Terminator 2: Ultimate HD DVD Edition out March 20!

At least loyal HD DVD fans will get this. It's rumored to be a new transfer (not 100% sure though). I passed on the Blu Ray edition as it seemed like a rushed release in terms of PQ, features and lack of lossless sound (for a classic film like this...?!) . Here is a screenshot comparison of the the already released UK HD DVD version vs the US Blu Ray version. One benefit with HD DVD that I have yet to take advantage is the lack of region coding. Too bad this feature wasn't marketed better. The specs on this release are pretty impressive (7.1 DTS HD ! ) and supposedly has nice interactive features that showcase HDi. I already have two versions of this movie already on SD DVD but that won't stop me from importing this one. I'll post some screen shots when I get this.

Viks and I have been pretty hooked on the Sarah Conner Chronicles. Lena Headey was terrifc in 300. She is starting to grow on me as Sarah Conner although I still think she isn't as tough as Linda Hamilton was. Ditto re: Thomas Dekker vs Edward Furlong.

class A/AB vs class D / H amplifiers

I've been reading more about solid state class A/AB audio amplifiers vs the newer class D amplifiers. I find it interesting but not surprising that many class A/AB owners dismiss class D as a fad and "not musical." And then you have the class D or H owners who will tout significant power efficiencies and think class A/AB owners are foolish to spend large amounts of money for 100+lb amps that generate a ton of heat for sound quality that no doubt is great but is not much better than newer class Ds. For the record, I am a class H owner (Sunfire Cinema Grand). And I really like my amp. Clean, dynamic, dead silent and runs stone cold. No matter how much I crank it up or when there are transients, it doesn't break a sweat or lose it's finesse or poise. It is a gentle giant. I've even considered getting a 2nd amp used on Audiogon for 7.1 purposes but it's not something I am itching for right now.

But still, I have that curiosity. While I really enjoy the benefits of class H, could there be some appreciable element(s) of Class A/AB that I am missing out on? Right now, I'm not really qualified to have an opinion since I've haven't done any listening comparisons. Being value oriented, I have always been skeptical of the higher cost class A/AB amps from Krell, Classe, Plinius, Simaudio, etc. But through numerous discussions with one of my coworkers (who happens to be a die-hard tube amp fanatic but likes a few solid states), I've learned of smaller class A/AB outfits like Odyssey who are getting a lot of praise from end users for their price/performance. Another class A/AB company that I'm interested in is Gemstone Audio. Gemstone seems to be somewhat similar in terms of business model to other internet "bang-for-the-buck" Mfg'ers like Outlaw Audio and Emotiva. Anyways, even though I am still skeptical about the boutique brands, I think it's best to keep an open mind. The question I always ask myself is why do certain "high-end" amps cost significantly more than others? Is it mostly marketing? Placebo? OTOH, market forces are at work here. Enough people are buying the Krells, Classe's etc to keep them in business so they are obviously doing something right. Whatever the case, I am fascinated by engineering design choices and understanding how a Mfg'er allocates the budget toward a product (ie how much of it is actually toward the actual circuit design or components or power supply or chassis, etc.....or is it more toward a fancy chassis? Perhaps marketing costs? Or does it also have to do with economies of scale/size of the Mfg'er?). I don't think it will be easy to find the answers to these questions.

Back to A/AB vs D vs H - I suspect it will just boil down to a lot of listening and testing myself to see if I can hear a difference between A/AB vs D and figuring out my own point of diminishing returns.

My week off

I was maxed out on my PTO hours so I took the week off this past week. It's been nice to not be on a schedule and just do whatever I want - I've slept in the whole week, been working out during the day, IMing with people while they were working (or supposedly working), playing PC games that have been backlogged due to a lack of time (ie Half Life 2 Ep 1, Ep 2, and of course my usual favorites: DoW DC and Team Fortress 2), and even doing some yard work. I have been bad about reading work related emails throughout the week but have been very good about not replying. It really is tough to break away.

I'm getting close to going cash on several investments - most likely the small caps. I'm not timing here - mostly trying to reduce our exposure and better diversify. I'm no financial market guru but it's not hard to sense that more bad news is coming. I think large caps with good balance sheets & fundamentals will weather the storm better in the near term.

