Show off your latest purchase!

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Tim Hortons,

XL Double Double...shakes the morning blahs !
 

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I just got a set of black skewers too. I wasn't planning on learning to unicycle, so they're quite handy in the city.

Rick - any normal bike shop should have them, they're quite common.

Yes, they are quite important for a bike, really.
 
No pictures unfortunately but:

92 AWD DSM Stage 2 trans from TRE. All kinds of upgrades/goodies for a mere $1550. :)
New passenger door window motor
new shifter cables
New hard bushings in car and under hood.
And of course, a nice set of air tools including a dremel. Going to port my 14b turbo like a crazy man. :)
Gotta do a little body work and a good prep and primer and she'll be road ready.
 
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Great deals on both so decided while I was in town visiting it was time to wean my folks off their old 480i CRT TV and show them the glorious world of 1080p HD.

I wish I had a taken a picture of my mother's face when I put in the first disc of Blue Planet on Blu-ray into their shiny new PS3 connected to their shiny new 46" 1080p Bravia... and hit play. I couldn't tear her away from the screen if I wanted to. :)

I then added the HD package to their Dish service and replaced their Dish DVR with the VIP-622 HD DVR. I also updated their Netflix account to make Blu-ray their priority choice. They watched their first Blu-ray movie last night (the first Pirates Of the Caribbean movie) and afterwards they both said they will never go to the movie theaters again!

While they maybe in their golden years, they are now official members of the HD community. :)👍

I even downloaded several of the free game demos for the PS3 as well as game trailers and I was surprised that they actually seemed genuinely interested in at least a few. They were particularly interested in Little Big Planet, but that's not out yet. They are both Soduku fans so they liked Go! Soduku, and they also got a kick out of flOw. They were not terribly interested in Resistance: Fall of Man however. :D


My current top choices for different types of 1920x1080 displays based on both performance and price would be:
Code:
PROJECTOR:	Panasonic AE1000	N/A LCD (~$4,000)
RPTV:		Samsung HL-S6187W	61" DLP (~$2,000)
DVTV:		[COLOR="Red"][b]Sony Bravia KDL46V2500[/b][/COLOR]	46" LCD (~$2,500)

WARNING: For Christmas I bought my parents a new TV, the 46" Sony Bravia KDL46V2500 DV-LCD, and after installing it and calibrating it, I noticed severe Mura uniformity artifacts.

There are a few different types of Mura artifacts that can show up on some LCD panels, and in this case it appears to have a combination of two of them, but mostly it appears to be from a manufacturing error where the LCD panel is improperly sealed causing to much pressure on the liquid crystal cells in isolated areas on the panel. The effect of this are noticeable gradient "clouds" of gray that can be easily seen when the display is showing large areas of black. This defect is often referred to as a backlight uniformity artifact.

While this type of artifact is normal for LCD displays, it should not be easily seen by the human eye, and in most cases, requires specialized equipment to even measure it. Even when LCD panels have noticeable Mura artifacts, in most cases they are caught by the manufacturer in quality control and testing, and are discarded.

This was unfortunately not the case with this particular unit! The uniformity was so bad that it created very noticeable gradient "clouds" of gray which became slightly more pronounced the longer the display was left on... which is also normal with LCD, only that even then the effect is rarely ever noticed by the human eye under normal viewing conditions.

Before sending it back for a replacement, I did some more tinkering with the settings, and by adjusting the backlight control to '0' for each video input and then recalibrating the video settings for each input, I was able to remove most of the gradient cloud artifacts, but not entirely.

My parents were not in the least bit concerned, and after my adjustments, unless the image being displayed was pure black, even I found it difficult to notice the artifact. 👍

However, I still wanted to give my parents a defect free display so I returned it for another unit, but it to showed similar gradient cloud artifacts. 👎

This prompted me to make some inquiries with Sony as well as Samsung, who actually manufacturers the 1920x1080 LCD panels used for this and the other Bravia 1080p LCD TVs for Sony, including the XBR line. While both Sony and Samsung admit there is a problem with some of these panels, neither is saying what percentage of units is having this problem, nor have they given me a satisfactory answer as to why these panels slipped through unoticed by quality control.

For the time being, I have decided not to return the 2nd unit, as I have made the necessary adjustments that have for the most part eliminated the Mura artifacts and even before I did that, my parents were very impressed by the quality of the picture, and may have never even noticed the artifacts had I not pointed it out to them.

If you own or are considering purchasing any of the Sony or Samsung 1080p LCD TVs, my recommendation is to immediately check the set to see if it has any gradient cloud artifacts, and if so adjust the backlight control to '0' for each input, and then calibrate the set from there.

