta-max from back in the day.

Neither one is really that much better than the other, and different studios are supporting different formats, which is why most people are just buying good old regular DVDs

 

Blu-ray and HD-DVD have the same picture quality. They both show 1080p and the only real difference is Blu-Ray discs hold more memory, but the picture quality isn't any better. It's all about preference and what you are willing to pay. I don't want to spend much so I paid $179 awhile ago for the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360. I love it and the movies look fantastic. My t.v. only does 720p/1080i and it still looks awesome. I figure if blu-ray wins the battle then I'm only out $179 and some good movies.

 

Badass, watched Planet Earth last night on a friends PS3 and it was INCREDIBLE. Once the movie companies stop bitching about who is going to do what movies, Ill look into one, but until then, Im not choosing a camp. And that Logitech Harmony is a badass remote, bro in law has one, SO easy.

 

[QUOTE=madmatt;301056]. Once the movie companies stop bitching about who is going to do what movies, Ill look into one, but until then, Im not choosing a camp. QUOTE]

exactly!

 

[QUOTE=jjtgiants;301063]The question is how long will this take to iron out? So in the interim why not pay to enjoy it .

 

I wouldn't pay $300 right now for a blu-ray player. Maybe if they get down to $200 or less like you can get a HD-DVD player for. It does suck that there are two formats right now, but even if one goes away, you can still watch the movies you have. They also upconvert your regular DVDs to make them look better.

 

[QUOTE=todd03blown;301066]good question....who knows how long it will take.