Sigh. I now wish I had taken two weeks off. There's so much more I had wanted to do (as well as not do) at home. This past week has gone by way too quickly and I'm just not ready for it to end.

Refinanced

The funds just kicked in today. We went from a 5.125% 5/1 ARM (P+I) to a 5% 5/1 ARM (P+I). Now the question some might ask is why refinance with only a 0.125% reduction? Why not wait for a better rate? Well, it's hard to predict mortgage rates. Despite what some might think, market forces determine mortgage rates and not the Feds.

Our area has been soft for some time now. We had two years left of our original 5/1 ARM. I've been wanting to get a lock into a lower rate asap in the event that it doesn't make sense to sell our house within the next 2 years. Despite putting 20% down from the get go - our home value has dropped such that our current loan to value ratio (LTV) is barely 0.8. Maybe even lower. But in our case and as I hinted above, it's not just a simple matter of waiting for a lower rate. As I kinda sensed in March of last year, I'm expecting things to get worse before they get better in terms of home values. The new reality today is that credit is simply harder to get. If your home value is below the price you paid, you simply cannot just shop for the lowest rate and lock in. The home value + how much you originally put down become key variables. Going through this experience I learned that the alarms sound off if your LTV is > 0.8 and pretty much all lenders at that point will ask for more money down until the LTV is equal or less than 0.8 to mitigate their risk. I don't even know if it takes more effort today to obtain a second supplemental loan or to do PMI. Well, whatever the case I did not even want to pursue those latter options. I did some shopping and because of the softness in our area a mortgage broker requested I put more money down and it got me a little concerned. We ended up using the same lender from our first loan. Turns out there were perks to this - minimal checks (they had our info from 2005), we were able to skip a formal appraisal, no additional out of pocket principle payment was required (I felt this was the key benefit), 0 points, and the closing costs which I was able to lump into the new loan will be made back in less than two years with the interest reduction! The out of pocket expense was very minmal. Just a $275 deposit to lock in the rate. It was a pretty fast and painless transaction.

At my work we have an investing news group. The discussion today around a DQNews article about Bay Area median pricing falling 8.5% got pretty heated. The "renters" were proclaiming the sky is falling while the "homeowners" felt pretty justified with their home purchases despite the drop in values. Viks asked me today if knowing in 2005 what we know today, would our decision to buy a home change? Maybe. The thing is, we really do love our house. It really is a place of happiness for us. And we knew the risks going in and what it could mean. I think as long as one understands the risks going in and can accept the potential consequences then no one should ever criticize you for your decision. But even then, it's your own business anyway.

I'll be in the dog house

When I woke up this morning I saw that Viks made me a little valentines day card with a chocolate on top. It totally made my day. I felt really guilty since I did not reciprocate. It's not that I forgot (seriously, the advertisements/media/email spam ensure you don't forget). I kind of looked at the laptop she recently got as kind of her Valentines day gift but man, that is just not the in the same league as a hand made card.

DTS HD demo disc

Ever since I got the Dolby True HD to light up on my Onkyo 885, I've been itching to see the cool DTS-HD Master Audio logo light up. It's been a challenge since the PS3 currently does not output DTS-HD MA in bitstream (said to be impossible if you believe this thread) . On the red side, there aren't many HD DVD releases with DTS HD MA either - mostly imports from what I can see. Most HD DVDs are Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby True HD. So what to do?? If you were lucky enough to go to CES this past January, they were giving out free DTS demo discs in HD DVD and Blu Ray. I didn't make it and man, some people are trying to pawn off these demo discs for $60. No thanks! Currently, Widescreen Review is offering the demo discs for "free" in either format. Given the PS3 limitations, I went with the HD DVD version.

You get a decent selection of movie clips and music clips. I was hoping for more DTS trailers but that's ok. Now the question you might ask is how does it sound? It sounds great! As you would expect. But now that I have listened to uncompressed PCM, Dolby True HD, and now DTS-HD MA, I don't think it's easy to claim one format to be superior over another. From the Dave Matthews Band Blu Ray, it's much easier to hear and appreciate the difference between Dolby Digital vs Dolby True HD. But among the lossless formats, it's much harder I think - the quality of original soundtrack master is probably much more important than the lossless format itself.

