Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners New HT Room Advice

Well I just got back from Germany and Afghanistan and got my “real” carpet laid down. What a huge difference it makes having a “wall-to-wall” carpet in front of my seating rather than the half-a$$ed marine grade crap I had left over from my apartment. With the projector off the room is not totally black. I’ve already run into the wall twice because I can’t see a thing. While both projectors, especially the AE7000, light of the room like search lights, moving my seating forward a little has cut down a lot on the reflected light intruding on my peripheral vision. It’s still not like my apartment where the screen just hung in blackness but it’s getting closer. The only thing I can do from here to improve the darkness is to start using telescope flocking. I’m going to try it out on my M80s first since they reflect the most light, being closest to the screen. If that helps significantly I will also use it on the ceiling and the upper walls.

Other than that all I have to finish is painting the trim. It’s only going on 3 years since I moved in and I still haven’t motivated myself to do it. I’m hoping that relatives from Illinois visiting in January will give me the incentive to get it done.

Grunt II - Obsessed with Darkness

If you enjoyed "Grunt - Contrast for Hire" This movie will knock your welding goggles off.

Now playing in a over-lit theater near you.

Ok I finally did it. I switched over my primary computer to HDMI hooked up to my AE7000. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with my AE4000 but it just doesn’t focus as clearly as the AE 4000. For watching anime on Netflix even in HD it’s ok but the blurriness of the text on the AE4000 compared to the AE7000 was driving me nuts. Not to mention the other PQ factors like colour depth, black level, and shadow detail are so much better on the AE7000 there’s no comparison. Now I just need to find a viable HDMI KVM switch so I can hook all my computers up through the same output.

I’m about to make an interesting HT purchase. I planning on ordering a rowing machine. I was planning on getting an recumbent elliptical but someone on an exercise forum I posted to suggested a rowing machine instead which will allow me to sit under the beam from the projector without moving any seats out of the way plus it comes on rollers making it easy to pull in and out of the weight room (read master bedroom) into the HT (read former living room, well I do pretty much live there). This way I’ll be able to get in so cardio work while watching things.

On drawback I found right away is that with the clearer computer screen every little thing like the slight misalignment I’m seeing right now is irritating.

Last night the carriage on my Opo BDP-93 stopped working so it won’t open to accept or eject disks. After a quick search on the internet I ran to Best Buy and picked up a Sony BDP-S590. It was between that and the comparable Panasonic (220 or 320 AFAIR). Sony won because they have always supported +R recordable media and Panasonic hasn’t which was a must for me since %99.99 of all my recorded DVDs are +R. It also played all the SACDs I put in it flawlessly. Also upconverted DVDs look as good as they ever did on the Opos.

Obviously I couldn’t do an A/B comparison but from what I did see/hear both PQ and SQ are as good with PQ possibly being slightly better in black level and contrast but that could easily be just different factory presets since I do my tweaking from the projector and haven’t run a calibration disk.

I have to say that I haven’t been terribly happy with the Opo for some time. It’s always had very long load times which normally isn’t a huge deal but does suck when doing demos and swapping between lots of disks. It’s also had constant HDMI dropouts about one to two minutes from starting a movie. It comes back up after a few seconds but it is rather annoying. More recently it’s required a restart of the receiver any time I changed disks or left one paused for long enough for the screen to time out. In both cases I had to restart the receiver to initiate a new HDMI handshake. I don’t suspect the receiver since nothing else requires this.

So it was pretty much a no-brainer to buy the Sony for $100 USD vs another Opo for $500 USD. I also saw no point in buying a Playstation. For many reasons a PS just wasn’t going to be worth the extra money though if I didn’t already have an Xbox360 it might have been in the running.

Sounds like you need to do a "Francis" style Youtube post on the Oppo as per my recent "funny thing tonight" post. Although I'm not sure the visual of a super-buffed soldier would add as much humor as his gravitationally challenged, WoW addict persona.

grunt:

As I've posted in another thread, I've put about 20 hours on my S590 since Christmas. I'm most impressed with the performance of this little player both in DVD, BD & SACDs that I eventually got for $97 CAN. Huge bang for the buck factor.

What the longevity of this machine will be, who knows? I'll enjoy it while it lasts...

TAM

I heard that they fixed the load times in the OPPO 103. I'll probably buy a 103, but I agree with you that there are comparable products out there for 1/2 the price, or less.

I've had many problems with my OPPO 93 that I've never had with a cheaper brand. Other than transport problems between 6 to 12 months with them. So far, no transport problems with the OPPO, other than having to wait an unusually long time to get the tray open if I don't hit the eject button within 10 seconds of turning it on. This means I start a movie activity on my Harmony 1100, then run upstairs, open the closet door, try to find the eject button by feel because you can't see it.

Hmmm. Hopefully OPPO uses higher quality parts than the cheaper brands. There must be some reason to buy another OPPO.

I have read your posts, so thanks. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t feel the need to spend weeks researching what to buy since I had already come to the conclusion based on posts like yours that most basic players these days would for all practical purposes have PQ and SQ indistinguishable from an Oppo (just realized I’d been spelling it wrong damm dyslexia ).

Don’t get me wrong either, I’m not anti-Oppo since my Oppo DVD player has certainly stood the test of time. I’ve used it to test every disk (1000s) I’ve ever burned and it still show no signs of any problems, however, the BD player has had little issues since day one. The only reason I bought the Oppo BDP in the first place was that I knew I would spend weeks researching and no matter what find a reason to justify buying it anyway. However, this time around it brings nothing I can see to the table to justify a premium of 5 times the price of something that is just as functional for me. Any incremental increase in either PQ or SQ the Oppo might have are likely (especially the SQ) to be indistinguishable from the Sony or comparable Panasonic in real use. I would be better served in saving $400 USD on the BDP purchase and put that toward room treatments if I want better SQ or PQ. Just like the B&Ws I liked were certainly not worth 3 times the price of the M80s, I can’t see any way the Oppo is worth 5 times the price of the Sony especially since the Oppo I have died after 2 years of pretty minimal use (granted that is anecdotal).

Yeah, I'd like to hear from any 103 owners out there about HDMI dropouts or slow load times.

I don't have a big TV and I'm no videophile, so really the only reason for me to do a 103 would be the fact it plays DVD-A as well as SACD.

For my one DVD-A.

Which I never listen to.

Hmm. Maybe I need to rethink my priorities. $100 for the Sony, you say?