She swallowed the spider to catch the HDMI...

...or 'the latest on my consumer electronics binge'.

I'm a little behind on blogging as I was at Austin GDC all week, but right before leaving I had a little consumer electronics binge, which I fear may lead to more binging.

Last weekend, before leaving for AGDC, the fifteen(!) year old projector that came with my house, died. Woohoo! I'd been awaiting it's death to justify the upgrade to HD, but couldn't justify it when there was a working old school projector still in place.

Anyhow, it died, and the next day I was off to buy a replacement. I ended up buying the very affordable Optoma HD70. There are a ton of specs I could list off, but the most relevant vs the old projector is it's weight: 5.6 pounds, vs the 115 pounds of it's predecessor. Here they are for comparison:

Let me tell you, that was not easy to take down off the ceiling!

Anyhow, this has lead to a series of tasks, upgrades, and other projects:

• Projector was $900
• Spider Mount: $100
• Solder, connectors, wire to build adapter for 12v relay to lower projectors screen: $15
• $300 for the 22" LCD that Alisa saw at Circuit City and wanted for the bedroom

Still to do:

• VGA, HDMI, S-Video cables from receiver to projector (right now it's component only, I want all the cables working).
• Fish cables through walls & ceiling
• putty & paint ceiling (projector had to mount a couple feet back from where the old one was)
• Current receiver supports component out, but doesn't upscale. New receiver?

Sigh... what a tangled web we weave when we upgrade to HD...

On the positive side, My Xbox360 is finally looking it's best. Bunch of games that I considered unplayable at SD are now on the to-do list (Dead Rising, Wik, Oblivion...)