Nouvelle Vague - 80's New Wave meets 60's Bossa Nova

If you've seen the GMC Arcadia commercial you might have noticed Nouvelle Vague's cover of Modern English's "Melt With You" Maybe I am late to the party but I recently found out they have covers of other classic songs like Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" and The Cure's "A Forest."

The covers are sure to polarize at least some 80's purists. Right now I am enjoying the songs. Great lounge music. The covers are actually fun to listen to. Time will tell if the music can rise above novelty status.

Fast food conglomerates - your advertising dollars at work

Ok, so I've been pretty good with regular exercise with all the great basketball that's been on TV for the past few months. But man, during the commercial breaks all these fast food commercials keep bombarding me with temptation. And believe me, I do try to channel surf during the commercials but it is just about impossible to not view at least one friggin fast food commercial in the span of 2.5 hours. We also get a lot of BOGO coupons in the mail. I guess competition must be pretty fierce (in this area at least).

After working out today, I broke down *shakes fist to the sky!* and went to the Golden Arches and got a mouth watering Quarter Pounder (minus the pickles). No, I didn't pig out. The "old me" can normally polish off two burgers. I am getting better with eating more fruit, vegetables or soup with my meals to make me feel full instead of eating all calorie dense foods to get full. Diet soda helps a lot too.

Oh and guess what my favorite fast food commercial is? It's the "Why didn't you think of that?!!" commercial from Jack-in-the-box.

In-n-out like lightening

Viks' 6+ year old Toshiba laptop has been on it's last leg. Pentium III with 256MB RAM running XP. It's unbearably slow by today's standards. Sure a RAM upgrade might give it a boost but that hasn't even been the major issue. It's been shutting itself off more frequently after being on for a short period of time. And it's been like this with proper ventilation and a new Toshiba battery. My own work laptop was also shutting itself down for a period of time but I noticed it did that right after installed Google desktop. Not sure if my CPU was pegged with the Google desktop (I didn't see this). Once I uninstalled Google desktop, my shut down issues went away. So with that said, I tried uninstalling all but the bare essentials on the Toshiba, running antivirus, and anti spy ware. The shut down issues seemed to go away for a day but returned again. For a brief moment I thought of re-imaging the Toshiba but given how slow it was and seeing how Viks always likes to use my work laptop when I am not on it, it became pretty obvious that it was time to just get a new laptop.

We ended up choosing the HP dv2715nr which was on sale at Best Buy. Four hours from research to purchase. That's a milestone for me. Normally, I'll spend weeks and months scrutinizing specifications, details, user reviews and checking if the model of interest is a known lemon. I have to confess though. The requirements for this laptop were fairly easy. Internet surfing, watching online TV, MS office, rip some CD/DVDs here and there, not too physically big, not too physically small, and reliable. That's pretty much it. Oh and not spend a TON of money ;-) Didn't really want to get an Intel Celeron or AMD Sempron class. But of course didn't need a top of the line dual core either. At first I had a prejudice against the AMD Turion from what I've known of the older mobile Athlon CPUs. But the more I read about the newer Turions, the more comfortable I became with them. The newer Turions supposedly run much cooler than the older generation and are a reasonable alternative to Intel's Dual Core. Again, keeping Viks' requirements in mind here. More than anything, I felt it was important to get 2GB of RAM than fuss over the CPU specifications. Because it's no friggin secret that Vista is a resource hog. But I am not going to bother re-imaging to XP. I spent most of last night uninstalling most of the bloatware. The AMD TL-58 CPU and 2GB RAM seem to make the laptop feel pretty zippy while not running too hot. Battery life is average at 2-2.5 hrs (I set it to MAX performance) but the laptop is intended to be stationary for the most part. I like the Vista sidebar widgets or whatever you call them. For the price, the build quality is also surprisingly very good. The laptop feels really rock solid and not flimsy at all.

Another thing I was glad about - and I never thought I would EVER say this. But I had the most pleasant Best Buy buying experience. It was also quick & easy. No rebate hassles. And minimal pressure to buy add-ons. I think the sales guy sized me up from the get go. I stated exactly what I wanted and he timidly asked me if I wanted any accessories or security software but I politely but firmly said "Just the laptop please." He didn't bother asking me if I wanted the extended warranty. Thank goodness.