Other than this issue, I still highly recommend these sets, as the picture quality is absolutely stunning. 👍


UPDATE: Well after being blown away by the performance of the Vizio VP504, especially it's new PDP panel and video processor, and buying one for myself a couple months ago, I decided seeing as we are in town visiting the folks that I would replace the Bravia I got them last year with a VP504 as well... yes it's that bloody good. 👍

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I also installed a Simplicity full motion wall mount (model SLF1) in order to get it out of the way of their fireplace. Before, I had it on a rotating platform in front of their fireplace as they wanted to be able to orient the TV in different directions depending on where in the gameroom they were sitting. The nice thing about this wall mount is that it still gives it a great deal of flexability in terms of how they want the screen oriented, but is now out of the way of the fireplace. My folks are not exactly Spring chickens either, so another nice thing about this particular mount is that it takes very little strength to pull the TV from the wall (and this set weighs nearly 100 lbs), and turn it as well as tilt it... and yet it holds it's position just as easily. 👍

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So besides this brilliant TV, I also highly recommend this mount as well. 👍👍
 
Mm yeah, the wireless one has a power button in place of the USB ports on the wired one.
Continuing the theme of Apple hardware...

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Airport Extreme. Figured I should finally get a wireless router and un-tether my Macbook Pro. :P

It arrived today, so a pic of it in the flesh. :)
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Don't mind my mess in the background. :P

So far it works very nicely. No troubles at all with set up, I've got it all set nicely now so my desktop PCs are wired straight to the Airport with Gigabit Ethernet, my printer is plugged in with USB and my Macbook Pro is connected via 802.11n. :)
 
So besides this brilliant TV, I also highly recommend this mount as well. 👍👍
I was going to ask this in another thread, but since you showed this picture:

For wall mounts, they just screw directly into the TV?

My wife and I are looking at a TV stand that has a wall mount on an arm for the widescreen TV and I was curious if would need to buy anything else.

Here is a picture of a similar setup, but it isn't the same one. I can't find a picture of the one we were looking at.
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EDIT: The one were are looking at has larger, and thicker, shelves.
 
Yes, there are hardpoints on the back of the TV with brass inserts for mounting bolts - 4 or 6 of them. These should mate to some combination of holes on the bracket.
 
How much would a stand like that go for?
I don't know about that one, but the one I am looking at will be about $199 at Wal*Mart.

It has three shelves, 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick each, all three are about the same size as the bottom shelf in that pic, the TV mount has adjustable height, and the rear support beam has holes in it to keep the wires organized. Oh, and the TV mounts swivels 15 degrees to the sides.


Looking around though I found that style can run anywhere from $175 to $500, depending on materials, number of shelves, size of TV, etc.

I was just looking for something that wasn't enclosed so I could put my PS3 on it and went by the computer desk section in Wal*Mart on a whim. They had three TV stands also.
 
Got my new camera tonight. I went with the Canon SD1100IS in chocolate since it was on sale for $229 at Best Buy which was a pretty good deal. I got the Canon value pack as well which came with a leather case, extra battery and a neck strap for the camera which will come in handy when I got hiking. For a memory card I went with a PNY 4GB SD card since it was on sale too for $25, normally $45! I got the 2 year service plan since it covers accidental damage.

Here is what it looks like.

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Well I've been meaning to get a new bike since last October. I picked this one out.

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Hopefully putting a deposit on this tomorrow at the local bike shop.

Haro's factory is located in China. So the Olympics have basically shut every factory down to make the air quality good.

Bike should arrive here in September. Just a little bit off from school start but whatever. It's pretty. :dopey:
 
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Adidas Exerta TR's.

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30% off + 30% off = too good to pass up. Also another pair of Adidas for 40% off + 30% off, but I don't remember what kind they are and therefore no pics. Both pairs of shoes together were under $70. :D
 
That is awesome. I wish the service advisers at my job were creative enough to do little things like that, but with us you would just just ended up with a "Parts functioned properly"

We get huge shipments every week from Seattle, and the boxes on the skid need to be "tagged" to denote the order is complete before leaving the warehouse. I guess one of the guys who checks the orders turns the normal big huge red X on the box into a big huge red fish from time to time.

It makes me smile every time I put an order away that has it. Life's little niceties...

I want to put up a random craigslist posting thanking the guy for making my day a little bit funner. Next time.
 
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2x HDMI 10ft. gold plated cables for ___.

edit: Might have it cheaper at a B&M store... Purchase on hold.
 
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A ticket to this:

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And to that Honda dreamscape thing. Both were pretty good, apart from the baking heat outside.


EDIT

Oh and:

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Those have the Ferrite Cores though...

You know that's a good thing right?

Longer HDMI cable doesn't usually have Ferrite cores because it only works on shorter runs, thus is a waste to add it to longer cables. Instead, they simply add additional shielding, which in most cases is also a waste of money as even 28 AWG cable has enough shielding to prevent typical in-home electrical interference.
 
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