Kiwimeat’s Kitchen

Upgraditis is a common affliction, especially in the technological age, and for some time I have been battling the symptoms on the home theatre front.

It’s been there for a while nagging away at my conscious. Initially I was looking to improve low frequency performance especially for music and thence began a search for a musical sub woofer. Then it was all compounded by my jumping off the fence regarding HiDef movies.

Anyway, with a bit of help from an excellent deal from my local dealer (certainly sounds like an addiction!) I may have been cured…well in remission at least.
Hi-Fi Additions

• Yamaha RX-V3800Bi AVR - replaces RX-V2600B
• REL R205 Sub Bass System -replaces Energy XL8 sub
• Toshiba HD-XE1 - replaces Denon 2930 for SD-DVD and HD-EP10 for HD-DVD
• Oppo 980HD for DVD/CD/SACD Playback (can carry SACD over HDMI as DSD) - replaces Denon 2930 for SACD/CD duties

Currently only the RX-V3800 is installed (and currently uncalibrated). The rest is on order with the Oppo coming from the US as the Australian supplier is out of stock and waiting for the new 983HD before ordering more.
Home Theatre PC

• Replaced original X1300 video card with a X2600PRO with Heat Pipe = near silence from HTPC!
• Added Pioneer BDC-S02
• Installed Slysoft AnyDVD HD and Upgraded the bundled Pioneer PowerDVD to the full PowerDVD Ultra.

As a result I now have region free (and AACS & HDCP free) Blu-Ray playback.
The only downside at the moment is that I have to use optical to feed the audio to my AVR and this results in the Hi-Def audio track being down-converted to Dolby Digital. The solution is to use the multi-channel analog outs into my AVR’s multi-channel analog in. Unfortunately these are currently occupied by the analog outs from my Denon 2930 for SACD support but once the Oppo 980HD arrives they will be freed up and I will be able to get PCM out to my AVR.

In light of my recent decision to purchase an HD-DVD player I have been reading and posting in the relevant sub-forums on a couple of my regular haunts.

Some of the stuff that goes on would scare many sane people away, possibly for good. Some of the fanboism exceeds acceptable bounds. Not only do you get verbatim spouting of press releases, and name calling and worse, it even causes some otherwise rational members (based on their other posts) to take temporary leave of their senses and even losing their cool.

What makes people do this? Last time I looked it was simply two competing formats for Hi-Def movies. At this time neither party can land a knockout blow and it looks like both will be around for a while. I imagine sometime after Xmas I’ll get a Blu-Ray player of some sort and then start having to educate the family about which machine to put the disks into.

Oh and my HD-DVD is due in at dealer tomorrow (Friday) and my order of HD-DVD’s from the US have most recently “Departed FexEx Location, Memphis, TN”.