The Usual Dec 2008

Yogurtworks

I don't know when I'll be flying back up next. So it was good to squeeze in one more Usual!

Dinner with Kuo-Nan's family

We had dinner with a family friend who is also my old former boss at the first company I worked at. We were playing Charge! on the Wii and later some Texas Hold Em.

In-Laws 30th

Our families celebrated In-Laws 30th wedding anniversary at Koi Garden in Pleasanton. 30 years - quite a feat.

Mike's LAN Party

I lugged up my gaming rig just for this and it was worth the lugging. We had a group of six (Mike T, Mike C, Paul, John, Josh, myself) and we played modded UT2004 , C&C Red Alert 3, and some Kane's Wrath from 1pm to almost midnight. Dardy hung out with us as well. I think we scared Christi out of the house. Yah, playing virtually online is fun and more convenient but the experience is just not the same as in-person.

Jason, Jim + SMC's visit

Jim + SMC's had a short trip to LA this weekend and Jason also happened to be not too far so we all hung out on Sat. BBQ at Lucille's was tempting but when we got there around 7:30pm, the wait was 1.5 hours. Doh. And I thought we were in a recession. The economy seemed pretty healthy at Victoria Gardens. Lesson learned - next time I'll be sure to call ahead to see if I can put my name down and if I can't, I'd at least assess the wait time to decide if the drive out is even worth it. We drove all the out to Victoria Gardens only to drive back and eat at the local Claimjumpers. At least Jim got his beef ribs fix.

Dabbling in home theater PC lite

With my latest set up, I've had some time now to fiddle around with the LG Blu Ray/HD DVD combo drive. Like most current GPU cards, the GTX260 has dual DVI out so I am using a DVI-HDMI adapter to video feed Blu Ray & HD DVD from the LG to the Panasonic plasma. For sound I am using the onboard motherboard solution feeding into a really old Technics Dolby surround receiver and old Sony tower speakers. Far from audiophile quality but it works and it is still better than TV speakers alone. Because the primary application for my PC is gaming, I did not install Windows Media Center or install a TV tuner card / PVR software or do I have any kind of remote control solution. So yah, fairly bare bones and crude. But my intent all along was just to be able to watch Blu Ray & HD DVD on the plasma at the lowest cost.

For the most part the LG with Cyberlinks works as advertised but with a few quirks. Sometimes I get HDCP compliance issues even though both my Panasonic and my GPU are HDCP compliant. But I've figured out a workaround but it adds an extra manual step.

When there is a new Blu Ray released, sometimes I'll have to update Cyberlinks or else the disc won't play (but to be fair, standalone Blu Ray players + PS3 can also have playback issues that require FW updates).

I had thought my GPU card could allow simultaneous output to two displays at different resolutions but it turns out that in my case when I want to watch HD media content on the Panasonic, I have to manually switch video output from the Dell to the Panasonic via the Nvidia control panel.

Ok, enough of the rants. A positive and very important one to me - without having performed any calibration or adjustments on either the Panasonic or on my PC, the picture quality is actually very good. Deep blacks, color is vivid and overall picture is very sharp.

After experimenting with the LG, I don't know if I'd ever want to build a "real" HTPC. Maybe the Media Center OS would streamline operations but I think the boot up time alone would be a deal breaker for me. I think I am just more of a fan of standalone components when it comes to home theater. But of course if you gave me something like a Niveus media server with capability to distribute A/V to the entire household I could easily change my tune ;-)

Edge enhancement on The Dark Knight blu ray

Like many other fans, I have been waiting for TDK release on Blu Ray for a long time. I watched it last night and I had mixed feelings on the PQ. The upgrade in resolution over the Standard DVD is pretty obvious but wow, I have to agree with the edge enhancement criticisms. Check out the screen capture and notice the ringing and the overprocessed look. This was the look for a majority of the film. It's pretty disappointing for such a high profile, highly anticipated release. Once you get acclimated to superior quality transfers like "Live Free or Die Hard," "Kill Bill, " and "I Robot" issues like DNR & EE can be distracting.

However, I did enjoy the PQ of the seamlessly integrated IMAX footage where the aspect ratio changes from the 2.40:1 of 35mm film to 1.78:1 of IMAX. While 1.78:1 is not the true IMAX aspect ratio, the clarity is pretty impressive.

The Dolby True HD track also did not disappoint. The action sequence where the Tumbler "evolves" into the motorcycle Batpod is impressive demo material. I don't know if it's just me but I sometimes feel that Warner Dolby True HD tracks have the highs rolled off while Fox DTS-HD MA tracks sound more crisp. But I could be imagining things here.

This was my third viewing of The Dark Knight and I was still very much engrossed by the film that I did not really fixate on the PQ issues.

Calibrating the Dell 2408WFP

I finally got around to calibrating the Dell this weekend. Out of the box, colors were way oversaturated to the point of having a neon glow. The different preset settings are pretty horrible to say the least. It wasn't distracting while playing games but doing everyday tasks like web browsing would torch my eyes. I used my Eye One and the Eye One Match Ver 3.6.2 and after going through the calibration against 6500K & gamma: 2.2 the settings I arrived at,

Contrast: 62
Brightness: 81*
Red: 72
Green: 66
Blue: 72

* There seems to be no way to measure Brightness with the Eye One Match Ver 3.6.2 even though the walkthough video shows this adjustment. I wonder if they got rid of this in 3.6.2? So my brightness setting was set to my own personal preference.

After going through this exercise, the colors are more natural looking. In fact I am blogging this post on my Lenovo laptop and the "white" background on the Lenovo is definitely not so white compared to the Dell now - more like blue!