Newy's Blog » Electronics http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog tail -f /dev/mind > blog Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:28:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The good and the bad http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2007/08/17/the-good-and-the-bad http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2007/08/17/the-good-and-the-bad#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:46:24 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2007/08/17/the-good-and-the-bad/ Well I got two shipments this week.  First thing I ordered was another hdhomerun.  I have been totally happy with the current hdhomerun I have so I ordered a second.  It came wed.  Did not have much time to hook up but I at least got it on the network.  Last night I finally got around to getting the static ip setup for it and setup in myth the way I wanted it.  I also upgraded both hdhomeruns to the latest firmware that came out yesterday.  Both are up and running now.  The original one has 2 cables from charter cable hooked to it and the new one has one cable from charter and one from the antenna I am working on in the garage attic.  I have heard rumors that charter will be getting simulcast going in our area some time in the next few months.  I have seen a few strange things with qam channels in the past 3 months so hopefully the rumors are true.  When they simulcast I will be able to record many more channels with the hdhomeruns.  Right now I have about 15 channels available.  Most of them are the network hd feeds.  I would love to get discovery hd (not hd theater) and a few other stations like the history channel and tlc, etc, in hd.

I also ordered a hdmi switch and 3 dvi to hdmi cables.  I am working on getting the mythfrontend, oppo dvd player and charter stb all hooked to our projector via the hdmi cable.  I found a switch on buy.com for 35 bucks with free shipping and no one complained that they had problems.  I hooked them up last night and it seems to do the job.  I just have to work on getting our logitech remote programed to control the switch.  That should make using the projector much easier.

The bad news is after all of that work last night, I woke up this morning to feed our dog and I normally check email real quick at that time.  The computer I use in the basement had not network connection.  Actually said cable dissconnected.  This can’t be good.  Well it was not.  The 16 port dell 10/100 switch that most things in our house plug in to was all lit up.  It is dead.  I was able to pull out an old 5 port 10/100 switch to help out.  I have most of the myth network plugged in to a 5 port gig switch, that is plugged in to a linksys wrt56gs that is running dd-wrt.  I also have the 5 port dlink switch plugged into the  wrt54gs.  I have 2 other dell 2300 wireless routers running dd-wrt in other areas of the house.  So between the extra 5 port dlink switch and the main wrt54gs, I was able to plug all active devices on the network in.  Now to find a good gig switch to replace the dead dell switch and get things back to normal.  Right now I am pretty much maxed out on ports so I hope another switch does not die on me.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2007/08/17/the-good-and-the-bad/feed 0 Put a few more things together in the basement http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/03/22/put-a-few-more-things-together-in-the-basement http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/03/22/put-a-few-more-things-together-in-the-basement#comments Thu, 23 Mar 2006 01:50:24 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=493 I moved all of the stereo equipment down to the basement tonight.  Have almost all of the speakers hooked up and working.  I have one sub to finish up and have to figure out how I will place the center channel.  I watched a dts demo disk for a bit and then called it a night.

Right after work I stopped by the charter shop and picked up a cable box.  Got pretty much every channel they have.  Have it all set.  Just have to get a cable signal to it.  I hope to get that tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see how that thing can project hd on my screen.  I found out now it has a dvi output.  I will have to hook it up to the projector and see if it is any better than component.  If it is better then component then I will have to look at getting an hdmi or dvi switcher in the next few months.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/03/22/put-a-few-more-things-together-in-the-basement/feed 0 monoprice.com http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/01/12/monopricecom http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/01/12/monopricecom#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:25:38 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=440 Just submitted an order for a few video cables from www.monoprice.com. I had been searching for good prices on good cables for sometime now. I was very impressed with the prices at monoprice. Today I finally made an order. I ordered a 25 foot hdmi cable, 25 foot component cable, 25 foot svideo with audio cable and a dvi to hdmi adapter. Total cost of the order was 62 bucks with shipping. Not a bad price at all. I needed a 20 foot cable to run through the conduit to the location of the projector (not yet purchased). 25 feet was the closest I could get and afew extra feet should be fine. I will post again when I get everything hooked up and working. It will be a few months but when I get it all going I will post as to the quality of the cables and the video picture on the screen. I hope it was a good choice.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2006/01/12/monopricecom/feed 0 Could not pass on a great hard drive deal http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/12/27/could-not-pass-on-a-great-hard-drive-deal http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/12/27/could-not-pass-on-a-great-hard-drive-deal#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2005 19:15:33 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=431 Last night I was checking my email and my college roomate had emailed me about a great deal on a hard drive. Outopost.com had seagate 300 gig drives on sale for 82 dollars shipped after rebate. I ordered one up right away. My plan is to put the 300 gig drives I have (3 of them) into a new raid array when I get my new linux box up and running. I hope to get the hardware setup this week and get linux on it soon after. I do not know what os I will go with. Been trying a few lately.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/12/27/could-not-pass-on-a-great-hard-drive-deal/feed 0 Wow that was fast shipping http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/11/28/wow-that-was-fast-shipping http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/11/28/wow-that-was-fast-shipping#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:30:53 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=418 I ordered a 300 gig drive from outpost.com Friday. Jen just let me know that we got a box today. That as really fast shipping. I will have to fill out the rebate forms and mail them in this week. A nice 300 gig Seagate for 79 bucks shipped.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/11/28/wow-that-was-fast-shipping/feed 0 Dvd player that looks promising http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/07/13/dvd-player-that-looks-promising http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/07/13/dvd-player-that-looks-promising#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2005 18:13:37 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=351 OPDV971H
I have been looking at projectors and also some dvd players. Just looking at equipment to put in the basement when I finish it. I want to get a new dvd player that has dvi out so I can hook directly to the projector. I found a great review of a relatively cheap dvd player that I will have to keep looking at but it does sound like a great unit for the price. It is the OPDV971H digital DVD player made by oppo digital. The review is at www.projectorcentral.com.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2005/07/13/dvd-player-that-looks-promising/feed 0 Another weekend I accomplished nothing http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/11/22/another-weekend-i-accomplished-nothing http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/11/22/another-weekend-i-accomplished-nothing#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:17:16 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=273 It was nice though. Had a few friends up and had a nice weekend of xbox games. We had two xbox’s at the house over the weekend. Wish we had three, one for each person, but two was better then one. We fired up Xlink/Kai, and started testing things and playing halo2. We found that if the person hosting had a bad lag problem the game really sucked. So we started hosting our own levels and then had no problems. Could play and didn’t seem to see much lag at all for the players. Sunday we decided it was so cool that you could talk in the game we had to go out and get a few mics for the xbox’s. We bought two and brought them home and played a bit more. Wasn’t as cool as we thought it would be but still was nice. When you have team play you can hit the white button and talk to your team if you want. Otherwise if you are around another player, when you talk you can be heard, that is only if you are close enough to the player. Still very cool. I have no need to get xbox live at all now. Xlink/Kai is great. I finally saw what xbox live it like and it really does not do much more that I can tell for the game. Does look like there never will be lag issues but if I host games I do not see lag issues anyway.

