Finally made the move to HDTV. Terra bought me a birthday/Christmas present this weekend. She picked up a Vizio VW37L 37” LCD. I was torn between a Toshiba 32” that had a better contrast ratio but after looking at them side by side for about 45 minutes I picked the Vizio.
So I was up to 4 AM on Thursday night ripping out the TV shelf I had originally built and sealing it up to mount the new TV to the wall. That entailed tearing down what I had before and drywalling over the opening, adding supports for the LCD mount, and then bricking the new area. I got a none swivel mount for the wall. I did not think I needed anything too fancy with the basement layout I have. That turned out to be a good choice and the only thing I did was install a few spacers to give the TV just a slight downward angle. It looks the same from the far side of the pool table to the far side of the bar with its 178 degree viewing angle. But I was on a mission to get it mounted and I was not sleeping until it was up. And of course get in a little time sampling some xBox 360 games.
Here is a slideshow of the new Vizio along with one photo in there of what the old TV shelf looked like.
I went a head and updated the cable with the HDTV package on Saturday. They installed that on Sunday. They gave me a new cable box and remote this morning. I had to pick up a couple of HDMI cables and another digital optical audio cable but tonight I think I have everything the way I want it. No wires are showing at all so I am happy about that. All the audio is going through my system under the bar and to the four speakers on the walls.
The xBox 360 is just incredible. The TV goes up to 1080i and the games just look incredible on the Vizio. It is like everything is new now so Noah and I want to play all the games that we have lost a little interest in. With Assassin’s Creed coming on on Monday we just can’t wait to pick it up and play.
I don’t have a HD player yet but I hope to get on deal on one Black Friday. I am looking for anyone that has a calibration DVD I can borrow. I have not done much to adjust it yet but I hope to this week. I figure I need to put a few hours in on it to get it broken in and then make some adjustments.
As I start to make adjustments and check out all the HD channels on Mediacom I will post more details this week.
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You might need to break out the shades when watching Everest. Last week in HD it was so bright from the snow it was hard to fathom.
It is on Discovery right? I know cable doesn’t have it in HD. One more reason to switch over to DirectTV. Let me know if you have DirectTV or the other company.