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/11/22/another-weekend-i-accomplished-nothing/feed 1 Now this is overkill http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/10/14/now-this-is-overkill http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/10/14/now-this-is-overkill#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:29:03 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=267 Why would you want to have 400 hours of available recording time on a replaytv. I have 2 40 hour units and have never run out of space. I just copy shows over to my media server if I have not watched them in three days. It happens automatically. Never have even come close to using up the space on the replays. Here is a link to a guy that is playing with a 400 gig drive in a replay. Soon he will be putting two of those drives in a replay to have a 800 hour replay407 hour 400GB Single Drive Upgrades – AVS Forum

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/10/14/now-this-is-overkill/feed 0 Thinking about getting a new tv/device for the kitchen http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/05/19/thinking-about-getting-a-new-tvdevice-for-the-kitchen http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/05/19/thinking-about-getting-a-new-tvdevice-for-the-kitchen#comments Wed, 19 May 2004 23:46:11 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=211 Here is the cheapest price I have found it for ever. Link

Here is a small list from techbargains

Instant Techy Kitchen, May 19
Overstock.com has the Salton combo TV, DVD player, Web/Email device, CD, MP3 player/streamer, FM tuner, with wireless keyboard and remote. Fits under kitchen cabinets. Original list $2300. $599.99- $25 coupon. Search for item 407905. Review

]]> http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/05/19/thinking-about-getting-a-new-tvdevice-for-the-kitchen/feed 0 Got hit by the storm over the weekend http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/05/14/got-hit-by-the-storm-over-the-weekend http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/2004/05/14/got-hit-by-the-storm-over-the-weekend#comments Fri, 14 May 2004 14:22:47 +0000 james http://www.jnewcastle.com/blog/?p=204 Well I think it is time to look into a whole house protection system. Sunday evening a bad electrical storm came rolling through. Heard and saw the lighting strike near by. It ended up killing one of my nic’s in my firewall, the 16 port dell switch I had that nic plugged into and the network port on my replaytv in my livingroom. Dell replaced the switch on tuesday. Have to send the old one back. I had an identical 3com nic in my old P233 that used to be my firewall. Just put that in and my current firewall is back up and working fine.
Went to bestbuy last night because I have a 4 year extended warranty through them on my replay. They wanted to give me a tivo to replace it. Same price ok I will give them that and it is a 40 hour unit also. But to get something comparable to my current unit they would have to give me full lifetime activation and the home media option also. That alone is another 500 dollars I believe. No way. So I asked for me warranty back. They prorated it so I got like 51 bucks of my 79 I had given them. I think I will go have a talk with the store manager tonight again.
So then I called replaytv support. After a little over an hour on the phone with SIM from india I am sure. She talked me through anything and everything. Of which I had tried already. Was so frustrating, but still nicely listened to her and lied a bit about what I was doing. Crazy to hold me on the phone an hour to tell me that it is out of warranty and since it was hit by lightening probably they will not do anything for me I have to buy a new unit. She did say since this is a special situation she has noted in my case number that I can have my current lifetime subscription moved to a new unit of equal space. So I messaged Replaylyndon on avsforum (the greats forum and the greatest tech guy ever) to see if this is true. He messaged back first thing this morning to tell me that yes this is true. I messaged back and am waiting to hear from him to see how I go about doing this. As soon as I hear back from him I will buy a refurb unit from the replayoutlet for 98 bucks shipped. Not a bad deal really. I will be happy with that.
Now to go let best buy know how they treated me and let the guy know he lost my business now.

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